What are some good defenses using dead falls?

[kahlzun]

I've started playing around with Deadfall traps, and they seem like a really good way of stopping enemies without expending resources unnecessarily.
Has anyone built any really good defenses just using these, and are there any tips or caveats to their use?

[Devon_v]

You can try making "false" entrances to your base and forbid your colonists from using them. They do try not to path through forbidden zones in 11a. The raiders would then fall for the trap, but if there are too many of them the first few will trip them all and the rest will get in. They'll also remember not to try that one the next time they show up, so it's a very temporary measure,  but it's not bad before you get turrets up. You can also try ringing the turrets with deadfalls so that if they want to whack the turret, they get whacked, and if they don't want to set the trap off, they can't whack the turret.

[skullywag]

The turret trap is the only decent way ive found of using em, makes your turrets slightly less squishy..

[mokonasakura]

Don't use them, even placing them around your turret is useless, they do almost no damage and once your turret blows up, which it will, your traps will be destroyed. Currently there is no good way to use them so don't bother.

[Cimanyd]

Don't use them, even placing them around your turret is useless, they do almost no damage and once your turret blows up, which it will, your traps will be destroyed. Currently there is no good way to use them so don't bother.

Are you using steel ones? Stone ones do less damage and wood ones do almost none, but getting hit by three steel traps can kill an animal and sometimes a human. The problem I've noticed is the factions remember where the traps are, and I don't really care enough to move them around. They still kill the occasional animal or fleeing enemy.

[kahlzun]

Do traps degrade over time, or with use or anything? The idea I had was to have the only entrance to my base literally 'mined' with them, and just have them disarmed most of the time. If i get the notification of a raid, i quickly get all the traps re-armed. There is literally no other way into the base bar mining or airdrop.

If the raiders have 'learnt' the location of the traps, but there is literally no other way through, will they still walk through the traps?

[Jimyoda]

Do traps degrade over time, or with use or anything? The idea I had was to have the only entrance to my base literally 'mined' with them, and just have them disarmed most of the time. If i get the notification of a raid, i quickly get all the traps re-armed. There is literally no other way into the base bar mining or airdrop.

If the raiders have 'learnt' the location of the traps, but there is literally no other way through, will they still walk through the traps?

Traps don't degrade, break down, or deteriorate but they can take damage from explosions and lightning.
I have tried to witness an enemy actively avoid a trap but have actually seen the same pawn walk over the same trap multiple times. So enemies don't appear to learn about traps (which is a bug), but if they did they ought to treat them just as a colonist would. To a colonist, traps have about a 630 path cost. So to walk to a space just beyond a trap they will take a longer slower path, costing up to 629. If there is no path that costs less than 630 the colonist will walk through the trap. I expect enemies aware of the trap would behave the same way.

Since colonists may choose to walk through traps when no other path is open, I advise to never block their path with traps. However, if you set up a minefield of traps in a checkerboard pattern, colonists can safely walk diagonally through it, while enemies will surely blunder into them.

[kahlzun]

Ok, so i gave my 'one entrance' plan a try. worked fairly well, though you will still need turrets for 'overflow'.

Here is my setup. Note that the colonists have easy access through the door, which the enemies blithely ignore to walk into the grinder.

..and here it is after absorbing a dev-page-generated 1000pt tribe attack.

Note that my colonists were not involved in the defence.
It took out 6 of the attackers, and in return they destroyed a turret and fled.
Conclusion:
You can certainly use deadfall traps as passive defence, however you will need a lot of them.
Also, they take longer to reset than i expected.

[Cimanyd]

The problem with that is there's no safe way for the colonists to re-arm the traps, so they'll probably do it in the wrong order and hurt themselves. Also, if the factions "learn" there are all those traps there, they'll probably decide the door is a "shorter" route and just smash it, though adding enough extra doors would stop that problem.

So is there any way to have a path with traps that enemies can't avoid but colonists can safely rearm? Jimyoda is right that a checkerboard pattern works great, until the enemies learn where the traps are and just path around diagonally just like your colonists.

Maybe if you did something with a bunch of doors? If you put a door every three blocks in the wall of the path (would require some mining in the setup in the screenshot), your colonists might be able to safely rearm the traps.

Another possibility is to use a checkerboard pattern, and when the factions learn too much about where the traps are, to deconstruct them all and replace them in the opposite pattern. This would take some work and use up some metal each time, though.

[kahlzun]

When needing to 're-arm' the traps, i just tell them to rearm the trap furthest up the path, and then the next one etc.
Takes a little while to do, but prevents injury.
I've been having problems with colonists 'wandering' into the armed traps. This is especially galling when I have them under a zone restriction that shouldn't allow them to walk out that far.

[kahlzun]

I tried doubling the pattern, and it absorbed a 1000 pt pirate attack easily. They all had shields and melee weapons. Strangely, the deadfalls seem to count as ranged, as they weren't hurting the pirates until the shields popped. Weird.

Oh, and so far, noone has attacked the door. I guess they see the corridoor and go "Undefended path! Surely there are no downsides to this path! Argh! A downside, out of nowhere!"

[Levin]

hehe, excellent quote!

Oh, and so far, noone has attacked the door. I guess they see the corridoor and go "Undefended path! Surely there are no downsides to this path! Argh! A downside, out of nowhere!"

[lusername]

Shouldn't they only learn about the traps if raiders survive to return home and tell of it?

[keylocke]

for the defense :

as others have said, i mostly use my deadfalls in front of turrets, aside from the deadfalls i used in the t-junction.. when enemies enter the killbox proper, they usually hit incendiary which causes them to panic (good for humans) and causing the ieds to chain. (good for centipedes)

it softens them up for the turrets and the troops that i placed in the hallway behind the turrets so they can fire behind the safety of the stone walls. it's also a great position for them to stop shooting and initiate turret repairs when necessary, while the alternate walls are great to prevent turret chain explosions.

also, if you check the powerlines, i separated the line for the turret and the doors, so i can keep the doors powered even if i decide to turn the turrets off..

while the doors at either side of the killbox, allows my colonists to come and go unhindered by the killbox.

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as for the general base design, nothing much has changed since the previous alphas.

-killbox connects to prison room. prison room connects to freezer room. freezer room connects to kitchen.
-prison room connects to dining and recreation room, which connects to hospital. then hospital to dormitory (for new colonists) and research/comms area. then private rooms (for vets).
-etc..

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note : too lazy so i built this with debug. but all of my bases look similar. haha. (i just adjust a bit based on terrain constraints)

edit : the killbox is usually the last thing i build in the colony, and even after i built the killbox, i don't fill it up with turrets right away. (i add 2 new turrets every other month or so)

[Devon_v]

I suggested that they should only be known if there were survivors but Tynan never commented and the dev log doesn't say one way or another, so I assume they "radio" home base with a warning. Maybe dev mode enemies don't belong to the map factions.