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[Techhead]

Two way power is easy, you can use cams and cranks for starters.
You can make them into more complicated things like gearboxes that swap the direction when reaches the end.

Spoiler: Gearbox design (click to show/hide)

Code: [Select]

() large gear
o  small gear
|  axel
]/ switch

Position A

|
ooo|
|  |  o
o()o]/|
   |  |

Position B

|
oooo]\
|  |  o
o()|  |
   |  |

[Pilsu]

1: To be honest that sounds like it could make trap placement kinda irritating, especially if you're building a maze-like structure or pretty much any hall that's not straight. Instead, we could make traps 1/3 as powerful as they are now, and I don't like the sound of that... See below.

Weapon traps are overpowered as is. The entire point was to make them harder to place and more limited

If you want a trap that's easy and compact, rockfall traps would probably remain unchanged

4: Sounds good, but I don't think power should be limited to animal power. Theoretically any power source could reset the traps, you could set up a system of gears or whatever to retract the traps and have a lever to disconnect the retracting power once they're fully reset. It's fully plausible but I wouldn't want to have to build that in the game, so we could let any power source reset them by simply connecting the power to the traps and assume there's some mechanism like that at work.

Yes, that was implied. Animal power would simply be convenient, automated whereas lever action disabling gears would take micromanagement. And leaving it on would jam the traps since let's face it, it acts like a swingset. If you never let go, it's stuck up there. Sure you could fit more traps with a lever system but you'd have to reload all of them at once and while doing so the ones left armed would be stuck

Hmm, rigging the power might be difficult if the thing requires solid squares below and above it though. Might require a dedicated gear block and improved build system so it could be placed from above. Perhaps hiding it if we ever get a feature to rehide rock. Guess it's the best way, does away with the teleporting animal power crud too. Powering the thing from above wouldn't be possible anymore though but that's probably alright

I don't think traps should be nerfed too much. At the least, they should be about 1/2 as powerful as they are now. However, the traps should require quality mechanisms and alot of maintenance to stay in tip-top shape. I posted about this here: http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=29369.msg382997#msg382997

I'll add to it by saying that poorly maintained traps would not only be slower and jam more often, they'd obviously do less damage if they did hit.

Worthy suggestion

I don't think players who dislike confrontations would be too badly hindered. Sure you'd need to reset them by hand but they'd cover the same space if desired, just disabling the autoreload. Enough of the traps would still murder everything


I'm not too sure how that gearbox thing works or what it's for but I just have a hard time stomaching a waterwheel rigged apparatus that can reload a trap automatically while provided constant power. It's one thing to make a clock that doesn't overwind but a giant axe blade trap with a high degree of automation in the 1400s?

[Karlito]

So I'm gonna bring back the idea of building a separate "weapon trap housing" (or whatever you want to call it), that is built on an empty space and when triggered by a pressure plate (or lever), it attacks the tile below it with a weapon.  This way, traps could linked to power sources, and would fit in better with the rest of the mechanisms.  You'd still need a room above the trapped corridor to house your power and weapons, but this way we wouldn't have to deal with invisible power transfers or one tile vertical axles.

[SirHoneyBadger]

I think that the most simple, versatile, and least expensive traps-including weapon traps-should be 1 shot only. That just makes the most sense. Even with only 1 shot, they're still deadly, especially since that "one shot" might still involve a whole cluster of weapon attacks.

Larger, more complex traps could require dwarf operators to keep them going, and the most complex and powerful traps might require either several dwarfs, and/or the aforementioned animal powersources, or some kind of natural power (a windmill, a waterwheel, a giant hamster wheel your dorfs can run on, whatever).

And in some cases, where you want multiple "shots", you should be able to use multiple mechanisms, with an increased chance of jamming, based on the number of mechanisms, compared to their quality.

Mechanisms should really also be limited by their quality of construction. Masterwork mechanisms might allow 10 weapons, or even more, and they might very well do several attacks in a row, but the lowest quality ones, I'd personally like to see limited by no more than 3 small weapons, 2 large weapons, or 1 giant weapon, and be 1 shot only, until reset by my engineers.

Artifact mechanisms might be capable of almost anything, on the other hand. I could see artifact flamethrowers, artifacts that power fighting automatons, artifact traps that actually move up or down the corridor, so the enemy never *quite* knows where the trap is located, an artifact mechanism inside a boulder-ala 'Indiana Jones'-but that actually *seeks out* the enemy, or an artifact mechanism for a "cage" style trap that instead accurately shoots out a big weighted net, ballista-style. All kinds of insane things.

One thing I'd really like to see is for traps to become part of the rest of the fortress, and not be so isolated. Adding a trap mechanism to a door should turn it into a trap door, with door-related features. Adding a mechanism to the ceiling should allow you to create a trap that causes that portion of the ceiling to slam down on the enemy, and then withdraw back into place.

Several mechanisms added to that one ceiling could give you several "shots" at sqwishing the enemy, on a "1 per mechanism" basis.

Most of all, designing really good, powerful traps, should require finesse and ingenuity on the part of the *player*, not just on the part of your dorfs.

[Muz]

Hmm.. your illustrated weapon trap suggestion makes me want to make my own illustration.

Muz withdraws from society, claims a laptop, and begins working.

[Pilsu]

Badger, that's well and good and all but it'd do nothing to reduce the traps' power. Mine was built on the premise that if you want automated death traps, they're gonna take room and engineering effort and the player could easily balance them some more by fiddling with jam and activation rates


Hmm, maybe the power could be transferred with a new mining designation that simply carves a hole through the stone and turns it into a waterproof axle. Gets around the building mechanics' limitations and adds a long awaited feature

[LumenPlacidum]

I think making traps a bit more complicated to construct is a good idea, brings them up to the level of realism of the rest of DF, and in some cases can actually make the traps easier to use.  Many people, myself included, consider traps to be too powerful for their effort, making defending yourself through actual military means unnecessary in all cases.  Requiring infrastructure for traps helps to offset this problem, and making it so that this infrastructure actually takes space means that even a fairly thorough trap system will have some gaps that can theoretically require some military to cover.

This can bring traps up to the level of accuracy portrayed by the rest of Dwarf Fortress already.  Everything from siege weapons needing to be loaded to irrigation make DF on the side of complex accuracy instead of simplification.  Right now, traps are just magic squares that kill things.  Stone-fall traps can be built under blue skies.  I wouldn't propose making them too complicated, but the rest of DF takes the stance that you should have to plan a little bit to make something complex work; I don't see that traps should be any different.

So, I think that weapon traps should actually be 2x1.  One of these squares should be impassable, essentially becoming a modified wall.  This wall tile is what needs to be maintained.  The passable tile is the trigger.  Placed in a 6xN room, you can have a central corridor 2 spaces wide with trap walls on either side and behind them, access halls for maintenance/reloading.  The trap should be able to be set as automatic (requiring power) or one-use, which would require a reset job by a dwarf.  This means it would require a bit more material to set up (a block for the wall), and possibly the infrastructure for power, and finally would require more space.  In the beginning of the fortress, the one-use option helps to keep the trap a solid defense when you cannot afford much of a military, but it can be overwhelmed, which is good.  These can be easier to use once installed, since dwarven engineers do not have to wander out into the kill-zone to reset them (as the wall separates the access shaft from the target zone).

Stone-fall traps should require that they be built indoors.  It's silly to have a device that drops a stone on your head out in the middle of a field (unless it's a catapult).  Other than that, I see little reason why this should not be possible almost as it is now.  Since it's not an automatic kind of trap, there's no reason why it should require power.  If some desire is made to make these a little more complicated, then they could simply drop whatever is on the floor above onto the tile in which the trigger is set.  These are, however, still somewhat too potent.  So, given the predictable nature of these traps, and how easily they can be spotted and how slowly they're deployed (relying on gravity for propulsion rather than some controllable mechanisms), these traps should have a chance of simply missing.

Cage traps are the really overpowered ones.  Absolute defense that also gets you a captive for the price of one mechanism and one cage.  Honestly, what with the cages being free to be moved, I don't know how these traps are intended to work.  The only way I can think of is that the cage is being propelled at the target (probably from above) and is locking into the sixth side.  This would mean you could spot the floor of the cage on the trigger floor or the hanging cage above.  This would require that the trap be placed indoors again, and there would be a very strong chance of the enemy simply dodging away.  Cages built for specific sizes of creatures might be a good balancing factor.  If the creature is too large for the cage, then it simply doesn't work.  If the creature is too small, it can fit through the cage's bars.  Terraria would be able to hold small creatures, but the breaking of cages would help to offset that strength.

Pressure plates that require complete reset should work as they do now.  Pressure plates that work automatically should either require that the plate be powered or that the target item be powered (like a bridge, or floodgate).

Upright spike traps should require that the floor underneath be solid.  In other words, there shouldn't be dwarfs running around under the spike trap, since they would have to weave between the unsprung spikes.  I don't have much experience with this trap, but since they seemingly can only be used by attaching them to a control device, then they should follow the rules for that control device.  If it's a pressure plate and they're set to auto-reset, then it should take power.  Levers take power from the dwarf pulling the lever.  If the spikes are constantly being triggered (i.e. a lever set to repeat pull), then they should be more easily avoided.  Perhaps for every time in the last 200 time steps that the spike fires, there is a 5% greater chance of avoidance by whomever it concerns.  This helps to model people being able to SEE the spikes shooting up and not just walking over them.

That's my two cents.

[SirHoneyBadger]

Pilsu, you'll please note that I did indeed include suggestions for making traps less powerful, and that that was the general gist of my thread.

There are some other thoughts in the mix, but
requiring more player savvy in designing traps would, I think, do a lot towards making traps more balanced.

The only thing I suggesting actually being *more* powerful was artifact mechanisms, which seems reasonable to me.

[Demonic Gophers]

So, I think that weapon traps should actually be 2x1.  One of these squares should be impassable, essentially becoming a modified wall.  This wall tile is what needs to be maintained.  The passable tile is the trigger.  Placed in a 6xN room, you can have a central corridor 2 spaces wide with trap walls on either side and behind them, access halls for maintenance/reloading.  The trap should be able to be set as automatic (requiring power) or one-use, which would require a reset job by a dwarf.  This means it would require a bit more material to set up (a block for the wall), and possibly the infrastructure for power, and finally would require more space.  In the beginning of the fortress, the one-use option helps to keep the trap a solid defense when you cannot afford much of a military, but it can be overwhelmed, which is good.  These can be easier to use once installed, since dwarven engineers do not have to wander out into the kill-zone to reset them (as the wall separates the access shaft from the target zone).

I like this idea.  Weapon traps could be similar to screw pumps, except selecting a trigger direction instead of a pumping direction.  Provided with power, they could reset automatically.  They could also be reset manually by engineers, much like pumps can be operated manually.  This would make setting up a trapped hallway a bit more complicated without completely crippling them for use by inexperienced players.


I'd also suggest that people who feel traps are too powerful simply not use as many.  You can easily get a lower weapon density by scattering a few traps about a hallway, instead of placing one in every floor tile.  There are compromises between having an invincible death hall and not being able to use any traps.

[SirHoneyBadger]

By the way, I don't have any problem at all with certain traps requiring more than one square, or even an entire corridor. That's fine with me, especially if it makes more sense that way (if the trap is very large/complex, if it involves giant weapons, or just crossbows, what have you).

I don't think that's the only way, or always the ideal way, to balance traps, though.

[Moron]

I think one of the things that makes traps overpowered is that they never miss; if a weapon trap had one spike or axe blade, there would be a good chance for the creature that activated it to dodge.

And when stacking multiple weapons in the same trap, they all hit the target; it would make more sense if using multiple weapons increased the chance of at least one hitting. The skill level of the trap designer and the quality of the mechanisms should also increase the chance of a hit.

[Theoclymenus]

I think one of the things that makes traps overpowered is that they never miss; if a weapon trap had one spike or axe blade, there would be a good chance for the creature that activated it to dodge.

And when stacking multiple weapons in the same trap, they all hit the target; it would make more sense if using multiple weapons increased the chance of at least one hitting. The skill level of the trap designer and the quality of the mechanisms should also increase the chance of a hit.

Of all the things in this thread I think I agree with this the most. It has always struck me as odd that you can make a trap that is only a copper dagger and yet it always hits, the odds of that happening are really small.
It is best to imagine them coming out of the floor. A creature is going to find it very easy to be missed by one dagger (they probably wouldn't even have to dodge) but if their are ten then the whole floor is covered with pointiness and it is much more likely they are going to get sore feet.
I like the idea of better quality mechanisms making a trap weapon more likely to hit. Maybe it can be viewed as the weapon springing out/swinging/drilling/raping quicker. Artifact quality mechanisms causing traps to have relativistic consequences anyone?

[Grek]

In order to have a trap which uses a constant power supply to reset itself automatically without overwinding, you attach the power source to a single-toothed gear. The trap itself has two states; ready and resetting. When it is in the "resetting" state, there is an L shaped portion of the mechanism which comes into contact with the gear, resulting in the force from the gear being transfered to the mechanism, pushing it back into the ready state, probably into a spring which stores power. The motion of the trap mechanism also resets the trigger and the latch which holds the weapon in place when the trigger has not been pressed. The L shaped portion of the mechanism is removed from the gear as part of the resetting process. The trap is now in the "ready" state. If the trigger is pressed, the latch holding the weapon back is released and the spring's stored power is released, causing the trap to go off, swing through the air, and move the L shaped portion of the mechanism back into contact with the gear, putting back it into the "resetting" state. The process repeats untill the trap jams or whatever is triggering the trap stops. Depending on how the latch works, it could be set up so that if you hold down the trigger the trap will instantly go off upon being reset.

[Pilsu]

Pressure plate mechanism light enough to be set off by an errant cat wouldn't hold back giant axe blades

Regardless, if you let the players just abuse waterwheels again, what did you accomplish? We're right back at where we started

[Draco18s]

Pressure plate mechanism light enough to be set off by an errant cat wouldn't hold back giant axe blades

Sure they could.  That pressure plate merely holds back something that weighs more than the cat, but less than the axes, and triggers another mechanism (ad nausium until you have one sufficiently strong).