Print

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

[Baffler]

I am attempting to make use of traps for the first time, I read the wiki but it didn't answer a few questions. First off, if I put down traps and the merchants go over them, will they trigger the traps? Second, it says wood is possible to use for certain trap components, but is this worth doing? Lastly, How frequently do weapon traps jam? I ask because I plan to put some menacing spikes in weapon traps outside the walls and don't want to put my mechanics in too much danger if they are unreliable.

[MonkeyHead]

Traps are only triggered by hostiles or unconcious friendly creatures (though there are some notable creatures with "[TRAPAVOID]"). Merchant wagons can not path over traps, but pack animals have no issue in doing so. You will have to put your depot outisde of any traps to access wagons. Weapon traps jam with regularity - I find my spiked ball traps jam with single corpses stuck in them, but my serrated discs tend not to as they gib the enemy. Menacing spikes are only useful in 2 situations: 1) an enemy falls from above down onto them (useful in dodgeme style traps), or 2) you connect them to a repeater system or lever so they can be extended and lowered to skewer enemies. Wooden traps are only useful against unarmoured enemies, and will do minimal damage through most clothing - they will lack mass to do decent blunt damage, and being made of wood limits thier sharpness for cutting/piercing. Glass discs are useful if you have no metal, but you should have an abundance of copper if nothing else and copper spiked balls are devastating.

[Chaia]

All trap components have the same chance of getting jammed by corpses. If you want your main trap corridor unjammed forever, use training weapons with 20z-level deep pits next to them.

[jcochran]

Actually, according to the wiki, weapon traps jam 50% of the time when they kill the creature. So bleeding 'em to death generally doesn't jam the trap. For my goblin grinders, if I have 10 weapons, I'll populate the grinder with 5 traps of 2 weapons each instead of 1 trap with all 10 weapons just because they'll jam. After all, it takes a lot longer for 5 traps to all jam than it does for 1. As for menacing , I believe that MonkeyHead is confusing them with upright spike traps. For upright spike traps, he's perfectly correct. However, using them in weapon traps is quite useful since they tend to cause bleed damage and as such don't directly kill the creature. So they don't jam as often. But the creature does get injured and does bleed out and die (at least for those that bleed).

[Garath]

that's why I like spiked balls too. Only a direct hit to the head will cause a kill, which doesn't happen too often, but the goblins come out with multiple broken limbs, easy meat for the cleanup squad

[AutomataKittay]

I am attempting to make use of traps for the first time, I read the wiki but it didn't answer a few questions. First off, if I put down traps and the merchants go over them, will they trigger the traps? Second, it says wood is possible to use for certain trap components, but is this worth doing? Lastly, How frequently do weapon traps jam? I ask because I plan to put some menacing spikes in weapon traps outside the walls and don't want to put my mechanics in too much danger if they are unreliable.

Merchants won't go over traps, at least wagon won't. I've not tested with pack animals since wagons have better capacity and traps blocks depot access. Traps won't activate on anything friendly, unless they've been stunned, unconscious or webbed ( creature that shoots web doesn't get webbed ). Diplomat can 'disable' traps for their civ unless you rebuilds them, if they goes over it to talk to your dwarves.

Wood's worth it if you don't have anything better yet.

Weapon trap jams half the time if they get a killing shot, corpses get stuck inside of the trap and dwarves will come to unjam them. That's why blunt trap like spiked balls are popular with some players, they get killing shot a lot less often.

Menacing spikes can be linked to a lever and toggled by some busybody, They won't jam if remotely activated, it'd have to be set as upright spear or spike, I forget the wording. Then linked to a lever, and so on.