How effective are non-electrical traps in A17?

[Xtrakicking]

It's been, I believe, a couple alphas since I use any non-electrical traps in any of my games. (That is, spikes, barbed wire, wire fences, mines... etc.).

 

How effective are they in this new alpha? Are they worth the cost of resources and time? Or are they still kinda meh?

[FileMachete]

Well, imo, it's very dependent on whether you're.. er... 'utilizing'(?) the AI or not.

And the downside of the way they 'built' the spikes now; they're designed to kill, not maim, so lots of lost xp compared to how the old cone ones worked.

 

If you try for a pure A16, early game (before concrete), melee base you'll need a lot spikes since if they reach your walls in numbers they will break through. So a huge field of wooden spikes, which again, my opinion, just isn't worth doing. Way to much time & effort early game to chop ~3400+ wood just for spikes (6 deep in a full 360).

 

Iron spikes are more durable and at 4 forged iron, fairly cheap as you progress a bit. Yet still a very long way from the removed road cone spikes. If you leverage the AI pathing then barb wire can be quite useful to slow them down. Vendui's vids show some great applications.

 

faatal's already made some AI improvements so this may all be a moot point, but for b240: Personally I think you're basically forced to be at least a bit cheesy early game for horde nights. Clarification: I think standing on top of a tower is a bit cheesy. Likewise using a POI. Not saying it's not valid; MM recommended using POIs early on. Just my opinion since it's easy to be completely safe.

 

As an example: this b240 game I again took over a house on day 1 for a base. First took out all stairs to 2nd floor. Next took out the front wall and replaced w cobbelstone poles, and a door. Added an inner layer of cobb poles around other four walls, leaving outside wood walls & filling in gaps. This basically encourages visitors to use the front. Then tore out the floor of the upstairs and replaced with a wood bar balcony. Created a collapsible ladder by hanging a wood frame out from wood bars then hanging ladder down. Picking up the frame drops the ladder. So defense is simple shoot/melee through poles then if needed climb up ladder to 2nd floor and pick up frame so z's are stuck below.

 

There are no traps at all. Upgrades have been to double the poles & add an outside wood bar porch around the upstairs. Daytime Screamer & wandering hordes I take on out in the open field. Around day 19 had a nighttime horde, a fat hawaian broke through the back wall while I was defending the front. Just one though so didn't wind up needing to retreat upstairs.

 

1st 7 day horde used a 3x3x4-high cobblestone tower w 2 rows of iron spikes around it. Birdcage on top using wood bars. 2nd horde I upgraded lower 3 layers to reinforced concrete. 3rd horde added another tower w 5-block gap between filled w iron spikes, and 2 layers around new tower. Couldn't lure the z's to move around much after they spawn in, but wasn't an issue, changing position had new spawns path to 2nd tower. In the end they only took out a single block & about 30 spikes.

 

Final bit. One thing I know I will be looking for is a modlet that either brings back something like the road cone spikes or something 'steel' that isn't so damn fragile. And not so much damage output as the current iron spikes. I liked that in A16 you could have 6 or more 'rows' of spikes that the z's had to go over before getting to your walls, it softened them up some and the occasional dismemeberment helped spread out the mass. Big plus being that outer rows seldom took serious damage so were a repair vs. replace.

 

For mid-game on. I'm just not going to be willing to replace fifty or a hundred iron spikes every horde night.

[myrkana]

I;ve had wonderful success using barbed wire combined with metal spikes in my hallways. I made a spiral base with thick walls (2-3 thick cobblestone) and put the spieks on the floor with barbed wire above that. Not sure about mines but I did some testing and if you dont mind the damage to the ground they work great with gas barrels xD

 

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/960853699221462179/892BD6DBBDD73B2FD2D1AE7711FC84DCC327D13C/

[Ghostlight]

Iron Spikes are pretty good but are easily destroyed. For viable horde night defence, you'd need a lot of them and need to supplement them with other traps. Additionally the new crappy AI will have the zombies path round them once a few are destroyed (garbage huh?).

 

However for normal nights they will pretty much insta-kill most zed types, including screamers so you will never get them screaming (unless you want them to).

[Xtrakicking]

Yeah, that's what it looked like. I was just tired of spending the hordes the "cheesy" way, since basically anything that isn't reinforced concrete or steel is absolutely worthless right now.

 

I kinda wanted to know if I could find a way to use the early game traps to protect myself instead of using POI roofs for hordes, and put them to good use, but it certainly looks like it's still not worth the trouble, since you'd need an absolutely massive amount of resources...

 

In my opinion, early traps should be buffed. They really are useless right now, just like any base made of wood, metal or cobblestone... there's just no point in building anything out of that, it seems.

[Scyris]

Only non-electic trap I use now is barbed wire/the fences, spikes do such a pitiful amount of damage they are a waste of materials imo. A17 is bascally the exploit the AI base defence game, as without a clear path to you the zombies will just steamroll any block in game in seconds. Its not so much their individual block damage, its the fact they focus fire now, where as in a16 they tended to spread out. Dart traps are apparently really good in a17, their base damage is 45 per dart, female zombies have 125 hp, males 150. Modified by diffculty, on nomad you deal 100% dmg, on warriro I think the player takes a 20-25% dmg hit, so it takes more to kill em.

[LuckyStar]

Metal spikes with barbed wire on top of them are very effective.

The trick is to set up your defenses in a way that zeds have to go through a guided path.

Just placing traps in a circle doesn't work as well as it used to.

 

I don't use electric traps till mid-late game because spikes+barbed wire work just fine.

 

I know they don't last as long as A16's spikes but so what.

They are also a lot cheaper and you can place a few extra rows if that's what you want.

[Gazz]

In my opinion, early traps should be buffed. They really are useless right now, just like any base made of wood, metal or cobblestone... there's just no point in building anything out of that, it seems.

For the first 4 hordes I only had cobblestone and wooden spikes and I only lost a single cobblestone block.

 

No loopy pathing tricks.

 

I have since upgraded to iron spikes. The last horde (bunch of cops and ferals) made it through the first ring of spikes but the 2nd ring (out of 6) was not breached.

 

So... effective? I'd say so.

[Xtrakicking]

For the first 4 hordes I only had cobblestone and wooden spikes and I only lost a single cobblestone block.

 

No loopy pathing tricks.

 

I have since upgraded to iron spikes. The last horde (bunch of cops and ferals) made it through the first ring of spikes but the 2nd ring (out of 6) was not breached.

 

So... effective? I'd say so.

 

Yeah, but 6 rows of spikes is usually a ton of resources you have to get with a sh*tty stoneaxe (not sure how big your main base is, but 6 rows usually is quite a lot of wood).

[A Nice Cup of Tea]

It would be nice if there were some kind of intermediate traps added.

 

Currently there's a huge gulf (in both difficulty to make and effectiveness) between the lower tier of spikes and barbed wire and the upper tier of turrets, electric fences, and spinning blades.

 

It would be great to have some kind of middle tier between those two groups.

[Doctor3D]

It would be nice if there were some kind of intermediate traps added.

 

Currently there's a huge gulf (in both difficulty to make and effectiveness) between the lower tier of spikes and barbed wire and the upper tier of turrets, electric fences, and spinning blades.

 

It would be great to have some kind of middle tier between those two groups.

 

Could definitely use more traps. Anyone remember that flame trap concept MadMole posted last year? That kinda stuff would definitely help. He had a few other ideas as well he did as concept art - I can't remember all of them. Maybe they are still planned..

 

 

For the first 4 hordes I only had cobblestone and wooden spikes and I only lost a single cobblestone block.

 

No loopy pathing tricks.

 

I have since upgraded to iron spikes. The last horde (bunch of cops and ferals) made it through the first ring of spikes but the 2nd ring (out of 6) was not breached.

 

So... effective? I'd say so.

 

In my experience, cobblestone is only effective in Warrior or below. On Survivalist or above it's just not very good unless you put up several layers. The repair rate becomes slower than the zombie damage rate. Similarly - the rate at which you can kill the zombie sponges - is slower than their overall damage output to the walls. So you're bottlenecked by all that. At concrete it's pretty much equalized on Survivalist and then Once you get to reinforced concrete it becomes gravy. At steel with blade traps, turrets and deep layers of iron spikes with barbed wire fencing - you can just AFK the thing.

[myrkana]

Yeah, but 6 rows of spikes is usually a ton of resources you have to get with a sh*tty stoneaxe (not sure how big your main base is, but 6 rows usually is quite a lot of wood).

 

thats hwy you get iron tools asap, either form the perk or from a trader. I;ve never made it past day like 4 without having iron tools.

[Xtrakicking]

Could definitely use more traps. Anyone remember that flame trap concept MadMole posted last year? That kinda stuff would definitely help. He had a few other ideas as well he did as concept art - I can't remember all of them. Maybe they are still planned..

 

 

That trap seems like top tier, though. Currently, my weapon to go for hordes is the molotov. Now imagine how insane the flamethrowers will/would be.

[Royal Deluxe]

Problem is that most traps degrade if they are used.

So for the moment (A17.0 B240) the best is

* Gravity + Falldamage

* Water (to slow down)

* Steps (to slow down)

 

Maybe i should test a campfire as trap in my next base

[Laz Man]

I know loopy babes is cheesy to some but when coupled with active defenses I have found them quite enjoyable. Half the fun is figuring out new and creative ways to overcome the 7 day horde using what you have at your finger tips.

 

My 1st 7 day horde experience:

 

I prefer this over digging a hole in the ground and hiding or building 1000 spikes forming a circle around u.

[Reth]

It's been, I believe, a couple alphas since I use any non-electrical traps in any of my games. (That is, spikes, barbed wire, wire fences, mines... etc.).

 

How effective are they in this new alpha? Are they worth the cost of resources and time? Or are they still kinda meh?

 

I can vouch for barbed wire - it's very effective in slowing zombies down and letting you get an easy headshot. It's my number one passive defense atm. I stay away from mines as they are too expensive to maintain. I use metal barricades, whatever they are called, to handle zombie "overflow" and they seem OK. I dislike wooden spikes and never use them, as they are too tedious to maintain.

[stasis78]

Yeah, but 6 rows of spikes is usually a ton of resources you have to get with a sh*tty stoneaxe (not sure how big your main base is, but 6 rows usually is quite a lot of wood).

 

By day 14 you probably have at the very least an iron axe and 1-2 levels in havesting perks. That’s not hard to make lots of wood spikes.

[Kattla]

For the first 4 hordes I only had cobblestone and wooden spikes and I only lost a single cobblestone block.

 

No loopy pathing tricks.

 

I have since upgraded to iron spikes. The last horde (bunch of cops and ferals) made it through the first ring of spikes but the 2nd ring (out of 6) was not breached.

 

So... effective? I'd say so.

 

Difficulty level, version, number of zombies at once?

[Gazz]

That was default diff (which makes no difference to the interaction between zombies, traps and blocks) and I think 16 per player.

 

And the current live version, of course.

[Kattla]

That was default diff (which makes no difference to the interaction between zombies, traps and blocks) and I think 16 per player.

 

And the current live version, of course.

 

Thank you.

[FileMachete]

For the first 4 hordes I only had cobblestone and wooden spikes and I only lost a single cobblestone block.

 

No loopy pathing tricks.

 

I have since upgraded to iron spikes. The last horde (bunch of cops and ferals) made it through the first ring of spikes but the 2nd ring (out of 6) was not breached.

 

So... effective? I'd say so.

 

Curious, how big an area does the 6 layers of iron spikes protect? A 5x5 or..?

 

Math for a 5x5 would mean 1,056 forged iron to make the 264 spikes. Of course that's assuming a simple tower base build. I'd guess you're doing something a bit more than that

[Gazz]

Footprint of the base structure is 9x10. No particular reason for that. I planned nothing and parts of it are totally inefficient. LOL

 

The spikes are spaced out and it should be a total of 350ish by now. Much easier to repair if you leave a walkable path between the rings instead of having to frame all over it.

 

Crafting/storage area is below the defensive structure.

 

 

Used to be cobblestone and 3 layers of wood spikes for the first 3 weeks or so. The early hordes aren't that big of a deal.

[Ranzera]

That was default diff (which makes no difference to the interaction between zombies, traps and blocks) and I think 16 per player.

 

And the current live version, of course.

 

Just to confirm, you're saying that across all difficulties traps kill zeds at the same effectiveness?

[ghettochild2600]

Could definitely use more traps. Anyone remember that flame trap concept MadMole posted last year? That kinda stuff would definitely help. He had a few other ideas as well he did as concept art - I can't remember all of them. Maybe they are still planned..

 

 

 

 

In my experience, cobblestone is only effective in Warrior or below. On Survivalist or above it's just not very good unless you put up several layers. The repair rate becomes slower than the zombie damage rate. Similarly - the rate at which you can kill the zombie sponges - is slower than their overall damage output to the walls. So you're bottlenecked by all that. At concrete it's pretty much equalized on Survivalist and then Once you get to reinforced concrete it becomes gravy. At steel with blade traps, turrets and deep layers of iron spikes with barbed wire fencing - you can just AFK the thing.

 

From my testing it didn't matter what difficulty you played on. They all do the same damage to blocks. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it only affects damage done to the player and each level decreases player damage done to Z by 25%

[Royal Deluxe]

if i see it right higher difficultys = Zombies have more hp