Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[taptap]

Wait, isn't there a water repeater that is like super fast to stop?

You can put the door a z-level below to remove a better defined amount of water and thereby conveniently start and end/reset a wave repeater (of 6 or 8 tiles). And it isn't really hard to set up. It does repeat way slower than a lever, even in designs with additional output pressure plates. Too small wave repeaters trigger even less often since the pressure plate fails to reset in between the visits. I assume for a long-term project like this the frequency of your repeater hardly matters. (More: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=145879.0)

You can't avoid some delay for the reset (e.g. dwarf moving to lever, door opens, water spreads, pressure plate may need additional time to reset depending on your settings), but this is hardly an issue for the applications I would run with it (e.g. repeating traps against opponents). I am somewhat surprised that Staalo did run his 10+ year experiment with manually triggered levers and apparently permanent manual oversight (and not some kind of repeater), so for each graduate Staalo got a serious case of lever arm and repetitive strain injury, but he didn't tell us.

[Staalo]

I thought this came up when discussing the Searingmines facility... I had the same setup there. I usually have a dedicated lever-puller in all my forts but in Searingmines the duke seemed to eagerly take up the training lever duty for most of the time. I suppose he got some kicks from it.

I still think the manually operated lever is the best solution where you can't afford even a single cycle to go through when there's an accident. I don't want to wait for the nearest dwarf to saunter slowly over the emergency shutdown lever whenever he/she feels like it.

[Dwarf4Explosives]

If the bug involving bridges becoming capable of letting fluids through when dismantled (or whatever the term is) and then having that order canceled still works, you could use that to drain a fluid repeater. I hope I'm remembering the bug correctly.

[Staalo]

Well, just as we were talking about it, five year old Litast Floorchanner somehow mislaid his mittens and within a single cycle got his both hands mangled beyond recognition. I ordered the lever puller to take a break and the system stopped immediately without further injuries. I'd like to think it as a dead man's switch of sorts, like in any dangerous industrial contraptions.

Litast is now recovering at the Questmountain's rarely used hospital. He'll probably want to resume his classes very soon, to avoid falling behind.

[Staalo]

Vigorous wrestling and fist-bumping at The Army of Lovers barracks has produced results. Nil Delightrags and Rovod Confinedgirders just got their fifth child Dumed Gullysling, a boy who in a year will join the others at the boarding school.

I may be overdoing this, but since this is a "rebuild dwarven civilization from extinction" scenario every child counts.

[Max™]

Oh, I just thought of another way to send the repeat signal.

Install one of my awesome dorfwashes with a pressure plate under the tile the pump fills.
wall wall wall wall wall
wall A 3x1 ramp wall
wall fortification wall
wall fortification wall
wall 4/7+ trigger wall
wall wall wall wall wall

Top layer has a pump over the fortifications (with floor over them of course) and an open space over the plate, have it 3/7 full normally, order a pump job and a dorf will clean the water of gunk left as dorfs path through the ramps, and the fluctuating water level will cycle the plate, tell them to stop and poof it's done.

Upsides over lever repeat: pump training stat boosts and clean dorfs!

[Dorsidwarf]

You are a true hero of dwarf fortress. Will you just keep updating your academy to each new version?

[Max™]

He will if he doesn't want us to send him to pull a lever accessed from under a drawbridge.

[Staalo]

I will, as long as there's science yet to be done in dwarven education.

Right now I'm having trouble getting students to fight with goblin guest lecturers. I suspect this is yet one aspect of the "won't fight" bug: every time when I drop a goblin to the training room students rush it en masse but then just stand there dodging the goblin's punches and literally just walk over it. Eventually the goblin levels up to a Elite Wrestler and starts bending limbs out of shape; at that point I have to send in a squad to stop the party.

I'm tempted to send the moms&dads squad next time this happens, even if it would mean danger to the new baby. Just for giggles, you know:

"Urist! Are you partying with goblins again? Stop this infernal racket at once!"

"...yes mom."

[rmblr]

How soon does cave adaptation set in? Will 10 years underground in the Education Center produce Legendary graduates who can't go outside without fear of spilling their cavvy sweetbread roasts all over the garden?

What about a dual level (three if you count the pool) school with an exposed playground? It could be all on one level if you built the whole school close enough to an edge to expose part of it to sunlight. Worth the trouble?

[Staalo]

I don't think it will be a problem since cave adaptation is capped to around 1,5 years. I'll just put them to plant gathering duty for a while once they graduate. If wiki numbers are correct it should take about six weeks to recover from complete adaptation. I tend to build fortresses where surface life isn't terribly important anyway.

I just had my oldest and beefiest student, Zon Boltsdust, to have a little mano a mano (or mano a beardo if you prefer) with a goblin captive. It did not go well; Zon ran circles in panic from a scrawny naked goblin recruit and got a thorough beating while the greenskin stood unharmed. That is, unharmed until I once again had to send the militia to the rescue. Zon is now getting stitched up in the hospital; I hope all those bruises will build a little character.

I am disappointed. Where are the child monsters of Searingmines who would rush and beat Minotaurs to death barehanded? This new behavior system will take some time to work around.

[Staalo]

All students have spent some time with the mom/dad squad watching their parents spar and gaining Obsever skill in the process. I have no idea how awkward that has been to everyone present.

Some, er, observations I've made:

• Merely watching the training sessions isn't enough, some soldiers have to be sparring to gain Observer for all within visual range.
• Watching sparring, or as I suspect any combat situation, trains Observer at about same rate for both participants and witnesses.
• Participant doesn't have to be an active combatant in the battle; merely getting beaten up by a naked goblin trains Observer very nicely.
• The rate of training is reasonably rapid and a watcher should advance to Legendary within about a year or so, depending on the frequency of sparring.
• When a sparring soldier charges another, any dwarf in the same square might also "spar" at the same time and could train a small variable amount of Wrestler (in one instance possibly also Shield User, for some reason). This was of course old news but now I've witnessed it several times live.
  

[Repseki]

Looks like it's time to dig out some dangerously small barracks for some parent wrestling matches.

Gotta figure out how small you can go before the number of severed limbs via collision out weighs the benefit of having a dozen children used as a floor mat for military training. SCIENCE!!

[Staalo]

It's a really small gain for Wrestler, but it might work in the long run... I'd think there would be no casualties, merely lots of stunned students but that's a natural state for students anyway.

[Staalo]

YES! YES! YES!

Just when I was about to lose hope, five year old Atír Gilltower brings the first victory of the program by killing a goblin pikeman in ferocious one-to-one. He had spent days running away from the goblin until, when cornered and injured several times he finally became enraged and basically beat the goblin into bloody pulp. After the fight, instead of going to hospital he had a drink, got a new pair of trousers and went to a party. Go Atír!

Now I'll have to figure out how to duplicate this. Atír's "likes to brawl" personality attribute might have played some part in it, as well as his raging in the end.