Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[kilakan]

hum I thought of something, glass should have insanely increased damage, but break off and stick in occasionally, but shatter against metal, like glass shattering in a cut, thus intense bleeding and pain, but not all that much damage internally?  Course object damage to destruction will need to be implemented.

[eRaz0r]

<thread necromancy>
Perhaps it's because I haven't been attacked by heavy armour wearing enemies, but I've found that a combination Weapon trap with 6-7 green glass serrated discs and maybe 2 or 3 bronze spiked balls minces through many enemies. 

I have a single line of traps across my 3-wide corridor composed of those, and it's fun to watch the goblins and trolls saunter through it, get sliced up and thrown back towards the entrance, to lie there, broken and bleeding.  If they survive one trip, they don't survive the next.

Given the low-cost of Green Glass discs,  and the ease of resource gathering (Sand is inexhaustible, if you have any at all, and the gather point is static), the only reason not to have a trail of 50 such weapon traps in your approach is time-cost (and making things too easy).

[Kilroy the Grand]

<thread necromancy>
Perhaps it's because I haven't been attacked by heavy armour wearing enemies, but I've found that a combination Weapon trap with 6-7 green glass serrated discs and maybe 2 or 3 bronze spiked balls minces through many enemies. 

I have a single line of traps across my 3-wide corridor composed of those, and it's fun to watch the goblins and trolls saunter through it, get sliced up and thrown back towards the entrance, to lie there, broken and bleeding.  If they survive one trip, they don't survive the next.

Given the low-cost of Green Glass discs,  and the ease of resource gathering (Sand is inexhaustible, if you have any at all, and the gather point is static), the only reason not to have a trail of 50 such weapon traps in your approach is time-cost (and making things too easy).

There is a problem, you might end up making the godblin a legendary dodger.

[eRaz0r]

Heh. Had not thought of that!
I suppose it might happen .. I haven't noticed it happening in my limited experience.  I also combine with several cage traps to catch dodging goblins, and ones thrown aside by the spinning blades. Perhaps that's why I haven't noticed it.

[LemonFrosted]

Since this is necro'd already, might as well point out that blunt weapons work much better now. I've got a whole row of traps made out of silver warhammers and they smash stuff pretty decent now that shattered bones actually incapacitate.

[Euarchus]

10 serrated glass discs

glass

Er... no way! Glass traps are useless. Do bronze or steel, that'll do the trick.

Um... I always use glass trap components and they seem to do just fine on goblin ambushes.

[i874236951]

10 serrated glass discs

glass

Er... no way! Glass traps are useless. Do bronze or steel, that'll do the trick.

Um... I always use glass trap components and they seem to do just fine on goblin ambushes.

Given, I use master glass and master mechanisms (some of the easiest stuff to churn out), but I've also had great success using green glass trap comps.  If anything manages to take a step off of the trap, they end up looking something like this:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Oh, word... I'm responding to 2010.

[sambojin]

But really, why not.......

A standard 3x3(x3->10 weapons) trap design in an entry corridor is more than sufficient to destroy most seiges. Like all successful attacks in DF it relies on differing weapon types. With 10 weapons in each trap, you'll dice/impale/club virtually anything. First row is either bronze or steel discs. These are your slicers to start chopping bits off and start the bleeding. Second row is bronze or steel spears (or menacing spikes) to kill off any larger creatures that got through your first row. Some of the bigger buggers can take a lot of chopping up, so often spears work better. Even if you just use them as upright spikes on a lever (it's not half as automatic as weapon traps, but it feels more interactive). The third row is either copper or silver hammers. Smashes down whatever is left and hits heavy armour users (the armless, bleeding, now vomiting or unconcious sobs). Good mechanisms help to avoid jams I think, but once you've reduced a seige to 10% of its original size without lifting a finger, your military really should be able to do the rest.

Dodgers sometimes "pinball" back and forth through all the traps, which is always a laugh. If you see some enemies without "trap-avoid" or "building-destroyer" tags then it can be funny to have a wooden upright-spear trap-section attached to a lever with some doors built on either side of the section. Just close/lock/forbid the doors once the enemies are in the section and start pulling the lever. Watch goblin pinball. Watch goblin become superman. Watch goblin slowly die. It's a nice way of using some upright spears that are a bit better than no-quality and gives you some really good options for arena fights later. I don't use training rooms for my dwarves, it's an exploit. Goblins are fine though.

Putting cage traps in a row or two before or after your killing ground can get you prisoners if you want, but aren't really necessary. Works great for your super-gobbo-training-deathcamp though.

[Beeskee]

Wow, old thread is old.

I think the main problem with glass was the uninitialized values which have since been fixed. It's on the bug tracker but I forget the ref number.


For the curious, I mainly used glass due to the availability, most of my forts have been relatively short on metal, at least they were by the time I start getting invaders.


Now I'm using a combination of glass traps and a narrow walkway over a deep pit, now if anything dodges a trap it falls and breaks it's neck. The spikes at the bottom help.

[arzzult]

An often over looked fact is that piercing weapons are quite a bit better against armored enemies than slashing ones. Copper arrows/bolts and large daggers can easily go through iron armor and sometimes even steel. Spears aren't as good but can still at least get through armor of the same material as them.

[Kay12]

I've heard that upright spikes, even glass/wood ones, work very well. Wooden training spears still suck, though.

[arzzult]

Well train spears use a blunt attack not an edge.

[Alastar]

Almost everything has its place in my opinion:

Menacing Spikes are practical general purpose trap components: Organ hits tend to be fatal... eventually. This is better than instant kills because there's less danger of jamming traps. They get through armour reliably even when made of glass, and they don't cause an undue number of hauling jobs as the contact area is too small for showers of limbs.

Spiked Balls aren't very lethal - contact area is too small to cause extensive bleeding, penetration depth is too small to hit anything vital most of the time. They are a reliable and low-maintenance way of softening up invaders and useful in dodge-me traps (won't get stuck much, but even if an invader gets through chances are they'll be well-tenderised).

Serrated Disks are very material-dependent. Made from steel or adamantine, they're the most lethal trap components available but high-maintenance (messy and get stuck often) - more useful as failsaves inside of the main killing zones when you really want to secure a kill. Made of glass (less strong than metal but sharper) they tend to shred exposed bits while struggling to get through metal armour or even bone. I like this as invaders tend to armour their vitals only: not too many kills, some amputations, plenty of bleeding.

Giant corkscrews are devastating when made of a decent material - large enough contact area to cut off some bits and kill via bleeding, small enough contact area to reach the vitals through pretty much anything. They also tend to get stuck a fair bit though, and as a wish-me-dead trap I prefer disks.

Giant Axe Blades don't seem to offer enough over disks to be worth using most of the time... I'd rather have 3 hits instead of more mass. If I expect I'd need the added force to get through armour, I'd rather get corkscrews.

[Zaroua]

Glass spiked balls mow through goblins if the trap is armed with a masterwork mechanism. It won't really *kill* anything, it won't jam and by the time the entire squad passed over the trap and starts realizing that they're all dying, there's only one way out. And that way out conveniently is blocked by a pretty damn good trap.


Found out about glass spiked ball traps when I tried to set up a 2X3 formation in front of my cage traps so undeads wouldn't get to the cage traps but would let goblins through unarmed so I could use them for target practice. Turned out that glass spiked balls outright kill or batter goblins extremely effectively.