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Author Topic: Items and corpses should be retrievable from ice  (Read 2303 times)

Owlbread

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Items and corpses should be retrievable from ice
« on: August 06, 2014, 10:24:17 am »

My problem with ice-encasement traps is that the ice walls completely obliterate the creatures that have been frozen, items and all. While this can be useful at times, I do prefer being able to take weapons from dead goblins to melt down into goblinite and so on, I would much prefer the items to be stored within the ice until the ice thaws.

An example of how this would work could be as follows: a goblin activates your trap and is encased in a wall of ice. You then send a miner out to mine the wall; upon the wall's destruction the goblin's frozen corpse (which would no longer rot or produce miasma) would pop out, along with the items inside, such as his weaponry/armour. If the frozen corpse is placed in a warm area for a certain amount of time it will thaw out, becoming a "defrosted corpse" which will rot more quickly than a normal corpse. I don't know whether items like weapons should become more brittle having been frozen, but that is possible. The same sort of reaction could happen in a freezing biome on the surface naturally - if a goblin is killed in a snowstorm/blizzard, he could be buried under a few layers of snow. Corpses and items buried under snow could then thaw by the next spring (if it ever gets that warm) and become defrosted/thawed corpses and items.

You can imagine the possibilities here for elaborate Dwarven fridges and the like, with entire stacks of meat products and various corpses being frozen into the ice for future use. I think it would be quite exciting to dig into a layer of ice in a glacier and discover a dead/frozen megabeast from the age of myth, or dead soldiers/civilians from civilisations long-forgotten. Dwarven Ötzi comes to mind. I also believe that the undead, such as zombies and skeletons and mummies, should be able to survive ice-encasement. If you experience a necromancer siege and a zombie horde in deepest, darkest winter and all the zombies get frozen under the snow, they may defrost by the coming spring.

This would work even better if the ice, instead of becoming an "ice wall", would become an "ice wall" with the object/corpse visibly entrapped. You could even smooth the walls and use them for decoration; imagine smoothed, engraved walls lining the entrance to your fortress, showing the would-be invaders of your fortress trapped within the ice forever, staring back as a warning at any goblin foolish enough to approach.
« Last Edit: August 06, 2014, 10:26:45 am by Owlbread »
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darknessofthenight

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Re: Items and corpses should be retrievable from ice
« Reply #1 on: August 06, 2014, 10:39:22 am »

good suggestion, I think there should also be some [FREEZING_SURVIVABLE] that would go on some creatures such as bronze colossi so that ice traps don't become atom-smashers that preserve all items   
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Owlbread

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Re: Items and corpses should be retrievable from ice
« Reply #2 on: August 06, 2014, 10:42:42 am »

good suggestion, I think there should also be some [FREEZING_SURVIVABLE] that would go on some creatures such as bronze colossi so that ice traps don't become atom-smashers that preserve all items

Yes, this is good. Most of the stone/metal humanoids should probably be able to survive freezing in ice. Should the likes of magma-men and dragons, however? Should they just be impossible to freeze? Is ice really that much more powerful than magma and dragonfire?
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Scruiser

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Re: Items and corpses should be retrievable from ice
« Reply #3 on: August 06, 2014, 12:15:12 pm »

good suggestion, I think there should also be some [FREEZING_SURVIVABLE] that would go on some creatures such as bronze colossi so that ice traps don't become atom-smashers that preserve all items   
OBSIDIAN_SURVIVABLE would be a nice trait to stop the traps that instant kill HFS. 
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Meph

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Re: Items and corpses should be retrievable from ice
« Reply #4 on: August 06, 2014, 12:38:22 pm »

Even more, they could shatter it after a certain amount of ingame time.
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darknessofthenight

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Re: Items and corpses should be retrievable from ice
« Reply #5 on: August 06, 2014, 02:25:07 pm »

Even more, they could shatter it after a certain amount of ingame time.
I feel like if shattering is implemented it should be rare enough to make displaying your frozen iron man(due to icing problem) a worthwhile endeavor.
I also think that as a strange mood thing dwarves should find encased creatures and do cool things with them
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Agent_Irons

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Re: Items and corpses should be retrievable from ice
« Reply #6 on: August 06, 2014, 03:32:08 pm »

I was playing a frosty fort where I embarked in the autumn, and I had frozen carp skeletons to dig out come midwinter. I could find the skeletons through stocks, zoom to them encased in the ice, and mine them out. I butcher the skeletons for scales and bones. That was in rivers and lakes at the turn of the seasons, so I don't know if this is a recent change or what. (no hang on, I froze a miner then dug him back out to recover the pick and his body, so even flash-frozen aquifer water doesn't destroy items.)

It would be cool if you could see them inside the ice, though. Perhaps a way of mining the ice tile that basically produces an 'ice cage' with the creature inside? Handle with care.
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Owlbread

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Re: Items and corpses should be retrievable from ice
« Reply #7 on: August 06, 2014, 09:20:23 pm »

Are you sure that's the case, Irons? I am certain I tried mining for the corpse of one of my miners in DF2014 and it wasn't there. Are you using any mods?
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Meph

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Re: Items and corpses should be retrievable from ice
« Reply #8 on: August 06, 2014, 10:27:49 pm »

You cant mine out encased/frozen things/creatures. They get destroyed.

But now I want to make a SINGLE_GEM with ENVIRONMENT_SPEC:OBSIDIAN and add fake encased items into the obsidian layers for your dwarves to dig up and restore. :D
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samanato

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Re: Items and corpses should be retrievable from ice
« Reply #9 on: August 06, 2014, 10:43:50 pm »

You cant mine out encased/frozen things/creatures. They get destroyed.

But now I want to make a SINGLE_GEM with ENVIRONMENT_SPEC:OBSIDIAN and add fake encased items into the obsidian layers for your dwarves to dig up and restore. :D

One of my modding ideas was doing something similar, but with finding long-lost dwarven artifacts buried deep in rock, and restoring them into all sorts of ultra-powerful stuff. 

Of course, this wouldn't be without consequences.  You might find out why the ancient dwarven civ fell in a time before time...  ;)
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Larix

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Re: Items and corpses should be retrievable from ice
« Reply #10 on: August 06, 2014, 11:35:13 pm »

I don't know if it's been changed lately, but it's definitely been this way in 34.11 - stuff that got frozen in ice could be mined out of it.
Sometimes, items would get pushed by flow before freezing or upon melting out, hiding them from sight. Don't know how casting stuff in obsidian goes, but properly installed buildings tend to survive.
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Owlbread

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Re: Items and corpses should be retrievable from ice
« Reply #11 on: August 07, 2014, 12:20:11 pm »

It would be cool if you could see them inside the ice, though. Perhaps a way of mining the ice tile that basically produces an 'ice cage' with the creature inside? Handle with care.

I think if you smooth the ice whatever is inside should become visible. A way to create an "ice cage" through mining would help, however.
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darknessofthenight

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Re: Items and corpses should be retrievable from ice
« Reply #12 on: August 07, 2014, 12:27:14 pm »

It would be cool if you could see them inside the ice, though. Perhaps a way of mining the ice tile that basically produces an 'ice cage' with the creature inside? Handle with care.

I think if you smooth the ice whatever is inside should become visible. A way to create an "ice cage" through mining would help, however.
do you mean like dwarfs get a happy thought visible or, smooth all ice before mining it unless you want to be attacked by undead visible?
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Owlbread

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Re: Items and corpses should be retrievable from ice
« Reply #13 on: August 07, 2014, 12:47:20 pm »

do you mean like dwarfs get a happy thought visible or, smooth all ice before mining it unless you want to be attacked by undead visible?

Perhaps both? I wonder how Dwarfs would handle the sight of an iron man trapped in smoothed ice. Should they get happy thoughts if they're curious or something? In the same way we humans like to see dangerous animals in the zoo?
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Nikita

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Re: Items and corpses should be retrievable from ice
« Reply #14 on: August 07, 2014, 01:00:34 pm »

good suggestion, I think there should also be some [FREEZING_SURVIVABLE] that would go on some creatures such as bronze colossi so that ice traps don't become atom-smashers that preserve all items

Good idea, though I think [FREEZING_SURVIVABLE] and [LAVA_SURVIVABLE] should be mutually exclusive. Realistically, moet creatures are adapted to surviving either in cold or in hot environments. And because I still want my freeze-melt-obsidianize traps to work :P
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