What is the fastest/cheapest/most efficient way of killing immigrants?
I try to run a fortress with just seven dwarves inside which never go outside. Literally they are sealed inside.
The question is how to deal with migrants. I want every migrant wave to clear mess after the previous wave, sort corpses and spare belongings to stockpiles and die quickly (so they don't spam with complaints).
Surprisingly it turned out to be a hard task for, at least for a newbie. Don't forget, that seven dwarves must be able to build killing conveyor during first spring and summer, before first waves appears on the map.
Bonus question is how to solve a problem of ghosts. I had to devote a whole full-time dwarf (remember, I have only seven!) to make coffins. Is there better way? Special problem arise when next wave can't bury corpses because of a siege. I tried slabs, but their interface is sooo inconvenient when you have to place memorials for 20 migrants in a row.
Make a holding area with a floor of upright spear traps all linked to a single lever inside.
Have a drawbridge to raise up and close off the entrance to the kill room. Link the drawbridge lever somewhere inside the fort proper.
Make a "meeting area" zone inside the kill room. Since the rest of your fort is cut off, your own dwarves can't path to it, and when migrants come they'll go there automatically.
When a new wave comes, shut them in and put the "Pull the Lever" task on repeat.
Make some tea and watch the drama unfold.
The lucky lever-pulling survivor can be used to clean up the mess, maybe putting all the dropped stuff into a cart for delivery into the fortress later while getting rid of the... um... "biological by-products", if you will.
Well you can lure them into a trap. Create some work for them outside your fortress and activate those jobs on them. When they approach the work space you switch a lever and they end up in a deep channeled hole with spikes for instance. Plenty of fun ways to think of killing dwarves. You could also just starve them inside a airlock using burrows, when they died just open it from inside and gather the goods and bodies.
You can build memorial stones to have a funeral without the body. Build stone slabs and engrave them with the proper names of those who had a accident while commuting. This will get rid of your ghost problem.