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[Loud Whispers]

And I always thought cave-ins kill stuff, never had one myself, so I'm guessing I'm wrong.

Anything directly underneath the cave in instantly dies. Anything caught in the resultant cave in dust has a high chance of suffering intense injury, and passing out from the pain.
My bet would be giving a creature a suitable syndrome, or you could always try looking towards FBs and Titans if you want to keep it vanilla...

[Nil Eyeglazed]

Can't automate cave-in traps-- they're always going to require player interaction.

I bet  Nunzillor was talking about the thread where vamps fed on livestock contaminated with a sleeping syndrome.  There was some conjecture in there that a fall or cave-in knocked-out  creature might allow feeding, but as far as I know, nobody ever confirmed that.

The reason nobody is particularly interested in confirming that is because there's absolutely no benefit to be gained by allowing your vampires to feed.  Even if you were to make a complicated set up that worked, it wouldn't work any better than locking up your vamps and not giving them anything to drink.  Drinking blood will not alleviate their alcohol dependence.

[Nunzillor]

But you will not have to isolate them if their urges are satisfied at regular intervals.  I know personally that at my zombie fortress it is a pain to constantly isolate vamps while they work on aboveground (zombie-infested) projects.

[Nil Eyeglazed]

But you will not have to isolate them if their urges are satisfied at regular intervals.  I know personally that at my zombie fortress it is a pain to constantly isolate vamps while they work on aboveground (zombie-infested) projects.

That's true, but it would require even more micromanagement to guarantee that their urges are only satisfied through acceptable sources.  Even if you built a working livestock feeding center, your vampires might not pick the livestock to feed from (dunno how they pick, probably proximity) unless they were physically isolated from other dwarves.

[malroth]

mod cats to have a syndrome breath that only affects cats  this syndrome causes sleep in the cats.

[Nunzillor]

Yeah... I guess that is true...

I was just hoping that if you knew how long vampires went between feedings, you could draft them into the military and give them schedules to patrol near the sleeping animals (at the times you knew they would feed based on the time they previously fed).  But I dunno what the length is of what I previously called the cycle, so...

edit: that was what the pressure plate, door, and time-based release system (through fluid clock) would have been for from other post.  The door and pressure plate is for temporary confinement.  The clock is for automatic release after feeding.  The spikes and repeater were for automatic injury of animals, but now that I think about it you might need a pet stockpile too and a hatch for automatic pet replenishment.  Actually, might not need the spikes and repeater if just used fall damage like you mentioned earlier...

edit2: also assumes that length of cycle is not variable.

[Nil Eyeglazed]

It's not impossible.  I suspect that larger creatures have more blood (although I'm not sure) and thus won't die when fed upon.  I wouldn't go with a cave-in system, because it can kill the creature, and I'm suspicious of the idea that unconsciousness due to injury is equivalent to sleeping.  I tried briefly to set up a contamination chamber, using evil weather that caused drowsiness, before I realized that there is very little to gain by giving vampires food-- for once, it was extraordinarily difficult to get my dwarves to contaminate my dwarven bathtub.  If you found a FB with a non-life-threatening, drowsiness-causing syndrome, and got yourself something big and tame, maybe an adult cave dragon, you might be able to setup a timed feeding chamber.   Stationing the vamp there every other month would be a good start; you could use the vamp's own station orders to put him on top of pressure plates that locked the exit until he fed (or at least, until he idly wandered up next to your food source).

But that's based on a lot of conjecture, and the availability of something rare (said FB).  The mechanics of it are relatively simple-- the feeding chamber is just a silk farm.  Vampire gets patrol burrows orders that puts him on a 1-tile burrow standing on top of a pressure plate that activates a latch that raises a bridge behind him (or something like that); a pressure plate closer to the bait animal raises a bridge, blocking LOS to the FB (assuming the vamp will spook when in feed mode-- it might not be necessary); and a third pressure plate, on the tile adjacent to the bait animal, undoes the latch, allowing the vamp to return to general pop, and lowers the LOS blocker, allowing the FB to put the bait animal to sleep again.

If you happen to be set up for something like this, but can't figure out the mechanics, this is what I'd do:

Code: [Select]


 ##########
 #######hh^  ->to fortress
 #F:bvD^###
 ####### #
       # #
 ...
       # #
 #######^#
   h^   ##    enters here
 ########

top-down, F is forgotten beast, : is fortification, D is tame cave dragon on restraint v, ^ is pressure plate, h is hatch

Central-top and bottom hatches controlled by a latch, not shown; to get a diagram for a latch, look up memory (computing) on the wiki, and pick whichever suits you.  Bottom pressure plate makes the latch open, top central pressure plate makes the latch close.  Top right pressure plate linked to adjacent, top-right hatch, prevents entering system from wrong end.  Central pressure plate linked to an additional latch-- opens raising bridge next to elephant dragon.  Top central pressure plate linked to this latch as well, although it sends a close to this latch, lowering the bridge so the FB can put the elephant dragon back to sleep.  Vamp given bimonthly orders to defend a burrow composed solely of the bottom pressure plate.

Just a rough draft-- probably could be optimized significantly, and I haven't given it a careful look-over for bugs.  You'd want it out of the way so it doesn't catch idlers-- dwarves that find no reason to approach sleeping cave dragons will get trapped in here, shutting down the system.  You probably also want another hatch-plate combo to prevent retrograde motion once feeding is complete.

[krenshala]

What worked for me was giving the vamp a room right next to a dorm, so he had regular access to victims food.  I never lost a dwarf in the two years between the arrival of my Chief Medical Vampire and the 34.04 upgrade.

[Nunzillor]

Wow!  It took me a good half-an-hour to understand it (not too sharp), but, knowing nothing about ticks/delays or much in general related to mechanics really, that looks awesome and like it would work.  The only thing is that those creatures are pretty annoyingly rare (even if you used an elephant instead of a cave dragon, as you mentioned)...  Why not just restrain a bunny or a cat instead, then replace it after each feeding with a new one?  You could get a dwarf out with military move commands, I think maybe, after each replacement is restrained.  I agree in that one creature would be better to use in a zombie fortress, to reduce corpses.  Also, I will test the unconsciousness vs. sleeping deal with my next fortress (compression problems make me want to smash my computer) just to make sure they are not equivalent, as, if they were equivalent, it would eliminate the need for the FB, I think, and require less effort.

Please go easy on me, I'm probably not understanding this correctly...

[Nil Eyeglazed]

Well, if you're actually going to do it and want some help figuring stuff out, I'm happy to-- normally people don't bother trying to figure out the diagrams   It's true, those are annoyingly rare creatures.  I started with an elephant and then changed it (apparently not everywhere) once I remembered that their grazer tag would lead to rapid starvation.  Changing out animals would be possible, just painful.  If you could avoid it, you'd want to.

Definitely let us know about unconsciousness tests.  A non-stop kitten bludgeoning device might be interesting to try to set up-- dropping domestics is pretty fiddly, hard to automate.

[NRDL]

Well...the two problems here are that vampires often kill important dwarves, and that when isolated or placed in a solitary location like on the surface or very deep underground, the vampires become useless due to lack of alcohol, which apparently the game doesn't let them drink.

Would modding solve the latter problem?  If somebody modded blood to have the same properties as alcohol...if someone actually just replaced blood with alcohol, I've read of players doing much more than that, surely it can be done?