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[Quiles]

So I had (moar on that later) this squad of 5 axe lords, danger room trained to peak condition fully armed and armoured go through 3 separate events in the space of half a year

First I get a Minotaur, he gets cut in half, literally the only combat that went on between dwarf and Minotaur was axelord cutting Minotaur in half
Ok, a semimegabeast, not too bad
A month later "A vile force of darkness has arrived!"
About 12 goblins, all spear masters and mounted on jabberers/giant cave crocodiles and 6 trolls, I kill the trolls (they got into the fort before I closed the bridge and then wait out the siege for about 2 mo ths, I kill the goblins just as another 12 turn up, though some of these are mounted on ohms, I lose 1 marksdwarf and 1 axelord in the fight. I am down to 4 axelords 5 markdwarves/recruits.
A couple of days pass
"A vile force of darkness has arrived!"
About 30 goblins, 8 trolls and a slate demon leader, most die to my traps (though the demon put up quite a chase around the fortress as he runs with no hands from the lords). Lose two stupid marksdwarves when they stand in front of the traps alone against 30 goblins and get mobbed (how do you stop them doing that?)

Basically why the HFS am I getting so many invasions?

[Girlinhat]

Sorry, you must have forgotten what game your playing.

Losing is fun.

[Quiles]

Sorry, you must have forgotten what game your playing.

Losing is fun.

Let me put it more bluntly, this is my second ever fortress, will I usually get long chains of stuff that wants to murder dwarves because if so I need to be more prepared

[Girlinhat]

Bluntly: Yes.  What do you expect when you pit 5 against 12?  Numbers count a lot more than training and equipment, and being outnumbered will kill your dwarves faster than anything else.  Well, faster than anything except whips.  Those things...  Anyways, yeah, the game is rough, very rough, and your danger room should be seeing a lot more use as you use migrants to replace recent losses.

Slight modding can be done to change siege times.  I've had luck changing the goblin active season to winter, so that their siege comes in late winter every year and is somewhat predictable and controlled.  If you open the creature_default.txt raw, and look at the goblin entry which is [ENTITY:EVIL] then you'll see something like [ACTIVE_SEASON:X]  Just change that to only include one season, and then goblins will only show up during that season.

[Quiles]

Yeah... next wave of immigrants are gonna be exclusively drafted
And I did get 4 separate marital trances during the first invasion which I'm guessing helped (not exactly sure what they do)

Also, what makes whips so nasty?
And, how do I train marksdwarves quickly? I can't really danger room shooting skills
Finally, in a weapon trap does moar serrated blades mean moar damage?

[Girlinhat]

Martial trances increase dodging, blocking, and accuracy by something like 5x (not sure of the exact number) but it basically allows the dwarf to become immune to all weapons and dance around blades like a drunken, steel-plated ballerina who's caving in skulls.  It's glorious.

Whips have a relatively large size for their, well, size.  The entire weapon is counted as the size, so the whip's handle, rope, and tip are all counted as part of the weapon.  While a real whip strikes with just the tip, a DF whip strikes with the entire bulk of the weapon, but at the same speed.  Imagine having a bull whip, but imagine that it's about 15x larger, made of solid silver, and moving at the speed of sound, concentrating all that force onto about 3 square inches.  It's brutal, and the weapon data needs a little bit of cleaning.  Most modders change the whip size to be very small and it works well enough.

Marksdwarves never train quickly.  I put mine on a wall behind fortifications with my front door locked.  They shoot, and they cannot run out to melee, so they stay safe.  There's been a lot of science dedicated to handling marksmen.

10x Serrated Steel Blades means 10x damage, and 10x chance to get a body stuck and jam up uselessly.  Most people make a 10x longer entrance and fill each with 1x disk, for maximum jam prevention.  Although overall, dodge-em traps are currently in style and quite powerful.  A forum search should yield numerous results for that design.

[Quiles]

I tried making a goblin grinder trap (which was in place before these 3 attacks) but for some reason the goblins ran right through, do the pits at each end need to be more than a z level deep?

[Girlinhat]

Very much so.  A 1z drop is safe for all creatures.  Gobbos need at least 5 levels to incur significant damage, 10 levels for almost certain death.  15 for overkill.

[Quiles]

How much pit do I need to disrupt Pathing, the idea is after running through 12 serrated disk traps they hit a pressure plate and a hatch in front of them opens, opening up a pit and forcing them to repath back through the traps, where there is another plate/hatch waiting

[Girlinhat]

You just need 1 level to alter pathing, or solid walls.  Anything that cannot be walked through.  The thing is, you need another path.  Two goblin grinders will cause the goblins to run down one, reach the end, then down the other one.

[Quiles]

I thought the idea was to have them run back and forth in one
Also just realised I don't have a 1z pit, the ramp is still there

[Girlinhat]

Well, yes, but they need to be able to path towards a dwarf.  If they run through one grinder, reach the end, and the hatch disappears, then what are they going to do?  They're going to stand there because they cannot path towards a dwarf.  That's why you need a second available path, to encourage them to path around again, otherwise they stand around idly.

[zehive]

i am of the mind that DF knows when you are at your weakest and chooses that time to make shit harder.

[Quiles]

Well, yes, but they need to be able to path towards a dwarf.  If they run through one grinder, reach the end, and the hatch disappears, then what are they going to do?  They're going to stand there because they cannot path towards a dwarf.  That's why you need a second available path, to encourage them to path around again, otherwise they stand around idly.

Gotcha, will start that ASAP before another damn seige

[Girlinhat]

This is why the source code is closed.  Toady doesn't just care about keeping is project private - he doesn't want everyone to know how much sadism is hard-coded into sieges and stupidity.  Why does a dwarf always build a wall that locks himself in a pit?  It's a heavy chunk of sadism code.  Same with sieges and dodges-into-murky-pools.  Why'd he dodge into the pool?  Sadism code.