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[Urist McBusDriver]

I'm still confused by this.

What am I meant to do with cages containing creatures like racoons and naked mole dogs that I can't order slaughtered, or train, or do anything useful with?

Build the cage outside somewhere then deassign the animal from it?

If I'm not careful I end up letting wild biting animals loose all over the fortress.

Second related question: when goblins get caught in a cage, how do I remove their weapons and armour? Is it d>b>d on the cage to designate their possessions for dumping, then do !!fun!! things to the unarmed unarmoured goblin remaining behind?

[noob]

i think they fixed the animal hauling thing for .19. just pit them into the river or something

[Sphalerite]

Second related question: when goblins get caught in a cage, how do I remove their weapons and armour? Is it d>b>d on the cage to designate their possessions for dumping, then do !!fun!! things to the unarmed unarmoured goblin remaining behind?

Use the mass designation tool to un-forbid the cage and its contents, then designate it for dumping.  Then individually select just the cage and un-designate it.  The goblin's clothes and weapons will still be designated for dumping and not forbidden, so your dwarves will grab and dump then.  Then you can reclaim them if you want.

[CinnibarMan]

Dump in the volcano. Just make sure they aren't fliers first. I learned this the hard way.

Man those vultures sure were pissy about being caged.

[Uristocrat]

1)  The DM is bugged.  Until then, you can use noexotics to remove the exotic tag and tame all those critters if you want to.

I dispose of them into the top level of a tower that's several Z high.  On the top level, we have a bunch of hatches, ONE pit zone covering all the hatches, and an animal stockpile that does NOT allow empty cages (a separate stockpile for only empty cages draws from this pile to get the empties out of the list).  You pit goblins and anything else you want to kill in from here.

Below that is a _retracting_ bridge surrounded with fortifications that they fall onto.  Use this for marksdwarf training if you like.  Make sure it's inside a big room so that you can station the marksdwarves here (and prevent other dwarves from seeing the trapped creatures and getting scared.  Be careful to disarm your prisoners first.  You don't want a bowgoblin in here who is still armed.

When you're done killing them, or just bored and want to dispose of them, pull the lever that controls the bridge to drop them down to a lower floor.

My bottom floor is a big atom smasher.  Be sure that this bridge is one tile longer than the rest of those in the tower (so that you don't drop anyone on top of the atom smasher bridge.  I have a locked door (so that if there are only dead goblins in there, we can retrieve any last goblinite that was missed), followed by a few cage traps (insurance) and finally a floodgate (last line of defense).  Mostly I just atom smash the dead at this point.  You could instead use spikes on repeat, but it makes it harder to destroy the garbage.

Note that the control levers do NOT have to be near the device.  In fact, it's better if their farther away, should a goblin get loose.  I think that trolls can destroy bridges, so make them out of something sturdy and kill them quickly (marksdwarves or atom smashing, your pick).

2)  Taking their stuff:  Yeah, use d-b-d to dump it, but you also have to use d-b-c to claim it (it's all forbidden to start with).  And then you want to *undump* the cages (use k if you have only a few, or the stocks screen to do it en masse..... none of your cages should be marked for dumping, so that makes it easy).  If you don't undump the cage, I think they just drop the whole cage into the dump, which isn't what you want.  You don't have to build the cage anywhere (but if you do, you can skip undumping the cage, because they can't dump a built cage, so they won't).

[proxn_punkd]

Seconding "remove all the exotics tags and tame them". Check and make sure whichever ones are herbivores get slaughtered before they starve; starved animals can't be butchered.

[Gahagan]

The solution I plan on using:

Build a walled-in area of your fort. Make a drawbridge as the only way in, and designate the area inside as a barracks. At one end of the room, create a 1x1 animal stockpile that only accepts full cages.

When a cage is delivered to the stockpile, link it to a lever. Have some dwarves report to the barracks, pull the lever, and enjoy glorious combat.

For bonus points, create a special one-Dwarf squad for your best fighters, and hold gladiator matches against captured wild animals, kobolds, and goblins.

For double bonus points, build your butcher's workshop nearby to keep your Dwarves fed from their slaughter.

Might also be a good idea to have some kind of purging device, should your dwarf/ves lose their fight.

This isn't something I have tried to do yet, though I see no reason why it wouldn't be possible.

[Urist McBusDriver]

I'm still doing it wrong. I haven't built a military yet (it's one of those 'I'll learn how to do this soon' things) so I'm not looking at any particularly extravagant way to kill goblins. I just want to catch them in the cage traps at the fort entrance, strip them of their gear, and chuck them down the main garbage chute to land on a pile of rocks and rat carcasses fifteen z-levels below.

I've built an animal stockpile next to the top of the garbage chute, and the dwarfs take the goblin cages to it. I dump the cage with d-b-d, and the dwarfs chuck it down the garbage chute. Then I reclaim the cage only through the stocks menu, and the dwarfs bring the goblin and the cage back up again (but I think leaving the clothing and weapons in the chute).

Then I want to throw the goblin down the pit. So I take the activity zone for the garbage dump at the top of the garbage chute, declare it to also be a Pit, and assign the goblin to be thrown down it. But it seems a random civilian will take the goblin out the cage and drag it two urists to the top of the chute, and sometimes the goblin escapes and runs around the fort until someone punches it to death.

[Lord Darkstar]

I trap the heck out of my entrance. When I want to get rid of caged wild creatures or enemy, I install their cage in the middle of my entrance traps, link the cage to a lever, and pull the lever when the entrance hall isn't too full of passing dwarves. The traps chew it up (most try to run out, mad ones try to run in further to the fortress). I clean up the leftovers and de-install the cage. Repeat as necessary. At some point, I break down the trap lever I've been using, to get back all the mechanisms it still has, and then build it back.

If you want to get fancy with your executions, you can always do some dwarven engineering as described in prior posts or as you imagine it.

[ral]

This is the easiest way I've found so far: Mass Cage Recycling System

http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/DF2010:Stupid_dwarf_trick#Mass_Cage_Recycling_System

Beware of "thief" types, flying, or particularly large creatures. For dealing with those you either need to link a lever to a built cage or have sufficient military power sitting around.

The pit in my recycling system has a platform in it, surrounded by a trench, which is across from several archery ranges. Dwarves that show up for archery practice notice the hostile creatures running around on the other side of the trench and use them for target practice until they're dead, at which point they return to the archery targets.

Note that this doesn't address the issue of disarming them, but see the other answers for how to do that.

My way of disarming things is usually to go into the z Stocks screen and unforbid all of the metal armor and weapons. I think this causes the dwarves to strip them off of caged goblins. Otherwise maybe I'm killing them so fast that I just don't notice if they're armed.