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[Viprince]

Auto-Butchering. Yeah way to break the beautiful image of a birth.

So I have desgined and built a functional automated slaughterhouse. Thing is, although it can be considered a feature, it only kills fully grown animals. Some people like that but I am not satisfied with the precious FPS I have to sacrifice whilst all those damn foals, pups and hairless monstrousities grow to maturity with all the pathing they can muster.

Here's the map of the design to save me explaining it all. It's straightforward excpect that the rectratable bridges at the centre are hooked to a slow repeater.

http://mkv25.net/dfma/viewmap.php?view_poiid=21077

My prototype worked fine when I tested it with some gobbos and wild mountain goats. Thing I didn't think about was that baby animals and mature animals path differently. And well my design is dependant on the animals trying to escape. Sadly, newborns are attached to their mothers and won;t path more then a few tiles away from her in any direction. (Proximity seems more important then path, some animals are fine with going to to next alcove but not the corridor) This wears off immediately after they reach maturity at which point they run to their deaths. So fellow dwarven scientists, how do cut the umbilical cord?

I'm looking for something as simple as possible. I have a few general ideas but no practical designs for them. I don;t really like their implicatiosn either.

Water - let the floods take the babies away
Hostile creatures - Scare them away, mom's chained and won;t go nowhere

[Ieb]

Remind me if I'm wrong, but currently, animals tied to a rope/chain, when dropped down a z-level, don't start to choke, right?

I can't remember if they end up getting freed of the rope, but if not, wouldn't it be possible to tie the breeder animal down, have a retracting bridge on either side, wait for it to step on them, and pull the lever? Animal falls down a level, and is left hanging.

After that, every offspring it produces falls down all the way into the butcher zone. Assuming those corpses can be butchered. It's sort of messed up at the moment to my knowledge what corpses can and what can't be butchered.

[gerkinzola]

animals chained and in mid air will cause the restraint to be deconstructed

[Ieb]

Damnation, my SCIENCE is ruined!

Oh well, I can just think of some other horrible death machine for them animals then. Bridges and deadly drops will be involved.

[Viprince]

After that, every offspring it produces falls down all the way into the butcher zone. Assuming those corpses can be butchered. It's sort of messed up at the moment to my knowledge what corpses can and what can't be butchered.

What corpses can and can't be butchered is pretty clear cut. Stray (tamed) animals can only be butchered through the "z" animals menu. The killing happens in the butcher shop. Wild animals will leave butchereable corpses, if this animal can be butchered of course, mountain gnomes for example are wild animals technically speaking but you still can't make em to meat and fat. I presume its just some mechanism to stop you from turning dead pets into roasts. Or whatever.

On the subject of breaking restraints, I was unhappy about using fluids because I am unusure what happens if flow is applied against a restrained animal, will it will push it as to break the restraint or will the animal stand its ground. Would have to test that I guess.

 

[BlazingDav]

If you were to build a floor round the outside on the building (on the same z level as the breeding critters), every once in a while animals and the like that have something to hang around (pets and parents alike as far as I know), like you said about them going into an adjacent alcove, thats 2 tiles aways.

So with a floor round the outside they can access (from those stairs to the roof like you have) the free animals path a couple of tiles from their parents on the outside, but fall to their deaths instead =P
Admittedly you probably need to build all the way up to the tower walls to do it (can't do stairs from above I think) Unless you deconstruct a corner wall or something I guess and build round that way (with stairs included).

I could see the design being adapted for tame pets so that you dont' have to deal with the issue of capturing and linking up wild animals (namely a meeting area far away enough should work for unowned mature animals).

[Viprince]

If you were to build a floor round the outside on the building (on the same z level as the breeding critters), every once in a while animals and the like that have something to hang around (pets and parents alike as far as I know), like you said about them going into an adjacent alcove, thats 2 tiles aways.

So with a floor round the outside they can access (from those stairs to the roof like you have) the free animals path a couple of tiles from their parents on the outside, but fall to their deaths instead =P
Admittedly you probably need to build all the way up to the tower walls to do it (can't do stairs from above I think) Unless you deconstruct a corner wall or something I guess and build round that way (with stairs included).

I could see the design being adapted for tame pets so that you dont' have to deal with the issue of capturing and linking up wild animals (namely a meeting area far away enough should work for unowned mature animals).

I'm not all that clear as to how far and how the babies path in correspondance with their mom's to make something that has a guaranteed chance to work but its certainly worth a shot! I might even turn every second alcove into something similar to the bridges in the centre if worst comes to worst. Those babies shall splatter!

Thing with tamed (Stray) animals is that their corpses aren't butcherable ( or at least auto-butchered by the setting). This system would kill em fine but you'd just end up with a pile of farm animals. Well you could use the bones once the body rots but my point is the butcher won;t touch em hence no food is produced. Don;t ask me why its like that, it just is. (Could change in the nextversion although I havn't read anything about that) cross your fingers.

[Summoner]

For Dwarfen Science!

[pushy]

After that, every offspring it produces falls down all the way into the butcher zone. Assuming those corpses can be butchered. It's sort of messed up at the moment to my knowledge what corpses can and what can't be butchered.

What corpses can and can't be butchered is pretty clear cut. Stray (tamed) animals can only be butchered through the "z" animals menu. The killing happens in the butcher shop. Wild animals will leave butchereable corpses, if this animal can be butchered of course, mountain gnomes for example are wild animals technically speaking but you still can't make em to meat and fat. I presume its just some mechanism to stop you from turning dead pets into roasts. Or whatever.

With regards to "wild animals", it's still rather straightforward - eating sapient creatures is unthinkable to dwarves, so any creature with [CAN_CIV], [CAN_LEARN] or [CAN_SPEAK] (or [INTELLIGENT] which implies all three of those) will not be butchered. You mentioned those beer-guzzling bastards the mountain gnomes, who can't be butchered because they have [CAN_LEARN]

[NecroRebel]

I had an idea for an auto-butchery a while ago, but haven't built or tested it. It consisted of a series of 1x1 pillars, all surrounded by empty space that is several levels deep. My idea was that females would be put onto these pillars, become pregnant, and give birth, but since babies spawn adjacent to their mother, they would immediately fall to their death and be butchered.

Now, for the most part this is doable and not difficult. The problem is whether or not I'm actually right about the "babies spawn adjacent to their mother" thing. I've heard many stories of dwarven mothers giving birth while next to a precipice and the infant immediately dying, but I don't know if this is a certain thing. Might want to make sure you can get to the top of the pillars, say by making them entirely out of staircases with a forbidden hatch at the top that the mothers stand on, so you can later get to and slaughter any (male?) children that might get stuck on the pillar.



...Actually, why build a set of pillars? One per species should be enough; just put all the mothers on there. The problem with this would be recapturing them all if a mistake occured. Hm. 

[wagawaga]

I thought of a similar method to kill any newborn stray animals.

Put several z-levels above your refuse stockpile a series of alcoves like you did, and designing a meeting zone over slowly-repeating retracting bridges. Just make sure this contraption is cut off from your main fortress as animals could escape and/or your dwarves could decide to meet on the bridge.

[Sphalerite]

Now, for the most part this is doable and not difficult. The problem is whether or not I'm actually right about the "babies spawn adjacent to their mother" thing. I've heard many stories of dwarven mothers giving birth while next to a precipice and the infant immediately dying, but I don't know if this is a certain thing.

Tried this too.  It doesn't work.  Newborn animals appear on the same tile as their mother.  I think what's going on with dwarves is that dwarven babies have no survival instincts whatsoever and can craw right off the precipice before their mothers are able to pick them up.  Newborn animals don't do this.

For an automatic butchering system you need a way to physically contain the parents while luring their offspring onto a retracting hatch or bridge.  You can use chains as suggested here, but babies stay near their parents until they grow up.  In the auto-butchering engine in my current fortress I use a system where animals are constantly being cycled in and out of isolation cells.  Each cell is a single pressure plate set to only trigger for an adult of the species in question.  Before and after the plate are hatches linked to the pressure plate.  Babies follow a few tiles behind their parents, and floor hatches have zero delay on opening, so when the mother animal steps on the plate both hatches open.  This traps the mother in place and separates it from any babies following it, and possibly drops a baby down to whatever is under the hatch.  In my design that is just a floor one level down with a stair back up to the entrance to the sorting mechanism, but it could just as well be a ten level drop to a meeting area.

Mother animals will eventually give birth again, so you need a way to get them out of the isolation cell and back through the sorting system.  My design uses water logic to implement an AND gate which detects when all the cells are full, and then opens a side gate to let any excess animals out into a butchering mechanism.  Alternate paths also open allowing animals out of the cells into a waiting area, where they are briefly stored before being let back into the sorting cells.

[Vattic]

I've been working on something like this myself. I had the restraint, eight empty tiles around that restraint and then a circle of retractable bridges connected to a fast repeater. I found that young creatures did fall through if only occasionally compared to mature animals.

It was a bit overcomplicated yes but it was on one of my test forts where I try new ideas. I'd likely do it more like the OP next time.

[o_O[WTFace]]

Simple, automated, effective.  Overall thats a very good design.

Anyway, for catching the babys, keep in mind that the mother is chained, and so can only move one square away from the restraint.  The babys will stay around the mother, but at some point they will probly end up outside the 9 squares around the restraint.  Put some bridges and repeaters there and your bound to get at least some of them, although its sloppy and incomplete. 

[TKGP]

What about the classic room with a pressure plate and hatch?
A large breeding room with one plate linked to a hatch, so that if an animal steps on the plate and another is on the hatch it falls down a pit. Figure out the rate at which they breed/die and adjust size/number of hatches as necessary.