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[Saiko Kila]

I have a setup, where invaders must have to go through a trapped corridor, under ballista and catapult fire. The intention was that some of the invaders jump to the pit, some other get shredded, and if led by a leader, they stand around his body and allow themselves to be executed. Instead of an elven caravan a zombie invasion happened, and I could test the setup.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The first victim was pacifist son of my siege operator. She injured him critically when he stood in front of the ballista, and even tried to load another arrow instead of helping him (after I disabled the shooting, she went to eat something, the son died a couple of minutes later, and was replaced at his post by his brother. This reminds me why dwarves should be sterilised). The shooting from catapults and ballistae continued, and no zombies ever wandered through the second trap. Similarly, no thieves and wild animals. There came one wild grizzly bear with the zombies, but fortunately it was being scared away by my operators, who were trying to retrieve arrows - I used this fact to catch the bear later, he was male and I had only females from elves.

Now, there's something I find strange: most of the zombies were killed by the first trap. After battle I have counted 102 zombie bodies on it, plus one goblin thief who went with the crowd. Some zombies jumped forth, after being hit by some components of the first trap, and were dismembered and killed by the second trap. And about 20 zombies were killed by siege engines. Siege engines also revealed a hidden kobold thief, one of two who were attempting to rob me hiding behind the zombies (another one has revealed himself later to a Legendary+5 marksman, who came to kill the last zombie). The first revealed kobold had his hand and leg broken by cobaltite stone, but was able to flee the way he came finally, occasionally losing consciousness for a while. No-one jumped into the pit, though it was full of body parts anyway.

The first trap had exceptional mechanism and 5 weapons: iron morgenstern, green glass corkscrew, iron maul, spiked green glass ball and pine spear. The spiked ball was responsible for most kills I believe. This weapon was planned to only rough up the invaders, and force some of them to jump to the slave pit. I suppose I have overestimated toughness of some of my opponents.

Questions here:
1. The traps never jammed, which I find unusual. Has the frequency of jamming been lowered in v.34 or zombies are such soft targets that they don't jam the weapons?
2. Why zombies did not attack the kobold, letting him go? Are they friends? Because the zombie civ is in fact a dwarven civ, and the kobold civ is another entity.
3. Also why zombies didn't attack the grizzly? I thought undead loathe all life. I saw them sparing some birds and snakes in the forest during previous sieges, but thought it to be accidental, everyone has his priorities. But here it's clear they didn't care.

[CandyOreVein]

High quallity gears make things less likely to jam and such.

[I am Leo]

Jamming is pretty rare. I haven't seen it for amny a fort. The ballistae are a more than a tad superfluous in this sort of design. Five tiles of traps in a row each fully loaded with pretty much anything will do the job, especially with a pit on each side for creatures to dodge into, will hold off a siege of hundreds.

This is why I don't use traps any more, too easy. Fully automated magma traps are the way.

[Urist Da Vinci]

...
The first trap had exceptional mechanism and 5 weapons: iron morgenstern, green glass corkscrew, iron maul, spiked green glass ball and pine spear. The spiked ball was responsible for most kills I believe. This weapon was planned to only rough up the invaders, and force some of them to jump to the slave pit. I suppose I have overestimated toughness of some of my opponents.

Questions here:
1. The traps never jammed, which I find unusual. Has the frequency of jamming been lowered in v.34 or zombies are such soft targets that they don't jam the weapons?
2. Why zombies did not attack the kobold, letting him go? Are they friends? Because the zombie civ is in fact a dwarven civ, and the kobold civ is another entity.
3. Also why zombies didn't attack the grizzly? I thought undead loathe all life. I saw them sparing some birds and snakes in the forest during previous sieges, but thought it to be accidental, everyone has his priorities. But here it's clear they didn't care.

Are you using a mod? That could explain the unusual behaviour.

I use wooden training axes and low-quality mechanisms in my weapon traps if I want to force enemies to dodge into a pit. The trap does pathetic damage, so it will likely never jam, and the trap's attacks are super easy to dodge, which is intended.

[Spinning Welshman]

I experienced something similar with an undead siege all dying on a single row of traps, 50+ undead, and the traps were still killing.

Could it be affected the undead creatures health system? Damage to undead is calculated differently, that could be affecting how often traps get jammed by them?

[Saiko Kila]

...
morgenstern,

Are you using a mod? That could explain the unusual behaviour.

No, I just renamed it subconsciously, it is "morningstar". I use vanilla game with Ironhand's graphics.

Nevertheless, after posting this message I got a goblin siege. The traps and enemies were behaving differently this time. Two of the traps finally jammed (the first and the third one, it took less than 10 goblins for the first one to jam), several goblins jumped down to the pit, and goblins ventured as far as the sixth trap goes. Which is what I was expecting from the start. That means that zombies indeed are much more easily dispatched by the trap, and don't jam it as often as living creatures. Maybe not at all.

This may be related to the different health system, sure. My Legendary+5 marksdwarf sometimes shoots more than 20 bolts into a goblin, before the critter dies or collapses. Hero goblins are particularly hard to kill, not least because of their dodging skill. For zombies, one bolt is usually enough, an they are very easy to hit. Or maybe this simulates their gelatinous, decrepit, putrid bodies.

[Naryar]

I've never seen a weapon trap jam in DF2012, easy as that.

Didn't used many of them, but on at least 100 weapon trap uses i've never noticed jamming being a problem. Most of these being large serrated discs.

[Garath]

my feeling is that jamming has to do with superfluous attacks. You get 30 attacks but attack 3 kills, big chance of jamming. 10 attacks and no. 9 kills, small chance.

[Loud Whispers]

Zombies are very fragile. Traps make short work of them very quickly, and jamming is not frequent in good traps. Zombies are also very slow, which is why they left the grizzy and Kobold alone... As for birds... Buggy AI with fliers.

[Count Dorku]

I've definitely had traps jam in 34.06. Some goblin and troll corpses got caught in weapon traps during the largest and most gruesome siege I've had so far.

[morderkaine]

I have definitely had traps jam on goblins and trolls. 6 weapon traps of varying quality and weaponry killed a whole bunch in a big siege, but then the goblins started marching back and forth over them with no problem. Had to wait for them to retreat so I could get dwarves to go clean them.
Havent had the chance to try it on zombies yet.