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[moki]

I had a question in the "what's happening in your fortress?" thread, but didn't want to derail it, so here it is again: Is there a way to drop a dwarf (noble) down a shaft (about 25 levels) with the following conditions:

1)
No dust from a cave-in. There are stairs all along the shaft and I don't like my useful civilians to fall off and into the depth.

2)
Should be easily reloadable/rebuildable. I don't want to spend all year rebuilding the trap for the next year's nobles.

3)
The noble should activate the trap himself, either with a lever or a pressure plate, or multiple if necessary. Suicide sounds so much nicer than murder

4)
It should work automatically without me or other dwarves doing anything (especially manually locking doors and pulling levers)


the shaft looks like this:

XXXXX
X...X
X...X
X...X
XXXXX

X=stairs
.=empty space

The first plan that made me ask this question, worked like this: A supported floor with a support in the middle, on that support an unsupported floor (accessible with grates) and a lever. The lever is connected to the support. When it's pulled, the top floor with the lever-puller falls down and punches through the lower floor, producing a giant cloud of dust that makes dwarves fall from the stairs further down. The first and only pulling of the lever killed 6 and 2 more in a following tantrum... I'd like to avoid that in the future.

I specifically want to drop nobles down the central staircase, where everybody can watch. Drowning, burning, smashing, starving or dropping somewhere else is no alternative, but I'm alway open for better, overly complicated and dramatic ideas. There can never be enough interesting ways to kill stuff.

[NecroRebel]

At the top of the shaft, make a small hall/room similar to this:

WWWWWWWWW
++GGG++LW
WWWWWWWWW, where Ws are walls, +s are floors, Gs are a retracting bridge, and the L is a lever linked to the bridge.

Use the lever's workshop profile to set it so that only the offending noble can use it, then set it to be pulled. The noble will walk in, pull the lever, start walking out, and then the bridge will disappear beneath its feet, causing it to plummet down your death shaft.

Now, you'll almost certainly need to make the hallway after the bridge but before the lever longer than I showed there, in order to calibrate it correctly such that the noble can't actually get past the bridge before it vanishes, and supposedly retracting bridges can send people flying along their same z-level so it won't be 100% reliable, but I think such a design will be the simplest and most effective option available.



To reset it, you'll need a second lever accessible from the outside that your other dwarves can pull once your execution is complete, but otherwise it seems to fit all of your requirements.

[Skorpion]

I prefer murder. It's so much simpler.

As such, I just have a lever with a path of repeating spikes. I set it to be pulled by the nobles I want killed, have the spike lever pulled on repeat elsewhere, and stabbity stabbity urk.
Just gotta cancel the 'pull the lever/r' on both when they're all ded. Don't want the philosopher dying.
Not after his predecessor perished in that unfortunate accident with the titan...

[Sir Iryn]

My favorite method involves a lever attached to nothing that is set to pull on repeat for the noble. A Locked Door, and a ballista firing through a fortification into the one tile lever room. Space efficient, quick, and 100% effective.

[mal7690]

I prefer the 'animal management accident' approach.  Where the animal is a goblin hammerer who wasn't stripped.

But for your approach, make a retractable bridge over the pit, and make sure the only possible place to pull the lever is on the bridge.  Also don't forget the reset lever outside the door.

[Crowbar]

At this point, I haven't had a fortress last long enough to get some truly annoying nobles in, but when it does I plan to just have a Super Happy Fun Time lever in their quarters the causes an array of spikes to impale anything standing near the lever.

[TheCatfish]

Code: [Select]

  XXXXX
XXX...XX
Xld===d^
XXX...XX
  XXXXX
EDIT: Sorry I hit post rather than preview >.<

Explanation:
Put this set up right above the shaft.
Set lever to Noble only.
Pull the lever.

Key:
.=space
X  wall
=  retracting bridge
l  lever
d  door
^  pressure plate (connected to doors and bridge)

That'll work yeah?

[shadowform]

[Big diagram here]

That'll work yeah?

No.  The dwarf will move on top of the lever, pull it, and then start getting pathing errors because the bridge will retract before they get onto it.

You'd have to do it with pressure plates set to activate when a friendly dwarf steps on them.  Same setup as above, replace the doors with pressure plates linked to the bridge.

[TheCatfish]

The dwarf will move on top of the lever, pull it, and then start getting pathing errors because the bridge will retract before they get onto it.

Well when the dwarf steps on the plate it locks the doors before he reaches the lever, or you could manually lock them, then the plate triggers, bridge drops.

[Shades]

4)
It should work automatically without me or other dwarves doing anything (especially manually locking doors and pulling levers)

Is there any activity that only nobles will do? Or possibly some level of room only nobles will claim?

I can't see a way of isolating them automatically otherwise.

[Dorf3000]

I specifically want to drop nobles down the central staircase, where everybody can watch. Drowning, burning, smashing, starving or dropping somewhere else is no alternative, but I'm alway open for better, overly complicated and dramatic ideas. There can never be enough interesting ways to kill stuff.

As a suggestion for the OP's request, running water can push some dwarves off ledges, especially ledges that used to be dry just moments ago, and very recently used to connect to a bridge back in to the rest of the fortress.  The cascading water will also please your dwarves in the central stairway.  I think you can see what I'm hinting at here.

You can also replace water with magma if you don't mind having burning death next to your main routes..

[moki]

@Dorf3000: I like that idea... I'll have to see if there's enough space up there for this kind of setup. Water pushing stuff and especially creatures is a not very well documented feature, so I'll have to do some experiments first.

I'll build something simple first and go for the more interesting stuff later. Nobles are impatient and I don't want to keep them waiting too long
I didn't think of the delay for bridges and floodgates. That makes it a lot easier. The plan looks like this now:

OOOOOO
O+++^d
O+OOOO
O+++LO
OOOOOO


O=walls
d=door (not really needed, but should stay closed when the trap is not in use)
+=bridges, connected to the...
^=pressure plate
L=lever, set to be pulled. it doesn't do anything but make the lever-puller walk over the pressure plate, which opens the bridges. He has to walk 5 potentially deadly tiles to the lever and 5 more on the way back. There's only a small chance, he'll be on the tile with the lever when the bridges open. Some calibration, as suggested by NecroRebel could be necessary, but with 5 tiles (times two), it should work for most dwarves.


@Shades: The easiest way is building a lever, assigning it to the noble in question via the <P> menu and setting it to be pulled. It's also the only dependable way I know of.

@Sir Iryn: That's too easy for a sophisticated trap and ballista arrows are expensive... I think, I'll include a narrow corridor for elven caravans and immigrants with a ballista at the end. I didn't try, but I heard, a ballista arrow can go through an infinite number of creatures, so it would be wasteful to use it on a single dwarf.

[mattie2009]

Place his room at the bottom of a Lava Shaft and give him a nice shiny lever to pull. Make sure you have locking magma-safe doors and a magma-safe hatch. Make it like this:

X-wall
.=Floor
/=Lever
D=Door

.......
.XXDXX.
.X...X.
.D./.D.
.X...X.
.XXDXX.
.......

The doors insta-lock and the hatch opens.
Enjoy your swim in the magma, Captain Adamantium Lover.

[loser]

The water-push trap sounds great, and I think it could work real simply like this.

Code: [Select]

      ╔══╦════════╗
 ══╦══╣≈≈║≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈║
 ++┼¢ò┼≈≈╬≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈║
 ══╩══╣≈≈║≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈║
      ╚══╩════════╝
╔,═,╗,╣,║,╚,╝ = wall sections
≈ = water
┼ = door
¢ = hatch cover
ò = lever
╬ = single-tile, unraised bridge of the raising type


The lever opens the hatch cover & the second door, it also raises the bridge.  The open hatch cover both prevents the noble from leaving and provides access to the stairwell shaft below.  The open door allows water to wash in and hopefully shove the noble down the hole.  The raised bridge keeps the water tank from refilling from the larger water supply beyond

This water should not be pressurized, so that it slides sideways.  That's the only way water will move other objects.

The whole thing will need to be reset, somehow.  One option is another door off to one side of the lever, that is usually locked.  The only time you unlock it is when another dwarf needs to go in and pull the lever to close the door and hatch cover.  Then you wait for the water to run out, unlock the side door, and send a dwarf in to reset the lever.

Now, the second tank is a bit of a problem.  It can't be pressurized because that will pressurize the fist tank during the 100 steps it takes the bridge to raise.  Also, it would be best if both tanks had somewhat less than 7/7 water.  For this reason, and to refill the tanks once the door is closed and the bridge is back down, I'd recommend that the second tank be kept partially filled by something like that one repeater that, as a side effect, can keep a body of water at 3/7 - 4/7 automatically.

Alternately, instead of that unraised bridge of the raisable type, you could keep the first water tank connected to a pressurized water source by a door.  Then you have a dwarf pull the level to close that door before you send the noble to pull his own special lever.  This depressurizes the first tank.  When you send a dwarf in to reset the suicide lever, you can after ward send a dwarf to open the door that leads from the first tank to the pressurized water source, to refill the tank.

Damn, this seemed so simple before I started writing it down.  Hopefully someone can come along and make this more elegant.

EDIT: on second thought, the unraised bridge of the raising type could indeed be all that separates the first tank from a pressurized water source.  In the 100 steps before the bridge is raised, pressurized water will flood the tile on which the noble and lever sit and will not push the noble anywhere.  However, once the bridge closes the pressure is cut off and the noble gets washed down the hole just like he or she would have before.

[Shades]

@Shades: The easiest way is building a lever, assigning it to the noble in question via the <P> menu and setting it to be pulled. It's also the only dependable way I know of.

I agree it's the easiest way but it also requires manual interaction which is why I asked if anyone knew an activity or the like only nobles do so we can attempt to isolate them auto-magically.