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[praguepride]

Right now you have two choices for allowing monsters to bypass traps: all or nothing.

Either they stumble into every single trap like a drunken sasquatch or they nimbley avoid stepping on a trap even when going down a 100 tile corrider filled to the brim with traps.

What about making it a percentage? Maybe give standard intelligent creatures a flat 50% chance of noticing and avoid the trap, while thieves can have higher %'s based on skill.

0% and 100% would work the same as the "all or nothing"

Then to compound things, maybe add a second tag [trAPDESTROYER] which allows them to destroy traps they bypass.

This keeps traps as a useful defense while increasing overall challenge and difficulty. Making goblins/orcs have [trAPAVOID] basically eliminates the traps from the game. Having traps eliminates orcs/goblins from the game.

[Walliard]

I'd make it skill-based rather than a flat percentage. But you're right; traps need to be less of a dichotomy.

[SirHoneyBadger]

I like this idea very much, and I like the idea that it be skill-based. I think size could also be a factor, since smaller creatures-it seems to me-would have less of a chance to set off traps.

Maybe have traps be size based? In that you'd set like a treefall trap for a giant, and a mousetrap for vermin. 

[tsen]

Sounds good to me. A couple other things...

1. I was testing weapon traps and it seems that the only difference between a weapon trap with a single (wooden shortsword) and one with a masterwork serrated steel disc is that the latter is gorier. Both slaughter fully equipped goblins with equal ease, which seems odd to me.

2. Mechanism quality could have an effect on both the trap's re-set time, chance of going off and their durability in the event of critters with [trAP_DESTROY] or [trAP_JAMMER].

3. As was pointed out, rather than a yes/no flag a skill would be appropriate, resulting in failure (trap is set off), success (trap not set off), success (trap evaded and jammed) and success (trap evaded destroyed).  Sound ok?

[Folly]

Problem is, enemies come in waves. If they simply have a chance to avoid traps, then people would just have to exclusively build large traps that destroy entire waves, so that the first one to trigger will take them all out.
Really need to have them disarming traps, not just passing by.

[tsen]

We can already do that in the current system. I think what he means is that some traps wouldn't trigger based on creature size, not that they would affect a larger or smaller area.

[RAM]

I would like to see trap detection, triggering, and dismantling handled somewhat separately. I could see some creatures spotting a trap, but deciding to just on through regardless. Some might not try to dismantle a known trap, which would probably be dangerous and certainly time consuming in most cases. And some creatures might destroy traps just from their presence, without ever knowing about them, maybe some sort of acid creature, or a colossus...

Everything would be handled by skills and other aspects of the creature, animals probably wouldn't ever try to disarm a trap, but everyone who reacts to stimulus should have some chance to avoid traps. Also traps should have varying levels of quality to oppose the creatures resistances.

How do people feel about traps working on citizens?

[SirHoneyBadger]

"How do people feel about traps working on citizens?"

In general, I'm against it, only because I doubt the AI running them would keep them from acting like lemmings, right now.

If the problem could be solved so that it was a 1 in say 10,000 times occurrance, and based on something other than a computer hiccup, then I'd be fine with it.

[Awayfarer]

Wether it's skill based, a percentage or some other option, I'd definitely love to see goblin getting past traps. Would add a reasonable challenge to the game.

[praguepride]

I would like it so it's not an ALL or NOTHING toggle. I like traps to be useful and incorporated into the defenses, but not the end all.

Option A:
Maybe another thing is that if they do bypass a trap, they bypass ALL traps of that type? This would prevent the massive weapon/stone-fall fields.

If it was a percentage base, you could set up 100 traps in a row and more then likely blow up the entire seige. But if they catch your stone-fall trap at the beginning, they can stroll down the hallway all free.

I think this would make trap placement more strategic because you don't want to get trap-immune gobbos before they even reach your critical defensive line.


Option B:
They make the rest of their squad trap immune to that particular trap. So if there's enough of them and enough traps they might make it all the way through as long as one of the X goblins catches the trap in time.



tl;dr:

Option A: When a creature bypasses a trap, they avoid all traps of that type for the rest of the time on that map

Option B: When a creature spots a trap, their whole squad can avoid that trap.

[RAM]

B makes alot of sense. I dislike the idea of memory in general, because it will just have people rebuilding traps needlessly, and it doesn't make sense that they could memorise a complex trap mechanism in the middle of a battle. But if the one who figures it out actually points it out to their friends that seems much more sensible, but I would expect them to forget the precise layout during the course of their trip back to their home...

[Tormy]

I would like to see trap detection, triggering, and dismantling handled somewhat separately. I could see some creatures spotting a trap, but deciding to just on through regardless. Some might not try to dismantle a known trap, which would probably be dangerous and certainly time consuming in most cases. And some creatures might destroy traps just from their presence, without ever knowing about them, maybe some sort of acid creature, or a colossus...

Everything would be handled by skills and other aspects of the creature, animals probably wouldn't ever try to disarm a trap, but everyone who reacts to stimulus should have some chance to avoid traps. Also traps should have varying levels of quality to oppose the creatures resistances.

This is how it should work in the future. Good ideas RAM. 

[Aquillion]

I have a few requests...

If enemies are given the ability to disarm traps, make it so the trap is turned into a 'disabled' state that requires dwarf-maintenance to re-enable, rather than simply destroying the trap.  It would be a huge bother to have to completely rebuild (and re-place from the menu) a ton of traps (of course, normally you might want disarmed traps to be forbidden by default so your dwarves don't immediately rush into the oncoming attack to re-arm them -- but once the attack is over, it'd be easy to area-reclaim the traps you want your dwarves rearming.)

Second, as far as memory goes, make it fade over time.  Forcing players to constantly dismantle and then reconstruct traps in the exact same place is both annoying and illogical.

[Veroule]

Having TRAPAVOID as a percentage bonus would be about right.  Everything should have some base chance to avoid a trap.  Even if that chance is dumb luck 1:1000000000.  Adding a TRAPDISARM as a general ability would be great.

Something like TRAPWARN as a professional activity would also be interesting.  A scout would be the first to enter that dangerous unknown corridor.  They would be trained to avoid, disarm, and mark traps.  Possibly some they would avoid by instinct and not disarm or mark for the rest of the squad.

Another way to look at it is the scout spots a trip wire and calls the squad's mechanic to come disarm the trap.  Everyone in the squad is halted until the mechanic and scout thinks it is safe.

Both tend to show there should be some trap related skills.  The second method definitely requires a much more complex AI.  Both would tend to make traps what they should be, a way to slow enemy forces.

In terms of remembering traps I would say let it be civilisation wide.  If 1 escapes it takes reconiasance back to its civ, if none escaped they hopefully learned to not send more.  What this would actually do is a create new pathing walkability map that is used by that civ.  The information brought back would assign trapped areas as a higher cost then other tiles.  They might then choose longer paths to find a weak point.  A memeber of the civ stepping on a higher cost location with no problems would clear it.

[Pilsu]

If I may shamelessly promote my own thread, mine's more customizable. But yes, a trapavoid tag that isn't flawless would be nice. I can scarcely believe anything short of a master thief getting past every single trap. Same for human sieges, knowing where the traps are shouldn't confer flawless immunity