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[JezaGaia]

I would like to build a trap in my fort by connecting a tunnel to a room with a bait animal chained in a corner.

The tunnel leading to the room would only be open using a lever when there is a megabeast in the cavern so no other cavern dweller would activate it and eat the bait animal needlessly.
The idea is for the beast to trigger a bridge that will close the room as soon as it's inside so my archers can kill the beast from above, the room would be 3z levels high and have fortifications carved in the walls there to avoid fire/poison from reaching the archers.

The obvious trigger to use would be a pressure-plate but I know there is a delay not only on the pressure plate itself but also the bridge and I was wondering if someone knows how many blocks before the bridge I should place the pressure-plate for it to be effective ?

[Blue_Dwarf]

I'm in the process of building similar constructions.

Timing it with a lever, with less than 15-20 tiles between the bridge and the bait, the beast will typically kill the bait and get out. A pressure plate should be faster, but I would still use a similarly long corridor.

Another option is to use at least two bait animals in different corners, which increases the fight time significantly. There is a considerable delay while the beast targets the second animal and fights it, so a smaller corridor would work.

Also, the pathing AI is heavily bugged. If the room is closed when the beast spawns, it may not be able to path to your trap. Same if it gets into a fight with another beast. It will then spend the rest of the game derping in a corner somewhere, instead of going to you.

[JezaGaia]

thanks it's very helpful advice !

In the meantime I've watched a couple of videos and from what I understand pressure plates might not be ideal, for one forgotten beasts are immune to traps, isn't a pressure-plate considered a trap ? so it might be useless
And even if it's not after 99 seconds without input it'll reset and when this happens it sends a new signal if I'm not mistaken ? and if so wouldn't that re-open the bridge and free the beast from the room ?

So I think that having 2 bait animals and triggering the bridges to close the room with levers might be the best solution.
If I'm mistaken please someone let me know

[Saiko Kila]

Forgotten beasts are immune to traps, including pressure plates. Megabeasts are not immune (for example  a dragon).

[JezaGaia]

Forgotten beasts are immune to traps, including pressure plates. Megabeasts are not immune (for example  a dragon).

ah shame, thanks for the confirmation, oh well I'll have to use levers then.

[Saiko Kila]

You can use levers, you can also use some contraptions which could automate it thanks to exploitation of FB's behaviour. But there are problems with said behaviour, it is not as reliable as it used to be, because Toady changed the AI to make it less exploitable (but also more buggy, IMO).

For example, FBs are building destroyers, so they should destroy doors, which then could release water or magma which in turn can be detected by the pressure plate. But this is not as reliable as it used to be, and often they "smartly" ignore such baits. I always do a double trigger system, including manual override by levers, just in cases like this.

[Moeteru]

Unless things have been fixed since the last pre-Steam release, both Forgotten Beasts and werebeasts are completely unable to destroy buildings. Even a simple pair of locked wooden doors is sufficient to contain the most terrifying of monsters (unless they're on fire - then you want something magma-safe like glass).
Just provide it a path into your fortress which takes it through a pair of doors, wait until it's between them, pause the game, and lock them both. Then you can take your time pulling levers to raise drawbridges, walling it in, or just leave it trapped by the locked doors.

If that bug ever gets fixed then you could probably fall back to using more than two doors. It takes time to destroy buildings, so a series of locked doors acts as a time delay giving your dwarves a chance to run over and pull a lever.

[JezaGaia]

Unless things have been fixed since the last pre-Steam release, both Forgotten Beasts and werebeasts are completely unable to destroy buildings. Even a simple pair of locked wooden doors is sufficient to contain the most terrifying of monsters (unless they're on fire - then you want something magma-safe like glass).
Just provide it a path into your fortress which takes it through a pair of doors, wait until it's between them, pause the game, and lock them both. Then you can take your time pulling levers to raise drawbridges, walling it in, or just leave it trapped by the locked doors.

If that bug ever gets fixed then you could probably fall back to using more than two doors. It takes time to destroy buildings, so a series of locked doors acts as a time delay giving your dwarves a chance to run over and pull a lever.

thanks this is very helpful advice ! I had an issue with FB previously generated that were coming back into my fort because there is no warning then and so they had time to come in eat the bait and leave before I was aware anything was going on and checking the visitors list every 5 min gets old very fast.
With some doors to occupy it I have time to be made aware it's there, it's a great alarm system even without the bug.