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[billw]

It occurred to me that the most efficient, quick and clean trap I could use at the entrance to my fort would simply be a long corridor with large raising bridges along one edge, and a lever in my fort (or a pressure plate?). Is the reason this is never mentioned that it is kind of boring, or is there something I am missing? I find it annoying that my flooding chambers are always full of corpses and goblinite.

[Dorten]

1) Everyone loves goblinite
2) There are building destroyers
3) Some Megabeasts can't get smashed
4) Just do it already!

[billw]

1) My dwarves got sieges so much in my last fortress that they spent all their time collecting it and never got anything else done. I wanna make all my own stuff anyway, I think its not so dwarfy to be melting down evil goblin weapons.
2) No building destroyers can destroy bridges, but some creatures will stop them from closing (FBs, dunno what else).
3) Yeah, screw those guys!!! What I am thinking is that I can replace the smashing bridges with a decent magma flooding system later, but the bridges would see me through the first few years till I can hit magma. Normally I waste ages making a big water flooding system with a reservoir etc. This will be much easier temp solution to sieges.
4) I would, but I am in work. Maybe at lunch time

[Daetrin]

I'm seriously considering doing this in my fort...well, killing or magma-drowning first, but then the smashing for the same reason.  After you've offed a siege of 80 goblins you won't finish hauling the goblinite (even if you magmafy most of it) before there's another siege or something.

[Heavenfall]

I just leave it on the ground.

Building destroyers don't mess up your bridges, but they can mess up the mechanisms linking your bridge to other things.

[hambone]

That is the defense I've been using on one of my old 40d forts. First I have a stretch of retractable bridges with a 13-14 zlevel drop underneath, and after that a stretch of raised bridges for crushing. Oh, and past that right at the inner entrance a bunch of cage/stonefall traps. It works great, almost too well.

[Hyndis]

I prefer falling traps instead of crushing traps. With a falling trap I can recover the goblinite and corpses. I have adjusted my civ ethics so that goblin corpses can be butchered, which gives me huge supplies of iron, meat, leather, and bones to work with.

Why waste perfectly good goblinite?

[Quietust]

Unless the atom-smasher behavior has changed since 40d, trying to crush an excessively large creature will destroy the bridge. The only time they just prevent it from working is if you're trying to raise a drawbridge (even if they're on the edge that would become a wall, IIRC) or open/close a retracting bridge.

[Sphalerite]

From my experiments in 40d, an excessively large creature will prevent a retracting bridge from opening, but will also destroy a retracting bridge if you attempt to extend the bridge while the excessively large creature is in the space the bridge extends into.  So the behavior is the same in both cases - the bridge won't retract or raise if a large creature is on it, and will be destroyed if you lower or extend it while a large creature is in the way.  This seems to be true in DF2010 as well.  I am not sure yet just what the cutoff size is in DF2010.

[FallingWhale]

I only use bridge based death to auto butcher wild things from inside the fort to avoid needing to mark for meat, a 3z drop onto a pile of spears is great.

[ECrownofFire]

Building destroyers and goblinite are really the only reasons you wouldn't do this. Goblinite is always useful. Building destroyers can be dealt with most of the time, but they are tough. For things that aren't building destroyers, it's probably better to just use traps of some kind. Traps can catch building destroyers if they are designed correctly. Otherwise it can lead to lots of fun, and drowning/burning.

[Hyndis]

A pusher trap can catch even a large building destroyer. Essentially you're just using pressurized water to push something off of a narrow ledge. Bonus points if you use magma. It will set them on fire, and then push them off the ledge where they plummet to their doom and explode at the bottom of a magma lake.

[ECrownofFire]

Of course, there is the ever reliable cave-in trap. Just use a support triggered by a lever or plate. If the support is destroyed, it works just as well. Can building destroyers destroy pressure plates? I'm not sure if they can even do that.

[thijser]

Well I almost always have a pressure plate linked to a bridge of 2 (sometimes for safty 3)tiles that borders to the pressure plate that way the delay the bridge needs to go down almost always means the enemy will be on one of the bridge tiles when it comes down. If you link it to a water pump which is linked to reset the bridge you can have a really quick reloading mechanism of doom!!!

[Dungeon]

In my last two fortress's I've rigged up long atom-smasher corridors at my entrance just for Goblins and other nasty invaders, Size 10 beasties excluded of course. But its all in the name of warfare, cause I know eventually the Goblin Sieges are just going to get ridiculously bad. Hell, the last Siege at Nitigrigoth had to have had around 100 Goblins at least considering I caught over 60 of them in cage traps alone and I STILL got at least 8 that breached my defenses through a weak point and a large squad ran off after I killed the leader who was IN that 8.

But I set it up like this. W=Wall, F=Floodgate, B=Bridge.

WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW
WBBBBBBBBWBBBBBBBBBWBBBBBBBBBWBBBBBBBBBWBBBBBBBBBW
FBBBBBBBBBF BBBBBBBBBF BBBBBBBBBFBBBBBBBBBF BBBBBBBBB F
WBBBBBBBBWBBBBBBBBBWBBBBBBBBBWBBBBBBBBBWBBBBBBBBBW
WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

Now, while the uniformity here is off. There is absolutly no space for any invaders to move or hide in. And I have the control levers inside down in the main area so if I order my Dwarves indoors I can operate the floodgates and the bridges. So, the enemies HAVE to funnel in through the atomsmasher to even approach my fortress. And the road is a tight squeeze designed to limit their ability escape. Bassicly, in case of crap, lock em in, make Goblin pudding. Bill Cosby tested, Bill Cosby approved.