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[Grand Sage]

I ran into a new problem with my fort...

I am currently trying an above ground fort, that is supposed to do a lot of raiding and fighting. But how do i get rid of the corpses afterwards? especially the enemies? I would very much like to avoid atom smashing, since that is sort of an exploit, and I cant see a way to get hold of magma (aquifer and all).

can skeletons "wear" away in a refuse stockpile?

[thompson]

Yes, they do wear away. Just dump them anywhere outside.

[PatrikLundell]

It takes a long time for them to wear away even in a refuse pile (and corpses of sapients go into corpse stockpiles, not refuse ones, although there's nothing stopping you from combining the two).

A huge corpse stockpile would provide somewhere for the corpses to be hauled, although it will probably fill up first, given how many teeth a goblin can spread while being chopped up. As you don't like atom smashing you probably don't like mine cart QS stockpiles either, but I mention it so you can make your decision. Personally I have a mine cart QS like construction where the corpses are dumped down a hole where I have an atom smasher at the bottom, but you can easily leave the smasher out, and don't need the hole of you're dumping into a stockpile.

[bloop_bleep]

Get a wooden or other flammable artifact. Put it in the bottom of a pit and set it on fire. Dump corpses into the pit. Instant corpse-burner!

[PatrikLundell]

Get a wooden or other flammable artifact. Put it in the bottom of a pit and set it on fire. Dump corpses into the pit. Instant corpse-burner!

How would you set it on fire? Dumping magma down the hole will set it on fire, but if you've managed to dump magma down the whole you already have an incinerator...

[bloop_bleep]

Get a wooden or other flammable artifact. Put it in the bottom of a pit and set it on fire. Dump corpses into the pit. Instant corpse-burner!

How would you set it on fire? Dumping magma down the hole will set it on fire, but if you've managed to dump magma down the whole you already have an incinerator...

Fire imp or other fireball-throwing creature, and bait.

[Grand Sage]

well, its certainly not impossible, but probably very hard to pull of. Would all those corpses in the QS not still kill my fps?

[PatrikLundell]

Items affect the FPS, which is why I atom smash them, but I think they have less an effect on display FPS in a big pile than spread out. If you burn the corpses with fire or magma they'll no longer affect the FPS, I believe, as they're removed at least from the active list of items, and quite possibly removed from DF altogether (with the exception of artifacts). If you make a refuse stockpile where your corpses are stored they should decay slowly (but the ones I have over the corpses of FB killed critters do not seem to affect the skeletons visibly over the 5-10 years I've had them).

Given that luring a fire imp (using a live bait, I guess, as they're not building destroyers, thieves, gluttons, or guzzlers) is hard and require you to have access to magma (where the imp comes from) it's probably a lot easier to just bring a mine cart full of magma to your incinerator. Of course, it's dwarfier to use the more complicated imp/artifact solution...

[Flintfakeer]

I do not understand. You DON'T want the corpses of your enemies laid out before the entrance to your village?
 Seriously though do you have a river? if you have a river it will wash the junk off map. You probably don't have a volcano. Maybe you could dig a cave/mausoleum and not let the cats down there so vermin will spawn and cause the bones to rot quicker. Another option is collapsing something on it. You could build a spire with platforms jutting off to store the dead on. Maybe you could breed wild kea or some other thieves and release them next to the bones but that would be finicky. Can you throw them off map by raising a bridge? You could leave the corpses next to some brush and just wait for a fire titan or dragon to set everything on fire.

[bloop_bleep]

Rivers will not take the corpses off map, they will get stuck in the river output tiles. Neither will raising bridges (those spray in random directions anyway, not necessarily in the direction they're raising). Items can only be taken off-map by units.

Though I agree a fire-breathing titan or other such creature is a pretty bad-ass way to get rid of corpses.

[Flintfakeer]

Ahh. I used rivers to wash away prisoners and such and assumed it worked with items.
I have it! Get a necromancer! Then the corpses become units!

[Colonel Sanders Lite]

Maybe you could dig a cave/mausoleum and not let the cats down there so vermin will spawn and cause the bones to rot quicker.

Barring the dumb luck it would take to get a fire breather, and figuring out a way to use it without burning things you don't want burned, this is probably on the right track.

What I would do:

After a battle, dig a small pit.  It should be 2X1, with a ramp on one tile and a flat surface on the other.  This will be a mass grave.

Put a refuse stockpile on the flat part of the grave.

Dump the corpses in the mass grave, such that they land in the refuse pile.

Put a floor over the mass grave to finish burial, ensuring that no cats are down there chasing vermin.

Perhaps decorate the site with some kind of memorial statue.

Let the vermin do their work.



Downsides -
Probably will result in bodies fully rotting away slower than you would really like.

Could potentially cause some nasty lag if something causes all those corpses to reanimate...

[anewaname]

Magma crab turrets are an option if you do prefer burning your refuse.

[Grand Sage]

Will a mass grave pit get rid of the corpses completely or just store them there indeffinetly? I dont really have a problem with storing corpses away, I just want to optimise my fps, and I heard that the amount of items a siege leaves can become a problem after some time.

[PatrikLundell]

A mass grave hides the corpses away, removing them from affecting the display FPS when moving the layer above the grave. Eventually the corpses will degrade, but that takes a long time. As mentioned, a combined corpse/refuse stockpile may reduce the time from very long to long. If you want to get rid of the corpses you need to get rid of them, i.e. atom smash, dissolve them in magma, or use DFHack to delete them.
When it comes to the garbage items left behind I use caravans as garbage trucks. The metal items are melted with the iron converted into steel, bronze used for weapons/armor until there's enough steel, and copper used for training armor/weapon forging, with the masterworks hauled off by the garbage trucks. I play with very metal poor worlds, though, so I usually don't have metal on the embark. If you've got enough iron/steel anyway you can just sell off the metal or incinerate both junk (i.e. non iron/steel) metal together with clothing and corpses.