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[BoltsFogs]

One of my carpenters was heading down to gather up some ore when an injured troglodyte sprung from ambush. What concerned me was that he triggered a weapon trap which consisted of a single copper giant axe blade. When my carpenter found him, he was stunned and had a yellow left hand and right hand. Which leads me to think that maybe I should rig more blades or whatever into a single weapon trap.

What kind of weapons do you use for your weapon traps? And how many weapons do you usually put in a weapon trap to ensure a good, if not perfect kill ratio?

[Jaqie Fox]

Bone crossbows, and dark stone shortswords.

Every path into my fortress you have to go past at least two traps filled with a total of at least 6 swords and at least 3 bone xbows.  I tend to fill traps with no more then one or two bone xbow and no more then three shortswords.  the shortswords are usually first in line for them to go through.  I havent seen anything but kobolds and my own creatures (dwarves and pets and livestock) get through any of my lines.

[JT]

Where's the fun in the game if enemies can't hurt you? =)

When I make traps, I make a staggered 25% dither pattern like the following:

code:

▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓
^...^...^
..^...^..
^...^...^
▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓

That way, only a few of the bad guys hit the traps, and I'm set in case Toady decides to go through with implementing my oft-requested "can't walk over set traps" feature. ;-)

Only one weapon allowed per trap.

[ March 25, 2007: Message edited by: JT ]

[BoltsFogs]

I'm not so sure about that crossbow trap cause if one runs out of ammo, you'll be spammed with reload messages or something, forcing the game to crash. At least that's what I read in the wiki. Anyway. six swords in one weapon trap? Wow. Those better guarantee some one hit kills and minimal times of an enemy getting stuck in the trap, rendering it useless until cleaned!

[Entropy]

A giant axe blade and corkscrew usually work well enough. The blade does great slashing damage while the corkscrew gives a good critical hit.

I have seen one or two things survive walking into one of these, but they die within seconds after.

[Jaqie Fox]

you misread my formula.

I end up with something like this:
trap 1: 3 swords
trap 2: 3 swords
trap 3: xbow
trap 4: xbow
trap 5: xbow

besides, I have never had the game crash from out of ammo messages... and I also have a single craftsdwarf doing nothing but cranking out bone bolts... good way of using the extra bones I always end up getting piled up in my indoor refuse pile.  I never run out once that dwarf gets caught up with the demand for them, last fortress I made I ended up with about 20 bins filled with nothing but bone xbow bolts.

~edit~
JT, not every person playing this game relishes in blood gore and war. I personally am an engineer at heart, so I love engineering the fortress. I also love being able to have an agrarian society, no need for a military (save a couple for kobolds et al).  If i want to focus on killing, I could always play the multitude of games out there that let me do that, one of the newest being Supreme Commander (which is great by the way).

[ March 25, 2007: Message edited by: Jaqie ]

[JT]

I don't relish in killing and bloodshed.  But I think it smacks of major lack of realism if you don't have to maintain a standing gendarmerie to protect the masses.  You know things are wacky when people complain til they're blue in the face about the Fortress Guard and Royal Guard, as these guards should be not only welcome but also necessary, at least if human society is any indicator.

Which does remind me that we don't have enough dwarf-versus-dwarf political strife going on...

[schnobs]

I end up with a large army mostly because I find it difficult to keep all dwarfes occupied. Once you've made all the armor, set all the traps, furnished all rooms... not that I never played that far. But based on current experience I'd say once you no longer have to keep up with a growing society, a workforce of maybe 60 dwarves all told is enough to keep the place running. Maybe even less. The rest can be nobles or army, I wouldn't know how to busy  them otherwise.

[BoltsFogs]

quote:Originally posted by schnobs:
<STRONG>I end up with a large army mostly because I find it difficult to keep all dwarfes occupied. Once you've made all the armor, set all the traps, furnished all rooms... not that I never played that far. But based on current experience I'd say once you no longer have to keep up with a growing society, a workforce of maybe 60 dwarves all told is enough to keep the place running. Maybe even less. The rest can be nobles or army, I wouldn't know how to busy  them otherwise.</STRONG>

Right now I'm facing a food and drink problem. My dwarves eat all the food at a constant rate, and I have two stills set on repeated brew with several brewmeisters and I keep teetering around 10 drinks, never able to get past that mark. I think my dwarves drink and eat alot more than any other dwarf fortress out there, hehe.

[Kylaer]

I generally put 2-3 regular weapons (not specific trap components) per trap. Warhammers, shortswords, and spears, typically, since those are the weapons I mass-produce. I don't make bone crossbows, I prefer metal ones, and certainly wouldn't make crossbow traps, since they need to be reloaded, whereas a warhammer trap will work over and over, with occasional cleaning.

[Paul]

I like using spiked balls. They kill things without chopping them up, so the bodies are just 1 item and not a messy pile of limbs. When I used the large serrated discs before, I would have a couple goblin thieves come by and my dwarves would fill my entire refuse pile with arms, legs, hands, feet, heads, lower bodies, upper bodies, etc. With spiked balls I just look over and see a pile of 4 bodies, instead of 40 assorted parts.

My current setup is 3 spiked balls per trap, but that is probably overkill. Especially since they are all masterpiece iron, heh heh... Tons of leftover iron after all the goblin sieges. What else do I do with it all but make legendary weaponsmiths and churn out masterwork trap components?

I even have masterwork iron mechanisms on them all - I don't know if that is why, but I VERY rarely see anything get past the first row of them. An entire goblin siege died on a single row of traps. They never seem to get stuck, and nothing ever moves after hitting them.

[ColonelTEE3]

quote:Originally posted by Kylaer:
<STRONG>I generally put 2-3 regular weapons (not specific trap components) per trap. Warhammers, shortswords, and spears, typically, since those are the weapons I mass-produce. I don't make bone crossbows, I prefer metal ones, and certainly wouldn't make crossbow traps, since they need to be reloaded, whereas a warhammer trap will work over and over, with occasional cleaning.</STRONG>

I agree, crossbow traps are just a hassle. You alays have that thought in the back of your mind "but what happens when we DO run out..what do we do then... .WHAT THE HELL DO WE DO THEN!!" Not to mention the annoyingly long time it requires even the greatest of mechanics to load a crossbow traps, and don't even get me started on single bolt stocks.

I use bone bolts to train my army of marksdwarves. And before my fortress fell to the might of mixed up data folders forcing it to be deleted, i had a standing army of 11 elite marksdwarves, several of which were legendary, and maybe only 1 of them had actually "seen action", the rest were chipping away at my target ranges with bone bolts.

[Walker]

My personal rule for weapon traps is four items.

Any combination of:

- Goblin/kobold/attacker weaponry
- Metalsmith training weapons (bronze/copper/silver)
- Obsidian Short Swords
- Trap components

I only use 'better' quality mechanisms.  This of course relative to the mechanisms available at any given time.

I don't worry too much about exactly what is in any given trap, unless it is at a critical point.  Four weapons will generally kill anything.

[LordBucket]

quote:how many weapons do you usually put in a weapon trap to ensure a good, if not perfect kill ratio?

Only one, but I make up for it with lots of traps. I've never tested, but I've generally assumed that the 'jam' test occurs for every individual weapon firing, so a trap with four weapons is more likely to jam than a trap with only one. So, if true, four traps with a single weapon each is somewhat better than one trap with four.

quote:What kind of weapons do you use for your weapon traps?

  I tend to not go out of my way to produce weapons for traps, so I mostly use whatever is available, and I use a lot of stonefall traps. Certainly there are reasons to NOT do this, but it works for me. Stonefall traps seem to do a lot of damage, and it's so much easier to supply stone to fill a 5x30 anti-siege entry hall, than to make 150 weapons to do the same. I mostly only use weapon traps at chokepoints. For example:

code:

Weapon  Stonefall  Weapon
|Traps   Traps     Traps
|         |         |
v         v         v
#######################
^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^#####
^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^+ + +
^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^#####
#######################

That way, the weapon traps on either side will take out the casual group of ratmen, or the occassional elephant, without having to reload anything, but the stonefall traps provide a great deal of stopping power if anything serious comes along.

Bucket Man

[schnobs]

quote:Originally posted by LordBucket:
<STRONG>

code:

Weapon  Stonefall  Weapon
|Traps   Traps     Traps
|         |         |
v         v         v

</STRONG>

Hey, that looks familiar. Only that in my case the layers of weapon traps are a bit thicker. And I hope and pray that nothing ever comes reaches the stone-fall traps. They are, in fact, just one means to despose of stone and the thought that someday it might become necessary to reload them is rather frightening.