Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[PatrikLundell]

I want to make a system that detects vampire visitors only, without witch trial murdering of others. However everything I've tried has failed for one reason or another.
My latest attempt was to use reanimated parts to scare non vampires away from the direct route, but that turned out to fail because mercs apparently also ignore undead. Thus, it seems I'd need something to distinguish vampires from mercs.
What I really am after is a way to let mercs and regular visitors through, but catch/kill vampires. If necros and weres are detected as well it's a bonus.

So far I've found that all visitors seem to go directly to the location they're visiting. If they're petitioning they'll then immediately go from there to petition. In a previous attempt I tried to make a visitor only tavern well away from the fortress itself by having a restricted tavern inside the fortress itself, but the blasted dorfs still insisted on running back and forth to the visitor tavern rather than the much shorter distance to their own tavern, so the attempt to make a passage used only by vampires out for a snack failed (I thought petitioners would go directly to petition, rather than go via their target location). I can separate citizens from visitors using travel restrictions (which I used in my latest failure to keep from scaring my dorfs), but I still need to separate vampires from petitioners.

[Fleeting Frames]

You could possibly redirect petitioners by giving your mayor a room right above tavern, with pressure plate to close the entrance on their bedroom whenever they go to sleep, and another to open up that entrance when they wake up.

Citizens won't take jobs in 6/7 water, but visitors hang around in 6/7 pools just fine, so not sure if submerging the mayor for the sleeping time would work. That said, hanging doors over ramps can instantly alter pathing, without danger of being jammed or dropping something on someone's head.

I've also noticed outpost liaison wandering around everywhere, not just in locations, after caravan has left, so I'm not sure this would separate them.

If you're willing to sacrifice citizens, then dwarves will sleep on the floor of the dormitory - possibly stacking upon each other - when bed of dormitory is unavailable. You could ensure that all but few dwarves have rooms, and use paired pressure plates: visitors and dead bodies don't trigger them, so when they're killed in their sleep the room will ensure the visitor is sealed in. That said, I'm not sure if death from bloodsuckers can't occur after they've finished eating.

[Fox Mulder]

One of the harder, but more effective ways to approach it would be to make use of vampires' stun immunity and expose visitors to cave-in dust. Those who aren't getting unconscious are vampires.

[PatrikLundell]

Redirecting petitioners is a good idea, but it won't work for me as I'm badly shortdwarfed (16 adults of a dead civ, 2 years until the first and so far only resident should petition for citizenship) and goblin sieges result in a lot of additional work on top of the base they just barely manage (The Booze Quest is a lot of work). This means the expedition leader has to work full time, and thus run around.

Visitors frequently get stuck in 7/7 water due to bugged pathing without taking any visible harm.

I don't get any liaison (dead civ), so that's not a problem. Visitors who can't leave because the exits are blocked due to sieges wander around everywhere, though (I've installed a door to the minecart repeaters to keep them out of there, since roadkill can cause dorfs to get hurt when removing the idiots' bodies).

Most of the time vampires will kill their victims, and as far as I know the few pale survivors won't suffer a delayed death. I really don't want to lose anyone to vampires, but stop them before they get that far. I'm trying to catch all visitor arrival messages as they currently announce vampires as such, but I'd rather automate it and have it work when that loop hole is closed.

@Fox Mulder: I didn't know vampires were supposed to be stun immune. Apart from requiring a lot of work to set up and rebuild, it also suffers from the witch test issue: catch the guilty one by removing those affected. I suspect it's easier to use a witch test with water that you let out before the test subject die than constantly rebuilding a cave-in dust generator. Both of those methods would require you to collect the test subjects in batches for testing, rather than having a pass-through metal detector type design.

[Fox Mulder]

Come on, it's a cave-in dust, not a direct cave-in hit or magma mist. Not that harmful it would lead to massive deaths.

Interesting if we could build an automatic cave-in dust generator using automatically generated obsidian...

[imperium3]

According to the wiki, vampires don't eat. So what you could do is this:

- Create a small habitation area for new arrivals, with no access to the fort.

- Put a food stockpile well out of the way, and definitely far from the meeting area, so that nobody is going to go down there except to get food.

- Put a pressure-plate linked hatchway or retracting bridge along that corridor to drop anyone who goes along it into your fort.

So what you will have is an automated filter that only lets through dwarves/visitors who need to eat. Vampires will continue to hang about in the arrivals lounge until you notice them and decide what to do about it.

The only issue is that I'm not completely sure how this will play with the site visitor mechanic since I haven't had much of a chance to play around with that yet (new fort still under construction). Do they get upset if they can't reach the location they came for?

[steel jackal]

According to the wiki, vampires don't eat. So what you could do is this:

- Create a small habitation area for new arrivals, with no access to the fort.

- Put a food stockpile well out of the way, and definitely far from the meeting area, so that nobody is going to go down there except to get food.

- Put a pressure-plate linked hatchway or retracting bridge along that corridor to drop anyone who goes along it into your fort.

So what you will have is an automated filter that only lets through dwarves/visitors who need to eat. Vampires will continue to hang about in the arrivals lounge until you notice them and decide what to do about it.

The only issue is that I'm not completely sure how this will play with the site visitor mechanic since I haven't had much of a chance to play around with that yet (new fort still under construction). Do they get upset if they can't reach the location they came for?

i dont think visitors actually eat, and visiting vampires will drink socially.

remember that vampires typically have a lot of deities, so thats an indicator of the plausibility that they are a vampire, though its not 100%

[PatrikLundell]

As steel jackal said, visitors don't eat anyway, and goblins do not need to eat either. Furthermore, visitors do not activate pressure plates (as Fleeting Frames said and I've tested as well). But yes, it's possible to trap every visitor using a more elaborate mechanism (I've use a pressure plate with water in one attempt, and it worked).

However all of these are using the "catch all, test them, and release the innocents" scheme. I'm not against the scheme out of principles, but out of sloth: they all require me to deal with them regularly manually, rather than cleaning out a vampire catcher whenever a vampire show up (which isn't that frequent). I could use the current, failing, undead filter method to collect vampires and mercs, and thus cut the numbers needed to be tested in half (roughly), but it's still significant work (and the collector would need to rearm itself automatically).

[Fleeting Frames]

Hm. Didn't mercs attack some chained things, such as megabeasts? Or was that all visitors?

If just mercs, could ensure they have a bait and try to attack - then use trapavoid passage test to ensnare mercs. Of course, mercs can still be vampires, so it wouldn't work that well....And then there's the fact that with pop so low the FBs won't attack you(or maybe they will, given the goblins), I'm not sure what would even work. I've had visitors attack caged cavern troll I was in the process of pitting in 42.06, though, so that's an idea. Clowns might perhaps also work, given they're hostile to everyone but themselves, though you need a webber for that.

For hacky solution, I know there are dfhack scripts (soundCense and the new season color switcher mentioned in twbt thread, I think) that can read the updates to announcements.txt and run something - you could run fpause to pause the game every time vampire appears to ensure you don't miss one.

That won't work for performance troupes - which is also the "patch", however....

What work does your expedition leader do? The job could possibly be decentralized using minecarts. (Well, he can't really sac inter-fort hauling, but it's a thought.)

As a crazier but similar alternative to giving leader separate sealable sleeping room, you could seal off your fort from visitors, leaving newly-vamped expedition leader/bookkeeper/manager out (working through minecarts), with out of the way bedrooms for petitioners who want to sleep after joining to ensure they'll drop into your main fort.

[Werdna]

Have the mercs and vampires proceed past the scare filter into a tavern full of cats, and wait for the adopted-a-vampire announcement.    

"Et tu, Mittens?"

[Fleeting Frames]

Hehehehe. I think cats will only adopt members of your civ who like them, though.

Maybe a barkeep could be slightly beneficial, here, if citizens are kept busy - do the vampires target the closest sleeping being?

[PatrikLundell]

I'm in a dire shortage of megabeasts (I've seen a total of 2 over more than 2 years of intense DF:ing).

Again, I want to snare the vampires, not the mercs. However, it's correct that I've had visitors in the past (caravan members?) attacking trolls or whatever it was I was trying to pit. However, given that mercs are trap avoid I have no easy way to protect the targets. It's possible some kind of indirect trapping device can be set up, but it would need to rearm itself automatically if so.
I've got a bunch of gobbos, and more are sure to follow (there are over 10000 of them in the dark tower nearby, and my lazy buggers haven't even starting stripping the current batch, although the trolls have been executed), so bait is not an issue as such.

So far I haven't seen any vampires in performance troupes (they ought reduce the troupes to one man bands in fairly short order), but that doesn't rule out that they can exist. I believe all my vampire visitors have been performers rather than mercs or scholars, though.

My expedition leader is the farmer, if I remember correctly, which means intense planting of 30+ so farm plots in spring and summer, bee keeping, and fruit collection from trees. None of the jobs can be decentralized using minecarts, as one of the first things the buggers stop doing is "put stuff in vehicle" tasks of my QS'.

I think cats select whoever it thinks it can torment the most. All adopting males are immediately scheduled for gelding while the females are sent to patrol the secondary food stockpile (with no males around). Once the buggers stationed as sentries at the entrances start to die off due to old age some other adopters (probably females, as they can't be gelded) will replace them, but I'm nearing the point when it's time to start to execute them.

A barkeep would be another dorf not doing productive work, and you can bet the bugger will target the locals rather than visitors in the poison attacks. I don't know how a vampire selects its target, though, and given descriptions of vampire deeds in the middle of crowded taverns on the forum, all you'll know is that someone has been found dead (maybe: the apparently the dorfs hauling the dead bodies don't know what they haul, as these reports tend to come well after the bodies have been hauled to the corpse stockpile, and if the hauler then also drops it down the chute to the garbage compactor I wouldn't be surprised if no report was made at all).

[Fleeting Frames]

...Can't you replace the expedition leader? Won't work so well once you have mayor, I think, but food for thought.
And autumn problems is one I haven't considered before. Interesting. And of course harvesting/growing beats minecarts in priority, hehe.

If mercs are safe, then once you have trapped the mercs the remaining trapavoid bedroom visitors will be only vampires and wandering visitors wanting to leave but unable to do so.

Then, since they ignore pressure plates, well. Leave a civilian-operated pressure plate that prevents one from unfortunate fate in the path to bedrooms? (not sure if that'd catch all things, especially not sure about really light children and animals like cavies)

As for trapping mercs themselves...If there was something scared of merc through a window, it'd be easier...But, hm. For "door gone" detection, how about something like this?
POWER
  %%^
D%%
 ###~

Build pumps in right order, and the water is never in tile at the end of step to be atomsmashed by door or to interrupt pathing.
As soon as door is opened, the pressure plate in front of above pump triggers.
(tip for others reading: dig downstairs, build floor, build pressure plate and deconstruct floor - now you have an accessible pressure plate you can add link to afterwards without needing more (de)construction with wall beneath)

The weakness is that the door can be jammed by monarch butterflies, but that problem can be ~safely (for dwarves, not the sock - I think going by the ‼well‼ thread, maybe test first) solved by using magma instead of water. (an advantage a minecart variant doesn't have with doors - though that one could have smaller footprint, perhaps. And diagonal hatch movement could perhaps be safe, as long as mercs move 1 at time.).

And Point about bar justice fail. Ugh.

[PatrikLundell]

Yes, I can replace my expedition leader for any of the other fully occupied dorfs: I don't have any idle ones to spare, and suffer regular birdsplosions because the buggers just never get around to collect the eggs. I try to slaughter off adults, but the the butcher/tanner/leatherworker/weaver/clothier is always busy (despite never doing any leatherworking)... I also regularly have miasma in the butchery and kitchen (and I've stopped caring).

I see no problem with a mayor (although I have to more than double the pop to get one, at which time the only time I'll suffer serious shortages of workers is siege cleanup). A mayor can "elect" a replacement, so I generally replace the elected one with one who doesn't spew mandates. This has to be repeated every summer, though, as new elections are held.

I'm not sure how to create a protector plate driven design, since paths are two way and dorfs won't move to create a path unless one is available. Regardless, I don't think there's space for a device: it would probably have to be designed in from the beginning.

Mercs attack things that can be attacked, but ignore things that cannot (some can be scared as well, but that's another issue). A glass window is probably a good idea to prevent missile users from pin cushion the bait without actually taking the detour. There is also the issue that if you manage to reroute mercs it may just lock them into an eternal loop where they run back to engage that vile goblin or beak dog on a chain (beak dogs are probably safer given my experience of a gobbo breaking down and tantrum destroying the chain, though) once they've been dropped (onto a featherwood floor) so there'd need to be a way to de-aggro them. I'm not sure breaking the line of sight with a drop is sufficient for that.

I wasn't aware you could engineer a pressure plate on top of a stair like that. Also, I suspect magma can be rather impractical, because if it can set fire to a sock it ought to be capable of setting fire to a visitor, but the design definitely looks promising as a general open door detector (using water, that is). A monarch butterfly on fire making it to the booze stockpile might also be considered a !!Bad Idea!!

Well, testing this stuff requires a fair bit of space, which probably means I need to go back to a distant (attempted) visitors only tavern with a fair bit of plumbing en route to the fortress itself. Obviously, it also takes some time to construct.

[Bumber]

Can you use the undead to trigger a pressure plate? Undead won't attack vampires.

You'll probably need a way to filter visitors one at a time, or the vampires could sneak in while someone else triggers the undead. Maybe it's unlikely enough.
1. Visitor enters hallway and triggers a plate that confines them and releases the undead.
2. Undead senses living (through wall?) and paths toward them, triggering a plate that seals the undead back in and releases the visitor into the fort.
3. Visitor triggers a plate that re-opens the hallway for the next visitor.

Concerns:
Reset the undead's position. Use chained animal with a similar scheme?
Make sure visitor can't make their way to the undead. Another plate on their side of the undead path?
Make sure undead doesn't trigger plate by wandering, letting in vampire. Do undead wander? Maybe humanoid undead don't?