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[CulixCupric]

using invaders for !!SCIENCE!! What have you tried or accomplished?

Also share your evil deeds.

[hiroshi42]

I usually use invaders to answer the all important question, "will it blend?"  Other important science usually involves trying to figure out what that forgotten beast's blood does.  Occasionally I will play with setting up a goblin clock, but that usually involves too much effort for my taste.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

I plan to create an arena and pit invaders against each other (megabeast vs megabeast, megabeast vs sieger, sieger (gobbo) vs sieger (human), etc.).  Sure, I could do it in the actual arena, but where's the fun in that?  Besides, this way the dwarves get to freak out and then harden their wills.

[Evil One]

Well, I did once try goblin pong... Using raising drawbridges to catapult goblins towards other similarly raising drawbridges, and discovered that it's better if they only catapult them onto and not at another bridge.

If it's at, there's a chance the goblin with either fly through it (they raise instantly, ignoring all the intervening area in the process so the goblin can just fly through without hitting) or hit it while it's raised, resulting in the unfortunate goblin splatting on the side/exploding.

If it's onto, there's a chance the goblin in question will survive the initial shot, allowing the other bridge to make a return shot (make sure you have an adequate washing system though as dwarfs in the new DF tend to not like cleaning up the results that much).

I've actually had a goblin somehow survive 4 shots (he might have survived more but had the misfortune of hitting a bridge already raised)... Tough bugger.



I wonder what would happen if you had two raising drawbridges facing each other and raised both at the same time?

[miauw62]

Fairly sure the wiki has a few pages on goblin computers.

[TheFlame52]

Pterosaur brute < 60 goblins < One dwarven weapon master < Pterosaur brute

[SyrusLD]

Found out a lot about prolonged stress, the stages of stress and when to expect an individual to finally snap. Also found out that a creature throwing a tantrum is capable of destroying everything, be it a bridge it is standing on (over magma) or (steel) chains which hold it in place. And I found out that, no matter how much time given, a creature that went insane will not turn back sane, even if its stress levels go back to 0 - good thing that goblins are immortal, they make good long term test subjects.

By now my stress related test series has ended though, last thing I found out was that a berserk goblin will not leave the map, even if released topside.
Now I just do tests of how well Jabberers can dispose of unarmed, naked prioners of all kind. And I must say...they produce a lot of body parts that need to be dumped. Sadly my Jabberer army is currently in the phase of dying of old age though, soon I'll have to breed them again, whenever their number is below 50.
Hopefully at some point I'll get a male Roc...already got a female one.

Also did some vertical acceleration tests with invaders. It was a smashing success, taking up good speed at the start, but coming to a very sudden stop at the end.
The main problem was that somehow the test subjects kept getting free, so I had to abbandon this project for invaders and reserved it for cavern creatures only.

Another thing I had to look into was a cage-emptying-shotgun-system. Because of the beforementioned problem I needed a way to safely remove prisoners from cages, I found that launching them down several ramps in their cages in a minecart against a wall would cause not just the cages to be flung out of the minecart, but cause the cages to empty either upon hitting the wall, or during flight already.


That arena idea sounds interesting, but there's not much point to pit my legendary military against some puny goblins, trolls, elves, war grizzlies or such...I really prefer my Jabberers doing that job, and hopefully soon the Rocs to take over.
Sadly all Forgotten Beasts spawned down in that place below places, where beings creep around that are at least as scary, if not worse then themselves.
Really need some new ideas of what to do with all the damn invaders volunteers coming to my fortress. The last goblin and elf sieges I just shotgun-emptied into a meatgrinder room (filled with large serrated disk traps) down at magma flow level.

[TheFlame52]

I've also done some similar tests on plump helmet men. Tantruming creatures can destroy the chain they're on, freeing themselves. Also, some creatures can have personalities that make it so that they get good thoughts from being confined, so some of my PHM couldn't be tested on.

As for rocs, I had to resort to a really shitty system to breed them. Even then, the roc hatchlings are hostile to my dwarves. Or rather, my dwarves are hostile to the roc hatchlings - nothing happened until one of my dwarves saw a roc hatchling through a door and attacked it.

[SyrusLD]

I've also done some similar tests on plump helmet men. Tantruming creatures can destroy the chain they're on, freeing themselves. Also, some creatures can have personalities that make it so that they get good thoughts from being confined, so some of my PHM couldn't be tested on.

As for rocs, I had to resort to a really shitty system to breed them. Even then, the roc hatchlings are hostile to my dwarves. Or rather, my dwarves are hostile to the roc hatchlings - nothing happened until one of my dwarves saw a roc hatchling through a door and attacked it.

Well, I used goblins and made them feel horrible by putting lots and lots of corpses around them. Just had a hatch through which I could drop in all the dead invaders that came with them and more. It worked really nicely and stressed them out quite quickly - as would be expected.

For the rocs ... I had two Hydras which I tamed and they'd after a while just attack my dwarves for no reason. But on the other hand I had a dragon down in a secured area of my fortress and he has not caused any problems. He's even war trained. The roc has so far also not caused any problems, hopefully she won't either. I really hope to be able to breed a roc army. Then again, she was the first roc that visited Violentlash in over 60 years since it has been founded.

[megahelmet]

My fort decided to re-enact a scene from India Jones. The one where he goes down into the snake pit. Captured, trained, and bought as many snakes as possible.

Made a large arena with nest boxes.

It sounds really awesome up to this point. But the results were less than spectacular. Naked goblins can easily kill large amounts of snakes. Even though several goblins died. It just wasn't a good method.

We will retry the experiment with Giant snakes another time.

[Daris]

I bred rocs.  They are a pita.  They and active military are hostile toward one another.  This includes fortress and foreign military.  I wasn't able to figure out if the rocs were attacking the military or vice versa, but one glimpsing the other guaranteed carnage.

Inactive military was no problem, nor were full-time civilians.

The one dragon I captured had the same problem.

[Dunamisdeos]

I create dinner theaters, in which the dwarves meet in a large amphitheater and a grizzly bear has dinner with the captured invaders.

[SyrusLD]

My fort decided to re-enact a scene from India Jones. The one where he goes down into the snake pit. Captured, trained, and bought as many snakes as possible.

Made a large arena with nest boxes.

It sounds really awesome up to this point. But the results were less than spectacular. Naked goblins can easily kill large amounts of snakes. Even though several goblins died. It just wasn't a good method.

We will retry the experiment with Giant snakes another time.

Right! That reminds me that one time I bred Cave Crocodiles.
I can tell you that even 600 of them are not capable of stopping a goblin siege... or killing even a single one of them.

[Dunamisdeos]

My fort decided to re-enact a scene from India Jones. The one where he goes down into the snake pit. Captured, trained, and bought as many snakes as possible.

Made a large arena with nest boxes.

It sounds really awesome up to this point. But the results were less than spectacular. Naked goblins can easily kill large amounts of snakes. Even though several goblins died. It just wasn't a good method.

We will retry the experiment with Giant snakes another time.

Right! That reminds me that one time I bred Cave Crocodiles.
I can tell you that even 600 of them are not capable of stopping a goblin siege... or killing even a single one of them.

What you need to do is drop them from above. My very first "Mega"project was a system that dropped 20 or so crocodiles onto an invading force in a tunnel along with a few feet of water. The water and crocodiles falling from above worked well enough, lots of severed legs from bites.

These may have been saltwater crocs, which are larger and deadlier. It was a while ago.

[SyrusLD]

I released them from a cage in the middle of the siege. No water though. Should I have had water? Maybe that was the problem...
Though I felt like they all got "scared" and didn't fight back at all. It was hard to tell, considering I was down to 0 FPS (more like 2-5 SPF). Just left it to run while I went afk. When I came back they were all dead and not a single goblin was dead (or even hurt from what I remember). Kinda disappointing.

Hrm...oh well. I wish Jabberers would breed like that.


(And yes, if the dragon or the roc meets my military, they'll fight. Just wanted to test it, so I savescummed it; I'll just keep them both down there, far away from my military. Will see what to do if I ever get a male roc to visit. I thought children at least would not have this problem...)