Print

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

[pushy]

Quick question. I'm unfortunately all too familiar with fire imps and their damned fireball attack, but can fireballs be fired at targets on another Z-level if the imp is unable to otherwise reach someone/something that it wants to fight?

I've just started a map which has a magma pipe that has its top at 1 z-level below that of most of the rest of the map. There's a little bottleneck a wee bit away that would be easy (and fairly safe) to wall up, and I could just have my miners remove ramps on the pipe's side of the wall so that the imps are trapped in a tiny area in and around their little cave...but I'm worried that the imps would then still be able to attack, say, immigrants that wander past and get a bit too close to the cliff-edge.
Last game I had ended up being abandoned after a group of immigrants (my first group of immigrants, too) ended up attracting the attention of three fire imps that then chased the little eejits (well, the ones that weren't burned to a crisp as they tried to walk past) into my ill-prepared fortress where my first seven dwarves were subjected to the same fate as the stupid immigrants  

[Thassa]

If the imp can see you, the imp can throw a fireball at you.  This includes throwing them through fortifications (though there is a good chance of the fireball hitting the fortification instead).  That said, if you have a few marksdwarves fire on a single imp, it should go down pretty quick.  Then all you have to do is put out any burning dwarves..    

Anyway, in short, yes.  Any missile weapons fire can go from one z level to another.  However, generally fire from higher z levels is more likely to hit targets on lower levels, and fire from lower z levels is more likely to get blocked by walls and the like.

[ April 21, 2008: Message edited by: Thassa ]

[pushy]

Damn. Thought so...

Thanks. Guess I'll just have to try and wall up closer so they're stuck in the cave, then.

[Derakon]

As noted, imps have terrible health. A single marksdwarf can put the hurt on them very quickly. Make a crossbow and some bolts - bone or wood is fine - and train a dwarf up a bit on an archery target, then station him next to the caldera and tell him to shoot at dangerous wildlife.

Or just don't start your fort near the magma. Imps don't generally wander far from the volcano, so if you're a ways away you have basically nothing to worry about. Just dig an access pipe for the magma you need (side view):

code:

........_.
#######>#~
#######X#~ #: wall X<>: stair
#######X#~ ~: magma .: open space
.......<#~ _: channel designation
#########~

Designate everything except the channel, then once it's dug out, send a miner to dig the channel; he probably won't attract the attention of an imp on that trip. Once the channel's dug, the tunnel will start filling with magma, and eventually you'll have plenty to run your forges. As long as the tunnel's long enough, imps will get bored before exploring all of it, and you'll never see them.