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[Dwarfotaur]

http://i.imgur.com/Mr3oC.jpg

I used to link up their cages and let them out accross that bridge you see by the cage stockpile. I would then use them as target practice. However, that was before I breached the caverns and met the goblins so I was only catching the odd ogre/werewolf. I do not really fancy linking up that many cages just to have them die in one shot (Crundles are pretty weak).

Any better ideas? I'd kinda like to get a use out of them (like level marksdorfs), only I want to do it in a more interesting/imaginative way.

[Girlinhat]

You can pit them.  Make a pit, and assign the creature.  Your dorf should haul it over and toss it into the pit.  If that pit is 1 level deep with a pit separating it from your marksdwarves, then, well...  Some creatures seem to escape when presented the chance, like being pitted.  You can help prevent this by building the cage next to the pit, or (my preference) build the cages next to each other, and assign them all to be taken to the center cage.  Those that make it into the cage, get rebuilt near the pit and chunked in.  Those who escape, meet a waiting group of training melee dwarves.  Either way, someone is training!

[UristMcDwarf]

No!

UNLEASH EVERY SINGLE ONE ON A GOBLIN AMBUSH!

[Mister Always]

...and then watch as the goblins totally ignore them.

Unless, of course, you train them as war animals first (may require some very basic raw modding). Seeing as they look like crundles (and some other crap, the Mayday graphics pack that I use uses that graphic for crundles, but I'm not sure what pack you have and indeed whether or not those are crundles), they probably won't be very effective...but it will be fun to watch. Who knows, they may get some lucky shots in!

[Akura]

Personally, I like the idea of a 30z drop tower.

You can even create a bullseye shaped floor area right below out of alternating rings of kaolinite and dolomite.

[ral]

In order to avoid the problem of having to build and link cages, I set up an animal stockpile with squares directly adjacent to a big pit or number of small ones. The main problem seems to be that its hard to pit creatures en mass because if they only fall one or two z-levels then they'll still interrupt the dwarves above when they try to pit the next creature. When interrupted doing this the creatures are very likely to escape the handler.

It seems like if you have the cage directly adjacent to the pit, and there's nothing to interrupt the pitting dwarf, then the vast majority of the time the creature can't escape.

Throwing goblins down a 10 z-level pit onto ten iron menacing iron spikes can be quite fun, especially when they die slowly in the miasma of their comrades' rotting bodies. I've also set up fortifications for target practice, drowndng chanmber, and other sorts of traps for testing.

BTW, since you like cage traps you might want to know that you can capture thieves and possibly other trapavoid creatures if you chain a bunch of dogs or similar fighting animals all over the traps. If the dogs force a creature to fall down or something (stun? or maybe just jump/dodge) not sure what exactly) they can still run afoul of the trap.

Those master thieves seem to be a bit overconfident when they think they can sneak past six war dogs in a one tile wide passage filled with cage traps.... Meet the spike pit mr thief

[ISGC]

unfortunately, it's pretty tough to work out getting dwarves to haul them to a pit, so a good way to get rid of them (so you can start recycling cages) is to station your military on the stock pile, then have all the animals pitted.  Most will escape, and the military will kill them all.  Good practice.

[Girlinhat]

The stockpile edge is a good idea, that's basically what I said with "build the cages at the pit" but a lot easier.  You can make it only accept animals, by disabling empty cages with the "u" key in the stockpile menu, and elsewhere you can make the reverse, a pile that only takes empty cages, so that your full cages await pitting and empty ones are closer to the traps that need cages.

Drowning pits are fun and easy too.  Just make a pit, say, 3x3, or larger if you have the dwarves, and assign it as a pond zone, so it'll fill up with water.  As long as the pit is deeper than 1 Z, anything except toads will drown.  For that matter, that may help.  A drowning pit full of toads has quite the appeal!

[Dwarfotaur]

Thanks guys. Still taking ideas/advice.

The contents of the cages are a giant rat, a handful of goblins (snatchers only I believe) and a cluster**** of crundles.

[ral]

I've also considered just creating an atom smasher to destroy a whole stockpile at once. That seems like the most effortless way. The main problem is that this destroys the cages too, but cages are pretty cheap. Then again the fighters don't get any practice either.

[Girlinhat]

Pit them to your military, if nothing else.  Don't pit them for a fight, just station your military at the bottom of the killing pit (perhaps with spikes raised, because your men can walk across them just fine as long as they don't pop up while they're on the spikes).  The effect is that they'll see a lot of death, and quickly gain "doesn't really care about anything anymore" at which point they become immune to tantrum spirals.  So, when your civilians snap and go postal, your military will slaughter them and then wait for the next migrant wave.  Also, if you're using an all-male military and your parent civ is dead or popcap is 0, then a tantrum spiral will remove your breeding stock.  Just sayin', Girl Power!

[plisskin]

There's tricks that I haven't figured out yet that involve creature pathfinding and pressure plates that allow you to use a creature to actually power some things by making a repeater with it. Look it up on the wiki. Goblins on treadmills-likes.

I love having captives. You can always make a zoo, too, so that dwarves can come admire the many crundles on a break. Another idea might be to make an "ant farm" since they're, well, giant ants. You could build a big multi-layer maze to dump them in, and then dump in some goblins and see if the crundles will eat them.

[Urist Da Vinci]

Dwarves will let their prisoners escape in at least 2 cases:
a) The dwarf, who is leading a prisoner by the nose, sees another hostile creature other than the one they are leading.
b) You attempt to lead a "thief", such as a goblin snatcher.

You can pit through hatches. This prevents the dwarf from seeing the creatures in the pit.

Don't pit more than 1 creature at a time. Put the cage stockpile near the floor hatch for quick travel time.

[Girlinhat]

Add [LIKES_FIGHTING] to any animal to make it aggressive, which is more dangerous for your civilians who might get caught unawares, but makes for more fun in the arena.

The pathing trick is to make a hallway where both sides lead to the surface.  Remove a piece of floor from either side, and add a hatch.  Add a pressure plate beside the hatch, on the inside of the hallway.  Now, any animal inside there that attempts to leave, will head in one direction, which causes them to step on the plate and open the hatch.  Without a path, they then turn around and go to the other exit, where they flip the other hatch and the other side opens, ad infinitum.  Once a creature has a path, it will continue that path even if a new, shorter path opens up en-route, causing the creature to ping-pong back and forth.  For hilarity, you can remove one wall and make a circus-style shooting gallery, with a moving target.  If you add a pressure plate in the center, you can link it to something else, and every time the creature pings or pongs, they hit the plate and trigger the device.  This can be very evil, if you use one goblin to be a repeater that sets of the spikes that are killing his comrades in another room (or right beside them!)

[ral]

Thanks for the reminder about pitting through hatches. I've done this before but it somehow didn't occur to me that this would stop civilians from getting spooked.

I seem to have found a pretty solid design that lets you pit hostile creatures as fast as you want. Basically:

1) Create 6 single tile pits in a 2 x 3 grid with each pit being two tiles away from each other.
2) Build six hatches and place them on the pit openings.
3) Place an animal stockpile over the group of pits such that every tile in the stockpile is directly adjacent (orthagonally or diagonally) from a pit. This gives you almost 50 stockpile tiles after you subtract the pits.
4) Disable empty cages/traps on the stockpile and any creatures you don't plan to pit (dogs, cows, for example)
5) Now, most importantly, draw one big pit zone that covers ALL of the pit openenings such that all openings are essentially the same pit. Dont create six different pits or fun may ensue when you try to pit things.

You seem to be able to pit all the creatures in the stockpile at once and because the creatures are pitted "instantly" through hatches without being lead around they don't spook the other dwarves pitting things. This way things can be pitted en masse rather quickly and if you have a squad or two of semi-skilled military below then they can probably finish each one off before the next one comes falling down, especially if you drop them 2 z levels causing them to be stunned. Even elite goblins only managed to get a couple of shots off before being put down.

Naturally you can do other sadistic things to dispose of creatures like throw them down an 80 z-level tall cavern.

You can empty out cages very quickly this way and if you have an empty cage stockpile somewhere then other dwarves will be happy to haul the empty cages off while dwarves are tossing things into the pits.

Havent tried this with thieves to see if they get a chance to escape. (Not sure if they escape only after being lead one tile or if they escape immediately.)