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[Garath]

confirmed to work. Rather labor intensive to set up though, since you need to spike all tiles in about a 3 tile radius

i would think that if you only particularly care about killing some of the goblins, and don't care if the rest simply flee, that 3x3 would be overkill. or heck, if the rest of them will start to move inward as you slaughter the rest of them, so much the better (huh... now i have an urge to design a freestanding structure that channels creatures, then find a way to make an impassable, unbreakable barrier around the edge pop up at a moment's notice... powered by a goblin-triggered pressure plate in the middle of the whole thing).

maybe if i made a ramp down to the structure, then covered said ramps with drawbridges that raise up when triggered by a pressure plate attached to a NOT gate?

I had killed a squad of 10 down to one left standing just outside the spike area and the idiot still didn't flee... Or step closer. Very frustrating.

[SharkForce]

I had killed a squad of 10 down to one left standing just outside the spike area and the idiot still didn't flee... Or step closer. Very frustrating.

huh. well, was it really all that horribly impossible to kill the one remaining guy with troops?

[Wannazzaki]

Parimeter fence of traps 1-2 deep. Capture everything that spawns.

[nightwhips]

A downside to cage spam is that they'll either make invasions pathetically easy or you'll have leaders caught in the cage with their squad milling about, and trying to dislodge squads like this often costs me more dwarves than I like.

can't solve the first problem (easy invasions) for you, but have you considered just putting spikes around the cage trap, attaching a lever, and setting it to be pulled repeatedly when you feel it is necessary?

Booyakasha. Nice thinking.

Additionally, you can make the trap cross a little more effective by placing five traps in the center, rather than one.

    x
    x
    x
    x
  TxT
xxTxxx
  TxT
    x
    x
    x

x = wall, T = cage trap. This way, filling one trap doesn't render the cross useless, because animals will still path through/over the filled cage onto other primed traps.

[MenacesWithSpikes]

Downside of trap crosses is that Urist McCageGrabber may be exposed to ambushes as he paths back and forth.  Since animals tend to cluster around the trap cross, Urist McHunter, if you have one active, may get ambushed around here as well.  The goblin ambushers themselves tend to cluster around the trap cross... which is good (they tend to end up in the cage traps) and bad (for Urist McCageGrabber or Urist McHunter).

Of course, there's probably a better way to do this than the way I've been doing it.  I have a set of inner walls, but I haven't walled around the entire embark yet for this fort.

[slothen]

I place about 10 cage traps randomly around the map edge, without crosses or pathing restrictions.  They seem to catch plenty of things.

If squads milling about their caged leader is an issue, just put up a ballista battery a screen or two away.

[micha]

i try to avoid cage traps because

• a) i'll want the animals to be there in 20 years,
• b) they lead to drop rooms and that's work for me, not the dwarfs,
• c) catching stuff endanger dorfs on pickup,
• and d) i prefer mazes.

instead of traps i use the ' pressure plate opens hatch ' technique to trap visitors going in a 3 wide space between two ditches that make a U-shape around the fort .. and offer a pathable .. but never available .. lure, my always open main entrance.

all but flying building destroyers keep themselves out this way. mil dwarfs have a training room a wall/drawbridge so that they can enter the holding area to enjoy themselves.  two dogs/peacocks/whatever chained up behind some glass overlooking the entrance to the holding area insure that there are no real ambushes, ever.

final bonus of this no-trap approach is that the top of the U is available as an outward going 'trap' where hatches mess with the merchant path finding until i let them out (caveat, so far i've only built this for 1 wide convoys.)

just say'n.    making drop rooms, for siegers was fun for a while, but i usually wound up with 2 or 3 sets of traps for an 11x11 drop room, storage for empty and full cages and dwarfs getting killed cause they'd want to replace traps in the middle of some mayhem.  not good.  to catch breeding pairs place three random cages one each corner of your outer wall or ditch. they will fill up.

if you want wood,  use path-costs to protect saplings and build nothing whatsoever in your courtyard until you have wood from an underground source.  once every other season or so go out to gather planta and cut wood. just pay a little bit of attention to the timing of things and noone will die. you won't need beds for a while if your booze is good, so bring booze and some 30ish cheap stones to wall up right away in case you embark somewhere nasty with majestic critters

so, hey,  traps are for insurance and caging the insane. they belong indoors; don't eradicate the wildlife! just say no to outdoor traps! 

* i use traps with the defense mod to brutalize flyers pathing into dedicated roof openings. all other openings, going out, or going in from the courtyard go to an up-stair with a hatch or a ramp with a bridge on top.   ** thanks to everyone who's helped me shape these ideas with their posts, maybe someone somewhere will get something out of this one too.