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[MDFification]

I've seen the idea of dwarven drop pods pop up several time over the years, but I think I've noticed something others haven't. Specifically, I don't remember anybody mentioning how you can use Feather Wood to cushion falls and prevent serious injury. This is something to incorporate.
So, to rehash the basic concepts of the drop pod as I remember them:

-Dwarves are equipped with full sets of armor; preferably adamantine to reduce weight.
-Dwarves are then herded onto a retracting bridge some z-levels above a featherwood platform linked to a support.
-Fill the featherwood platform with cats. Hopefully dwarves will land on the cats. Also, if possible flood the featherwood platform with water for additional cushioning.
-Drop the dwarves and the platform (link the support and the bridge to the same lever). The result will (hopefully) be a horde of dwarves landing on top of a bunch of stunned kittens in knee-deep water, surrounded by unconscious/mangled legions of goblins.

And there you have it, an absurdly complicated system to allow you to drop dwarven soldiers into a goblin siege.

[Dirst]

I've seen the idea of dwarven drop pods pop up several time over the years, but I think I've noticed something others haven't. Specifically, I don't remember anybody mentioning how you can use Feather Wood to cushion falls and prevent serious injury. This is something to incorporate.
So, to rehash the basic concepts of the drop pod as I remember them:

-Dwarves are equipped with full sets of armor; preferably adamantine to reduce weight.
-Dwarves are then herded onto a retracting bridge some z-levels above a featherwood platform linked to a support.
-Fill the featherwood platform with cats. Hopefully dwarves will land on the cats. Also, if possible flood the featherwood platform with water for additional cushioning.
-Drop the dwarves and the platform (link the support and the bridge to the same lever). The result will (hopefully) be a horde of dwarves landing on top of a bunch of stunned kittens in knee-deep water, surrounded by unconscious/mangled legions of goblins.

And there you have it, an absurdly complicated system to allow you to drop dwarven soldiers into a goblin siege.

If you are one of those who likes to avoid harming cats (and if you are, what's wrong with you?), you can apply the following to cushion the fall.

Code: [Select]

[SYNDROME]
[SYN_NAME:wrap in bubble-wrap]
[SYN_CONTACT]
[SYN_AFFECTED_CREATURE:DWARF:ALL]
[SYN_CLASS:DWARFY]
[CE_MATERIAL_FORCE_MULTIPLIER:MAT_MULT:PLANT_MAT:FEATHER:WOOD:1:10:START:0]
How to apply it is left as an exercise for the reader.

[puke]

I'm not sure about this.  The platform will deconstruct as it falls, and the material on your landing zone will be whatever the floor below is.

Instead, pave the gobbo-rich LZ with featherwood, and keep the cats on a retracting bridge just like the dwarfs.  Saves some reconstruction effort when you have to reload it.

If you have a constructed floor under the cats, you will need to place the dwarf drop area fairly high to avoid the cave-in dust.  Placing them that high might increase the injury risk beyond what the cat cushions and featherwood will account for.

edit:  I may have misunderstood how this works.  Is it that landing on a low-density feather-wood surface lessens the impact, or that having a bunch of featherwood blocks littering the otherwise hard surface lessens the impact? 

If the later, you might want to just pre-seed the LZ with a bunch of FW garbage -- maybe crafts?  This would get more light objects down there, and would also avoid the cavein dust from FW blocks or logs hitting the ground.

[BlackFlyme]

The floor that you land on helps determine the damage taken from the fall.

Falling several Zs onto a featherwood floor is much less hazardous than falling a single Z onto a platinum floor, for instance, since featherwood is much less dense.

I don't believe that items laying on the ground are factored in, but I don't completely know.

[higgypig]

I love this game.

[HooliganintheFort]

Is it possible to launch dwarves off minecarts? It sounds simple to me. But what do I know?

[Eidre]

Just out of curiosity (since someone may have already done this and it will save me the trouble of putting it together)...
What happens when you (for example) make a plug held up by a single floor tile (like you were going to breach an aquifer) over an even larger open area pre-filled with active goblins, hollow it out, make ground floor exits, burrow in the military dwarves, then channel out the last floor tile so the whole thing falls down...

Do the dwarves inside "fall" if the floor under their feet is falling as well?

[puke]

Is it possible to launch dwarves off minecarts? It sounds simple to me. But what do I know?

Yes.  If a minecart collides with something at speeds that would cause derailment, it will fling out its contents.  Including dwarfs.

The wiki has details:

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Minecart

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Trap_design#Minecarts

[puke]

Do the dwarves inside "fall" if the floor under their feet is falling as well?

It's been a long time, I'd say since 40d, that I had dwarfs riding cave-ins.  This can be done. 

Some say that it is possible to ride it down and escape without injury.  In my experience, they still get injured -- possibly to a lesser degree, but riding a landslide can still sometimes be fatal.

How much the injuries are reduced -- if at all -- would probably need better science.  This is what the Wiki has to say, and by the sound of it a rigorous and thorough investigation has not been done:

Anything standing on the area that caves in falls and may get away with being stunned. The fall victim has a chance of being unable to walk away, somewhat proportional to the distance fallen but not set in stone. No Pun intended.

[Urist Da Vinci]

The floor that you land on helps determine the damage taken from the fall.

Falling several Zs onto a featherwood floor is much less hazardous than falling a single Z onto a platinum floor, for instance, since featherwood is much less dense.

I don't believe that items laying on the ground are factored in, but I don't completely know.

Yes, DF models falling damage by beating the fallen creature with a large cube made of the floor's material (constructions like floors or the wall beneath if no floor has been built). Most creatures would rather be beaten with a giant pillow than with a block of dense, hard metal.

Objects laying on the ground don't count/matter, EXCEPT for minecarts. Before anyone asks, no you can't fall "into" a minecart.

...
Yes.  If a minecart collides with something at speeds that would cause derailment, it will fling out its contents.  Including dwarfs.
...

Any container, including cages, travelling sideways at derailment speeds will eject its contents upon collision.

Just out of curiosity (since someone may have already done this and it will save me the trouble of putting it together)...
What happens when you (for example) make a plug held up by a single floor tile (like you were going to breach an aquifer) over an even larger open area pre-filled with active goblins, hollow it out, make ground floor exits, burrow in the military dwarves, then channel out the last floor tile so the whole thing falls down...

Do the dwarves inside "fall" if the floor under their feet is falling as well?

The tiles of natural ground or cast obsidian compact flat, leaving no air gaps and crushing things inside the "hollow". Anyone standing on the roof is left floating in midair, surrounded by cave-in dust.

[puke]

The tiles of natural ground or cast obsidian compact flat, leaving no air gaps and crushing things inside the "hollow". Anyone standing on the roof is left floating in midair, surrounded by cave-in dust.

Woah, really?  I'm sure this didnt used to be the case.  I mean, sure, unsupported natural ground is mined out, it will pancake down.  But if you drop a solid structure as one piece, it should continue to support its self.

So if you have, for example, a 3x3x3 chunk of natural stone, with a doorway in one face and hollow in the central square, and you carve out a 4x4 hole beneath it... the entire thing should drop into the hole and remain a hollow 3x3x3 with a doorway (by which I mean an opening, not a door) in one side and a hollow center.  NOT end up as a pancaked 3x3x3 with a 1x2 depression in the roof.

so:

Code: [Select]

z+2     z+1     Z+0
###     ###     ###
###     #..     ###
###     ###     ###

not ending in this

Code: [Select]

z+2     z+1     Z+0
###     ###     ###
#..     ###     ###
###     ###     ###



I am nearly certain that I've seen screenshots of people that embark-anywhere'd on a dark goblin fortress, and dug around the foundations of it, and dropped it in tact into a hole in the ground.

[HooliganintheFort]

Is it possible to launch dwarves off minecarts? It sounds simple to me. But what do I know?

Yes.  If a minecart collides with something at speeds that would cause derailment, it will fling out its contents.  Including dwarfs.

The wiki has details:

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Minecart

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Trap_design#Minecarts

Maybe you can pasture a cat in front of the "launch pad" and after the cart hits the cat, the dwarves can be propelled into combat via inertia.  But there may also be a problem with this. The placement, forifications, and deaths. Can carts go through fortifications? They don't need to be if they can't. Also dwarves might hit their heads onto the ground and we all know how thick skulls are.

[Crashmaster]

All I needed was a pasture of cats to get my mason safely down 40z after he sealed up the top of my magma tank. The cedar logs hurt some of the cats but they were several-deep per square. Fallers get off scot-free if they land on a creature - who is not so lucky.

[Urist Da Vinci]

...

Maybe you can pasture a cat in front of the "launch pad" and after the cart hits the cat, the dwarves can be propelled into combat via inertia.  But there may also be a problem with this. The placement, forifications, and deaths. Can carts go through fortifications? They don't need to be if they can't. Also dwarves might hit their heads onto the ground and we all know how thick skulls are.

Carts will hit fortifications if the cart is on the ground or on rails. Once the cart leaves the ground, it is a projectile and will pass through fortifications. A 1x1 hole in front of the fortification is sufficient, provided the cart is going fast enough to jump the gap.

Players commonly crash carts into walls, fortifications, or other carts. Animals are unreliable at staying in one spot where you need them to be.

All I needed was a pasture of cats to get my mason safely down 40z after he sealed up the top of my magma tank. The cedar logs hurt some of the cats but they were several-deep per square. Fallers get off scot-free if they land on a creature - who is not so lucky.

Yeah, if you fall on a creature now, you transfer momentum to it, causing it to slam into the floor.

[Di]

Yes.  If a minecart collides with something at speeds that would cause derailment, it will fling out its contents.  Including dwarfs.

Not quite. It depends on the masses of cart and the something. Haven't checked whether featherwood walls cause shotgunning less than stone ones, but for collisions with creatures you can definitely suppress flinging contents by having cart that's ten times heavier. The cart still loses it's momentum in such collision.
Though that'd be more of a cavalry charge than spacemarine drop.

It has also been discussed earlier that vertical falling in minecart doesn't cause falling damage. But any military-minecart interaction requires quite a lot of micromanagement.