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[Rastaan]

Hey all.

The dream I have is for my entrance hall to be an awesome ancient tomb style Sliding Wall trap.
Somewhat of the setup:
_        _
>|___|<                   >, < = Direction of sliding.
>|___|<                   ___  = Pressure plate (to initiate sliding)
>|___|<                     |    = Wall
>|___|<
>|___|<
>|___|<
  |___|
TRADE DEPOT

So, basically. Any goblin who tries to come through will trip at least one pressure plate, thus setting a section of wall to sliding inwards. As he runs, he will activate more plates and start more sliding, eventually resulting in a nice red wall-stain.

The only problem is that I'm stumped on any way to get this working as intended...I'll probably have to settle for a compromise, but I wanted to see what the diabolical pro's on the forum had to say first!

[o_O[WTFace]]

You could make the walls out of drawbridges.  When raised they would be funny looking walls, and when someone pushes the button stuff gets smashed and then removed from the universe.  Otherwise I'm pretty sure walls won't move. 

[The Architect]

You can't really do what you want. There's a thread of mechanics requests going, and moving walls and player-specified triggers are part of the requests.

[Rastaan]

Oh, brilliant! That would be awesome indeed.

With that out of the way (for now), I'm open to suggestions about alternatives.

Drawbridges are an awesome idea, but I have a habit of relying on the goblins clothes for trade goods...Does atomsmashing get rid of them too?

Other suggestions include a dwarf-made magma tube and a roof attached to triggerable supports. This captures the basic idea, but vertical.

[mal7690]

Liberal use of drawbridges?

Because of the item-space-infinity-collision system, you can't have a pressure plate occupy the same space as something else, but with a delay system, you could achieve the right effect.

Also, opening/retracted objects occupy a 5th dimensional space, so they aren't physically existent.

I however have done similar things with doors where the trap is tripped and the gobbys, instead of having a nice big path suddenly have a small and trapped path to walk through.
Like it looked like this:
nxvxn
nxvxn
nxvxn
nxvxn
nxvxn
nxvxn


x = door
v = trap
n = wall

so normally it's a wide corridor to walk down but it can become small.  It works nicely for the hall layout I use, which is long and wide.  It is however, a linking hell.

[The Architect]

Drawbridges smash anything and everything except spoiler-y creatures, who are smash-proof to avoid abuse of "atomsmashing". This is actually a boon. You can make more value in trade goods with one field of sweet pods and a cruddy cook than an entire large goblin siege will bring you, and lots of low-value goblin clothing tends to just lag your game.

The standard methods for retaining clothing are drop traps and flood traps. Then there is just lopping the goblins to pieces with swords, or killing them with any other weapon. A champion soldier will dispatch anything quickly, but swords are massively overpowered at the moment (and thus your best choice if you just want to get it over).

[NecroRebel]

Actually, the thing that determines whether or not something can be smashed is size and size alone. 10+ can't be smashed, smaller can. Simple as that. It just so happens that clowns are size 11 and bigger and are among the most common things that would be desirable to smash. Things like elephants, giant lions, tigers, and jaguars, and megabeasts can't be smashed either, but for the most part they either don't attempt to enter your fort or are better off caged and tamed, so the atomsmasher immunity is less noticable.

[The Architect]

Well, learn something new every day. I knew about size, but I didn't know anything was large enough other than megabeasts and clowns. Spoiler-y things, as I said. I'll be keeping an eye out for large predators now if I ever use a smasher for defense 

[Rastaan]

I usually just have a 3-wide hallway PACKED with cage traps.

If it comes through, I'll catch it. Then build the cage in my meeting hall if the tenant is worth showing off.
If not, I'll chuck 'em off something tall. That way, all their items are heaped in a convenient little pile, which is right next to the trade depot. I usually leave the low value stuff, it's the occaisional giant cave spider silk item which makes it worthwhile.

[Talion]

Use an auto-sealing obsidian dropper.
This involves having the corridor below two connected layers of water, one layer of open space and one layer of magma. After activation the magma drops into the water and turns into unconnected obsidian. Then it falls as a cave in. After mining the obsidian out the trap resets.

[wagawaga]

After playing Evil Genius lately, I just cannot wait until DF gets these walls AND wind-generators (or their medieval equivalent, which would be giant fans). The only thing that resembles fans currently is moving water, but is laggy, unreliable and unpractical.

You could make the walls out of drawbridges.  When raised they would be funny looking walls, and when someone pushes the button stuff gets smashed and then removed from the universe.  Otherwise I'm pretty sure walls won't move. 

You cannot do that, at least not with a setup like that one in the picture, as drawbridges cannot be build in the same tile as a pressure plate, and so goblins on the plate will be smashing-immune.

[LoneJedi7]

the architect is right in that you cant cause mud-slides, the drawbridge approach will work, but there is one problem. if you want to take out caravans, the draw bridge will just explode into its raw materials upon hitting them because they are size 12.
better ways (in my opinion) would either be just to connect the pressure plates to vertical spikes......or (better idea) to mine out (not channel) several z-levels below the hallway making a pit (put something Fun at the bottom), then set up the ceiling to collapse on the floor when the pressure plate is triggered causing a massive cave in that drops them into this pit. then simply rebuild the floor and ceiling and hook up the triggers again to reset it.

[o_O[WTFace]]

You could make the walls out of drawbridges.  When raised they would be funny looking walls, and when someone pushes the button stuff gets smashed and then removed from the universe.  Otherwise I'm pretty sure walls won't move. 

You cannot do that, at least not with a setup like that one in the picture, as drawbridges cannot be build in the same tile as a pressure plate, and so goblins on the plate will be smashing-immune.

True, but tweaking which plates trigger which bridges could acomplish that easily.  Goblin number 1 steps on the plate and triggers the bridge behind it, squishing the rest of the squad.  Also, don't forget levers pulled on repeat, thats an easy way to deal with all sorts of trap designs. 

[MC Dirty]

Actually, the thing that determines whether or not something can be smashed is size and size alone. 10+ can't be smashed, smaller can. Simple as that.

Not really as simple as that. Building destroyers can smash drawbridges. If the bridges are lowered, they can attack any part of it and if it's raised, they can only attack the raised part. All clowns have [BUILDINGDESTROYER:2].
Does 10+ mean 10 or larger than 10? If yes, that's incorrect, because size 10 creatures can be smashed.

For the record: Non-megabeast, non-clown creatures larger than 10 are:
Giant Lion, Bluefin Tuna, Bull Shark, Giant Tiger, Marlin, Treant, Bull Shark, Hammerhead Shark, Hippo, Manta Ray, Ocean Sunfish, Swordfish, Wagon, Great White Shark, Tiger Shark, Elephant, Sea Monster, Sea Serpent, Basking Shark, Whale, Whale Shark