Alrighty! A few days ago I asked for Dwarven Landmine trap designs which led me to begin testing of said deadly devices.
Before I discuss my tests, I will disclose my setup. There was a gantry built to house various sized slabs of walls and floors for testing. I arrayed migrants in warrens 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9 tiles away from the blast to view the damage.
THE FINDINGS:
Initial test: I dropped a 5x3x7 chunk of walls. The dwarves at 1 and 3 tiles away were killed while the one 5 away sustained a few serious injuries and lots of bruising. 7 and 9 remained unharmed.
Second test: I dropped a 3x5x1 chunk of walls and received nearly identical results with the exception of a dwarf 3 tiles away surviving the initial impact but dying of his wounds shortly thereafter.
Third test: I dropped a 3x3x1 chunk of walls and killed the dwarf 1 square away whilst only wounding the dwarves 3 tiles away. 5 tiles and onward were not badly injured.
Fourth test: I dropped a 3x3x1 chunk of walls from a few z-levels higher and it seemed to cause more dust. This needs more investigation, methinks.
Conclusions to draw:
Large-Scale Cave-In traps are really fucking deadly. Imagine a gobbo siege moving through the trap area. You could easily wreak terrible, terrible damage on a clustered force.
Bigger isn't better. I couldn't really detect any big difference that couldn't also be attributed to dwarven toughness fluctuations between the taller trap and the shorter one. Area seems to make a difference, but in a very linear fashion.
Taller might be better. Data isn't well researched, but a cave-in from higher up might cause more damage.
Another interesting thing to note--some nearby wildlife of Dwarfish size or larger (donkeys) were hurled into walls and exploded. Clearly having walls set up around such a trap could greatly increase its deadliness.
With all of the above information in mind, I would like to propose this trap idea:
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Basically, you just create a big square with the corners left open as you desire (to let baddies in). Leave 2-3 spaces between the edge of your cave-in section and the wall (to maximize guaranteed kills and efficiency). Build a few bridges above to let you easily build floor tiles as desired. If you want to be really dwarfy, build them really high up in the air.
Benefits: Really deadly.
Works on titans and trap-avoiders.
Can do a lot of damage.
Is indiscriminate.
Fairly efficient and easy to set up (no pumpstacks required or any sort of later-game industries).
Not to time-consuming to reload (depends on the scale of the design, but I set my idlers to masonry anyways, so it rarely takes long).
Immensely Dwarfy (crushing things under rocks, sending them hurtling into things and turning them into chunks, etc.)
Downsides:
Not as reload-able as say, a cage trap.
Takes a lot of planning compared to a simpler trap.
No magma is involved (unless you wanted to move the wall back a few squares so it just causes them to be deflected into a magma pit).
Thoughts and input is appreciated--especially if you know how heights modifies cave-in power.
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Topic: Dwarven Cave-in-Trap !!SCIENCE!! (Read 3304 times)