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[KVC627]

So I don't like having to bother with the military, so I build a lot of traps and walls.  Now for my entrance from the wilderness to my courtyard, I built a single wide path of traps, alternating cage and weapon traps with walls to either side.

:c:
:w:
:c:
:w:

: = Wall   C = cage  W = Weapon Trap

There are 6 of each trap type, making my entrance 12 steps long, plus an iron door on either end.  I just got ambushed by Goblin Pikemen and Lashers who walked right into my fort's courtyard.  3 got captured in cages, the other 3 cages didn't catch anything and the weapon traps only killed 1 attacker. (All the traps were loaded and had been for some time.)

Reading the Wiki I see part of my problem was using mostly glass weapons, I think only 1 had iron components...  For Weapon traps I usually use 6 weapons, 3 discs and 3 giant axe blades.   I also have a small room where I have a cage surrounded by weapon traps which kill caged animals/attackers and the weapons seem to work as soon as they are stepped on.

So my questions:
1 - Should weapon traps use all 10 slots? 
1b -Does the material the traps are made out of matter? (other than glass that is)
2 - Is my design flawed somehow?  I've read a lot that people lay traps with drops to either side.. I must try that.
3 - Are weapon traps the most effective?  I don't like stone traps because the need to be reloaded, and I haven't tried spear/spike traps.

[shlorf]

1. The more weapons you use in a trap, the higher the chance for the trap to kill it's victim thereby getting jammed by the bits (this is worst for serrated discs, as they chop the target up and throw the bits around possibly jamming other traps around it with landing arms and legs). You might want to experiment with traps loaded with 10 war hammers as these will break some bones but probably not kill leaving you with severely injured goblins even a recruit will beat up.
1b. Yes, steel generally seems to be best as all trap components are edge type attacks.
2. Yes, your design is flawed as you will catch near dead goblins in caged therefor ending up with cages with goblin corpses. I would try something like this:

Code: [Select]

W
W
W
+
+
W
W
+
+
C
C
C
The first 3 weapon traps would be loaded with silver war hammers, the other 2 traps would be loaded with anything deadly (for serrated discs you don't need 10 per trap as each gets 3 attacks already anyway, 3 or 4 should be enough). The +s are floors without traps and should be made longer to give any goblin ample time to pass out / bleed out after being injured. The cages at the end will catch any good leader who keeps dodging the weapon traps.
3. Spear/spike traps don't fire automatically, that means you have to link them up to a lever. They have 2 big advantages over weapon traps tho a) they cannot jam b) they will hit even trap avoid creatures. The downside is you have to make sure you order a dwarf to pull the lever on repeat whenever something attacks you, and they also don't discriminate between friend and foe, so you have to stop pulling the lever when you send out your militia.

[gtmattz]

Personally, I prefer my traps to be non-deadly so that nothing gets stuck in them.  What I do is set up my entrance so that the traps are on a catwalk with a very long drop on either side.  I usually use wooden training spears the same as one would in a danger room, 10 to a trap.  What this does is, instead of the traps killing the invaders, the invaders dodge the traps, and invariably end up falling to their death when they dodge off the edge of the catwalk.  If you want survivors you can shorten the drop so that it is not lethal, then deal with the survivors however you please.

[Lagslayer]

My current for has about 15 rows, 3 tiles wide, all weapon traps with 10 high quality spiked balls in them made of copper or silver, and all with at least a fine quality mechanism. I also have 6 cage traps out in front to catch ambushes. The traps bash everything up pretty well and I have only gotten a couple of corpses stuck in them. For the unfortunate souls that survive the traps, they then have to deal with my military, which could easily rip them to shreds without the aid of traps.

[KVC627]

How far a drop does it take to kill them?

[elpizo]

personnally i just put a bunch of cage traps at the entrance and then execute the in vaders in my volcano or i train my soldiers wich bring me to my own question, how do you disarm a caged goblin?

[NecroRebel]

How far a drop does it take to kill them?

It depends on how they hit and how heavy they are. 2 is enough to deal damage against unlucky targets, 5 is usually enough to break several bones (which sometimes leads to bleeding out), 8 is often instantly deadly for goblin-sized creatures, 10 is almost always deadly for goblins, and 20 will explode pretty much anything into a spray of gore.

how do you disarm a caged goblin?

You designate their weapon for dumping, then let a dwarf drag the weapon to a garbage dump zone. There's 2 main ways of going about this. You could use the stocks menu, find the goblins' weapons in your weapons list, and dump them from there (this is why it's helpful to make all your weapons out of steel, so you can easily identify enemy weapons). Alternatively, you could use the mass dump designation (d-b-d) to mark everything in the tile the goblin cage is in for dumping, then loo(k) at the cage itself to remove the dump mark on it.

[elpizo]

why would someone use the stock option when it's so much easier to massive dump it?

[NecroRebel]

why would someone use the stock option when it's so much easier to massive dump it?

The mass dump option relieves the enemies of their armor, too. That's undesirable if you want to train your dwarves' weapon skills, as it means that the enemies will be unarmored and incapable of taking as many hits.

[gtmattz]

How far a drop does it take to kill them?

Because I like to use magic numbers, I give them 13 z levels to fall.  This guarantees death, and results in a bloody chunksplosion most of the time.

[elpizo]

why would someone use the stock option when it's so much easier to massive dump it?

The mass dump option relieves the enemies of their armor, too. That's undesirable if you want to train your dwarves' weapon skills, as it means that the enemies will be unarmored and incapable of taking as many hits.

guess you're right but when i check stock some of my stuff does'nt even show, is it because i need a bookkepper or something?

[NecroRebel]

guess you're right but when i check stock some of my stuff does'nt even show, is it because i need a bookkepper or something?

Probably. A bookkeeper isn't that much effort to set up, though. You just need a chair and a spare dwarf, neither of which is too costly after the first summer. Using the (n)obles screen, scroll to the bookkeeper position, (r)eplace the (probably empty) dwarf slot with somebody who is otherwise mostly idle, then change the (s)ettings to highest precision, make sure you've got a chair someplace (one in your dining room is fine), scroll to the chair and make it a (r)oom (a 1x1 room is fine), then assign it to your bookkeeper. That's all you need to do; after a bit, your bookkeeper will have made your stocks screen so that you can see everything.

[ltprifti]

i like glass serraded blades with steel ones and silver warhammer and a few steel axes aswell