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[ImagoDeo]

Am in the process of reading through the 20-odd pages that I missed.

I was surprised to see this thread still thriving after I left it back in September-ish. I have returned to DF after a lengthy hiatus (otherwise known as the school year) and I will proceed to rebuild the main page with the various findings that happened since I left, as well as write a manifesto for anyone wishing to try some of these methods. I think some slight improvements could be made on the daycare attempts I've seen up to page 30 ish.

One innovation that I have yet to be able to implement is vampirism. Back in 34.11, I successfully ran an all-vampire fort for fifteen good years before it finally died to a tantrum spiral of epic proportions. The potential for real supersoldiers is very very real.

The question is when to apply the vampirism. I have half an idea that it should be done as a graduation ceremony, because if I recall correctly becoming a vampire locks in a dwarf's attributes and prevents them from rising or dropping afterwards. So it would make sense to raise them as high as possible before making them vampires. On the other hand, vampire dwarves never need to sleep or eat and can't drown, so that would make regular daycare activities substantially more efficient while also probably raising social stats a bit more (which has apparently become an issue).

Do let me know what you all think. I haven't seen any vampires in 40.xx yet. If you get one, save him/her for epic science.

[Bumber]

I have half an idea that it should be done as a graduation ceremony, because if I recall correctly becoming a vampire locks in a dwarf's attributes and prevents them from rising or dropping afterwards. So it would make sense to raise them as high as possible before making them vampires. On the other hand, vampire dwarves never need to sleep or eat and can't drown, so that would make regular daycare activities substantially more efficient while also probably raising social stats a bit more (which has apparently become an issue).

I'm fairly certain the attribute lock is currently broken.

[Max™]

Think so too.

[ImagoDeo]

Is that based on fort evidence or adventurer evidence? The latter would make more sense, but whatever.


Today I embarked to a quaint little island in the middle of nowhere with the intent to build a fully functional supersoldier training program, not only for my little children but also for my adult dwarves. They can party while spikes force them to dodge into water, and since adults can wear armor via civilian militia squads, there will be even less danger of injury (although Staalo's programs never had any fatalities or even major injuries to training spears).

I need to finish designating and digging the whole fort, building the aboveground access structure, hauling everything, and designing QSP routes before I can really get down to the business of producing children and starting a long-term program, but the aquifer was pierced in under six months and a full clear-cut of the entire surface will be underway as soon as the QSP system is in place. For the purpose of science, I will be abusing melt yields to get steel armor for my population, and I'm going to manipulate the soft and hard population caps to control fortress births. I just hope I get enough couples for a well-attended school.

[Kitsune]

Woops. Did not mean to post.

[Staalo]

So is this going again? I'd recommend also trying out the undead hair/wool method if possible.

[Bumber]

Is that based on fort evidence or adventurer evidence? The latter would make more sense, but whatever.

Probably adventurer. Fort mode vampires are a pain to get a hold of, let alone test.

[Max™]

Yeah, adventurer mode, I can't recall getting capped after turning and I had a period where I was experimenting with vampirism heavily.

[escondida]

I had a period where I was experimenting with vampirism heavily.

Urist McDracul: "MOM, it's not a phase! Eh-blaaaah!"

[ImagoDeo]

Yeah, adventurer mode, I can't recall getting capped after turning and I had a period where I was experimenting with vampirism heavily.

Then it likely holds true for fort mode as well. This is good news. We can vampirize the kids before they go to school.

The only question is which method to use to remove the alcohol slowdown. Do you remove the [NODRINK] tag or do you remove the [ALCOHOL_DEPENDENT] tag? The former gets you vampires who can die of thirst, but remain very dorfy; the latter gets you vampires that literally drink nothing but blood and don't suffer any ill effects from sobriety.

For roleplaying purposes, the former is more accurate, because it would let a vampire hide more easily in dwarven society, but the latter is probably better if we're going for supersoldiers.

One of the two is necessary because the slowdown from sobriety is pretty much unbearable after a year or two.

[Ravendarksky]

Has !!SCIENCE!! been done on leg removal of dwarfs? ... Can they dodge without legs? Legendary Crutch User Legendary Dodger would be... funny as hell.

Military training already maxes all relevant stats. Crutch walking brings no benefits to trained out dwarves. The crutch itself may be used as a weapon, but even a heavy crutch isn't in any way better than common weapons (even with the current broken system of handling impact damage).

Missing limbs makes a dwarf need less armour thus lighter. A fully trained crutch walker will go faster than a dwarf with two legs.

There was a separate thread where someone made an entire fighting force of one legged dwarfs. However it isn't easily applicable to children as you can't selectively remove their limbs as easily (armour and saw blade traps were used)

[Not good with names]

I do have a vampire chilling in the third cavern of one of my saves I got bored with if you want it (Warning, only metals are adamantine and sphalerite, goblins own the surface).  I would need the knowledge of how to give you said save (Seed of world gen then post save maybe?).

To keep on topic, can you still just toss a bunch of turkeys on the kids and get small gains?  I found the emotion stress caused by making them sleep on a pile of small angry animals worth the effort, at least on my end.

[Calidovi]

Has !!SCIENCE!! been done on leg removal of dwarfs? ... Can they dodge without legs? Legendary Crutch User Legendary Dodger would be... funny as hell.

Military training already maxes all relevant stats. Crutch walking brings no benefits to trained out dwarves. The crutch itself may be used as a weapon, but even a heavy crutch isn't in any way better than common weapons (even with the current broken system of handling impact damage).

Missing limbs makes a dwarf need less armour thus lighter. A fully trained crutch walker will go faster than a dwarf with two legs.

There was a separate thread where someone made an entire fighting force of one legged dwarfs. However it isn't easily applicable to children as you can't selectively remove their limbs as easily (armour and saw blade traps were used)

So if there's a dwarf missing a leg, would the weight of his legwear half or are legs one entity when armor is mapped?

[ImagoDeo]

Has !!SCIENCE!! been done on leg removal of dwarfs? ... Can they dodge without legs? Legendary Crutch User Legendary Dodger would be... funny as hell.

Military training already maxes all relevant stats. Crutch walking brings no benefits to trained out dwarves. The crutch itself may be used as a weapon, but even a heavy crutch isn't in any way better than common weapons (even with the current broken system of handling impact damage).

Missing limbs makes a dwarf need less armour thus lighter. A fully trained crutch walker will go faster than a dwarf with two legs.

There was a separate thread where someone made an entire fighting force of one legged dwarfs. However it isn't easily applicable to children as you can't selectively remove their limbs as easily (armour and saw blade traps were used)

So if there's a dwarf missing a leg, would the weight of his legwear half or are legs one entity when armor is mapped?

Said dwarf would only wear one high boot. The legwear would weigh the same. I don't think that particular modification is really worth it, although doing it with vampires later on as a graduate education might be a viable option for people who don't care that much what the survival rate is. The accepted method was to cause controlled cave-ins to shove dwarves onto weapon traps, if I recall correctly. The traps would go off on the unconscious dwarf. Assuming the dwarf was entirely armored except for one body part, a trap with ten serrated discs would be quite likely to sever that body part. The trick was making sure that body part was the single desired part - one foot or leg, and no more. I think the success rate was less than 70%, possibly as low as 30%, but I'm just throwing out the general impression I got from reading the entire thread a year ago.


It'll take me a while to summarize everything that's been done up to this point, but I want to thank Staalo very much for doing all the hard work so far. Almost every issue has been solved, except discipline (and climbing), and I have a solid idea for how to fix that, although it does require an additional course in the academy. Now we're in the stage of refinement, and the goal will be to design a system that can accommodate any number of dwarven children over the entire lifespan of a fort once it has become seriously established. Modulation of the system is good, since not all forts will have access to every tool needed for the full curriculum - e.g. no necromancers, or no vampires.

The pros and cons of each step should be listed, and possible dangers elaborated. Basic setups can be specified. Eventually I'll put together a thread detailing the final outcome, with diagrams for common use. This will be the final word on making those booze-guzzling smallbeards useful, finally!

[Staalo]

Thanks for the kind words ImagoDeo. I'm afraid I don't have much more to give to this thread; I sort of ran out of ideas after running several forts focusing on child care research.

Discipline training would be very nice to crack; I never quite managed to figure out how to train it reliably. The closest I got was when I pitted some students against something they would be too afraid to fight but still wouldn't kill the students outright. When the students ran around in panic shouting "I must withdraw!" their discipline got trained slowly but surely.

The difficulty in this approach would be finding a suitable training partner; the students fearlessly attacked megabeasts but would let a naked goblin invader to beat them senseless without lifting a finger. Something between these two could work; maybe a crippled goblin that wouldn't be able to attack?