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[Devin]

I am a fan of challenge mods, many of which include giant sieges of dwarf-hungry critters with [trAPAVOID] set.  Not being able to use traditional traps has certainly improved my grasp of the military side of the game, but at the same time it seems saddening that I can't at least take out some of the invaders with hallways full of unexpectedly whirling axe blades and other amusing things.

Currently (and please correct me if I am wrong, for I am a newb modder) there isn't any continuum between traps not working at all, and traps working all of the time.  Wouldn't it be more interesting if various critter types had a chance of evading traps?  For the aforementioned challenge mods, something like 90% might be enough to ensure a real force gets through even long hallways of death, but still keep things interesting.

If that part of the tag code isn't set up to accept numerical arguments, I could be happy with a bunch of trapavoid tags with hard-coded percentage checks, e.g. [trAPAVOID90] and whatever other percentages people would like.

Thoughts?

Edit: That's interesting, the forum is de-capitalizing the two letters after an open bracket.

[martinuzz]

I say that's actually a nice idea.
I feel the same about traps. Having them maul an entire siege is definitly unrealistic or at least overpowered. But indeed, it would be fun to see some limbs fly due to traps.

[Osmosis Jones]

I'd be happy if you could make it agility (or whatever aglity is replaced by) dependant, so that uber pikemaster can dance through the hall, and most of his elite guard can get through, but the basic plebs get annhilated like the scum they are...


Failing that though, percentage based would be a huge improvement over the current system.

[Rowanas]

I concur. There should be no race incapable of dodging a hallway of traps, but in the same way, there should be no race able to dodge every one every time.

[Vester]

I concur. There should be no race incapable of dodging a hallway of traps, but in the same way, there should be no race able to dodge every one every time.

Actually if the creature going down the hallway basically takes up the entire space (like, say, your average dragon should) then the traps should have a much larger chance of hitting. Maybe they can be based on size as well?

[Rowanas]

I concur. There should be no race incapable of dodging a hallway of traps, but in the same way, there should be no race able to dodge every one every time.

Actually if the creature going down the hallway basically takes up the entire space (like, say, your average dragon should) then the traps should have a much larger chance of hitting. Maybe they can be based on size as well?

Size divided by agility = trapavoid. I like.

[Grendus]

No amount of agility will make a whirring axe blade miss the middle of a size 20 dragon. There's not enough room in the damn tunnel for him to dodge.

But I like the concept. Perhaps give it some tie in to the wrestling skill as well, since that effects melee attacks. A possible solution would be to change how traps work to have the trap attack treated like a creature attacking, with the traps weapon skill being based on the quality of the mechanism in it. The creature's counterattack could be used to calculate the chance of the weapon jamming, with higher quality mechanisms being less likely to be jammed by a counterattack.

[Pilsu]

I find it's the traps themselves that are the problem. They're too small so you can saturate the place with them. Personally I'd make them larger and harder to set up, meaning you'd have to have a ridiculously long tunnel to destroy a whole siege. It's easier to make adjustments if it's done in the trap end by tuning jamming

[Belteshazzar]

Why not make [trapavoid] into a skill related to dodging or somesuch. Perhaps two skills, Dodging (vaulting past a series of spikes, saws, and darts) or Mechanics (plugging holes, cutting wires, jamming holes, or just taking the damn thing apart) so to speak.

[Granite26]

Why not make [trapavoid] into a skill related to dodging or somesuch. Perhaps two skills, Dodging (vaulting past a series of spikes, saws, and darts) or Mechanics (plugging holes, cutting wires, jamming holes, or just taking the damn thing apart) so to speak.

Because some creatures that SHOULD have trapavoid don't have skills.

Other than that... good direction

[redacted123]

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[Rowanas]

I still prefer the size divided by agility...

By having an effective max n agility it can be rigged so that even with uber-agility, only creatures of size 10 or less will ever be able to avoid traps because they're just to big. The traditional trap avoiding races tend to be those that are small and agile, so kobold thieves will still dodge a trap 9 times out of ten, but a goblin thief will only dodge traps half the time. Master thieves will dodge traps loads because to be a master thief your agility has to be pretty damn awesome.

[Devin]

I like the idea but if it's a percentage chance thing then I don't want the game rolling a die every time something steps on a trap because it's doing enough already and I don't need extra processing lag. However, I think there should be a percentage chance but instead the dice are rolled when the invaders enter the map and it decides which ones can avoid traps and which ones will be eviscerated.

The random number look up shouldn't take a significant amount of time even in mass; we're talking a worst case on the order of microseconds for one or two disk seeks through the random number table per trap, so it should take thousands per second to make a difference.  I'll bet there are far more intensive things going on each turn, a simple percentage check should be nearly insignificant with 2 billion cycles a second or more to play with.

Replying to Pilsu, I like the idea of traps being kept down in number by requiring power, but that would probably be a pain in the arse to implement.  (I don't know how modular the mechanics code is, though)  Hopefully, this would be a simpler way to accomplish roughly the same end result of traps still working, but not being all you need to end sieges.

[Grendus]

My opinion on traps power - rather than making them larger, make them spring loaded. A trap will fire once, then need to be rewound by a dwarf. When it fires, regardless of whether it hits or not, it's out of commission. So it would be possible for the dwarves to defend themselves with nothing but traps, but it would take much more effort than it does now and you'd lose the benefit of having a mobile army to protect trade caravans or wandering dwarves.

And I revise my position on trap avoidance. The size divided by agility thing is better, my suggestion is exactly how traps function right now in terms of getting through traps (traps chance to hit is based on the mechanism's quality, and I believe traps can be dodged which is why you should layer them thick). While I still think a [trAPAVOID] tag should be left for creatures that are large but simply immune to traps or unusually dexterous, most trap avoidance should be handled by the creature by default.

[buman]

You would need to add a status to each trap much in the same way as the seige engines in that case. [Keep loaded][don't reload] etc to ensure the dwarf doesn't run out to reset the trap like the rush for goblin sneekers