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[MDFification]

I'd believe dropping other sentients could work... maybe some kind of automated goblin salsa machine would harden students enough during training?

I'd test it but I'm still not getting any sieges... perhaps it would work if I'd mod [CAN_LEARN] tag to wolves or dogs?

That might work. I think if you do that you should try it on something hostile by nature (i.e. [LARGE_PREDATOR]) so that the dwarves have the instinct to flee from it before it impacts, just to see if hardness and discipline can be trained simultaneously.

[Staalo]

Ok, results from drop test two, five sentient wolves and wolf cubs from height of 25 urists to lead floor:

Lots of splattage and mangled canine bodies, exactly one horrified student (the one with "can't handle stress well" personality trait). All students got a "has witnessed death" thought, so that at least sounds promising.

I can't measure Discipline gains yet, that has to wait until 40.11-compatible version of Dwarf Therapist is released.

[TheHossofMoss]

Hrm. I think the drop chute method can still be used to train discipline due to (possibly a bug; sauce) dwarves still panicking at the sight of horrifying corpses. This does not seem to work with all corpses, only with specific ones dwarves find terrifying - of which the notable ones are trolls, ettins and forgotten beasts. Further testing may be required with these specific species - regular creatures are not known to cause the same effect.

tl;dr further testing required, change the corpses to a more frightening species (like trolls) and try dropped captured (and stripped) invaders.

Speaking of dropping Forgotten Beasts, are there kinds of FBs that don't explode on impact? I understand fleshy ones doing that, but what if they are made of metal or gems? Will they explode with gems flying everywhere?

[Staalo]

My descent to madness has begun. I just realized I have given intelligence and self-awareness to virtual animals only to kill them in horrible ways to achieve emotional scarring in other virtual sentient beings.

So anyway, i penned a sentient wolf cub in the training area.

It died in a very grisly manner but no one got terrified this time. Still, the "Death... this is truly horrifying" cries from the students would hint that the tragedy training is working somewhat.

[Wolfhunter107]

Good. It has began.

[MDFification]

Alright! We've got tragedy training, although in an unmodded game it requires an absurd amount of captures 'ummies, goblins, elves and kobolds... well, anyone with CAN_LEARN I guess.
Discipline can be measured with the currently released DFhack compatible with 40.xx - you just go to the units screen and press L (lowercase). It'll bring up the units and a list of their levels in all skills, in a neat graphical format that lets you look at many dwarves at once!

Not sure about the forgotten beast drop. I mean, dropping from 25+ z-levels onto a lead tile (ground weight matters significantly) would probably kill and explode anything that isn't a blob, but I can't confirm this. Anyway, there's much better uses for captured FBs than dumping their corpses into a pit when you could just as easily use a troll... if your fort wasn't cured like Staalo's to never see invasion apparently.

Perhaps you can use DFhack to force an invasion for testing? I really have no time to sink into my testing fort. Uni being srs business atm and all that.

[Staalo]

Over ten wolf cubs were required to die a gruesome death before some students got the "is getting used to tragedy" token. At this rate I'll run out of sentient animals before getting to "doesn't really care about anything" with all students.

As far as I can tell there's still no significant Discipline gain from witnessing the deaths; all students are still at Dabbling level. I can't get the current version of DFHack to work with 40.11 either, so I can't measure skill development accurately.

When DFHack is updated I'll see what can be done with invasion triggering. Since I've already started cheating I might as well go all the way.

In other news, some students have taken to sleeping on the training floor, despite there being beds available. Curiously they're still dodging spears while asleep.

[MDFification]

As I said; you only get discipline gains from certain corpses. The ones I can confirm give it so far are Trolls, Ettins and Forgotten Beasts. However it may be a bug, and thus may be fixed in future.

[Staalo]

I don't really worry about Discipline that much; the military training will take care of that very quickly. But, if I manage to capture any large hostile creatures at some point I'll see what they'll do.

I ran out of sentient wolf pups, it took well over twenty of them to get all lower school students to "getting used to tragedy" level. Now I'll have to wait for the population to grow back a bit. Although I do have over fifty war dogs in cages... maybe it's time for another atrocity in the name of science?

EDIT: Figured out why students had started sleeping on the floor: the latest update stops dwarves from sleeping in hospital zones. That's bad news for my dual-purpose sleeping/hospital area but the hospital part wasn't really used anyway. I'm just surprised that the students weren't instantly perforated when they fell asleep in the classroom.

[MDFification]

Question for Staalo - do you dump leather armor in the school with your children so that when/if their clothing rots, the only thing to replace it with is leather? Because if so, you can force them all to equip leather armor until they're let out.

[Bates]

As I said; you only get discipline gains from certain corpses. The ones I can confirm give it so far are Trolls, Ettins and Forgotten Beasts. However it may be a bug, and thus may be fixed in future.

Goblins work too.

In fact, many of my civilians in my current fort have discipline at competent level without ever seeing combat.
I put a couple of goblin corpse stockpiles near my fort entrance and dwarves passing by them get horrified and learn a bit of discipline.
That's also where my new recruitees train for the first couple of monts to toughen them up faster.

[Staalo]

Question for Staalo - do you dump leather armor in the school with your children so that when/if their clothing rots, the only thing to replace it with is leather? Because if so, you can force them all to equip leather armor until they're let out.

No, the students just use ordinary clothing from the main stockpile. I let the students out whenever I'm making modifications to the facilities; they'll use the opportunity to replace their XclothesX with new ones. Since civilian alert states surpass ordinary burrow designations, I abuse those to switch school burrows on and off without hassle.

In previous fortress I had a separate clothes stockpile within the school burrow but that only took unnecessary space and tended to get full of (large troll fur loincloths) from sieges.

[Repseki]

Question for Staalo - do you dump leather armor in the school with your children so that when/if their clothing rots, the only thing to replace it with is leather? Because if so, you can force them all to equip leather armor until they're let out.

I'm pretty sure, even if it was all they had available, non-military wont wear armor of any kind, even leather. Assuming you mean actual armor, and not just clothing made from leather.

[wierd]

some sentients can breed in captivity.

a good one to use is kobolds, since, iirc, they lay eggs.

so do serpent people.

it would be worthy of investigation if tamed serpent people can be abused in the fashion. large quantities of serpent person hatchlings can be produced, similarly to mass producing turkeys, or at least it was possible previously.

(my new job has me so occupied, that i really dont have the time to play anymore.)

[Staalo]

More horrible experiments in the name of science: I added the [INTELLIGENT] tag to dog raws to continue the tragedy training. Unfortunately, while being effective in traumatizing students that also meant the dogs started getting hungry and thirsty...

When I noticed this I quickly replaced the [INTELLIGENT] with [CAN_LEARN] as earlier. Unfortunately that didn't reset their hunger status so now I have a fortress full of starving and dehydrated war dogs who never actually starve to death... I am a horrible person.

Other than that, the tragedy training is progressing slowly but steadily. About thirty murdered animals later some students are getting the "is a hardened individual" status. I'd believe this would be easier with a steady supply of captured invaders.