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[Girlinhat]

New thought: Does Miasma in dense enough quantities kill?  In most of my fortress, I have rail running down every major corridor.  I use it for both goods transfer and trash removal.  Which got me thinking:  Eggs.  Specifically, eggs that have intentionally been left out and become rotten.  I note eggs can be gathered in rather... hrm, prestigeous quantities.  Rotten egg barrage, anyone?

Causes bad thoughts for dwarves, causes no damage.

Smoke causes a little damage to creatures that breathe, but is significantly harder to produce in quantities and will drag down your FPS.

Steam used to be killer, as it was hot enough to melt flesh, but that got changed a few versions back.

[Urist Mc Dwarf]

Modding? Also, how much damage would three cave trapped zombie whales do compared to 1000 grizzly bears?

[Whackjob]

I use no mods.  As to the zombie whales?  I've no idea.  Can they be domesticated and war trained?  I imagine, given their size and lack of ability to die like a respectable creature, would make them an asset in this sort of situation.  Especially if this setup is used to push enemies off a narrow bridge and down onto some spikes tiki torches for the murderfest party.

[Girlinhat]

Modding? Also, how much damage would three cave trapped zombie whales do compared to 1000 grizzly bears?

You can't mod most of the stuff in this thread...

Zombies are killer because they scare civilians, disrupting fortresses.  In fact they're very slow and easy to injure, and a zombie whale would probably be dodged if it lived long enough to attack.

The real threat of zombies are terrifying biomes where they infinitely reanimate, and their tendency to scare civilians.  Against proper military on a mundane field, they're not a threat really.  In previous versions they followed normal damage patterns - you had to hit a vital organ or cause them to bleed out, which skeletal creatures are totally immune to, but in recent versions undead have a hidden HP bar that makes them really quite easy to dispatch.

A live giant badger is more terrifying than an undead whale.

[Brilliand]

New thought: Does Miasma in dense enough quantities kill?

Not unless you count generating such severe unhappy thoughts that your dwarves go insane.  I don't think that affects enemies...

[Whackjob]

Hrm.  Another thought occurs.  Desert location, bagging sand topside, minecart it down to a magma smelter, make glass serrated discs, and use those.  Should be tons of wealth, tons of traps, tons of Fun.  A minecart-shotgun blast of serrated green glass discs should be an interesting combat log read.

[Girlinhat]

Hrm.  Another thought occurs.  Desert location, bagging sand topside, minecart it down to a magma smelter, make glass serrated discs, and use those.  Should be tons of wealth, tons of traps, tons of Fun.  A minecart-shotgun blast of serrated green glass discs should be an interesting combat log read.

It'll probably store ~500 in each cart.  That would indeed be an interesting set of combat reports.  You can load roughly twice as many spears though.

[Whackjob]

WOW, ok.  I got an idea.  Why not use this sort of thing in a danger room?  Load up a cart with a thousand wooden training spears, and then BLAMMO!  Have Urist McDodgeStick stand directly behind the stationary cart so the thing fires directly into his face!

[Brilliand]

WOW, ok.  I got an idea.  Why not use this sort of thing in a danger room?  Load up a cart with a thousand wooden training spears, and then BLAMMO!  Have Urist McDodgeStick stand directly behind the stationary cart so the thing fires directly into his face!

Better keep a fortification between him and the carts, or the formerly stationary cart will flatten him.

Hmm, would this train shield/weapon skills, or just armor user?  More importantly... how do you make this repeatable?  Loading up a thousand training spears by dwarf power will take forever. 

[Urist Mc Dwarf]

I use no mods.  As to the zombie whales?  I've no idea.  Can they be domesticated and war trained?  I imagine, given their size and lack of ability to die like a respectable creature, would make them an asset in this sort of situation.  Especially if this setup is used to push enemies off a narrow bridge and down onto some spikes tiki torches for the murderfest party.

In vanilla zombie can not be tamed

[Drazinononda]

WOW, ok.  I got an idea.  Why not use this sort of thing in a danger room?  Load up a cart with a thousand wooden training spears, and then BLAMMO!  Have Urist McDodgeStick stand directly behind the stationary cart so the thing fires directly into his face!

Better keep a fortification between him and the carts, or the formerly stationary cart will flatten him.

Hmm, would this train shield/weapon skills, or just armor user?  More importantly... how do you make this repeatable?  Loading up a thousand training spears by dwarf power will take forever. 

Repeatability is simple: build the spears into an Upright Spear trap and link it to a repeating lever.

And yes, it would train shield and weapon skills, as well as dodge. Flying objects -- be they fired, thrown, or launched -- can be either swatted away (weapon skills), blocked (shield or armor, depending) or dodged. The frequency of each of those depends on the skills the victim trainee already possesses, so if you have a Legendary Axedwarf with no shield skill equipped with both an axe and a shield, he's much more likely to "swat aside" flying objects than to block them with his shield, further training his already legendary skill while neglecting the one you'd want to train up.

That said, I don't think current combat mechanics allow more than one dodge/block/parry at a time, so a thousand training spears hitting at once would probably favor Armor User training and/or break every bone and bruise every organ in the target's body.

[Brilliand]

Repeatability is simple: build the spears into an Upright Spear trap and link it to a repeating lever.

You mean, don't use Whackjob's idea at all.

That said, I don't think current combat mechanics allow more than one dodge/block/parry at a time, so a thousand training spears hitting at once would probably favor Armor User training and/or break every bone and bruise every organ in the target's body.

Judging from the combat reports from my legendary dwarves in a repeating spike trap room, the combat reports do allow more than one dodge/block/parry at a time.   Frequently they bat away seven shots from the same stroke, I've often seen them block five (they maxed weapon before shield), and it's not rare for them to dodge two shots from the same group, leaping across the room (their dodging skill isn't actually legendary yet).

[Whackjob]

Repeatability is simple: build the spears into an Upright Spear trap and link it to a repeating lever.

And yes, it would train shield and weapon skills, as well as dodge. Flying objects -- be they fired, thrown, or launched -- can be either swatted away (weapon skills), blocked (shield or armor, depending) or dodged. The frequency of each of those depends on the skills the victim trainee already possesses, so if you have a Legendary Axedwarf with no shield skill equipped with both an axe and a shield, he's much more likely to "swat aside" flying objects than to block them with his shield, further training his already legendary skill while neglecting the one you'd want to train up.

That said, I don't think current combat mechanics allow more than one dodge/block/parry at a time, so a thousand training spears hitting at once would probably favor Armor User training and/or break every bone and bruise every organ in the target's body.

Danger rooms are done into oblivion.  But I'm seriously liking this thousand-spear minecart shotgun.  I will see if I can manage this tonight.  Though I will not use training spears.  Can they be made out of glass?  Hrm.  A thousand spears may take a long time, but it would make one hell of a trap!  This needs to be done if for no other reason than that it can be done.

[Oaktree]

The issue I found with firing a mine cart loaded with weapons and trap components down a corridor into invading goblins was the the first goblin in the firing path would stop a large percentage of the flying items with its body.  So the first goblin would get hit by 40-50 spears and serrated discs and get shredded while most of his companions would escape untouched.

I also noticed that goblins tended not to dodge mine cart launched weapons.  (Possibly not considered an "attack" to dodge?)  An elite goblin who was dodging and parrying multiple bolts would get flayed by the discs and spears without dodging or blocking any of them.

[Mr Space Cat]

The issue I found with firing a mine cart loaded with weapons and trap components down a corridor into invading goblins was the the first goblin in the firing path would stop a large percentage of the flying items with its body.  So the first goblin would get hit by 40-50 spears and serrated discs and get shredded while most of his companions would escape untouched.

That's why you make the shotgun shoot another shell shortly after the first. Then shoot another after that one. Then keep shooting until everything resembles salsa. Or you run out of ammo. Whichever happens first.