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[Geldrin]

Hi bay-watchers!

As the subject says, on a two-yearly basis, my current fort is become besieged by the undead. Since it's the first time I've confrontation with zombies, I'm not sure that they bugged, or their attributes are normal.
The first thing there's no necro towers around my site, and I have never met any necromancers yet. (Fortunately.) However, roughly every second year, I've get a message that says "The Dead Walk. Hide while you still can!". Afther that, zombies appearing around the borders in every direction.
The most strange thing is that my marksdorfs can kill them with only one shot (!). They don't even have to land a clear shot: even a chipped bone does the work, which is good, because a single squad can fight back a siege from a bastion... On the other side, if I try to fend them with melee squads, my soldiers bite the dust very quickly. These bastards can brake bones trough steel armor with every hit! Does zombies so tough, or are they buggy?

What do you think of that?

PS: IF you interested, I'll wait for another zombie-siege, and I'll upload the map somewhere.

[itg]

That's a normal type of necromancer siege. There's probably a tower close enough to your site to send out sieges, but far enough away that you didn't recognize it as "around" your site. The necromancer himself doesn't always come with the siege. Sometimes, he never will.

The marksdwarves are so good at killing zombies because, unlike normal creatures, they use a simple HP-based damage system. Bolts evidently do a lot of HP damage. It doesn't matter where you hit the zombie because they don't actually need any particular body part to survive; the only reason you can kill them at all by attacking them is because that's what the movies have led us to expect.

Melee soldiers ought to be able to kill zombies in one or two hits, too, but the zombies get to fight back, and they're supposed to be strong--think of the movies again. Your soldiers will do better when they level up their dodge and shield skills, but of course, you've already discovered that marksdwarves are the way to go here.

[Psieye]

Undead having an HP system was a hotfix. Back when the living were transferred to a more realistic "death from organ failure or blood loss" system, it was very quickly discovered that undead don't make sense. They defy nature, so all the standard ways of killing someone didn't apply to them - no need for a brain, no need to breathe, no need for blood. The only way to kill them was to bisect them which was still considered a universal "died" flag. For monsters that didn't have an anatomy that could be bisected, undead versions of them were literally unkillable (I think they walked through magma fine too) without resorting to things like Cave Ins, Atom-smashers or Obsidianisation. You know, those Plan B methods that 'erase the existence of units' (don't take that literally) instead of killing them.

That was v0.31, now in v0.34 the dead can continuously return to unlife in a suitable evil biome or with a necromancer. This means if it wasn't for that HP system, they would be even more unkillable than before. Fortunately, it seems like your zombie sieges don't involve re-animation.

[Geldrin]

Okay, so killing undead with bolts are considered normal in this version. Thanks for the answers!

Oh, and I found on my own that magma doesn't kill them too, after dropping hundreds of'em into a crater. They had merrily sat on the bottom of the magma sea until I built a roof over the volcano, and used a "plan-B" protocol on them. It was a huge FPS improvement, though.

[CognitiveDissonance]

Okay, so killing undead with bolts are considered normal in this version. Thanks for the answers!

Oh, and I found on my own that magma doesn't kill them too, after dropping hundreds of'em into a crater. They had merrily sat on the bottom of the magma sea until I built a roof over the volcano, and used a "plan-B" protocol on them. It was a huge FPS improvement, though.

I'm curious, what was that plan-B?

[i2amroy]

Okay, so killing undead with bolts are considered normal in this version. Thanks for the answers!

Oh, and I found on my own that magma doesn't kill them too, after dropping hundreds of'em into a crater. They had merrily sat on the bottom of the magma sea until I built a roof over the volcano, and used a "plan-B" protocol on them. It was a huge FPS improvement, though.

I'm curious, what was that plan-B?

Cave-in would be my guess. And yeah, right now undead are immune to magma and fire due to a combination of the fact that only the FAT tissue has a melting point and their inability to bleed to death.

[Button]

Cave-in would be my guess. And yeah, right now undead are immune to magma and fire due to a combination of the fact that only the FAT tissue has a melting point and their inability to bleed to death.

The standard solution to this, which I'm sure i2amroy knows but for OP's benefit, is to mod melting points for other tissues in to the tissue raws. Though this has the unfortunate side effect of making burn survivors no longer immune to heat.

[gestahl]

 inability to bleed to death.

But their blood does still boil, and can even make them pop and send limbs flying that injure the marksdwarves that you sent oversee the magma trap.

[Geldrin]

I'm curious, what was that plan-B?

Cave-in would be my guess.

Exactly... It was awesome to see the magma mist filling the the mamga chute all the way down. I'll post some picture of it when I get home.