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[Oaktree]

First use has been as a basic building destroyer trap. [...] Large creatures can take the hit, and I've only bruised or stunned forgotten beasts with one so far.

If you want to have a more punch, you should use a setup like Larix has earlier in this thread, where water is stored in a tile above a locked door.  When the building destroyer smashes the door, the water drops, and it falls on a pressure plate, triggering the trap.  Use a second door just behind the first to keep the FB in position. 

The main problem with nothing but a cart on a ramp behind a door is that they have no chance to really accelerate, which means the really heavy creatures don't take much damage.  Making the water-activated pressure plate open a door or hatch holding a cart back, and let it have some room to accelerate, however, and you have a far more deadly cart. 

RocheLimit's post, however, has a great setup for a FB trap, however.  It could possibly use some more manually-intensive expansion, though.  Once trapped, you might set it up for target practice with a sufficiently potent melee force or marksdwarf training if it is not terribly dangerous, or you might set it up for obsidian casting if it is.  (RocheLimit already has a method of getting water into that cell, just add a path for magma, and you can obsidian cast every FB that walks into the trap!)

The cart wasn't just sitting on a ramp.  It was in a coil accelerator - so it came out doing close to maximum cart speed.

My preference for forgotten beasts in any case is connecting an "air lock" between the fortress and each cavern.  In the lock area are 3-4 cells that can be closed off by a bridge and baited with a stone door and rigged with upright spikes and spears connected to a lever.  When a new beast appears the outer bridge is opened, a cell is left open, and I wait for the beast to come after the door.  Close the cell, close the outer lock, and then spike/spear the beast to death.  Might need some decom work if it has deadly blood, otherwise just process the corpse afterwards.  A previous fort had disposed of 20+ forgotten beasts this way.

I prefer a mix of menacing spikes and spears since it appears that spears have a better chance of triggering a de-limb hit.  Which is a necessity for killing inorganic beasts since you need a decapitation or body-splitting hit to kill them.  Which can take a while with this set-up.

[NW_Kohaku]

Speaking of which, my new cavern trap is a GCS web factory with drawbridges to dump them on cage traps.  I have a airlock-style system with a winding passage that leads to a wooden door, a stockpile with a pot of prepared cuttlefish, a barrel of dwarven wine, and a third passage that leads to a guineacock.  It also has three passages that form a shortcut to trap even just random wanderers.  (I'll work on clogging some of the alternate passages in the caverns when I get a more mighty military to ensure more through traffic.)  As a final failsafe, I can raise a drawbridge near the guineacock to trap it inside, with the guineacock pastured but with a pressure plate it can trigger that raises the trap.  (So it runs -> hits plate -> raises bridge that traps webber FBs in trap with the sacrificial guineacock.)

I know it lies outside the bounds of the purpose of this thread, as it uses just "vanilla" traps, but it's almost disturbingly effective at vacuuming up the fauna of the caverns.  (I have a breeding pair of cave crocs, a GCS, a half-dozen naked mole dogs, and a couple giant toads in just a year of operational time.)

[Oaktree]

As promised, some diagrams for the water-gun design.

Code: [Select]

SIDE-VIEW DIAGRAM

         h          F   ---> targets ---> oX
       [^^^_[^^^]D_oXXX
           ^       |
            ^_^    |
               ^^  |  ---- water filled ---
                X^^^X ----------------------

Legend:
F - Fortification
o - Hole
^ - Track Ramp
D - Door
[ or ] - 180 degree track turn (two pieces of flat track)
_ - Flat straight track
| - vertical shaft
X - Wall

TOP-VIEW DIAGRAMS

01. Firing Range is skipped - it's a hole, a fortification, and where you want the targets to be on the level above the gun.  Holes to act as drains for water are a good idea.  Plus a way to trap invaders.

02. The Gun (Level 0)

   [iii__[iii]D_o::
   [jjjv:[___]

Accelerator Coil that will fire cart east to hit wall and fire contents before cart drops down shaft.  To the west the cart returns via ramp at "v" and then proceeds across series to impulse ramps wrapped around a switch back.

Legend:
i - impulse ramp (NE)
j - impulse ramp (SW)
v - downward ramp
: - wall (surrounding walls not shown)
_ - straight track
[ or ] - curved flat track
D - Door (Control Point A) - connected to lever
o - Hole.  Top of shaft leading directly to the reservoir

======
03. Level -1 - Only showing lift section

         [v
        i]

Cart enters from east, transits flat "S" curve, and then climbs a track ramp (NW)

======
04  Level -2 - Only showing lift section

          i_ivv

Cart enters from east, transits a NW ramp and then a NSW ramp in a half-checkpoint configuration.

======
05  Level -3 - RESERVOIR

             iivvv_____
             __________
             __________

Cart emerges from trench and crosses two NW track ramps to leave reservoir

======
06  Level -4 - Loading Trench
           
               iij

Three NW track ramps.  Cart dropping down shaft should land on (j) and then roll west

Having transferred it to paper (so to speak) and looked it over I can already see some potential improvements to test that might improve the firing rate:
1. Make the drop one less level.  That saves a level of lifting and a partial tick of the cart falling.  You have to monitor the reservoir levels a bit more closely regarding overflow.
2. A "slower" cart might actually transit the lifting zone quicker via an impulse elevator set-up as compared to the brute-force approach.  Though I think that is necessary in the lower levels due to the need to move the cart through water.