Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[MattWisniewski]

Hey guys, im very new to DF, so bear with me here.

Im trying to set up a very basic early warning system/kobold thief defence. I have 3 war dogs, and I want them to hang out by the entrance to the fort. I have them sitting in a pen, but they dont attack any invaders that wander through the pen into the fort. Any ideas here?

Thanks,

Matt

[i2amroy]

Create three 1 tile pastures across your entrance and assign a different war dog to each of them (assuming you have a 3 wide entrance). That ensures that the dogs will stay spread across the entrance to catch all of the thieves that try to sneak in, and they will be able to attack or run away from enemies as needed. Keep in mind that while 3 war dogs may frighten off thieves, they will be totally worthless against any kind of invading force.

[Hyndis]

Easier way would be to just make a regular pasture zone at your entrance. Go ahead and make it big.

Import as many animals as possible and cram them into the pasture zone. There will be so many animals that nothing can get through without being seen.

It'll be fine against thieves or even berserk dwarves. Against any sort of siege and it will buy you at most about a minute's worth of time.

Against a necromancer attack its worse than useless. You'll just be feeding the undead army and making it larger.

[i2amroy]

The problem I've found with only designating it as one big pasture is that all of the animals have the tendency to cluster into one corner of the pasture, possible allowing thieves to sneak by.

[Hyndis]

The problem I've found with only designating it as one big pasture is that all of the animals have the tendency to cluster into one corner of the pasture, possible allowing thieves to sneak by.

They do at first, but then over time they will spread out through Brownian motion.

Any offspring will follow their mother around until they are adults, so you might get clumps of animals for a while, but these are only young animals. If you want to speed up the process, just send the mother off to the butcher workshop and the offspring will then spread out via Brownian motion.

[greycat]

Given that the purpose is to detect kobold thieves -- presumably right now and not a few years from now when the animal population has exploded -- it would make more sense to use a few well-positioned 1x1 pastures with 1 animal apiece.

[MattWisniewski]

Alright, I understand now. Will the dogs chase the kobold into the fort? Just wondering. I had a kobold sneak in one time and they didnt pursue. Its a small pasture at my entrance too (6x4).

[greycat]

Once detected, a thief runs away from the fort if it can.  War dogs should chase it, if they are able to do so.  (A pasture won't restrain them, but they might lose line of sight if it goes around a corner, behind trees, etc. -- in which case they'll stop chasing.)