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[EveryZig]

Can building destroyers destroy bridges from above and/or beneath (if you put a bridge over the top of a ramp, for example)?
Do building destroyers take more time to destroy a door than it takes for a dwarf to go through it (if the door is locked immediately after the dwarf)?

[Urist Imiknorris]

Above, yes. Below, no. Doors, I don't think so.

[Girlinhat]

Building destroyers take quite a while to destroy something, so much so that building a line of doors in front of your fort can delay a megabeast from reaching you for several seasons, hopefully until a guarded caravan arrives and kills it for you.  This time can be extended by dropping animals outside, as the beast will attack a living creature first, stopping their door smash and beginning their puppy smash, and have to restart the door smash afterwards.

Statues work nicely as well, especially since they can be stone.  Just produce two dozen stone statues and place them around your doorway, it'll take forever to bash them all down.

Also, they can only destroy the level they're on.  If you build a bridge, then if the beast is on that level, they can destroy the bridge.  So, if you make a ramp or stairs down from the surface, and cover it with a bridge, it'll get smashed.  If you make one up from the surface, then the beast cannot smash upwards and cannot break through.  At least, this is the way it's been explained to me.

[EveryZig]

What I was wondering about with the doors was a way to open HiddenFunStuff without losing miners. I am thinking of putting a long row of doors/hatches near where I think the HFS will be, then lock them all behind my miner as he goes through, giving me time to do more lasting things.

Another question: If catapults don't hit things close to them, can I safely have a line of catapults directly behind each other?

[Urist Imiknorris]

Like getting your miner out of the spike hall you set up for the HFS and getting a dwarf to the control lever?

[Girlinhat]

Catapults aren't reliable, they do poor damage for their job.  Balista do better, but can hit your men as well.  Get silver bolts, as they're heavier, to fire.

Your best bet here may be to set up a few doors between the cotton candy and the spike pit.  As soon as HFS appears, you activate an alert state for the burrow needed, and get someone on the spike lever.  Just be aware that adamantine mining requires its own complex for proper mining, much different from regular stone.  Any section smaller than 3 wide, is safe to mine (as safe as it gets, anyways) because a 3x2 wide pillar cannot be hollow.  A 3x3 may be hollow, though, and should be avoided.  Find a vein, and dig everything around it, then dig up, until you've depleted all the safe bits.  Then, you need to start at the top and work down, mining out one stone at a time, making sure it gets back to the stockpiles before the next stone is retrieved, because any one of these could unleash hell itself.  Make sure the mining operation is entirely enclosed as well, so the ONLY path to your base is via the spike hall.  Diagonals will kill you here.

[EveryZig]

I was thinking of using the catapults for defending my front gate, and using them rather than ballistas because stone is cheap.

If I want to flood the HFS with water and magma, I can get the water from an aquifer, but with magma do I run a risk of the HFS traveling through the magma tunnel and any fortifications/grates to pop out the volcano?

[Urist is dead tome]

Building destroyers can't destroy bridges. Exceptions do exist for elephants, mega-beasts, forgotten beasts and titans. For these they will only destroy it if you lower it on them. As for semi mega-beasts I'm not sure.

I only came here for the title.

[Girlinhat]

Demons can swim/fly in water and magma, so a pump stack isn't safe from them, as they'll smash apart the pump, and a grate, but anything built with b - C is immune to destroyers, so fortifications should be safe, so long as you don't have any liquids flowing back.  There's a bug that causes flowing liquids to push creatures and items through forts and grates.

Also be aware that hell has chasms, like the 40d chasms, which are deep, bottomless pits.  You'll need a LOT of liquid flowing, as much of it will flow down into the chasms.  It may be easiest to wall it in by hand, or to floor over the chasms/obsidian cast them, and then flood the edge.  Be aware that you CAN build walls on the edge of hell, unlike the edge of the surface where there's a 5 block limit.  Underground, you can wall in to the edge to prevent spawning.  But, being almost entirely open on the edges, unlike caverns with 3-4 openings, and a few Z deep, it'll be very difficult and time consuming to actually wall off hell.

[EveryZig]

So can swimming creatures only travel through fortifications in the direction that the water is flowing?

[Sphalerite]

It appears that swimming creatures can travel through fortifications in any direction they please.  Note that 'swimming creature' means any creature in water that can move at all, too.  I had a human travel upstream through a fortification to escape from a drowning trap recently.

[EveryZig]

Another question, this one about dodge/fall traps: With multi-weapon traps/spikes, do enemies have a chance to dodge for each attk of each trap weapon, or just once per weapon, or just once per trap? And am I right in assuming that flying creatures do not fall if they dodge over empty space?

[Girlinhat]

This has been witnessed as "spontaneous dodge teleport" at times.  Apparently, with a weapon or upright spear trap, each attack happens instantly, and each dodge is performed instantly.  With 10 spikes, that's a possible 10 dodges and 10 tiles crossed instantly.  For Large Serrated Glass Disks, this means up to 30 dodges all of a sudden, and makes for instant dodging.  Plus, glass is a poor weapon, so it's less likely to kill and jam the weapon and more likely to force a dodge.

Alternatively, use hammer traps.  Hammers throw their target, so if the enemy dodges, they jump into a pit, and if they get hit, they're knocked in!

[Urist Da Vinci]

I used low-quality mechanisms and training weapons to make a very reliable "dodge" weapon trap. Mechanism quality improves the accuracy of weapon traps, and low accuracy makes dodging happen more often. The trap won't jam on a body, because the 10 training axes can hardly kill.

Catapults and stonefall traps do the same damage, which is "not much".