Print

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

[wagawaga]

Don't kill the children, or else you will lose most of your females as they get overcome by grief that their 5 sons and 6 daughters dying.

That's what migrants are for.

Last time I killed about 30 children, I locked their parents each one in a separate room with mist generator, hoping to avoid a tantrum spiral.

I forgot children were friends with almost everyone.

[Sutremaine]

Don't kill the children, or else you will lose most of your females as they get overcome by grief that their 5 sons and 6 daughters dying.

Ah, but if you get them as soon they grow into children, the parents get only one or occasionally two bad thoughts a year. Additionally, since they won't have time to become friends with anybody (...I think babies don't make friends), the rest of the fortress won't be upset either.

[Djohaal]

Children are a good source of labor...   

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Heliomance]

Okay, due to all the dwarves that were pregnant when I changed the init file, I now have a population of 245. And a lot of the babies are starting to grow into children and starting to path, so I have a serious fps problem. Is there a way to easily get rid of a bunch of children, cheating or otherwise, preferably without causing a tantrum spiral? Dwarf Companion lets you set them as dead, but you can only do it one at a time so it's very slow and tedious.

[Sutremaine]

Is it the sheer number of dwarves that's the problem, or children's relative uselessness (ie. you wouldn't mind the excess pathing so much if they earned their keep)? The second can be dealt with by assigning them labours via Dwarf Therapist. If it's the first and you have the dwarfpower to spare, draft a number of useless haulers equal to the number of children and station them under a raised bridge.

Or you can build a childcatcher. For this you need some hatches and some doors attached to a pressure plate over which every dwarf must pass. When an adult passes over the plate, nothing happens. When a child (size 4) passes over the plate, hatches open to cut off the normal pathing and doors open to provide an alternate path. This alternate path takes them over a different pressure plate and then a bridge. This bridge is, naturally, attached to the pressure plate which the child has just triggered. What happens next is up to you. A raising bridge is the most efficient solution, but will result in an accident sooner or later (since an adult on the same tile as the child and the pressure plate will also be forced onto the alternate path). A short* drop into a chamber with a dummy lever marked Pull (R) and preceded by an adult-only pressure plate and a retracting bridge over a shorter drop back into the fortress should return any adults back to wider society.

*2 z-levels is good.

[Aspgren]

As a general rule, dwarves that work all the time don't have sex.

I find this hard to believe. I've had the clerk (who was working around the clock updating stockpiles and engraving) and my captain of the guard (guard duty, fishing, woodcutting - he always worked too) get lots of children. 7 or so before a tantrum spiral craved all their lives.

The dwarves in that fort were particularily fertile. In spite of building a huge tower and constantly I made sure there were no idlers.

[Heliomance]

Is it the sheer number of dwarves that's the problem, or children's relative uselessness (ie. you wouldn't mind the excess pathing so much if they earned their keep)? The second can be dealt with by assigning them labours via Dwarf Therapist. If it's the first and you have the dwarfpower to spare, draft a number of useless haulers equal to the number of children and station them under a raised bridge.

The sheer numbers of dwarves. But I have no useless haulers; my haulers are a specially trained caste of legendary pump operators, who keep the fortress running smoothly and efficiently. Mostly.

[Grendus]

Draft all your females, you get both child shields and goblins culling your useless child population. Win-win.

[Heliomance]

But everyone's doing useful jobs. I've carefully managed this fortress so I don't have any soap makers or fish dissectors or anything, everyone gets their professions set to something useful.

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

Liberal application of !!MAGMA!!

[Sutremaine]

The sheer numbers of dwarves. But I have no useless haulers; my haulers are a specially trained caste of legendary pump operators, who keep the fortress running smoothly and efficiently. Mostly.

Squash 'em anyway, Pump Operating trains quickly.

But I think death by DC will be the most efficient way of dealing with the children. You can arrange dwarves by profession, and you don't need to set them as specifically dead. You just need to right-click, Hurt them, and they'll die pretty quickly once you apply the changes.

[Heliomance]

Huh.
Well-established fortresses are hella hard to take down. I have a one-square meeting area, so everyone is friends with everyone else. I just used DC to wipe out almost all the children. Absolutely no-one dipped below ecstatic.

EDIT: killed some more. NOW there's miserable folks around. Time to stop, methinks.