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I'd like to know how you use traps in your gameplay. This will help me balance the game.

Please consider carefully and vote honestly!

If you could outline, in a post, the reason why you hold your opinion on traps, that'd be useful to me as well!

i dont really bother with them because the wild animals usually trip them all

I usually play without a killbox, and therefore cant really set up traps in an effective manner, like funneling raiders into traps etc..
My colonies usually grow around a centerpiece complex and in time I would need to move my defenses because they are occupying living space. Also, IEDs are kind of tricky to use with the delayed explosion, faster pawns usually trigger them before you can get a good hit.
A trap that can be used more than once and stuns pawns instead of damaging might be interesting to use, something like a flashbang trap?

If I ever use traps, I must make a concerted effort to build my entire base with them in mind. The interactions traps have with path finding create odd situations. My typical deployment is a two tile hallway leading out of my mountain home, left side laden with drop traps every tile and the other side with doors. It looks weird but works with reasonable efficiency.

The problem with traps is that they force this kind of design pattern. When I play in a plains area, I do not use them because animals tend to trigger them. Perhaps design traps for crowd control, rather than killing power, such as a player triggered wide area, persistent, smoke bomb that gives pawns in its radius a strong Hediff penalty to their eyes/scanners/etc. In the later stages of the game, killing hostiles with traps becomes horribly inefficient due to their swarm-y nature and AoE traps only ever hurt the "vanguard" of the attack.

I like them. They provide a mild level of threat mitigation if placed well (unless you funnel and cheese the hell out of it) the problem is there's a certain amount of tedium to relying on them as a part of your colony defense because you have to replace them so often.

I'd like it if there was some way to auto lay mines in a zone or something like that, provided resources are available ofc.

If automating that process is not something you want in the game, then even just lowering the chance they get triggered by squirrels / rabbits etc would be nice. You don't even realize a bunch of them have gone off half the time until it's too late to rebuild.

But yeah basically I feel like the way the construction/hauling jobs work and the way they're triggered by animals, laying and maintaining minefields is tedious stuff. Therefore it's probably mostly used when you can funnel enemies, around obstacles near your base, etc. and mostly an afterthought for people building in the open.

IED => lay minefield and it's on.

I've only found them useful for denying enemies from using some heavy cover corners to take cover behind since they remember where the traps are

It's mostly the wild animals that trigger ever them

Kinda lame answers.. I scatter them all over, BUT,  unless i bottle neck somewhere (but then i can't exit that way) they are ineffective unless put everywhere, and even if they are,  only marginally.


Soooo.. Yeah.

I honestly think it would be much better if traps,  particularly deadfalls,  could lock victems into it,  requiring rescue,  or possibly able to be removed alone with extensive risk for more severe damage,  like limb dismemberment,  or tearing larger chunks out of the torso

But yeah I use them,  but its more like an extra arbitrary layer of defense,  not a crucial tactical aspect.

So,  I use them often,  but NOT  very useful. Only useful part is they don't blow up like turrets.

I use them sometimes. I would probably use IEDs more if their steel cost was either reduced drastically or removed.
Trap variety is a problem as well. Snare traps could be proven to be useful so you could use your otherwise useless Brawlers for a clean kill :P.

The big problem with traps is that your people will walk into them, sometimes being killed. I guess that this is supposed to be a low frequency occurrence, but in practice it happens fairly often. I've noted a technique where a "notrap" zone was created which is the whole map with the trap locations excluded. This works but can restrict collection of loot and bodies.
I'd be in favour of more trap types, with maybe higher degrees of lethality, but they must come with a better approach to avoidance. A couple of thoughts include:
1. Have a negative zone options, i.e. people cannot go to this zone.
2. In conjunction with (1) have a skill, such as "Field Engineer", which further reduces the risks, with level 20 never triggering the trap. This skill could be tied to the setting of traps (higher skill = better chance of trap working) and even for minimum skills for trap types (both standard game and mods).
3. Poison traps, applying additional hit points for a period of time (could be tied to quality of trap). A poison could be health impacting or sleep inducing (knock out poison).

A final thought, many trap concepts (such as incendiaries) include trap rooms or kill zones. A separate mechanic that allows doors (or better still walls/panels) to be remotely opened and closed would be great. This might extend to remotely triggered trap types. However, this relies on another area of need in the game, improved wiring. Separate topic completely.

Traps Are cool, Electronic traps that reset from 1 point would be less tedious more useful, and with additional parts needed to craft electronic traps (And power drain), they could do more damage and still be balanced

No need to remove old traps, just give us something better

As someone that 1) plays with a single pawn, and 2) basically "roleplays" the pawn as someone "settling the frontier", as it were, I would LOVE to be able to use traps, I really would.

They just aren't effective enough to be worth the time.

In "real life", you can build traps that can, with a little effort and foresight, kill large game like bears and deer. They are basically the same thing as the traps designed in-game (read the info tab, the in-game traps apparently drop heavy weights on the head and shoulders of the target), except they..... well, you know, work.

In game, you basically have to cheese the hell out of the trap to get much use out of it. Either build a killbox so attackers get funneled into it, or build some walls so that animals have to trigger it.

I would love the option to either 1) be able to "bait" traps, so that hungry animals get attracted to them, and/or 2) build alternate traps, like beartraps or snares, that break the leg of the target and/or hold them in place (prevent them from moving)

Quote from: Boston on March 10, 2016, 07:12:15 PM
In "real life", you can build traps that can, with a little effort and foresight, kill large game like bears and deer. They are basically the same thing as the traps designed in-game (read the info tab, the in-game traps apparently drop heavy weights on the head and shoulders of the target), except they..... well, you know, work.

Do you have any info on people killing bears or deer with deadfall traps? I've never heard of this trap used against something this large.

I've only heard of traps used against small game - from boar-sized on downwards. With some exceptions (giant cage traps, gun-trigger traps, bow-trigger traps, explosive traps, etc).

So reading some of the other comments, people traps sound like a really good addition. Building some sort of pit or cage that, if triggered, captured an enemy would fantastic. So often I'm trying to get prisoners for recruiting but my people keep killing them.

Quote from: Tynan on March 10, 2016, 07:20:53 PM

Quote from: Boston on March 10, 2016, 07:12:15 PM
In "real life", you can build traps that can, with a little effort and foresight, kill large game like bears and deer. They are basically the same thing as the traps designed in-game (read the info tab, the in-game traps apparently drop heavy weights on the head and shoulders of the target), except they..... well, you know, work.

Do you have any info on people killing bears or deer with deadfall traps? I've never heard of this trap used against something this large.

I've only heard of traps used against small game - from boar-sized on downwards. With some exceptions (giant cage traps, gun-trigger traps, bow-trigger traps, explosive traps, etc).

Deadfalls (which are basically the traps already in-game). They can be ranged in size from the standard "Figure 4" deadfall, which is used for small game like rabbits and squirrels, to giant ones using whole logs. You just scale the thing up, basically. You just have to make sure the weight is capable of breaking the spine or crushing the skull, or you will have one very pissed-off animal.

http://www.vintagetraps.co.uk/shop/bear-caught-in-an-native-american-deadfall-trap/

Or, the so-called "spear" traps, where the animal triggers a spring that propels sharpened spikes into the animal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBq6hU6ZZZ4

Deadfall is to small and its effect is well crappy, only good thing is that it can be reuse but then again traps are often in fire zones so they dont live long. Bear trap maybe with 2x2 size and even only a chance to cut off or heavily dmg enemy legs would be better.

IED trap this one is preety neat reminds me of our good old mining mine, ability to maybe add a longer fuse time would be good and/or remote detonation(that may be to op thrugu).

IED Incendinary ... well non of incedinary stuff is usefull due flame/rain mechanic and the fact that its more often will damage the colony itself.

Biggest problem of traps is that they are not minified, becouse we all know that every colonist is experianced sapper :D

Completely useless to me, my colonists trip over them and set up off hurting themselves.

Wild Animals trip them sometimes killing them, sometimes going nuts and then attacking colonists. Either way since i have no issues hunting them normally, the are pointless for animal trapping

putting them in obvious bottlenecks has the same issue as before, your colonists trip them and hurt themselves

lastly given the nature of the assaults the traps are pointless .Case to point, you need to literally have 100s of traps to make a significant impact on the assaults. I have had over couple of hundred enemies bunched up after that the engine slowed up when i moused over them as it could not list all the pawns in 1 page , burning them all took months..

so in the end, traps are useless unless you use modded OP ones .

Personally, I don't use traps purely out of fear of my colonists accidentally triggering them.

Ive never actually had one trip on a colonist but have heard that they can, and the few times I have used them I find the colonists pathing is not trustworthy enough to feel safe in using them.

Ive also noticed that walling up a trap within a Sapper dug tunnel seems to prevent future Sappers from reusing that spot. Which seems like an exploitable method for shutting down Sappers.

I find them hard to use, as any path that works on enemies works on friendlies too. It becomes quite a complicated challenge to set up traps i can use to hurt enemies without friendly fire being so common.


My colonists should know where the minefields they built are, and avoid them at all costs naturally - short of dementia, or having a mental break and running into one.

I would prefer traps that can move blocks, such as doors i can remotely open and close, or traps i can trigger from radio switches. (have a minion hit a switch, doors/walls close, trigger IED's etc)

The main problem I have with traps is that in order to use them effectively, you have to exploit the AI's cover mechanics. In other words, you have to know/predict where the AI will take cover and put a trap there in order to be sure it will trigger at all. This raises further issues, as preferably you don't want the AI to go into cover at all - you want them to be mowed down by some combination of turrets and colonists shooting from cover. So I tend to place traps only in places where the AI is forced to go, such as 1-block choke points.

Additionally, traps lose most of their value when placed outside, because animals will constantly wander into them.

Deadfall traps are okay if you don't have anything else, but I think explosive IEDs are the best. Even without slowing raiders with sandbags, you can sometimes get lucky and get several kills with one IED. Worth the cost I think. I haven't had much luck with incendiary IEDs, the fire doesn't seem to spread much. Maybe if you could seal raiders in a room and trigger one, but I'm not sure how that would work.

Same as everyone just stated, that they are too hard to set up in points that are useful or so your pawns dont kill themselves. I would love to see a much bigger trap like a 2x2 or maybe even a 3x3 involving a rock wall, they trip it, it falls crushing anything under it, including the items. So its not a free item farm kinda deal. And maybe some remote explosives, like c4 that a pawn can throw and detonate it, and thats the weapon. Craft them at the smiths bench and they can only have like idk 2-3. Or another turret thats stationary, ex. gas turret thats stuck to the wall, or a flame thrower. something thats mid to late game. cause IEDS work wonders for me

Traps are almost useless for me and I don't use them most of the time. Or start to build them when there is huge excess of materials and lack of other stuff to build (which is year 10+). In other words: traps are the last thing I will build.

Why they are bad? They are useless against:
- Siege (since most damage from siege is made by mortars)
- Any landings inside of the base (since you cant minefield you own base)
- Landed ship parts (well you can lay traps around it... but I never saw it work good enough)

And even if we forget about this and imagine that there are only direct wave attack situations, which must be perfect for good placed minefield... well even then traps will suck because IED's have this delay and deadfall trap has no area effect.

And all this stuff are the major threats. If traps cant be used against those, then why even bother with placing them?

Also I would like to see more complex system for traps with separate damaging device (IED, firebomb, EMP, electric discharge, falling stone, shooting gun, gas, water sprinkler...) and trigger for it (remote activation, trigger line, pressure plate, smoke detector...).

I use them only occasionally, because I have a small choke point as an entrance without doors. If I then build the traps so that my colonists can pass them without activating them, it only works against the first few raids. Afterwards, as they remember where they are, I need to change their placement often. This is too much hassle for me.
The alternative that is often used, a long corridor with many doors to pass safely between the traps, looks too much like an exploit for me and not like something that I would normally use. I mean, if you were the raider and if there are doors, therefore why would you go down the narrow path, especially if you know that there are traps? So I don't do this kind of entrance.
For me they are only useful as an animal stopper, but not that useful as a raid defence.

If I could suggest how to balance traps i'd like them to be faster to re-aim and maybe bait with food to attract animals to hunt

Quote from: giannikampa on March 11, 2016, 05:35:08 AM
If I could suggest how to balance traps i'd like them to be faster to re-aim and maybe bait with food to attract animals to hunt

That is a good idea.

I never use traps, the amount of time to build them and the minimum damage that they do, seem  not worth it.

I'll use them when the terrain gives the opportunity; raiders constantly funnelling down the same natural chokepoint, etc. I don't generally go in for man-made killboxes so trap use is pretty much limited to random luck on a mountain map.

I don't use IEDs, particularly incendiary. I don't use fire weapons full stop as I find them more hindrance than help. Deadfalls have their benefits but I'm generally only using them to thin the crowds in a cheap way; I've never relied on them.

There is a significant amount of jiggery-pokery to be done with restricted zones to make sure people, and particularly tamed animals, keep clear. They also seem to be incredibly varied in their effect; the number of maps I've had three raiders pile through picking up nothing more than a scratch, but one distracted colonist loses his way and BANG, his head has been ripped clean off (literally; this is not an exaggeration. I've had two separate colonists have their heads completely removed by a deadfall). I'd definitely like to see a more consistent damage output; not lethal and constrained to the lower body with a view to reducing movement speed, perhaps.

I'd also like to see them hooked more into hunting. Having them baited has been suggested already and I agree wholeheartedly, but baited or not I'd like to see any animal killed by a trap automatically flagged as permitted so a hauler can go fetch it. Preferably I'd like to see this extended so anything caught in a trap sent a flag to a hunter to go collect the body. If you combined this with the aforementioned lessening of lethality, perhaps the animal gets automatically downed and flagged to hunt so someone can go finish it off without the usual risk of going on a hunting trip. This could further be related to previously-mentioned ideas on differing trap sizes; what traps work on which animals, etc. An elephant probably wouldn't notice a rabbit snare but equally a squirrel wouldn't crash through a pit built for a Thrumbo.

I think the auto-rearm option works well and keeps them viable, though I never realised raiders learned their position and avoided them on later attempts. I shall bear this in mind in future base design! Not knowing the ins and outs of this, I'll make some additional suggestions that might be pointless: if you completely wipe an attack out, there are no survivors to learn for next time. Locations should only be learned by raiders who triggered the trap (and those who saw it triggered?) providing they survive the raid - the old, blind guy with the bad back and bum leg who'd barely made it halfway to the attack before routing almost certainly didn't see and make notes of the traps that killed his friends a mile away! Finally, and probably already in the code, lessons should only be learned by the clan that attacked. Pirate Band 1 should not know your traps simply because Tribe 2 attacked a week ago.

Actually with the whole learning position thing,  id argue it should ONLY  work if someone who witnessed the death AND ,  manages to get back.  So if you slaughter everyone,  or one guy splits up / doesn't see the trap go off,  it shouldn't be remembered.

This would effectively be a huge buff alone,  in terms of you don't have to micromanage / move a trap every single time. I also think enemies should still "trip up"  and step into traps they know of occasionally anyways.

But,  even JUST having it need to be witnessed / reported back would be huge.

Yeah, traps as they are really are not worth the material you put in. 50-60 stone blocks might get you one dead raider if you are lucky and 85 steel, maybe three or four. They just are not efficient when you can construct large fortifications, layers of defense and periphery turrets for the same cost of a decent minefield, or deadfall chokepoint.


And those don't get triggered by the stray muffalo.

I use traps all over the place, but I don't think them particularly useful. I went for the middle option as a compromise.

The problem I have with them is for them to be effective you have to spam them everywhere. Sure you can put them down in chokepoints (IEDs are actually ideal for dealing with sappers in my experience) but unless you plaster the approach routes to your colony you're only going to hit a very small few raiders every time. The problem with plastering is that you can hit anything - from animals (not such a big deal) to guests (really bad) to your own colonists (facedesk worthy). It's also pretty expensive.

Another issue with traps is the priority the colonists are assigned auto-rearming vs. hauling. It is disturbingly common after a raid to see colonists run around and fix up all the traps without picking up what is on the tile first. The result is that the trap is activated and a colonist has to step onto the tile with the trap (potentially activating it) to haul what has dropped on the tile.

What I'd really like is a trap which had a larger area of activation. It is immensely frustrating to see raiders (or centipedes) walk immediately adjacent to an IED and have it not go off. A little more proximity for activation, or IEDs at least, would be really nice and cut down on the amount of plastering that needs to happen.

Hey guys, what do you think about gun braces and tripwires? They're one of the things I love to hate about Fallout 4.

Pros:
Doesn't matter if the tripwire is discovered, you can easily set it somewhere else the next time you're attacked.
Customisable according to what weaponry you have handy (potentially, could use any mod weapon).

Cons:
Single burst.
Tripwires are single-shot and need to be linked to a particular gun brace.
'Spare' guns could be sold for silver.

After having starter colonists die to them several times I never used them again. If the colonists were made a bit more 'trap smart' after sitting them instead of turning around and walking back through them right after sitting them I may consider using them again and trying new things with them.

Side note: This was/IS before the exclusion zones and now thinking of those thanks to this thread I may try them again using exclusion zones to mark the trap and the squares immediately surrounding them to try to force avoidance. However, with the need to 'reset' a trap once they spring this would create a lot of overhead in the way of micromanaging the traps and zones. This would be fine for a starter colony trying to survive with wild animals hunting them as well as random raids, but for larger colonies this kind of thing would likely become useless and extremely time consuming with micromanagement with the consideration of better ways to do this using remote turrets and power lines / remote power cells (setting up charged battery placings instead of mods with remote power transmitters and replacing the batteries when they run dry).

They are useless because of how they are built. When they are useful they are extremely expensive. If they were cheaper, that would be great.

Quote from: MarvinKosh on March 11, 2016, 01:59:07 PM
Hey guys, what do you think about gun braces and tripwires?

thats what i actually was thinking IED should be: explosive + wire, that u can place in wider areas, instead of landmine-like.
something like that:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
                      O                             
                       |                           
                       |                           
                       |                         
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

it would also greatly benefit, if the explosions in vanilla worked Combat Realism-ish..

Thank you for the info everyone. I'm making some changes in response to this. I don't want traps to be OP, but they should be useful.

I havent understood deadfall traps. I tried to build them several times but they are resource intensive and risky. Only use seems to be in narrow corridors, and then my own colnists will trigger them which reduces the only use to shut-off corridors where I expect raiders to enter. This can still be a use, but very limited.

I use IED's sometimes in similar places and they have their use. I also put IED's around alien ships sometimes and it can help do good damage on release.

So I think IED's are ok but underpowered/under-useful  and deadfall just a waste of time

Quote from: Tynan on March 10, 2016, 07:20:53 PM

Quote from: Boston on March 10, 2016, 07:12:15 PM
In "real life", you can build traps that can, with a little effort and foresight, kill large game like bears and deer. They are basically the same thing as the traps designed in-game (read the info tab, the in-game traps apparently drop heavy weights on the head and shoulders of the target), except they..... well, you know, work.

Do you have any info on people killing bears or deer with deadfall traps? I've never heard of this trap used against something this large.

I've only heard of traps used against small game - from boar-sized on downwards. With some exceptions (giant cage traps, gun-trigger traps, bow-trigger traps, explosive traps, etc).

If you ever were to add pit traps, or hunting pit traps. That would certainly be something fit for big game.
In Norway we had these "moose pits" or "hunting pits" that they mainly used to hunt Moose / reindeer. It was so effective in fact, that it almost culled the moose population in the 1500's, and the government at the time tried to ban it. It wasn't until much later it was banned, however. But I remember finding traces of them in the woods near where I lived as a child.

article from Norwegian wiki (with some images):
https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fangstgrav

I've never used traps, but I do think that if gun's and turrets required ammo but traps merely required being reset then I would have motivation to use them.

I find explosive IEDs in conjuction with regular shells scattered around to set off chain explosions very effective.
Deadfall traps and incendiary IEDs, on the other hand, are kinda meh when Cassie Extreme starts sending 100+ raids my way.
Bottom line: yeah, traps are pretty useful.

P.S. Forgot to mention that IEDs are godsent for destacking my shell stacks. Because of this, trap usefulness increasses to over 9000.

I haven't tried traps yet, but I have thought about placing IEDs around a ship part before letting the mechanoids loose.  How effective is this sort of strategy?  What is the detection range on an IED?  If the mech has to walk on top of the shell to set it off I'm probably not going to get enough hits to make it worthwhile (I imagine it takes  a dozen to take down a centipede)

I use IED's as an opening gambit against crashed ships and 'preparing' raiders. Deadfall traps line specially placed walls and form barriers in front of turrets, and devastate manhunter packs and melee raiders trying to charge turrets.

Quote from: TheSpaceKraken on March 12, 2016, 02:35:26 PM
I use IED's as an opening gambit against crashed ships and 'preparing' raiders. Deadfall traps line specially placed walls and form barriers in front of turrets, and devastate manhunter packs and melee raiders trying to charge turrets.

In my last incident, which I shared under "Stories", a muffalo manhunter pack powered through 7 steel traps and only downed 1 off them. Not quite what I was expecting from a fairly high steel investment,

Quote from: Gonorejus on March 12, 2016, 06:38:08 AM
I find explosive IEDs in conjuction with regular shells scattered around to set off chain explosions very effective.

i use this tactic sometimes (esp when opening psychic ships), but that requires additional micro to place.

How I use traps
(http://i.imgur.com/c3SXcvf.png)

I forgot to add doors leading to the IEDs though. Other than that, it's quite effective and safe too thanks to the doors on the side.

Quote from: A Friend on March 12, 2016, 09:02:12 PM
How I use traps
(http://i.imgur.com/c3SXcvf.png)

I forgot to add doors leading to the IEDs though. Other than that, it's quite effective and safe too thanks to the doors on the side.

Is the tree part of the strategy? 
Why 2 paths rather than 1?

I place CQC pawns in there during raids. Peeking out the doors to cut down incoming raiders. More doors there are, the better.

The tree just kinda grew there and I didn't want to risk cutting it down. But it does help make some of the raiders step on the traps.

I've built bases that could use traps, but i just don't bother.

I tend to either play with a killbox that doesn't really need the traps (i don't want to risk raiders choosing to chop down a wall rather than walk thru a trap laden hallway), or in an open style base where i play peekaboo out of various building doors until the raiders are dead (this always EVENTUALLY dies to a gigantic tribal raid, since i don't use turrets in those).

I'd like to see explosive and incendiary traps easier to make, have a larger trigger radius (since stepping on a single tile isn't always a sure thing, unless you cheese your base to do so), and have turrets and pawns shoot at "on-fire" enemies