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[Psilobe]

I had some cagetraps out in the wild at a strategic location to catch me some unicorns and badgers. This caused a slight problem when me with no miltary gets ambushed. As my dwarfs constantly run out to replace cages and reset traps they get scared my the goblins. They run away but lo and behold now the goblins are walking around outside my main gate making it impossible to get inside. After a while the goblins manage to fall in to my traps so I get a stockpile full of goblins. Yay now I only need to empty the cages and reset the traps. I make a ditch filled with magma, designate a pit above it and creates a 1 tile wide animal stockpile along this ditch. All goblins and badgers and whatnots are here now so I decide to pit them all but when my dwafs start trying to dump the bastards in to the lava most of them manages to escape instead leaving me with badgers/badger men and goblins running around in my base. Stumpped I get the situation under control with only a slight population dip (15 dwarfs) and asks myself, how did they get out!?

Why didnt they fall in to the lava as nice animals do?

[Starver]

This is not the complete answer, but (d)esignating a (b)lock of (f)orbidden over the traps will certainly prevent there being a job to ensure the cage (once trap is triggered, and it sits there, encreatured) being brought back into the fortress.

Add to this some Burrow assignments (of all areas internal to whatever gateway(s) you have, or more picky burrows to which any/all legitimate industries other than trap-reloading can be restricted) and you should be able to bring such moonlighting duties down to zero.  But I'm not sure if that's more micromanagement than you're typically used to using.


(I don't tend to pit hostiles, so I don't know much, but I suspect they have a little bit more fight and might wriggle free.  I'd consider modifying to make it lever-openable/deconstructing cages in a sealable area, near to a bridge-be-gone[1] over the drop you want them to take.  A bit more effort, again, but I think it should work.)


[1] Perhaps with a 'guaranteed' exit on the other side of the bridge with a bridge-linked pressure plate and then some cage traps, so that the first one to try to exit dooms the others.  I don't know, never tried this or the more passive version, so there's probably some finesse needed.

[Garath]

did you disarm the goblins first?

[Kravick]

In order to successfully pit hostile creatures you have to first build the cage next to the hole you're going to throw them into.  Otherwise the dwarf that tries to move the creature will "get scared" as soon as they let the creature out and run away.  If you build the cage with the creature in it next to the pit, the dwarf never gets the chance to get scared as the creature will immediately get thrown into the hole.

[NonconsensualSurgery]

All your problems can be solved with !!HATCH COVERS!!!

http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/DF2010:Mass_pitting

If there's a hatch cover over the pit then things cannot crawl back out and will not frighten dwarves ever. If every tile of the animal stockpile where prisoners are being held waiting for processing is adjacent to a hatch cover that's also a pit then goblins never have to be hauled, and thus cannot escape even if something else frightens the dwarves doing the hauling.

Note that this isn't foolproof. Goblin thieves will usually escape anyway, but ambushers and siegers never will. It's also a bad idea to pit megabeasts or certain other creatures.

Drain the lava once in a while. All the iron weapons and armor will survive the heat intact, yet can be curiously melted down to bars at a magma furnace by designating them for melting and then queueing melt metal object orders.

[blaize9]

All your problems can be solved with !!HATCH COVERS!!!

http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/DF2010:Mass_pitting

If there's a hatch cover over the pit then things cannot crawl back out and will not frighten dwarves ever. If every tile of the animal stockpile where prisoners are being held waiting for processing is adjacent to a hatch cover that's also a pit then goblins never have to be hauled, and thus cannot escape even if something else frightens the dwarves doing the hauling.

Note that this isn't foolproof. Goblin thieves will usually escape anyway, but ambushers and siegers never will. It's also a bad idea to pit megabeasts or certain other creatures.

Drain the lava once in a while. All the iron weapons and armor will survive the heat intact, yet can be curiously melted down to bars at a magma furnace by designating them for melting and then queueing melt metal object orders.

Hey do you know if you can shoot arrows into the pit with hatch covers on it?