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[Oaktree]

Best I have done so far (and that was by accident) was tossing a human general leading a siege about 5-6 Z levels straight up to fall back down and break bones on a paved road.  Legends lists him of dying from "a collision with an obstacle",  but I think at least partial cause was the impact of a two-humped camel landing on him right after he hit the ground.

[Perroquet]

I have allready used this modified coinstar for my entrance.
You can start with 10 boulders/brigdetitle and if you have some weapons. A great benefit is, that as more enemies dies in the pathway as more leathal this will be. All separated body parts, clothes, armor makes this setting more powerfull. You have only to ensure that you haulers don't try to remove the refuse during an attack.

[Centigrade]

How would one go about automating this system and making it self contained?

I am imagining an area on the approach to the fortress, let's say a 3x6 rectangle for the sake of argument. This is where we want all of our stuff to fall on top of the invaders, and we want our stuff to fall on each of the 18 squares in a somewhat equal manner. We want to collect all the stuff after each use, and rearm the trap; also, we want a way to get the stuff from anything killed by the trap (bodies, items, whatever) added to the pile of things to drop on the next group. As our final concern, we want the entire operation to be automated such that it requires no (or minimum) dwarf labour: it should trigger on its own, and it should automatically reset and rearm itself in a timely manner.

How would this be done?

[Loud Whispers]

this new "weapon" seems to be too much work for too little fun. I prefer just sealing the outside and pitting my giant and cyclops thrall outside for the invaders to play with. (if i wanted to use a unconventional weapon) or pitting them in the trade depot room with the elves after sealing said room.

I am amazed by your ability to post so consistently with off-topic responses.

Questions of efficiency are rarely considered ever for Dwarf Fortress projects. Otherwise they'd all be 5x1xn hyper efficient cuboids entirely impervious to damage.

[wierd]

I thought bridge-a-pults were impossible to aim, and resulted in erratic tradjectories?

Minecart cannons are at least aimable in the same sense that a mortar is.

The question then, is if 1x1 bridges installed in a checkerboard pattern could be turned into rapid fire "bouncing betty" type antipersonel mines.

Eg, something like:

..B..B..B..
B..B..B..B
..B..B..B..
B..B..B..B

For any individual launch, there is a 50% chance that the item will land on a nearby bridgeapult tile, thus loading it automatically. This only will work if the bridges fire seperately, otherwise items will fall under the bridges that just fired 50% of the time, and get atom smashed.

Could possibly be resolved by putting channels under the bridge a pults, to collect goblinite so it can't be smashed.

Be sure to close it in with walls.

It would be intriguing to utilize a water chamber random pressure plate activation system to have automated random firings.

[Urist Mcfortwrecker]

Isn't this similar to the "Coinstar" training room? See http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=117154.msg3839037#msg3839037 and following posts in that thread.

As far as I can interpret, this is a more lethal version of that.

 pretty much, you got it

How would one go about automating this system and making it self contained?

I am imagining an area on the approach to the fortress, let's say a 3x6 rectangle for the sake of argument. This is where we want all of our stuff to fall on top of the invaders, and we want our stuff to fall on each of the 18 squares in a somewhat equal manner. We want to collect all the stuff after each use, and rearm the trap; also, we want a way to get the stuff from anything killed by the trap (bodies, items, whatever) added to the pile of things to drop on the next group. As our final concern, we want the entire operation to be automated such that it requires no (or minimum) dwarf labour: it should trigger on its own, and it should automatically reset and rearm itself in a timely manner.

How would this be done?

I know of several fairly compact repeater designs, and with the help of creature logic some can be turned on and off while you dump your heaviest trash onto a dump zone hatch, which would ideally drop down onto the bridge when the enemy you wish to kill enters the map. then junk and body parts will get put onto the bridgeapult just by having junk slapped on instead of having it rot away uselessly.

As for the aiming problem, because the game makes parabolas in 3d, walls could try to control where things go, or at least prevent friendly fire.

I realize minecart shotguns are more accurate and equally lethal, if not more, they do require more setup than a bridge and a lever, and by the time you have the metal and spare labor to engrave a track up from the caverns and equip the minecart shotgun, you usually have a well functioning military, but this method allows even crappy wooden weapons to do some damage when claimed from deceased hippies, especially in the early game, when you have little or no access to metals

[wierd]

True.

The issue I see is how to get the goods to return to the bridge(s) safely, reliably, and quickly. Some creatures are very large, or have a high agility, and can theoretically make it through. This means the hell-yard needs to be a relentless autorepeater, with accumulating gibbed body parts and goblinite pieces in constant motion.

A raising bridge on the ground will hurl objects up into the air, where they fall down again. The problem then is having them fall under triggered bridges before they reset, and the resulting atom smash.  Channeling under the bridges requires supports under one of the bridge's edges, or it will discombobulate spectacularly, rather than fire continuously.

The idea here, is to have a singe "control room" with 2 levers. One lever dumps a metered volume of water down 1 z level into another, larger room with pressure plates and a hatch cover on the floor.  This activates the autofire mode, since the pressure plates are what drive the catapults, and the measured volume of the room above makes a 2/3 depth with scattered 3/3 depth water whizzing about. When 3/3 is over a plate, it triggers. This triggers the plates far faster than a creature repeater. The second lever in the control room drains the autocontrol system, shutting off bridge activations. This makes it easily on/offable, and continuous fire.

(Eg, we have a 4x4 tile room above with 4 hatches tied to the "on" lever that fills with 7/7 water from a floodgate that shuts when the hatches open. This dumps 121 units of water into a 5x5 room. The water depth is 4/7, with some 5/7 tiles whirling around. We can have 24 pressure plates in the floor of this chamber set to go off on 5 depth liquid, and 1 drain hatch. The speed that the 5/7 water tiles whirl around is faster than nearly any creature's movement speed.)

A tall wall around the hell-yard will prevent goblinite bombs from escaping. A room perched above the hellyard with drop holes directly above the bouncing betty bridges, cycled with a retracting bridge doubles the pleasure, and ensures the bouncing betties stay armed. This room can be several Z up, to avoid goblin crossbow fire.

This would exploit the stupidity of the goblin ai, where the subordinates all huddle around the leader. 1x1 betty launchers would toss individual units, (and debris) causing them to land on their peers, resulting in stunning, and major injuries. Stunned creatures can't dodge, so the murderhole dropped items can't be dodged.

[Drazinononda]

It may be that a misunderstanding on my part of the above design leads to an irrelevant question such as this one: Would a 5x5 room be large enough that the wave peaks (the 5/7 water tiles you mentioned) would not move faster over the pressure plates than the response delay of a bridge? I don't know how frequently the game calculates water flow, but even if it's as long as 50 ticks, several pressure plates will be pressed several times during their recovery period of 100 ticks, and several times more during the linked bridge's own recovery time of 100 additional ticks. Given the unforeseeable nature of fluid motion I would think it would be better to build a minecart repeater, which would allow more fine-tuning of timing for various bridges.

[Gentlefish]

I think you're talking about a coinstar machine?

So, think of this:

Code: [Select]

BFFFB
BFFFB
BFFFB
BFFFB
BFFFB
(to a length of 10)
WFPFW

Where you have pressure plate P that activates a latch that starts a minecart repeater that raises and lowers the bridges B at oscillating times, flinging gibs and weapons back and forth, the whole thing disabled at the stepping on of another pressure plate by a dwarf, leaving one or both bridges in the downward position.

[wierd]

I believe I have come up with a unique and wonderful implementation of the weaponized bridge system.  Construction is underway. When completed, I will test with a preload of a bunch of harvested clay boulders.

I will use the water peak repeater design, since there are a *lot* of bridges that need cycling. This new design assures 100% landing on bridge tiles! (Assuming it works as expected.)

To prevent goblins from being tossed and falling in an open space (bridge has not lowered yet), verical spike traps will be installed in the landing zone 2 z levels below the bridges.

Again, this design should assure 100% lands on bridge tiles (or bridge holes).

I can't wait to dry fire this beast!