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[Werdna]

So I get my first siege of 100 some odd goblins, beak dogs, trolls, and other assorted mercenary riff-raff about 3 years into my fort, at mid-winter.  Thankfully 3 years is plenty of time to equip and train a military, and my 19 dwarves mow it down with one KIA (poor fellow took a mace to the head, followed by a whip).  At this point I am reminded why I can't stand goblins - the acres of body parts and junk they leave behind.  After we hold the traditional beak dog BBQ I build an atom-smasher, set up a dump zone from the wall overlooking the carnage, and start dumping. 

Much time passes.  I smash the body parts first, so my dwarves can haul just the corpses of, for a later project.  Splat - now for the big push.  I mass-dump the heaps of clothing and armor.  Much more time passes.  Many things remain to be built, if only the wheelbarrow could be used to collect goblinite...

Finally, at almost mid-spring, my dwarves are done with the junk dumping.  I scroll through the items in the square; there are 36 presses of * to page through all the loincloths and what not.  I think that's roughly 2000 items about to be wiped from memory.  Finally, I can get back to building a fortress.  I happily pull the lever.

Oh no. 

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Not pictured - the items on other side of the wall, the wall top covered in items, moat full of items, the horror on my face, the beer sprayed on my monitor, etc.

My theory is that when enough items are crushed together into an impossibly small space, they achieve a sort of critical mass and violently fly apart.  My dwarves on the other hand insist I forgot to reset the atom smasher, but what do they know, they can't even match their socks.

Of interest, the furthest item flew ~19 squares and the spread pattern is a square, not a circle.  The spread appears to be random and not weighted towards the center; there is a pile of 5 items a full 11 squares out yet many squares of single or no items right near the smasher.  The items arc through the air; the bridge blocked most of the items flying to the southwest.  Loincloths achieve remarkable distances.  All animals and the one dwarf survived the blast with bruises, but the lever-puller, one of my starting seven, is quite shaken. 

I'm toying with the idea of a goblinite atom-flinger landmine now, instead.  It'll probably be even less lethal than a corpse shotgun, but the end goal here is really to humiliate invaders and not steal kills from my squads.

[Kolnukbyne]

Well, looks like you might just have to pack it in and call for that elven miracle cleaning lady.

[Asin]

So, what I am getting here is that you tried to smash a crap ton of items with your atom smasher, but it somehow failed and caused items to fly at almost nightmarish speeds. Am I right?

[Werdna]

I'm afraid the elves did not survive this world gen.  (They rarely survive with the Fortress Defenses races added in, unless you keep the years down to around 50 or less)

So, what I am getting here is that you tried to smash a crap ton of items with your atom smasher, but it somehow failed and caused items to fly at almost nightmarish speeds. Am I right?

Yep!  An atom smasher is nothing more than smashing the underside of a bridge against items on flat ground to smash them out of existence.  Since my bridge was only 1x2, I failed to notice that after smashing the body parts that I did not pull the lever to raise it again.  My dwarves then proceeded to spend the next month piling a couple thousand items on the bridge instead of the space below it.  So when I did flip the lever, I got the bridge catapult effect, and a the items were thrown everywhere.  I wouldn't call it nightmarish speeds, since a dog, pig, and leverpuller all survived the blizzard with no more than bruises, but I do wonder what would have happened to my leverdude if he had been hit by say, a goblin spear instead of a goblin shoe. 

[Asin]

It said it hit the leverpuller's heart, so if it was a spear? Death. Most likely death.

[Infinityforce]

It said it hit the leverpuller's heart, so if it was a spear? Death. Most likely death.

This gives me an idea for dealing with all those annoying goblins who keep traipsing over my bridges...

[Pirate Santa]

It said it hit the leverpuller's heart, so if it was a spear? Death. Most likely death.

This gives me an idea for dealing with all those annoying goblins who keep traipsing over my bridges...

I've done this.
10z is the highest I've managed to get them. Those that landed in the moat had a total fall of 20z and splattered. The one that was lucky enough to land inside had to be stabbed to death.

[Henry47]

This is why i put my atom-smasher in a sealed room, that way, if i accidentally lower rather than raise the bridge, the garbage does not fly far, and is easily dumped again.

[Ouan]

Now I do not feel so bad about some of my bridge mishaps in my fort thus far. I went to close my bridge on a Were-attack and accidentally flung one of my wardogs I have zoned in front of the gate onto the other side of the fortress. I have yet to have a goblin wave of awesome, so I hope that my actual atom smasher in this fort does not make an arc like that. I am considering a bridge catapult to be built where the few small attacks have come from thus far. I figure about 1000 blocks of sandstone ought to slow them down when they finally mount a dedicated attack.

[Werdna]

I've thought a bit on how to weaponize it.  First would be to chain animals right next to it, to force the attack wave into close proximity.  But I keep thinking about the sheer area that is covered by the cataplosion - roughly a 36x36 square around the item pile.  I first thought of surrounding it with walls to contain the items into a smaller area, but since the items arc I think that will result in enormous piles at the base of the walls, with no extra hits in the center.  I think for maximum effect, to evenly and randomly turn a smaller space into a deathtrap, you need to cap it with a dome so the arcing objects hit the roof and fall more randomly.  The problems that I see are, 1) how high does the ceiling need to be to ensure proper spread?  and 2) does hitting a wall or ceiling change the velocity of the object?  We're not talking high speeds to start with.  Put perhaps falling speed is even more advantageous, who knows.

Another possibility is say, a 3x3 up/down staircase that the attackers take to all descend straight down towards the cataplosion item pile.  Theoretically all the articles will arc through this center space.  But the unknown here is what role a staircase takes - do they block item trajectory, or does it act as an empty space that items can hurl through?

Final thought is an elevated item pile that explodes far above the attackers, raining items down from on high.  I don't know however if an item truly does any more damage falling 20z than a single z. 

And just to be clear, I'm pretty sure a minecart shotgun does all of this with far more more precision and velocity, so this is mostly for fun.

[Infinityforce]

I've thought a bit on how to weaponize it.  First would be to chain animals right next to it, to force the attack wave into close proximity.  But I keep thinking about the sheer area that is covered by the cataplosion - roughly a 36x36 square around the item pile.  I first thought of surrounding it with walls to contain the items into a smaller area, but since the items arc I think that will result in enormous piles at the base of the walls, with no extra hits in the center.  I think for maximum effect, to evenly and randomly turn a smaller space into a deathtrap, you need to cap it with a dome so the arcing objects hit the roof and fall more randomly.  The problems that I see are, 1) how high does the ceiling need to be to ensure proper spread?  and 2) does hitting a wall or ceiling change the velocity of the object?  We're not talking high speeds to start with.  Put perhaps falling speed is even more advantageous, who knows.

Another possibility is say, a 3x3 up/down staircase that the attackers take to all descend straight down towards the cataplosion item pile.  Theoretically all the articles will arc through this center space.  But the unknown here is what role a staircase takes - do they block item trajectory, or does it act as an empty space that items can hurl through?

Final thought is an elevated item pile that explodes far above the attackers, raining items down from on high.  I don't know however if an item truly does any more damage falling 20z than a single z. 

And just to be clear, I'm pretty sure a minecart shotgun does all of this with far more more precision and velocity, so this is mostly for fun.

Wow. Some cool ideas there (that I will try to incorporate!)

[wierd]

option 4.

cataplosion generator is installed very high up in the air over the taget area allright. however, it has "roof supported" walls around the generator to constrict the drop zone dimensions.

it itself is a 2x1 rectangle that also acts as a minecart drop zone. Powered rollers powered by a windmill (being so high up) installed on the floor directly overhead and routed down with a vertical axle and floating gear assy, allow fully automated cart dumping. this area gets piled high with dug clay boulders. the weight of the object has considerable effect on damage calculated from impact, and by constraining the scatter area, coupled with the more or less gaussian distribution of the raining items, we can predict a theoretical minimum number of impacts per target cell below.

the minecarts efficiently deliver the boulders to the launch site, allowing fairly acceptable reload times, if loading site is directly adjacent to clay harvest point.

this is more targetted than a minecart cannon, and has splash damage area defined by the rectricting wall curtain, making it better than just dropping the items with a retracting floor.

[Werdna]

Very nice, that would be quite deadly!  Not quite a weaponized yard sale, but clay boulders are very clever; great way to generate tons of heavy objects cheaply.  You could even replace the 'splash' walls with rings of floodgates to create a modifiable drop zone size.

The question is how much headroom is needed directly over the item pile to allow full spread - I suspect a ceiling directly above the pile may interrupt the horizontal part of the arc, leaving you with a spread focused near the center.  That's why I was thinking of a dome, but that might be overkill.

Its a pity the yard sale caught me by surprise, I would have liked to step through it a frame at a time to get a better idea of the arc!

[Infinityforce]

BRIDGES: A dangerous kind of weapon.
BRIDGE MAKING: Dwarven weapon technology
RANDOM SHIT: Dwarves will use that shit to kill you by propelling it at high speeds/raining junk on your skull

[Ruhn]

Did the lever-puller get some good training from the experience?  I remember item-drop training using random socks and junk being a thing at one point, even though I can't find it on the wiki at the moment.