Bay 12 Games Forum

Drawbridges are your friends here; place thin ones in front of your fortifications and raise them to create walls if you see an elite bowman coming. If they can't see a dwarf they'll happily wander past into the death traps.

Goblins, lots of goblins....

First they came in summer and ran straight into a human caravan. The guards killed everyone except for 2 trolls who seemed to get stuck, unable to decide if they wanted to come into the fort and stay in a nice cage, fight the remaining wounded human swordsman, or run away.
A depressed cheesemaker was dispatched as bait, but he only succeeded in obtaining the rank of skilled biter. Eventually I cracked and dispatched the hammerdwarves.

Just as the clean up ended, the dwarf caravan turned up....and more goblins. More mess to clean up and still not a single prisoner.

Then it was Goblin X-mas, no merchants to get in the way this time! Everyone scurried inside and waited patiently.....

....as a herd of giant wild boar decided to clog the outer ring of cages leaving the poor goblins to get diced by the weapon traps.

Well, I've had the chance to try a few suggestions\ideas;-
1. The Ballista(s);- Hit and miss. I had to try this on the humans due to the dwarf caravan skipping the bridge and attempting a river crossing into some wildlife. I was hoping that targets would be slammed clear of the depot, but most dropped dead inside. Coupled with the inability to hit the broadside of a barn at point blank and the cost of munitions, I don't think it's really viable or fast enough.

2. Pumping the water out;- Items still move and go missing, I didn't notice any improvement over using a single drain. 1 marksdwarf did get washed through the fortifications+bars blocking the drainage channel and escaped somehow.

3. The air lure;- Too time sensitive, Urist Mcleverphobe needs to open access to the air chamber just as the water level reaches the drowning point. I did have some success opening the air chamber in advance and using the waterflow to shove the still living merchants&guards out of the depot. Some items were still in the depot, however that might be due to the 'Get out of my depot' system killing its target rather than just wounding it.

Unfortunately I can't attempt to freeze them in my current biome. I'll try that with my next embark.
Claim and dump isn't really in the spirit of it. I'm a fan of multipurpose traps really. Steel, flux, and hatred of the dwarvern leadership caste is the current motivation, but it never hurts to have something you can use on elves and humans too.

Washing them out of the depot into a side room\DAS seems to work well enough even with a 1x5 room (although size is less of an issue providing they finish under the DAS). It's just getting the water out. Maybe a fork shaped room along the lines of;

000000
X___B0
X_0000
X___B0
X_0000
X___B0
000000

X:Floodgates
0:Wall
_:Empty
B:Retractable bridge over a pit

If they're forced back over the pit, then I can dump them into 1x1 rooms to drain the water without any room for items to move into quantum space, then drop them again into a room containing the DAS. Resulting in 3 nice clean piles of items to pick through and no need for mass designating (and thus no hauling trash). If that works I could even scale it up, with stops added for the smelters, crypts, and stockpiles, before finally dumping everything that's left into the trash compactor.

No, not training dwarves on goblins. Could I train goblins with dwarves\animals and then release them to wreck havoc on an unsuspecting game world?
I'm thinking of pitting each migrant wave (and their children) into a room with an armed goblin (melee) for a decade or so, then opening up an escape tunnel to an isolated area at edge of the map. Assuming I take precautions to prevent the goblin getting crushed by falling cheesemakers would the game keep track of him after he flees the map? If so, could he\she come back during another attack, even if I abandon the fort and start another one?

It's not the littering that bothers me, it's the inefficiency of have to go through the entire stocks screen to locate the items and unforbidding+(re)dumping entire categories rather than just single items (some of those items could be outside, miles away from the stockpile because their previous owner was eaten by bears). The ideal outcome would be to end up with a single, visible pile of forbidden loot under the DAS for easy manual sorting and disposal.

However, if there's a possible bug at work I'll go with the easier option. I'm sure I've used similar systems for trash compactors (flooding an underground refuse pile instead of a depot) without this issue, but  I've never paid too much attention to that section of the stocks screen.

My suggestion would be to make either a one tile dump in the existing washout area that is under the existing DAS, or make another one tile dump very close to the washout area with its own DAS.  This will pull the rubbish items out of the quantum flood masking state.  It will still involve a large number of hauling jobs (unless DFHack autodump is used), but the short hauling distance will at least minimize the time drain impact.

Thanks. In my case the DAS is 1x6 (so 5 tiles of 'open space'), so this actually works pretty well. Everything that's hidden ends up either in the floodgates or under the DAS anyway They're only dumping the items 1 square or less so it's pretty swift.

....no need to kill them, that results in unwanted ghosts sometimes.

They're loyal servants of the bourgeois dwavern elites, that's reason enough to kill them (plus, this way I can also use it to dispose of any tall vermin who visit). All those dead pack animals are a good source of food, ammo, and leather too.

That damn liaison is next: I'm thinking a glass box. Put in some nice furniture, a years supply of food and drink, and some random weapons. Seal the mayor in there with the liaison until he hopefully goes berserk. If the mayor survives, I'll let him out and the fort will pay attention to his mandates\demands for a year, if he loses; keep adding badgers and see how long the liaison lasts.

Either way, it should make the dining area more interesting.