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[Urist Mcinternetuser]

I read the "Dwarf Fortress inventions" conversation and was inspired by Sphalerite and his/hers  "Dwarven Children Academy". It's basically where you make a little system that seperates all of the children into a safe room. The Adults drop food in for them occasionally, and when they are all grown up they leave. As I was designing my safe room I realized if they are going to be stuck in there, why not let them make cheap products. Is there a easy way to make children do work? Also, any other useful things they could do while they are growing up?

[Snook]

Unless it can be modded... No. They'll happily tear down structures, though.

[nbonaparte]

Dwarf therapist can assign labors to children and nobles. It gives you a message about cheating, but it's possible.

[Haus Party]

If you leave them workshops and crafting materials, they'll at least have somewhere to go when they're in a strange mood. Otherwise the only work I've gotten children to do is harvesting.

[Urist Mcinternetuser]

I simply believe that Dwarves need to learn responsibility at an early age, like 2. So that by the time they reach adulthood, responsibility will be long forgotten.

[chmod]

Dwarf therapist can assign labors to children and nobles. It gives you a message about cheating, but it's possible.

Yeah you have to turn on cheating in options, but DT can assign labors to them.

[Daetrin]

Instead of dropping in food, seal in all your farmers with the children and the farm plots, and have them drop food out.  That way you can take advantage of child harvesting.

[bdog]

Drop them cloth and force them to make shoes
also mod in rice for food so they wont die to early...

of cou rse set labors via Dwarf The rapist

[Arkose]

Instead of dropping in food, seal in all your farmers with the children and the farm plots, and have them drop food out.  That way you can take advantage of child harvesting.

You only need a single adult dwarf to build farm plots and mood workshops, and once those are built you won't need any at all. Raw materials for moods can be dropped in from above, and harvests can be set to dump down to be processed by brewers / cooks / weavers.

Children that produce artifacts are allowed to become artisans according to the nature of their works. All other dwarves take whatever non-mooding job (cook, soldier, hauler, etc) is needed at the time they mature.

Stick the Hammerer in there to maintain discipline; hopefully if enough children are brutally murdered for crimes they didn't commit the survivors won't care about seeing brutality once they get drafted into the militia.

[ECrownofFire]

So how do you manage to seperate the children out in the first place? I wonder if you could force them into cages, that would be good, it even improves FPS a bit.

[vagel7]

Seems like dwarven children have a hard life?

[Daetrin]

So how do you manage to seperate the children out in the first place? I wonder if you could force them into cages, that would be good, it even improves FPS a bit.

there's a clever way to do it with pressure plates but I don't know the specifics.

[Jimmy]

The Dwarven children's academy:  I used pressure plates set to trigger for children but not adults and some floor hatches to route children into a sealed building.  In that building I put everything the children would need - a stockpile of prepared food (dumped from above), and had a waterfall feeding multiple wells, a room full of beds, a dining room, even a tame dragon on a chain in the meeting room.  A second pressure plate system would divert dwarves out of the sealed-off area when they matured to become adults.  This kept children out of the rest of the fortress, safe and not underfoot.

[Sphalerite]

So how do you manage to seperate the children out in the first place? I wonder if you could force them into cages, that would be good, it even improves FPS a bit.

For my Dwarven Children's Academy, I used a system of pressure plates set to trigger for citizens in a size range chosen so only dwarven children would trigger it.  The child diverters were placed in high-traffic corridors in the main fortress, so that children would inevitably step on them eventually.  Stepping on the pressure plate would open floor hatches before and after, which would trap the child in place, and open up a side door leading to a passage to the academy.  The child would have no choice but to proceed down the side passage.  In the academy I had a similar mechanism set to trigger for adults, so when a child grew up he would be automatically sent back to the main fortress.

The Academy had a craftdwarf's workshop for strange moods, and I had a system set up so I could drop materials in from above.  The idea was that if a child went into a mood, I could look at his demands and then choose exactly what kind of metal or rock or whatever I wanted his artifact to be made from.  The children didn't do any other useful work, but just spent all their time hanging out under a waterfall becoming super happy from the mist and gaining legendary social skills.  In retrospect it would have been clever to put vital fortress defense levers under there, since children will pull levers and would never have been far from them, but I built the fortress defenses long before I thought of making the academy.

[sweitx]

So how do you manage to seperate the children out in the first place? I wonder if you could force them into cages, that would be good, it even improves FPS a bit.

For my Dwarven Children's Academy, I used a system of pressure plates set to trigger for citizens in a size range chosen so only dwarven children would trigger it.  The child diverters were placed in high-traffic corridors in the main fortress, so that children would inevitably step on them eventually.  Stepping on the pressure plate would open floor hatches before and after, which would trap the child in place, and open up a side door leading to a passage to the academy.  The child would have no choice but to proceed down the side passage.  In the academy I had a similar mechanism set to trigger for adults, so when a child grew up he would be automatically sent back to the main fortress.

The Academy had a craftdwarf's workshop for strange moods, and I had a system set up so I could drop materials in from above.  The idea was that if a child went into a mood, I could look at his demands and then choose exactly what kind of metal or rock or whatever I wanted his artifact to be made from.  The children didn't do any other useful work, but just spent all their time hanging out under a waterfall becoming super happy from the mist and gaining legendary social skills.  In retrospect it would have been clever to put vital fortress defense levers under there, since children will pull levers and would never have been far from them, but I built the fortress defenses long before I thought of making the academy.

Do you get occasional problem of children stepping on the plate and promptly drop the adult into the hatch?