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[Max White]

You mean my "Can't take out of water or will DIE!!!" problem can be solved by means of glass? I haven't really used glass yet, so didn't know you could make a cage out of it. Doesn't seem like the kind of thing you COULD make a cage out of at first glance.

I'm one step closer to having my fishy army! NOT EVEN ELVES CAN STOP ME NOW! Not like they ever could...

[beekay]

Pretty sure you're only meant to catch aquatic creatures in glass cages to prevent airdrowning (technically these 'glass cages' are more like aquariums or display cases).

Honestly, I'd just make a big waterlock filled with cage traps, flood it from the river to pull carp in, then drain it with screw pumps to take them out. The waterlock would need to have a lot of floodgates leading in from the river (which itself should be about 1 square away), or you'd need to wait quite a while for carp to wander in.

Of course, the stumbling block is that I'm pretty sure you can't actually tame carp in the first place... I guess you could tie a bunch of dogs to the bottom of the moat...

[Max White]

The problem with the dogs is there stuck in the 9x9 square that they are restrained in, so they could be taken down one at a time in a death march, as opposed to a mass of fish that actively move to the closest target to swarm and destroy, while not leaving there beloved lake.

[Retro]

Tried this last night. Findings! (this presumably applies to all large fish)

1. Any cage will work fine for keeping the carp from drowning. I caught mine by digging under a pond full of carp, littering the floor with cages, then digging up into it. All but one fell through and into the cages, though I don't think there's a way to make this process work in a non-luck-based way. Anyhow once the water levels died down to 2/7 and 3/7 my dwarves ran and stored them outside.

2. Dwarves can swim/walk freely in 3/7 and below water (the 4/7 is a myth, they won't do it), but refuse to go into 4/7 water. Carp drown in anything less than 4/7 water. Therefore it is impossible to have 'meeting' points between the dwarf half and the carp half. This makes having a 4/7 room a waste, and it a better tactic to just put the things into 7/7 water.

3. It is absolutely possible to have an accessible 4/7 (or any water level really) room above a 7/7 tunnel with other open spots - just use a baffle (diagonal tile) to keep the taller room from depressurizing. The tunnels will still be perfectly accessible. However due to point 2 making a room like this is purposeless.

4. Carp cannot be war/hunting-trained, but can be tamed easily. You can tame a creature fine while it's caged, but for advanced training you need to drag the pet to the kennels, which is impossible with the water differences.

5. Carp cannot be adopted. Even a dwarf with swimming raw'd in forced to stand beside the carp will forego regular activity because the water is there. And if the dwarf is not in the water with the carp they cannot see/path to the carp and thus will not adopt them.

6. Carp are boring as shit. Because underwater meeting zones don't allow meeting zone room, carp will not path to hang out in the water where you want them to. They will in effect sit exactly where they were released FOREVER.

Ultimately all these findings mean while you can absolutely FARM carp, you can't do anything remotely useful with them aside from taking advantage of their petvalue of 50 (which I don't think is all that high). HOWEVER! I think there's still a way to take advantage of them for defensive purposes. As carp are known to fight back fiercely when they cannot run (ie in a pond), you can pit carp into 1x1 pits of water all along your entrance to serve as 3x3 trap zones - the carp has nowhere to run and thus will attack anything in the 8 land tiles surrounding it - and the enemies it attacks won't be pathing to it save maybe a lucky angle from a marksgoblin, so it'll have the surprise advantage. A goblin will be walking by and then suddenly dragged into the water, where it will be ripped apart and unable to defend itself because it will be drowning and focused on getting out of the water. I haven't tried this but I believe this would effectively make your carp murderous weapons of mass death and actually serve as an incredibly effective defense, and easy to set up as well. The next step is to set this up and see how it works in practice.

My friends, I believe the carp has successfully been weaponized for dwarven defense.

[Urist Imiknorris]

Yeah, those ones can walk on land.  :p

Hopefully this is fixed at some point, but until then, watch out on the seaside for land-walking zombie whales.

I know for a fact that there are species of snakes that "walk" on their ribs. I always imagined zombie and skeletal carp did that too.

[Hyndis]

Yeah, those ones can walk on land.  :p

Hopefully this is fixed at some point, but until then, watch out on the seaside for land-walking zombie whales.

Zombie whales are no laughing matter! Shortest embark ever. 


Okay, actually it was quite hilarious as it ate my dwarves and their war dogs one by one, multiple mining picks embedded in it as they tried to fought back but failed utterly.

[Malicus]

Ultimately all these findings mean while you can absolutely FARM carp, you can't do anything remotely useful with them aside from taking advantage of their petvalue of 50 (which I don't think is all that high). HOWEVER! I think there's still a way to take advantage of them for defensive purposes. As carp are known to fight back fiercely when they cannot run (ie in a pond), you can pit carp into 1x1 pits of water all along your entrance to serve as 3x3 trap zones - the carp has nowhere to run and thus will attack anything in the 8 land tiles surrounding it - and the enemies it attacks won't be pathing to it save maybe a lucky angle from a marksgoblin, so it'll have the surprise advantage. A goblin will be walking by and then suddenly dragged into the water, where it will be ripped apart and unable to defend itself because it will be drowning and focused on getting out of the water. I haven't tried this but I believe this would effectively make your carp murderous weapons of mass death and actually serve as an incredibly effective defense, and easy to set up as well. The next step is to set this up and see how it works in practice.

My friends, I believe the carp has successfully been weaponized for dwarven defense.

Before I got distracted from my fortress, I had planned to try to get the many fish to start breeding (by giving them the pet tag then taming and releasing some) then "hunt" (that is, chase them into underwater cage traps in a space that can be easily drained) them for the meat.  However, this is so much better.  I shall have to try it, if I ever get back to said fort.

[Max White]

Some handy information there Retro, thank you very much!
I'm left to wonder your testing methods. I put a dwarf in an empty room then flooded it with a measured amount of water, so it looks like that can survive in 4/7 water, but don't like going in it given the choice.

Tried to build a pipe system through my fortress, but goblins got to me before I was ready to flood it in, ah well, I'll get it next time! Practice makes legendary!

I found the wiki for DF (Could make things easier, not sure if I want it to) and it says that not only are there a bunch of sharks to be found, but they can be made into pets! My guess to raid the beach might just pay off! Salt water, aquifers and few trees here I come! All in the name of fish! This will be my most dangerous embark yet, so I shudder to think about the mountains. 

[Retro]

Tried to set up the defense-purposes carp pits last night and ran into a snag - I keep catching dead carp corpses instead of carp. What I think is happening here is that if they are caught while in 3/7 or less water they drown no matter what in their cage, and if they're caught in 4/7 or more water they survive no matter what. So to properly catch them you need to drain the lake into a smaller-size room, then once the cages are filled drain that again into a larger room so the dorfs can get in.

And yeah, dwarves can survive in water below 7/7 (or maybe 6/7, not sure), but they'll never path into it, only out. Incidentally 4/7 is the minimum amount of water to gain the swimming skill, so dwarves will never gain the ability to swim without player assistance/force.

[Quietust]

As a possible improvement to the "carp pit", place a floor hatch on top of it and link it to nearby pressure plates - a goblin steps on the plate, exposes the fish, gets yanked in, then the hatch closes and seals the intruder's fate while also protecting the fish from ranged attacks.

Also, while carp are certainly deadly, they are among the weakest of the large fish - use some pike, longnose gar, or sturgeons and the chunks will fly.

[Retro]

Hadn't considered size - there are sturgeon aplenty on my testing site, so I'll take your tip into consideration :D

As for pressure plates, seems like a pain to set up. I'll do a few and compare them against unprotected fish pits. I suspect the ranged creatures won't be able to do much to my lil' swimmers if the approach is flat enough though.

[Max White]

Well when I tried drafting a hunter into a marksdwarf and shoot the fish to death, they didn't seem to be able to do much, and as he was at competent level, it should be hard for anything to kill them.

That raises an interesting point. If fish can drag in near by targets then a bridge that is three tiles wide should allow most intruders to get dragged to a fishy death.

For any of you that stalk me, you should know by now that my attempts to catch ocean sharks isn't doing very well. The terrain was hostile before, but now a fire imp burnt down the entire landscape, and I think that was the cause of death of a horse of mine (Was killed by heat, not struck down).

But we must carry on, FOR FISH!

[Retro]

That raises an interesting point. If fish can drag in near by targets then a bridge that is three tiles wide should allow most intruders to get dragged to a fishy death.

True; however, to be on the safe side I'm constructing a pit zone with 2-wide paths in between so every tile is prime danger zone. As for the wagon, there will be a 3-tile wide path, but it'll wind so that every enemy will be forced to go through Carpdome. The idea:

Code: [Select]

.....................
.C..C..C..C..C..C..C.
.....................
.....................
.C..C..C..C..C..C..C.
.....................
...WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW
.C.W.................
...W.C..C..C..C..C..C
...W.................
.C.WWWWWWWW..........
..........W.C..C..C..
..C..C..C.W..........

W being the wagon path, entering from the right and going into the fort at the bottom. Applied on a wider scope, all enemies would have to path through the pit field and be subjected to constant attacks except for the rare time they path onto a W tile (and then off right afterwards). I actually think once I get this set up it'll be a formidable open-door defence option!

[Max White]

We can do that? AWESOME! Set out the fish traps, have the miners start digging, and somebody get me a barrel of dwarven rum!

As I'm having trouble catching fish off shore, I'm thinking of another largish project to set traps in the middle of the ocean and reclaim them, but I'm left to wonder, do traps and floodgates survive being dropped from large heights? Or do they die on impact...

[Retro]

As I'm having trouble catching fish off shore, I'm thinking of another largish project to set traps in the middle of the ocean and reclaim them, but I'm left to wonder, do traps and floodgates survive being dropped from large heights? Or do they die on impact...

Buildings deconstruct, so you'd end up with a bunch of mechanisms and cages from the cage traps and a bunch of unbuilt floodgates all sitting at the bottom of the ocean. Your best option is a safe room underneath the ocean with a sealed entrance+drain setup, and having the miners pierce the water directly under your fish of choice; then you can drain the room afterwards. As a tip (well, an exploit technically) you can dig to second tile away from the map's edge, then smooth and carve that lone tile into a fortification and have a permanent drain. However I suspect this may not working in your favour with an ocean map (ie. water will flood inwards).