Cage traps were way overpowered in 40D, now that relying on them just means something else'll come along that doesn't care about them and will slaughter everything you've got they're about as close to balanced as anything in Dwarf Fortress ever gets. They're pretty great for early forts when you don't have a dozen metalworkers cranking out weapons and don't want to deal with elaborate goblin disposal systems or malfunctioning military yet, but they're not an effective replacement for a more general defense system.
If you've got more than like a dozen seeds there's basically no reason at this point you can't just hermetically seal up your fort 99% of the time and have a truly flawless line of defense that nothing can ever penetrate ever (except that that's lame and boring), and non-trap forms of active defense are completely horrible and deadly until the very late game, so really balancing out defense is a lost cause already; you make your fort as impenetrable as you feel like.
anything that gets knocked out can be caught in a cage trap, demons, titans, FBs, dwarves ect.
though it's not without draw backs. Most people cannot find the resources to sustain cage traps to their full efficiency. Wood is a resource that needs to be used for other projects and at 3 bars a cage, the metal smithing cost isn't worth slapping it on repeat. then caught hostile creatures are a bitch to get rid of, so there is no viable or quick way to recycle them. It's useful if you're in an area with a good amount of trainable wildlife, but anywhere else it's just too much of a strain on resources.
A single elven caravan gets nuked, you'll wind up with more cages than you could ever reasonably use.
They're also great junk furniture to train up blacksmiths that can use all the crappy metals good for nothing else, of which there's usually a near-infinite supply. 'Availability of cages' should really not be a problem.
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Topic: Cage Traps: Overpowered? (Read 3331 times)