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[ChairmanPoo]

At the moment I have 10 children and 8 babies. How can I kill the damn things off? (my biggest problem is getting them into my facilities dedicated to the glorious task of pop control)

[Puck]

Dont know, only one thing comes to mind right now:

b>C something in those ... facilities. When a lot of dwarves are busy with whatever (dunno, in a pinch get them mass-hauling), you can designate those constructions for removal. Chances are, children will be rushing to the deconstruction, because that's a job they can do.

As for babies - afaik it's hardish to get them separated from their parents. They're always on the same tile... now if they would follow the mother around like pets, it would be easy. Maybe somethign can be done with cave-ins? Not sure if worth the bother, maybe wait til they are children and then see above.

All I can think of right now.

[milaga]

For babies just send the parent on a lot of outdoor fishing or hauling jobs. Eventually the snatchers will get them.

Also, to prevent a second baby boom check your init.txt file. There's a setting to cap the number of babies born. If you haven't changed it, there is no limit the number of babies.

[ChairmanPoo]

I am messing around with the remove construction order. It does seem children have a preference for this....

The goblin snatchers is definitedly a creative idea. I have to try that one.

Editing inis... you see, I know this can be done. I just prefer to go King Herod on the children, you see...

EDIT: Doh, why didnt I think of using an atom smasher to deal with the children?

[Alrenous]

I accidentally created a baby strainer. If you have a waterfall near stuff that needs hauling, next to a channel, the water can push parents down into the channel, where they'll get stunned and drop whatever they're carrying, including children.

My channel was full of water, and while the parents could make the swim to the ramp out, babies cannot.

[Rowanas]

Forced swimming practice! Babies and children fail at swimming/life, so it's effective.

[Puck]

Oh yeah, now that you mention it... early designs of my waste disposal system (finally finished now, btw, should post sometimes the next days tbh) were killing of babies friggin reliably. Basically it was a room with the goal to have 3/7 water flowing over the floor at all times, with a deeeeeeep channel on one side. That channel had an atomsmasher on the lowest level.

Whenever the water went to maybe 5/7 tops on certain tiles, mothers dropped their babies and tried not to get washed down the channel. The babies, however, were washed down, along with the trash.

I SWEAR THAT WAS NOT THE DESIGN GOAL.

[ChairmanPoo]

... you *have* to post the planes of your waste disposal system

Trivia: Children that fall into a magma pipe are actually DROWNING until they hit the floor or the magma flow. (apparently in the spectral realm, water and magma have neither heft nor lift.  They stand as thin as air)

Pic related

[Mandaril]

Only in Dwarf Fortress can you have a thread about best methods of child/baby-killing.

[ac31]

Only in Dwarf Fortress can you have a thread about best methods of child/baby-killing.

that and 4chan until about 3 years ago

[ChairmanPoo]

I think there is some sort of moral to be extracted from the simmilarities between DF and /b/...

[Aspgren]

Here is a great way to kill babies that I discovered through an accident when a floor collapsed (damned grates i forgot you can't function as a floor!)

1. Draft the mothers.
2. Place the mothers on a retractable drawbridge over a pond. You should be able to climb out of it.
3. Retract the bridge and they fall into the 7/7 water. The mothers will panic and drop their babies and climb out. They won't be able to retrieve them due to dangerous terrain and the babies will drown very quickly with their small lungs.

If you alter the design of the pond so that the dwarves have to take a longer route to get out of the water you can kill of the children as well. The children aren't nearly as tough as the adults and can't swim either so if you have say .. a hatch they have to climb out of and lock it once the adults have scrambled to safety you can snuff them as well.
This method is risky though and might endanger the lives of your regulars since you need a bit of a distance to separate the fast adults from the slow children... and if your adults are slow then I don't know.

Works perfect for babies though.


Edit: I read the thread now and saw that the suggestions had been suggested sort of. Come to think of it I lost alot of children during reconstruction of a castle I built long ago, they just loved to tear down those supporting pillars and I would rage because I hadn't figured out how to do it properly yet.

[Puck]

... you *have* to post the plans of your waste disposal system

Alright, I just did that.

If you modifiy the plans in that link a bit, you should be able to reliably kill babies with it. Put levers linked to nothing in the trash area, modify workshop profiles of those levers to only accept mothers as operators.

I think the suggested cistern size is fine for the setup. It MAY be too small, tho, you might need to get a bit more water than 4/7 in the trash area. If that's the case, you can easily enlarge the cistern, just temporarily build a second lever and link it to the dwarven access floodgate to open it while the cistern is empty. I suggest deconstructing the lever afterwards. Just dont forget putting the gate in synch with the rest of the setup again. (coming to think of it, that aint necessary... if you pull the main lever, it turns into a state in which the gate would be open anyway. so just deconstruct the lever after you're done)

Anyways, you want the mothers to be pushed around a wee bit by the water. That gets em to drop their babies, and those usually get pushed by water, just like the tiny items they are.

You might want to play around a bit with the positioning of the "motherbait" levers. Close enough to the edge to wash the babies over it, far enough so the mothers dont.

Gosh, I feel horrible. And they wanted to ban GTA 

[Kanddak]

I made a child killing system a while ago:
http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=31423
http://mkv25.net/dfma/movie-1135-child-b-q
http://mkv25.net/dfma/poi-15093-childnobletrap

I dealt with babies by waiting a year for them to grow into children, and then had an annual child-burning festival. For some reason it took four years for this to cause a tantrum spiral.

But if you just can't wait, my brother accidentally developed an excellent system for killing babies.
He was working on this mind-bending atrocity: http://mkv25.net/dfma/poi-14474-batshitcrazysewerminelagfactory
He would dig wide hallways in an aquifer layer, with channels in the center which were also in an aquifer layer. The aquifer water from the top level would drain into the lower level, allowing water in the top level to remain low enough for engravers to come in and smooth the walls to stop the water.
But it was a slow process, as dwarves would continually be washed into the drainage channel. Adults would climb up the escape stairways, and the miners and engravers who worked there regularly became strong swimmers, but the fort's babies all drowned.

[Quietust]

At the moment I have 10 children and 8 babies. How can I kill the damn things off? (my biggest problem is getting them into my facilities dedicated to the glorious task of pop control)

You think 18 total is bad? My fortress has ninety-four. Even with my population cap set to 200, I have 268 dwarfs.

And you thought catsplosions were bad.