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[Urist Da Vinci]

Real life intervened so I didn't play DF for a week.

Vampire soldiers are terrifying machines. Human macemen siege got torn apart, except for their valiant leader, who used a tactical retreat ran away.

Initially, hauling is much faster, because everyone is stronger and faster.

I notice that it's hard to keep the population happy, due to the missing eating/drinking thoughts. Some tantrums happen, and the fist fights cause some injuries to civilians.

I turned up the popcap to cause migrants to appear. Some enter almost immediately.

Dwarven caravan comes and leaves without a problem.

The vampires don't do anything to the migrants who are awake, though I felt sorry for that guy who was the only person eating at the table in the crowded dining hall. I had some meat on hand because I butchered an animal to get bones for a strange mood. When each migrant decides to sleep (one at a time), ALL of the vampires in the fort dogpile into the bedroom and drain the poor dwarf dead. Vampires ignore dead bodies on a one week timer, as the missing and found announcements happened at the same time. Vampires don't witness each other during feeding. However, vampire dwarves still become unhappy that their relatives died.

While in 'V'iew Units, "on break" dwarves always use the darker cyan (spore tree, peasant) text, in the 'U'nit List it is different. On the 'U'nit List, dark cyan dwarves are really "on break", whereas feeding vampires are shown as light cyan (microcline) "on break".

Mining and other tasks are becoming painfully slow. Letting vampires feed on migrants (lock the door so only one vampire feeds) doesn't make them speed up work again. It appears that the alcohol dependant bug is verified.

[NRDL]

It's like the fort get's an adrenaline high all of a sudden, then becomes extremely depressed and sloppy. 

Any plans? 

[Urist Da Vinci]

It's like the fort get's an adrenaline high all of a sudden, then becomes extremely depressed and sloppy. 

Any plans?

Well, the humans have decided to be all friendly and send another (non-vampire) law-giver and a caravan the next year.

I sentenced one of the cheesemaker vampires for all 27 murders on record. The sentence was 2800 days in prison and 700 hammerstrikes, carried out in that order apparently.

I'm going to end the fort now, since I want to start a new fort elsewhere and don't want any of these vampires migrating to it. I'm not learning anything new at this time, and the local goblins seem content to not siege my fortress.

I'd recommend to other players to only vampirify their elite soldiers, and not everyone. Even then, it should only be done prior to soldier deployment, with a lead time of ~1 month for the entire squad to drink from the well. I have been able to get soldiers to fill their waterskins specifically with water from the vampire well. You can have them drop the waterskins immediately for safe storage, and then use forbidding micromanagement to get a squad to pick up the "waterskins of undeath" at a future time.

Time to see how the vampire militia holds up against HFS.

[misko27]

I sentenced one of the cheesemaker vampires for all 27 murders on record. The sentence was 2800 days in prison and 700 hammerstrikes, carried out in that order apparently.

Aha, 2800 days, finally a reasonable amount of punishment for murder, though the fact for its 27 murders diminishes that. 700 hammerstrikes sounds like a shit load of hammer strikes. What a fun sentanc: A long sentence (by dwarven stadards), followed by execution.

[Sutremaine]

Mining and other tasks are becoming painfully slow. Letting vampires feed on migrants (lock the door so only one vampire feeds) doesn't make them speed up work again. It appears that the alcohol dependant bug is verified.

That is fixable with modding. You just need a syndrome that takes away the [NO_DRINK] tag from any creature that contracts it. I haven't tested it on a vampire fortress with noticeable slowdown, but I did observe that the booze-drinking vampire lost the 'hasn't had booze for ages' thought once she was finished with the barrel.

[Urist Da Vinci]

Mining and other tasks are becoming painfully slow. Letting vampires feed on migrants (lock the door so only one vampire feeds) doesn't make them speed up work again. It appears that the alcohol dependant bug is verified.

That is fixable with modding. You just need a syndrome that takes away the [NO_DRINK] tag from any creature that contracts it. I haven't tested it on a vampire fortress with noticeable slowdown, but I did observe that the booze-drinking vampire lost the 'hasn't had booze for ages' thought once she was finished with the barrel.

...
I don't plan on taking any special actions to counter any alleged alcohol bugs, I want to see how this happens.

One of my goals was to see if the alcohol slowdown was real, and not a side effect of a lack of blood to drink. The vampires who did get to drink some blood didn't speed up again in any detectable way. See: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=107933.msg3216709#msg3216709 and Toady One's comment in the following post there.

[NRDL]

So really, if you're gonna make suicide soldiers, in place of training, just vampirize them and send them against a strong opponent.  If they win, magma em.  If they lose, they'll probably strike a hit with all their natural bonuses, allowing others to take down the enemy. 

[EmperorNuthulu]

Now 100% vampiric, and no-one got drained during the great transfer.

Did I mention that I have a count?

I don't plan on taking any special actions to counter any alleged alcohol bugs, I want to see how this happens.

It's very important now you also make your count your bookeeper somehow.

 "SIX, SIX GOLD BARS, AH AH AH"
 "TWO HUNDRED,TWO HUNDRED FISH AH AH AH"

[Sutremaine]

...
I don't plan on taking any special actions to counter any alleged alcohol bugs, I want to see how this happens.

One of my goals was to see if the alcohol slowdown was real, and not a side effect of a lack of blood to drink. The vampires who did get to drink some blood didn't speed up again in any detectable way. See: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=107933.msg3216709#msg3216709 and Toady One's comment in the following post there.

Yeah, but you're ending the fort now so the experimental part is over. Suddenly speeding everyone up at once would be a nice visual indicator, especially if the fort hasn't been static and there's been slowdown from dropping FPS.

[Di]

Maybe a bit late, but don't forget to send the save on mantis so we had actual proof of it working not as Toady thinks.

[Urist Da Vinci]

Maybe a bit late, but don't forget to send the save on mantis so we had actual proof of it working not as Toady thinks.

It is a bit late (they are all dead now). However, I did create a fortress map prior to the end: http://mkv25.net/dfma/map-11327-machineshock
It might be working as Toady intended with respect to the drinking blood part, but the alcohol slow is overwhelming before and after, so you'd never see it. We don't need this fort to confirm that the alcohol dependance bug is real. I think I'd have to redo an experiment where the vampires don't have alcohol dependance in order to see if the no-blood-slowdown is working.

So really, if you're gonna make suicide soldiers, in place of training, just vampirize them and send them against a strong opponent.  If they win, magma em.  If they lose, they'll probably strike a hit with all their natural bonuses, allowing others to take down the enemy. 

That could help, but I was thinking that training them to high skills and then vampirifying them would be better. Turning your elite army into vampires will give them awesome boosts for at least a few months, so it is good for "final battle" type situations.

It turns out that vampire soldiers will keep fighting fearlessly to the death, but 20 poorly trained ones can only delay HFS.

[NRDL]

Yeah, but investing that much time training a soldier who will eventually burn out due to lack of alcohol seems wasteful.  That's why they're suicide soldiers.  Damned ones,  cursed with immortality by the rest of the fortress so that their short, pitiful lives can be graced with one moment of glory, fighting down the HFS with their unnatural might.