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Author Topic: Spiral entrance  (Read 1306 times)

timotheos

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Spiral entrance
« on: September 29, 2015, 01:46:56 pm »

My last few forts have all had large spiral entrances with ramps going down several levels before reaching the gates to the fort proper. I have a row of weapon traps lining the inner edge of this spiral to exploit goblin pathing while letting wagons travel round the outside.
But for some reason the goblins get stuck on the second or third level. The traps take out about a third of the goblins and then they just stop and sit there. Does anyone know what might be causing this? Is it something to do with the spiral? or the fact that the first few goblins got sliced up by the traps?
My legendary axedwarfs can deal with this but its not working the way it should.
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celem

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Re: Spiral entrance
« Reply #1 on: September 29, 2015, 02:01:41 pm »

You really do seem to get some kind of 'goblin moral' sometimes.  Thats not what it actually is, just the name i give to the various 'invaders stop pathing' issues.

Invaders come in squads, and they can sometimes have issues if things happen to their squadmates.  Usually you see this with cage traps, but sometimes I do see what you describe with weapon traps, mainly where I've made it so that every tile they step on will be trapped.  They just dont have the heart to go on.  In general I find about 50% trapped tiles gives the right sense of hope.

They do seem particularly keen on stopping if the squad leader goes down however, its a bit of a bugger to be honest.

Try thinning the traps a little so that they occasionally take a step thats not accompanied by spinning death and see if they get further.  Generally when this is happening to me its a 1-tile wide corridor of death and they wont walk all the way through to be minced but wuss-out.  Putting the traps on every other tile got them further into the corridor, but not really across more trapped tiles.  Widening the corridor to two tiles and having a checkerboard trap pattern appeared to work best to be honest.
« Last Edit: September 29, 2015, 02:03:30 pm by celem »
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Insert_Gnome_Here

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Re: Spiral entrance
« Reply #2 on: September 29, 2015, 02:06:36 pm »

Iirc, only one invader per squad paths while the others follow it, so if the pathing one gets trapped, the others will just stand around. you could test this by releasing 2 invaders who were together on different ends of the embark & see what happens.
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Numeroid

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Re: Spiral entrance
« Reply #3 on: September 29, 2015, 02:39:08 pm »

I had always thought this was intentional. Invaders stop trying to path so as to avoid your traps.
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SyrusLD

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Re: Spiral entrance
« Reply #4 on: September 29, 2015, 02:56:16 pm »

I noticed only Goblins doing this "stopping when the first one hits a (cage) trap / gets killed / etc.". Trolls don't do it, and elves don't do it either. I haven't had any human sieges so far.

Kind of weird that only goblins come as squads.
Has been too long since I got a Goblin siege consisting of humans/elves/dwarves to say whether they'd run into traps or not. As far as I remember, I only had one of those actually. And back then I didn't focus on trapping every invader for evil experiments... scientific research projects... slavery... happy fun time... things that you are definatly not allowed to do to prisoners in the real world.

Then again, elves don't send sieges, they send ambushes. But trolls definatly just run without being "squads".
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Atarlost

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Re: Spiral entrance
« Reply #5 on: September 29, 2015, 04:41:43 pm »

I've taken to setting up marksdwarf positions overlooking my above ground cage lines so the goblins that refuse to keep charging my defenses can be shot. 

Spike fields can work too.  Stick a spike field before and after the cage line and only activate it when goblins stop.  Since they're just standing around it doesn't even have to repeat mechanically. 
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PatrikLundell

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Re: Spiral entrance
« Reply #6 on: September 30, 2015, 01:52:42 am »

I tend to have retracting drawbridges around the first cage trap row in my trade entrance. Below those I place a field of cage traps, so if (when) the invaders camp I drop them into cages below.
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