Bottom Line Up Front: what is the best way to weaponize magma mist?
OK, now for the details...
Just started a new embark on a volcano (love me some easy magma forges). I deliberately picked the embark despite being almost completely surrounded by goblin settlements (not sure if this makes it more likely for ambushes to show up early?).
Now that I've dropped in, I see that I have more of a challenge than I thought:
Assets:
- Volcano
- Native Gold
- Native Silver
- Galena
- Clay
- Lots of soil
- "Woodland", so some trees
- Aquifer (so findable infinite water supply)
- Plenty of magma-safe rocks
- Good supply of gems
Liabilities:
- Hot temperatures = no surface water (ponds, fishing, etc)
- No iron, copper, or flux stone = no weapons grade metals = no melee weapons, metal armor, or metal trap components
- No sand = no glass = no easy magma-safe trap components (corkscrews, pipes, etc) = no good way to pump magma
This leads me to the following hypotheticals on early defense:
- Marksdwarves (wood crossbows, wood/bone/silver? bolts and shields) protected by fortifications
Available quickly, but unlikely to be good enough early in the embark to protect against an ambush.
- Weaponized magma (immersion pits with retractable bridges)
Usable, but dependent on fine timing with levers, locking doors, and will destroy all of the non-ferrous goblinite (copper, silver, bronze, etc); and without the ability to pump the magma it away, it will require waiting until natural drainage or evaporation gets rid of the magma before the goblinite can be extracted.
- Weaponized magma mist (dropped rocks into convenient magma pools? overhead magma reservoir with triggerable murder holes?)
If done correctly, will set goblins on fire, which will kill them without doing damage to their fire-safe (instead of magma safe) metal stuff, and it will require much less magma, leading to a quicker clean-up afterwards.
- Goblin launcher (drawbridge launches enemies into the volcano, walls, or other objects)
NOTE: I refuse to use bridge atom smashers as defensive devices; I consider this an exploit. Likewise with cage traps. I don't have objections to using a drawbridge to lob enemies into solid objects (or lob solid objects into enemies).
- Siege Weapons
Catapults are inaccurate, don't do reliable damage, and since they're manned by civilians and therefore require a complicated set-up to keep them from running away when the goblins show up. Ballistae aren't much use without weapon-metal arrow-heads.
- Buying iron/steel weapons and armor
Gold and magma forges will allow for quick generation of high-value gold crafts, which will allow purchase of iron and steel weapons right away. However, I won't get a say in what gets brought until year 2 autumn (earliest), and what they bring is irregular and may not correspond to the exact need (or be horribly overpriced; needed -iron mail- and all they brought was *<<=iron mail>>* for three times the price due to the nice pictures of purring maggots in prase). Buying raw materials (iron, steel, wood, coal, flux) take a very long time to accumulate enough to outfit a credible defense.
So of the options available, I'm tending towards the "magma mist" option; it seems to be pretty quick, have the highest potential gain, and has the virtue of being something I haven't tried before.
Does the community at large have any suggestions on the best way to weaponize this valuable resource?