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[Fleeting Frames]

Convert one of the featherwood logs into a block, build screw pump for power.

Though I noticed they don't dodge out of forbidden doors either during this, surprisingly. So it probably is overcomplicated *shrug*

No idea if it kills babies yet, though - haven't tested. But you can't eat babies anyway.

[taptap]

Oh, this is amazing. Never made sth. like this before. It does not even hit once. (Edited post to not flood this thread.)

Test 1) 43.04 fort, feather wood, dwarf. Massive dodge gain in dwarf, attributes accordingly. (No precise monitoring.)

Test 2) 40.19 fort, tunnel tube, voracious cave crowlers. (Monitored with DwarfTherapist) Massive attribute gain. 400 each in agility, toughness, endurance (only see bodily attributes in animal) in about 5 days. 0 strength, however.

I.e. even a 20 yr. very rusty cave crawler is in top shape after 2 weeks dodging minecarts. A month should, as you say, secure maximised attributes in virtually all circumstances. Ok, basically this is just confirming you, but well, I was surprised.

As I was at it I looked into swimming as well.

Test 3) 40.19 fort, meditative swimming cell (stand around in 4/7 water without moving), voracious cave crawler. No effect whatsoever. (This is the most efficient swimming scheme in dwarves, I just don't use it because of micromanagement requirements.) I hope voracious cave crawlers are not innate swimmers.

Test 4) 40.19 fort, meditative swimming cell with too much water, voracious cave crawler. I had no setups for 5, 6 water ready, but while drowning it did significantly train endurance and toughness (10 each). I.e. it should be possible to train endurance and toughness with a sufficiently fast wave repeater with 1 or 2 tiles 6 and a bunch of 7 water depth. Or a "shower" setup. Utility would be limited though as the minecart dodging works all around better and without risk.

Musing about swimming: It might be that different animals require different depth for normal swimming. Needs testing. Or swimming does not exert animals at all.

Test 5) 40.19 fort, dropping strawberry seeds on young cave crawler. Crushed to death.   

[Fleeting Frames]

It starts hitting/training armor user if you use multiple targets or greater impulse, such as from ramps (~half training speed though) - in which case your dwarf would have to be armored to not die (didn't test with large livestock, though some larger creatures do take less impact damage than dwarves iirc).

The hens got bruising hits/skidding with single cart, but that might have been caused by their flying tag allowing them to stay in air.

Thus, you need power to train animals, and even then no strength, thus no yield increase.

(I don't like using power :/ Though this is hardly only thing that I can think of for massive improvements with power.)

[Heretic]

PTW

[FantasticDorf]

Just a thought, what about if you constructed a very poor performance specially build 'dummy' weapon for traps? It'd train up those bruises real good.

Trap components can be modified from tokens, so you could in all theory make a big flat 'paddle' (blunt) or a 'poking stick' (edged), set it to strike 20 or so times with very little damage, then keep repeating the command or ramp up the number of time it hits.

Code: [Select]

[ITEM_TRAPCOMP:ITEM_TRAPCOMP_DISIPLINARYPADDLE]
[NAME:paddle:paddles]
[ADJECTIVE:punishment]
[SIZE:200]
[HITS:20]
[MATERIAL_SIZE:5]
[WOOD]
[METAL]
[ATTACK:BLUNT:100:10:smack:smacks:NO_SUB:10]
[ATTACK_PREPARE_AND_RECOVER:4:4]

If you want to make your own trap or improve on this code design that can be copy-pasted to ITEM_TRAPCOMP in the raws , use the dfwiki token page & the existing trap components for guidance DFwiki - Trap_component

EDIT - Also remember to add the trap to the civilisation entity raw else they will not be able to build it!

[TRAPCOMP:ITEM_TRAPCOMP_DISIPLINARYPADDLE]

[Fleeting Frames]

Well, that depends on whether spear/menacing spike limit on repeating spikes is hard-coded or you have access to webber.  Haven't experimented with modding at all myself, but how well does it work for you?

Otherwise, if bruises/being hit does train strength, perhaps falling 2z onto featherwood floors would be safe way to bruise with blunt damage without worse injury, especially on smaller creatures. A meeting area on the bridge + pressure plate before bridge linked to it + up, up/down and down stairs should make a small animal pack fall forever.

[FantasticDorf]

Well, that depends on whether spear/menacing spike limit on repeating spikes is hard-coded or you have access to webber.  Haven't experimented with modding at all myself, but how well does it work for you?

Otherwise, if bruises/being hit does train strength, perhaps falling 2z onto featherwood floors would be safe way to bruise with blunt damage without worse injury, especially on smaller creatures. A meeting area on the bridge + pressure plate before bridge linked to it + up, up/down and down stairs should make a small animal pack fall forever.

I've modified my design a little by adding [IS SPIKE] to the trap component so that it is compatible with the lever spike traps and therefore triggerable on command.

I have also used a room room where the animals are pitted over the spike trap via a hatch above and blocked within a restrictive space by the door, for funsies i also tried filling it up with water but decided against it later in case it causes animals to drown (new drowning pool trick for killing trolls i assume) when they are stunned.

X
D
R

(X is trap with the hatch overhead for my 'pit', D is door and R is ramp)

There is a pasture nearby with my embark animals, and i brought the trap components i detailed in my code with me, the spike trap is tied up to a lever outside the room.

It works like a charm on pigs. However it has the nasty tendency to cause head injuries and consistently stun because of neck jerks, the bruises fade and the pigs become very muscular in 1 or two goes, Ill try it on a yak. This is for a birchwood, so potentially even at larger values, the power of hitting and trying to hit the head even with light 10 velocity can still be fatal.

High hitting power stun spike/weapon traps are the new cool meta it seems, especially if all your enemies are going to be armoured, knocking them out will be more valuable than trying to cut through their potentially superior materials. To be honest id rather knock out a megabeast then build a cage trap under it rather than slice and dice it right away.

EDIT - less effective on the yak it seems, less damage being incurred, might upgrade him to my copper variant and no visible muscle mass gain, just bruises that heal over very quickly (im not using dwarf therapist to point out, feel free to do your own science)

EDIT - It broke every bone in the yak's body, something lighter then will probably be needed or it'll need to be tweaked unless it makes a full recovery (*or we take as is and take it slowly, still no visible description gain*), its been slaughtered now humanely since it was nearing death and gave out 15 meat (not double as OP claims) and some broken cartilage compared to the rest of the gains that were normal.

[Fleeting Frames]

Yeah, while I looked at stats/body size with DT, the in-game low-grade equivalent is the description of their muscles improving.

Very interesting that one size doesn't fit all, though! The pig is certainly a success.

I guess the difference between pig and yak was that yak got brown bruises while pig got yellow ones?

[FantasticDorf]

Yeah, while I looked at stats/body size with DT, the in-game low-grade equivalent is the description of their muscles improving.

Very interesting that one size doesn't fit all, though! The pig is certainly a success.

I guess the difference between pig and yak was that yak got brown bruises while pig got yellow ones?

Also i don't think yak have strength modifiers for some reason. (because the fur obscures, ooor the body hitting to be meaningful thresholds are more on larger animals, so id need to hit it 20 times to max, i only tried like 6 times) I might have a go at installing dftherapist for probing this a little more.

The pig has a number of scars, i can't determine whether it was the serious cause of the muscle gain or the (in game they are universal it seems) bruises. Breaking the animal's bones does not train strength so flesh wounds and heavy/light woods for now.

[taptap]

Trying to simplify things I made another tunnel tube cell with two straight track ramps (resulting in a somewhat higher velocity), dropping an animal from above let to rapid death of a half grown voracious cave crawler (about 400k size, that is pretty large). Trying to put a vcc in and enter the cart later were similarly deadly to the cave crawler. I am a bit surprised, frankly. A dwarf who walked in the same cell (pretty trained) dodged the minecart without problems (even while carrying the vcc corpse), but the minecart made him unable to leave through the unlocked door, because dodging distracted him from opening the door.

-> Maybe here is a way to turn the less dangerous powered cell into something requiring less micromanagement. Open path to X, minecart active in front of door -> dodge training without oversight.

[Fleeting Frames]

Dwarves have large bonus to dodging minecarts, so even without any training they're unlikely to get hit even by carts moving fast enough to explode them. I've seen them dodge same cart 7 times before getting hit when trying to do their job.

Of course, if they get hit, they explode. I guess the VCC got gored by cart bouncing at 20k as well?

Unpowered two-ramp pit needs armor for a dwarf to survive in my experience, it'd be interesting where the point is where an unarmored creature can survive. Also, I guess you'd need to mod dwarfs to be consumable for this to boost food returns.

Actually, come to think of it: With goblins wearing armor come 43.04 it is possible that they can actually get through such pit traps, should they use mere wood carts, instead of having sieges routed by few of those after each other.

PS: For dodge-training, yo, can train while you train if you incorporate dodging into swimming. Micromanagement-free designs are likely to be not so different from usual swimming/danger rooms.

[Lozzymandias]

As i happens i do have access to some necromancers, therefore, in the name of SCIENCE i have been doing some experimenting. I locked a reindeer and a bull in a 3 by 3 pasture with a reainmated kangaroo hair, and then a boar in with reanimate hair in a 2 by 2 pasture, each for about half a season.

My results:

No immediately visible change to the beasts. The hair has gotten extremely muscular though. Checking with the Therapist however, shows that agility has made some moderate gains, and endurance and toughness has gone through the roof. Strength, however, remains the same.

From the combat results, one can see that the undead hair is doing all of the attacking. The animals make no attempt to respond: the bull made a few attempts, and destroyed most of the body of the hair, leaving only a hair hand and hair head which the adjacent necromancer reanimated, (reanimated kangaroo hair is wierd, it seems to have the same body plan as a kangaroo). Therefore the animal is only dodging, and that doesn't train strength, so no muscle gains.

The reanimated hair when whole did some bruising, but when reduced to a head all the strength left it and it was perfectly safe.

My next experiment is to lock in a war dog with the hair. Since they will fight, we might get some muscle gains.

[Lozzymandias]

It worked! A dog locked in with the hair not only saw mad endurance, toughness and agility gains, it also got incredibly hench too. Butchery will therefore be highly profitable, and this beast will make a far better guard dog.

Therefore, i present to you Lozzymandias's Patent Nostrum for Burly Beasts:
1. Take war or hunting trained animal
2. Lock in for a season with a reanimated piece of hair. The smaller the hair the better, try and injure your hair beforehand, but combat ought to damage it to the point of both harmlessness and immortality (somehow my experience finds the two are linked) if the hair has its limbs cut off (don't ask) keep the necromancer at hand to reanimate them. Animal and hair will do battle and after some time you will get massive increases in strength, agility, toughness and endurance.
3. Separate from hair (a door and a row of cage traps will do)
4. Take animal and butcher, use as guard animal, or breed a mighty army of Lamarckian Uber-war-animals

bonus: design animal murdering device that works on both the living and the dead. Minecart shotgun will do, or a Upright Spear floor. Make the animal burly, kill it, reanimate it (which will increase its burliness threefold), kill it again and butcher. For ideas in that direction hit up Loudwhispers superlative necrobacon thread: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=113638.0

This is obviously limited to trainable animals. however modding in a [TRAINABLE] tag is easy peas for an animal of your choice.

RELEASE THE BATTLE-HARDENED TURKEYS OF WAR!

[taptap]

Of course, if they get hit, they explode. I guess the VCC got gored by cart bouncing at 20k as well?

No, they maxed relevant body attributes, when in the circuit with powered rollers at lowest speed. This makes it so surprising.

[Fleeting Frames]

Excellent summary, Lozzymandlas. A season to max out strength? Nice to have concrete data.

taptap: Lowest speed is 10k and will never to nearly never (translation: They will only have 1 or 2 brown or yellow wounds at time) hit. Low speed is 20k (push speed) and gives red wounds to unarmored dwarves right away.