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[Knick]

My fortress is in a biome wtih no iron ore.  Since I am not really able to properly armour my dwarves, I am relying on traps for defence.  I have a long, single-tile corridor that I am slowly but surely filling with traps.  Mostly I am using copper and green glass serrated discs.  I am also adding a few more traps, specifically, an atom smasher, and a pit-fall trap.

I want the atom smasher to be sprung by a pressure plate.  My theory is that the first invader will reach the plate, and 100 steps later, the drawbrige will smash the invaders behind.  If more than one invader treads on the pressure plate, will the second trigger override the first?

I know that pressure plates can be fine-tuned so that they are only triggered with a certain weight.  Given that dwarves and goblins are the same weight, can they distinguish between the two species? 

A final question, not trap related.  I am building scaffolding around a large, cathedral-like structure.  I keep getting the message that the build order for up/down staircases has been cancelled--item used or destroyed.  What gives?

[Garath]

triggers, like pressure plates and levers, have a cool down period iirc, or in any case, once the signal is sent it will be executed. Untill the bridge has lowered it will ignore other triggers to get it back up again.

[smjjames]

I believe you can also set the plates to not have citizens trigger it.

[WanderingKid]

I want the atom smasher to be sprung by a pressure plate.  My theory is that the first invader will reach the plate, and 100 steps later, the drawbrige will smash the invaders behind.  If more than one invader treads on the pressure plate, will the second trigger override the first?

The bridge will raise when the first one steps on the plate.  When he moves off, 100 tics later the bridge is coming down, unless someone else steps on the plate and aborts the signal.  Plate activated atom smashers are tough to use.  You'd be better off using a repeater that raised and lowered the bridge sidways so there was constant pathing across the terrain.  They're still tough to setup and get them used properly.

I know that pressure plates can be fine-tuned so that they are only triggered with a certain weight.  Given that dwarves and goblins are the same weight, can they distinguish between the two species? 

When you setup a pressure plate, you have to specifically tell it to see civilians, otherwise it'll ignore them.

A final question, not trap related.  I am building scaffolding around a large, cathedral-like structure.  I keep getting the message that the build order for up/down staircases has been cancelled--item used or destroyed.  What gives?

Not sure.

[acetech09]

A final question, not trap related.  I am building scaffolding around a large, cathedral-like structure.  I keep getting the message that the build order for up/down staircases has been cancelled--item used or destroyed.  What gives?

Is your mason currently building anything? I know that stones tasked for construction are sometimes not heeded by other tasks, not sure if workshop orders will. If not, have you dumped anything?

[jcochran]

Well, traps are a highly effective defense. My standard embark channels the edges with a 'wagon only' channel and leaves one point where everything else has to walk through. I call that point my "welcome center" it consist of a small room with 4 entrances attached to the perimeter channel. Each entrance is a hatch cover linked to a pressure plate with the pressure plate non-citizen triggered, any weight. Effectively, that makes all of the entrances one way for enemies. I use 4 of 'em so as to provide as much opportunity as possible for entire squads to get inside the room before panicking and fleeing (means that there's usually one or more entrances available while the most recently used ones are waiting for the pressure plate to reset so the hatch cover will close and make it pathable again. Then only usable exit from the room leading to the surface then passes through a goblin grinder filled with traps. Just in case a creature is standing on a hatch when it opens, I have a tunnel that passes under each hatch that leads back to the unsecured edge at one end and up to the room at the other so it doesn't provide any pathing to my fortress. That tunnel is filled with cage traps. Finally, I have a drawbridge connected to a lever that when closed blocks off the 4 entrances to the room. The only thing that can get through as kobold thieves and fliers. Everything else either gets killed in the grinder, or trapped in a cage for later looting and execution. Whenever I get a siege, ambush, mega-beast, etc, my procedure is.

Call a civilian alert restricting all dwarves to a burrow that on the surface is every more than 21 tiles away from the channeled edge. One level below the surface, everything no including the channel at the edge, and finally below that, everything. The 21 tile limit is to keep enemy crossbows from killing any dwarves on the surface. And because of the burrow restriction (which /doesn't/ include the goblin grinder or anything in the welcome center) they don't go cleaning out any jammed traps just because something go stuck in 'em. If figure that 15 or so single weapon weapon traps in a grinder can tolerate a few of 'em getting jammed. As for the cages, I've got about 60 of 'em in the tunnel underneath (I thought that the 25 or so I had originally was overkill.... Until I got a siege with 8 squads and 10 orgres).

Then watch the welcome center. When a building destroyer gets close, throw the lever closing the drawbridge and protecting the hatches (and at the same time encouraging the building destroyer and associates to enter the tunnel filled with cage traps).

I may open and close that bridge a few times. If I have some enemies in the entrance room of the welcome center frantically attempting to leave, I'll close the bridge to 'encourage' 'em to either go through the cage corridor underground or step into the grinder and be killed. After the room is empty of live enemies, I'll open the bridge again (when closed, invaders can still path through the cage corridor underneath the welcome center, but I don't want all the cages to get filled. If that happens, some of the enemies might escape.)