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[Hamiltonz]

This is my standard gate design.  It relies completely on cage traps.

Code: [Select]

B for bridge
W for wall
E for screen edge
U for ramp
. for ground/floor
@ for cage traps.
First floor

Code: [Select]

                W.....E
                W.....E
 WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW.....E
BB..............B.....E
BB..............B.....E
BB..............B.....E
 WUWWWWWWWWWWWWWW.....E
 WWW            W.....E
                W.....E

Second floor

Code: [Select]

                .     E
 WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW     E
 W.@@@@@@@@@@...W     E
 W.           W.W     E
 W.@@@@@@@@@@.W.W     E
 W           .W.W     E
 W @@@@@@@@@@.W.W     E
 WWWWWWWWWWWWWW.W     E
              W.W     E

I built this design before the bug with traps blocking caravans.  It was a happy accident that my design was not affected by the bug.

The gap between the rows of traps is important.  It gives the haulers and the mechanics a chance to run away before being killed.  When I had walls there the workers would sometimes walk right up to the attackers before turning around.  Attackers would often kill them before they could get away.  Those long straight paths are murder.

These gates come in pairs.  The inner and outer bridges will be open or closed opposite to the sister gate.  This creates a long path into my base through boths sets of traps.

When I started to get serious sized sieges I found that 60 cages were not enough, so I tripled the length of both gates.  The math works out to 180 cage traps.  I usually only had to replace traps for one gate at a time.  I had a 'cage farm' of over 2000 prisoners before I worked out how to strip goblinite from prisoners.

I accidentally released a dragon within the prison.  A quick run down on what happend next: dragon fire burned the wooden cages, burning prisoners ran for the screen edge, dragon was between the prisoners and freedom, dragon did not survive the 'zerg rush', most prisoners died from blood loss, those that made it to the screen edge tracked several layers of blood.  In the end I had two roads three wide with at least 9 layers of blood on each square from the center of the map to the screens' edge.

I used to leave all gates open until after a caravan arrived, so that the caravan would take the shortest path.  Now I leave the outer bridges closed almost all of the time.  When the caravan appears I open the inner bridge on the gate closest to the caravan, then the outer bridge.  This makes the caravan path directly through the gate.  After the caravan starts moving I set the sister gate to have its' inner bridge closed and its' outer bridge open.  As soon as the last unit in the caravan makes it through I then close the outer bridge to create the long path.

Liaisons and attackers can easily path in and out when the gates were set up this way.

Lately Kobolds have been getting into my base.  I've been thinking up ways to automatically deal with them.  One is turn the floor of the path between the gates that runs just inside the protective wall into a bridge and somehow triggering that bridge to drop the kobolds onto cage traps underneath.  I never had this problem in my first fort.  Any suggestions would be welcome.  Currently the best solution that I have is to run out and mass dump everything that drops when someone dies out beyond my protective walls.  That prevents the kobols from showing up in the first place.

Oh and I know a massive wall completely encircling my base is a cheap noob move.  I'm still working out how to gear up an effective army and get them trained enough to survive.

Until then I build walls.

[Maxmurder]

magma minefield in the surrounding areas, baited minecart shotguns closer to the walls, a healthy sprinkling of weapon traps at the entrance and a steel clad welcoming committee in the entrance courtyard.

[0cu]

This is my entrance. I can lower the four bridges to make place for dwarven wagons, but most of the time I'm too lazy. If anything gets through, it will be welcomed by my 40 speardwarves in training. Also, the occasional wildlife critter walks in and gets mutilated by the silver spiked balls hanging around there (this time it was a coyote).

[Urist Mcfortwrecker]

Urist Mcfortwrecker has become a legendary Necromancer!

sorry i dont follow, im new to the forums, did i do something wrong? i just replied to an older thread, i really didnt think that it was worth posting a new thread just for this one silly little idea

[lukstra]

My current favorite trap setup is a minecart "grinder" with rows of minecarts accelerating in a loop around a central entrance corridor. The system is activated by pressure plates at the beginning of the entrance (not shown) dropping minecarts onto ramps which accelerate them back around the corridor. Goblins caught in this are literally smashed apart. In addition, I sometimes put cage traps in the middle of this setup in-between tracks so that the goblin squad leader gets caged and the rest of the squad sits around, perfect targets for flying minecarts. From the image below, you can see the entrance corridor (bottom to top), with the small offshoots where the minecarts shoot from, as well as the minecarts themselves, primed and ready. As evident from all the mess in the entrance, this method is very effective.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[flabort]

Judging from the gore at both ends, I'd say some got through. 

[lukstra]

I sometimes let some invaders through without turning on the grinder in order to test other weapon systems. The grinder then serves as a nice "clean up" mechanism after I finish testing and I lower the drawbridge (shown at the top) to allow the invaders to attempt to flee to the exit (bottom of the picture)

[potpourri1]

My current favorite trap setup is a minecart "grinder" with rows of minecarts accelerating in a loop around a central entrance corridor. The system is activated by pressure plates at the beginning of the entrance (not shown) dropping minecarts onto ramps which accelerate them back around the corridor. Goblins caught in this are literally smashed apart. In addition, I sometimes put cage traps in the middle of this setup in-between tracks so that the goblin squad leader gets caged and the rest of the squad sits around, perfect targets for flying minecarts. From the image below, you can see the entrance corridor (bottom to top), with the small offshoots where the minecarts shoot from, as well as the minecarts themselves, primed and ready. As evident from all the mess in the entrance, this method is very effective.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I'm currently using something like this, although I use the front drawbridge to divert the invaders to a twisty single-wide corridor 1 z-level down that snakes under the wagon route. The invaders have a set of stairs at the end of the path allowing them access to my fort and motivating them to take the long road, while the minecart is routed back to the entrance. The track forms a loop, allowing the minecart to make multiple passes. A drawbridge can be raised to redirect the minecart up a few z-levels to its holding pen on top of a retractable bridge; retracting the bridge drops the cart onto a series of accelerator ramps which gets it up to speed before entering the grinder loop. The cart is filled with boulders for the extra weight, although I'm not certain if this is actually necessary if I used a heavier cart than my current willow version.

I did a test run using speed-modded dwarfs to make sure I got the physics and mechanics right, then tested it on my collection of migrants - hard to tell if the gore was comparable, since it was on red rock to begin with. Obviously that's an oversight that I've corrected in my current fort. I've just finished setting up the routes in my current fort and haven't had any invaders to test it on, but I'm looking forward to seeing how it handles multi-ambushes and sieges, and possibly megabeasts. For that matter, it could be worth setting up a route between my main fort and the caverns. I'll also have to test out multi-cart setups, just to see if they make any difference (besides more crimson dye on the walls ).

[Loud Whispers]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Fly catchers for thieves. Cage traps scattered across the Fort to capture creatures that have died within the Fort and come back to life. Guard humans kept in cages, ready to be released at the flick of a lever to attack invading foes from the dead. Or perhaps to spark a zombie cascade against invading goblins. By the gate sits the cage that releases the ravenbomb. It is full of zombies and zombie ravens. All of those supports as well as many unseen hold pillars that can be triggered to cave-in and cause large explosions of dust clouds, stunning enemies, injuring some, knocking all to the ground and scattering undead. Guard pig sniffs for thieves, it is not a big loss if the guard pig is lost - it is a scrawny piglet spared from butchery, it is already dead.

[smakemupagus]

sorry i dont follow, im new to the forums, did i do something wrong? i just replied to an older thread, i really didnt think that it was worth posting a new thread just for this one silly little idea

When the thread is 4.5 years old and not active, it is sort of not good etiquette.  In this case it turns out OK because it was a timeless topic  

But in other cases people can get really confused.  Many gameplay mechanics have changed in the 2 major releases since this thread had been buried.  Well, for example, the posts above yours talk about filling the trade corridor with traps, which in the current version would break wagon access.

[Daetrin]

There's my cycling magmatic siegekiller, from a long time back.

I tried to make a new one recently and messed up pretty badly though.  It's an awful lot of mechanisms and linkages.

However if you wanted to take it to the next step and make it work for undead you could litter the corridor with spikes and attach them to a repeater or the like.  Because there clearly aren't enough mechanisms.

(In fact you could replace "dump the magma" with "start the repeater")

[SuicideJunkie]

I've made a pair of double-grinders to maximize Goblinite production and maintain safety for the workers harvesting it.

Each of the two double-grinders looks like this:
      ▼
╔════O+O════╗
║   + ^ +   ║
║ + + ^ + + ║
║ +   ^   + ║
║ ++++^++++ ║
║     ▼     ║
║     ▼     ║
║ ++++^++++ ║
║ +   ^   + ║
║ + + ^ + + ║
║ + + ^ + + ║
║   + ^ +   ║
╚════O+O════╝
      ▼
1) As goblins enter from the bottom, they dodge into the pits. 
2) The goblins slog through the gutter full of corpses and traps until they reach the ramps in the middle.
3a) If they are still feeling brave, they will head north towards the fort, and dodge the traps into the north gutters.  Goto 2
3b) If they are not feeling brave, they will head south towards freedom, and dodge the traps into the south gutters.  Goto 2
4) The grinder is sealed off annually for maintenance, whereupon the dwarves swarm in to grab socks and drag any metals off to the magma smelters.


I have levers to toggle the flow of raw material into the eastern and western double grinders, so while one is filling up, the other is being cleaned out.

I have also considered making use of the item-teleport-via-deconstructing-walls bug to insta-collect all the items in the grinder, which would allow the grinder to be emptied while it is still running.

[fractalman]

cage traps.
cage traps.
And MORE cage traps...
Oh and then more cage traps around the bedroom, with a few anti-building destroyer traps scattered randomly. 

Finally, at long last, I place goblin cages in a place surrounded by weapon traps, pull the lever...
And "lucky" goblins run into yet another layer of, you guessed it, cage traps, and are then hauled back to the middle to start again.

I have an excuse: I've been playing in haunted biomes.

[Urist Mcfortwrecker]

I just tried a new setup that actually works better than just a moat against most enemies, i channel out a moat, but instead of leaving it there, i make an entrance to my fortress in it, the catch being that its trap filled, all magam safe to keep my traps around from being melted by the magma releasing pressure plate, then a floodgate, followed by a door, both triggered to close when the pressure plate is stepped on. floor grates take care of the magma cleanup, leading to the pump stack resevoir to reset the system. it takes care of everything that is not both magmaproof and trapavoid, and for those, the entrance filters into my swordsdwarf barracks. i lost 2 forts trying to perfect it, but it works against almost all enemies

[Catsup]

traditionally i've used large retracting bridge based mazes connected to a single pressure plate in the middle of the bridges that retracts all bridges when stepped on, and is also linked to a lever for the stubborn enemy that gets stuck on it. This does a good job of pitting undead and un-mounted goblin sieges and ambushes, but i need marksdwarves overlooking the bridge on a tower to keep the necromancers at bay (they take a hell of a long time to kill if they join their army in the pit) and does badly against mounted sieges and titans because the bridge will not retract with them on it.

Recently i've been trying 1 tile wide mazes of cage traps (mostly because i need live captives for...reasons) with raising bridges as walls for some parts so that they can easily be cleaned out. i have several mazes of this kind, and one of them has weapon traps with 2 serrated discs each at the start of it which i use exclusively for mounted sieges. The other one, which has about 100 cage traps are used for undead sieges and goblin sieges without too many mounts or if i want them alive.

I also have the edge walled off with many raising bridges connected to each other and to 1 lever; though the purpose of this is not so much for protection, but because i want to reap all the goblinite i can from sieges and goblins have a tendency to run away if their comrades start calling for help. A passage to the outside after all bridges are raised (that is another maze of cage traps) is opened to allow the goblins to (attempt to) escape.

both my mazes are connected to a small water pump that will drown all goblins refusing to advance further down the maze due to their squad leader being caged (this works less well on amphibious mounts, thus the weapon traps in one of the mazes at the start). The fortifications in the walls ensure the water spreads fast and efficiently; and when im done i have several hatches in corners of the maze behind fortifications that open and the water drains down to the aqiifier layer, allowing me to clean out the trap.

EDIT: note i do not use the mazes for regular dwarf traffic, i have 4 smaller entrances that are the normal entrances but which can all be sealed with retracting bridges at the pull of a lever; each of those 4 smaller hallways have some cage traps leading up to a lockable door with a pen full of war rutherers behind the doors. Marksdwarves are also able to shoot at enemies refusing to enter the maze from the second above-ground level of my fort, which is surrounded by fortifications and is built i such a way that marksdwarves are forced to path into the 1 tile wide hallway behind fortifications when stationed there.