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[wierd]

Seriously? Water is the easiest to use for this.

Setup: 2 tile trench. One tile has a pressure plate calibrated for 4 depth water. It is linked to all those spikes.
Dump (1) 7/7 chamber of water into the trench. (From above, using a hatch) This will make a travelling 4/7 flow that bounces back and forth very quickly.

This will trigger the pressure plate faster than even the spike traps can respond, never gets tired, and never goes on break. Just floor it over, and let it run.

[Fleeting Frames]

No, dorfs are the easiest

However, a pressure plate will send off signal 99 steps after the trigger for on has been removed - and adding new on triggers during that period will reset the delay. Furthermore, spikes have 40 steps delay for signals.

Thus, the theoretical best a single-plate setup can do is 3,5 times longer than 2+ plate setup.

Given the random nature of water, I'd be surprised if a water system managed to get average of 160 steps per raise, though.

However, for a two tile trench with pressure plate? My experiences with two-tile trench water reactors suggest that it'd send a signal once every few days, perhaps. The 4/7 would have to cross the single tile slower than a dwarf walks 10 steps to produce a signal after the first, and water waves usually outrace dwarves if you look at them bouncing around

For perfect timing, you'd need a multi-plate minecart repeater. Two for repeating spikes came up again recently and there are others. No randomness in the system.

[wierd]

I just dont like all the necessary digging, track placement, cart loading, and traffic forbiddance designation that goes with minecarts.

If I can get some liquid bouncing around in a trench to do the work, I find that preferable.  If I have to lengthen the trench to make the signals reliable, so be it.

It takes Urist hardly any time to dig the trenches, and takes significantly less planning and thought.

[Fleeting Frames]

Eh, depends on application.

For a spike artifact bait trap I might just take the simple NE-NS-NW ramp bouncer, add bit of track to return a cart back onto it when thrown out, install plate somewhere, and garbage dump a cart in. Bit more building or designating required, but on the other hand don't need to babysit a pond zone for correct amount of water.

For linking up hundreds or thousands of spikes for a significant undertaking, however, I would aim for a little more thought than "what if I cut the size of wiki's water repeater design into third, that's better right?", more planning than "lets not research the buildings involved and just dig tiles till things are right" and more testing than "can't be brothered to boot up DF but I guess it might work".

It'd save several times the resources required, after all (and time needed to otherwise build all those extra spikes)

(And fellow dwarfputers, do test your designs. Writing code, one takes longer to test it than write it after all :v)

[wierd]

Put another way:

I would not link hundreds of traps. Instead I would engineer a maze of maybe 100 traps, with corridors controlled with raising bridges, artefact furniture distractors, and sensor pressure plates.

Knowing that clowns like to stop 2tiles away from distractors, I put plates there. Just past the distractor, is a bridge switch plate. This closes a path and opens another. The goal is to keep clowns patching in the maze, but distracted by bait.  All the while they stand on pokey traps, which get reliably toggled.

At any given time, there IS a path that leads into the fortress, but getting past a distractor causes that path to change, forcing repathing over the spike plates. Distractors are placed along the route specifically to cause the clowns to pause long enough to permit bridges to rise or fall, and allow sufficient space to avoid destroying the bridge on a clown's head.

I can get the clowns to stand on the same traps repeatedly that way.

If I were going to incorporate minecarts, it would be as hallway cleansers loaded with Slade boulders.

[PatrikLundell]

Sure, it takes a little bit of work to set up a mine cart repeater, but I've got a design from a forum thread that does the job well, so I'm sticking with it. After setting it up, it's just a pull of a lever to start it and another to stop it. If I was to use rollers rather than impulse ramps for power, however, the amount of work would increase significantly. The impulse ramp repeater is generally built well before a 10 spike spike trap has been built, however.
The only traffic forbiddance I do with my repeaters is to ensure I forbid the stone in the tunnels before activating them. Nobody has any business down there.

@wierd:
I don't know why you'd try to use pressure plates against trap avoiders. Have you really tested that design?
Unless you're hacking, I don't see how you'd get slade boulders until AFTER you've dealt with the clown rush...
If you're using artifact distractors, I don't see why you'd need more than one spike repeater (and I'd make it out of candy in that case, as you're as likely as not to get DF to crash due to the trap component breaking crash bug).

[Sanctume]

If the target is on 1 tile, just use minecarts that drop from above and propelled by impulse ramps to repeat forever.

And more minecarts can be dropped via hatch above also.

I would prefer checker board system over spiked halls.

[wierd]

Not all are trap avoiders/web immune. Some spray webs.

I also incorporate pastured nongrazers, which panic. They often trigger the plates, which is by design. My lead in/out is enough to catch this. I use civilian triggered plates. I might do a writeup sometime.