Traps Overhaul

[Emily Mewens]

Traps need an overhaul. Badly. It was one of the core aspects of Dungeon Keeper, right next to the minions you slapped around and took care of and then sent out to die horribly.
Dungeons have traps. They have devious and terrifying ones. Its really what accents any dungeon that makes them feel more like a dungeon rather than just another monster dwelling

However it seems that theres a fine line between balanced, and very unbalanced when it comes to traps in this game. As such i understand that its hard :T

But im not here to just say the obvious. I also have a suggestion that might fix it. And ia lso ask that you guys provide your suggestions as well.

My idea:

Traps can be OP. They really can. As such, i think its best to limit the traps. In Dungeon Keeper they limted it by having enemies that could bypass the traps, not just through digging, but also by other abilitys, such as disarming traps, or turning into a mist.. flying.. spawning minions of its own that would hit the traps first, etc. We could have this in the KeeperRL too. However we have to keep these abilities balanced as well. have traps that counter certain things, like flying minions, and have disarming traps have a decent % chance of failure.
Its a good start, but lets continue because in the end, you could still figure out ways to really cheese out traps and make enemies pointless.

So what if we limit the traps?
Personally i dislike having X number of traps only allowed, so lets do better. Itll be a little more complicated, but i think itll be nicer than "You can only have 5 boulder traps :T"

Instead of that kind of limiting. Lets do a Trap Pool. Lets say.. you start with 50 trap points that you can use. With that we have a limitation right off. Web and Panic traps are worth 3 point each. Gas and Surprise traps are worth 5 points. Boulder and Alarm traps are worth 10 each

This means you can have 3 panic traps, 2 web traps, 2 gas traps and a boulder and alarm trap. Or... 5 boulder traps.. Or.. 16 panic traps... etc.

Next we'll rebalance some of the traps since we have room to make them a little better now without them being super ultra spamable OP.

Panic traps. They should be solid placeables. Much like the Eyeball you can place around. It should have an aura that CAN cause fear, but isnt guarenteed. The weaker enemies will be more likely to be feared, while stronger more robust enemies could bypass this. So think of Bandits trying to break in. They would be more likely to run away in terror, meanwhile the Dwarves that are attacking you would be more likely to get through, especially if theyre geared well. Then youd have other things that would be entirely immune, such as undead, dragons, etc. This is how it worked in DK and that seemed to work out great. Panic Traps should be useful for early weaker enemies, while becoming obsolete and useless later in the game. Theyre time buyers really, and thats it.

Gas traps should be able to fill up all adjacent tiles. This means a 3x3 area around the trap. This way, you can set 1 trap down, and itll hit a full room if its triggered. I know that the gas works the same way as miasma, so it really should feel more useful rather than just a puff of gas that you might take a damage from. With it being 3x3 itll be a nasty accent to the other traps that could be in that room.

Alarm traps should be nerfed to an area around them instead of calling down literally every monster. Say.. a 15-20 block radius However as result, it stays active for the entire duration of the attack, and minions within that area should get a minor buff to stats and a 3 turn speed boost. It would give that sense of your minions rushing in to take care of a problem, but if misplaced, could leave your minions taking care of a minor threat while a bigger one moves up towards your keeper. Itd also make things interesting in adventure mode

Boulder traps should turn and move to the next open tile after colision with a wall, up to 3 times. It shouldnt get a boost in distance, since thatd be silly, but itll make the boulder trap feel more significant and useful without having to cheese webbing.

Next we can splurge and add *more* traps to the list.
Things like Iron Spike traps, Spear traps, Pit traps, Flame Torch traps that burst off fire ever couple turns down say.. 3 tiles distance, Crusher traps, a seeing eyeball trap that spits out lazers or something cool etc.

Each one of these will ofcoarse have their own trap point cost thats appropriate to how powerful or useful they are. So like.. the Flame Torche trap could probably be considered a higher end trap since it can spit fire multiple times before breaking. Lets make that a 10 pointer, while a pit trap should probably cost something like 3 points, or something like that.


And since theres going to be a LOT of traps, lets make traps feel more special.
Lets make a tech tree out of them

First off you have to unlock Traps. naturally.
This will get you the basic stuff. say spear traps, gas trap, webbing, panic, and alarm traps.
This opens up Advanced Traps

Advanced Traps should be say.. 150 Mana, and will get you a bunch of traps that can deal some good damage, like the spike trap, the flame torch trap, the eyeballl lazer trap, etc.

Unlocking this will get you Trap Mastery, which will cost you another 150 Mana and unlocks the rest of the traps. the ones that instakill like the boulder trap, the crusher trap, pit trap, etc.

And being unlocked along side Trap Mastery, so long as you also have Advanced Sorcery and Advanced Alchemy, you also open up Advanced Placement. Unlocking this will cost you 300 Mana, and that will double your trap points, making it 100 instead of 50.

Now i know this is quite a bit to take in all at once, so let me break down some numbers here.

Traps costs 100 Mana
It unlocks Advanced Traps.
Basic and Advanced Sorcery costs 100 each
Basic and Advanced Alchemy costs 100 each
Advanced Traps costs 150 and also unlocks Trap Mastery.
The above, sorcery, alchemy and advanced traps unlock Advanced Placement
Trap Mastery costs 150
and Advanced Placement costs 300.

If you want to just unlock all of the traps, this will cost you a measily 400 Mana.
However, if you want advanced placement, this will cost you an additional 700 mana. Thats a TON of mana to be dropping early on when theres other more important things to be getting, like pigstyes, the throne, iron working, etc.. This way its more encouraged to get Advanced Placement later on, closer towards end game rather than early to mid. The mana prices might need some tweaking, maybe raise the prices a bit here and there. but i think this in and of itself will make it pretty interesting.

This ofcoarse is all just thrown on the wall at the moment, and most certainly likely needs a few tweaks. But i did do my best to think of the best way to balance it all as a whole while also giving more freedom to the creativity of both the developer and the player. Theres a lot of traps and people will definitely find a way to cheese the game with them one way or another. Our job is to make them work for it, without hurting the rest of the games balance.

Anyway, again. If you have ideas, drop them here as well. Lets get this discussion going. I love traps, and i would love to see them be useful, but not game breaking. And i think its very possible to do. We just need to put our head together and THINK!

[Emily Mewens]

Also sorry for the ungodly wall of text. But i think its important to have traps be a core part of the game, instead of being pushed aside because its just not balanced right now. We can balance this. It just needs to be taken down and reworked a bit.

[Michal Brzozowski]

Thanks for you post. I wasn't planning to work on traps in the nearest future, so I'll bookmark it and come back to it later.

Some quick feedback: traps definitely need to be more deadly, I think they got nerfed accidentally in the last few updates along with other changes. I like the idea of making certain enemies immune to certain traps, this will keep the player from getting too comfortable even if they invest a lot into traps.

I'm not sure about the point system. If I have learnt anything while designing this game is that players hate having any hard limits :D. I think that simply balancing the costs of trap production should do.

[Emily Mewens]

Originally posted by Michal Brzozowski:

Thanks for you post. I wasn't planning to work on traps in the nearest future, so I'll bookmark it and come back to it later.

Some quick feedback: traps definitely need to be more deadly, I think they got nerfed accidentally in the last few updates along with other changes. I like the idea of making certain enemies immune to certain traps, this will keep the player from getting too comfortable even if they invest a lot into traps.

I'm not sure about the point system. If I have learnt anything while designing this game is that players hate having any hard limits :D. I think that simply balancing the costs of trap production should do.

The issue with the balancing of costs and such is that you could put too much strain on the players very limited resources. And while you *can* cheese meteor to get more granite for some things, theres already a good number of things that pull granite from it as well. Wood will eventually run out, and iron will run dry long before either. The only renewable resource through noncheesing functions is gold from raiders.. which dont give nearly enough gold to make the resources for the traps :/

[Michal Brzozowski]

That's why perhaps some more renewable resource sources are needed.

[Emily Mewens]

Originally posted by Michal Brzozowski:

That's why perhaps some more renewable resource sources are needed.

the Tree problem is easily fixed by allowing plantable trees. (maybe use my suggestion to have certain prisoners required for certain things, so like farmers could be used to plant them maybe?)
Another thing ive always been bothered by is that i have a ton of iron laying around, but in the forms of armor and weapons.. and i have nothing i can do with them other than let them sit there. Maybe have a way to break them down into base materials?

[Michal Brzozowski]

Using farmers to plant trees is a really cool idea, I'll note it down. Melting down equipment has been part of the plan for a long time, maybe I'll get there within the next couple of updates. All that would be left is renewable stone.

[Emily Mewens]

Originally posted by Michal Brzozowski:

Using farmers to plant trees is a really cool idea, I'll note it down. Melting down equipment has been part of the plan for a long time, maybe I'll get there within the next couple of updates. All that would be left is renewable stone.

You should look back a bit through the suggestions thread, i had a post with a few more ideas about using prisoners for various things (like using bandits to raid villages and demand gold instead of killing villagers. Kinda like how the attacking tribes are able too :P)

Stone though.. Im not really sure how to get that as renewable. Maybe have an option to send dwarven prisoners out to mine in conqured territory to bring back stone?.. hmmmm

[Pagliacci]

I promise I will read your great text wall, right now Ive just skimmed through it and what I can say is:

I do think traps should be a lot more deadly as long as they are also costly.
The "disarm trap" skill really needs to be reviewed since it basically makes you immune to all traps.
I like that in most cases, traps are a feature more present in "PvP", that is, when youre trying to conquer other peoples dungeons. I dont really see how traps could be balanced in a "PvE" context, that is, when playing against the AI, since youll always have a hard time balancing how the computer controlled enemy deal with the traps.

[Pagliacci]

Ok, read it all now and really liked your ideas, and since we are brainstorming about traps, Ill add something to boulder traps, my favorite ones.

I never quite understood why the boulder is destroyed as soon as it kill one enemy, its a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ gigantic boulder rolling down a corridor crushing everything in its path, it should only be destroyed when it reaches a wall or is destroyed/disarmed by the enemy. While at that, I also think it would be interesting if the boulder picked up speed the longer it rolled (up to a maximum speed of course), this would make people think twice before sending their minions into dark corridors since you might not be able to outrun the boulder.