Trap costs in 0.19

Started by giltirn, August 29, 2018, 07:38:34 PM

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giltirn

In 0.19 traps are much more deadly but they break after a single use. This seems like a decent compromise on the face of it, but in my experience it almost completely negates the use of anything other than wooden traps, and even then this is very difficult on maps with short growing seasons or no natural tree spawn.

The reason is that traps require 30 resources to construct, just under half of their former cost. In a typical raid I will lose upwards of 10 wooden traps, which means at least 300 wood to replace them, or the full harvest of 10 typical trees (pine, birch, poplar). This happens every few game days, resulting in an insanely heavy demand for wood. In my unstable playthrough starting a week or so ago, I managed to completely denude my large boreal forest map in the first year - there were no harvestable trees remaining! Fortunately it appears that natural tree spawn was buffed in the past few days as my map in year 3 is now repopulated (year 2 it remained largely desolate). Nevertheless the time investment in chopping trees and rebuilding traps remains prohibitive - I typically barely have a chance to rebuild before the next attack comes along.

While wooden traps are a struggle to use, I cannot imagine how anyone could support the consumption of 300 steel or 300 stone blocks every few game days. The resource cost for even a modest trap use is just staggering! IMO this is far too heavy of a nerf to trap usage. My suggestion would be for traps to have a chance to break on use which averages at say 3 uses per trap. Thus a typical trap would cost 10 resources, which is still a heavy load but not unbearable.

Thoughts?

Tynan

Well first it's important to have the right expectation of what traps *should* be capable of. It sounds like you think you should be able to just mass traps indefinitely and defeat every threat that way, regardless of wood availability, regardless of mineral availability. Now you're finding this is cost-prohibitive and feel that it's a problem with the game.

However, the design goal isn't that you should be able to defeat every threat just by massing traps regardless of situations. If you're trying to do that, and finding it cost-prohibitive, it sounds like everything is working as intended.

Overall the goal is for the game to have variety - of necessary tools, of strategies between different resource availabilities and game phases and threat types, of threats and goals. Traps are supposed to be one tool in the toolbox, not a total answer by themselves. Also, we want different biomes to feel different, not the same, so if traps are much more or less useful in different biomes/mineral conditions, that's a design success. If massing traps was a total solution everywhere at all times, the game would have much less variety.

So use traps as appropriate, but don't expect to win just by spamming them everywhere. It won't work; you need to use a variety of tools and a more complex strategy. Mix in some use of turrets and soldiers; use traps for key areas, emergency situations, fallback positions. Try burn boxes, killboxes. Call allies if you need to, or send some attack animals, or use IED traps in other circumstances. Launch some artillery and have a superweapon or two on hand if things get really bad.
Tynan Sylvester - @TynanSylvester - Tynan's Blog

vampiresoap

The thing is...spamming stone traps is still super effective. My two-tile-wide corridor of death is still killing raiders left and right. I picked stone because I am playing on a desert biome. If I were playing on a temperate forest, I imagine I would just mass wooden traps everywhere ;P

I know, Tynan, I know...You thought you outsmarted us

5thHorseman

I find a corridor with wooden traps followed by stone traps to be quite effective. The wooden traps tend to nab the small animals that just wander in, and usually also get the first few raiders though it takes several traps per raider. Anybody who can get through the wooden traps deserves the greater damage output of the stone traps.
Toolboxifier - Soil Clarifier
I never got how pawns in the game could have such insanely bad reactions to such mundane things.
Then I came to the forums.

giltirn

Quote from: Tynan on August 29, 2018, 07:54:27 PM

Thank you for your response Tynan. The question is really: what is the amount of trap usage that is considered appropriate? My figures are based around losing 10 traps in a fight, which I deem a very small number of traps, yet still requires an exorbitant amount of resources and maintenance even if made from wood. It seems to me that you feel that losing 2 or 3 traps per fight is more appropriate, which suggests an extremely sparse scattering of traps. At this point, why bother?

5thHorseman

Quote from: giltirn on August 29, 2018, 10:49:19 PM
The question is really: what is the amount of trap usage that is considered appropriate?

I guess the answer is however many will stave off that amount of loss of another - more valuable - resource.

How many traps is a person's arm worth? Or their life? Or the medicine to fix them? Or the serum to grow back their leg? Or the bionic leg? Etc.

For me the answer is all the traps it takes. I spam them and am happy to use wood instead of plasteel and advanced components to fix up my people. Then I have turrets and sandbags to further weigh the odds in my favor.
Toolboxifier - Soil Clarifier
I never got how pawns in the game could have such insanely bad reactions to such mundane things.
Then I came to the forums.

giltirn

Quote from: 5thHorseman on August 30, 2018, 12:22:09 AM
Quote from: giltirn on August 29, 2018, 10:49:19 PM
The question is really: what is the amount of trap usage that is considered appropriate?

I guess the answer is however many will stave off that amount of loss of another - more valuable - resource.

How many traps is a person's arm worth? Or their life? Or the medicine to fix them? Or the serum to grow back their leg? Or the bionic leg? Etc.

For me the answer is all the traps it takes. I spam them and am happy to use wood instead of plasteel and advanced components to fix up my people. Then I have turrets and sandbags to further weigh the odds in my favor.

I spam them too, but then end up getting sucked into a black-hole of wood chopping and trap rebuilding. It's a slow and subtle death of a colony - what some might call a noob trap. Experienced players simply won't use traps knowing that it will screw them over in the long-term. A sad eulogy to a formerly viable game strategy.

Thane

Quote from: giltirn on August 30, 2018, 12:46:24 AM
I spam them too, but then end up getting sucked into a black-hole of wood chopping and trap rebuilding. It's a slow and subtle death of a colony - what some might call a noob trap. Experienced players simply won't use traps knowing that it will screw them over in the long-term. A sad eulogy to a formerly viable game strategy.

Just up and move your colony after a few years. Fresh place and fresh resources.
It is regular practice to install peg legs and dentures on anyone you don't like around here. Think about that.

zizard

They're best used inside the base, against drops, in the least intuitive places possible. In hallways, inside bedrooms, outside bedrooms, in workshops, etc.

Tynan

Quote from: giltirn on August 30, 2018, 12:46:24 AMExperienced players simply won't use traps knowing that it will screw them over in the long-term. A sad eulogy to a formerly viable game strategy.

You seem to say that because they aren't a total solution, nobody ever has any reason to use them ever. It's not a valid inference.

In reality it's in between, as it should be: Useful sometimes, less useful other times, based on circumstances and strategy. Not a total solution; not totally useless. I look forward to seeing how the metagame works out as players get experience with them.

As 5H noted, I suspect they're still OP if used optimally, but so many RW strategies are.
Tynan Sylvester - @TynanSylvester - Tynan's Blog

Boboid

Thought I'd just chime in here - My last playthrough was on Medium because I had the flu (which was kicking my ass for 3 weeks straight) , 85% of all threats were trivially crushed by wooden traps on a temperate map with standard winters.

It took ~3 years before I seriously considered using any form of defense other than wooden traps and a basic U shaped wall with an entire cardinal direction left completely open.
I was sick as a dog and barely capable of coherent thought and I very nearly experienced boredom in my delirious state because traps were removing almost all of the combat from the game.

Now, I've had a lot of experience playing at higher difficulties - Traps are less effective when enemy density increases and resources/opportunity cost are tighter. But "less" is -rather obviously- a relative term.  They have their place in a well rounded defense and can be used in a variety of creative ways unique to them to negate threats varying from sieges to drop pods.

Traps are useful in their current state. Steel traps quite expensive if used incorrectly, they're not always appropriate. Are they still located in key locations in my bases because damage density is worth the aforementioned cost? Yes.

Can you shoot yourself in the foot by splurging all your resources into terribly placed traps? Absolutely. But you could say that of literally anything.
A prison yard is certainly a slightly more elegant solution to Cabin Fever than mine...

I just chop their legs off... legless prisoners don't suffer cabin fever

spidermonk

#11
In my experience traps are still redicously OP in B19 on forest biomes. It takes a day of work of a tree cuter and a construction guy to make a defense that makes all mid game raids in any difficulty trivial. And I'm not even talking about trap corridors, which feel cheesy, it's enough to just build a lot of traps on corners and across walls of your buildings or natural hills and then just run in circles untill the raid is grinded. It doesn't even feel cheesy, just unballanced. The strategy would be still OP even with old trap costs, it will became not spammable I guess at level of 1.5 of old trap cost.

I have to restrict myself to not use this strategy, because, like killboxes, it kills fun, but I prefer to be restricted by game rules, not my own will,  because overcoming restrictions posed by a game is enjoyable. I'll probably nerf the traps with a custom mod on my next run.

Randy Merciless, NB runs, B19, only interface mods, Temperate forest with nerfed animal spawn and crop yilds

Lowkey1987

I like the traps but use them as last line of defence between my pawns and the enemy. When someone comes near my sandsacks the traps hopefully stop him.

In the beginning i had only some traps at importand points. Then i build more and more. Yeah, i had to buy wood sometimes but more for my artists.

Now large parts of my wood traps get destroyed when a turret get destroyed but thats the price to pay.

I think it is okay and i like to use them.

Bolgfred

I think traps are pretty much balanced. They provide a strong effect on high ressource cost with low maintenance.

What I don't like is that they don't have any synergy with anything. Worst case looks like this: colonist shoots at attacker. arm get hit  to 15/35 health. Attacker  takes cover, cover had a wooden trap placed. Bam, arm get reduced to -35/35. Now all 'preparation' the colonist did is lost. Would have been no difference if there was just the trap alone.
My current defense is an S-shaped corridor. In the first row, colonist defend and retreat through doors. in the second are traps only and in the third are the colonists and towers again.

It would be great if traps would be used to soften enemy, not kill them outright. This would counter the current situation where traps are better to be used stacked in a row with no interruption.
"The earth has only been lent to us,
but no one has said anything about returning."
-J.R. Van Devil

Firestonezz

#14
Quote from: giltirn on August 30, 2018, 12:46:24 AM
Quote from: 5thHorseman on August 30, 2018, 12:22:09 AM
Quote from: giltirn on August 29, 2018, 10:49:19 PM
The question is really: what is the amount of trap usage that is considered appropriate?

I guess the answer is however many will stave off that amount of loss of another - more valuable - resource.

How many traps is a person's arm worth? Or their life? Or the medicine to fix them? Or the serum to grow back their leg? Or the bionic leg? Etc.

For me the answer is all the traps it takes. I spam them and am happy to use wood instead of plasteel and advanced components to fix up my people. Then I have turrets and sandbags to further weigh the odds in my favor.

I spam them too, but then end up getting sucked into a black-hole of wood chopping and trap rebuilding. It's a slow and subtle death of a colony - what some might call a noob trap. Experienced players simply won't use traps knowing that it will screw them over in the long-term. A sad eulogy to a formerly viable game strategy.

You can build traps out of literally any material. If you're short on wood, you can use other materials to substitute while waiting for the trees to grow back.

Or you know, grow your own trees? Trade? Caravan for resources? There's tons of ways to get materials in this game. In my colony I've used wood traps early game and switched to steel later on.

There's always going to be a cost for each fight. That cost can be in many different forms: materials for traps, medicine for injuries, time/food for animals, materials for bionics, etc. Traps and turrets used to have no upkeep cost and they were rightfully nerfed.