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[Sadrice]

So, I had an FB (giant humanoid made of ash, no special powers) come in through the third cavern layer, where I was trying to set up a minecart based magma mover, filling a big cistern at z -20.  To get magma in the carts, I had a dwarven water reactor built, following this design exactly, but I hadn't yet sent a bucket brigade to fill it from the water in cavern 2, so it was empty, but with pump, two water wheels, and a hatch over the pump input with attached lever, and the ramps removed from beneath the water wheels but not the pump input.


Ash monster shows up, I send in the militia, my mace dwarf, who as it turns out doesn't have a mace yet shows up, knocks a hand off with his shield before being promptly punted into the magma pool by the FB (discovering candy in the process, so I guess yay, praise the miners?).  Next on the scene is a spear dwarf, a brand new recruit with neither spear nor meaningful armor.  Skull caved in immediately. 


Then I go try to get my military sorted out so someone with an actual weapon will come deal with this crap, and when I glance back, the FB is dead!  I check the reports, and the most recent one has him getting clobbered by a pile of flying logs, which are scattered in the reactor trench along with the FB parts.  The pump and water wheels are deconstructed.


I assume he broke the pump, and the falling water wheel parts got him, but don't they just fall, or do they explode?  I don't know where he was standing when he broke the pump, but I would assume it would be in the accessible tile of the pump or on one of the adjacent diagonals SW and SE of the pump.


He was made of ash and so was somewhat inherently delicate, but still, as my carpenters discovered after I played around with minecart supplied drop chutes for wood, falling logs are not harmless.  I would like to mount a large number of water wheels suspended over a single supporting machine component as a trap for building destroyers.  I've got some Bloodthorn in the caverns for heavy logs, does anyone know if falling height affects the lethality of falling items?  I could put it in a tall chamber with a vertical axle holding the wheels high above the hapless building destroyer.  Gold mechanisms are another potential item to drop (I assume they deconstruct when unsupported, like water wheels?).  If you build it in a fortress entrance anteroom, you could get a troll to drop it on his whole squad.


I know there are better building destroyer traps, like supports to generate cave ins, or doors holding back water and/or magma, but I think this one's entertaining, and what it lacks in lethality, it makes up for in ease of cleanup and lack of cave ins.  Has anyone tried something like this?

EDIT: fixed broken link.  The iPad's copy/paste and selection system takes a dwarven approach to doing what you want when you want it.

[GavJ]

1) It's possible that building destroyers cause parts to get thrown, whereas careful dwarf deconstruction does not, though I've never heard of that or seen evidence of it in terms of things being widely scattered.
2) In normal deconstruction, the parts get placed on the piece of ground that was supporting something. In the case of suspended wheels being deconstructed by losing the wheel they were attached to, there is no such floor, and so the parts have to fall somewhere, at least 1 z level. It's possible the dude was in a tile where a falling log began at original z level on its way to the next one down, and that counted as being "hit by the falling log" thus damage? I.e. it falls through its starting z level then the one below it, and if the FB is in the starting square along with it, could be hit.

Doesn't sound like a very reliable trap regardless.

[wierd]

depends on how many mechanisms are suspended above the single construction, and in what kind of pattern.

Say for instance, dropping several gear mechanisms surrounding a central drive shaft, itself supported by a single gear mechanism at the bottom.

EG, something like this:

***
***
***

......
..o..
......

+++
+*+
+++


this would basically guarantee droppage of at least one mechanism on top of the FB that is destroying the bottom mechanism of the stack, from a height of 2z.

If the mechanism is made of some special material, like a platinum mechanism (from a mood), it could deal considerable damage from the fall.

[GavJ]

But
A) They can destroy from two tiles away, greatly increasing the number of ridiculous platinum mechanisms you need to 27 instead of 12
B) It still is only getting hit with one mechanism, and potentially only one enemy being hit, for all that effort.
C) Don't the mechanisms still randomly get placed somewhere in the starting tile or one of the 8 surrounding ones before falling? If so, you're going to get some tiles with 3 mechanisms and others with zero, maintaining average amount of damage, but reducing reliability from any one instance considerably.

[Sadrice]

If I do a Christmas tree of stuff off a central vertical gear shaft, I could put in as many mechanisms as I please, i think, by stacking several z levels of stuff to drop.  It would be a pain to build, though.


The best machine component to drop would probably be native gold mechanisms.  Not much less dense than platinum, extremely abundant in most places, and you don't even lose value since it has the same value as smelted gold, which can't be made into mechanisms outside a mood.



But in any case, an easier way would be to have a building destroyer break an active gear, rerouting a minecart path to dump waste stone from a dumping stop in the ceiling, or if you want more scattering, cycling bridges could be used to fling it in a more random fashion.

[smjjames]

Don't FBs made of ash die if you so much as sneeze in their direction anyway?

[Sadrice]

Yeah, but I'm more interested in the fact that the logs hit him in the first place.  Falling logs, (or better, mechanisms) can be dangerous to non ash creatures as well, so this might be adaptable to convoluted and inefficient, and hence dwarfy traps.   

[Sadrice]

Finally at a real computer so I could check my save.  The wheel did explode, and so did the pump.  Images spoilered:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This is the wreckage of my water reactor.  3 of the logs are up here, one in the pump output, one in the impassable tile of the pump, and another 1 east of the hatch cover, along with the pump's iron pipe section.  The FB was seemingly under the floor hatch (passable, not yet linked to the lever, with a ramp underneath) when he destroyed the pump and was clobbered by the logs, breaking off the right upper arm, and then the entire upper body.





This is 1 z down.  The highlighted tile is beneath the floor hatch, and has the other three logs.  I confirmed the FB was standing here by zooming to the location of the reports of the logs striking him.

None of the logs from the two wheel landed in the tiles actually under the wheels.  Three ended up in the remaining z-1 tile, while two were at z 0 on the ridge between the wheels, and the last was 1 tile south of the east wheel, along with the iron pipe from the pump, which seems to have been flung a bit.


I will engage in some further experiments with building destroyers, but it seems water wheels do explode when one destroys the pump it is suspended from.

[TheFlame52]

Hell, this whole thing is awesome just from the title. Go ahead and weaponize it, man.