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[taptap]

I don't really understand why you would want to do military training on children below 12 at all, when you are happy to use danger rooms anyway. (Even without danger rooms military training is incredibly fast - especially since the long patrol thought was removed from training.) I also would be interested in the medical data of the successful graduates of staalo's experiment. What development you had in your medical staff?

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Inspired by this thread, I did a little experiment myself just in normal gameplay, basically putting my reserve barracks into my main dining room / sculpture garden / meeting area (which is 8x8 tiles, my pop is 30) and another barracks next door but connected by windows. After two years I have three results of interest. 1) It increases observer (0->proficient in the most idle dwarf, likely more in children) and 2) it limits social skill progress tremendously - most dwarves still only have novice, dabbling social skills even those hanging around in the area a lot and 3) there was almost no spillover into other combat skills (maybe not crowded enough and not enough dodging due to shield use).

Now, I don't know how this scales up, if you put 90 kids in, but that observing competes with socialising might merit further research.

[Max™]

Mostly it is due to kids being useless boozesuckers, having that wasted time turned into a jumpstarted soldier is handy.

Having the process involve horrible atrocities inflicted upon children regularly just makes it dorfy.

[Staalo]

I don't really understand why you would want to do military training on children below 12 at all

Why? Well... the short answer is of course "Why not? This is Dwarf Fortress!" but the long answer is a bit more complicated.

Others probably have had other motives for the original "Dwarven Child Care" project but for me it began simply from desire to have the children learn some skills while they were burrowed for eleven years away from snatchers. Then I realized that there's simply no reason not to max out everything possible for everyone before reaching adulthood; not just for soldiers, but for everyone. This is the new normal for dwarves; every peasant will have Legendary +5 skills and all the resulting attribute boosts by the time they'll reach adulthood. And after that they'll start learning their actual profession.

I also would be interested in the medical data of the successful graduates of staalo's experiment. What development you had in your medical staff?

There were surprisingly few training related injuries; the doctors were more occupied with the injuries resulting from the dwarves hurling themselves against the floor (the Flying Dwarf Syndrome, a bug up to version .40.12, I think). There were couple deaths from the FDS and two graduates have permanent lung damage but otherwise all students and graduates are in full health.

The medical staff is now reasonably experienced but not experts in their related skills. I was expecting more carnage so I had several dwarves assigned to medical duties; as a result no one got exceptionally skilled.

[taptap]

I am actually all for !!SCIENCE!!, just wish there were a boarding school setup without spikes and a more acceptable survival rate. If you would run such a system in a live fortress on a likely somewhat smaller scale, you would anyway train the graduates in additional military skills afterwards (weapon, shield, discipline) and I wonder how much time you even gain compared to simply socially trained (maybe some sports like swimming, climbing) dwarves, who can pick up the military skills fairly quickly when put through a military education schedule run by legendary teacherwarrriors - all the student/concentration/organising skills help to increase attributes like memory / patience / focus neglected by the danger room training and make for truly universal education. The way I see it, you trade increased speed of education for casualties among dwarf youth.

[Dwarf4Explosives]

The way I see it, you trade increased speed of education for casualties among dwarf youth.

And the downside is?

[Staalo]

Like I said, there were no casualties from the training, and no injuries other than an occasional broken thumb from falling badly into the swimming pool. The only student deaths were from unrelated causes like the jumping bug or following the mother into combat with a fire-spewing FB.

The original danger room setup was actually designed to train combat skills very slowly, with the eleven year training period in mind. I had to build another, harder version of it afterwards to get Armor User fully trained for the more advanced students.

Of course, it is entirely possible to build a boarding school without the spikes and only train Swimming, Observation and maybe Grower (with an added farm plot). That would also be enough to give most of the same attribute boosts to the students.

[Staalo]

Migrated the save to .40.14. The fortress didn't erupt instantly in madness and bloodshed as I had feared, so that at least is good news. The bad news is, as I predicted, that the whole combat hardness mechanism seems to be gone. Looks like I murdered all those puppies for nothing.

It looks like it's time for another bout of !!SCIENCE!! to find out if there are any new ways of "hardening" students in this new dwarven thought system.

[TheHossofMoss]

Looks like I murdered all those puppies for nothing.

No no no, you did not! They died in the great name of !!!SCIENCE!!!

[Urist McVoyager]

I've heard that people will slowly (or quickly) go insane with the right stressors, and that most folks have never seen them bounce back. I've heard of one case where two such people were chained up in jail together, became best friends, and recovered together. It's possible that friendships are now the key to preventing tantrum spirals. You need your people to make new friends to get over loss.

[taptap]

Given the changes to social skills we may require a school setup to increase them (and corresponding attributes) soon enough.

The battle hardening appears to me to work in pretty similar ways (witnessing death), at least my military dwarves are completely hardened now, even the same message as ever. I have no kids to test this, although I managed to have several romances, but no one married.

[Staalo]

I'll have to continue the research in another fort since this one is running out of students. Almost all children have now graduated and it's time to plan for the endgame.

Since I'll have to gen a new world to get all the goodies in .40.14+ I'm starting to warm up to the "going out with a bang" option, the one that involves taking all children to the circus. I'm curious to see how their training will help when playing with the clowns.

[Nail]

Yay, a field trip!

[TheHossofMoss]

I'll have to continue the research in another fort since this one is running out of students. Almost all children have now graduated and it's time to plan for the endgame.

Since I'll have to gen a new world to get all the goodies in .40.14+ I'm starting to warm up to the "going out with a bang" option, the one that involves taking all children to the circus. I'm curious to see how their training will help when playing with the clowns.

Make sure they get as much cotton candy as possible, and all the peanuts they can grab! Maybe they'll meet the Ringleader!

[wierd]

... Mrs Sizzle strikes again...

[Staalo]

IT. IS. DONE.

It's 12th Sandstone, year 219. Little Sigun Citylenses has just graduated and the Searingmines Boarding School project is finally complete.

To celebrate the last graduation day I'm giving everyone free passes to the circus. Have fun kids, and remember to play nice with the clowns!