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[thebigJ_A]

If I put a crossbow as a weapon trap, will it act as a bow, or jut as a club? I've got all these crap 'bows I've made to train up my crossbow-maker that I don't have anything to do with.

[BigJake]

If you have bolts/arrows/ammowhatever, your dwarfs will load it and it will fire; reloading it when it empties.  As far as I'm aware, a crossbow/bow/rangedwhatever in a trap without ammo won't do a thing.  I'm uncertain about that point, though, because I very rarely do this.

[bcd1024]

Ranged weapons in traps suck. At most they can be loaded with 5 ammo, which means that even if the trap doesn't jam, dwarves still have to go and reload it. This typically happens in the middle of combat.

[BigJake]

I thought ranged traps never jammed.  But, yes, ranged traps are a general hassle.

[Blood-Dwarf]

put those bows in magma. load weapon trap with spears.

[LoSboccacc]

so they shoot five times in a row before needing a reload?

true that ranged are a mess to reload, but bolts are just soo nicely effective against soft titans.
I use them as a last line of trap, as to not have to reload them every time an ambush shows up.

my first line is usually composed of wooden stuff, as to soft the enemy up without killing them (and getting jammed)

[Akura]

Seemed like 10 per trap rounds to me. It might have been ~150 bolts for a 10-crossbow trap. If you've got a legendary bowyer, crossbow traps are pretty good, and pretty cheap(wood or bone, material doesn't matter for shooting, just quality). Even exceptional/masterwork crossbows loaded with bone(and maybe some iron) bolts shredded some goblins for me.

[thebigJ_A]

Hmm.  Mixed answers. Up to now, I'd been putting up cage traps, and weapon traps with things like spiked balls and giant axe blades in them.

[celem]

giant axe blade does a monster hit for sure....but the serrated blade strikes three times.  It seems pretty unclear which does the most damage but the disc is good at multiple amputations for crippling those it doesnt kill:)

Spiked ball is pierce according to the wiki, but doesnt get the same penetration as a spear

[Akura]

No, but spiked balls also hit thrice like discs. And 30 strikes is better than 10, right?

[Hyndis]

Range weapon traps cannot jam but they can run out of ammo. Fully loaded the trap will have 10 rounds per weapon, so it will fire 10 times before running out of ammo. You of course need to make the ammo to reload the trap but it can be reloaded.

Either way traps do need to be maintained. Weapon traps full of steel discs can get jammed, and weapon traps will of ranged weapons can run out of ammo. Even cage traps or stonefall traps need to be reloaded.

The only traps that don't need this sort of maintenance are meta-traps, things involving bridges, levers, pressure plates, and other such things, but that is a reward for building a properly designed trap rather than just a single weapon trap which is very easy and fast to build but unable to handle an entire siege by itself. If you want to handle an entire siege with a single trap then your trap needs to be very large. Magma should also be involved.

[thebigJ_A]

So I should be filling up the traps? I've just been putting one thing in each. Doesn't matter though, I've done all this work for nothing. Turns out I have .13 instead of .12 somehow, so no invasions.

[FleshForge]

It's the difference between having the trap get 3 attacks, and 30 attacks.

So far I don't see any reason not to use .16, I have been playing with it since it was released and it's behaved very well except I don't get any human caravans (possibly because of the Fortress Defense mod I use).

ps: bow traps are great - until they have to be reloaded, which is any time anything hits one.

[Darkmere]

I fail to see how reloading a bow trap is any less annoying than having to pick goblin corpses out of serrated disc traps. Process the goblinite into more bolts to farm more goblinite for more traps. It's the circle of life VENGEANCE. Labor is cheap, make the lazy sods earn their booze.

But yeah after a while just stuff every worthless crap weapon you don't feel like melting into weapon traps. In my experience anything more than 2 or 3 serrated discs is overkill, and thus more dwarfy.

[FleshForge]

Because it's 10 trips back and forth, vs. 1 trip back and forth.