How useful are traps?

[Tynan]

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!

[slyscavenger]

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

[Panzer]

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?

[ambrux]

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.

[Noobshock]

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.

[Noobshock]

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.

[Shinzy]

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

[mumblemumble]

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.

[ChJees]

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 .

[MeGrrrr]

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.

[userfredle]

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

[Boston]

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)

[Tynan]

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).

[MeGrrrr]

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.

[Boston]

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