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[Abadayos]

Hello all.

I am for the first time doing a reasonably trap heavy defensive build for my new/current fort and am wondering 1 thing mainly in regards to the trap materials. Now I know that steel would make 'better' traps (blades/spiked balls) and Adamantine would do better spikes (but not going to do that, not touching the stuff for a good while yet).

Now I'm looking at the sustainability of a metal industry and also not wanting to rely on metals too much outside of armor/dwarf weapons. The real question boils down to, for general defense against non-trap immune enemies, would glass serrated disks x10 per trap be enough in strings of 4-10 mixed with some cage traps (for !SCIENCE! and marksdwarf training) to keep a sub 100 dwarf fort defended if that zone can be blocked off and reset even if more hostiles want in?

I use a serpentine entrance way that I activate when invaders show up forcing them to go down that path and not the direct trade depot route with no traps, it can be closed via levers to only allow however many I want in, baring lever delay.

Any advice would be great as I usually just drawbridge it up and ignore invaders but this time I'm wanting to get a bit more blood on the walls (even though atom smashing an entire invading force in 1 shot IS highly amusing, no loot is not so amusing).

Cheers.

[Larix]

Glass works, but is significantly inferior to metal. Putting fewer weapons in each trap and using more traps instead tends to work better - traps jam sometimes, and that puts all its installed weapons out of commission for the time being. With metal trap components, i usually take three or four per trap. Better quality in both weapons and mechanism is highly desirable - you could go so far as melting down and re-forging low-quality trap components.

If large numbers of invaders get killed by the traps, that should give you massive amounts of material for the metal industry through claiming and melting. In my glacier fort, my flux and coal mining has trouble keeping up with iron imports and i only use copper for studding.

Apart from traps (including repeating spikes), there are many other automated/mechanised defences possible against invading forces, notably using water, magma, ice, water+magma, flying objects or minecarts; or combinations of those.

[Abadayos]

I have been thinking of doing some 'fun' with minecarts when I get some more steel and have got my melee squad fitted. May not do the 'shotgun' option with weapons...but Diorite stone? Sure why not.

The melting down option is something I did consider, just not had the fun times with goblins yet. Give it some more time I I'm sure I will.

[BoredVirulence]

Early on I find wooden spiked balls to be very deadly. And spiked balls tend not to jam as easily, or at least according unsubstantiated rumors.
You can make a very long lasting defense with 10 traps with 4-5 wooden spiked balls each. Maybe even use a few wooden enormous corkscrews, and when you decide to decommission them you can put them into pumps.

[GiglameshDespair]

I always remembered glass spinning blades doing decent, to e honest.

[wierd]

Depends on weapon type; blunt or edged.

Discs are edge, and glass has a "reasonable" edge value. You can get better edge values with other materials though.

[Uggh]

I use a serpentine entrance way that I activate when invaders show up forcing them to go down that path and not the direct trade depot route with no traps, it can be closed via levers to only allow however many I want in, baring lever delay.

An easier option requiring less alertness on your side is to make an untrapped serpentine entrance for the caravans and provide a direct, heavily trapped path for invaders. This way, even if you somehow miss the appearance of invaders (ambush!), they will still take the short trapped path.

And glass discs and wooden spiked balls are perfect.

[Fen]

In my experience with my current fort, simply jamming a bunch of weapons from goblin and elf ambushes into weapon traps has proved sufficient for me. I did cut down on the relative inferiority of a lot of the weapons I've been getting from them by developing a massive field of traps along with a shooting gallery area for my marksdwarves with a pit nearby, which has resulted in a lot of dodging from one trap to another, dodging into the pit, and either dying to the marksdwarves, the weapon traps themselves, or the melee clean-up crew (either when enemy numbers have sufficiently dwindled, or if anyone survives the fall into the pit.)

Either way, in my opinion quantity > quality for this situation. Weapon traps can get jammed if they kill a hostile and go on a cooldown even if they don't, so if you have, say, 9 really really good weapon traps, that's not very likely to kill many dudes. If you have 50 mediocre weapon traps, then each one isn't likely to kill a guy, but chances are it's going to at least hurt them, and they'll either die partway through the massive array of traps, or be sufficiently injured that they'll be a cakewalk for a military squad.

[GiglameshDespair]

there's an exploit-y way you can make caravan only ramps, as I recall. Might go poorly against flyers, but you can have further traps inside the mountain for that.
So you can have long, winding ways for invaders, filled with traps, and an easy way for caravans.

[Zammer990]

Glass in my experience has some horrific damage potential, because siegers rarely come in complete armour, and 3x10 hits pretty much guarantees you'll hit something unarmoured, along with infinite production w/magma, you can annihilate sieges.
If full and well armoured opponents get through, silver hammers in weapon traps?

[Broken]

Glass serrated disks. Lost of Glass serrated disks. Seriously, the only drawback is that cleaning all the body parts is a bore.

[Melting Sky]

There definitely isn't any need to waste high quality metal on traps. As other have pointed out glass serrated disks are quite effective aside for jamming with severed body parts and wooden spiked balls are great for effective high endurance weapons traps. I usually throw in a couple of weapon traps filled with goblinite blunt weapons as well just incase you run into something really well armored.

[Loud Whispers]

I'm turning all of my copper and silver into giant menacing spikes. Definitely better off just turning them into warhammers or spiked balls, but I just like the idea of giant spikes. They work well, despite their inferior weapon quality, and are cheap so far as metal goes.

[Larix]

There definitely isn't any need to waste high quality metal on traps.

Well, there's also no need to waste "high quality" metal on armour and personal weapons, you can automate all your defences. Really, if you have 1000+ bars of weaponable metal, what's the point of saving it and spamming glass instead? Glass performs adequately, no doubt about that, but once you got the goblinite imports rolling, metals stop being scarce and you can spam those just as well; and metal trap components perform a fair bit better than glass. If you have a ten long, five wide trap field, the efficiency of individual components is largely irrelevant; but if you want to secure a narrow, short hallway, quality/material matters. I usually install very few traps, as supplement to other installations, and in those cases, the difference between glass and metal is notable.

[Lyeos]

Clowns. Clowns everywhere, sir. Your traps are irrelevant. On a side note, I immediately thought of Kevak when I saw the name of this thread.