I’ve been considering the idea, and I’m beginning to agree with it. Merging Survival and Trapping into greater Survival skill.
Do you want to start coding it?
Mite b cool
Trapping is currently only leveled up by books and it doesn’t have any high-level recipes. But then, neither has survival.
They are similar thematically, as they both do the same job, just in somewhat different ways.
I would have to agree. Having less skills it’s easier on the players. Merging these two could be a very good start, in the same fashion of merging “Pistol/Rifle/Shotgun” in one skill.
Trapping is currently only leveled up by books and it doesn't have any high-level recipes.as far as i recall you need trapping lvl 6 to not fail at producing blade traps.Blade traps need for electic motor is bottleneck in its production and you can quite easily lose ingridients.
And blade traps are on of strongest things in this game capable of shredding entire hordes of lesser zombies while you watch behind them.
For blade traps alone-trapping skill is very powerfull but late game.
I’d be much more interested in simply expanding the range of traps that can be created and making them more viable to incorporate into various playstyles.
They have the potential to be a very rewarding part of the game, but they’ve been severely neglected for a long time.
I agree with Kevin on this, more traps should make the skill more viable and interesting/rewarding to use.
[quote=“Kevin Granade, post:5, topic:14226”]I’d be much more interested in simply expanding the range of traps that can be created and making them more viable to incorporate into various playstyles.
They have the potential to be a very rewarding part of the game, but they’ve been severely neglected for a long time.[/quote]
It’s rather unfeasible to make traps matter in the current game system.
Notably lacking are:
[ul][li]Zombie pathfinding: traps need chokepoints, zombies make own ways by bashing against the walls[/li]
[li]Attraction to fortified spots: hordes are only hordes on maps, they turn to milling about as soon as they are spawned[/li]
[li]Curiosity: for as long as zombies are just milling about from place to place, all it takes to stop all zombie incursions is just a bookcase blocking entry and enough distance for smell to decay[/li]
[li]Strong threats that aren’t zombies: well there are the robots, but you can’t stay in their FoV to lure them[/li][/ul]
Then there are problems what we have already:
[ul][li]Traps must be renewable to matter against zombies. Any trap that gets used up is instantly dropped a few tiers, to the point where it is very unlikely to matter. For example, best use of mines is disassembling for gunpowder.[/li]
[li]Traps need significant preparation due to lack of chokepoints (other than windows). Lack of chokepoints is enforced by zombies being skilled bashers.[/li]
[li]Zombie density is generally too low to bother with traps. I play on 1.25 zombie speed and hp and avoid the early armor grind and every zombie group is still weak enough for me not to consider any tactic that takes more preparation than kiting.[/li][/ul]
Traps simply aren’t viable as a playstyle. They could possibly be a nice supplement to a playstyle, but only possibly (that’s totally not a given, as no one has shown a highly probable way of making them matter) and even then, the best way to make supplemental effects matter is to bundle them with existing effects that DO matter already.
The best thing that happened to construction was bundling it with fabrication. Bundling trapping with something (not necessarily one skill) would do a lot to make it matter.
Even if trapping would be best made useful by addition of new traps (ie. if we assume that it can be done), temporarily combining it with some other skill until it gets strong enough to matter is still a good idea.