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[guardian707]

Cage traps - I've been playing a short time and I love me some cage traps.  I haven't had the pleasure of playing much with the the sieges, but I went from a booming cat leather industry to cornering the Unicorn goods market. 

1) how can I cage FBs, mega-beasts and or other fun monsters for use in my leather and trade goods industries? 

2) is it worth it to capture everything over outright "spear through the spleen" type traps? 

3) is there a way to transfer a wild creature from a cage, to a pit without them getting loose or building the cage somewhere? 

4) outside of using a cage trap is there a reliable way to trap a FB in a pit? (from above or from the caverns).  A reloadable trap would be preferred as some of the exceptionally designed traps on magmawiki seem very one-time reliable. 

Massacre - Or: "you must die, so that others can make snazzy earrings from your teeth" - I have done a slaughter tower 10z high and it does rain cats and dogs in my world, sometimes to horrifying effect.  I have done the gladiator pit and unless I forget to lock the door, it'll be Unicorn burgers for breakfast, lunch and dinner. 

5) what is your favorite way of "dealing" with the slaughter of non-tame captured enemies?  My preference is ways that allow me to glean some raw materials for use later. 

6) how do you deal with situations where butcher shops get cluttered quickly?  I've found that if I dismantle the butchery, all the fun clutter comes out, but more importantly, the dwarves actually start picking stuff up where they left the stuff in the butchery alone if it remained built.  I have bored dwarves and a full butchery till I dismantle it.  Am I missing something here?

7) parts and pieces or your mangled prey...  mitten's left ear, Rex's front paw, you get the idea.  My slaughter tower always produces and metric ton of... debris that just sorta sits there till it turns from red to white.  Is there a purpose to these items?  Can they be used for bones at some point? 

8.) I want a stockpile of skulls for... aesthetic purposes.  I'm not sure what custom stockpile settings I need to make that happen.  Have you guys ever set up a custom stockpile of various elements of conquest and win around your leader's throne? 

[Heliman]

1: you need to use a Cave-In to stun them first.
2:I'm personally a cage trap fan and IMO it's the safest, cleanest way to kill the goblins.
3: No, this still happens, it's bugged to hell.
4:This thread here:http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=62798.msg1690749#msg1690749, Details a possible non cage trap solution.
5:I strip them down and send them off to face my Military.
6:You could probably reduce the clutter by designating more butcher shops.
7:Yes, they can be turned into bones at the butcher, I believe.
8: go to refuse in your custom stock pile, and designate that skulls alone may be placed there. then, forbid skulls from all your other refuse piles to make it so that all the skulls are there.

[proxn_punkd]

Which version are you playing? I think skull/bone/shell-specific refuse piles were implemented in 31.16+, and if OP's not getting any goblin sieges they might be playing an earlier version.

[guardian707]

31.14 atm, but thats just because I was using mayday's tileset from a few months ago.  What version should I be using and where can I get it? 

[Langdon]

3) is there a way to transfer a wild creature from a cage, to a pit without them getting loose or building the cage somewhere? 
 

3: No, this still happens, it's bugged to hell.

I don't think it's really bugged. The chance a prisoner or animal escapes while being transferred is dependent on the Animal Handling skill of the dwarf doing the Large Creature Caging task. It's just that most dwarves aren't that good animal handlers, which is why they can escape. The escape chance is checked for every step (or every few steps) the prisoner takes as it's dragged to the new cage (or Pit zone), thus the farther the prisoners have to be hauled, the more chances they have of freeing themselves.

The easiest way to reduce such escapes is to put the cage stockpile right next to the dropoff point (I usually have a 3x3 stockpile, with a hole in the middle (preferably covered by a hatch) where I drop captured prisoners into the arena. You can use the stockpile Take options to move specific cages between stockpiles with no chance of escape (the dwarf hauls the cages, not the prisoner). So I have a large Animal holding stockpile near the entrance (where prisoners are initially dropped when taken from the cage traps) and a smaller 3x3 elf/human/goblin/troll stockpile around the drop hatch to my arena/drowning/magma chamber.

Goblin thieves and master thieves do have an increased chance of escape, but I find that if I dump their daggers beforehand they are much less dangerous. I usually have a set of secondary cage traps blocking the only way out from the 3x3 stockpile, so that any escapees are immediately recaptured. With the cage stockpiles right next to the drop hatch the prisoners have much smaller chance of escaping, even with dabbling Animal Handlers.

[celem]

Also.  any untamed animal appears to escape immediately upon leaving the stockpile if the cages' destination is a trade depot, otherwise the only things i ever see escape are 'thief' types or critters significantly larger than a dwarf (sometimes?)

Personally when it comes to disposal of my captured enemies I use the arena method.  Unfortunatly yes it involves building and linking dozens of cage traps, thats why I got an army of mechs.  In addition every cage ever built adds one more mechanism to the lever in my dining room, thing must be worth 40,000 dorfbucks already by itself.
Once the critters are all ready i open the cages and the marksdwarves stationed above do their thing.  Because im nice i dont lock my arena so those not sniped make a beeline for the door, where the melee squads await backed by a long corridor of traps just-in-case.  Stripping weapons first is key, leaving armor on hostiles is also very useful to maximize training.  If doing this with beasts like unicorns then you can always put a butcher/tanner right outside to help process the corpses.

Butcher shops being cluttered and not hauled seems like a bug.  check you got food/refuse stockpiles with space, people with hauling enabled, idlers.  seeing as it works when you decon the butchers it sounds like a proper bug.

The other big advantage with trapping and arena execution vs just an impaling spike (besides free training) is that the notable kills all end up on dwarves and their weapons rather than some lever operated spike, this yields nice engravings and an interesting Legends Mode if you read that




Regarding FBs and the trapping of...

Heliman is right in his first comment that using a cave-in to stun a trapimmune monster will cause it to be vulnerable to cage traps.  However, FBs, along with titans and clowns as randomly generated monsters are all both TRAP_IMMUNE and NOSTUN.  This means they ignore cage traps and will not be stunned by a cave-in (though a direct hit will still be fatal).

The ONLY method for capturing these types of guys is to arrange for a cage trap to be webbed by a spider.  None of the above are web immune and web acts just like a stun.
(This has been tested and proven, I managed to cage FBs, Titans and Clowns for use in my invader defenses.  It requires obscene planning and micro-management if at all unfamiliar with GCS silk farming techniques)

It has however possible (and done) to 'trap' an fb without a cage trap.  A series of raisable bridges to funnel him from the caverns to where you want him is key here, with a bit of work you can make a maze for him to live in and route seiges through it