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[vjek]

For 34.07, I've verified the following is still true:

• Screw pumps will not pump all the liquid off of a tile (down to zero), they'll just pump to 1/7.
• Non-flying creatures fall through hanging pressure plates.
  

So, given that is still the case, I have no solution for the problem of liquid evaporation preventing pathing in sealed trapped hallways.  You can't pump the pressure plates dry, evaporation is unpredictable/unreliable, and using triggers outside of the hallway has its own (worse) set of problems.

If you fill every square in the sealed trap hallway with 7/7 liquid, the pressure plates will prevent pathing until evaporation clears them.  This is undesirable/not ideal.  I have a working design that just uses a large number of pressure plates to "play the odds" with respect to evaporation, but it's not flexible in terms of location or layout.  I'd like more options.

If the pressure plate layout doesn't block pathing, the creatures will walk right through, avoiding them, when each pressure plate has liquid on them, waiting to evaporate.

I've used a bridge-floor design, and a grate design.  Neither of these help due to pressure plates requiring "ground" or a constructed wall to be built upon.  Removing the constructed wall creates the hanging pressure plate, but walking enemies fall right through after that.  Having the ground or constructed wall beneath creates the situation that only evaporation will clear the last 1/7 liquid from the tile.

Has anyone come up with an elegant solution to this problem?  (Yes, I know I can build two entire systems, but that's a workaround, not an elegant solution.) 

[Girlinhat]

...you seem to have forgotten to include any real context.  Reading your post, even reading it carefully, I'm lost as to what you're talking about.

[vjek]

...you seem to have forgotten to include any real context.  Reading your post, even reading it carefully, I'm lost as to what you're talking about.

Take a look at the movie in my sig to get some context, it should help. 

I completely recognize there may be no current solution to the problem, but those that have built any kind of sealed hallway trap involving liquids, with pressure plates inside, will understand the context immediately.

[Girlinhat]

I've built them.  You just include drainage.  A hatch on the floor, or a floodgate in the wall behind a fortification to make it destroyer proof.  Drains the room to 1/7, which is walkable easily.

[vjek]

I've built them.  You just include drainage.  A hatch on the floor, or a floodgate in the wall behind a fortification to make it destroyer proof.  Drains the room to 1/7, which is walkable easily.

Unless the liquid is not water.

[Girlinhat]

Ah-ha, then my usual solution is a few floodgates.  If you set a row or two of floodgates along the inside of the chamber from one door to another, then link them all to a lever, you can close and open them to instantly atom-smash any liquids.  Bridges work as well.

[NecroRebel]

For 34.07, I've verified the following is still true:

• Screw pumps will not pump all the liquid off of a tile (down to zero), they'll just pump to 1/7.
• Non-flying creatures fall through hanging pressure plates.
  

I think you need to verify those things again, because the first isn't true. A pump won't pump 1/7-depth fluid, but if there's more than that, it will pump the whole block. Obviously, you simply need to arrange for the entire hallway to be filled to 2/7 depth or more, then arrange for the entire hallway to be pumped out simultaneously to prevent any 1/7-depth tiles from appearing. Your flood-system priming device should involve a line of raised drawbridges to narrow the hallway to a width of 2, fill from the side or below through grates, and empty out the top, using 2 lines of pumps pumping to opposite sides of the device with hanging floodgates or doors to block their intakes (so they always drain when the thing is open and not when it's filled). You can work the whole thing with 2 levers, 1 to prime it for use pulled whenever a siege is on-map and the other to fire.

Edit: Hmm... I can see how to make the device with levers, but with pressure-plate-driven system would require the use of a fluid-logic inverter. Simply priming the device with a lever pull when the vile force of darkness message appears is one thing, but I think you want it automated beyond that, and adding an inverter complicates things, especially as I've never used one  As I've been working with mods that heavily use trap-avoiding enemies for 2 1/2+ years, I've not really developed skills for pressure plate use, instead using lever-triggered architectural traps.

[JackOSpades]

since 1/7 water is easily walkable I'll assume your working with magma...

To easily clear 1/7 magma without waiting for evaporation well what about flooding the hall with WATER after you get the magma to 1/7 that should make a Obsidian floor rather than a wall which should HOPEFULLY not destroy the pressure plates but I've never tested it myself.

[vjek]

Ah-ha, then my usual solution is a few floodgates.  If you set a row or two of floodgates along the inside of the chamber from one door to another, then link them all to a lever, you can close and open them to instantly atom-smash any liquids.  Bridges work as well.

-attempting to build a bridge over top of a pressure plate returns the error "Building Present" and prevents construction.
-attempting to build a pressure plate under a retracted bridge returns the error "Building Present" and prevents construction.
-attempting to build a floodgate over top of a pressure plate returns the error "Building Present" and prevents construction.
-attempting to build a pressure plate under a raised floodgate returns the error "Building Present" and prevents construction.
Currently the entire floor of the grand goblin melter, as an example, are retracting bridges.  Everywhere is a bridge-floor except the pressure plates.  Hence the problem.
Even if I took out the bridge floors or grate floors, the problem would still exist on the pressure plate tiles inside the hallway.

For 34.07, I've verified the following is still true:

• Screw pumps will not pump all the liquid off of a tile (down to zero), they'll just pump to 1/7.
• Non-flying creatures fall through hanging pressure plates.
  

I think you need to verify those things again, because the first isn't true. A pump won't pump 1/7-depth fluid, but if there's more than that, it will pump the whole block. Obviously, you simply need to arrange for the entire hallway to be filled to 2/7 depth or more, then arrange for the entire hallway to be pumped out simultaneously to prevent any 1/7-depth tiles from appearing. Your flood-system priming device should involve a line of raised drawbridges to narrow the hallway to a width of 2, fill from the side or below through grates, and empty out the top, using 2 lines of pumps pumping to opposite sides of the device with hanging floodgates or doors to block their intakes (so they always drain when the thing is open and not when it's filled). You can work the whole thing with 2 levers, 1 to prime it for use pulled whenever a siege is on-map and the other to fire.

Edit: Hmm... I can see how to make the device with levers, but with pressure-plate-driven system would require the use of a fluid-logic inverter. Simply priming the device with a lever pull when the vile force of darkness message appears is one thing, but I think you want it automated beyond that, and adding an inverter complicates things, especially as I've never used one  As I've been working with mods that heavily use trap-avoiding enemies for 2 1/2+ years, I've not really developed skills for pressure plate use, instead using lever-triggered architectural traps.

-The rooms I've pumped out are filled with 7/7 (right up to the pump itself, as well) magma, and they are not cleared down to 0/7 100% of the time.  Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't.  I'm looking for a technique that is reliable.  You're correct that a pump will pull the whole liquid, but at the end of the pumping, adjacent 2/7 squares will flow onto the pumped tile, making a 1/7 adjacent to the 2/7.  This of course can happen up to 8 times (once for every adjacent tile) on every tile being pumped, which results in it happening too often.

You're correct though, I'm looking for a technique or solution that will fit into a completely automated system.  Doing this with levers is very straightforward, but still suffers from the pathing block due to magma 1/7 on the pressure plates.

since 1/7 water is easily walkable I'll assume your working with magma...

To easily clear 1/7 magma without waiting for evaporation well what about flooding the hall with WATER after you get the magma to 1/7 that should make a Obsidian floor rather than a wall which should HOPEFULLY not destroy the pressure plates but I've never tested it myself.

-This might be a good solution, except for two problems.  How to ensure only a little water gets on the tiles with the pressure plates?  And also, where does the water drain, compared to where does the magma drain?  In the worst case, they both drain to the same place, creating obsidian walls everywhere.  An option, however, may be a mist generator above the pressure plates.  I don't know the interaction of mist with 1/7 magma, so I will test that.  It will still be challenging to automate the temporary firing of a mist generator, but I think it could be integrated, if all it does is create obsidian floor.

Thanks for the responses so far, I appreciate the brains and eyes.

[Uristocrat]

It is neither necessary nor desirable to have your pressure plates inside the area to be sealed off.  Put the triggered plates just *outside* the sealed-off area.

[Girlinhat]

You seem to be making this more difficult than it really needs to be...  Why is the whole floor covered in pressure plates?

[NecroRebel]

...arrange for the entire hallway to be pumped out simultaneously to prevent any 1/7-depth tiles from appearing.

-The rooms I've pumped out are filled with 7/7 (right up to the pump itself, as well) magma, and they are not cleared down to 0/7 100% of the time.  Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't.  I'm looking for a technique that is reliable.  You're correct that a pump will pull the whole liquid, but at the end of the pumping, adjacent 2/7 squares will flow onto the pumped tile, making a 1/7 adjacent to the 2/7.  This of course can happen up to 8 times (once for every adjacent tile) on every tile being pumped, which results in it happening too often.

You've not implemented the solution that I suggested. The way you've described, with 1 pump, obviously won't work. I'm talking about using 20 pumps for a 10-long 2-wide hallway so that every single tile in the hallway is a pump input tile. If there are no adjacent 2/7 non-pumped tiles to flow into the pumped tiles, no 1/7-depth tiles will appear and you have no problem.

The difficulty is that this requires, as mentioned, only a 2-wide hall, but that's easily solved by either making a 1-tile drawbridge along one of the walls of a 3-wide hall that are raised to prime the device or by making 2 entry halls, 1 2-wide and trapped and another 3-wide further away for caravan access. Aside from needing to pull the priming lever when invaders are first detected it would be automated, and having a priming lever is safer anyway as it allows you to have the device not work when you don't want it to.

[slothen]

instead of trying to fill the walkable pathway with magma, have a ton of pumps constantly dropping it in from above, and make a majority of the floor grates that feed magma back into the system?

I also do not see what role the pressure plates play at all.

[vjek]

... You've not implemented the solution that I suggested. The way you've described, with 1 pump, obviously won't work. I'm talking about using 20 pumps for a 10-long 2-wide hallway so that every single tile in the hallway is a pump input tile. If there are no adjacent 2/7 non-pumped tiles to flow into the pumped tiles, no 1/7-depth tiles will appear and you have no problem.

I've tried what you describe both with 22 adjacent pumps and 3 adjacent pumps, and there are still cases in both sets of adjacency where 1/7 magma stubbornly refuses to disappear, with all the surrounding tiles starting out at 7/7.  Believe me, if it worked, I would use it.  As you've outlined, it would effectively only permit a 2-tile path width, which is more limiting that what I have now, which works (minus the evaporation problem) with up to a 9 width path.  In other words, I would rather wait for 1/7 evaporation than be limited to a 2-tile path.  Right now, the larger I make my hallway, the better it works, so I'd rather keep going in that direction rather than smaller.  It just requires more mechanisms.

You seem to be making this more difficult than it really needs to be...  Why is the whole floor covered in pressure plates?

It's not.  As you can see from the video linked in my sig, it's a single row of 9 pressure plates surrounded by bridge-floor.

instead of trying to fill the walkable pathway with magma, have a ton of pumps constantly dropping it in from above, and make a majority of the floor grates that feed magma back into the system?

I also do not see what role the pressure plates play at all.

The pressure plates are triggering the automated system.  When an enemy walks over it, it seals the hallway, fills it with magma, waits for it to be full; once full it empties the hallway, unseals it, and waits for the next batch of victims.  Entirely automatically, with no manual intervention of any kind.

It is neither necessary nor desirable to have your pressure plates inside the area to be sealed off.  Put the triggered plates just *outside* the sealed-off area.

I've tried that.  The problem is, when the pressure plate is triggering an automated sequence, retriggering it will create a situation whereby creatures outside the sealed area will keep the trap in a state of perpetual "on/start" and it will never reset/empty. (they keep stepping on it)  I've tried them outside, and it didn't work for me.  But if I could, I would.
I've tried isolating the pressure plate outside the hallway, but eventually, just one creature gets sealed in there with it, and keeps retriggering it.  Annoying, those pesky enemies.

[SharkForce]

i suppose there's some reason you don't want the floor to simply disappear and drop the goblins into a pool of lava?

if you're worried about a group staying on the platform where the pressure plates are, you can simply put training spear traps on the same platform, and wait for the goblins to dodge into the lava pit. i suppose in extreme situations, you may need to use marksdwarves to make them dodge, which would be undesirable... there might be some sort of animal you could use instead?

(alternately, you could just set the floor on repeat, so that they'll start pathing, those on the bridge will fall, then they start pathing again, then they fall again - just have to make sure your repeater has a long enough delay. last i heard, the easiest repeater to make was a line of water filled to at least 2 in each square, with 1 square having 3/7 water. the 3/7 square will move back and forth, and you simply have a lever someplace that you want to trigger each time the 3/7 square comes by).

in any event, this does also still leave the possibility of a floor made of grates, with pressure plates that trigger the lava falling all throughout the room, that someone suggested. simply leave some spaces without pressure plates, designate the plates as being super-lowtraffic for your dwarves. your dwarves should then avoid the plates (which will often be covered in magma) while the rest of the floor should be perfectly safe. just don't unforbid goblinite sitting on the plates.