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Author Topic: Master Trapper: What i think about it  (Read 3504 times)

DDarkray

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Master Trapper: What i think about it
« on: June 02, 2017, 08:49:27 AM »

The day has come when traps are no longer the objects of fear but the objects of constant pursuit. When I first heard about trap extractor, I thought to myself, "How is it like to be a trapper?" And now, I got to try it out.

While breezing through the Materials, I got a really good start. I was able to find several hacking suites from operators and got a schematic for trap extractor from manual hacking one of the terminals (rating 2 item is really easy to get). Later in the first Factory floor, I was able to fabricate an extractor while obtaining a datajack. And from then on, that's where I went crazy with traps. Here are some of my thoughts about trapper.

Pros & Cons:
Traps are little interesting pieces of weapon that come in a variety of effects such as explosion, alarm, stasis, etc. One of the benefits of using them is to weaken or even obliterate the enemies before they can get to shoot at you. This is especially effective if you're armed with guided weapon which you can lure them to a choke point filled with traps. One time, I was able to completely annihilate a Behemoth without a single scratch. That was pretty awesome.

However, using traps come with a lot of negatives. First, they're one-time use in limited quantity, so it's easy to have too much fun with them. :P Thus, it's practically impossible to use them as your primary weapon.

Secondly, they take up a lot of storage spaces. Everytime I find a fresh pile of traps, I constantly thought to myself, "What should I drop?"

Spoiler: Need...more...space... (click to show/hide)

Because I sacrificed a lot of combat items in favor of traps, I'm very weak at actual fighting. I had to use stealth items such as sensor array to avoid as many enemies as possible. But if you're caught in a big fight, you're in a lot of trouble.

Trap Review:
Blade and Segregator Traps are definitely my favorite. One time, I got caught by a group of 2 grunts and a duelist. I ran into a room and quickly placed down 3 blade traps near the doorway. The first grunt went in, his weapon got cut off. The second grunt went in, his weapon also got cut off! And finally the duelist went in, his weapon didn't get cut off, but his legs did! So then, I safely got rid of it at a distance.

Segregator traps are especially useful against prototype enemies since you'll get to have some of their awesome parts! I didn't get to try that out in a full extent (I was getting ganged up by too many enemies), but it's so satisfying when that happened!

Explosive traps are deadly, but they have surprisingly little use! They can't be triggered together or else they'll destroy each other. They also blow off walls so they'll get rid of your defense.

On the other hand, EM bomb traps are much more helpful! They can be chained together to set off a great firework, and they don't destroy walls! Their EM damage also increase corruption, making it easy to terminate enemies with additional EM attacks.

Shock and EM Surge traps purely increase corruption but by a large amount. Shock traps increase by 50-80%, but EM Surge increase from 80-120%. Robots get terminated when they reach 100% corruption, so EM Surge has 50% chance to outright kill in one shot! Even better, those who are weak to EM (e.g. Hunters) are guaranteed to die, but those who are resilient (e.g. Programmers) have less effect.

Stasis traps are generally not very useful to me, but they're great against melee attackers. They tend to get out of stasis in several turns, so be sure to get rid of them quickly. But what's awesome about stasis traps is that they can be reused multiple times! If you dispatched the enemy before it escapes from stasis, the trap stays on the ground! You can then equip a trap extractor and get it back into your inventory again! (How cool is that?!)

Chute traps are definitely the most fun. Do you see a marching Sentry? Now you don't.  :) Unfortunately, being an OP trap means you can't extract it at all (since it's connected to a branch area), but it's good to setup an escape route.

Other traps such as alarm and ambush traps cause no positive effects for you and can't be extracted, so don't bother reprogramming them unless you want to cross the road to get to the other side. (Hehe!) ;D

I do wish alarm traps can signal an alarm signal to you after an enemy steps on it. Does it communicate wirelessly (since you can transmission jam it)? If so, it would be great to give it some use.

Ambush traps would be too powerful if they convert all underground army into allies, but why not give a small percentage to convert some of them? That would be cool and probably not overpowering. Quite understandable that they can't be extracted.

Overall, I've been having a lot of fun! Not a good build for serious play (too much pressure in item management and tricky combat), but if you're looking for something new, give it a shot!
« Last Edit: June 02, 2017, 11:05:08 AM by DDarkray »
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Kyzrati

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Re: Master Trapper: What i think about it
« Reply #1 on: June 02, 2017, 06:40:13 PM »

I've been wondering when someone might do this--thanks for the writeup! (I moved this thread over to Strategies since it's a good fit here :))

An excellent analysis overall, including some good tactics. Many versions ago in order to facilitate that kind of play I lowered the extractor tiers (the basic on was originally 4!).

I can offer some additional ideas that I've considered as I've been working on relevant features: This strategy would even more effective when combined with Zion imprinting. First of all you'd have access to allies to handle some fights for you (this augments pretty much all strategies, anyway :P), but more on point, you might also get trap resupplies, which are specifically for this strategy. Even if you don't get many of those, though, any resupply will be able to hook you up with a Humpback, which is currently the ultimate in storage capacity (not great because they get blown off more easily, but if you're avoiding enemies most of the time that's not an issue). The caves on the way are also home to minesweepers, which of course can hook you up with an extractor and more traps than you can probably carry.

RE your suggestions:

Ambush traps already have a non-small chance to be allied, but it was mostly for logical reasons that I didn't allow extraction to have any conversion potential there. That's more the realm of hacking. But now that you mention it, the initial datajacking could have a chance to convert them, and I should look into doing that...

And would alarm traps sending you a signal really be that helpful? Seems like a lot of work for a feature that is much better achieved via the various sensors.
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DDarkray

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Re: Master Trapper: What i think about it
« Reply #2 on: June 02, 2017, 09:37:35 PM »

I can offer some additional ideas that I've considered as I've been working on relevant features: This strategy would even more effective when combined with Zion imprinting.

I've thought about going to caves but decided not to go in my last run. I was afraid of not finding minesweepers, and if they don't appear, I'll have little chance to resupply. But if they do appear often, I'll reconsider. (But now that I think about it, I think they are quite frequent)

Another reason is that I generally hate caves. :P

any resupply will be able to hook you up with a Humpback

Really? Maybe I should've gone to the caves. :'( But boy, 40 mass is huge.

Ambush traps already have a non-small chance to be allied, but it was mostly for logical reasons that I didn't allow extraction to have any conversion potential there. That's more the realm of hacking. But now that you mention it, the initial datajacking could have a chance to convert them, and I should look into doing that...

I like how ambush traps can contain allies, and I'm always happy whenever that happen. :)
But for a fragile hacker, no one would really want to intentionally trigger it to find out, so ambush traps are practically useless to me as of the current state.

I agree that alarm traps aren't very practical, but it can have a small niche if you also gain information about what kind of enemy it is. (An approaching watcher doesn't mean much, but an approaching carrier probably does!) But most importantly, it's a little strange to see so many traps have some use, but only a few don't (especially since alarm traps being one of the most common traps), at least that's how I felt when I first attempt trapping.

But I wouldn't complain if alarm traps won't get any benefit.
« Last Edit: June 02, 2017, 09:41:18 PM by DDarkray »
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Kyzrati

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Re: Master Trapper: What i think about it
« Reply #3 on: June 02, 2017, 09:45:10 PM »

Yeah I'll look into making ambush and alarm traps useful as well.
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Re: Master Trapper: What i think about it
« Reply #4 on: June 02, 2017, 11:05:57 PM »

Nice write-up.

I can't wait till you find [REDACTED].

I'm gonna start experimenting more with traps. Sounds like a lot of fun!
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Kyzrati

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Re: Master Trapper: What i think about it
« Reply #5 on: June 03, 2017, 03:22:13 AM »

Hehe, ooh I know what [REDACTED] is... DDarkRay's gonna love it. (And I can see a space for more such interesting... functions of a similar nature in the future :D)
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DDarkray

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Re: Master Trapper: What i think about it
« Reply #6 on: June 03, 2017, 11:35:42 AM »

I can't wait till you find [REDACTED].

I'm gonna start experimenting more with traps. Sounds like a lot of fun!

You should definitely start a trapper build and find [REDACTED]. Let us know how that goes.  :D
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DDarkray

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Re: Master Trapper: What i think about it
« Reply #7 on: June 14, 2017, 07:06:41 PM »

I can't wait till you find [REDACTED].

Ahhhhhhhhh..... Now I know what that [REDACTED] thing is. That sounds ridiculously fun. ;D
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Horse

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Re: Master Trapper: What i think about it
« Reply #8 on: July 21, 2017, 08:16:34 AM »

I've only ever managed to find it once. Hard to plan for, since there's such a low chance of it turning up... unless there's another path I've missed?
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Kyzrati

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Re: Master Trapper: What i think about it
« Reply #9 on: July 21, 2017, 08:39:20 AM »

Yeah you can't plan for it, or a handful of other really special items. And the total number and variety of such items will quite likely increase in the future. It's nice that way, though, because then they can be intentionally designed to be OP and fun :D
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