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[Hawklaser]

Ok, I have been using a rather unusual way to defend my forts as of late, and curious as to what others opinions of it, or if they have any suggestions on how to improve it. It ends up being completly underground. And looks something like this from the side.

XXXXX|__A_#BBBBB____________C________________D
E______________/

The X's are just empty space or rock, | / and _ are floors, walls, and a ramp,# fortifications, A is where I have ammo and marksdwarfs,B is a drawbridge that raises towards the fortifications, C is cubbies in the side to hide my melee dwarfs, D would be another drawbridge to keep the invaders from getting into the fortress proper. E is the entrance and exit to to the fort.

I try and have my meleedwarf cubbies far enough in to let all the invaders get into the tunnel before the attack gets broken and they start fleeing, once they are in far enough, the bridge levers get pulled. What I have found nice about this set-up is it doesn't let the enemy get away, while also making a safe place to clean up the mess afterwards. I also usualy have a some random livestock chained up before the cubbies to reveal invaders.

I'm also curious as to some of the more unusual ways people defend their forts, outside of traps, and magma/water/cave-in/obsidan deathtraps.

[Duke 2.0]

 Actually, add a second retractable bridge after the main bridge covering a small pit, and you make those fortifications more useful. Then you pull a lever and raise the drawbridge, while extending the retractable bridge over the pit.

[Cypress]

My entrance is built into the ocean floor...so I only need to turn off the pumps to seal it.
And if that fails, I have a drawbridge that swings up against a wall, crushing anything on it and revealing an aquifer.
Links in the siggy

[Hawklaser]

So... Modify it to something more like this? To keep the invaders with bows from getting up close to the fortifcations, right?

XXXXX|__A_#BBBBB__^__________C________________D
E______________/    |_|

With the ^ being the retractable bridge.

I just find using plain ole death traps, or hordes of marksdwarfs to take the challenge out of ambushes and seiges.

[ArkDelgato]

Lock the melee dwarfs in the cubbies with food and drink.
Make a pressure plate release them when the invaders get in the middle.
For added fun have a ballista or catapult at the A


XXXXX|__A_#BBBBB__^_________CCCPCC____________D
E______________/    |_|

P is for pressure plate

[Hawklaser]

Hmm... I can just imagine the suprise of the invaders from that.

"Hey boss? What was that click?"
"Oh crap, their coming out of the walls!"

Then comes the fun of keeping the melee dwarfs stocked with food. Best solution I can think of is build a food/booze stockpile one level down, with direct access to the cubbie with doors or hatches to lock out haulers or soldiers depending on state of the stockpile. As dumping it in could cause some problems.

[Jim Groovester]

You could provide direct access to the cubby holes from your fortress. That would be an easy and safe way to get soldiers and haulers down there, as long as the doors to your murder corridor are mechanically operated. And to keep the soldiers from leaving and going off to drink their favorite booze, you could keep a different set of doors that you could lock manually. That way, the only way to the booze is through the goblins, which would make your dwarves fight harder, methinks.

[ArkDelgato]

You could provide direct access to the cubby holes from your fortress. That would be an easy and safe way to get soldiers and haulers down there, as long as the doors to your murder corridor are mechanically operated. And to keep the soldiers from leaving and going off to drink their favorite booze, you could keep a different set of doors that you could lock manually. That way, the only way to the booze is through the goblins, which would make your dwarves fight harder, methinks.

"Come on Urist, there be gobbo's to slaughter!"
"But Alath, I dislike fighting and am a recently recruited soapmaker."
"The booze stockpile is down at the other end of the hallway."
"*Dwarven rum* here I come!"
The recruit explodes into a lump of gore
"Oi, that's gotta hurt."

[ArkDelgato]

Just had a great Idea.
rig a pressure plate to drop military dwarves from above via hatch or floorgrate.
one Z drops will stun momentarily, but leave them ready in a second or two.

[jester]

I use something a bit like this but with the marksdwarves aboveground (4 z levels) its apparently harder to shoot through fortifications from further away.  I also have a moat that goes around about 1/4 of the map with 6 bridges over it all hooked to one lever.  Once all of the gobbos are over the bridges pull the lever and suddenly there is nowhere for my iron crop to run.