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[Catsup]

heres that thread again... undead are utterly overpowered, this time the victim? one of my 2 rocs ='(



i was cleaning up after a huge siege where the goblins and 4 necromancers in ambush mode showed up with about 60 undead. Goblins had 4 squads and came a short time after the undead did. The goblins managed to kill most of the undead but had quite a few casualties and decided to make a run for it, so i raised the bridges around my map and walled everything in. The goblins scattered and ran about randomly trying to find a way out and the undead picked them off.

eventually i managed to trap the ambushing necromancers by opening a passage with cage traps in it, but by then they had a sizeable army of 20 undeads resurrected. Now its important to remember, raised undeads do not path to your fort normally like sieging ones do, so they are much harder to get rid of later than initially sieging ones if you do not engage them. I decided to wait them out a while since it was going to be winter and no caravan was coming for a while. The waiting paid off and within a month or so the undead all pathed to my trap tunnel at 1 time or another and there was only 1 left, at the far west side of the map.

now, since i only had 1 squad of 8 marksdwarves that werent danger-room trained in any way, nor did they ever spar or train against un-armed goblins. I decided to use one of my many war animals to take care of the single undead. Sealing all entrances to the outside, i pitted one of my 2 war rocs from a ledge of my fortress wall and made a meeting area near the single goblin corpse.
The roc starting pathing to the goblin corpse and i watched nervously, since i knew undead were so deadly but a mega beast should have no problem with 1 right? my roc was "gigantic" sized and not skinny and should have been larger than an normal sized adult dragon, so how the goblin corpse managed to even reach for the roc's head was a mystery...

the highlight how deadly the undead are, the goblins had 4 squads but also came with 2 squads of trolls. The trolls fought with roughly a equal number of undead but surprisingly all died without killing all that many. The only squad of goblins that fair reasonably well against a equal number of undead was the archer squad led by a mace lord.

[i2amroy]

RNG happens.

In most cases undead are extremely weak, especially to weapons due to their HP system. The only thing that makes them powerful is the fact that they are usually constantly revived until the source is destroyed. Personally I think you might have been better off sending you crossbow dwarves in. All it would take is a bolt or two and the corpse would have collapsed.

[weenog]

I don't think this is an undead problem, this is just combat in DF being extremely deadly, as usual.  Infant dwarfs can and will do this to forgotten beasts and titans on occasion.  We'd probably see it from infants of other races if they were played more often.

[Catsup]

yea pretty dumb, the undead punch and break bones through gauntlets and high boots as often as no-armor as well. Which is why i didnt send my marksdwarves squad. When i do try to send them it takes them forever to group up and at most i have about 6 dwarves there out of 8 that split up even further after i order an attack. This is usually enough to get at least 1 of them killled against the single undead since it moves so fast that it can close the distance after 1 bolt and it usually takes several to kill it.

but i dont think its solely df combat being normally deadly, as i fed un-armed goblins to rocs before and their punches and kicks only glanced away due to the rocs' bulk, and the rocs literally ripped the goblins apart.

[Mlamlah]

Yeah, seen this happen frequently.
My first experience was pretty hilarious, and involved a baby dwarf basically biting the face of a troglodyte off, which then proceeded to bleed to death.

[thrush_titan]

more like rocs are under-armored (or under-layered)

there are FBs that will take bolts all day and they'll never reach the organs and it'll only die 10 minutes later from blood loss but rocs (which are supposed to be 4x as big as elephants) can be one-shotted by pretty much any attack

[CapnUrist]

War beasts, regardless of how big/tough they are, will go down fairly quickly against anything remotely dangerous. That's why I usually save them for guard duty or arrow fodder. The only real way to tip the scales is with weapons and armor...

or magma.

[Loud Whispers]

yea pretty dumb, the undead punch and break bones through gauntlets and high boots as often as no-armor as well.

[The undead get a massive strength/size bonus. Gauntlets and high boots are the weakest parts of armour. Only the legendary can truly face the undead with little to worry].

[k33n]

They are not that hard to survive if you are smart about it. I hope Tarn makes them harder.

[krenshala]

I lost a fortress to zombies just last night.  THe first to die, only died when the elf corpse stopped punching and kicking, and instead started swinging his pants around.  No really.  Inod died when the sheep wool trousers hit him in the head, did the usual skull smashing and brain tearing, and lodged in the wound.  That was the second hit from the pants. The first hit broke his leg and caused him to pass out from pain.  He was holding his own prior to that (page and a half of combat log; pant attacks as the last two entries).

[StubbornAlcoholic]

I kind of like zombies being fearsome, it's nice to have the undead be a force to be reckoned with.

However, I do kind of think their ability to skull-hadouken pretty much anyone or anything is a bit stupid sometimes. It almost feels like an incorrect variable somewhere.

If my Dwarves or creatures are going to be killed by Undead, I'd far rather it was because hordes of them wrestled them to death than 1 lone Horse Corpse or something one-hitting my whole veteran army with hoof kicks to the head that penetrate armour like freaking depleted Uranium. Yet the latter happens much more frequently.

Case in point, my previous fort I had soldiers that could literally solo-takedown entire Goblin sieges on their own. Pit similarly skilled soldiers against even 1 or 2 zombies and half the time they return horribly maimed or dead. Whether that's because Goblins suck at fighting vets or zombies are a bit silly is perhaps a matter of debate.

Most ridiculous Undead fight I've seen so far is something I detailed in another thread. My experienced Militia Commander, wearing Iron gear, was killed in a 1v1 battle with a reanimated Goblin head. Can it seriously be argued that a veteran soldier with a steel battleaxe would be fatally bitten through an Iron gauntlet by a toothless, rotting head that doesn't even have neck muscles to bite with? -.-

[☼!!Troll Fur Sock!!☼]

You know why udead are overpowered?
THEY FLOAT ON WATER.

[Loud Whispers]

You know why udead are overpowered?
THEY FLOAT ON WATER.

Flash freeze. BANG! And the corpse is gone!

[Until it thaws]

[Sutremaine]

However, I do kind of think their ability to skull-hadouken pretty much anyone or anything is a bit stupid sometimes. It almost feels like an incorrect variable somewhere.

The skull is 1/10 the relative size of the brain and doesn't so much encase the brain as get between the brain and the incoming attack, concentrating all the force of an attack into 1/10 of the brain's surface area. The results are predictably messy.

[wierd]

Yes, but the curved structure of the skull helps to increase the effective cross section through which incoming force is directed through deflection and diffusion.

Much like an eggshell is only about .0125 inches thick, but can effectively withstand being crushed in the palm of the hand. The deflection of force through the eggshell increases the effective cross section of the force applied, so that it goes parallel to the shell's surface, and not perpendicular to it any longer.

The most common head injury associated with blunt trauma is caused by the whipping action and inertial action of the brain inside the scull cap, ramming into the bones over the temporal rgion of the skull, since a sharp edge forms inside at that location.

Yay internets!

Actually shattering the skull and driving bits of bone through the cortex is surprisingly rare.