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[beefsupreme]

I'm looking to create a few squads of blind dwarfs to operate the siege engines. Could anyone give me an idea of what the most effective and quickest way to blind large amounts of dwarfs quickly is? I'm not too familiar with editing the game's files, but I could probably manage to if given direction.

[Centigrade]

If you don't mind it happening to literally all of your dwarfs, then you could just modify plump helmets (or some other foodstuff) to induce a syndrome that grants blindness.

[i2amroy]

If you don't mind it happening to literally all of your dwarfs, then you could just modify plump helmets (or some other foodstuff) to induce a syndrome that grants blindness.

Do note that doing this would probably make any melee or ranged fighters that you had useless due to their blindness.

[Jenniretta]

Without modding it's basically all up to luck. Any severe injury to the eyes should cause permanent blindness, so getting armour to cover all parts of the dwarf except the face and locking them in a danger room for a while could work, eventually, maybe.
Otherwise, try to catch a beastie with a blinding syndrome (preferably as a ranged attack) and set up a blinding chamber using similar principals to a Giant cave spider silk farm.

Neither is guaranteed, or reliable, however.

With modding, be aware that blind dwarves can be [retty terrible at their jobs.

[Catsup]

you need a forgotten beast that spews deadly gas that causes blindless. Trap the beast between 2 raising bridges and rest of the walls as fortifications and station whoever you want blinded outside the fortifications. Depending on the beast's composition you may want to remove all ranged weapons and ammo from your blindees first or they may kill the beast.

[laularukyrumo]

Without modding, it's all up to luck. I don't know if any non-random creature that has a blindness syndrome, and the only other option is having both eyes gouged out and surviving. Good luck with that happening in fort mode!

With modding, you can mod out the eyes altogether (which, as mentioned, hits across the board and makes job performance horrid, among other things), or you can create a new crop that has an ingestion syndrome that causes blindness. You could even make it temporary in that case, since you presumably have a renewable source of said crop.

Of course, you could just eschew ballistae altogether. Without a modding fix anyways, they're pretty abysmal, I've found. I've seen these things barely bruise targets, even when made of metal.

[Jenniretta]

Of course, you could just eschew ballistae altogether. Without a modding fix anyways, they're pretty abysmal, I've found. I've seen these things barely bruise targets, even when made of metal.

They're usually pretty effective. A miss will do nothing, and wooden ballsita arrows will be deflected by armour almost always, but a solid hit with a metal ballista arrow can pierce through multiple goblins in metal armour. I've had copper ballista arrows (fairly cheap to make) kill multiple goblins with just the one shot.
If they are doing poorly, odds are good you made the ballista out of low-quality parts - siege operators do not improve accuracy, only firing rate, so a ballista made of low-quality parts will always have lower accuracy than one made of higher quality parts. The quality of the arrows for ballista influences accuracy too.

Catapaults are a lot less effective - they're similar to stonefall traps in the damage they do, if they even hit.

[Slidey]

blinding dwafs ..hm no caste of minimal range of vision but high natural seige skills and attributes?
also i wonder what VIEWRANGE thats really short 1-3 comboed with likes_fighting (so it doesn't flee possibly) would do in a caste as far as your wants. If not..mod them just to have no eyes.

[Jenniretta]

blinding dwafs ..hm no caste of minimal range of vision but high natural seige skills and attributes?
also i wonder what VIEWRANGE thats really short 1-3 comboed with likes_fighting (so it doesn't flee possibly) would do in a caste as far as your wants. If not..mod them just to have no eyes.

Viewrange might work. Likes_fighting would be an issue though, because then unarmed, near-naked, civilians would rush into the fray, instead of away from it to safety. Last thing you need is a wife, mother of 12, and best friend of 100, rushing into the goblin horde to trigger a tantrum spiral!

[slothen]

Of course, you could just eschew ballistae altogether. Without a modding fix anyways, they're pretty abysmal, I've found. I've seen these things barely bruise targets, even when made of metal.

They're usually pretty effective. A miss will do nothing, and wooden ballsita arrows will be deflected by armour almost always, but a solid hit with a metal ballista arrow can pierce through multiple goblins in metal armour. I've had copper ballista arrows (fairly cheap to make) kill multiple goblins with just the one shot.
If they are doing poorly, odds are good you made the ballista out of low-quality parts - siege operators do not improve accuracy, only firing rate, so a ballista made of low-quality parts will always have lower accuracy than one made of higher quality parts. The quality of the arrows for ballista influences accuracy too.

My first and last real attempt at ballistae was under supposedly ideal conditions.  I had a nice ballistae battery, I had a nice 50 tile long 3-wide straight causeway the invaders had to travel over before entering the fort.  All my siege operators were +5 legendaries (catapults aiming at a wall train up very fast), and the 4 ballistae were all masterwork parts.  When using metal bolts, the damage was quite impressive, usually not resulting in instant kills, but easily incapacitating several enemies.  The problem however, is that even under these conditions, accuracy was completely abysmal.  The siege operators could put out a LOT of shots quickly, but the variance on their trajectories was so high that only a quarter of the shots even had a chance of hitting an enemy, and hardly ANY shots flew straight and true down the hallway.

[Slidey]

blinding dwafs ..hm no caste of minimal range of vision but high natural seige skills and attributes?
also i wonder what VIEWRANGE thats really short 1-3 comboed with likes_fighting (so it doesn't flee possibly) would do in a caste as far as your wants. If not..mod them just to have no eyes.

Viewrange might work. Likes_fighting would be an issue though, because then unarmed, near-naked, civilians would rush into the fray, instead of away from it to safety. Last thing you need is a wife, mother of 12, and best friend of 100, rushing into the goblin horde to trigger a tantrum spiral!

Then mod the caste to be totally abysmal at conversation and other "talking skills" so they dont get many friends..and uncommon enough too ..maybe just allow pacification to gain at all if it doesnt ruin the conversation blockade. Also i believe theres a friendliness attribute or three So maybe in a fort of 180ish...8 or less of them..and just a rare few friends. Plus you can burrow them together since they have minimal usage other than maybe pulling your levers, powering stuff, and seige equipment. Though i suppose they could be your engravers too if you dont mind more micro management of them.
IF you dont mind more fantasy effect, maybe give them webbing skill (and webimmunity) just to their viewrange. So they can "defend" themselves despite their unwillingness to flee. (Course if you dont burrow probs go ugly for their function..your choice)

[Jenniretta]

Of course, you could just eschew ballistae altogether. Without a modding fix anyways, they're pretty abysmal, I've found. I've seen these things barely bruise targets, even when made of metal.

They're usually pretty effective. A miss will do nothing, and wooden ballsita arrows will be deflected by armour almost always, but a solid hit with a metal ballista arrow can pierce through multiple goblins in metal armour. I've had copper ballista arrows (fairly cheap to make) kill multiple goblins with just the one shot.
If they are doing poorly, odds are good you made the ballista out of low-quality parts - siege operators do not improve accuracy, only firing rate, so a ballista made of low-quality parts will always have lower accuracy than one made of higher quality parts. The quality of the arrows for ballista influences accuracy too.

My first and last real attempt at ballistae was under supposedly ideal conditions.  I had a nice ballistae battery, I had a nice 50 tile long 3-wide straight causeway the invaders had to travel over before entering the fort.  All my siege operators were +5 legendaries (catapults aiming at a wall train up very fast), and the 4 ballistae were all masterwork parts.  When using metal bolts, the damage was quite impressive, usually not resulting in instant kills, but easily incapacitating several enemies.  The problem however, is that even under these conditions, accuracy was completely abysmal.  The siege operators could put out a LOT of shots quickly, but the variance on their trajectories was so high that only a quarter of the shots even had a chance of hitting an enemy, and hardly ANY shots flew straight and true down the hallway.

Yeah Accuracy is always really bad for some reason. not sure if it's a bug or a feature, but the bolts rarely fly straight, even with well made parts and bolts etc. The ones that do hit can wreck a few days though. Honestly, volume of shots seems more important than accuracy for the most part.

[tarrahwade]

If you don't mind it happening to literally all of your dwarfs, then you could just modify plump helmets (or some other foodstuff) to induce a syndrome that grants blindness.

Do note that doing this would probably make any melee or ranged fighters that you had useless due to their blindness.

I have to agree. Drawfs aren't the only one that will be affected.