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Author Topic: Dwarven rescue swimmers?  (Read 808 times)

Kietharr

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Dwarven rescue swimmers?
« on: September 15, 2009, 10:29:57 pm »

So I sent my brand new fully kitted out exceptional/masterwork adamantine clad champions to test their new weapons on a bunch of insidious giant olms and lizardmen in the underground river. Naturally, they butchered everything in one or two shots, but two of my champions ended up falling in the water and drowning.

Naturally, considering they were just legendary in wrestling/shield use and practicing everything else in the fight the dwarves themselves are easily replaced by peasants in a few seasons . What's not easily replaced are the two full suits of masterwork admantine armor and exceptional adamantine battleaxes sitting on the bottom of the river. Most of the creatures were slaughtered so I don't expect that they'll be too terribly problematic.

Now, what would be the most effective way of retrieving this armor? Considering this is near the mouth of the river I don't think I can pump it fast enough to make it shallow. Will dwarves with the swimming skill go into water to retrieve items? Also, will they rescue dwarves who are drowning? I have a miner who is also a novice swimmer due to a near-death experience when I nicked it mining ore.
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Skorpion

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Re: Dwarven rescue swimmers?
« Reply #1 on: September 15, 2009, 11:15:44 pm »

Pumps, or the legendary magma-ignited lignite-block-in-a-bin method.

Next time, teach the military to swim.
Which reminds me, I should do just that myself.
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The *large serrated steel disk* strikes the Raven in the head, tearing apart the muscle, shattering the skull, and tearing apart the brain!
A tendon in the skull has been torn!
The Raven has been knocked unconcious!

Elves do it in trees. Humans do it in wooden structures. Dwarves? Dwarves do it underground. With magma.

thobal

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Re: Dwarven rescue swimmers?
« Reply #2 on: September 16, 2009, 12:33:21 am »

If its deep enough you can block it off via isolating a few un-mined tiles above the river and dropping them in upstream from the armor. Just remember you need the whole blocks, not just the floor and nothing constructed.
side:
XXXXXX
_      V_
X  XX  X
X_    _X
XX~~XX

The V is the last tile you remove, remember, you've got to get the all the tiles above and around out, the falling blocks have to be completely isolated.

top view(until you channel out that last _)
. . . . . .
.#### .
.# . . _ .
.#### .
. . . . . .

PLOP! and stopped goes the river.
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Derakon

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Re: Dwarven rescue swimmers?
« Reply #3 on: September 16, 2009, 12:40:10 am »

As I understand it, you should also be able to undermine the river source and drop it down a z-level or two, at which point it should fill up a small pool and then stop. You could then channel out a new course for the river. Just don't dig out or collapse natural walls onto the source tiles; the river will be gone forever if you do that.

This is all highly theoretical, though. If you experiment, make backups, and report what you find.
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Jetblade - an open-source Metroid/Castlevania game with procedurally-generated levels

bluea

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Re: Dwarven rescue swimmers?
« Reply #4 on: September 16, 2009, 01:26:22 pm »

You can make a vertical U-bend of the entire river exceedingly close to the edge which redirects the entire thing off the map through fortifications.

Code: [Select]
Side view of normal river
Z=-1   ----------
Z= 0   WWWWWWWWWW
Z=0.1  BBBBBBBBBB
Z= 1   ##########

Code: [Select]
Side view of diverted river
Z=-1   ----------
Z= 0   WWW-------
Z=0.1  BBHBBBBBBB
Z= 1   FWW#######

- = open space
W = Water
B = Riverbed
F = Fortification
# = Rock
H = Hatch

You can dig "up" to make space for the hatch with a ramp, just remember to have a route for the miner to escape with a door.
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ShadeJS

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Re: Dwarven rescue swimmers?
« Reply #5 on: September 16, 2009, 10:28:38 pm »

At the risk of under engineering the solution you could probably just carve ramps at the edge.

One of the first things I do when I have some spare miners is care a ramp into the edge of every pond, pool, and along rivers. From experience dwarves will retrieve arrows for melting and their dead kin...
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