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[Fnear]

Trap #1: (sort-of fail)
Creatures will dodge steam into the magma, so I'll put a pressure plate in front of the grate to raise water onto an ever-burning artifact and it will cause it to fire steam on attackers.

Recipe:

• Obsidian road with channels of magma along each side.
• A hole in the road covered with a grate (later a hatch) and below, paved with coke.  (Lighting an artifact directly with magma melted the artifact, completely destroying it)
• Set the spot below the hole alight with magma, drain magma, drop flammable artifact in hole (build floor over, designate stockpile, forbid the artifact when it arrives, and deconstruct the floor).
• Next to the hold, another tube running down to pressurized water.
• Floodgate to raise pressure to level of hole to generate steam.

Actual Result:
Creatures do NOT care about steam.  Steam does not flow up through a grate.  It will flow up through an open hatch.  But I have a nice steam generator in the middle of a section of road.  And magma (with grates 1-z down for quick-collection of goblinite) ready to accept goblins that dodge away from boring old weapon traps.
Trap #2: (success-ish!)
Constant V shaped chess-board of magma stamping down on whatever is trying to move through the area and getting sucked back up.

Recipe:

• 5-wide tunnel
• Above the tunnel, 5 V-shaped pump arrays with holes down to the road at intake and output.  (h = hole, sS = pump [inOUT])

Code: [Select]

sShsShsShsShsS
  sShsShsShsShsS
   sShsShsShsShsS
  sShsShsShsShsS
 sShsShsShsShsS

• Magma flows in at the left, gets pumped up at the far right (into a channel that returns it to the left end)

Lessons learned:

• Pumps pump from BELOW only.  They will not pump a fluid on the same level.  (Moved first line of pumps up a level, added walls to make an area for them to pump from)
• The intake square of a pump is completely open space.  If you stagger pumps, magma will flow through the diagonals (this torched my axels and required a redo of the power system; had to redo left end to eliminate diagonals while still dropping to the staggered holds for the second set of pumps - no worries on the other diagonals - all the possible flow spaces are also pump inputs)

Actual Result:
This basically works!  The left side pumps control when the trap is "on".  Turning off the left side lets the rest of the pumps move the magma back into the reservoir above.  There are a few tiles of 1/7 magma left over, and the staggered magma is more random than a chess-board pattern.  But woe be to the invaders that try to run through it.
Trap 3: (weird and total fail)
Based on the obsidian machine gun designs; Wave of generated cave-ins along the sides of a road destroying whatever triggers the trap... and then everyone behind that person with successive waves of disaster!

Recipe:

• 5-wide tunnel with channels on both sides.
• Above the channels on the outside (every fourth tile), magma pumps with empty space under their output.
• Above the channels on the inside (every fourth tile), water pumps with empty space under their output.
• Water feed in the middle (capped with hatches to limit available water), Magma feed on the side with same hatch caps.
• Complex gearing to allow pumps to fire sequentially.

Actual Result:

• Right side pumps just generate steam and a bit of the magma falls into the channel.  No cave-in.
• Left side pumps basically just pump the magma into the trench.
• (I suspect since the water is shared, the right side is starving the left side, but all of the water is converted to steam - no obsidian is formed!)

This is the most deadly and awesome concept (1 legendary miner/mason and 5 peasents already died draining magma to redesign it).  It is based on the obsidian machine-gun.  But it doesn't work at all .  Any ideas?

- Fnear

[SRD]

Atleast you're trying

[BastiBasti]

Theise seem like good traps (if I understood them), seems like your being a bit too complicated, I mean, if your traps don't work yet. No offence, I coudn't do better! The best idier i got for a trap, is building a waterfall, forbidding it, then setting up my fort so goblins will path trough the shallow bit at the end. Result- they fall down the waterfall onto some lovely spikes.

[Loud Whispers]

(Lighting an artifact directly with magma melted the artifact, completely destroying it)

TRULY TIMES HAVE CHANGED

In terms of traps, can't help you much.

[Fnear]

Theise seem like good traps (if I understood them), seems like your being a bit too complicated dwarfy

Fixed that for you .

Theise seem like good traps (if I understood them), seems like your being a bit too complicated dwarfy awesome!11!!one!

Fixed it better .

But seriously, I don't disagree.  I've done drowning traps before where I have a sealable entrance for caravans and a second entrance that goes through a long twisty maze (that I close both ends of and fill with water).  That works great! almost... too great...  Magma works for that too (though drying it out after is an issue... I could just grate the whole maze, but trolls will rip up the grates).  Cage traps I definitely still use, but mostly to stop lone snatchers.  Ultimately, I'll probably implement some dodge traps - those are proven effective - as a last line of defense (after my other... bizarrely complicated traps... sort-of work) 

[BastiBasti]

I agree with you aggreeing, I wasn't dissing it's just that sometimes its best not to make an effective yet complicated trap, somtimes its more ‼FUN‼ to do an simple trap, but do a half assed job of it and watch the fun that porceeds. And training your surgens is allways good....

[Nil Eyeglazed]

This is the most deadly and awesome concept (1 legendary miner/mason and 5 peasents already died draining magma to redesign it).  It is based on the obsidian machine-gun.  But it doesn't work at all .  Any ideas?

It's hard to imagine exactly what's going on without drawings.

It sounds like you have offset water pumps and magma pumps set to output to the same tile, but only steam is being created, and only on one side of the trap?

So the fact that it's working differently on either side suggests that you built each side slightly differently than the other.  That's to be expected-- build order is a concern, and you can't build things simultaneously.  For instance, if you have two pumps feeding from a single square, and they're both always on, the most recently built pump will always get all of the fluid, and the pump built first won't ever get any.

The one video I saw of a cave-in trap (I trust video first, screenshots second, forum reports third) involved water and magma spilling out from two bridges and meeting in a single square between the bridges.  I have read reports from 40d where the author (eli dupree? i think) claimed that water and magma won't obsidianize while both are falling (although I've heard more recent reports denying this).  If I wanted to do this and was tired of experimenting, just wanted to get it done, I would design a system where the pumps fed simultaneously and continuously onto two bridges (to permit cave-ins) rather than directly on top of the channel.

I'm not sure which method you're using to offset the water and obsidian pump.  If this offset is too small, one fluid will not have fallen before the other pumps.  Depending on your exact reasoning, it would seem to make more sense to me to pump directly into your channel with one fluid, and drop the other fluid from above-- over-under pumps, rather than facing pumps.

[Fnear]

Quite true Nil!  Turns out the side being starved of water actually WORKS if it isn't starved of water.  I'll do a bit more experimentation on it, but the trap is highly effective even with one side working.  Really demolished an invasion force with generated cave-ins and trenches for them to fall into.

The downside of traps based on magma is that you set enemies on fire.  And they can set your dwarves on fire.

To Mafol Isakmelbil Olonestrith Idok - Mafol Spatteredtomes the Geared Spy of Pointing.  One of my original 7 dwarves, trained to legendary in Axe with his partner Alath Bronzeclaps the Throne of Illness (who died in the last invasion).  With 85 notable kills, including a Roc and the vampire blind-cave-fish-woman human diplomat.  The (at least) 5 dwarf kills aren't listed... I probably should not have made you the militia captain.  You single-handedly broke the sieges of 509 and 510.  If only Dostngosp hadn't set you on fire...

I'll see if I can post screenshots of the traps

[Leafsnail]

Theise seem like good traps (if I understood them), seems like your being a bit too complicated, I mean, if your traps don't work yet. No offence, I coudn't do better! The best idier i got for a trap, is building a waterfall, forbidding it, then setting up my fort so goblins will path trough the shallow bit at the end. Result- they fall down the waterfall onto some lovely spikes.

I tried building something like this (not sure how to reliably forbid the area, so I've just sealed it off with doors attached to a lever instead).  It seems to drop things to their death pretty nicely, I'll see if it actually takes care of ambushes when I get one (goblins have been reluctant to attack ever since their snatcher got sliced into over a dozen pieces by a serrated blade trap).

[BastiBasti]

Theise seem like good traps (if I understood them), seems like your being a bit too complicated, I mean, if your traps don't work yet. No offence, I coudn't do better! The best idier i got for a trap, is building a waterfall, forbidding it, then setting up my fort so goblins will path trough the shallow bit at the end. Result- they fall down the waterfall onto some lovely spikes.

I tried building something like this (not sure how to reliably forbid the area, so I've just sealed it off with doors attached to a lever instead).  It seems to drop things to their death pretty nicely, I'll see if it actually takes care of ambushes when I get one (goblins have been reluctant to attack ever since their snatcher got sliced into over a dozen pieces by a serrated blade trap).

Talking about my waterfall trap? Yeh, main problem is trying to get dwarf not to go down it, because ti relies on the golbins pathing, but since (i think) gobbos and dwarrow have the same pathing, you need to do somthing cleaver to save your dwarfs.

[Nil Eyeglazed]

Talking about my waterfall trap? Yeh, main problem is trying to get dwarf not to go down it, because ti relies on the golbins pathing, but since (i think) gobbos and dwarrow have the same pathing, you need to do somthing cleaver to save your dwarfs.

A simple way to deal with this is to provide a slightly longer path, then adjust the path costs with traffic designations.  Goblins don't pay attention to traffic designation costs, but dwarves do.

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  #####
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 # ### #
 # ### #
    ^
 #######

If you paint the straight path restricted (traffic cost 50?) and the alternate path high traffic (traffic cost 1), goblins will still tend to travel over the trap (^) but dwarves will go around.

But merchants, diplomats, etc, also ignore traffic designations, and it's not foolproof for dwarves either.

[Ross Vernal]

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=92559.0 <-- cave in cannon

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=68925.0 <-- cave in trap science

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=54532.0 <--- Urist McTzu's Art of War, complete with similar traps

[BastiBasti]

Talking about my waterfall trap? Yeh, main problem is trying to get dwarf not to go down it, because ti relies on the golbins pathing, but since (i think) gobbos and dwarrow have the same pathing, you need to do somthing cleaver to save your dwarfs.

A simple way to deal with this is to provide a slightly longer path, then adjust the path costs with traffic designations.  Goblins don't pay attention to traffic designation costs, but dwarves do.

Code: [Select]


  #####
 ##   ##
 # ### #
 # ### #
    ^
 #######

If you paint the straight path restricted (traffic cost 50?) and the alternate path high traffic (traffic cost 1), goblins will still tend to travel over the trap (^) but dwarves will go around.

But merchants, diplomats, etc, also ignore traffic designations, and it's not foolproof for dwarves either.

Yeh, I know but from what i hear gobbos sometimes path differant ways, I did think of that but i'm worried that if they did manege to path the differant way... anyway, i don't want dwarfs getting out and then luring gobbos the right way.