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[A_S00]

Right now, about two thirds of the deaths in my fort are from one problem.  Here it is:

I have a danger room, upright training spears linked to pressure plates in my main hallway, normal stuff.  Using burrows, I've disallowed civilians from going in there, and I've got like 6 layers of no-pets doors keeping the cats out.

Problem is, when a caravan comes, the military dwarves really want to help bring trade goods to the depot, even though they all have hauling disabled (I guess all dwarves get the Bring Item to Depot job, regardless of labors?).  If they make it, that's fine, but a lot of the time, their tour of duty comes up while they're hauling, and instead of bringing the trade good to the depot, they bring it to the danger room (where they're scheduled to train), and then they drop it on some spikes.  Then, Urist McSuicide picks up the Bring Item to Depot job, goes to grab it (even though it's several squares into a burrow he's not allowed in), and then, when he gets to the square the trade good is on, I get:

Urist McSuicide cancels bring item to depot:  restricted area

...and then he walks out of the danger room, back to a civilian burrow, and promptly restarts the same job, walking right back into the danger room.  This goes on a few times, until either the caravan leaves, or he gets unlucky and the spears break his arm...at which point he's at the mercy of dwarven medical practice.

Is there any way to stop this from happening?  If I can get any of the following:

-Military dwarves don't haul trade goods to depots.
-Civilians don't try to grab items from restricted burrows.
-Military dwarves don't bring hauled items with them when they go on duty.

...to happen, the problem will be fixed, but I have no idea how to do any of those,

Halp?

[FuzzyZergling]

Put your military dwarves in training full-time, maybe?

[thburns]

You could try to set up a restricted traffic zone on, and around the plates. For when you don't want UristMchaulswhathesnotsupposedto, to get impaled.
Or, the one thing I like to do for danger rooms is link the spikes to a lever, you control when the spikes are out. So that way accidental injuries/death are less likely to happen. I know its time consuming to link a shit ton of spikes up, but, if it's a danger room you shouldn't have too many tiles to link.

[Vndetta]

I've tried restricted traffic zones to fix a similar problem and it was unreliable at best and completely ignored by everyone at worst. In my opinion the lever is the best option that we have available - while you do have to have a dwarf full-time pulling it on repeat when it's on, at least you can turn it off when trading time comes. The only other solutions I've found are to:
1) Have the military active all the time, or
2) Have them live in a completely closed-off area with forbidden doors that no other civilians can reach, or
3) Draft everyone else into inactive squads with armor so they aren't injured by the spikes.

I'd go with the lever-on-repeat option, but #3 is certainly viable if you have the resources (and have pets & babies safely put away, of course).

[Merendel]

well you've got the pet blocking doors, you could always lock a pair of them when a trader shows up to seal off the danger room.  just lock em while hauling is happening then unlock afterwards.  It wont hurt your military dwarves to spend an extra few in game days in the danger room or be locked out for a few days of their rotation.

Also where is your trade goods stockpile in relation to the depot?   if the only goods you plan to sell is only a few tiles away from the depot there is much less hauling time for your military dwarves to do this.  you can also try to cut down on the amount of trade hauling by tradeing high value bined stuff instead of lots of individual things.   I tend to trade mostly in foodstuffs and mass  produced trap componants.   5-6 bins and mayby 10 food pots and I can buy out the whole caravan if I chose too.