Bay 12 Games Forum

Magma of low depth can evaporate over time but it will not cool and harden into obsidian unless you combine it with water.`

Quote from: Melting Sky on May 01, 2014, 08:46:20 pm

The other issue that really needs fixing is the fact that "intelligent" enemies will charge strait into a hallway of doom where they literally just moments ago watched half a dozen of their buddies get sliced and diced into a fine red pulp by the endless traps that are waiting there. This behavior is perfectly fine for zombies and other very low intelligence foes like giant insects but it just ridiculous of anything smarter than a dog to make such an obvious mistake. Intelligent enemies should either simply completely avoid approaching known death traps and or have a good chance of being able to disarm or navigate their way through them after seeing others set them off.

It's planned. Goblins, etc. will eventually place pathing weights on tiles where they've lost people, causing them to find a better route. Climbing in the next version brings us closer, but we still need enemy digging and a massive pathing update before it can be realized.

I'm really looking forward to enemy AI improvements. Digging and intelligent pathing will be amazing, particularly if Toady goes so far as to create different pathing behaviors based on what type of creature is attacking. For instance he could leave the same brain dead pathing the game has at the moment for creatures of negligible intelligence like zombies and low intelligence animals etc. but give intelligent attackers like goblins more advanced tactics including things like avoiding/disarming known death traps and digging.

I don't like the idea of a specific level of skill being required for thespecific level of cage, especially since you need an expert, someone who needs to have been repeat on 'make mechanisms' for roughly a year by that point. As it stands, hardly anything in the game requires that sort of implementation and it's just going to confuse the mix. And I think the amount of trap variety is A: Unecessary, and B: Destined to confuse new players and result in "I have built a trap but I can't trap this elephant!"

Nerfing cage traps is ABSOLUTELY necessary, so you make a very, very valid point. I think once there's alternatives for capturing creatures (See my suggestion of capturing with nets and/or tranquilisation :3) Toady will make them less ridiculous. I hope.

You make a good point, particularly about the skill of the mechanic since they tend to get themselves killed frequently, although I think even a new player might realize that the reason the small cage trap didn't work on the elephant was that it was small version rather than the large one but then there is the problem of the ambiguity of how big is a large trap vs a huge one etc. It would be annoying for new players when they decide to go to the effort of making a bunch of large cage traps to deal with their elephant problem only to find they needed a huge one. Even veteran players aren't likely to know the exact size of animals vs the size the cages needed to trap them. For instance off the top of my head and using my own rules that I just made up, I'm not even sure if I would need a large or a huge cage to trap an adult jabberer.

Perhaps reducing the number of sizes to just small, medium and large would be simple enough to not be confusingly and needlessly over complicated. The small cage would be for creatures smaller than a dwarf. The medium cage would cover all the humanoids and everything up to about the size of a water buffalo and the large one would cover everything bigger than that. The small cage could be made of any material, the medium sized one would use 2 bars of any metal and the large one would require 4 bars of steel or better metal and that would be the only requirements.

I just really don't like the idea of the same trap you would use for a hamster working for a 10 ton dragon. The hamster would just walk through the slits in the bars in the house sized cage you would need for a dragon and the hamster trap would be so small the dragon wouldn't even notice when it fell on it. The same goes for the materials needed to build said traps. I mean I could totally see a hamster trap being made out of a single log worth of wood yet a dragon trap would be the size of a building and would require a literal ton of material.

May dwarves always be drunk, and your enemies bleeding. 

One of the single most broken mechanics currently in the game has to be the rickety cage trap made of sticks, aka the God Slayer.

Although the deep and rich play mechanics that are made possible once a creature is captured are some of the most fun elements of dwarf fortress, the one size fits all cage trap we must use to catch them is strait up game breakingly overpowered. It's hilarious to think that the same little stick trap that is made to catch rabbits can also instantly defeat an ancient fire breathing dragon that has survived centuries of combat with the world's greatest heroes. This is a beast capable of melting solid stone with a sneeze and it has just been utterly and instantly defeated by by a rickety wooden trap made by a neophyte mechanic.

If you add a bit of web to it, you have a God slaying super weapon capable of defeating eldrich abominations that have been terrorizing entire civilizations since the dawn of time. These are supernatural entities that are worshiped and feared as Gods by the various peoples of the world. Seeing such iconic being brought down by a cheesy stick trap is perhaps the single greatest disappointment there is in dwarf fortress.

I think a good start to fixing the problem with cage traps being ridiculously over powered would be to create a few different sized tiers so the same rickety little stick trap that would be effective for catching rabbits won't work for catching something like a grizzly bear. I think making the following changes to how cage traps are made and work would do a lot to balance them out a bit. Here are my suggested tiers from smallest to largest.

The small cage trap would be exactly like the ones we currently have as far as the material and skill requirement to make it. A mechanic of any skill could build it and the trap would be effective for creatures up to about the size and strength of a dog.

The medium cage trap would require two bars of any metal and a proficient mechanic. It could catch opponents up to about the size and strength of a brown bear or tiger.
 
The large cage trap would require 3 bars of bronze or better metal and and a expert mechanic. It could catch opponents up to about the size and strength of a rhinoceros.

The huge cage trap would require 4 bars of steel or better metal and a master mechanic. It would be effective for creatures up to the size of a full grown elephant.

The gargantuan cage trap would require 5 wafers of candy and a legendary mechanic to build it. It could catch any non trap immune creature regardless of how big it was. This would be the mega beast tier cage trap.

The other thing that is broken with cage traps is that they never miss and cannot be dodged. A goblin spear master that is so ninja-like that it can dodge and bat away incoming crossbow bolts like they were nothing is somehow completely incapable of dodging a large and clumsy cage hanging from the ceiling...

This can be very simply fixed by making it possible to dodge cage traps like any other attack, but there should be penalties to dodging the trap based on the quality of the trap and its components vs the dodge skill and applicable physical attributes of the creature.

These are just some ideas from the top of my head that may or may not be particularly well balanced, but I think the one thing everyone can agree on is that as they are right now, cage traps are one of the most broken elements in the game both from a logical and game play stand point. For the price of a log and one piece of garbage grade stone we have a god tier weapon capable of instantly defeating civilization ending creatures that would normally be a challenge for an entire squad of millitary dwarves clad in full steel armor that took years to equip and train.

As they are right now cage traps are really cheap and broken, but since we have no other way to subdue and capture enemies you can't simply opt out of using them without losing a large part of the Dwarf Fortress experience which includes animal training, breeding, domesticating, zoos etc. not to mention the various fun things people use POWs for such as the gladiator pits or training arenas.

I would love to hear some other ideas on how make cage traps or capturing enemies a more balanced aspect of the game.

We already have projectile weapon traps but I think I see what you mean. You are suggesting projectile weapon traps that can shoot over distances rather than just at the square the enemy is occupying. I really like the idea of having pressure plate triggered ballista or other heavy ranged weapons set up to fire down hallways when triggered.

I believe you can actually poison serrated disks in vanilla Df, you just have to really work for it. I remember reading a thread where somebody had basically dumped a load of weapons on the floor and then let a load of poisonous creatures battle it out over them. I can't remember which critter he was using but he did successfully coat the weapons in poison and they were effective in delivering the poison in battle. But I do see what you mean, there should be a much easier way to employ poisons.

I like the secret door idea a lot, mostly for the flavor it would add to the game. It would be particularly cool in adventure mode. I think this mechanic would be rather hard to program compared to the others you suggested but it would be neat.

I think traps are a subject that Toady really should revisit some time in the not too distant future. Right now cage traps are just strait up game breaking in a bad way, much the same way draw bridges can be. Nothing is a more ridiculous let down than having a centuries old legendary dragon that has terrorized entire civilizations be taken down effortlessly by a rickety cage made of sticks that was put together in a couple of minutes by a neophyte mechanic. Add a little web to it and your rickety stick trap becomes a strait up God slaying super weapon capable of bringing down eldrich abominations that have stalked the shadowy depths of the world since the beginning of time.

The other issue that really needs fixing is the fact that "intelligent" enemies will charge strait into a hallway of doom where they literally just moments ago watched half a dozen of their buddies get sliced and diced into a fine red pulp by the endless traps that are waiting there. This behavior is perfectly fine for zombies and other very low intelligence foes like giant insects but it just ridiculous of anything smarter than a dog to make such an obvious mistake. Intelligent enemies should either simply completely avoid approaching known death traps and or have a good chance of being able to disarm or navigate their way through them after seeing others set them off.

Make him a crutch.

Once I captured a dragon missing his nose.

Yeah, he's been properly attended to by our medical staff and has a crutch now. Interestingly enough he's a doctor which is cool because we have a serious lack of skilled medical dwarves in this fortress although I'm not so sure he's the sort of Doc I would want working on anybody dear to me. You would have thought as a doctor he could have made at least some sort of makeshift splint or crutch for himself before crawling those hundred or so miles to reach our fortress.