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[Loud Whispers]

There is no weaponizable way to project a dwarf towards an enemy.

Bridges.

Gravity.

Orbital kitten drop chute.

Delicious.

[blarg552]

Thanks for all the help! So much stuff in the game to get down.

[Solon64]

I dont know about water softening landings...

Was playing masterwork mod, bought a tame Sea Serpent from elves (love that mod ) and, in a fit of rare compassion, I caged it next to the ocean and pitted it to set it free.  Now, I had assumed water softened landings, so the cage was at the top of an 8 z-level cliff, figured it'd be a majestic sight to see the rare and powerful sea beast sent home in a glorious dive.

I don't believe the water softened the landing at all.  It ended up in many, many, MANY chunks at the bottom of the ocean.

Hurt my heart to see.  One, that thing cost like 12,000 dorfbucks, and two, I was not about to commit to draining the ocean just to farm its body parts, regardless of how valuable their bones are.

I took the lesson to heart and dug a small grotto at the bottom of the cliff so I could set my tame Orca free as well.  It went smashingly.  Until three seconds later it intentionally beached itself in the grotto and air-drowned. WHY DO YOU CREATURES HATE ME SO!

[slowpokez]

@Slowpokez; Because I'm pretty sure that even if you manage to pressurise water to such an extent that it would theoretically hurl things away, most of it would flow in every other direction rather than the one you want to. If you have a dwarf there, odds are he/she'll just get flushed away in a random direction instead of being tossed at the rampaging Uruk-Hai Goblins.

And possible random directions include a) chasms. b) small ditches that will fill up and drown your dwarf or c) chasms that will fill up and ensure you'll need a lot of pumping and patience to reach the dwarf's splattered corpse.

Since when does a df-project have to be efficient to be valid?


Picture a towering fortress carved out the side of a mountain surrounded by sieging creatures who know no mercy. The fortress gates has been shut tight and the haulers and lye-makers are covering inside...Suddently the loud noise gears twisting flows out the mountain and far above the heads of the goblins a hatch in cliffside cracks open. A stream of water shoots out of the cliffside with such force that the ground beneath their feet tremble. Before the flood reaches theinbaders a goblin with keen eyes spot steel glimmering un the sky, he could'nt even warn his bretheren before death rained down on them in the form of wet beards and sharp steel. Those who were not cut down were flushed away by the flow only to tell the story of when the day that the dwarves crushed their forces from the sky...

(I must appologize for my poor writing since it's just a pain in the ass to type on a phone)

[Nil Eyeglazed]

I dont know about water softening landings...

Was playing masterwork mod, bought a tame Sea Serpent from elves (love that mod ) and, in a fit of rare compassion, I caged it next to the ocean and pitted it to set it free.  Now, I had assumed water softened landings, so the cage was at the top of an 8 z-level cliff, figured it'd be a majestic sight to see the rare and powerful sea beast sent home in a glorious dive.

I don't believe the water softened the landing at all.  It ended up in many, many, MANY chunks at the bottom of the ocean.

Hurt my heart to see.  One, that thing cost like 12,000 dorfbucks, and two, I was not about to commit to draining the ocean just to farm its body parts, regardless of how valuable their bones are.

I took the lesson to heart and dug a small grotto at the bottom of the cliff so I could set my tame Orca free as well.  It went smashingly.  Until three seconds later it intentionally beached itself in the grotto and air-drowned. WHY DO YOU CREATURES HATE ME SO!

I don't think water really softens landings, so much as it doesn't count for damage from landings.  Drop a dwarf 8 levels through air and 8 levels through water, splat.  Drop a dwarf 1 level through air and 15 levels through water, stunned only (and drowning).

The old "drop a dwarf in a bubble of water" thing takes advantage of this-- every time the dwarf drops, he drops through water, not air, and doesn't take damage.

[Girlinhat]

Essentially, every level that a creature falls where that level is 4/7 or deeper, it doesn't count for falling damage.  If you dropped a serpent 8 levels into water, then that's 7 levels of falling damage and 1 of negated water.  Since the first level is free (stun only), that's 6 levels of falling damage, and the size of a serpent lends to lethal falls.

[Dorfus]

Non-gravitational propulsion is tricky. Gravity works but there's the landing issue - basically you can survive a fall from great heights if you can land on (and probably kill) something else. I don't remember exactly but I think dwarves act like netwon's cradles, in as much as landing on a tile already occupied simply passes the damage on to the occupying creature. There are, obviously, ways to guarantee and even replenish such a soft landing but nothing that would be useful in combat. There were plenty of trials but I believe the end result was the spread of the cushion animals during freefall was too great, regardless of how many animals there were.

Search the forums for orbital drop squads. I can't remember the details but it didn't work, unfortunately.

[tommy521]

I think dwarves act like netwon's cradles, in as much as landing on a tile already occupied simply passes the damage on to the occupying creature.

Afaik, no.

[Stoup]

Close. Rather than transfer, the energy is simply negated, and the two creatures just wind up on top of one another.

If you're looking to do science, it might be advisable to observe the effects of a dwarf falling with water, in terms of how that might negate fall damage. Unless dwarves fall drastically faster than water, theoretically one could drop a dwarf from a water-filled chamber down onto a lower level, along with the water, and have the fall damage negated by the water he fell along with. If one were to add grates to the bottom of the lower chamber, they wouldn't drown once they reached the bottom.

[Nil Eyeglazed]

Close. Rather than transfer, the energy is simply negated, and the two creatures just wind up on top of one another.

If you're looking to do science, it might be advisable to observe the effects of a dwarf falling with water, in terms of how that might negate fall damage. Unless dwarves fall drastically faster than water, theoretically one could drop a dwarf from a water-filled chamber down onto a lower level, along with the water, and have the fall damage negated by the water he fell along with. If one were to add grates to the bottom of the lower chamber, they wouldn't drown once they reached the bottom.

This has been done, it works.  Dwarves do fall significantly faster than water though.  For this reason, you need some water that starts below the dwarf as well. I think most of the research used arena mode, which of course doesn't show the whole picture.

But believe it or not, a really fast dwarf can move as fast as he can fall anyways.

[Girlinhat]

It takes 6 ticks to fall one tile down, this is true for all creatures.  A dwarf who starts off listed as "agile" can gain more agility than a dwarf listed as "slow".  That is, there is a racial cap, and a personal cap.  A dwarf with a high starting agility can achieve a higher max agility than a dwarf with no starting agility.  A sufficiently quick dwarf can run faster than a creature can fall.

[wastedlands]

Why not just make one wall for the entire military slide open to the outside? That way, they're already at the same floor AND only take HALF a forever to prepare themselves?

[SuicideJunkie]

In regards to the original question, yes you can make a dwarf powered battery.
Set up a pump for the dwarf to operate, and lift water into a holding tank (the battery).

When you want the power back out, let the tank flow back down through a waterwheel.

(of course if you're going to set up a tank, a pump and a waterwheel, you may as well hook them together and make a maintenance-free water reactor)

[Nil Eyeglazed]

In regards to the original question, yes you can make a dwarf powered battery.
Set up a pump for the dwarf to operate, and lift water into a holding tank (the battery).

When you want the power back out, let the tank flow back down through a waterwheel.

(of course if you're going to set up a tank, a pump and a waterwheel, you may as well hook them together and make a maintenance-free water reactor)

For even more pointlessness, designate a pond zone one tile upstream of a waterwheel, and a water source one tile downstream, and give him a bucket!

[Chagen46]

The only possible trick would be to use a cave-in system that delivers them, but then you'd be doing just as well having the dwarf walk there and causing a cave-in just before they fight.

Yes, but using a cave-in like that is inefficient, difficult, and practically useless in the long run.

In other words, it's ridiculously dwarfy!