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[delphonso]

Since it hasn't been recommended enough, a pit trap with any creatures in it will give them better odds and more likely to fight.

A short drop into a sealed room full of helmet snakes will kill a good portion of the invaders it catches. The stun from the fall puts them more evenly on the animals level. Fleeing ones might calm down and fight since there's nowhere to run. If not, it still keeps them busy. You can either leave the invaders in the pit, or allow a secondary path from there to the fort.

[Quarque]

And drop the bears on top of the invaders from at least 10 z levels above while you're at it. 

[Leonidas]

Pit traps onto upright spears or spikes can also be very effective. Also pit traps into drowning chambers. But timing is always a problem.

[Garfunkel]

Would this work:



Have a 3x3 Draw bridge between outside and trade depot so caravans can get in. Have a 3x3 pasture underneath it. Put all black bears on that pasture. Hell, I'll put my grizzly bears there too. Then when the enemy comes, pull a lever to retract the bridge and everyone on it will drop on the bears who have nowhere to escape. I have the space it needs so that's not a problem.

But timing is always a problem.

Yeah, I already have an issue that the footbridge into my castle is too close to all map edges because I did a 4x4 embark. Twice now a monster has reached the footbridge before a dwarf pulled the lever to close it. Maybe I can find a DFHack command to increase the embark area or alternatively I have to build map edge mazes or something.

[Leonidas]

Would this work:
Have a 3x3 Draw bridge between outside and trade depot so caravans can get in. Have a 3x3 pasture underneath it. Put all black bears on that pasture. Hell, I'll put my grizzly bears there too. Then when the enemy comes, pull a lever to retract the bridge and everyone on it will drop on the bears who have nowhere to escape.

Drawbridges fling things into the air when they lift. It's a five-tile radius, IIRC. Retractables fling much less.

Try this: Put a 3x2 drawbridge on your depot path. When enemies come, raise that bridge to divert them into a side tunnel where your bears are waiting.

Or for more drama, you could put your bears in a room next to your depot tunnel, concealed by a raised drawbridge. Then lower the drawbridge to release the bears all at once.

Be warned: Those bears are big, but they have no armor. They will take some damage with every battle.

[Garfunkel]

Gotcha.

I'll keep a breeding pair elsewhere so I can replenish their numbers.

[Moeteru]

The main problem with using a 3x3 bridge is that, if you're very lucky, you might be able to take out 5 or 6 enemies. More often than not your timing will be slightly off and they'll have walked off the bridge by the time it activates. Remember that once you give the order to pull the lever, a dwarf has to take the job, run all the way there, pull the lever, and then wait a further 100 ticks before the bridge actually moves.

If you want to use that kind of bridge-drop trap, I recommend building a very long (100+ tiles), winding entrance tunnel with raising bridges at both ends and retracting bridges all the way along. When your fort comes under siege, wait until they're all inside the tunnel then raise the bridges at the ends to seal them in. Once they're trapped you can drop the floor out from under them (or deploy other traps) at your leisure.

As for the bears, I can think of much more !!FUN!! things you could put down there. Bears might work, but you run the risk of being left with a pit full of dead bears and angry goblins. Also, be aware that enemies can climb up rough stone walls. You should probably make the pit quite deep and get your engravers to smooth all the walls.

[muldrake]

Pit traps onto upright spears or spikes can also be very effective. Also pit traps into drowning chambers. But timing is always a problem.

I like drowning chambers when I have actual running water on the map.  Just diverting an entire brook into a drowning chamber is great fun.  Of course you lose a lot of goblinite and other junk that way but that stuff is just FPS death anyway.

[PatrikLundell]

Pit traps onto upright spears or spikes can also be very effective. Also pit traps into drowning chambers. But timing is always a problem.

I like drowning chambers when I have actual running water on the map.  Just diverting an entire brook into a drowning chamber is great fun.  Of course you lose a lot of goblinite and other junk that way but that stuff is just FPS death anyway.

Odd statement. If you've got a setup so you can close the chamber off and empty it you can recover the stuff and melt the goblinite, destroy the bodies, and destroy or sell the clothing. Unless your setup includes an atom smasher to actually get rid of the junk you're inviting FPS by item death (but you need a huge number of slain enemies for the chamber to be the largest source of the FPS issues).

[Leonidas]

A big advantage of a drowning chamber is that it's so easy to get rid of the junk.

Design 1: Drop the goblins into the water, on top of floor grates. Wait until they've drowned. Drain the chamber down through the floor grates. Pick out what you want. Then open the grates to drop the junk into an atom smasher.

Design 2: Drop the goblins into water, under a raised drawbridge. Wait until they've drowned. Drain the water out horizontally. Pick out what you want. Then lower the drawbridge and smash the rest.

Designing clever traps is lots of fun when you're starting out in DF. They don't need to be practical. Just think of something cool, like Garfunkel's bears, and enjoy building it.

[muldrake]

Odd statement. If you've got a setup so you can close the chamber off and empty it you can recover the stuff and melt the goblinite, destroy the bodies, and destroy or sell the clothing. Unless your setup includes an atom smasher to actually get rid of the junk you're inviting FPS by item death (but you need a huge number of slain enemies for the chamber to be the largest source of the FPS issues).

I usually don't, though.  When I set up a drowning chamber like this it's usually really early and focused on speed so I just have some really dumb set up where it just floods everything out of the chamber.  Some stuff gets left, most of it just gets swept away.  I suppose I could use grates and stuff to keep more junk, but why?  I usually do embarks on high metal areas anyway, so goblinite is not very important.

[A_Curious_Cat]

Looking at the wiki, it appears that the only way to use black bears in a trap is to butcher them and then use their bones to make bone crossbows and/or bolts and then use those in a weapon trap.

 Of course, you could get lucky and have one of your dwarves use some black bear bone to fashion a weapon for a mood...

[muldrake]

Looking at the wiki, it appears that the only way to use black bears in a trap is to butcher them and then use their bones to make bone crossbows and/or bolts and then use those in a weapon trap.

 Of course, you could get lucky and have one of your dwarves use some black bear bone to fashion a weapon for a mood...

Bone bolts are so terrible I'm not sure they're even worth putting in a trap with all the other junk you usually put in traps.  I mainly use them for training, i.e. go kill some crundles, make crundle bone bolts, kill more crundles with those, repeat until you have semi-skilled archers and then swap over to real ammo.

The utility issue with using really, really bad things like bone bolts is they don't hurt anything you can't just go kill yourself anyway.

[Kat]

And, when it comes to fear, there seems to be a body-counting calculation, of both alive and dead bodies, within the line of sight. So, if 10 bears see 50 siegers, the bears are more likely to flee. If 50 bears see 10 siegers, the siegers are more likely to flee, and if there is a pile of dead bodies that look like the dogs or the siegers, that will effect their fear-level also.

So. If you had a lever-operated trap, that opened a hatch, and stacked on that hatch were a big pile of goblin skeletons, then when you pulled the lever, and dropped a pile of goblin skeletons into view of invading goblins, then the invaders would have a panic attack and flee ? 

[Moeteru]

So. If you had a lever-operated trap, that opened a hatch, and stacked on that hatch were a big pile of goblin skeletons, then when you pulled the lever, and dropped a pile of goblin skeletons into view of invading goblins, then the invaders would have a panic attack and flee ? 

I've already tested something like that in my current fort. I have a trap system consisting of 10 minecart grinders in series which, to avoid stress, never gets cleaned. It must have killed a couple of hundred goblins by now, most of whom have been blown into multiple chunks. Every time invaders come they're forced to walk right past all those corpses and severed limbs, but they never immediately flee. They usually only give up once about half their number have been reduced to bloody chunks, often managing to jam the first couple of minecarts through sheer numbers. The worst I've seen is one or two individuals getting "horrified" or "terrified" thoughts, but even those are usually only temporary.

I suspect that old corpses aren't counted in the same way as fresh corpses in morale calculations.