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[chaotic skies]

If only we could stick stuff besides bolts in a ballista...then we could launch gold bars at the children!

[Gwolfski]

Catapults don't hit friendlies.

[Staalo]

Oh, hello. Looks like this thread was necroed recently (before it was promptly beaten to a pulp again by mitten clad little fists, I presume).

Catapults as a training tool is an interesting idea; another one could be automated minecart shotguns launching trash across the training room. Although I'd believe anyone resorting to this would have to accept a few casualties.

After Copperfell became unplayable I have been building small boarding schools into my later forts with moderate success. One trouble with this old method seems to be playing dwarves' tendency to remain in one place, oblivious to the world around them. Earlier when the children just milled around aimlessly they were constantly hit by training spears throughout their childhood but now they'll just dodge randomly until they end up on a tile where there are no spears and stay there. That tends to slow training speed significantly compared to earlier versions.

I have tried to tempt the children by placing the only source of toys  right in the middle of the room; that helped somewhat, especially when they sometimes dropped their toys while dodging into the swimming pool. Placing some goblets into same place also managed to get children off their corpulent backends. But still, basic training isn't as... entertaining as it used to be.

[dbay]

Oh, hello. Looks like this thread was necroed recently (before it was promptly beaten to a pulp again by mitten clad little fists, I presume).

Catapults as a training tool is an interesting idea; another one could be automated minecart shotguns launching trash across the training room. Although I'd believe anyone resorting to this would have to accept a few casualties.

After Copperfell became unplayable I have been building small boarding schools into my later forts with moderate success. One trouble with this old method seems to be playing dwarves' tendency to remain in one place, oblivious to the world around them. Earlier when the children just milled around aimlessly they were constantly hit by training spears throughout their childhood but now they'll just dodge randomly until they end up on a tile where there are no spears and stay there. That tends to slow training speed significantly compared to earlier versions.

I have tried to tempt the children by placing the only source of toys  right in the middle of the room; that helped somewhat, especially when they sometimes dropped their toys while dodging into the swimming pool. Placing some goblets into same place also managed to get children off their corpulent backends. But still, basic training isn't as... entertaining as it used to be.

I've encountered this problem as well. It can be minimized by reducing the number of tiles without training spears--the students don't need beds, tables, or chairs. Training their skills keeps them happy enough that they maintain the 'focused' buff the whole time they're in school, in my experience. You only need 1 quantum food/clothes stockpile that has no spears.

Has anyone else had problems with dwarves forcing open locked and even lever-operated doors to get into the school? I've had to start using floodgates in place of doors.

[Staalo]

Has anyone else had problems with dwarves forcing open locked and even lever-operated doors to get into the school? I've had to start using floodgates in place of doors.

In my last fort I had that one classroom door to the  that always managed to unlock itself when I wasn't looking. After a while I figured my students must be picking the lock whenever they wanted to skip class; I never caught anyone in the act, though.

[Gwolfski]

ANOUNCEMENT

I keep repeating this (at least i think so): catapults dont hit friendlies.

[NCommander]

It's possible to get them to indirectly hit by having the capault shoot a wall over a channel. The rock will fall and smash whatever is below

[Staalo]

Looks like Toady has added some new features to combat in .43.04; I've witnessed limbs being twisted by impact force and clothes being literally shredded apart by repeated attacks. This might make danger room training quite a bit more interesting in the future...

In other news, I got a new computer and noticed that I can play the old Copperfell save again. The game is plodding along with sedate 10 FPS but that's still better than crashing every game week or so. Maybe the kids will get their circus visit after all.

[Dainz]

Looks like Toady has added some new features to combat in .43.04; I've witnessed limbs being twisted by impact force and clothes being literally shredded apart by repeated attacks. This might make danger room training quite a bit more interesting in the future...

In other news, I got a new computer and noticed that I can play the old Copperfell save again. The game is plodding along with sedate 10 FPS but that's still better than crashing every game week or so. Maybe the kids will get their circus visit after all.

Thats nice to hear, i really want to read about the Übersoldiers fighting against hell!

[Repseki]

Does anyone have a setup to train children in swimming in 43.xx?

All they seem to do is "play" and "make believe" now, with no real tendency to congregate at meeting zones, so they haven't been making use of the training pools like the adults in my fort. Although I haven't gone to any extremes when it comes to the size of the burrow they are in.

[Staalo]

"Hi, I'm Urist McClure. You may remember me from such Dwarven Child Care classics as Searingmines: The Boarding School, Questmountain: The Return of the Boarding School, Moonpalace: The Boarding School Strikes Back and of course Copperfell: Boarding School the Electric Boogaloo."

Sorry about the rather heavy necro, but inspired by the "Dwarven !!SCIENCE!! Think Tank" thread I thought to post some later advances in Child Care^TM, in case someone is still interested in betterment of dwarfkind.

Since maxing dwarves' skills and attributes early in life has been found to be generally a good thing, I've been doing a light version of the Boarding School in all of my forts. After the "limb twisting and armor shredding" update in .43.04 turned danger rooms into meat grinders, I've concentrated on training just unarmed fighting skills and swimming; even those give a nice boost for a child's adult life.

Because of this the Boarding School in my current fort, Swordheart, is a rather simple affair: just a room with various openings in the ceiling. These openings can, without warning, fill the room with either captured monsters or 4/7 water, depending on the whim of the unseen mysterious school master. Every day is an adventure in the life of a Boarding School student!

Water for swimming lessons is drawn from a nearby cavern lake and collected into a reservoir above the training room. When a retracting bridge splashes the mass of 7/7 water downstairs, it equalizes into safe-for swimming 4/7 water. When the students have had enough swimming lessons, water is drained off map via another tunnel. Students can reach Legendary Swimmer quite quickly, but they do need supervising since apparently a dwarf can dehydrate and die of thirst while neck deep in water.

Monster mashing happens in the same room; through a guest lecturer drop chute the students are introduced to various captured cavern critters starting from crundles and gradually advancing to Blind Cave Ogres and worse. Another variation of the unarmed training room was to have all the mashing happen in a special room downstairs, where the students would be unexpectedly dropped from their usual luxurious lodgings through a retracting bridge. If the lessons get too hot to handle, the old proven emergency flushing mechanism can be used to dump everyone into a room full of cage traps below.

This method of training has been quite successful, providing students with Legendary unarmed skills, kill lists as long as their arms and some very, very impressive scarring.

All in all, there isn't any heavy science happening, I'm just encouraging a healthy lifestyle of exercise in dwarven youth. It really pays off later in life.

[Sanctume]

Oooh, I love dwarven child care.

How much 7/7 water tile we talking about? 

Have you used portable drains yet, those are so convenient.

Do platinum toys result in remarkable impact?  platinum toy hammer anyone?

[Reelya]

A necro seems fine for a thread like this which is ongoing science.

So danger rooms are no good any more, how about the coinstar^tm? Is that still effective or is it deadly too?

[Staalo]

How much 7/7 water tile we talking about? 

Have you used portable drains yet, those are so convenient.

Do platinum toys result in remarkable impact?  platinum toy hammer anyone?

The reservoir is 44 tiles of 7/7 water; this happily resolves into 77 tiles of 4/7 water which is the exact size of the training room.

No, I haven't tried portable drains; looks interesting but right now the map edge is about fifteen tiles away.

Like I said in another thread, children never bring their toys to school but they do carry little trinkets like rock scepters and figurines. They have seen quite a lot of use and some have started accumulating kills on them. Children have also started to grow attached to them; I'm waiting for the first named +rhyolite figurine of dwarves+ with a mile long kill list on it.

So danger rooms are no good any more, how about the coinstar^tm? Is that still effective or is it deadly too?

They already were a bit too lethal; see this earlier experiment:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=140588.msg6454302#msg6454302