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[JoshuaFH]

so i found grates, and i thought "great!" and i'll tell you why.

would it be possible to create a long spanning raised platform made mostly of grates to be the only entrance into your fort, then hook every single grate to a single lever, then channel a giant pit 5-6 z-levels deep underneath the grate bridge. the grates would have to be positioned two grates thick with a supporting section of wall inbetween the next two thick section of grates. then chain an animal up in front of it to detect ambushes and whatnot

what you have then is a near-perfect defense to outside land-based attackers. any attacking force will be forced to cross the bridge, and when they do, some simple persistant flickering of the lever that is attached to all the grates will drop them many z-levels where they will then die on impact with the ground.

underground tunnels connecting to the bottom of the pit can also be made to safely collect the various valuables the attackers had equipped at the time.

is this doable?

[KrataLightblade]

so i found grates, and i thought "great!" and i'll tell you why.

would it be possible to create a long spanning raised platform made mostly of grates to be the only entrance into your fort, then hook every single grate to a single lever, then channel a giant pit 5-6 z-levels deep underneath the grate bridge. the grates would have to be positioned two grates thick with a supporting section of wall inbetween the next two thick section of grates. then chain an animal up in front of it to detect ambushes and whatnot

what you have then is a near-perfect defense to outside land-based attackers. any attacking force will be forced to cross the bridge, and when they do, some simple persistant flickering of the lever that is attached to all the grates will drop them many z-levels where they will then die on impact with the ground.

underground tunnels connecting to the bottom of the pit can also be made to safely collect the various valuables the attackers had equipped at the time.

is this doable?

I think any grates not DIRECTLY connected to land will lose support from the pulling of the lever and kill your bridge.

Why not just use a normal retracting bridge?

[Walliard]

I think any grates not DIRECTLY connected to land will lose support from the pulling of the lever and kill your bridge.

Why not just use a normal retracting bridge?

They're all connected to "land" via the two side walls. And normal retracting bridges have a 100 tick delay, unlike grates, so pulling the lever repeatedly probably won't be as effective..

[JoshuaFH]

then i suppose 'strategic' lever pulling would be more effective?

[Warlord255]

You could just stick them all to one lever and make the supports that connect them walls instead of floors, so that the enemy is forced to path over the grates.

I've got a site that I could easily do this for, and it's a colonized bottomless pit. However, I prefer good ol' fashioned melee showdowns, and as such I have a thin set of fighters and a cadre of archers above, raining down arrow-based death while the enemy charges headlong into oblivion.

[_Acorn_]

WW FW FWW FW
G B B G G G G G G
G P G G C G G C G
G B B G G G G G G
WW FW FWW FW

W=wall
F=fortification
G=grate
B=bridge or grate w/ a lever
P=pressure plate will retract grates
C=cage trap

You'll have 1 or 2 invader(s) trapped on a podium, maybe a few more in cages, and the bulk will fall in the pit.  To either side of the hallway, behind the fortifications would be an ideal place for a barracks, food and drink stockpiles, and a squad of marksdwarves.

Weapon Trap the rest of the hallway for when the caravan arrives and you need to let down the "bridge" that forces walking on the pressure plate.

[RavingManiac]

normal retracting bridges have a 100 tick delay, unlike grates, so pulling the lever repeatedly probably won't be as effective..

I thought that applied only to drawbridges...

[Grumman]

If you're going to do this, might I suggest that instead of connecting the bridge directly to the lever, you connect it to a water-logic repeater controlled by the lever? That way you don't need to keep pausing the game and pulling the lever, you just have to pull it once to turn it on, once to turn it off. Just make sure you keep your dwarfs off the bridge.

[DanielLC]

If you press r, it sets the selected command to repeat, so the dwarf will just keep pulling the lever.

Why grates instead of hatches? There's not really any pressing reason one way or another, but my instinct is to use whichever is closest to regular floors and bridges.

I'd probably build it like this:

######
¢¢¢¢¢^^
######

Where # is a wall, ¢ is a hatch, the ^ on the right is a pressure plate, and the ^ on the left is a cage trap or weapon trap. I'd probably also make it longer. The goblins would come from the left, the first would drop the rest, then get trapped/killed

[Quift]

About a year ago someone built what he called "The Hammer of Armok", which you can probably find on the videosite.

It was a checkpattern of hatches where the black and white alternated in opening. basicly it allowed the pathing though it at all times, but pathing would lead to a hatch that would open beneath the goblins feet into an abyss.

Very impressive engingeering since it had an almost 100% catching rate. instead of allowing the gobbos to linger and loiter outside.

I'm for into the military confrontation myself, but I do see where a nice and efficient goblin cathcer might come in handy. A large gobitorium, a blood temple, all these have there uses.

[THLawrence]

If you build supports beneath every grate it may hold them up. This was done with the hand of Armok. Also, the falling goblins will pass straight through the supports.

[Sevrun]

and the supports don't need anything uder them as long as they're secured to something solid, perhaps via other supports?

[Fossaman]

This is what I would do.

Code: [Select]

O##O##O
O#####O
O#O#O#O
O#####O
O##O##O
O#####O
O#O#O#O
O#####O
O##O##O

 Not quite wide enough for caravans, but I don't think that's possible. You'd have to use floor sections instead if you wanted a caravan friendly entrance. Which isn't a bad idea, necessarily. If the lever's on repeat, they'll path off of the floor tile eventually and plummet to their doom. You could set that up something like this:

Code: [Select]

O+##O
O##+O
O+##O
O##+O

or

O#+#O
O###O
O###O
O#+#O
O###O
O###O
O#+#O

Number two there is cooler, in my opinion. But you'd need supports or something to make it work. Maybe you could suspend them from supports hooking into the ceiling of the path? That would be pretty awesome.

[numerobis]

Your floors could just be the tops of walls one z-level below.

For extra credit, make them 5- or 10-z-level tall, smooth, obsidian pillars, so that the falling goblins don't get the benefit of forshortening to decrease their terminal panic.  Put spikes at the bottom.  Then, show it off in 3dwarf.

You might want to make the pattern larger, so that there's always a path for wagons, in case a caravan feels like showing up just as you're demolishing the goblin attack.

[Rafal99]

You can make something like this:

Code: [Select]

O###O
O#X#O
O###O
O###O
O#X#O
O###O
O###O
O#X#O      X - level operated door on a floor
O###O      

That way when doors are closed the attackers have to go through grates. If a caravan come pull the level opening the doors and you have a 3 tiles wide path.
Make a floors under the gates supported by a long pillars going to the bottom as someone already suggested.

Edit: Replaced floodgates with doors cause they don't have 100 ticks response time like floodgates.