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[JAFANZ]

Fairly economical to build aboveground since you would only need 1/3rd of the usual flooring materials, less if you built it on a road, even less than that if still went & dug out one level of the landing zone so you didn't have to construct walls/fortifications.

Chain a cat in the middle & you should get the [trapavoids] too... 

[FleshForge]

Well as far as I've seen, kobolds etc. just walk right over traps whether they're seen or not, but they're not really a big problem, but yes putting a spotter animal at a choke point pretty much drives them away 100%.

[Absentia]

I was wondering what kind of deathtrap to play with next, and now I'm wondering no longer. As a way to get goblins into a pit it beats the heck out of the trapdoor-drawbridge. I'd definitely go with wood spikes; with glass ones you're going to be gently poking them to death.

[JAFANZ]

Why bother with spikes? a raised footpath only requires 2 wood(/stone/etc) for each level you wish to raise it by (if it's accessed by stairs, ramps take it to 4/z-level), so if your pit is of any length, the savings on wood should be significant (& if you really want to be evil, you could loop it back over itself so the closer they get to your dorfs, the further they have to fall).

[FleshForge]

Man, you don't build mass-kill entry halls with economy in mind   My last fort, the welcome/drowning hall was about 3x200 map tiles long, with a 10x200 reservoir of water suspended above, eight 2x10 gates to dump the water, ten 4x10 gates to drain the hall, and a huge drain spillway beneath it so I didn't have to wait long to loot it or if I didn't catch the whole siege in it in one pull.  All beautifully floored in marble so I wouldn't have to go muck it out later.  This dodge/fall thing, I expect will take 1% of the labor and materials no matter how convoluted I try to make it

[FleshForge]

I set up the dodge/fall catwalk with crappy trap parts thing ... today in our forecast, there is a 100% chance of heavy goblin showers!

[cyks]

Reading about dodging and falling reminds me of a legendary warrior I recently lost when he fell into our volcanoe after dodging a zombie horay marmot.

[Shoku]

I figured you could have the spear traps below just give another ledge to fall down and so on until you've funneled them into a single tile of swiftly rising floor.

[ledgekindred]

I kinda like putting crappy weapons in my weapon traps.  But that's because I build a roach motel for incoming hordes filled with weapon traps consisting entirely of crappy weapons.  They can dodge and dodge and dodge all they want, but all they are going to do is dodge into another trap.  Even if one out of twenty does some damage, when they can't get away from them ever, eventually they die by infinite paper cuts.  Some of them have crappy spiked balls in them instead of spinning discs.  It's fun watching a goblin weapon master bounce around the roach motel dodging flying disc after flying disc and then dodging into a spiked ball and getting tossed across the room and have to start dodging again.  All I can say is, ineffectual weapons or not, so far no invader has come out alive.

Originally I had cage traps interspersed among the weapons traps but I ran out of cages so fast that I disassembled most of them.  The best part of that is that now only the best invaders - mostly the weapon masters - are able to dodge long enough to dodge themselves into a cage.  Which means that my military now gets only the best sparring partners.

[FleshForge]

It turns out there is a little problem with this dodge/fall platform setup - it is so lethal that it kills too many enemies and the siege breaks before very many of them even get up on the catwalk.  Hilarious to see it happen though

[ledgekindred]

It turns out there is a little problem with this dodge/fall platform setup - it is so lethal that it kills too many enemies and the siege breaks before very many of them even get up on the catwalk.  Hilarious to see it happen though

You need to set up a one-way door before they get to the catwalk area so there's nowhere else for them to go.  Channel them through an area like this:

Code: [Select]

-----------
 bbbHp  ^
-----------

- = walls
b = retractable bridge over channel
H = hatch over a channel
p = pressure plate that triggers on anything but dwarves
^ = ramp back up from channel under bridge and hatch

Remove all the ramps from the channel except the one escape ramp.  Once the invaders pass it, trying to go the other way opens the hatch, exposes the pit and makes it uncrossable.  The only way is across your ramp.

The bridge you can pull for building destroyers - dig a channel under it that leads to the other side of the trap.  Building destroyer lines up to bust the hatch, pull the bridge and he falls into the channel.  Put the bridge back for the next bunch.  You can't always get the bridge out of the way, and a busted hatch makes the path permanently unpassable, so I usually use two or three setups in parallel so that at least one usually stays intact.

Whatever deathtrap mechanism I have set up at the time is always entered through one of these.  And far enough away that a majority of the siege will be trapped by the time the first ones start dying.  It's much more fun to see 50 goblins get chopped/smushed/eaten/boiled/drowned/etc than only to the first 10 and have the rest run away.

[forsaken1111]

It turns out there is a little problem with this dodge/fall platform setup - it is so lethal that it kills too many enemies and the siege breaks before very many of them even get up on the catwalk.  Hilarious to see it happen though

So a better setup would have them dodging into a holding area which you then flood with magma once they're all in.

[FleshForge]

Yeah that makes great sense, or a dropper or drowner or whatever.  Thinking about more convoluted one-way doors and such, I don't know that it adds very much, the holding area seems much harder to do wrong (although I'll try to find a way!)

[forsaken1111]

I would just have a constructed floor 'bridge' over a 1 z-level drop into a pit with no way out. On the sides would be iron grates with pumps on the other side, and the floors would have magma-safe hatches over draining grates attached to a lever.

Pull one lever, pumps start up and magma flows in from a big tank just below. Pull the other lever, it all drains out.

This kills the intruders, incinerates all the annoying clothing, and leaves the tasty metal.

A drowning chamber would be harder to design in this case, because the top needs to be closed or they will just swim.

[FleshForge]

Yeah that part is actually pretty easy to fix (a bridge above that you close before filling).  It doesn't have to be a very big area at all, because it's very rare for anything to get past the third "dodge me" trap anyway, one 3x10 bridge would be plenty to cover it.  I actually can think of ways where it could be set up for both options, water or magma, or even a third option to drop them into a deeper hole and smash them.  All in the same neat 3x10 area.  The real trap is the "dodge me" catwalk, everything after that is just fun ways to dispose of large numbers of goblins.  Thanks for the idea!

oops ps:

iron grates

or fortifications, much safer