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[Random_Dragon]

I've been tinkering around with mass-pitting goblins and have had some...very weird results, in the current version. I figured out a climberproof setup that renders them unable to ever escpae once they've been dropped below, but the issue is that they only seem to get dumped through the hatch half the time.

Is there anything that might cause a goblin to avoid being dumped down the hatch properly? I've done the usual system of having every hatch in inside a single pit zone, making sure every cage stockpile is adjacent to one of the hatches, etc.

Note that the wiki seems to have some false information here: I've tested forbidden the hatches and that appears to make the mass pitting fail 100% of the time, whereas the wiki advises forbidding the hatches.

[Bumber]

I think seeing military dwarves might cause the goblins to freak out and break free?

[Random_Dragon]

I think seeing military dwarves might cause the goblins to freak out and break free?

That seems...huh. I can try not having militia nearby just in case, but that seems pretty weird and wacky.

[PatrikLundell]

It haven't worked for years. Half of the time the prisoners break free and every prisoner set to be dumped at the same time break free as well, even if the previous ones have been put down well before the civilian taking the dumping task arrives.
Note that they can break free even if the cages are built immediately beside the hatch.

I guess you could achieve "dumping" by building cages, hook those up to levers, release the prisoners, and then have them try to get out through a corridor whose "floor" is a retracting drawbridge hooked up to a pressure plate (plus an override, as some prisoners will inevitably stand on the pressure plate without leaving at one time or another, although a secondary "escape route" might work as well).

[Random_Dragon]

It haven't worked for years. Half of the time the prisoners break free and every prisoner set to be dumped at the same time break free as well, even if the previous ones have been put down well before the civilian taking the dumping task arrives.
Note that they can break free even if the cages are built immediately beside the hatch.

I guess you could achieve "dumping" by building cages, hook those up to levers, release the prisoners, and then have them try to get out through a corridor whose "floor" is a retracting drawbridge hooked up to a pressure plate (plus an override, as some prisoners will inevitably stand on the pressure plate without leaving at one time or another, although a secondary "escape route" might work as well).

Well that sucks. There's really no trick at all to get them to reliably dump?

[FantasticDorf]

The logic for transferring creatures in cages is overall better & more effective since it was redone sometime in 44. using a cage rather than dragging vicious unpredictable animals about is also applied to prisoners and semi-intelligents, so its safer to transfer cages then manually release than throw people anywhere.

• Pitting as a technique of execution is quite archaic also; unless its for dropping creatures in specially designed trap halls for disembowelment with a faint promise of release or retribution with the obligatory (this lever collapses all levels of the fort) at the end. The challenge and purpose is entirely player constructed.

Beastpits haven't really been so popular because they are messy and reqiure all simultaneous pit creatures if not tamed to be slain first, and you get as much free-entertainment by playing in arenamode. Lava pits are still pretty good but there's no returns on what is essentially a garbage chute, much the same as atom-smashing bridges the line thinning between dumping cages and dumping people meant to be contained in the cages.

Ponds? Rarely would even bother, technically difficult to catch large fish to stock them that are also aggressive (zombie fish, now that's a possibility) though it accepts amphibious animals too, has more use for farming.

[Random_Dragon]

It does rather obviously have the advantage of not needing a lot of tedious building of cages, linking levers, etc for every single creature though? That's why people use mass pitting, because it's way faster. :/

[Bumber]

You can minecart-shotgun creatures from cages, I think.

[anewaname]

You can minecart-shotgun creatures from cages, I think.

Yes, GlazedFaith has visuals of this.

[Random_Dragon]

That's...also a lot more hassle. Guess this goes in the "toady plz fix eventually" pile too. :v

[PatrikLundell]

I use minecart shotguns to throw prisoners out of their cages into a room leading to an atom smashing corridor to get rid of the prisoners with the least amount of corpse hauling. Its efficiency is far from perfect, though, as there are quite a few cases of prisoners not thrown out of their cages (requiring another go), some prisoners dying on impact, and some fighting each others (members of undead sieges aren't too well disposed towards goblin invaders). In addition to that, the buggers have a tendency to camp rather than run for the exit. Finally, some cages (and an occasional prisoner) gets stuck in the fortification, with occasional prisoners managing to get out from the fortification on the "input" side, resulting in a need to call in the militia.

It's the least bad implementation I've found for dealing with sieges that keeps the mental impact from corpse hauling down to a minimum, though (apart from turtling, which would keep my dorfs away from the topside tree produce and logs).

[gchristopher]

You can minecart-shotgun creatures from cages, I think.

Heartily recommended. If you launch them upward at an angle, you can make them fly in a parabolic path to a giant target, where they will explode into a rain of body parts on impact.



Still sad that the temple contest thread petered out, because putting the temple underneath the rain of clown bits was pretty magical to watch in action. (If maybe not the best thing for dwarven psychology.)