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Author Topic: Keeping Up The Illusion  (Read 999 times)

DuckBoy2

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Keeping Up The Illusion
« on: March 12, 2012, 01:24:29 am »

If a dwarf dies in the dining room, but theres no one there to see his corpse, does it cause unhappy thoughts?  Not anymore it doesnt! 

What the dwarves dont know wont hurt them, so now its just a matter of keeping them blissfully unaware of just how many of their brethren are biting it every day.  Ive had a few ideas on how to deal with this, depending on exactly how the discovery mechanism works.  I suspect it works off mechanism A, but B would be much more fun. 

Plausible Mechanism:
A: When a dwarf/animal comes within X squares of a corpse, he instantly alerts everyone

The Practical - Set burrow restrictions and forbidden zones of size at least X by X around corpses.  You dont want the little buggers to notice.

B. When a dwarf comes within X squares of a corpse he learns of it, and as he runs into others, they find out and become unhappy. 

The Traditionalist - Separate the men and women, so no one ever discovers their spouse has died. 

The Moonbounce - Cover your entire map in retracting bridges with walls 2 Zlevels up and set them on repeat.  Live dwarves will just get stunned and bounce around, dead dwarves will count as items, and will be flung in a random direction bounded by a 3x3x3 cube, or until they hit an obstacle.  So long as all the corpses moonbounce over the walls, no one will notice a thing!  This solution is also ridiculously inefficient, and automates hauling by making it completely impossible for dwarves to carry items.

Finder's Keepers - Any time someone finds a corpse, make them immediately stop everything and bury it, and themselves with it-- dig a two tile under the corpse, floor over the corpse, build an upstairs on empty tile, floor over upstairs from below. 

The Future - Alternately, any time someone finds a corpse they run to the corner of the map to atom smash themselves in your suicide booth. 

The Legend - Build a dining room (jk)

C: Vampires (and other murderers?) dont report mias.

The MIB - An elite squadron of vampire miner masons bury your dirty secrets before the cattle becomes aware. 

Anybody else got a way to dispose of the corpses without any dwarves noticing?  I wouldnt want the migrants to stop coming to my death hole every year!  Also, does anybody know the real mechanism of bad thoughts/corpse discovery?
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Old Greg

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Re: Keeping Up The Illusion
« Reply #1 on: March 12, 2012, 01:38:54 am »

It's definitely a strategy that deserves thought - the trick is that if you don't bury them properly, their ghost will be proof of death. Also, IIRC, if one dwarf sees the stiff, they all immediately know through hivemind.

Matoro

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Re: Keeping Up The Illusion
« Reply #2 on: March 12, 2012, 02:22:23 am »

It's definitely a strategy that deserves thought - the trick is that if you don't bury them properly, their ghost will be proof of death.
Aye, that's the main problem. Little unhappy thought aren't bad if some ghost scares your best soldier to death.
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Di

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Re: Keeping Up The Illusion
« Reply #3 on: March 12, 2012, 07:20:34 am »

I guess mechanism is the same as before: anyone sees the corpse, and missing dwarf is marked as dead now. The only change is that it's not the death it's discovery of corpse causes unhappy thought.

To hide a corpse it's probably possible to use cave-ins.

Or use necromancers to make corpses move in to other place, this will prevent decay as well.

And for the least complicated way I'd suggest dropping a pair of imps and cats into the room that needs cleaning. You just need to put cage traps at the exits once the room is cleansed by fire. If you'd go with tame dragon and goblin variant you could omit the cage part.

Finally, there could be some modding solution.
I doubt pets report anything, especially if they can't speak and it was said that dwarves transformed to pets retain labor settings. Well, you get where it comes.  ;D
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