How do i commit the mass genocide of the exceedingly large animal population in my fort? I was going to butcher them all, but its filling up my food stockpile and it seems to be a big trouble to slaughter them all. Is there a way i can just wipe them out, in a fairly simple manner? I lack magma, so scratch that.
also- is there a way to find out when exactly a dwarf died?
http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/DF2010:Dwarven_atom_smasher
Unless you have pet elephants or building destroyer flagged critters, in which case, drop the ceiling on them.
I thought of this because i use a DAM for my dump, but how do you propose i get the animals to all get into one area, under a drawbridge already built? I cant build ropes or chains in the same area as a DAM. I guess if i got really creative i could figure it out..
XXXXXXX
VVVVVVV
XXXXXXX
VVVVVVV
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X's are 1-wide bridges
V's are chains.
Since they can move around at range 1 from the chain, or on the chain itself, the animals have a 66% chance of being under a bridge every time you raise or lower the bridges.
You can set the bridges to oscillate by linking them to several pressure plates in a room that you can fill with water, and empty when you don't want the bridge to oscillate any longer.
To be a little clearer on the oscillation bit.
A room partly filled with water, if you watch it with water depth turned on, you will see that the depth of the water constantly changes unless the water is perfectly even.
a 3x3 room, put one pressure plate for each possible water depth in the room, link them all to each of the bridges. Fill room partly with water. You don't need to be precise with water amount, any amount that all tiles are higher than 1 all the time will be fine (water evaporates only at depth 1 if underground)
chop chop.
When the animals are gone, let the water out of the oscillator control room.
It might just be easier to chain animals in a drowning room (animals that can't survive under water), than dump the corpses in a trash smasher.
You can also set up a simpler oscillator (many fewer mechanisms) using a dwarven perpetual motion device.