Tesla Rods Don't Hurt Mobs

Well seems to be some good ideas in the thread, I'd say a combination of AI tweaking to evade them (which, really, AI needs tweaking all over the board), removing their drops, requiring power (I'd say make generators like the wireless generator count as 'always on' switches as well) to use them so they can't be dropped on the fly, and adding a 1 second or so invulnerability tick to trap damage (like the player gets from every OTHER kind of damage, and apply it to monsters as well), and you'd have a pretty good system.

The lack of loot dropping keeps people from using them to make pixel/item farms (though people already do this with turrets so this may not be a concern), AI tweaking allows enemies to avoid them, requiring power means that players can't drop them out in the open world, and an invulnerability tick reduces their DPS to be inline with/lower than weapons (as it should be).

Plus, tesla spikes are 1000px a piece in the 3D printer. That's pricey for something that, currently, is only useful as an eccentric light source.

 

I'm just glad at least lava and poison works to damage enemies.

 

Maybe just make bosses (rare and tier)immune, I'd fully support that. You should be able to defend your house from normal enemies via spikes.

 

Reminds me way to much of Terraria.. I kind of hate Terraria nowadays.

 

Actually I would think if the creature evolved in that environment it should be immune.

 

I say just let it happen. If a player wants to get pixels via a hotel, let them. If a player wants to get pixels via mining, let them. If a player wants to get pixels via farming, let them. If a player wants to kill mobs via traps, let them.

 

Immune bosses and no drops from regular mobs. It is defense, not a item grinder.
Plus AI that at least tries to avoid it.
And making many of them requiring wiring. Coals that don't get hot tell you turn them on. Tesla that wont work tell turned on, etc. Would keep the cheese down in pvp as well when people would for sure be making walls of traps when chased.

 

Bosses should continue to be immune to them. "Normal" monsters should not. However, give a 3 (or 5, if you want) second timer when placing those traps where they do no damage (neither to players nor AI NPCs and monsters). This would make it highly ineffective to use them as primary weapons while retaining their ability to be used defensively.

 

I feel that I should chime in on this as well...

As stated elsewhere in the thread, making bosses immune to environmental hazards prevents tier progression from being easy mode. However, making bosses the only route for tier progression is itself part of the problem here. The more creative and less combat focused types are going to favor creative solutions to the points of the game where you are forcing combat. Why have forced combat at all? I feel tier progression needs additional alternatives.

As for normal mobs... I think that there is literally no aspect of traps that cannot already be accomplished in the game mechanics already. You've restricted me from using a wall of tesla spikes as a deterrent for enemies walking into my base, sure. But... you know what you haven't done? Disabled my ability to create a proximity sensor trigger trap that causes a huge zone of land made of Glitch false walls to drop out, leading the enemy to a one way confrontation with the planet's core. And that is just one example of completely overkill traps that are just as feasible and "EZ mode" as the spikes we'd like to be able to use.

Furthermore, there's nothing preventing weapons from being easy mode either. Nothing is stopping someone from asking a friend to pop into their game to hand them a tier 10 weapon with which to oneshot every single aspect of the entire game up to tier 9. The idea of restricting creative solutions to concepts such as base defense and also village defense is completely absurd in the face of all of the other balance issues that exist in this still very not complete game. Going forward, I think that we should allow creativity to be rewarded, rather than penalised. There's a rather buzzwordy term that actually applies to this situation: emergent gameplay. People building things that were creative instead of just focusing on creating utility and surviving in the all too famous Minecraft is an example of this. Penalising people for deciding to play a sandbox the way they want to basically ruins the entire point of a sandbox. Children don't sit there in a sandbox making their castle only for a parent to walk on by and kick part of it down, saying that architecturally, its improper and that they should build something the way they say.

Also, let's bring up turrets. Nothing stops a player from creating a wall of turrets that is skyhigh and capable of inundating a map in bullets for the sake of defense. That's every bit as EZ mode. Nothing stops a player from burning a bunch of diamond to buy a ton of guard spawners, and using a massive mob of guards to defend their base. That's just as EZ mode.

Stifling creative solutions in an arbitrary way is just no good for anyone. It sends the wrong message to both sides of the argument, and it leaves us all poorer for it. I understand the reality of needing immediate balance solutions, but I, and many other members of this community would certainly like to see this issue addressed again at a later date.

 

reminds me of deus ex.



And now you will be able to make tons of pixels farming or fishing whatever, still gonna need to hit a boss with a epic hoe.

 

I absolutely agree. Removing potential gameplay paths and opportunities is a terrible thing in my opinion. If traps are too powerful when used as an offensive weapon rather than a defensive structure, it would be better to give the enemy AI the ability to recognize that danger and react to it accordingly than to make them completely immune to it and let them ignore it entirely. As base defense, things like spikes and tesla rods don't even need to kill mobs, just so long as the mobs see them and get an "Avoid this damage source" message added into their pathfinding.

As-is, things like tesla rods are... worse than useless, they're detrimental. Having them around only proves to put you in more danger than before. I'd much rather see them usable as a dangerous and effective way of dealing with hostiles indirectly.

 

All of the alternates you mention (turrets, guards, other traps) also involve combat in some form. I agree that something needs to be worked out to make things both balanced and fun in creative ways, so I am wondering if you can provide any examples for things you would like to see as non-combat alternatives for tier progression.

 

I was providing examples of why the current reasoning for the lack of traps working to prevent cheating wasn't a very logical argument. That had largely nothing to do with my pointing out that bosses as the sole means of tier progression was a less than ideal idea. There's an entirely separate thread about the woes of tier progression, so I figured that any argument regarding that is best left there. In general, I feel that all of the solutions to get around needing to slash something directly shouldn't correlate to progression as such either. Since those are all solutions to let you do other things, such as maintaining a village from which to charge rent, maintain crafting facilities from which to sell items, maintaining fields from which to sell crops and other alternative means of gaining pixels that were mentioned in the big future of Starbound news post.

But, without derailing the topic entirely hopefully, I'll go ahead and give you some examples of what I mean.

There's nothing logical about the idea of having to shoot down a UFO that happens to have the heat source you need to make a proper station through which to melt and work with metal. There's also no reason that isn't still valid--but that it is the only way is the problem. A solution would be to change the way by which you end each chapter of progression. Why force the player to summon a boss with their distress beacon? Its cobbled together and rather faulty by default, but... Why not offer means to improve it, by putting in more materials, more effort, engineering it to be a superior distress signal that operates on an encrypted channel that someone from your race might pick up? Then, they could give you the item you need without having to take on an army of penguins. Building the robot is another thing that could have a peaceful solution. Perhaps change it so that you can use an inferior brain for your robot, but... the consequence of doing so is that it attacks you, and you have to fight it. While, if you go through the effort of finding a superior brain, it won't attack you, but will instead malfunction in some other way, allowing you to extract the processor you need to build the tier up item. Other alternatives could involve not having boss summons at all, and be based around a system of research and technological development based on the computers on your ship. You have a 3D printer, and a computer capable of calculating interstellar flight using some means of FTL. Surely it can be used to determine how best to develop new technologies based on the resources you are showing it?

Anyway, back to the actual point of this thread... Alternative means to solve the same problems is very much the point of a sandbox. There will always be certain rules to that sandbox which must be followed, and all solutions need to work without the bounds of those rules... But, making the rules such that violence, murder, pillaging and other savagery is the quickest and easiest way to success? While perhaps accurate to reality, its certainly not the easiest message to go along with. And its guaranteed to be a message that some people who are playing are going to disagree with. (Disclaimer: I actually like combat and such, I just also like being able to have non-combat when I so feel like it.)

 

Starbound likes to pride itself on appealing to all play styles, well trapper is a play style. Just like holding a shield up and letting your pokebound monster do all your frighting for you is another one.

I do think traps could be balanced to where, if you want to go that way, it is expensive and traps like turret have limited durability/damage/number of time place-able before breaking..

Having a no drops setting isn't really letting a play style work.

 

Traps are pretty, I don't know, old school for a game that revolves around space travel. If a town needs defenses, I build a big wall. Guards are horribly lopsided (meaning they will die so fast) against monsters. Then again, if something hurts the player, it should be obvious it hurts enemies.

Maybe *give* guards tesla coils, burning coals, etc. and let THEM place them? I don't know, it's so early in beta that it's too open-ended as to how one would defend a town. Archaic means would be fine in Terraria and Minecraft, but this is Starbound, with frikkin laser beams.

 

Then the guards will end up walking into the traps.

 

So, let me get this straight: A giant stone wall is entirely modern, but lightning coils are archaic?

 

They might be referring to the bamboo-spike traps that act like stalagmites and stalactites.

 

Well in this stage of the game, avoidance of combat is entirely possible, so yeah, I build a wall. Mind you, I don't just slap a column of cobblestone... I actually try to make it look decent, with a "drawbridge" look to it. Sadly, the town I was trying to protect ended up with gigantic meteors destroying entire buildings, so I just gave up and moved on. lol

As Zuvaii said, spikes and pit-fall traps are archaic, and lightning coils don't even work... so options are limited.

 

Don't forget lava and poison puddle traps are a joke at high tiers. And I do not believe monsters can drown.