Print

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

[Centigrade]

EDIT:
Of course, naturally, all pressure plates will be assigned not to trigger by my residents. Don't want to have ‼fun‼ that way yet. Could work for danger rooms, however if you assign a squad into one.

By contrast I would love to see this setup somehow result in friendly dwarfs being set on fire.

[Oaktree]

I generally use 1-2 weapons per trap.  Since I see a lot of goblin cavalry the general goal is to cripple mounts so that they stagger a few more tiles and then pass out - if you kill the mount the riding goblin will then often just run away.  But since I want the goblinite the goal is to have the mount crash in range of the marksdwarves so that they have two stationary targets to fletch.

Usually using spiked ball traps for this, with some serrated blade traps mixed in for de-limbing stuff.  I also started playing with giant corkscrews and they are pretty impressive as well.  If they get a throat or heart shot the target staggers a tile or two before bleeding out; which does not jam the trap.

If you want mayhem in a confined space using pressure pads then working some variant of the "grinder" system would work:

aabctttttcb <-- in a corridor going left to right in this example.  Usually multiple corridors close together so that pathing is not totally interrupted by open hatches.

a = spike trap : this is generally lever or repeater operated and is used to protect the outer hatch from building destroyers
b = hatch over a depth one pit - the two pits can connect and come back up in the midst of the traps if you want
c = pressure pad set to open the adjacent hatch.  Note that the positioning is such that those triggering the pads get into the middle but will have trouble getting back out.
t = traps.  Whatever you want, but note that they can and will jam eventually.  So a few spike traps mixed in might be something to do.

A couple easy refinements are adding a few cage traps at the far end to catch any that get through (and some do as they dodge in the right direction),  or a fortification for a few markdwarves at the one end so that they can snipe at intruders working their way through.  The latter might also be useful for cleaning out goblins who "camp" there after their squad leader gets squashed.  The pit area might accumulate a few wounded goblins as well and need cleaned out - practice for the melee dwarves I guess.

These set-ups used to be a fortress design standard for me.  Each access tunnel into the fort had a two-corridor grinder (along with a by-pass that could be used when not under attack with a drawbridge).  Used up a lot of mechanisms to get put together, but also allowed for one tunnel to be closed off and cleaned out while the others remained open.  My designs since than have evolved to a central "kill box" that all the tunnels lead into.  The box is trapped heavily, but the main defense is that when all the retracting bridges are down the attackers have an extensive zig-zag path in front of marksdwarf galleries.

The goal is the same though.  Get as many goblins into the system as possible, seal them in, and then kill them all.
 

[Centigrade]

I learned today that having access to sand on one's map makes optimisation an inconsequential concern. An array of magma furnaces and a few hundred sand later, I am pretty set on defenses forever. Who cares how many traps get jammed when you can literally have an unlimited number of fully-armed traps?