Print

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

[Girlinhat]

Good thought, but not my intent.  It'd also get rid of the cages though, so I could put up some more important captures.  Exchange my Elf Spearman for an Elf Swordmaster.  Not to mention, butchery on demand >:3

[imperium3]

If you hook the cages up to a lever before you remove the constructions, you can drop the elves from the tree in the future.

Can you weaponise that? Next goblin siege, drop a bunch of elf soldiers on them, then sit back and laugh evilly as they slaughter each other...

[Urist Imiknorris]

Or at least as the goblins slaughter the elves.

[Puzzlemaker]

Why don't you strip the elves of all weapons, and hook them up with chains?  With a bit of wrangling you can have them hanging.  It wont kill them, just leave them quite... immobile.

[xeivous]

Why don't you strip the elves of all weapons, and hook them up with chains?  With a bit of wrangling you can have them hanging.  It wont kill them, just leave them quite... immobile.

I recall hearing that future versions will make this suffocate the critters.

[Sphalerite]

At the moment, chains don't physically restrain creatures at all.  All they do is prevent the creature from voluntarily pathing away from the chain.  If you remove the floor from under a chained creature, it will fall as if the chain wasn't there.

[Puzzlemaker]

At the moment, chains don't physically restrain creatures at all.  All they do is prevent the creature from voluntarily pathing away from the chain.  If you remove the floor from under a chained creature, it will fall as if the chain wasn't there.

Aww damn.  It used to hang creatures.  That sucks.

[Sphalerite]

At the moment, chains don't physically restrain creatures at all.  All they do is prevent the creature from voluntarily pathing away from the chain.  If you remove the floor from under a chained creature, it will fall as if the chain wasn't there.

Aww damn.  It used to hang creatures.  That sucks.

Did it?  When was this?  As far as I can tell, the behavior of chains not hanging creatures has been the same since at least the 40d version.

[Ubiq]

The cages will be made of Blood Thorn, unless sufficiently good reason is given to use another material.

Two reasons that occur to me:

1) Using Blood Thorn for cages diverts wood that could be used for the tree instead.
2) Crimson red decorations on a crimson red tree? Have you no sense of style?

Using other trees would allow you to expand the tree as you see fit and would also lend a nicer visual appearance to the finished product. I suggest including the odd window here and there for the Elfmas lighting effect. Gem windows constructed using two of one gem and another of a different color would give you a nice blinking pattern while regular glass windows would work as a fixed glass bulb.

Tinsel is another option, but one that depends on whether or not you have plenty of native aluminum/platinum/silver or galena on hand. Tetrahedrite is another option since you can smelt silver from it, but that adds an additional step.

One more option would be to put the main entrance to your fort directly below the tree so that sieges and ambush parties have to wind up directly below up. That way you can use the tree to celebrate Goblinmas as well.

[Aramco]

No, wait. Build the tree out of Bloodthorn, coated in actual Elf blood.

[Urist Da Vinci]

Bloodthorn. Blood thorn.

Make menacing spikes out of blood thorn wood, and adorn the tree with them (upright spike trap). Creatures killed by upright spikes may end up impaled on the spike. You can then leave a forbidden elf corpse to rot, impaled on a tree "thorn". There will be blood. The bones should just stay up there forever.

You don't have to have the spike repeating, you can just drop the elf onto the spike from at least 2 z-levels up. If it doesn't work, try again with the same elf (recaptured) or a fresh elf.

[Girlinhat]

Nice thought on the menacing spike, I might use that to adorn a few bodies around, but I'd like most of the captives to be live.

No tinsel, no light, no crap.  This isn't a Christmas tree.  This is more akin to the tree at the start of 300 that had hanging bodies from it.

No chains, mainly because they'll interrupt my dwarves.  A chained elf causes job cancels, which gets difficult with the scale I want to achieve, and it just doesn't appeal to me as much.

Chains don't restrict Z level movement, so technically if you chained a dog at the bottom of a 50Z stairway, that dog would be able to travel across all 50 levels, so long as it was within the 3x3 area.  Hanging creatures will hang, somewhat, but tend to get stuck in the "falling" status, which makes the untouchable and very annoying.  They don't suffocate, not until Toady adds that.

You're right about the color though.  Perhaps I'll use something bright for the cages.  Tower-caps, or spore trees...  I may or may not get some tunnel tuber or fungiwood for purple or yellow, to make some hanging vines.  That's a bit more effort than I was intending to make.  A gaunt, 'living dead tree' bearing wicked fruit despite the lack of leaves and the inert trunk, is really what I wanted.

[Puzzlemaker]

At the moment, chains don't physically restrain creatures at all.  All they do is prevent the creature from voluntarily pathing away from the chain.  If you remove the floor from under a chained creature, it will fall as if the chain wasn't there.

Aww damn.  It used to hang creatures.  That sucks.

Did it?  When was this?  As far as I can tell, the behavior of chains not hanging creatures has been the same since at least the 40d version.

It used to be that it would stop z-level movement one square away.  So you could have a guy hanging in midair.  He wouldn't die, but just hang there.

[Sphalerite]

At the moment, chains don't physically restrain creatures at all.  All they do is prevent the creature from voluntarily pathing away from the chain.  If you remove the floor from under a chained creature, it will fall as if the chain wasn't there.

Aww damn.  It used to hang creatures.  That sucks.

Did it?  When was this?  As far as I can tell, the behavior of chains not hanging creatures has been the same since at least the 40d version.

It used to be that it would stop z-level movement one square away.  So you could have a guy hanging in midair.  He wouldn't die, but just hang there.

Yes, and what version was this in?  I know for a fact that it didn't work that way in 40d, and I'm pretty sure none of the 31.xx revisions worked this way either.

[white_darkness]

Me, I'm more interested in a progress update, since you were just getting the trunk in place, I'm assuming it's risen a few more z-levels and possibly a branch or two has been completed with some "fruit" hanging?