Print

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

[Tomcost]

Not sure if its been mentioned before in the last few pages, but I know a Coinstar system would train skills, without the risk of death (unless the kid passes out on the bridge, and is flung into a wall, or drops a piece of clothing in the Coinstar).

It should train armor user, strength, agility, endurance, and such skills pretty efficiently.

You mean dropping coins onto the children? It can work with those skills, but we would still need something to train them in combat anyway.
Dropping severed fingers would have the same effect? (It would add to the whole psychological trauma)

[Larix]

-Training via hostile animal ends with either the children or the animal dead (even with low risk animals like fleshballs).
Read my post (like, 3 post above yours), to see my newest idea, which, due to my lack of experience, could not be taken too practice. (if someeone wants to try it, feel free to do give it a try, and post the results)

I don't think there's much potential there. Considering what killed the children in previous torturedomes - large numbers of small hits (infection and lucky blows) and insanity - those are the two things undead could do much, much better than ordinary crowded-tame or wild animals. I question the notion of getting 'supersoldiers' out of a functioning setup - the children would train dodger and fighter mostly. A variety of unarmed combat skills would also very slowly rise, but the best that's been posted in this thread are some piddly gains that can be equalised and surpassed by military training in a matter of months once the dwarf turns twelve and gets recruited. No wait, the best posted in this thread was dwarf children dying horribly, so even a totally non-military fortress would be better at facing outside threats than one with a dwarven 'day care'.

Yeah, i think the Coinstar would be a decent alternative. Would danger rooms really offer additional combat training to children? Since they can't use weapons, they will never accumulate weapon skill through parrying.
I think the main problem with danger rooms for non-recruitable units is the lack of shields. Dodge just ramps up too slowly in efficiency when every hit bears a significant risk of causing permanent damage. Shield (going by adventure mode) scales up much better in efficiency _and_ gets much more experience per application. Having a helmet and body armour would still help a lot.

[Lich180]

I think fingers are too heavy to drop, and can still crush skulls. Hell, that's why the Coinstar started with seeds, and moved to coins when they found coins are much less lethal since they "pass through" or "glance off" anything.

As for actual combat skills... not sure exactly. My experience with the Coinstar showed me that even a novice with a sword or other weapon, and legendary +5 dodge/armor plus the high strength, endurance and agility leads to quite capable warriors regardless of weapon skill, and only a few captured goblins need to be killed to harden the emotions, I would think that another year or two paired with a legendary weapon user/ teacher would be enough to get them fully trained. Kind of defeats the purpose of the segregation, no friends, uber-soldier, but it would work with minimal losses.

Undead are still quite dangerous, even hair can kill eventually so I would hesitate to use that. Not that it wouldn't work, but I'm all for the minimization of losses, even if they are useless children. Sure, they are renewable, but its still a pain in the butt to replace them constantly.

[Scruffy]

I tried adding flowing water in the room. Like someone previously mentioned it works well. I will have to change my design though since the water keeps pushing the child through the wall grates

[Tomcost]

Well, about undead, my idea was to use some kind of limb smashed enough to only allow them to push. I managed to get a baby hand with its bones (and some fingers) crushed and its tendons severed. Its weight is less than 1 unit, so I think it would work (not enough mass to crush a skull, or at least I think so), but I'm still setting up the room for my test subject. Any thoughts?

Edit: grammar

[Scruffy]

Well, about undead, my idea was to use some kind of limb smashed enough to only allow them to push. I managed to get a baby hand with its bones (and some fingers) crushed and its tendons severed. Its wheight is less than 1 unit, so I think it would work (not enough mass to crush a skull, or at least I think so), but I'm still setting up the room for my test subject. Any thoughts?

Do you have some way of sealing the hand away from the subject? Otherwise the child will be too spooked to eat, sleep or drink.

[Tomcost]

Well, about undead, my idea was to use some kind of limb smashed enough to only allow them to push. I managed to get a baby hand with its bones (and some fingers) crushed and its tendons severed. Its wheight is less than 1 unit, so I think it would work (not enough mass to crush a skull, or at least I think so), but I'm still setting up the room for my test subject. Any thoughts?

Do you have some way of sealing the hand away from the subject? Otherwise the child will be too spooked to eat, sleep or drink.

The hand is undead, so they will fight until the hand collapses, then he will eat/drink/sleep. Then I will open a floodgate to allow a necromancer to resurrect it and continue the training. I hope the legendary room and furniture will prevent the child from getting insane from being attacked by undead and misma.

[Meistermoxx]

posting to watch

[coldmonkey]

Can you put a lid on the chamber? A retractable bridge or something and a hole to the sunny overworld. That way the hand won't produce miasma.

[Sutremaine]

It should train armor user, strength, agility, endurance, and such skills pretty efficiently.

You mean dropping coins onto the children? It can work with those skills, but we would still need something to train them in combat anyway.

How about... combat? Okay, it sounds circular, but, with their augmented stats and ability to move quickly in full steel, they're in a much better position than the average random cheesemaker Recruit. Giving them a couple of levels of Shield User before letting them fight something will make them so hard to take down that it won't really matter that they currently barely know how to hold a weapon.

[Lich180]

That's what I was thinking, since they get pretty badass through Coinstar training, it won't matter much as long as they aren't pitted against too many enemies at once.

[Scruffy]

I will conduct more SCIENCE tomorrow.
My plan is to use a 4 stage training.
First stage is for the new children and will use coinstar and help them get used to tragedy
The second stage will teach them to swim (Won't be very useful for stats since they already have had coinstar training by this point but atleast they learn to swim)
The third stage will be a holding cell for making them happy and waiting them to grow into adults. (Don't want to train them too much or they will die/go insane)
The final stage will start when they reach adulthood and will be drafted into militia and will get a few sessions of classic danger rooms for weapon and shield skills.
It is a bit too complicated but I was thinking of chaining all 4 stages into a long corridor so I only need to open a door and move them to the next stage. Multiple specimen can use the same corridor at the same time if they are of different ages and in different rooms.

[Broseph Stalin]

Can you put a lid on the chamber? A retractable bridge or something and a hole to the sunny overworld. That way the hand won't produce miasma.

You could actually just dig a hole and then construct over it. The tiles will be "Inside" but no longer "Underground" preventing them from creating miasma. 

[Gigaz]

Has anyone here tried to enforce a legal drinking age of 12 in a fortress? I see a huge efficiency gain if the children don't become too sad about it.

[Tomcost]

I'm back from testing, with rather dissappoiting results. For those who don't know what I was doing, I was the guy with the idea to use necromancers and baby hands to train the future supersoldiers.

These are the results:

This is the test subject:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This the baby hand I used to try to "train" him:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And finally, the fight:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)