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[wuphonsreach]

So, due to a massive abundance of bone, I've started making bone bolts and bone crossbows in massive numbers.

http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/DF2010:Trap_design#Weapon_trap

How effective are weapon traps stacked with 10x crossbows (or bows)?  Obviously, it will take 100 bolts to fill the darned thing up.  Will all 10 ranged weapons attack as soon as an enemy walks into the tile, turning them into a pincushion?  Will it only work for 10 resets before running out of ammo?  Should I mix in a few other weapon types like training spear + corkscrew + dagger + etc and only use a maximum of five ranged weapons?

This will also give me something to do with all that elven bows and arrows I've looted (I embarked into a world where I'm at war with the elves).

[Girlinhat]

As far as I know, it'll fire once per trigger, and fire as many as needed to kill, up to 10.  It doesn't spread to other tiles, sadly, so you can't set up a shooting alley that hurls hundreds bolts down a hallway... though that would totally rock.  In theory, the weapon should never jam, since it'll never be impaled, but don't count on that.  They will need refilling though, so in really large sieges you can very easily run out of ammo.

Overall, though, why not?  You've got un-meltable elf bows and ammo, so set some up at the very entrance of your fort.  If they score kills, awesome, if not, you're wasting a few ☼dorfbucks max.

[Hyndis]

Weapon traps with ranged weapons do not jam but they can run out of ammo.

Melee weapon traps can jam but do not need reloading.

[Dutchling]

Weapon traps with ranged weapons do not jam but they can run out of ammo.

Melee weapon traps can jam but do not need reloading.

Also don't mix them together, the whole weapon trap will be unable to fire/slash/whatever if just 1 little dagger is stuck...

[wuphonsreach]

I have, according to the stocks screen, 4900 bits of ammo at the moment after 5 years of making bolts.  Running out of ammo is not a concern. 

In general, something has to path over at least 20 weapon traps in order to get in.  Then they have to run a gauntlet of cage traps mixed with chained war dogs...  Then there's the 25 tile long, dodge-this bridge... then some more dogs and cage traps.  And the manually operated section of upright spears/spikes on a repeating lever job, in the middle of another 25-tile dodge-this bridge. 

I'll probably put the 10x crossbow traps towards the end of the first section, after the initial set of weapon traps.

The wiki does mention something along the lines of 5 traps w/ 2 weapons each is better then 2 traps with 5 weapons.

[Hyndis]

Just remember that while crossbow traps are great against things that can bleed they generally do not instagib anything. A creature than run over several weapon traps and be pincushioned before bleeding to death. If the creature does not bleed at all then the crossbow bolts will not do much damage.

Masterwork giant steel serrated discs are the best for weapon traps with a very high chance of instantly killing creatures of any kind, even ones that do not bleed.

Melee weapon traps are faster to fix. Any dwarf with the cleaning labor can unjam them. However only engineers can reload the ammo in a crossbow trap, and it takes longer. To fully reload a crossbow trap will take 4 jobs, assuming each stack of bolts is 25 bolts.

[Triaxx2]

So, the best trap halls should have: Ranged first, to kill little guys. Then Spears to kill anything that survives the first, and then a Giant Steel Serrated Disc trap to mop up the left overs.

But build three of them so you can close one off while engineers are reloading/clearing it, so they don't get dwarf splatted.

[imperium3]

Hopefully at some point Toady will let us link arrow traps to pressure plates... then we can have our shooting alley...

[ral]

I'm not sure how you can possibly have so much ammunition that you need to go out of your way to manufacture ways to use it. If you have too much sitting around then you're obviously not setting up 10 or more archery ranges with 10 archers set to train at any given time.

If that weren't enough to use up ammo faster than I could make it, I wouldn't mess with crossbow weapon traps. I'd just build even more archery ranges and set more dwarves to train in them.

It's not like danger rooms help with archery practice so....

[Naryar]

Why bother setting archery ranges when you can simply put your to-be marksdwarves as hunters.

[Girlinhat]

You achieve ammo piles, by having no marksdwarves.  Elves shooting wooden arrows at your steel shields results in 2 harmless hits, 1 dead elf, and 23 spare arrows.  Per elf.  4-5 dead elves will stock a bow-loaded trap, and there's 7-10 per squad.

[ral]

Why bother setting archery ranges when you can simply put your to-be marksdwarves as hunters.

Just depends on how much bad luck you're having with hunters getting killed, how dangerous the biome is, etc. Archery ranges are safe, and also don't leave bolts scattered all over the map.

[Naryar]

Why bother setting archery ranges when you can simply put your to-be marksdwarves as hunters.

Just depends on how much bad luck you're having with hunters getting killed, how dangerous the biome is, etc. Archery ranges are safe, and also don't leave bolts scattered all over the map.

If you get your hunters to hunt in the first cavern layer, hunters generally don't get killed. Most creatures here flee when attacked by a hunter.

Also you waste bolts on archery ranges. Not only hunters bring work for your butchers, they also train other attributes and gain more attributes that way.

[Insanegame27]

Also you can turn what they bring in into more +bone bolts+

[puke]

No, it's cool.  We still wanted to talk about this. 

It's only a necro if the topic is over 5 years old, and this one is only 4.