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[ImagoDeo]

I'd believe this would be easier with a steady supply of captured invaders.

This is essentially what I had planned to do for tragedy training in the dining halls of each of my major fortresses. I haven't built a fort strong enough to make that a reality, though.

All the same, it's good to have confirmation of the sentient/nonsentient thing. The wiki had a fallacious paragraph or two talking about dropping puppies for quite some time and I never really believed it.

[Chaine Maile]

Its worth noting that in my "death causeway" project at about 20 sentient deaths some of the survivors got "doesn't care about anything anymore". Doesn't look like it takes very long.

[Staalo]

Its worth noting that in my "death causeway" project at about 20 sentient deaths some of the survivors got "doesn't care about anything anymore". Doesn't look like it takes very long.

I had to waste nearly twice as many lives to get the first "doesn't really care about anything anymore" statuses. But it's getting there... I'm just hoping I don't run out of dogs before that.

If I totally run out of upliftable animals, I'll have to send the squads to clear out some cavern wildlife again... maybe some troglodytes or animal men will move in.

[ImagoDeo]

Its worth noting that in my "death causeway" project at about 20 sentient deaths some of the survivors got "doesn't care about anything anymore". Doesn't look like it takes very long.

I had to waste nearly twice as many lives to get the first "doesn't really care about anything anymore" statuses. But it's getting there... I'm just hoping I don't run out of dogs before that.

If I totally run out of upliftable animals, I'll have to send the squads to clear out some cavern wildlife again... maybe some troglodytes or animal men will move in.

In theory, modding and capturing animal men won't be really necessary. Goblin sieges will provide sufficient horrific death.

[Arcvasti]

Its worth noting that in my "death causeway" project at about 20 sentient deaths some of the survivors got "doesn't care about anything anymore". Doesn't look like it takes very long.

I had to waste nearly twice as many lives to get the first "doesn't really care about anything anymore" statuses. But it's getting there... I'm just hoping I don't run out of dogs before that.

If I totally run out of upliftable animals, I'll have to send the squads to clear out some cavern wildlife again... maybe some troglodytes or animal men will move in.

In theory, modding and capturing animal men won't be really necessary. Goblin sieges will provide sufficient horrific death.

From what I remember about the latest version, goblin sieges are erratic and smaller then normal. Might have been fixed since then though.

[Staalo]

I'm still not having even those smaller sieges, that's why I have to resort to atrocities to get those students traumatized properly.

Things might be looking up, though. The liaisons tell me every year that the local goblin civilization "Sin of Fat" is steamrolling further through the continent so I'm hoping they'll pay poor old Searingmines a visit at some point. I have several comfy cages ready for those Sin of Fat people.

[Staalo]

"Urist McStudent has been quite content lately. He has seen some shit."

Tragedy training is progressing slowly. The fortress is chugging along at sedate 5 FPS when caravan is visiting so I'm just letting the game run on background and check back  every few minutes. I'm running out of dogs but several students are already at "doesn't really care about anything" level.

Both schools are now slaughterhouses filled with blood, vomit and teeth. There'll be some cleaning to do when this phase of training is over; I suspect the mess is partially responsible of the FPS death. For now, I let them be... I like to think the students just had an exceptionally energetic frat party. After all, it's not a real party until someone pukes into the swimming pool.

[Staalo]

Continuing monologue to keep this thread somewhere near the first page...

I have been experimenting on various kinds of educational violence and their effects on the student mind. There's one puzzling interaction I keep noticing; when I release some wildlife inside the school burrow, the hostility between them and the fortress citizens seems to misdirect somehow. They won't attack the students, and even militia members with kill orders just follow them around seemingly unable to attack them. When the animals leave school grounds, they instantly get attacked by militia.

I suspect this is because the game interprets the wild animals being "in combat" with the training equipment and relegates everyone else to some kind of bystander status. Why militia with specific kill orders won't still engage is a mystery.

[Staalo]

Oh yes, and seeing how the [CAN_LEARN] animals are actually learning combat skills before succumbing to inevitable, I'm thinking about the next project after this:

Project "Cujo", to raise war dogs to their full potential.

How do unarmored creatures fare in coinstar rooms?

[StagnantSoul]

I already tried a few designs for a "Cujo" project, including four days spent nearly exclusively on making animals stronger. It didn't do much, just brought me barely stronger dogs/bears/gorillas/rhinos/giant lions/elephants. Rhinos and elephants fared well, with the highest growth. Everything else did rather poorly. You can give it a try though. I tried a lot of things: falling knives/rocks/logs/blocks, training spears, other animals, nothing really did much.

[Staalo]

Ah, too bad. I had hoped that a war dog with Legendary Fighter and Dodger could at least handle a snatcher with some diginity.

Unboosted war dogs seem so underpowered, more like war chihuahuas than iron jawed slabs of muscle, fur and hate they should be.

[StagnantSoul]

Oh, they can't learn skills.

[Staalo]

I meant training skills with [CAN_LEARN] modded in, as I'm now doing with dogs; that was the idea of the "Cujo" project. But let's not derail this thread...

[ImagoDeo]

I meant training skills with [CAN_LEARN] modded in, as I'm now doing with dogs; that was the idea of the "Cujo" project. But let's not derail this thread...

Yes, thank you. You can mod in natural skill tags for them if you really want something a little more impressive.

I'm still waiting on a mostly stable version to appear so I can settle in for the long haul on my own project. So far, each time I redownload and start enjoying it, Toady throws out some update which contains a bugfix that I realize I can't live without. So I leave off playing DF.

Well, that and college keeps getting in the way. But I'm determined to do my own testing sooner or later, hopefully on a map with goblin invasions so I can use their sentient death to harden my population instead of relying on modding puppies.

[CancerousCthulhu]

So, I've read through the thread and noticed a trend. Most people seem to be over thinking and creating highly convoluted cells with water pools, live goblins on chains, dead goblins not on chains, climbing walls, weapon traps, etc. when the only real results have come from Staalo's incredibly simple (Not calling him simple of course ) childcare system. When I finally get a long term fort going (Confound thee Toady with your wonderful bugfixes!) I'm going to try a similar system and hope for some nice gobbo invasions to turn into sentient, meat-filled firework displays amidst the crowds of stick dodging, kung-fu fighting super-soldiers-to-be. Then "graduate" them to a much harsher training facility once they reach adept or so at dodging.