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[Staalo]

I haven't yet tried to set up a school as fast as possible; I suppose a smaller version could be running by the end of second year with some planning. In my forts I tend to take things slower and have a working classroom only around year five or so.

Here's what I've found working so far:

- I always embark with a dedicated military/teacher dwarf. He/she will be paired with a recruit from the first migration wave and the sparring duo will provide Observation training for the children while I build the first training facilities.
- Building spears, assembling spear traps and installing mechanisms is the most time-consuming part that can easily take years to complete, depending on how ambitious the planned classroom will be. It would be a good thing to get that started as soon as possible. Everything else, food and textile industry, individual bedrooms etc., can be built up in the meantime.
- Uristloads of wood will be required. A woodland embark is highly recommended, and elves be damned. Anything that hinders wood collection (like zombies in my current fort) will slow things down greatly. Buying wood from caravans will help.
- My starting food strategy relies on underground crops and turkeys, supplemented by caravan-bought animals. Usually that's not important; no matter what I do there tends to be a mountain of booze and roasts by the end of the second year. A lot of students can be supported by a very small food industry.
- I don't usually bother with textile industry in the beginning. I just order maximum amount of leather from the caravan and use it for everything except socks. After that I'll expand to pig tail farming, supplemented by various shearable animals and/or cave spider silk. Clothes production will have somewhat lower priority after everyone has enough cloaks, hoods and mittens.

All in all, I don't suppose starting a child care fort is that much different from an ordinary one; only that there's a constant spear and mechanism production and installation running in the background for a long time. Dedicating few useless immigrants to carpentry and mechanics work could work. The logistics of a typical fort can easily spare some workers after sufficient adult workforce has migrated in.

[TheHossofMoss]

....All hostile beings are fit for guest lecturing...

 

[Staalo]

One student dropped out by growing up before finishing the education. Ingish Shieldtowns, "only" a Legendary Observer & Dodger and Great Armor user, was assigned to her own militia squad, "The Bowels of Cobalt" (really!) where she proved that even half an education is a wonderful thing.

Due to other squads falling foul again to the old "won't attack" bug she ended up facing the hill titan Tequil Grottodune alone. Tequil, an enormous scorpion with poisonous sting had really no chance against a twelve-year old dwarf girl with a sword and no weapon skills; the fight was really embarrassingly one-sided. Well done, Ingish.

The rest of the initial bunch of seventeen students are getting ready to leave the boring part behind and to start getting zombies thrown at them. They're still only Master Armor users but I'd better hurry before more of them drop out like Ingish.

I'm still mulling over the zombie combat arena design. I guess I'm going to start with a main room floored with a retracting bridge ready to drop the whole room into cage traps waiting in similar room below. However, it's the zombie delivery mechanism I'm still uncertain about. What would be the best way to automate it?

Right now I'm thinking about a garbage dump above the room where some animal hair would be dropped when convenient (would require some manual dump assignation). Then a necromancer behind a raising bridge (would require a lever pull) would re-animate the hair and the fun would begin.

[Sanctume]

How about

1. Tile 1 is a QSP minecart trackstop dumping to a tile 2.
2. Tile 2 is at the bottom of the 1x1 pit, with retracting bridge, that falls to DCC zombie classroom.
3. Tile 3 necro gets LOS to tile 2 via raising bridge.
4. Tile 4 is a single tile stockpile for hair refuse; accepts from links only; and source stock pile taken by tile 1.
5. Tile 5 is a lockable path (floodgate) when open,
+has path for tile 4 to accept 1 hair refuse.
+has pressure plate to toggle Tile 3's LOS bridge.

So I envision Tile 4 is unlocked, Hauler Urist triggers Tile 5 pressure plate, hauls 1 refuse hair in Tile 4, goes to QSP Tile 1, and dumps to Tile 2.
The theory/timing depends on when the hair lands on Tile 2, and the Tile 5 pressure plate triggers the LOS bridge of Tile 3.
So if the Tile 5 is locked, the QSP should not be receiving hair refuse for re-animation.

[Staalo]

Would a necromancer be able to animate things in a moving minecart? And would the animated things stay in the minecart until the stop? I'm thinking of ways to eliminate the whole LOS triggering here...

[Staalo]

Can this be true? While I was idly sketching a possible layout for the combat arena a familiar-looking figure strolled over the border and straight into a cage trap.

Imase Boreddragon the Matched Cudgel, a bronze colossus, has decided to join the faculty. Thank you very much, RNG.

[Dwarf4Explosives]

Poor bronze colossus. He'll never stand a chance.

[Staalo]

Poor bronze colossus. He'll never stand a chance.

I wouldn't say so; Fimshel in Questmountain held his own quite nicely. He even managed to kill three of the students.

I think I'd better reserve Imase as a guest speaker in the graduation ceremony; the focus of this fortress was supposed to be training methods with undead, after all.

[Max™]

Takes a bit of extra set-up... but it's worth noting that if you get wind of someone in your fort with a kidnapped relative, you can go retire the fort, grab an adventurer, go grab said kid and all the others, everywhere... all of them, every single kid you can find anywhere, bonus for dorf kids of course as they will behave properly... then bring them back to your fort member and while they're happy about being reunited with family ask them to adopt the rest... yes, all of them, even if you've got say, 60 kids... yes, I meant sixty.

[Staalo]

It took me a while to get back to this (was distracted by adventuring in the old Searingmine world) but I now have the first undead combat arena running. I've had some teething troubles though:

- Animal hair is surprisingly flimsy; the children simply punch it to pieces in few seconds. Maybe I should use only head hair or should I upgrade to skeletons?
- It takes a long time for the necromancer to notice the dead piece and animate it. This is impractical; I should probably figure out a way to deliver pre-animated dead safely into the training room.

BTW, it seems that Reddit is following this thread as well: http://www.reddit.com/r/dwarffortress/comments/30h6sv/dwarven_kindergarten/

[Dwarf4Explosives]

Hmmm. Perhaps you could dump a large number of corpses all at once and use a triple airlock to release them one at a time?

[Staalo]

I was thinking about setting up a zombie factory with my other necromancer and caging the products; these caged undead could then be released safely into the combat room. That would require an excess amount of hauling and building, though.

The airlock system you mentioned could work, although controlling the release could be a bit involved.

[miauw62]

You should look in the "Ravens are murder" thread, LW seemed to have an effective undead factory design.

[Max™]

I agree that "taken over by the resident necromancer and turned into a perpetual demon-grinding charnel house of horror" qualifies as effective, but these are kids we're talking about here man!

[miauw62]

I ment the upstairs one, not the one near the circus