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[Seolferwulf]

A question regarding trapping and weaponizing untameable, trapavoid megabeasts.

I'm currently playing MDF 44.12 and the surface of my fort is infested with balrogs - 89 in total...
At first I thought about using several layers separated vertically by retracting bridges to trap and weaponize them for future sieges, but after a look at the raws it turns out they're much bigger than 1200000, which makes them too big for such contraptions.
Plus they're trapavoid, breathe nasty fire and are generally too much for my military.
Oh and they pop out twins and triplets whenever the limit allows.

Are there contraptions that allow:
a) trapping really big and trapavoid megabeasts
b) dropping in invaders
c) reliably and safely separating loot and megabeasts
and d) population control?

Has anyone created such a convenient contraption?

[delphonso]

A raising bridge will still create a wall, it will only not operate if such a creature is standing on it when it tries to retract. I'd build a holding cell with several destructables in it (statues, worshops, doors) and a drawbridge on each end. Pull the lever and the invaders should be trapped inside (although catching 89 at a time would be very challenging.

edit: confusing wording on my part - good catch, PatrikLundell

[Libash_Thunderhead]

I used to have a  steel titan, sealed in a room using a draw bridge. When the goblins come I can raise the bridge and let them fight.
I just need to set up another room, in which I chained some useless animal so I can trap him agian.

Unfortunately, Titans don't have combat skills (at least at that time). He was killed by a single survived goblin, who trained himself into a master lasher during the fight.

[PatrikLundell]

A retracting bridge is useless against heavy creatures, while a raising one will simply refuse to rise of the critter is standing on it, but will present an indestructible wall when raised. A raising drawbridge gets deconstructed if lowered on top of a creature that's too heavy, though.

Apart from that, I agree with delphonso: airlocks with baits to trap them. That can be tricky to construct when you have to expose a miner to the horde as part of exposing the trap to the horde. My standard bait is a door, as it typically gives enough time for the drawbridge levers to be pulled to trap the victim before the door is destroyed, and it has the additional benefit that the miner can rush through it and you can then lock it to hopefully save the miner (and if the miner is unlucky, you can lock the door to block the enemy anyway).
With a horde of critters you'll fail to trap them at times, as some will stand on the outer drawbridge when you try to raise it, but then you'll have to try again by raising it when the airlock is empty, lower the inner drawbridge, replace the door, raise the inner drawbridge, and then lower the outer one again for a new attempt.

[Seolferwulf]

Thank you for your insights.

I guess I'll have to do this in multiple stages then.
Since their numbers need to be reduced anyway I'll start with this using some sort of trap (bait + block way out + upward spikes?).
Once only a handful remain trapping them will be much easier.
Invaders can also be dropped into the holding cell via retracting bridges and population control can be done with more upward spikes.
The question is how to separate loot and megabeasts.
What comes to mind is to flush the loot out of the cell using water.
Or maybe two cells separated by a raising bridge with easy access for placing baits, when I want to move the horde between the two cells.

What do you think?

[PatrikLundell]

I'd hesitate to have more than one critter per cell, as it gets tricky to manage, but if you use repeating menacing spikes you'll eventually kill off the enemies, at which time you can clean out that airlock while installing a new bait, and I'd rather spend the engineering power to trap and eliminate more of the buggers in parallel than on elaborate methods of early loot recovery.
Of course, if the buggers are breeding you have a bit of an issue.

One thing that should work well is to have an artifact bait of a kind building destroyers try to destroy (rather than topple), as repeating menacing spikes can gradually eliminate all of the ones trying to destroy that artifact, while you leave the access to the artifact open once it has been deployed.

[Seolferwulf]

After coming this far I start realizing one could just use the mechanism for "population control" to control the invaders population to zero aswell... ditching the idea of keeping megabeasts completely.
This would solve most of the problems.

This conclusion is kind of awkward.
I guess I just wanted to be resourceful.