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[Leonidas]

The colossus that has camped outside my cave is totally ruining my game.

I figured that my catapults could handle him, but they wouldn't even fire in his general direction.  So I built a new catapult directly opposite him, only to discover that catapults apparently don't aim at all, they just fling rocks out at random in a 15 degree arc.

After reading all the complaining about how missiles are too strong, I made a lot of marksdwarves.  But apparently they'll do little or no damage to it.  The only honest way to kill it, so far as I can tell, is to turn lots of soldiers into melle types, sit for a couple of years while they train up, and then get half of them slaughtered.  That's just a whole lotta no fun.

I've read mentions of some cheat programs for DF.  Is there one that'll kill the colossus, or make one of my dwarves invulnerable?

[Mechanoid]

You could use tileinfo.exe to get the x/y [coordinate of] the holding area for the creature is at, then use teleport.exe to move the offender into the isolated granite-rewalled room... And then open said room once you have a few legendary military dwarves (or a ballista constructed or dwarven xbow firing squad)

[ October 13, 2007: Message edited by: Mechanoid ]

[RPB]

Trapping it isn't too difficult, especially if you're willing to expend a dwarf. Make a little side entrance and moat it off, build a drawbridge and hook it up, lure it in and pull the lever.

If you have several hundred spare bolts and some decent marksdwarves, you can engrave fortifications overlooking the holding pen and have your dwarves take potshots at it to whittle it down.

Oh yeah, and kill cheat: move your cursor over the colossus and run teleport.exe -a 370 1 (I use this to toast unwanted cats, in case you're wondering). Dumps it in the magma river. You'll probably have to try it a couple times with tweaks to the first coordinate, since the location of the magma is a bit random. Of course, if you do it this way you don't get the cool bronze statue from the dead colossus.

[ October 13, 2007: Message edited by: RPB ]

[BurnedToast]

catapults don't fire at random - engine quality effects accuracy, use masterworked parts and you might have more luck. That being said, the accuracy is pretty dismal even with masterwork parts and a legendary operator, ballista are better (and more damaging) but they are still fairly low accuracy.

anyway, remember losing is fun! Better to try and win without cheating, then to just resort to cheats when it gets tough. Consider sending out some sacrificial peasant with a ton of war dogs attached to him. try digging a (big) channel system around him and flooding it with magma to keep him locked up. keep firing the catapults till one gets lucky and hits him.

If all else fails, draft every single dwarf into the military as wrestlers and tackle him (I seem to recall someone saying this worked, albeit with heavy losses).

or I guess you could just dump him into the lava. might as well just abandon the fortress and say 'I win' and save yourself some time though IMO.

[Thallone]

If you're going to cheat, you may as well use skills.exe to train the military as well. One thing to keep in mind though, do not create champions. All a champion can do after that is military service, and using skills.exe to lower them back down does nothing to remove the champion status.

On the topic of making masterwork siege components though, does anyone know if assembling a siege engine grants xp toward skill gain? if so, one could build one or two catapults/ballistae and then repeatedly assemble/dissasemble them until a sufficient level of proficency is reached.

[martinuzz]

Now that is a good question. In my recent fortress I'm fiddling with catapults for the first time and I must say it is pretty annoying to have to create tons and tons of worthless catapult parts. Okay I can sell of about 15 of them to the human caravan each year but this does not keep up with production at all.

[Savok]

Very simple and easy kill cheat that works with anything whatsoever at any time:
Teleport.exe the doomed one into the river, chasm, or magma river. (note: may not work with magma-proof flying undead)

[ October 13, 2007: Message edited by: Savok ]

[AlanL]

Doesn't work with flyers, but thats an easy solution to just about everything else. What I use to vaporize just about any unwelcome being is to dig a hole, seal it with granite.exe, set the temperature inside to 50,000 with artmoney and tileinfo.exe. Then I teleport the target into the hole. I then sit back and watch the poor guy melt   :p

Ironically, it even works on demons.

[ October 13, 2007: Message edited by: AlanL ]

[BurnedToast]

assembling a catapult or ballista does NOT train the skill. The only way to get high level engineers is to make a ton of parts, or a ton of ballista bolts. it takes ~600 wood (minus whatever skill they have already) to get legendary.

it's not really worth it, IMO - siege engines are only effective (even with masterwork parts) if you dig a moat so the goblins can never get close - they miss too much to do alot of damage before the goblins close in and make the operator flee unless you make sure they can't get close enough - 15 spaces IIRC but that's from memory so it might be wrong.

[qwertyuiopas]

teleport.exe comes with source code.
teleport.exe gets the creature's data location, all you need is the temperature offset.

[Freddybear]

You can train siege operators on ordinary "no-quality" catapults, and if you start with a Legendary (who got that way from making an artifact) the training will go pretty fast.

Assembling a catapult doesn't give XP for siege engineering. Making ballista arrows does give XP, and even "no-quality" ballista arrows are not a total waste. You'll still use up hundreds of logs though.

Read the Wiki

Or you can cheat and set your siege engineer to Legendary with skills.exe.

[Savok]

quote:Originally posted by Thallone:
<STRONG>If you're going to cheat, you may as well use skills.exe to train the military as well. One thing to keep in mind though, do not create champions. All a champion can do after that is military service, and using skills.exe to lower them back down does nothing to remove the champion status.</STRONG>

Ditto for heros.
 

quote:Originally posted by Thallone:
<STRONG>On the topic of making masterwork siege components though, does anyone know if assembling a siege engine grants xp toward skill gain? if so, one could build one or two catapults/ballistae and then repeatedly assemble/dissasemble them until a sufficient level of proficency is reached.</STRONG>

No, doesn't work. Read The Wiki
   

quote:Originally posted by martinuzz:
<STRONG>Now that is a good question. In my recent fortress I'm fiddling with catapults for the first time and I must say it is pretty annoying to have to create tons and tons of worthless catapult parts. Okay I can sell of about 15 of them to the human caravan each year but this does not keep up with production at all.</STRONG>

Economy. The Chasm.

Or, if you don't like that, EarthquakeDamage suggested the following:

quote:Before I had the stocks screen enabler for TileTool, I used to build giant trash compactors. Create a 6x11 room with an entrance on one end. On that end, build a 6x1 drawbridge. On the other end designate a 6x10 stockpile for your useless crap. When it's full, undesignate it (make sure there're no stockpiles that accept the same items) and build a 6x10 bridge. The items are dropped on the existing 6x1 drawbridge. Once everything's been moved, go ahead and cancel the 6x10 bridge. Wait until all dwarves have left the work site then raise the small bridge. Presto! The garbage is annihilated. Slow but effective.

[ October 13, 2007: Message edited by: Savok ]

[Tharg]

I had an idea on training operators that I haven't seen mentioned before.  It occurred to me that firing siege engines seems to be fairly instantaneous, whatever the skill.  It seems to be only loading them that takes a while.

So - train a single operator up to professional, or something, and then build a row of 10 catapults or so in a room with a door and no stone stockpile (although you'll want one nearby).  Let your professional operator load them all while they're on hold fire, then turn operating off for him and enable it on your new trainee.  Then set them all to fire at will and lock him in until they're all empty.

Repeat until done.

Obviously this will still take a while and a fair bit of micromanagement, but with a bit of cunning you could certainly do it with far more catapults.  And as we know - you're likely to have a catapult part or two lying around somewhere.

Legendary operators seem to load them almost instantly.  It wouldn't be that hard to set up school that might even rival engraving for it's quick experience gain.

[jester]

Doesnt magma flood bring a colossus down to size anyway?  Ive seen two so far and both of them have just punched on with the local elephants until they took a wound that knocks them out and then a few squads or just one dwarf with 30 or so wardogs assigned has worked for me.