Print

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

[DukeLeto2]

I apologize for a potentially stupid question, but I couldn't find anything about this on the wiki or on these forums: When I designate a pit, and have crundles thrown in it, the dwarves who throw the crundles in keep managing to fall down the pit themselves. Is there any way I can prevent this?

[PatrikLundell]

When pitting you should have a hatch cover on it, and it should be locked.
I would guess the cover hinders dorfs from falling in, and locking it stops critters from climbing back out. This is particularly important when you've got magma at the bottom of the pit, as a !!crundle!! getting back up may be too large a bundle of fun.

Also note that mass pitting is bugged, so they tend to result in mass escapes as often as not.

[Dunamisdeos]

For my garbage chutes, I use a 1x1 room with a shaft down to the actual garbage area/incinerator.

I top it with a retracting bridge. That way they can't fall in, and they just pull a lever and noone is anywhere near the horrific bludgeon-fest that is a pile of falling objects.

[PatrikLundell]

If you throw live crundles on top of a bridge they're going to leave before you pull the lever, and I see no reason why dorf's would fall down a garbage chute, unless the "garbage" is resisting. I don't see much reason to have dorfs at the bottom of a garbage chute where they can get hit by falling objects, as the garbage ought to be taken care of by either magma or an atom smasher.

A goods vertical transport chute is another matter: there you need to protect the dorfs picking up the deliveries, but for those I wouldn't dump the goods, but use a track stop/mine cart dumper with a feeder stockpile. Again, you don't need a cover in that case.

[Dunamisdeos]

I like to have my garbage pile accessible, because I always manage to toss something i didn't mean to and I want to take it out. Having a bridge up there prevents someone from chucking a rock onto a dwarf at exactly the wrong moment.

Anyway I guess it depends on why you are chucking crundles into a pit. Do they need to live at the bottom? It it for lulz? If you want to keep live crundles I'd put em on chains/ropes/cages. I've only thrown goblins into a pit so they can fight bears naked, and my pits had hatches which seemed to prevent any dwarves falling in so I'd go with that (never seen a dwarf fall in regardless, but I've never not used a hatch so hey).

It's worth noting that I did not lock my hatches.

::EDIT::
I wholeheartedly support the idea of dumping safely caged critters into magma for disposal, as suggested below.

[anewaname]

Due to the mass-pitting issues, consider these alternatives:  train them so you can butcher them, or dump them and their cage directly into a magma chute.

[Chief10]

When pitting you should have a hatch cover on it, and it should be locked.

Wait dwarves will know to unlock it before throwing the prisoners in? I thought locked hatches were like locked doors in that dwarves couldn't open them

[PatrikLundell]

Strangely enough, dorfs do know how to either unlock hatches to pit stuff through them, or to quantum tunnel the victims through the locked hatch.

Training goblins for butchering is not an option, nor is wasting those precious cages which I'm always short on through dumping.
After some minor initial engineering issues I've used the advice on how to set up a mine cart caged prisoner execution device: Slam a mine cart with caged prisoners into a wall at high speed, the prisoners are ejected from the cages and fly, beside the cages, through a fortification above that wall, then walk on a pressure plate that activates draw bridges that atom smash them as they try to get out. Once all the prisoners are dead (some die on impact), send the dorfs in to collect the cages (and haul some corpses).

[Insert_Gnome_Here]

Shotgunning. Nice. 
How about replacing the atom smasher with a load of marksdorfs. 
Nothing beats live training

[PatrikLundell]

Yes, finally gotten to try shotgunning and got it working. I'm rather shortdwarfed as well as not particularly fond of suicidal marksdwarves, so atom smashing gobbos saves on hauling their corpses, and atom smashing trolls without stripping them saves on hauling their clothes. Doesn't work perfectly, though, as some croak before getting smashed, and mixing victims can cause fighting with corpse (part) littering as a result.
Had to set up a different executor for ogres, though (door bait with repeating spikes). It remains to be seen if dumping magma on the pile of extremely heavy clothing will cause them to get burned away, though.

[Timmi]

I guess it's the same problem I was had. the pit is one lever deep, right?
when your dwarf pit foes, once they find out their foe being free of their grasp, they will be involved into fight with them (or run away in some situation), so they will not hesitate to jump off one layer or even jump across a tile wide channel to engage the foe. make sure the pit is 2 level deep and also, have Hatch on it.

[Timmi]

Yes, finally gotten to try shotgunning and got it working. I'm rather shortdwarfed as well as not particularly fond of suicidal marksdwarves, so atom smashing gobbos saves on hauling their corpses, and atom smashing trolls without stripping them saves on hauling their clothes. Doesn't work perfectly, though, as some croak before getting smashed, and mixing victims can cause fighting with corpse (part) littering as a result.
Had to set up a different executor for ogres, though (door bait with repeating spikes). It remains to be seen if dumping magma on the pile of extremely heavy clothing will cause them to get burned away, though.

seeing cavern inhabitants fighting vile green philanthropists is quite fun! especially when those blind ogres are equiped! throw a few armored goblins one by one to a group of ogre to arm them, and release them to fight the invaders!
actually I recently find a cage can be assigned to no limit number of prisoners. so cage all of your prisoners in a single cage is an option. just make sure the journey will be short or it will increase the chance they manage to get free.
if you have multiple opposite civilization (say green philanthropists and environment-friend hippies), do it in your defense trap entrance or just remove the cage and install it in the right place (would be a lot heavier then), and release the wave on the face of your common foes!
battle arena can be achieved in the same method, just don't know if dwarves really enjoy watching enermies fighting each other.

[PatrikLundell]

Dwarves are not humans: they do not enjoy blood "sports".

[Dunamisdeos]

They sadly do not get any happy thoughts from watching arena fights, but you can desensitize them to violence and I am always in favor of trial by grizzly.