Print

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

[Button]

Spos the Murk of Oceans

A gigantic panther composed of cassiterite. It has large mandibles and it appears to be emaciated. Beware its poisonous vapors!

Its right front leg is broken. Its right front leg is cut open. Its right rear leg is broken. Its right rear leg is cut open. Its head is broken. Its head is cut open. Its lower body is broken. Its lower body is cut open. Its upper body is broken. Its upper body is cut open. Its left rear leg is broken. Its left rear leg is cut open. Its left front leg is broken. Its left front leg is cut open.

Its right front paw is gone. Its left front paw is gone. Its right rear paw is gone. Its left rear paw is gone. Its tail is gone. Its right mandible is gone. Its left mandible is gone.

This guy's been in my FB processing plant for more than a year of game time, and he just won't die. He lounges in the abattoir, barely cognizant of the masterwork green glass spikes chipping what remains of his body, spewing poisonous vapors at the wren man corpse chained on the other side of the fortifications. My marksdwarves are just as ineffective as the spikes, and my meleedwarves wouldn't be able to get within range without contamination.

Magma won't work, because cassiterite is magma-safe. Obsidianization and cave-ins aren't options because the floor above is cavern, and there are a gigantic hairy hadrosaurid*, a great feathered moth, a gigantic sparrow with external ribs, and a towering feathered flatworm in the caverns outside. (All three of my cavern levels are linked...)

I'm currently in the process of training up siege engineers and operators just to dispose of this nuisance. Normally I don't bother with siege weapons, but right now I'm at a loss.

Does anyone have any suggestions that won't take years to implement?

* Incidentally, the gigantic hairy hadrosaurid's name is Emo Meandark.

[Loctavus]

I fear the only way of dealing with this monstrosity is either to wait for it's head or lower body to get chipped off (which might take another year) or lure it into another location for obsidianising. It's not a blob at least, so it should be killable by dismemberment. I think you've just been really unlucky so far.

Edit : Is a cavein possible? That would obliterate it.

[FritzPL]

Just use it as a pet fortress defender. Chain it just out of range of pasturelure animals so that as the gobbos charge to kill them, this sexy panther will eat their guts. Nothing could possibly go wrong here.*

*Note: This post was written by an insane man with little to no social awareness and knowledge of English language.

[sweitx]

Have you tried siege engines?
Setup a siege engine (preferably ballista, but catapult might work too) about 30+ tiles away (or however far away enough that civilians don't run, also for catapult, you have about 30 tiles minimum range required) with LOS through fortification. Start pounding the FB with rocks or ballista bolts.

This way, you get some siege operator practice too!

[joeclark77]

You could perhaps use it for archer practice.  The longer it lasts, the more practice your archers get.  You might have to set your archers several tiles away so they don't get gassed.

[Brilliand]

Switch to masterwork steel spikes?  I'm having trouble finding information on cassiterite's STRAIN_AT_YIELD, but I bet it's worse than steel's.

It would be better to hit it with a bladed attack rather than an edged attack, but that would require a webbed weapon trap... or... hey, maybe you can lob a minecart full of steel battleaxes at it?  Or even build a SQUIRT GUN.

[Drazinononda]

Switch to masterwork steel spikes?  I'm having trouble finding information on cassiterite's STRAIN_AT_YIELD, but I bet it's worse than steel's.

It would be better to hit it with a bladed attack rather than an edged attack, but that would require a webbed weapon trap... or... hey, maybe you can lob a minecart full of steel battleaxes at it?  Or even build a SQUIRT GUN.

"Bladed" and "edged" are the same thing in DF, contact area and penetration aside. As far as how the game calculates against-armor and against-flesh attacks, a spear, scimitar, scourge and morningstar are all the same: edged. The other option is blunt, which works differently but still consistently across mace, maul, whip, etc.

Cassiterite doesn't have a specific STRAIN_AT_YIELD so it uses the value under STONE_TEMPLATE in material_template_default.txt:
[IMPACT_STRAIN_AT_YIELD:100]
[SHEAR_STRAIN_AT_YIELD:100]

Brilliand's suggestion of using a squirt gun is a good one. You could set it up wherever it is you're currently planning to set up your siege engines, but it would be much more effective and much less costly overall. With some engineering I think you could even make it an obsidian cannon, or possibly more easily an obsidian dripper/dropper.

[Sutremaine]

You could maybe do a cave-in anyway.

Code: [Select]

#####
#####
#####
_____
##_##
#####
Here's your starting point. You have the tile the FB is on, and above that the cavern, and above that, solid rock.

Code: [Select]

#####
# _ #
#_I_#
_____
##_##
#####
Next, you dig out some floor directly above the cavern ceiling and put a support there. On top of the support is a chunk of floor, which is unconnected to anything but the support. Link the support to a lever, wall off the area, and pull the lever. The tile of floor should punch through the floor the support is on and through the cavern floor, hitting the cassiterite FB. Using a floor tile will leave a small hole between the cavern and the FB chamber.

With an extra level of rock above the cavern you can do this:

Code: [Select]

#####
#   #
# # #
#_I_#
_____
##_##
#####
Dropping a chunk of wall onto the FB will create a floor on the level above (at cavern ground level), plugging the gap.

If your caverns are located close enough together that you don't have space to make the cavein trap, you'll have to move the trap up a cavern level.

Code: [Select]

#####
# _ #
#_I_#
_____
##_##
_____
##_##
Here, the cavein will fall through one cavern floor, a floor you created yourself between the cavern layers, and through the next cavern floor before hitting the FB.

[Brilliand]

"Bladed" and "edged" are the same thing in DF, contact area and penetration aside. As far as how the game calculates against-armor and against-flesh attacks, a spear, scimitar, scourge and morningstar are all the same: edged. The other option is blunt, which works differently but still consistently across mace, maul, whip, etc.

By "bladed", I meant edged with a large contact area.  That's how you get severed limbs, provided the material is superior.  Edged attacks with small contact areas will do it, but much more slowly (battle axes have 4000 times the contact area of menacing spikes).

[Oaktree]

I have had some stone form FBs that basically took a pounding from bronze spikes for over two years.  I got it to shift to a trap room that had steel spikes and it lasted about two minutes.  I also started adding a spear in with my spikes since it appears to have different attack style that de-limbs more often.  Reinforced in this opinion by watching two spear goblins dismember a FB made of horn silver that had previously been pounding pitted goblin thieves with immunity.

So, maybe try some iron/steel spikes with a similar metal spear mixed in?  You can probably build it adjacent to your current trap and bait the location with a nice door to attract his building destroyer tendencies.

[SkillageFTW]

Don't kill it!  It's useful!

A good investment would be to attempt to weaponize it if it can still move.  Make a tunnel to the entrance to your fort and trap it in a 1x1 room with a fortification or a grate to spew the toxic vapors through, and cover it up when there are no invaders.  That would be the best way to make use of it without anything being able to go wrong (unless it somehow gets loose in the fort, or you forget to cover it up).

If it can't move, then I suggest you make it a prisoner chamber for gobbos after failed sieges.

[wierd]

With all of its "paws" gone, it should be immobile.

Dropping a fully loaded minecart off a retracting bridge 10z directly above it should instagib the beastie.

Load it up with platinum bars, or something similarly heavy, so that the cart weighs more than the creature, then bombs away.  The cart will reach max velocity, and should be able to gib the FB regardless of the composition, as long as the cart weighs more than the beastie.

[Button]

Thanks for all your suggestions guys!

Yeah, I plan to rework the chamber with steel once I get this beastie killt, but that isn't super helpful until then!

...Though I guess I really should have a second chamber, since I've been hoping to capture a webspinner.

I hadn't considered using it as an anti-gobbo turret - it's a great idea, but if it's immobile now as Wierd suggests, I don't know how I could get it to the surface?

I'm currently training up my Devastators, but since I didn't have any siege industry before now, it'll be a while before I can use this method effectively. Unless siege operating skill only applies to speed, not aim?

If all else fails I'll have to use Sutremaine's contained cave-in method. (Though will cave-ins work through trees?)

[joeclark77]

Why the hurry?  Why not just leave it there until it dies, or keep it permanently as an archery training target?  You could just build a second FB-processing cell next to it for killing the others.

[Button]

It's getting really annoying on my SoundSense 

"Clink... FWOOOOSH... rooooaorrr... clink... coughcough... clink"