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Author Topic: Blackhole Cages?  (Read 403 times)

SpiralDimentia

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Blackhole Cages?
« on: June 20, 2013, 12:43:05 am »

So, I made a new fort and have been messing around with various things, one of which is capturing random animals. Well, I placed some cage traps randomly around my fortress, in the hopes of getting something good, and ended up with a raven. Well, i wanted another for a breeding pair and some military-benny-hill-chasing got me several ravens. While i was hauling them off to deal with later, one of my cages caught a snatcher. Yay!

But then I caught another. And another. And another. The cages are spaced wide apart, and there aren't very many of them, but it seems like atleast one to three times a month, I'll get a snatcher and/or his buddies. Like I said, the traps aren't clustered or anything, most of them aren't even near the entrance to my fortress. Do goblins actively seek out cage traps? If so, why?
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Dragonwork, A Successful Failure.
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An enemy none could stop or yield,
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hiroshi42

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Re: Blackhole Cages?
« Reply #1 on: June 20, 2013, 01:00:45 am »

are the cages placed near some sort of natural choke point? ie somewhere where invaders would want to path through to get to your fort?
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SpiralDimentia

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Re: Blackhole Cages?
« Reply #2 on: June 20, 2013, 01:04:03 am »

Nope. My fortress sits on top of a large, flat hill, against a cliff that drops into the base of a natural waterfall. The cliffs are placed randomly, atleast 25 blocks[ sometimes more] in any direction apart from one another. Like I said, the majority of them aren't even near the one and only entrance to my fortress.

A kobold just showed up [and promptly fed my crossbowdwarves some EXP.] INSIDE my fortress. So this kobold was able to circumvent the traps well enough and make it inside. Yet I've caught ATLEAST 11 goblin snatchers.
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Dragonwork, A Successful Failure.
Legacy of Insightshields
Many more made tales in this hall,
before the stronghold found it's fall.
An enemy none could stop or yield,
had taken over Insightshields.

Sirbug

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Re: Blackhole Cages?
« Reply #3 on: June 20, 2013, 01:07:51 am »

Kobolds evade traps. But I experienced the same - no goblin snatchers were detected by dwarves, all caught in traps.
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Cool, but wouldn't this likely lead to tongues having a '[SPEACH]' tag, and thus via necromancy we would have nearly unkillable reanimated tongues following necromancers spamming 'it is sad but not unexpected'?

Linkxsc

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Re: Blackhole Cages?
« Reply #4 on: June 20, 2013, 02:44:58 pm »

I've had pretty good luck on plains maps. drig my nice 3x3 channel,a nd start to build the base underground. After hitting some stone (or even out of wood) I'll put a wall around 3 sides of my entrance hole. Then  I make a \V/ infront of the place with about 15-20 cages, leaving enough space on either side for a wagon to make it in. Catches literally dozens of goblin snatchers. Spring of year 2 I swear i caught about 19 snatchers. No complaints though. Keeps my workers stamping out more and more cages (great training for my noob metalcrafter, and a usage for the shit tons of copper i have). And after my weapon and armorsmiths get better (training them on bronze, so far I havent found much iron ore, though I do have lots of limestone), I'm gonna start using the goblins for live training of my army. I think total, its like spring of year 3. And I've got somewhere on the order of 40 goblins captured. (still only have around 70 dwarves myself.)
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