Print

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

[Dwarf4704]

I don't have one on my map right now, but I'm planning for when one, or similar, does show up. I checked out a bronze colossus in steel armor in the object testing arena, and found it indestructible. So how do I deal with them?

[A_Curious_Cat]

I don't have one on my map right now, but I'm planning for when one, or similar, does show up. I checked out a bronze colossus in steel armor in the object testing arena, and found it indestructible. So how do I deal with them?

I don’t think colossi can spawn with armor anywhere other than in the arena, and all other armor would be too small for them.  Thus, I don’t see this being a problem.

[anewaname]

Do you want to deal with it using "honest" dwarfy brute force that might take a lot of effort to build up, or are you willing to use a cheap trick that will deal with any non-ghostly beast and is cheap and easy to set up?

[Tomsod]

If you want to kill it in combat, you'll need either adamantine edged weapons (preferably picks) or a lot of whips.  Whips can punch through steel, but don't deal very much damage, while picks have good damage and high but not miraculous armor penetration.  You might also get away with masterwork steel picks (or spears, but spears take very long to kill an inorganic megabeast).

A far better solution would be to catch it and put it into your moat or something.  Or use it to train marksdwarves (unless it has a dangerous projectile attack).  You don't get a steel FB every day, killing it would be a waste.  Capturing methods are on the wiki, it being steel makes no difference here.

[Bumber]

Megabeasts wearing steel probably behave very differently than megabeasts made of steel (there aren't any steel megabeasts in vanilla, but you can get steel HFS and FBs.) The armor being scaled to the size of the creature makes it extremely effective.

I'm pretty sure you'd never actually find this in normal gameplay, though, because nobody makes the armor. Huge HFS goblin civ leaders do wear cloth and leather clothes, however (unless something changed in v50.) The leather clothes are surprisingly effective, but at least they take wear damage from combat since v0.43.04.

[Dwarf4704]

Anewname, what tips do you offer?

[Tomsod]

Megabeasts wearing steel probably behave very differently than megabeasts made of steel (there aren't any steel megabeasts in vanilla, but you can get steel HFS and FBs.) The armor being scaled to the size of the creature makes it extremely effective.

FBs and titans are megabeasts, at least going by the wiki.  They don't have [MEGABEAST] though.  As for armor, ultimately it's no better than a tissue layer made from the same material, in fact the squishy meat can get damaged even through infinitely sturdy armor ("the force bends the neck"); not so if it's steel all the way down.  Also armor typically has smaller contact area than the body parts it's worn on, although for megabeasts it of course doesn't matter.

[anewaname]

Pretty much what everyone is going over. The cheap trick method to trap it works for anything... for your front gate, use a 2-wide hallway with doors that you lock once it gets inside so you have time to wall it in or raise gate. From there, obsidianizing it or using it for fun is up to you. You would be abusing your ability to lock a door without sending a dwarf to do it, but when you want to ensure your fort doesn't collapse while you're working on a project...

[Dwarf4704]

I'm also interested in lever operated traps, to deal with trapavoiders. What do you think? How should I go about this?

[Tomsod]

Wait, how would doors be reliable?  Most megabeasts are building destroyers.  I typically protect my fort entrances with raised bridges.

For [TRAPAVOID], I usually prefer webbed cage traps, but you need a GCS for this.

Another idea I've pondered recently, since I've noticed DFHack allows remotely toggling/disabling track stop dump direction, is to have a vertical stairway with track stops to the sides, with water- and magma-filled minecarts on them that can be dumped onto the stairs for emergency obsidian, when something dangerous climbs through.  It doesn't really work in vanilla though, because you'd need to toggle track stops with a lever, and obsidianizing the intruder would thus require impossibly precise timing.

[anewaname]

@Tomsod
Several doors in a hallway is the most reliable method for trapping a beast. You as the overseer can lock a door while the beast is in the hallway and while the game is paused, then while the beast is destroying the doors, your dwarfs can build a wall or raise gates to seal off the hallway. This isn't a fancy trap that requires a developed fort or developed understanding for the player to build. It is what a player does to protect a fort when the 7 dwarfs haven't unloaded the wagon yet and a group of ogres wanders near the fort. It gets back to the original question I asked the OP, whether he wanted "cheap trick" or "honest" dwarfy brute force.

[Tomsod]

Oh, as in the entire hallway is filled with doors?  Yeah, okay, this can delay it for a while.  Still, it probably takes less time to build a bridge and link it to a lever than to craft 20 doors, but one does not exclude the other, and the doors can be reused later.  I mean, I also place doors everywhere, especially at the entrance(s), I just don't see them as a sufficient defense measure.

[Schmaven]

Oh, as in the entire hallway is filled with doors?  Yeah, okay, this can delay it for a while.  Still, it probably takes less time to build a bridge and link it to a lever than to craft 20 doors, but one does not exclude the other, and the doors can be reused later.  I mean, I also place doors everywhere, especially at the entrance(s), I just don't see them as a sufficient defense measure.

The doors are just to delay the beast long enough for walls to be built.  And unlike raising a bridge, doors can be locked instantly, without depending on the wanderings of Dwarves.

[FourierSeries]

My personal favorite means? An elevated 1 tile wide long, long winding causeway between the fort entrance and the outside world, and with an increasing density of weapons traps as one proceeds along the causeway.
Start with a 1 weapon trap in the first tile, next gets 2, etc. Also, you can cover the causeway with a ballista battery if you want to make things stupidly complicated. Otherwise, almost any weapon for the traps will do as they are unlikely to score any damage in this case. The point being the megabeast should eventually dodge over the side of the causeway. Thus it has to be sufficiently elevated to extract severe damage from the fall. How many falls will it take? Place your bets.
Off topic and only tangentially related: megabeast aside, and if you're feeling sadistic, for low level minor threats don't elevate the causeway more than 1 z level high to avoid fall damage. And, use plenty of cutting types of weapon traps. Try watching a conga line of agitated Gray langurs first run, then hobble, crawl, and finally wiggle their repeating way across this setup. They'll be leaving ever larger piles of body parts while painting the landscape in bloody gore. It's amazing how many times the little guys try even in the face of crippling injuries with the promise of more before bleeding out. I find it both absolutely horrifying ... and strangely satisfying.