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[Conor891]

I've always wonderes why it seems like people use all the different types of traps, but I could never any practical reason to use anything over cage traps.

Other traps seem to pale in comparisom as they are unlikely to kill an enemy in one hit, but cage traps immediately immobilize an enemy letting you keep them around as souvenirs until you find something fun to do with them.

They're extremely overpowered though. Is that the only reason why people use other options? Or is it something else I don't know about?

[Shonai_Dweller]

I've always wonderes why it seems like people use all the different types of traps, but I could never any practical reason to use anything over cage traps.

Other traps seem to pale in comparisom as they are unlikely to kill an enemy in one hit, but cage traps immediately immobilize an enemy letting you keep them around as souvenirs until you find something fun to do with them.

They're extremely overpowered though. Is that the only reason why people use other options? Or is it something else I don't know about?

If you have a corridor of weapon traps packed with glass serrated discs, you don't need to look for anything fun to do, just enjoy the exploding gobbos. Finish off the crawling remnants of the invasion with your military. Much more fun than cage traps.

So, just preference really. Some choose just to close the drawbridge. Current traps are due to be replaced by more realistic ones, but probably not any time soon.

[Fleeting Frames]

Well, other traps can fire multiple times - as long as they don't kill the enemy. Note that bleeding or falling to death doesn't count, so while cage traps need to match invasion numbers, dodge'em traps don't. Repeating spears, beyond making a good flooring and hitting trapavoid, also don't jam so you can creatively kill whole siege with a single spear for a sweet, long killlist.

There's also that sometimes, you just want to kill the enemy. With cage traps, there's extra setup to do that.

PS: Probably should use something less fragile than glass nowadays, I guess? Not sure how fragile it is since Toady tweaked things.

[Rafatio]

I get tired of dealing with all the catches too, and the fact that they don't linger forever anymore when the leader is caught hasn't really sunk in yet. I do like taming wildlife for no reason, so I build at least a few cages too.

Since glass disks break really fast I use the goblinite weapons to make more traps for goblins, glass is good to get that harvest started though. Even those shitty weapons are surpisingly effective used that way. No need to kill in one hit if every weapon trap hits ten times, quality mechanisms seem more important than quality weapons and libraries produce an awful lot of artifact ones and legendary mechanics. Last fort even used stone fall traps, if its all you can muster it gets the job done, but needs a lot of space and hauling.

[Ulfarr]

Personally I stopped relying on cage traps because I got bored of having to deal with all the hassle of having to haul the prisoners (which can be quite heavy and thus time consuming), disarm them, pit them one by one and having my military on alert while moving them because there is almost always a prisoner or two who will try to escape.

Meanwhile production is grinding to a halt because anyone who is not dealing directly with the prisoners is busy hauling their stuff/corpses to the stockpiles. (<- The downside of preferring low population forts)

[PatrikLundell]

As mentioned, it's largely a matter of preferences.
Personally I use a large number of cage traps, and repeating menacing (glass) spikes for FBs.

Glass spikes are very good still. I recently (0.44.12) killed a yellow diamond FB with them, but they won't make a dent in an FB made out of any kind of glass. Also, they kill FBs composed of flame, but the trap gets destroyed in the process. In one case all spikes were transformed into "green glass" that then slowly disappeared (evaporated?), even though they could be hauled. In the other case some spikes were melted and some were not.

I've stopped pitting prisoners. Instead, I used a mine cart shotgun to toss them out of the caged and into a room with pressure plate operated atom smashing bridges. That takes care of most of the bodies (not all, since some of them die on impact). Also, ogres are killed "manually" via cage release lever and a menacing spike trap repeater, which takes some work.

[Fleeting Frames]

Tried fragmenting them through walls?

[nutregina]

rising fortress' value of course.
ps: has anyone tried goblinworks - shotgunning goblins into each other in mid-air over some temple?

[Rowanas]

rising fortress' value of course.
ps: has anyone tried goblinworks - shotgunning goblins into each other in mid-air over some temple?

I mused on this in my current fort - having goblins trapped such that a minecart shotgun turns them into paste and flings their limbs in a confetti-spread over my depot entryway.  I haven't seen minecart shotguns dismembering though, so it might just fire the intact corpses, which would be less cool, but also less cleanup.

[PatrikLundell]

Tried fragmenting them through walls?

Nope. I send them through a fortification. I don't want to kill them through the de-caging process, as that results in a body to clean up: I want them to atom smash themselves on the other side.

[Halnoth]

Weapon traps are free. There is something satisfying about using your enemies own weapons against them.

[Mort Stroodle]

Since my current fort has no bituminous coal, I'm building my main fortress near the lava lair. The plan is to force anyone trying to enter my fort to head down all the way from the surface down to the lava layer, where I can pull a lever to drop lava on their heads (or maybe drop them into the lava itself), incinerating everything. No need to worry about cleanup, or bad thoughts from the corpses.

[Fleeting Frames]

@PatrikLundell: Hm, yeah, upon second thought it'd end up with a body and cage on same tile, so not atomsmashable ogre remains.

[Gigaz]

A trap is only reasonable and efficient if it floods the siege with magma. Anything else leaves problems with body parts, troll fur hats, zombies and so much miasma.

[PatrikLundell]

A trap is only reasonable and efficient if it floods the siege with magma. Anything else leaves problems with body parts, troll fur hats, zombies and so much miasma.

You're obviously not thinking of the well being of your dorfs' nether regions! There are only two sources of underwear (3 if you count visitite), and neither will fully satisfy the need of a fortress (unless it has an extremely low pop, somewhere in the dozen to score range).