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[Fleeting Frames]

Well, any real solution is going to require designing and building it.

Regarding protector plate, just have two-way cancel or path opening. Top down view for simple idea

^D++D^
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GRINDER/TRAPPER

The hatches are probably not necessary, but in case of dwarves taking a shortcut to not meet other dwarves. Link all buildings to both pressure plates. You could probably simplify this to 3-thin ^D^. (And don't forget about diagonal movement being able to avoid pressure plates if set up wrongly.)

Ideally, once they've been dropped down they'll have no path to it anymore, so that'd be ideal. That might be problematic of different sort though.

The ‼well‼ thread did mention that dwarves would only lose fat, not be set on fire. I've likewise have had things stored in minecart with magma in it take heat damage, but not catch on fire, so I expect it'd just wear away the obsctruction. I've had wooden screwpumps pumping magma similarly deconstruct with remaining components showing X and XX, but be unburnt.

@Bumber: For undead re-moving, perhaps water might be safer alternative.

The reset period of capturing the visitors is more of a concern, though, what's with ability to get multiple visitors in a day.

[taptap]

So the idea is everyone moves south for the longer path, but trapavoid creatures won't repath once they reach the pressure plate, with a security space to avoid some being stubborn and jump or climb over the open hatch / hole in the ground? I believe you have some potential problems as soon as multiple dwarves arrive. (Delay before closing door again, trapped between doors, outgoing and incoming traffic at once...)

What about offering an underwater path? Would it work?

Would not short term witch trialing all visitors be pretty safe? Though probably not automatic.

[Fleeting Frames]

Traffic amount concern is the only reason for the hatches...But yeah, single door variant probably is superior (using ramp/float to avoid jamming). If there's enough dwarves to trap one, there's enough dwarves to release one but also to go alongside vampires.

Underwater path would be not troubled by close signal delay, but not sure if it it would work. I'm not exactly clear on how visitors and pools function and whether they will take the shortcut, however (at the very least I might want to include a pool in tavern so that the one in sleeping quarters doesn't magnet all of them or something).

Hm.

This did not get the visitors inside (5/4 trench)



Chopping down the tree in the way got the basic three to move quickly towards zone, taking a dip into the water...And staying there.



I saw one briefly flash aboveground and get back in. Checking their skills with gui/gm-unit, they merrily train swimming. Even when I filled it in to 7/7.

One of them eventually came out of water to ponder medical ethics, then after leaving the next scholar visitor managed to not dip into trench entirely. Ditto for next speardwarf.

After the first two became legendary in the trench, lowered water level back to 4. Expedition leader immediately jumped in:



It also managed to catch next scholar for a bit, till they jumped back out and took the proper path.

Lowering the water to 2/7 did result in the visiting marksdwarves finally leaving the trench, now Legendary +1 Swimmers.

Visitors are weird. Tentative conclusion: swim-only path may or may not trap or redirect visitors. (And vampires may use different pathing entirely.)

[PatrikLundell]

Visitors do not trigger pressure plates at all, which is the reason behind the more complicated door/pump/pressure plate setup. Thus, a lot of these devices would require a lot of setup work. However, if an automated safe design was found, I'd definitely pursue it.
One way of "resetting" an undead would be to have the pressure plate it triggers drop it into a passage below that leads back to the starting point.

Multiple concurrent arrivals are actually made more likely by sieges, since the non mercs will enter the map and wait for a path to open, and then move along that path. They'll usually show up at different locations on the map edge, though. In this scenario the mercs will weed themselves out by suicide attacks against the invaders.

An underwater path will not work. Vampires won't blow their cover that way (I've tried 7/7 water behind a door to trigger a pressure plate when the door was opened, but the vampire never opened the door. DFHacking away the water to leave 3/7 caused the vampire to pass through the door and fall down the hole opened (after some wall climbing)).

Any trial of all or half of the visitors (i.e. the mercs) that's manual is a pain because of the constant manual intervention required if you get a decent visitor stream.

My current basic thought is (back) to have a far away visitor's tavern with with its own surface entrance and a shorter route into the fortress than going over the surface. Undead at both ends of the passage should reroute civilian visitors to a slightly longer parallel route (has to be more than 1 tile wide, or meetings can (probably) result in pathing over the surface). However, the scaring is a bit tricky because scared visitors tend to go back exactly the same way, thus getting stuck.

Inside the direct merc+vampire path a merc bait undead should draw mercs away to another path, with vampires continuing on their way for permanent treatment of their condition in the middle of the passage. The whole setup would have to be symmetric as you'd have visitors going back to the visitor tavern from the fortress (plus citizens who don't have the sense to use the nice tavern set up for their benefit).
I'm not sure whether petitioners granted residence will return to the visitor tavern or go to the one open to residents, but my current guess it that they'll return to the visitor's tavern and then drift to the resident's one only after having slept.

It will probably take a number of (RL) days to set things up to test them, but at least I've now got some useful ideas about what to try. Then it will be a matter of testing it with civilian and merc visitors, tweak, and settle back to wait for a vampire to show it it does actually work as intended (provided the tweaking actually results in something that seems to work that far...).

[Fleeting Frames]

Assuming the undead you have is the type of "path to living, otherwise stay still", you'd need multi-z rooms at least for the eternal drop loop (multi-z so that the living on other side can always see the undead.)

Not sure the setup you described would catch vampire mercs - would they ignore undead like vampires, or attack them like mercs?

If the first, then unreachable undead scaring away all normal visitors + reachable undead (on chain?) redirecting non-vampire mercs would just leave vampires remaining, with no need for drop loop. Though that is two tests, versus the one of "will this undead attack this visitor".

[Vomitmaster]

Would putting undead skins in cages in your inn work? See which guest got good thoughts about it? Since im fairly sure that thinking-undead get good thoughts about undead animals.

[Fleeting Frames]

So do not-undead thinking, going by Roomcarnage iirc.

[PatrikLundell]

It doesn't matter what visitors think since we can't view their thoughts...

I think vampire mercs would act as vampires, but so far I don't think I've ever seen one.

Since the goblins decided to donate another 50-100 warm bodies to science during the winter (plus some screwing up on my part) setting up the detector is slow work. No rest this R&R season (I try to leave the winter for social activities, but with a small crew it's hard).

[Bumber]

My current basic thought is (back) to have a far away visitor's tavern with with its own surface entrance and a shorter route into the fortress than going over the surface. Undead at both ends of the passage should reroute civilian visitors to a slightly longer parallel route (has to be more than 1 tile wide, or meetings can (probably) result in pathing over the surface). However, the scaring is a bit tricky because scared visitors tend to go back exactly the same way, thus getting stuck.

You don't need a separate tavern if you can sort visitors from residents using path cost designations. Visitors should ignore them and take the shortest route.

[PatrikLundell]

My current basic thought is (back) to have a far away visitor's tavern with with its own surface entrance and a shorter route into the fortress than going over the surface. Undead at both ends of the passage should reroute civilian visitors to a slightly longer parallel route (has to be more than 1 tile wide, or meetings can (probably) result in pathing over the surface). However, the scaring is a bit tricky because scared visitors tend to go back exactly the same way, thus getting stuck.

You don't need a separate tavern if you can sort visitors from residents using path cost designations. Visitors should ignore them and take the shortest route.

For a new fortress, yes. However, there isn't space for a larger contraption in my current entrance (and I don't want my dorfs to take that rather significantly longer route I'm setting up even in a new fortress). My initial, failed, setup relied on traffic designations (and also pointed to another issue with setting it up in the main entrance when a blasted grazer decided to head for the tavern and got killed in the vampire path, leading to a lot of dorf running to pick up corpse/clean blood, run from undead, repeat...).

[NonconsensualSurgery]

http://imgur.com/a/y1mKd


I think I solved it!

[StarWars1981]

My current basic thought is (back) to have a far away visitor's tavern with with its own surface entrance and a shorter route into the fortress than going over the surface. Undead at both ends of the passage should reroute civilian visitors to a slightly longer parallel route (has to be more than 1 tile wide, or meetings can (probably) result in pathing over the surface). However, the scaring is a bit tricky because scared visitors tend to go back exactly the same way, thus getting stuck.

-snip- Visitors should ignore them and take the shortest route.

Ahhhhhhh..... so do citizens. Some times.
A lot of times.
Most of the time.

Yeah those little guys are idiots...

[Fleeting Frames]

@NonconsensualSurgery: Yeah we know - the point of this thread is to figure out a trap that traps or kills them and doesn't risk anybody neutral or on your side, without the worries of performance troupe having one, this getting patched or missing the announcement in the sparring.

[PatrikLundell]

My current basic thought is (back) to have a far away visitor's tavern with with its own surface entrance and a shorter route into the fortress than going over the surface. Undead at both ends of the passage should reroute civilian visitors to a slightly longer parallel route (has to be more than 1 tile wide, or meetings can (probably) result in pathing over the surface). However, the scaring is a bit tricky because scared visitors tend to go back exactly the same way, thus getting stuck.

-snip- Visitors should ignore them and take the shortest route.

Ahhhhhhh..... so do citizens. Some times.
A lot of times.
Most of the time.

Yeah those little guys are idiots...

Citizens can be guided somewhat with travel restrictions. You also have to make sure the citizen passages are at least two tiles wide or the morons are likely to meet, both turn around, take the restricted passage, meet,... until the faster one actually manage to get through before meeting the slowpoke.

Edit:
Another failure. A chained undead (arm) did not provoke mercs to attack them: the mercs just walked by. Civvies are scared, though, but some of them still run past rather than back. Civvies also tend to run back exactly the way they came rather than straight to be led into the citizen passage, which means they tend to get stuck in a loop.

[Fleeting Frames]

...Maybe if you change the exact way back to citizen passage with pressure plate setup right after they pass?

Sucks about the failure on the arm, tho. Hm....

About that drop loop - maybe if you make it two-direction drop loop in a möbius strip kind of way, so that there's always path to the arm (for the merc) that arm constantly tries to path to merc on and gets dropped?