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[Timeless Bob]

Hmmm... you may want to que several floors for dropping... maybe with a passing minecart trigger so that they wouldn't all drop at the same time, but in a bam <pause> bam <pause> bam <pause> bam... manner instead.  If each floor to be dropped happened to be 2 z-levels thick, you could even carve domino pits in them for style.

[Grimmash]

When doing a cave-in, does it matter if the disconnected area is solid stone or floor?

[Timeless Bob]

yeah - things immediately disassemble when they're falling, so a constructed floor just becomes stones or blocks, which don't do falling damage, more's the pity.  However, that makes for a great "water balloon" effect when you drop a cistern on something.

[mahrgell]

Everything directly under any structure that is dropped by a cavein is killed. There is no damage calculation for that. Just dead. And floors work perfectly fine for that, even though they get deconstructed. The advantage of using a full layer of stone over just floors is, that they smash through levels, killing all floors at once

[Timeless Bob]

Interesting.  In experiments I've done before trying to use falling floors, it just disassembled and ended up on the next floor down, the gob invaders didn't even flinch.  That's actually why I had to resort to the "water balloon" method - the instant flood swept them all around, causing "body part hits..." injuries.

[kamikazi1231]

Took a look at the save Meph.  In the current state I can run the fortress at 45fps.  So let me know whenever I need to take over.  I have no idea how to handle the undead situation.  I would also like to request that the current fortress leader please name a dwarf after me.  Would like to be able to roleplay if I can.  Unless one of you has the plan to get the townportal up and start requesting dwarves.  Then I can wait.

[Meph]

Kamikazi: Its Splints turn, followed by Grimmash, followed by you. Splint wants to take a look today (tomorrow?), and Grimmash will probably let you go first. Regardless, after the great cave the FPS will go up again. Thanks for the offer though.

[jimboo]

It’s an interesting thought experiment and I really hope somebody comes up with a good plan before it’s my turn several years from now.     Cave-ins are classic vanilla DF solutions but the only “undead” ever faced is a vampire and they’re not all bad (so to speak).

1) How do you kill an undead?  By definition, you can’t so it becomes
2) How do you get rid of an undead? (Or thousands thereof.)
2a) Direct confrontation:
2a.1) Golems evidently don’t cut it.  We could sacrifice for a Guardian.
2a.2) The cave-in/domino effect.  The Arena is not set up for testing this, perhaps somebody could try this with the save?   Does anyone have actual experience dropping rocks on an undead?  My own experience comes from setting up magma elevators and something unexpected always happened.  I’m not ducking the work but it would be better if somebody else did this.   
2a.3) The White Mage.  From planning through execution to finish, how long would this take?  And since there can only be one White Witch Hunter at a time, is it possible to have a Mage-in-training to take over relatively quickly if the first one isn’t enough? And by relatively quickly, the manual says “after a month.”  Would that be one White Mage with multiple Lifemancers?  At the Library of Mind and Body, “Study Sorcery” grants lvl5 – so is that kind of an upgrade to a new White Witch Hunter?
2b) “Get rid of ‘em,” à la Timeless Bob’s Water Balloon extravaganza.  If floods can knock things around, can they be flushed off-screen?  Water staff waves only target three at a time but waterlings give infinite amounts until deconstructed, right?  Then a controlled cave-in could seal the breach and restore FPS.  But since many of them are holed up within those walled rooms, that could be problematic.  Or perhaps a water staff could immobilize the front lines of undead in ice, allowing the Witch Hunter to do his thing at leisure.  Brings to mind the scene in Eddings’ Belgariad where Riva Iron-Grip is using the Orb to pop Grolims one at a time on the frozen river.   

As was pointed out, Mages are not a quick fix and require many costly reagents.  I suggest exploratory miners to find gold asap, inviting caravans and diplomats to order Golden Geese and a Trade License as a contingency, and researching Alchemy.         

[mahrgell]

2a.2) The cave-in/domino effect.  The Arena is not set up for testing this, perhaps somebody could try this with the save?   Does anyone have actual experience dropping rocks on an undead?  My own experience comes from setting up magma elevators and something unexpected always happened.  I’m not ducking the work but it would be better if somebody else did this.   

cavein != dropping rocks on them Caveins kill right away without damage calculation, trying to drop stones would be tedious and take forever ^^ The most difficult thing about it would be the NoFear-Status for the miner. Without it the miner will always run away and never get done. Easiest ways to do the cavein is to place a support to some place above the structure, where there is no structure wall below. Then channel into all walls of of the structure from above. now the (natural) floors above the structure should be only connected to he support. Drop the support via lever, hf. Alternatively skip the support and sacrifice a miner ^^

2a.3) The White Mage.  From planning through execution to finish, how long would this take?  And since there can only be one White Witch Hunter at a time, is it possible to have a Mage-in-training to take over relatively quickly if the first one isn’t enough? And by relatively quickly, the manual says “after a month.”  Would that be one White Mage with multiple Lifemancers?  At the Library of Mind and Body, “Study Sorcery” grants lvl5 – so is that kind of an upgrade to a new White Witch Hunter?

I completely forgot about the 1 mage limit when meph posted that. Actually, going by what Meph said earlier (one kill every 100-300 ticks) it takes a single mage 1-3 years to kill 4000 undeads. Not including setup time. And assuming during that time the mage never eats, sleeps, rests, whatever... So basically he always has undeads in sight (which gets way harder once the upper floor would be cleared)
I think those mages are a nice way for the final cleanup. But for the main attack... Nope.

2b) “Get rid of ‘em,” à la Timeless Bob’s Water Balloon extravaganza.  If floods can knock things around, can they be flushed off-screen?  Water staff waves only target three at a time but waterlings give infinite amounts until deconstructed, right?  Then a controlled cave-in could seal the breach and restore FPS.  But since many of them are holed up within those walled rooms, that could be problematic.  Or perhaps a water staff could immobilize the front lines of undead in ice, allowing the Witch Hunter to do his thing at leisure.  Brings to mind the scene in Eddings’ Belgariad where Riva Iron-Grip is using the Orb to pop Grolims one at a time on the frozen river.

   
Where would the water go? Not exactly sure, how the structure is built. Flowing them away sounds nice, but sounds quite hard to achieve? But then again, more flowing water may kill FPS even more.
   

[Meph]

You cant flow them off the map.

Hellfire landmines are a winner. But the machine factory is also quite far away, because you need a chemist and blackpowder to produce them. I even had all the reagents for the chemist research, but somehow it was still red in the menu. Dont know whats up with that. But ordering them from the caravan should work. Hellfire landmines and turrets. Thats the way to go, they just melt them. No questions asked. They wouldnt even leave miasma-producing corpses.

[jimboo]

You cant flow them off the map.

Well, guess that answers that.  But, why not?

Hellfire landmines are a winner. But the machine factory is also quite far away, because you need a chemist and blackpowder to produce them. I even had all the reagents for the chemist research, but somehow it was still red in the menu. Dont know whats up with that.

So it happens to you, too?    

So the fortress still needs gold and caravans.  And time.
Hellfire mines are listed in inorganic_traps_masterwork but it doesn’t say much about ‘em.  What is hellfire, exactly, and in which subdirectory should I be looking for it? 

Plan C: just thinking out loud of things that might be faster, does the tag
[SYN_AFFECTED_CREATURE:DWARF:ALL]
mean Balrogs and Soggoths would affect the undead?  (What does mean :ALL, basically)

[Meph]

What do you mean with shoggoths and balrogs affecting anything?

[SYN_AFFECTED_CREATURE:DWARF:ALL] => This means all castes of the creature dwarf.

Hellfire turrets use dragonfire, which melts even magmasafe materials. Hellfire landmines use a custom material that is equally hot. The turret works for sure. Or high level fire mages could work.

I love how we have this one problem that would have barely any solutions in vanilla DF, and we just cycle through options like crazy. Would A work? No? Try B. Then Try C-Z.

[Splint]

Picking up the save, gonna see what I can do with it. Should have an update by tonight.

EDIT: This is way beyond my ability and confidence to deal with. Too few dwarves, not enough time. At least for dealing with the frost giants and for my playstyle (which revolves around elite infantry squads and traps at chokepoints.)

Recommendation: Prepared encasement ground to eliminate the undead. Two magmalings and one waterling can attempt to fill tanks with their respective fluids from above, and once filled put some bait or something in the chamber and knock out an access point for the horde with a bridge at the ends to take advantage of the AI. They'll path for the dwarves even if the gates rise, and we can encase a very large number of the abominations and then mine them out while the tanks refill to prepare the killing ground for another go.

Or we could just find a suitable spot to jam full of enough weapon, stonefall, and bridge traps and destroy them that way. Anyway, whoever wants to go next can go, I really don't have the confidence in my abilities to play.

[Talanic]

Hellfire landmines are a winner. But the machine factory is also quite far away, because you need a chemist and blackpowder to produce them. I even had all the reagents for the chemist research, but somehow it was still red in the menu. Dont know whats up with that.

Make sure that all of the components for that specific research are enclosed in the same burrow that includes the research lab.  That glitch dogged my steps all year - had to create the 'Everything Ours' burrow to ameliorate it.  In the year 5 save, Chemistry is available to research.

As far as golems, both of the golems pitted in were brass.  We could, in theory, make iron, steel, or even adamantine golems, albeit at the cost of a dwarf.  The town portal would alleviate the cost, making us not have to lose a named dwarf, but I think my dwarf might be the right kind of fanatic to accept goleming. 

Also, one of my plans had been to pit invaders into the undead.  Unfortunately I tried to do so when a caravan was there, and the caravan guards charged halfway through the fort to slaughter the orc and miscellaneous creatures that were going to be made useful.  If we can manage to get some freezers down there, it might simplify things immensely.

[Timeless Bob]

There's a thought - if hellfire turrets produce dragonfire, can the Colosseum produce dragons?  A Colosseum that paths directly to the curious structure via a lever operated door might be just the thing.  The dragon (or whichever) is spawned, the lever is pulled and the undeads rush in to fight it.  To make sure that they don't overwhelm the poor creature, a dwarf minding the lever...

You know, a much simpler version would be a door/bridge atom smashing affair?  Bridge is down, door is open, path to dwarves is open (but forbidden from use by idiot dwarves who want to give the horde flowers or clean up speck of dirt way over there).  Undeads swarm into the long passage, tripping pressure plate and squashing everybody behind them with bridges coming down.  Turrets on pillars in big open space at the very end of passage take out any other undeads that happen to make it through, bridges reset, wash rinse repeat.