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[Michael]

In fortress design, it is desirable to put bridges on your caravan entrance so as to stop thieves from using it.  Being three-wide with no doors, it is difficult to defend otherwise.

But DF's mechanics present a problem, in that caravans arrive unexpectedly and do their pathfinding instantly.  The player is forced to lower the bridges at the start of each season (except winter), leaving his defenses open longer than ideal. 

Worse, the caravans don't always show up -- in my last fort the humans skipped me in the second year, but showed up in the third.  So I had my back door open uselessly in year two summer, but got bypassed in year three because I didn't expect them and didn't lower the bridge.

I have one idea to fix the problem -- allow the player to set a "Caravan Waypoint".  When a caravan arrives and cannot immediately path to the depot, it will instead path to the waypoint and then wait for a path from there to a TD to open.  Likewise, on exit the caravan will head to the waypoint if there is no immediate route to the map edge.

Thus, the player can set his CW to the outer lip of his normally raised depot bridge, and have security without the risk of wagon bypass.   The player can even create an "airlock" of bridges, although the outer one will still need to be open by default.

[riffraffselbow]

Generally nice idea; I wouldn't use it, as I'm a Tranquil-lands pansy, but probably useful for those in the savage areas who face frequent sieges.

[Michael]

Generally nice idea; I wouldn't use it, as I'm a Tranquil-lands pansy, but probably useful for those in the savage areas who face frequent sieges.

It's not sieges that concern me -- in fact I've never played long enough to see one.  Rather, it's theives (kobolds, raccoons, mountain gnomes, etc.) that I want to stop.  Detecting these is as good as stopping them, but it's easier for them to evade detection if they can use the caravan entrance, rather than the front door which leads straight into a barracks.

And I prefer to settle in places with raccoons.  I like to collect animals, and animal thieves are easy to collect since they will walk straight into cage traps at my front door.  Trap-immune kobolds are just annoyance, though.

Actually, if I was faced with a seige, I'd probably seal the front door, and open the back.  My back door design features a pair of retracto-bridges over a pit going as deep as the game will allow.  So I'd extend the bridges, wait for the gobbos to take one step over my 3x20x12 Pit of Doom, then pull the lever and drop'em.

[tsen]

Better if the caravan just stays off-map but you get a message that "the <Race> caravan from <Civ> is nearby" so you have some warning.

[Granite26]

Michael... Try chaining animals (dogs for me) near your entrance... I don't bar up, I just leave the dogs out there, and they deal with it.

Also useful for detecting any Terminators trying to sneak in

[Rowanas]

I always build a wall as my starting aim and assign meeting areas to the three-tile-wide caravan/siege entrance (I only ever have one entrance unless I accidentally screwed up). Then everybody hauls everything from the caravan down to my stockpiles and that way early kobold raids get nothing from me (plus my war pigs destroy them). Later siege additions generally consist of ever-exapnding areas of walls with traps. Since goblin thieves appear before every goblin ambush, the moment a thief is discovered I post my military. Basically, I always rely on the forewarning. no foreqwarning = Rowan having FUN.