Print

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

[Loctavus]

What's the optimal depth for a death pit these days? I use a pit so I can recover the trade goods and goblinite.

Previously an 11z level pit ended up with creatures blowing apart on impact. However the same depth now seems to leave many victims alive, if badly wounded. I ended up having to put in traps to finish things off. Initially it was cage traps, but after ending up with two thirds of a patrol in cages *after* having hit the bottom of the pit, I realised this wasn't going to work. I had some goblins survive up to three flights down the hole before they expired. Later experiments with a 15z level pit was a bit more lethal but a fair proportion of the fliers still didn't die on impact.

[Tinyheavyistiny]

I would suggest making a 8-10z depth pit with spikes at the bottom, the more the better. It worked out fine for me, I've been trying to set up a way to flush away all the body parts with water, but I haven't set it up yet and I don't know if that will destroy the traps.

[Xinael]

From the sound of it, you're not extracting goblinite from prisoners before you drop them. This will increase their durability a lot. Best thing to do is mass-dump-designate your animal stockpile, then use loo(k) to reclaim the cage. Your dwarves will extract the goblinite and then you're free to dispose of the leftover prisoners. I know that's not as fun as splattering them with armour on but it's definitely more reliable and safer for your dwarves too. Upright spike traps at the bottom are also good, as is making the pit 1x1 and fully enclosed - they hit the sides and take damage on the way down. I also normally chain a couple of war dogs next to the entrance to the drop room to clear up stragglers.

[Lich180]

20 to 24 z levels should cause almost everything to blow apart on impact, regardless. Unless they land on some unlucky guy who managed not to die, of course.

But spikes should solve your current problem without having to alter your design much.

[Loctavus]

Aha so it's not really creature durability but the armor they're geared up in, I wonder if some change has made armor protect from falling damage now. Didn't used to.

It's rather difficult unfortunately to mass dump the gear whilst goblins are still comitting the inital assault. I think a shallower pit with spikes or traps and things at the bottom would work better. Anything greater than 10 z levels runs into caverns which makes building them a lot more awkward, especially as 20+ is likely to bisect at least two caverns.

Or possibly drowning them. The armor won't be any help there. More effective than spikes and things, but probably a lot more difficult to co-ordinate.

But the state of my current design is moot, the fortress this design was present in was eaten by a web spitting megabeast fly.

[kingubu]

Falling physics changed.  This also affects naked children and pets that I used to chuck off high places with a bridge-a-pult.

Then I realized that crippling children is a good way to train medical staff.  Win.

[slothen]

Definitely strip them before dropping them.  Then you can just leave them at the bottom of the pit.  If they blow apart, then you get usable goblin bones for crafts, and you won't ever really need to go down there and clean up.  You won't need any special security besides a locked door (unless you're dropping trolls), as unarmed, severely wounded goblins that manage to survive will be easy fodder for any military if you need to do clean up.  Also, trolls are less likely to survive as their heavier bodies result in worse damage from falling.

[Xinael]

Ah, okay - I'd just assumed these were goblin prisoners. In that case, the answer is magma. It always is, sooner or later.

[CaptainLambcake]

have you tried weapon trap

[vanatteveldt]

Definitely strip them before dropping them.  Then you can just leave them at the bottom of the pit.  If they blow apart, then you get usable goblin bones for crafts, and you won't ever really need to go down there and clean up.  You won't need any special security besides a locked door (unless you're dropping trolls), as unarmed, severely wounded goblins that manage to survive will be easy fodder for any military if you need to do clean up.  Also, trolls are less likely to survive as their heavier bodies result in worse damage from falling.

And you can designate the pit as your garbage chute as well (maybe from a different z level to avoid dropping garbage in a war zone). Nothing more hilarious then finishing off the goblins by dropping your garbage on their head.

[Loctavus]

have you tried weapon trap

Yes, I use these quite a bit. However the problem with those and the cage trap is there is an upper limit to the number of gobbos any particular arrangement can cater for whilst still encouraging them into the teeth of my fortress. I'm ever in search of a perfect design that will

a) kill goblins automatically, along with creatures the bring.
b) cope with an undefined number of creatures.
c) Require little to no military intervention. I'm just as prone to inattentiveness and fatal dithering as my dwarves are.
d) preserve loot for scavanging in an accessable place

This usually involves ways of plucking invaders off the main path of my fortress and into a pit of variable doom.

However the mechanisms for plucking and squashing are still work in progress. Sheer velocity has proven less effective than it used to be. My latest attempt left me with a pit full of water, dead dwarves and a broken drainage system.

[Garath]

upright spike traps. Don't jam, tend to kill and wound anything that isn't heavily armored or made of stone or somesuch, but need someone to operate the lever. However, it kills and keeps on killing anything walking over it. If you had 100 goblins in their regular armor all on 1 tile with 1 upright spike trap with just 1 upright copper spike and just set the lever to be pulled on repeat, they will all die, eventually

[slothen]

It's rather difficult unfortunately to mass dump the gear whilst goblins are still comitting the inital assault.

if cage traps, then you won't be doing anything until the assault is over.  Are you trying to get them to fall via dodge-me pit traps?  I tend to not have any trouble from caverns making giant death pits.

[Loctavus]

My water based design was a pressure plate triggered flow of water to wash things off a narrow ledge. A test firing proved it was very good at washing, but it's far more likely to take out any of my guys who are dumb enough to hang around.

I'm probably going to go back to weapon traps. I was using traps with wooden spiked balls to try and sweep gobbos into a death pit. However these were a bit too lethal, particularly when I stacked 3 or 4 trap weapons into one trap, they were killing goblins and then jamming as a result. I might design a special 'sweeper' trap weapon, with several hits but pitful damage.

Maybe stacking a few training weapons into one trap would do the trick, and save the lethal stuff for the bottom of the pit.

[slothen]

you can use training spears and hope for dodges.  I found if you have a decent line of traps, doing just 1 per trap is fine.  I was always a fan of green glass spikes for weapon attacks, they cause decent injuries, rarely instakill, don't cause severing.