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[Hyndis]

Keep on digging. You will always find some type of metal, eventually. Even if you don't find iron you can at least find something else you can make into weapons and armor.

The alternative is to use engineers as your weapons. A simple pit trap can doom even the most legendary goblin. Sure, he may be +5 in all skills, but that won't save him from a 15 Z level fall. Collect goblinite at the bottom of the pit, and use the flux to turn it into steel.

[mrtspence]

I have made a pair of deadly, large-scale pit traps that have been greatly successful at removing sieges. Just lure gobbos onto a retractable bridge over a 4-5 z-level pit lined with glass spikes, pull a lever/let them hit the pressure plates and you will soon have handfuls of gobbos plummeting to slow, horrible deaths below.

Got 25 gobbos during one siege between two of them. A few were killed on impact (fluke-y headshots with spikes) , but most just fall and break bones then slowly die over the next month or so. They take very little time to make and are highly effective.

I am also working on a larger-scale flinging bridge, to throw gobbos into a really big spike-pit, but that it more for fun than anything else.

[Hyndis]

Flinging them from a bridge is very easy. Just make a narrow, 1 tile wide path over a pit. You can make it out of constructed blocks or just don't mine out that strip of ground. Build bridges across it. Wide bridges, such as 5-7 tiles wide. Connect them to a lever.

There will always be a path into your fortress along that ledge. However the retracting bridge will continually extend and retract. While extended the entrance is very wide to handle large amounts of traffic, but when retracted they all have to go slowly, single file.

When the bridge extends or retracts everyone on the ledge will be flung about in a random direction. With 8 possible directions there is a 87% chance that they will plummet into the pit. If they do not plummet into the pit they end up stunned from being flung about and so the next cycle of the bridge there is another 87% chance of pitting. Compound those numbers over several dozen cycles it would take to walk from one end of the ledge to another, and there will be almost nothing that makes it through.

On the off chance anything does make it through, be sure to build a couple cage traps to capture the incredibly lucky bastard that managed to beat all the odds.




This will not work on mega beasts of course.

[Ragingpantsless]

After about two seasons of exploratory digging I managed to find a small vein of Limonite. However this was after first attack failed to get to me, thanks in part to a wild giant leopard. The glass constructions worked, as did the retracting drawbridge, but one somehow survived. I'll throw an elephant at him as soon as I get one trained.

[Hyndis]

To ensure nothing survive either make the pit very deep, or have another means of finishing the survivors off. Easy way is by flooding it with water. If you have access to a river or brook this is very easy to do. Or you could build a whole bunch of weapon traps at the bottom, where survivors moping around in there will eventually die to them. Or perhaps a catapult.

Another possibility is having cage traps at the exit. Anything that survives the fall will attempt to escape the pit, either to fleet the fortress or kill dwarves. If the only path from the pit to these goals is through a huge pile of cage traps you're okay. Goblins are not trap avoid. Kobolds are trap avoid, but kobolds run away and aren't much of a threat.

[Samrobot]

Guys a easy pit trap is to dig deep enough to the caverns build a floor at the bottom of the pit any gobos that dont die pull the lever and they drop into a cavern of nasty monsters

[Khift]

Limestone appears to actually be the worst sedimentary stone, at least in my experience. It feels like half the iron that would normally be in sedimentary stones is replaced with copper, turning what should be an upside (limestone bearing copper in addition to normal sedimentary stone veins) into a significant downside. This is just my experience, however.

[Eagle_eye]

aluminum weapons would really... suck.

[Urist Imiknorris]

I can rarely if ever find copper in limestone, so it's fairly random. Sandstone, though... that's another story.

[Aramco]

I can rarely if ever find copper in limestone, so it's fairly random. Sandstone, though... that's another story.

Limestone has more iron, the others seem to have more of everything else.

[Samrobot]

My last fort had Andesite as the top layer and i have huge veins of copper everywhere and random veins of hematite.  My current fort has limestone and has Coal/Magnetite/Limonite sticking out everywhere. Not one sign of copper

[Urist Imiknorris]

My last fort had Andesite as the top layer and i have huge veins of copper everywhere and random veins of hematite.  My current fort has limestone and has Coal/Magnetite/Limonite sticking out everywhere. Not one sign of copper

Malachite. Also tetrahedrite, but that's everywhere.

[Impudence12]

How is wood easier to mass produce than glass, which is infinite if you have a sand layer?
[/quote]

Glass is limited by fuel. Trees are fuel. In some cases it's skipping a step. Obviously with magma, or an abundance of coke it doesn't make a difference.