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[Gwen]

I'm trying to sort through the pages and figure out what the current method to do this is.

Could someone recap this for me?

We're using small poultry instead of dogs, yeah? Is it just one or should I put like, three in the cell?

How about furnishings? A bed, a table, some storage containers, and a chair might be good for the little monster child.
Mist would be nice to have but it would take a bit of engineering.
Also, if I filled the room with 3/7 water, would the child become a master swimmer?

Also, Should I drop a few changes in clothing in there along with the beer and food?

[ImagoDeo]

I'm trying to sort through the pages and figure out what the current method to do this is.

Could someone recap this for me?

We're using small poultry instead of dogs, yeah? Is it just one or should I put like, three in the cell?

How about furnishings? A bed, a table, some storage containers, and a chair might be good for the little monster child.
Mist would be nice to have but it would take a bit of engineering.
Also, if I filled the room with 3/7 water, would the child become a master swimmer?

Also, Should I drop a few changes in clothing in there along with the beer and food?

• Five peacocks seems to work very well for me (no fatal injuries so far), but the skill gain is very slow.
  
• One bed is enough.
• Mist is optional. Kids can go as low as -60 or so without tantruming, and to be honest there's nothing much to make them unhappy in a cell like that. They just keep admiring the bed and the food.
• Filling the room with water would require 4/7 to give swimming experience without drowning the kiddo. I'm pretty sure it would interfere with sleeping and eating.
• Clothes are probably a good idea but I haven't needed them yet after five or six years of testing. I'll let you know whether Oddom's clothes wear out.

[Koremu]

Did we ever figure out if being constantly stung by bees increases disease resistance?

[Cain12]

I'm currently building a little area just for that. Isolated from main fort, plenty of water, food and booze. Some twenty active beehives, all along the walls. Incidentally, the Beekeeper just had a baby. I'm weak to irony like that.
Update: Alright, more than 100 bee stings on the same dwarf over the course of a year, no visible attribute changes. I think it's safe to say that bees are worthless for training dwarves.

Searched bee, this is what came up.

[wierd]

For the purposes of testing out the effects of personalized daycare attendants, can I get a list of sentient creatures that do not require water or food?

I know that plump helmet men satisfy this, but they are quite rare. (Only ever had 2 fortresses with them in it, while serpent men, lizard men, caveswallow men, and ant men seem to be much more abundant.)

I have most of the daycare complex built, and am working on a modified version of the mist generator, and how to power it effectively.

I am not against using DFHack to accomplish certain physical ends, (like spawning the water for the mist generator) since I have created a fortress explicitly for this purpose.

I know dfhack can spawn items, but can it spawn entities too? That would make this considerably easier in regard to obtaining some plump helmet men for the test protocol.

[Di]

Just give CAN_LEARN to dogs. Or add NO_EAT and NO_DRINK to dwarves.

[wierd]

No_drink no_eat on dwarves is unacceptable. It would conflict with the experiment.

The goal is to be as vanilla as possible. That's why I wanted a list of possible alternatives to Plumpy.

A google search reveals that DaVinci suggested using switchmode to jump into arena mode, then create the plump helmet men that way, switchmode back to fortress mode, and makeown on the newly spawned helmet men to another poster asking the previous question in the modder forum.

I might savescum the fortress and try that.

It may be necessary to temporarily remove the Canlearn tag from them to assign them to the chains however.

[Kadzar]

For the purposes of testing out the effects of personalized daycare attendants, can I get a list of sentient creatures that do not require water or food?

I know that plump helmet men satisfy this, but they are quite rare. (Only ever had 2 fortresses with them in it, while serpent men, lizard men, caveswallow men, and ant men seem to be much more abundant.)

I have most of the daycare complex built, and am working on a modified version of the mist generator, and how to power it effectively.

I am not against using DFHack to accomplish certain physical ends, (like spawning the water for the mist generator) since I have created a fortress explicitly for this purpose.

I know dfhack can spawn items, but can it spawn entities too? That would make this considerably easier in regard to obtaining some plump helmet men for the test protocol.

Is there room to put in a trap door system to replace dead sentient beings? Or is the current goal aiming for completely hands-off system?

[wierd]

The goal is "5 birds enter, badass dwarf leaves."

Initial experiments with blue peafowl have demonstrated some design considerations in daycare architectural design, namely that dodging and throwing allows items to pass through otherwise unpathable obstructions, such as statues and fortification slits.

Other mysterious behaviors indicate slow atrophy of certain mental attributes from the prolonged isolation. (And the mysterious complete disappearance of an entire blue peahen.)


The daycare layout I have in mind looks like an ascii @ symbol of a sort. There is a central 2x2 chamber with metal grate floors, on which Plumpy the daycare attendant will be chained. Once inside, he will be walled in using a fortification slit. Directly adjacent to the slit is the child's bed.

There is then 1 tile of floor before a corner, and then 3 tiles of floor. The last tile is an up ramp, that during the experiment will be blocked with a hatch upstairs.

The tile of floor in front of the bed contains booze and food on a quantum microdump stockpile.

There is a meeting zone placed on the upramp. 5 peafowl are to be introduced into the room.
Mist is generated in the floor below the floor grates, which then billows up through them, and through the fortification slit. This allows the child to be misted gently the whole time they are asleep. Also, allows plumpy the plump helmet man to have soothing and friendly conversations with the child, without risking the dangers of friendships. Plumpy cannot get out of the mistbooth, and can't be harmed.

This setup is allowed to run continually for 12 years, or until li'l Urist gets all growed up. Whichever happens first.

It is meant to compliment the non-attendant trial already being overseen by another research center.

[Ravendarksky]

I have noticed a significant jump in skill gain using 10 peacocks instead of 5, although it also does increase the rate at which the birds kill each other.
I think an optimum number will lie somewhere around 7-8.

Interestingly I tried dumping 80 birds into the one room and skill gain over a few months did not increase as much as I'd expected.

Hard facts and figures will follow when I have more time for follow up experiements

[TheOnlySolitaire]

I recently did some childcare testing, and I know you all use birds, but if you are in the right biome, and don't mind catching wild animals for testing, there are some wild animals that are under the size of dogs, but over the size of cats etc. And they train offensive combat skills at a pretty rapid rate.

I found pitting single wild mandrills, coatis, koalas works. I even took some riskier animals and pitted them into the test chambers, like dingos, coyotes, lynx, and bobcats.
Just throw in some wild turkeys every now and then for the safer training kills.

I'm using a 2x2 chamber designated as a meeting zone, and an adjacent bedroom. Although this was only a working design, i'm testing various other designs now.

Out of 4 test subjects, 1 died fighting a mandrill. The other 3 survived and are at skilled/talented in wrestler, and around adept in fighter, with perhaps 7-8 kills each so far.

I'm doing more science on it now, but it seems that the tame animal plan people are using works well, but very slowly, while being relatively low maintenance. My method seems riskier, takes comparatively more effort, but not lots, but seems to be producing much faster results, just not much in terms of defensive skills, although it is training them too (possibly at a similar rate to the passive method).

[Di]

to have soothing and friendly conversations with the child, without risking the dangers of friendships.

Well, if that's the goal why not use ordinary talking animals (even those are extremely rare) or wall-in some insignificant dwarf. It's not like the food is anywhere near limited. Or maybe use vampire. With some planning one dwarf could provide a social interactions to several subjects.
And if one is frightened by even a single friendship the attendant can be quietly atom-smashed and slabbed as missing one later.

the tame animal plan people are using works well, but very slowly, while being relatively low maintenance.

Yeah, that's the point - low maintenance and micromanagement, just lure child in and wait. If were talking about training them by pitting against aggressive critters the giant zombie grasshopper and a squad of hammerdwarfs ten tiles away is unquestionable winner.

[TheOnlySolitaire]

Good point, I suppose. But the difference in micromanagement literally comes down to just pitting captured animals into the test chamber and letting the child fight it out.
I think I might have found a good compromise, but I want to finesse it a bit before I post it...

I'll also try and see if I can find a way to make the process as low maintenance as possible, but with wild animals it won't be easy...

Your zombie grasshopper counter does give me more ideas about using nullified husks though haha Just have to find a way to make the little angels eat, sleep, and drink...

[wierd]

The main goal of the attendant is to reduce the mental attribute decay seen from subjecting children to prolonged isolation, which should help them to learn weapon and shield user skills from the barracks training lessons more efficiently later.

The problem with a sentient is that they require food and water. A pitted vampire removes that problem, but replaces it with being a friendship disaster waiting to happen.

It doesn't matter "with what" that dwarves speak, they will develop the appropriate community skills. A plump helmet man would be ideal-- no center for thought, but can learn, doesn't eat, doesn't drink. I was just curious if there were other vanilla creatures to sub out for plumpy.

He's just a new variable in the experiment; it doest make sense to fixate on him to this degree. If his being present in the chamber has no tactical advantage, then it wouldn't be worthwhile to include such attendants in future experments.

I just want to see if the attribute decay can be mitigated with "fake" social interaction.
(Amusingly, if you don't mind the prospect of modding and also of course, if this works, it would be a good use for elven caravan members. Just mod them to not need food or water, drop them on some cage traps, install them in the mist chamber and link them to a lever-- fortification slit them in, open the cage by remote. All set. Elves being immortal would solve many problems.)

[Gwen]

I found pitting single wild mandrills, coatis, koalas works.

Are coatis really safe to pit? I had one of those things walk into my fort and singlehandedly take all seven of my dwarves out. One of your kids was able to survive with one of those monsters?

Is his name Pi or something?