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[DwarfStar]

I wanted to post an example that's working in v0.47.05, at least for me. I found conflicting and sometimes outdated information about how to do it, and I had shelved the project and thought it might never work. I had tried everything I could think of using captured goblins and pets as bait, either on chains or roaming free, including a few zany pressure plate designs inspired by comments that a path from GCS to bait was necessary, which I was never able to get working. The GCS would spew webs, but never through my fortifications, only after closing in on the bait and then subsequently reaching and killing it. But using a captured mega- and semi-mega-beast I finally have success!



There's a cyclops up top and a hydra below, with the GCS in the middle. The various levers here just manage the critters, opening up the cages and controlling the cinnabar raising bridges. If I were building this from scratch, I probably would have just held the bait using one raising bridge each, but this is my 111th design as I mentioned.

I've got the microcline retracting bridge next to a raising bridge (in white), since it seems like raising bridges are more violent than retracting ones, and I didn't want to hurt the silk. Maybe a raising bridge would have worked by itself? The reason for the raising bridge is to block the view from the collection area below so that jobs don't get cancelled.



That, boys and girls, is how silk is made.



Down below I've got my collection areas that the bridges drop the webs into, near the looms and dyers. I've had it running for quite a while and I did see one cancellation message caused by "webbed", maybe because the bridge retracted above the dorfs head while he was collecting, and a web fell on him. But it didn't seem to hurt him.



My trigger mechanism for the collection bridges is dead simple. Next to my meeting hall, I've got a two-tile long minecart track with pressure plates on both tiles. I have a hauling route set up to push the cart after 1 day always, so the bridges alternate but not unnecessarily quickly. I had it set to immediately at first but that seemed like overkill.

Speaking of overkill, I'm not sure yet how much silk I really need, and I'll probably have to halt production at some point. I'm fairly sure if I just disable the hauling job, the webs will not proliferate in the upper chamber since it seems like the spider itself cannot deposit multiple webs onto a single tile. I have multiple webs stacked up in the collection area, but the webs are only ever one layer thick on the GCS floor.

Anyway, I guess that's about it. Whee!

[Uthimienure]

That's pretty sweet    Maybe in a few years I'll get there!

[Moeteru]

That's very nice. I love the bi-directional design with two bait animals and two collection areas.
I'd also never thought of using a dwarf-powered hauling route as a timing mechanism. It's a very elegant approach, and much easier to build than the mess of ramps, tracks and hatches I'm currently using.
That job cancellation due to being webbed was probably caused by one of your web collectors switching to another job (eg. military training, eat, drink, sleep, etc.) while standing on top of a web.

Now the next thing to do is build another layer to the system so that you can drop those webs onto some cage traps and start building yourself a caged FB/clown zoo.

[FantasticDorf]

Very nice, based on output and security (with the fortifications) you could probably use this design as a trap all of itself (self resetting webbed weapontrap range for guranteed easy trap-hits) besides webbed cage production if you got tired of harvesting.

From the looks of it also, a more simple and exploitative way without boxing things in would also to be using zombies in the place of reasonably rare megabeasts, which you could simply either lay out some corpses to ressurect its own (in the right biomes), or use a necromancer (preferably your own) to stand in and draw aggression onto the spider.

Additionally, necromantic GCS would definitely keep its own abilities ontop of its longetivity, and remain ignored when web-slowing for a necro-siege.

[DwarfStar]

The only downside to the minecart approach is the occasional hauling jobs it requires, but setting it to wait one or more days reduces that overhead to a minimum. You could also drive more than one system with the same pressure plates.

I think the job cancellations were because there were some webs on the second floor that the dorfs could path to and occasionally try to collect; with the predictable result of a face full of web. I installed some doors and forbade them and the problem seems fixed.

I love the ideas of zombies and undead GCS for this but I don’t have any necromancy towers near me in my game. I may have to make that a goal for my next fort. In my last fort I had necromancers but no captured GCS.

Also very excited about the idea of combining this with a trap. Ima try to figure out how to set up a FB trap using a captured GCS.

[Bumber]

I love the ideas of zombies and undead GCS for this but I don’t have any necromancy towers near me in my game.

You could raid them for a book containing the secrets, then have one of your dwarves read it.

[DwarfStar]

I love the ideas of zombies and undead GCS for this but I don’t have any necromancy towers near me in my game.

You could raid them for a book containing the secrets, then have one of your dwarves read it.

Can you though? There must be a down side. I'm still getting used to all the new features since the last time I really played the game a half decade ago. In my only other v0.47.05 game so far, I tried raiding a few goblin cities but they only produced some seriously lame items. Clearly I need to play more with 'c'.

[PatrikLundell]

Raiding normal settlements generally results in random junk being brought back, as you noted. However, necro towers tend to have lots of books in them, and once you've eliminated the enemies you can just send expeditions to bring back books, a few at a time (when I did it equipment corruption eventually ended it, but that's supposed to be under control now). Doing it that way you'll eventually get a few books with the secret in them. I believe you can also locate specific books to such a tower and send an artifact retrieval expedition to target that specific book.

When I last built a silk farm I used an undead saved from ones captured during a necro siege as the target, and I haven't heard anything indicating the logic to have changed since then. The good thing with undead as targets is that they are valid targets regardless of whether the GCS is tame or not.

[Bumber]

If your dwarves' ambusher skill is high enough, you can loot without fighting. In the raid 'd'etails, you can disable "Loot other items" to avoid all the non-artifact junk.

Raiding can cause them to send a siege to your fort. Necromancers can already send sieges from the start of your fort if the the tower is close enough, however.

Check the description of each book your dwarves bring back to see if they contain the secrets. Use display furniture to move the book to a sealed library if you don't want all your citizens capable of raising hostile undead every time they get in a fight.

[Moeteru]

Now that I think about it you could probably make the design even more compact by using a living GCS and an undead GCS as bait for each other. The living GCS shoots webs one way while the undead one shoots them the other way.

As for getting your hands on a necromancy book it's definitely possible by raiding towers. In the previous version I had a fort full of necromancers. The main problem is that they won't take the initiative to drink alcohol on their own so you need a tavern keeper. Oh, and even the smallest fight will rapidly turn into a runaway explosion of zombies, half of whom are hostile to your dwarves.
It would probably be easier to just catch a foreign necromancer in a cage trap and use him for your experiments.

[Thon]

Now that I think about it you could probably make the design even more compact by using a living GCS and an undead GCS as bait for each other. The living GCS shoots webs one way while the undead one shoots them the other way.

As for getting your hands on a necromancy book it's definitely possible by raiding towers.
It would probably be easier to just catch a foreign necromancer in a cage trap and use him for your experiments.

☼Giant Cave Spider Silk Sock☼ is serious business.

[FantasticDorf]

As for getting your hands on a necromancy book it's definitely possible by raiding towers. In the previous version I had a fort full of necromancers. The main problem is that they won't take the initiative to drink alcohol on their own so you need a tavern keeper. Oh, and even the smallest fight will rapidly turn into a runaway explosion of zombies, half of whom are hostile to your dwarves.
It would probably be easier to just catch a foreign necromancer in a cage trap and use him for your experiments.

Its not quite like the old days of necro-bacon factory and throw them in a sealed box and automate as much of the process as you can, all foriegn sieging necromancers are imbued with the power to summon nightmare creature brutes, so even still they can turn out to be a handful (where the exact line between sieging and casual "Oh a necromancer just arrived" powers im not sure). Using a nominative "volunteer" to live seperate from the population after reading the aquired book is technically the safer alternative, though a vampire is lower maintenance (which in all means having a 'Monster Squad' on hand can be a good thing) and you'd have to give over a parallel sealed burrow-space eating into whatever space your growing fort may require.

Captured foriegn necromancers may also grind down mentally, go mad, then become vunerable to starvation and thirst like most other siegers if its to be believed but usually they're very destructive before they get to that stage.

[Seleucian]

Looks good, I'll have a go with this design. Thanks for sharing!

[DwarfStar]

I have had this running for several years now and it’s still working great. Turning it on and off again just requires (un)assigning the minecart to the hauling route, and there is otherwise zero maintenance required. Btw, I using an untamed spider (and untamed bait) which I guess is important, because wouldn’t a tamed spider need to be fed/tended by a dwarf? The idea of this design is that the dwarves should never be aware of the monsters in the ceiling, only that silk falls down sometimes

My only problem is overproduction. GCS silk products quickly became my most valuable export product, and everyone in the fort is wearing the finest duds.

I did have a sort-of-related issue with disposing of worn items, which I probably generated faster because of the silk farm. My clothiers kept getting unhappy thoughts when I disposed of their worn masterwork clothing in my magma incinerator. I guess I need to somehow make sure worn clothing ends up in a normal refuse stockpile to rot away slowly.

[Moeteru]

I did have a sort-of-related issue with disposing of worn items, which I probably generated faster because of the silk farm. My clothiers kept getting unhappy thoughts when I disposed of their worn masterwork clothing in my magma incinerator. I guess I need to somehow make sure worn clothing ends up in a normal refuse stockpile to rot away slowly.

How I solve that is by using the "take from links only" option on stockpiles. You have a "new clothes" stockpile which is linked to your clothiers' workshops and only takes from those workshops, then you have an "old clothes" stockpile which is set to take from everywhere and has the refuse category enabled. I usually make them both quantum stockpiles but that isn't strictly necessary.
Of course a side effect of this is that any unworn clothes dropped by invaders or traders end up in the refuse pile too, but when you're overproducing with a silk farm that's hardly a problem. In fact I usually have a third stockpile to dispose of any non-masterworks produced by my clothiers so that my dwarves (mostly) only wear masterwork clothing.