Any way to make a military dwarf drop their baby?

[Charles]

I started training a squad of dwarfs and one of them had a baby midway through their first year. I though nothing of it until a small goblin raid showed up and I mobilized the squad. Turns out the dwarf with the baby decided a battle is a great bring your kid to work day.

Personally I thing it is hilarious and have been running a save of the battle a few times to see if the baby has any impact on the fighting ability of the dwarf, but I would like her to drop it now. Any ideas on how to do that?

Also the raid is a mixed dwarf and goblin raid. I find that kinda odd, but have no clue how to figure out what lead to that composition. Is that normal, I suspect its because the goblins somehow got a king installed in a neighboring dwarf empire.

[pauloandrade224]

that sounds hilarious. OFC theres no way to make her drop the baby what did u think this is!!!!

[Lora Grim]

For a moment i read "any way to make a military dwarf drop their beard".
Thought this thread was about to be deeply heretical.

[Empath demon]

Yeah, you can't drop babies. DFHack lets you exclude dorfs with babies from militia selection, which is the best option for me. There can be some opportunities for !!FUN!! if a steel-clad axemaster loses her baby in battle. Babies reach childhood after 12 months according to the wiki, so it won't take long to get them back into the fight.

Goblin civs enslave other races and press them into armies, but dorf civs can sometimes contain or even be ruled by gobbos or whoever. You can check the civilization of the invaders on their unit screen somewhere, and then look for settlements on the world map or read up in legends to get an idea what's happening.

[Fel]

Babies starve to death if not held by their mother.
The usual "solution" is to take dwarves that are holding their baby out of the military at least until the baby grows into a child.
To be even safer, you even want to disable hauling for the mother so they never go where a battle took place.

Any battle with the baby held means a huge physical danger to the baby but even if it doesn't get hit it will get permanent trauma.
That kind of trauma on babies and children means that they are unlikely to be able to grow up into adults, as they will keep getting more and more stressed but won't be able to get positive thoughts from working.

This is also why you usually want to disable chores on children, all of them if possible but at the very least anything that could make them witness a battle or its resulting corpses and gore.

[Charles]

Thanks for the answers guys! Yeah, I figured it would be a lost cause. I kinda need her for the battle so it looks like that kid is now going to be known as "Battle Baby" and will become a lifelong military dwarf. The story behind it is too dang good not to do something with it.

[Fel]

I hope you have prepared mist generators in various places to allow the baby to reach adulthood then.

[Charles]

Цитата допису Fel:

I hope you have prepared mist generators in various places to allow the baby to reach adulthood then.

I do plan on putting some in, but the baby is very special. She saw all sorts of carnage....and didn't care. Reading through the personality page makes me think shes a little bit psychotic and wont really mind a little carnage. Also I haven't noticed any memories so hopefully with some toys and stuff she will be fine.

[AlP]

I think there was a way to do it by using waterfalls. Presumably falling water can wash the baby off.

[Charles]

That makes sense. Whenever the baby gets hit by something I noticed it gets dropped. Water would technically hit it so it would probably drop. It would also be a little more gentle than using something like rocks on top of a hatch.

[LastChime]

yeah sometimes large amounts of water pressure will do it.

[rome of oxtrot]

on the other hand, sending military dwarfs who have a baby with them on an offsite mission will lead to the baby gaining military and tactical experience, all with zero risk of anything negative to the baby (other than being killed outright, of course)

[Charles]

Цитата допису rome of oxtrot:

on the other hand, sending military dwarfs who have a baby with them on an offsite mission will lead to the baby gaining military and tactical experience, all with zero risk of anything negative to the baby (other than being killed outright, of course)

That is really good to know! I want that kid to be the best dang warrior in the fort at some point. That trick will make it a lot easier.

[AlP]

I don't think there's any practical value in that. It takes them 18 years to grow, and in that time you can train your entire fort to legendary in most skills, negating any benefit from the baby experience.

[Charles]

Цитата допису AlP:

I don't think there's any practical value in that. It takes them 18 years to grow, and in that time you can train your entire fort to legendary in most skills, negating any benefit from the baby experience.

I would disagree, but you are absolutely right. I'm more so doing it just to see what type of cool story could develop out of it.