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[Ravendarksky]

Hi all,

So I'm working on a very delicious trap which I like to call the Goblin Blender.

It currently has two modes
a) Smoothie
b) "Maim and capture"


The trap consists of a 3 tile wide walkway (I want caravans to come along it of course!) with 3 tiles of minecart track on either side.
I've then build high speed rollers going in opposite directions on the furthest track tiles and hooked up the powering gear to a leaver.
Finally I've dumped and forbidden a minecart onto each roller (one per roller pair)

The trap is simple, when we get attacked I burrow my dwarfs and pull the leaver. The minecarts SHOOT back and forth across the tracks, skipping over the 3 tile gap and kill everything foolish enough to be in the corridor. This is mode A "Smoothie" and makes short work of a full squad of dwarfs in masterwork steel NO problem.

I then realized that more fun could be had as the minecarts knock the targets around quite a lot as well as knocking them unconscious. This means that you can use them for caging trap avoid creatures as well as pitting things. To achieve this all I added was to dug out 2 squares behind each roller which then contains either a cage trap or a hole down to !!FUN!! plus some vertical bars to toggle the trap setting. (If the bars are in place things fly into the rollers and get stuck/pulped by minecarts, if the bars are open then they fly into the cage traps)

Here is a diagram (not in proper dwarfen ASCII sorry!):

W*WWOOOWW*W
X|R==OOO==R|X
X|R==OOO==R|X
X|R==OOO==R|X
X|R==OOO==R|X
X|R==OOO==R|X
X|R==OOO==R|X
X|R==OOO==R|X
X|R==OOO==R|X
WWWOOOWWW

W = Wall
O = Open space/Paved road
* = Gear
X = Pit or cage trap
R = Roller
| = Vertical bars/floodgate or whatever
= = Track

Now all this was great... UNTIL I decided to try my hand at caging a forgotten beast. He was smashed by the rollers onto a cage trap but unfortunately wasn't rendered unconscious on the first blow. It then proceeded to dismantle all my rollers and ruin my trap!

So what I'm asking for is help making this trap IMMUNE to damage from building destroyers. Unfortunately I expect this will take it out of the realms of a simple trap and into the mega project side of things. So far I've been exploring having the minecarts powered through two fortifications, but I can't seem to get them to have enough speed to make it back through the second fortification. If this was doable though then I could safely hide the rollers behind a wall.

Once I have it working I'm going to add in a goblinite disposal and minecart retrieval system (Sometimes the minecarts get stuck in the open squares when you power off the trap)

[wierd]

At the expense of sounding like a total douche...

Why not use impulse ramps instead? Don't require ANY power, other than a push start in certain semirare cases, and are immune to destroyers.

[Ravendarksky]

hmmm, could be a good idea. Will try this shortly and report back.

I'd originally used rollers for high speed and so I could turn the trap on and off, but I'm sure I can figure out a way of doing that and also using impulse ramps. I'm not sure they are going to give me the speed required, but I will experiment and see.

[itg]

Unfortunately, most [TRAPAVOID] creatures are also [NOSTUN], which means you won't be able to knock them out. However, If you can catch a giant cave spider and encourage it to spew webs all over your cages, you'll be able to catch anything but web-shooting megabeasts.

If you'd rather use rollers, you could try putting a pit on between the walkway and the fortifications you tried earlier. Maybe the minecart will shoot through the second one more easily since it's forced to be airborne. If not, it will fall down the pit, but in that case you could construct a cart return system down there.

[Ravendarksky]

Unfortunately, most [TRAPAVOID] creatures are also [NOSTUN], which means you won't be able to knock them out. However, If you can catch a giant cave spider and encourage it to spew webs all over your cages, you'll be able to catch anything but web-shooting megabeasts.

If you'd rather use rollers, you could try putting a pit on between the walkway and the fortifications you tried earlier. Maybe the minecart will shoot through the second one more easily since it's forced to be airborne. If not, it will fall down the pit, but in that case you could construct a cart return system down there.

Hi!

Thanks for the tips/suggestions. I've tried putting a pit before the fortification but the minecarts then get stuck on the other side of the fortification. This also stops my capture mode from working I guess I could have the minecarts dropping down a pit past the fortification and going back to the start, but I'm worried a fb is going to get knocked down there and mangle the inner workings!

As for webs, I have a three eyed web shooting kestrel mountain titan trapped in my fortress but I'm not sure I could get it to effectively shoot webs where I need them

[itg]

Thanks for the tips/suggestions. I've tried putting a pit before the fortification but the minecarts then get stuck on the other side of the fortification. This also stops my capture mode from working I guess I could have the minecarts dropping down a pit past the fortification and going back to the start, but I'm worried a fb is going to get knocked down there and mangle the inner workings!

Well, you'll just have to make the drop lethal, then. But maybe try a pit on both sides of the fortification, first. Reading your post, It sounds like maybe you put the pit on the side closer to the rollers, which is the opposite side of the one I meant to suggest. Good chance it won't work either, but worth a try.

As for webs, I have a three eyed web shooting kestrel mountain titan trapped in my fortress but I'm not sure I could get it to effectively shoot webs where I need them

It's not too hard to do. First, you'll need to prepare a small enclosure with fortifications on the shooting sides, with a drawbridge to seal off the entrance. Build some drawbridges around the outside, too, so you can "turn off" the titan when necessary (i.e. block its line of sight to the outside). Chain a puppy around where you want the webs to go. Stick some furniture in the enclosure, ideally an artifact. Dig a corridor from the enclosure to the titan's current location. Sooner or later, the titan will path to the furniture to try to destroy it, then you can seal it in. It'll shoot webs at the puppy until you raise the outer bridges.

[Larix]

Regarding the minecart grinder: you could just use my patented perpetual-motion design:

That's the model with six carts, should be pretty sure to hit everything that moves across the tracks.

To the east and west, there are pits containing a pair of E-W track ramps (outer ramp is underground, just mine out a square and 'b'uild 'C'onstruction 'T'rack part there). Ramps connected both to a wall and a proper 'down' direction (can be a floor, ramp on the same level or a hole) always accelerate carts, even if they're not actually coming from anywhere above, enough to leverl the cart up a neighbouring ramp and onto the upper level. Impulse ramps use the same principle. I built this design with hatch covers over the eastern ramps, so it can be switched off - the carts will roll onto the hatch, bump into the wall and stop, _or_, if they're underground when the hatch closes, constantly bounce between the two ramps there. To re-start it, just open the hatch again. The channelled-out tiles allow to keep intruders away from the hatches, although it wouldn't really be a problem - if they dismantle a hatch, this doesn't stop the machine, it just makes it harder to switch the machine off...

[Ravendarksky]

*deleted*

I managed to get your design working! Thanks!

To make it truly troll proof I replaced the hatches with one giant retracting bridge.