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[WanderingKid]

Okay, before I design, dig, and spend 6-9 dwarven months constructing components for this thing , I'm looking for advice as to the feasibility.

Here's the intent:

I'm going to drill a hole through the aquifer to allow access to under the aquifer in a different area from the fort.  From there, I'll punch access to the surface as the final act to open this for the undead to pour in.  I'm looking at 50+ undead at this point, including fliers.

That hole punch will lead down two layers (to get under the aquifer) to a long running single tile wide path filled with weapon traps.  On each side of the one wide path will be a 2-deep channel, which will have water flowing towards a hole back near the beginning leading down 5zs towards a fortified drain to allow water to leave and keep the undead pinned down in the hole.  The idea being that enough weapon traps will force the undead to 'dodge' into the ravines eventually, and they'll flow due to water falling from the aquifer punches above I'll use to feed the system into the ditch.

At the end of this (probably long curving) road will be some poor dog I've managed to salvage from a merchant death chained up as bait.

Other than the fliers being able to path along the side of the weapon-trap route, does anyone see any holes in this plan that can magnificently backfire on me?

[smjjames]

40d ravines or just deep holes you made? Just wondering.

One problem I COULD see is not having enough water flow to push the zombies (and the bits and pieces of them) down into the ravine or wherever.

[WanderingKid]

I only really started playing in 34.11, so I'm not familiar with what you mean by 40d ravines.  I'm going to dig out my own trenches.

I could see the waterflow concern.  With an aquifer, if necessary, I can (hopefully) add more water.  I'll make sure that additional flow is included in the design in case it's necessary, thanks.

[Merendel]

if your just trying to fling them down a hole you might consider bridges.  if the bridge is raised with zombies on it they'll get flung in the direction the bridge rises and down your pit if the bridge is ancored on that side.  you still might want the water flowing as a backup incase you get something too big for the bridge.


also this is dwarf fortress.  Of course there's a way for anything to backfire spectacularly.  Dont see an obvious one asside from possible water flow issues and that of geting your poor miner out after he pops the hole.   Really though as long as you seal off the far side so the zombies are after your bait not your dwarvs the worst that can happen is you just quarenteen that stretch of area

[jcochran]

I see a possible issue with waterflow.

You don't want too little ... or too much.
Problem with two little is pretty obvious. The zombies don't get pushed along the path to the place you want.
However, if that ravine gets filled with too much (7/7 water), then that's just as bad. The water will 'teleport' from its origin to where ever the drain is and there will be no push applied to any zombies between the two points. I think that you are going to get 7/7 water pretty easily and since zombies don't drown, you're gonna get some damp, but 'alive' zombies coming towards you after the dog is dead.

[WanderingKid]

Hm, an interesting idea Merendel.  I could setup a minecart repeater to activate the bridges for me and they could just keep whomping away.  My concern with bridges is if they come down on something and break.  I've had water buffalo HAIR break my atom-smasher when it was rezzed so Undead don't follow normal size rules.

Also, one of those undead used to be a titan.  That defense won't save me from him.

jcochran: Darn it, you have a dang good point.  I'd have to setup something so it would act like a 'wave pool' or something similar, and I'm not sure how I could do that without building a mega project.

Although, perhaps I could use something different.  It would create a ton of body parts but if I used mine carts to 'slam' into the, shoving them towards the holes, on a massive impulse ramp driver so the carts never get stuck, I might be able to pull it off.  Not getting the bodies caught up in the cart return would be the real trick to that, though.

I've never built a minecart water gun, but more and more it's looking like I need to do that.

[weenog]

FPS is going to be a huge problem.  Moving liquids are always hell on FPS, and even if the zombies can't actually move because of the rush of water, the processor is still going to be figuring paths for all of them.

Destroy them, don't contain them.

[WanderingKid]

I'm open to suggestions.  I've got undead too big to atom smash when it's alive.  Cave ins, while it'll kill them, don't eradicate the bodies, I've tested in my dump pit by dropping natural stone and floors on them.  I'm at my wits end with these things.  The undead wandered off the map in my other experience with a reanimating biome.  These aren't.

I'll take the FPS hit just to get them off the surface at this point so I can do some work in making a protected caravan/migrant/liason entry.

[weenog]

You can probably atom smash them as inanimate objects even if you can't atom smash them as creatures.  Try re-killing them and then smashing them.  If you're stuck on the idea of using running water to move them about, maybe you could create a multi-part trap that blows them apart with an upright spears/spikes trap, flushes the parts out of the trap and into your atom smasher, and then annihilates them.

[WanderingKid]

Actually, what I'd prefer to do is create a minecart slaughter-pit, a series of channels with minecarts ripping through the enemy, forcing them (preferably re-dead) under atom-smashers for removal.  But I don't have a metal industry yet and I don't think wooden minecarts will have the force I desire.  Maybe I need to put that together briefly just to get some minecarts together and build this right, once.

[itg]

You could use a combination of magma-safe spikes on repeat and magma. The spikes kill the zombies and the magma incinerates the corpses.

[WanderingKid]

 

Undead path through magma?  On purpose?!

    Undead army, I'd like to introduce you to my pump stack.

[itg]

Hehe, I didn't mean to imply they'd path through the magma. Come to think of it, though, I don't know for sure that they don't. In any case, I just meant to suggest the spikes and magma as an alternative to atom-smashing, since you were concerned about big zombies causing the bridges to deconstruct.

[Mad Jackal]

I think I'd look into an obsidian farm type of solution towards this. Burn them in magma you dump on them. Then flush with water to turn it to stone. Re-dig, re-use, repeat.

[WanderingKid]

Hehe, I didn't mean to imply they'd path through the magma. Come to think of it, though, I don't know for sure that they don't. In any case, I just meant to suggest the spikes and magma as an alternative to atom-smashing, since you were concerned about big zombies causing the bridges to deconstruct.

This I think has the most long term success possibilities... albeit it's a few years out to get magma where I'd need it.

I'm thinking this: 

A two stage chasm, the first area is 3 high to hopefully catch titans that jump off the bridgeways (since they could just step up otherwise), and the second area 2 high to make sure fliers don't have a Zaxxon path to get to me in the lava.  Load up the lower levels with repeating magma proof spikes, and fill the thing with magma.  The upper level will be a snaking S path loaded with weapon traps (with spiked balls, least # of parts to reanimate) to try to get the undead to 'dodge' into the magma.  At the end will be either a bait animal or some kind of airlock into the fort that the undead can hit a pressure plate and activate to shut off should they make it through the gauntlet.

Out of sheer curiousity, I've generated a fort that I'm going to create a very simple magma filled airlock in (minecarts for the win) to see if undead will attempt to path to the fort through magma.