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[Korva]

In my last fort, I constructed entrances to all three caverns (for the first time ever) and spiked them with cage traps hoping to catch some interesting beasties. As things go, twice I had FBs spawn while I was busy with other stuff so they waltzed right over the traps, killed the guard animals, parked their butts in front of the locked doors to the inner fort ... and waited ... and waited ... until the militia came running down to show them what for. I thought those buggers are supposed to wreck doors? Was I just lucky that my "uninvited guests" are at least somewhat polite, or does something as simple as locking a door throw them off? I've had trolls wrecking "normal" and pet-safe doors before and am pretty sure they are supposed to not be impressed by a silly lock either.

(The doors were locked because I read that it saves FPS to reduce the amount of dwarf-accessible space, and because they've no business running out there "on break" anyway.)

[Marthnn]

The FB was destroying the door. Very slowly.

I don't know what determines the rate of destruction, the beast's strength, the door's material, if it's locked or not... But given enough time, the door would have broken. Unless it was an artifact.

[Korva]

Thanks, I didn't know it was supposed to take some time. Curious, though. I've had trolls wreck a door here and there, and it always appeared to happen very quickly. These beasts both sat 1-2 spaces away from the locked doors for about a minute until the cavalry arrived to deal with them. If it happens again, I'll just wait a little longer and see what happens.

[slothen]

Thanks, I didn't know it was supposed to take some time. Curious, though. I've had trolls wreck a door here and there, and it always appeared to happen very quickly. These beasts both sat 1-2 spaces away from the locked doors for about a minute until the cavalry arrived to deal with them. If it happens again, I'll just wait a little longer and see what happens.

I don't know the formula, but i would conjecture that trolls are balanced to be strong enough to destroy doors quickly, while a randomly generated oozing pile of dust might not be strong enough to do it so quickly.

[Marthnn]

If it happens again, I'll just wait a little longer and see what happens.

Plus, you don't have to wait for the door do go down, using (t) you can look at the building and see the progression.
-rhyolite door-
x-rhyolite door-x
X-rhyolite door-X
XX-rhyolite door-XX
(gaping hole!)

[Hyndis]

You can exploit their building destroying behavior by constructing an artifact furniture as bait. The FB will attempt to destroy it forever, but will also fail forever because artifacts cannot be damaged or destroyed.

This means you can use it as bait to lure the FB to where you want...such as to where some siege engines are pointed or onto spike traps.

[Saiko Kila]

Trolls and other destroyers appear to have some problems with destroying doors while standing on certain positions.
I made an experiment with different quality doors. One door was destroyed by three trolls to compare effects of numbers.
Trolls are these green monsters, they are running to the right side of the screen. Doors are gray objects in the middle, and there is one exit doors in the right down corner.
The doors differ in quality, bottom door is well-crafted, one up is finely-crafted, one up is superior, one up is one up is exceptional, next one is masterful, and the top-most (with three trolls) is finely-crafted superior, because that was my most common quality at the moment.

After releasing trolls that looked like this:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And this is failed attempt: trolls stood too close to the doors. They were unable to do anything. Something was wrong with their pathing. Doors in the middle were unlocked. The exit doors were locked, that might be the reason:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Another attempt: this time exit doors are unlocked. Trolls stand in the right spots. Now they will destroy the doors.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And that's after some time. Three trolls are clearly better than one troll. Door quality seem to not matter, in fact the first door to fail was masterful, and the last one was well-crafted. But the other three doors were failing in seemingly random succession. The time between the first and the last destruction of door mangled by a single troll was very short. In comparison the door mangled by three trolls was down much faster.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

My conclusion was that trolls need to stand in certain spot to be effective, and that item quality doesn't matter. But number of trolls matter.

I have observed on many occasions that destroyers can sometimes stand in the wrong spot, and try to mangle an object. In at least one case they succeeded, after many days. Normally it takes 1-1.5 days for trolls to bring down the doors, depending on their number it may be less. Trolls sometimes don't get stuck forever, they are crowding and for a moment one of them can move to the right spot just by chance. I think this may be responsible for their success in seemingly hopeless situation. But it need more testing.

Anyway, if destroyers are too close they may be unable to destroy the object, but they don't know this.

I have made experiments witch hatches too. When trolls are standing right under unlocked hatch they can destroy it if they can path to it, i.e. they have a ramp or stairs. Not only that, they can destroy doors which are one z-level up, on the same level as the hatch and next to it, without moving to that level. Apparently they reach through the hatch.

EDIT: the topmost door quality was superior. Memory fails, but notes never do.

[Korva]

Gold star for the dwarfy Science experiment! So locked doors might indeed befuddle building destroyers? That is interesting.

@Marthnn: Thanks for the heads-up on damage status indicators, will keep that in mind.

[thatkid]

Completely off-topic, but Saiko Kila: What graphic set are you using?

[Korva]

That's Ironhand's.

[thatkid]

Thanks.

I normally don't bother with such things, but that one looks nice. I might have to use it.

[khearn]

Care to retry your experiment with different door materials? Maybe one wood, one stone, one copper, one iron, and one steel?

[EveryZig]

Does the floor hatch thing work if the hatch above them is locked?

With the artifact door, I had heart that they are indestructible but can be 'destroyed' as a building by the building destroyers deconstructing them (like a dwarf would).

[krenshala]

I also applaud your XX*Science*XX. 

Care to retry your experiment with different door materials? Maybe one wood, one stone, one copper, one iron, and one steel?

Try to get all the doors of the same quality, just to make sure the material is the only factor.

Also, on your experiment, did the trolls all have the same strength listed (e.g., "very muscular" or whatever it uses for them)?  If their strengths varied slightly that could account for the order in which the doors came down.

[Saiko Kila]

I'll do the experiment with the same quality doors, and with different materials, shouldn't be hard. With the same quality trolls however there is a problem. Yes, these trolls differ, but it's impossible to tell how much without use of Runesmith, and to get the same quality of troll is even harder. Troll descriptions are, from top most:
3 trolls:  thin and weak, NOTHING (colors and face features only), very fat (with many broken bones and bruises) - that was the FIRST door to fail
1 troll: tall and fat - that was the SECOND door to fail
1 troll: muscular - that was the FOURTH door to fail
1 troll: muscular - that was the FIFTH door to fail
1 troll: very skinny - that was the THIRD door to fail
1 troll: average in size - that was the LAST door to fail

As for hatches, I have one artifact hatch and will try it later. I have hatches unlocked usually, but they seem to be able to destroy even locked hatches. After all they are standing in the same position locked or not. With doors they sometimes will be confused - but not all of them (if the group has more). Also if there are enough spots around door they will try to occupy many spots available, by spreading. Even if only one of these spots works, they will finally bring down the door.