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[iyaerP]

And as a follow-up - in the upper sections and the non-lethal sections of a trap maze - 1 weapon per trap, mechanisms of superior or higher quality only is ideal.  Far better to have 10 tiles covered with 1 weapon per tile, then only a single tile with 10 weapons.

Make a stockpile near your future trap maze that only takes superior or better mechanisms.  I suggest having at least a 50-tile stockpile for that as you can quickly burn through a lot of mechanisms while setting up a trap field / maze.  Or if you have legendary mechanics, limit it to exceptional or above.  Sell off the lower quality mechanisms by making a stockpile near the trade depot that takes low-quality mechanisms, and use the superior or fine mechanisms for cage traps where quality doesn't matter (other then for giving dwarves happy thoughts).

(Weapon traps that used edge weapons will frequently jam if they score a kill.  So more traps with fewer weapons is preferred.  I never put more then three iron/steel discs in a single trap.  And early on, they might all be single disc traps until I have time to rip them up and replace them with higher quantities.)

If you want to avoid jamming the traps, just go with traps that have 10 silver warhammers.

They will almost never jam, and still slaughter everyone and everything with wonderful regularity.

[SirAaronIII]

Or, to prevent jams, rather than have 3 traps with 10 serrated disks each, have 15 traps with 2 disks each. They will still cut off arms and legs and stuff, but now with more chance for your enemy to crawl away to bleed out somewhere other than the trap (if a trap kills something [like decapitates, jamming the skull through the brain, etc] it causes jamming).

[zephyr_hound]

This is what I've been doing in my current fort, it does rely on having a military but it is oh so satisfying - and cinematic!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Firstly we do have a magma moat. While this is great and dwarfy, it poses danger as dwarves are so enamored of the beauty of magma that they will dodge into it at the slightest chance. Accordingly I had to come up with a way to stop my military dodging into the moat while fighting.


So I built a kill corridor. Those statues are mainly an annoyance due to body parts getting stuck on them, but I like them there for the look and also to lure building destroyers in.


The hatches are linked to a lever. Below are six chambers (lined with green glass if you were wondering, it's our main building material). With the gate closed, I station my army in the underground chambers and lock them in. Then I set the siege alert and open our main gate.


The goblins come in, and as soon as I have a squad or most of a squad, both gates are closed. As an added bonus we usually get the squad leader in that line of cage traps (although that's not the goal), because they continue pathing toward that exit after the gate is closed. So that shuts down the elite bowman should there be one.


Then the hatches snap open, and...

I take my sieges down a squad or two at a time.

[Musashi]

Cave-ins are an excellent compromise if you barely had the time to train your military up to Hobo-with-Delirium-Tremens skill, don't have enough weapons for good weapon traps, haven't found magma yet, and find linking one single lever to one single support takes far less time than linking one or more pressure plates to tons of hatch covers/grates. However, that requires basic planning well in advance, a huge population of masons, and it is a bitch to reload.

[MasterMorality]

Soldiers and a 'dodge this' trap seems to work wonders for me.
Soldiers - because watching them in battles and getting some heroic style characters, complete with awesome stories, in your fort is cool
Dodge this traps, because it's just fun watching enemies running along a bridge and either getting cut and smashed to bits, or having to throw themselves off the side do either die or horribly cripple themselves at the bottom.I prefer them crippled because then you can watch them drag their broken bodies back to the surface to try again.

[blizzerd]

make a lever operated "airlock" with bridges

capture some gobbos in this airlock system, shoot with wooden bolts untill dead, repeat

wooden bolts so your marksmen train massively fast because more shots are needed per enemy


http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1415325/afbeeldingen/airlock.jpg

[Musashi]

Soldiers and a 'dodge this' trap seems to work wonders for me.
Soldiers - because watching them in battles and getting some heroic style characters, complete with awesome stories, in your fort is cool
Dodge this traps, because it's just fun watching enemies running along a bridge and either getting cut and smashed to bits, or having to throw themselves off the side do either die or horribly cripple themselves at the bottom.I prefer them crippled because then you can watch them drag their broken bodies back to the surface to try again.

Oh, yeah, I forgot that (how could I?). A fairly easy solution, as the weapons causing the enemies to dodge aren't even required to be in any way useful to work, training weapons will force goblins and trolls to dodge just the same. One of my favourite. 

[Psieye]

Soldiers and a 'dodge this' trap seems to work wonders for me.
Soldiers - because watching them in battles and getting some heroic style characters, complete with awesome stories, in your fort is cool
Dodge this traps, because it's just fun watching enemies running along a bridge and either getting cut and smashed to bits, or having to throw themselves off the side do either die or horribly cripple themselves at the bottom.I prefer them crippled because then you can watch them drag their broken bodies back to the surface to try again.

Combine the two - place your soldiers at the bottom to harvest kills from the dodge-this trap. You get some live-training done this way for minimal risk.