The Layonara Trap Limiter v. 0.5 (alpha)

[J-ser]

Actually, quite easy to abuse them.
*points* From the link above....
 

Lord of the Forest - 8/7/2006  12:53 PM

An example for abusing traps...  
[img=http://www.secretforest.de/traps.jpeg]

Was taken on a LAN-Session with my neighbour

Anyhow, I like the upgrade idea.

[steverimmer]

Yeah...I said it would be hard to abuse them if the amount that could be set at anyone time could be limited.  Mind you imagine the scene above in Layonara;

Non epic characters..that would be a probable maximum of deadly traps.  Even 3 or four going off in close succession would probably not damage one of Layo's dragons significantly.

Don't forget as well, when a rogue lays a trap successfully they come out of hiding so anything within visual range would be on them straight away.  I actually don't think that traps in Layo are actually any more damaging than wizards spells of the same level and a wizard doesn't have to craft his spells and then sneak around setting them up either.

[Stephen_Zuckerman]

My one point here is on the idea of "upgrading" traps, as all of the rest of my points have already been made, and with a greater degree of eloquence than I can manage.

If all traps are made by adding smaller traps together, how do you make minor traps?

[Dorganath]

Stephen_Zuckerman - 10/17/2006  6:37 PM  If all traps are made by adding smaller traps together, how do you make minor traps?

 Fear not. Clearly there would be a way to make the low-end traps from base components.
  I also remind you, as I'm sure has been communicated in the past, that there are places around Mistone where minor traps can be recovered. With some tuning and extensions of systems we have already, said traps can be "harvested" in a manner similar to other types of CNR.
  No pun intended, but that would really be the most minor part of such a shift in trap-making.

[Talan Va'lash]

Dorganath - 10/13/2006  7:58 AM

The OnTrapTriggered doesn't work as one would hope, in that it completely overrides the trap's triggering mechanism.  The good news is, this allows for custom trap effects.  The bad news is that if you attach a script to this event, that script needs to handle he trap effects as well, or the trap itself will do nothing.

Don't put the custom script on the OnTrapTriggered event, place it on the onUserDefined and capture the onTrapTriggered event to run your own code on the event without overriding the default behaviour.

[darkstorme]

Well, the OnTrapTriggered event is not the problem here.  Worst comes to worse, the trap scripts can be overridden with an OwnerCheck included.  The problem lies in the OnTrapDisabled event.  I wasn't aware it fired anything by default, if there's no script defined in that slot.  If you know otherwise, Talan, Dorg, enlighten me, and I can refine the design of this implementation.

Jser's point, as I indicated in the first post of this thread, was the point of designing this in the first place.  As it is, it's prohibitively expensive to spam traps - but that makes trap crafting out of the reach of lower-level rogues, and I imagine that would be a large part of rogue training/upbringing.  Now, other suggestions were offered for an RP-proper reason for this system, but I simply intended it as a foil to another system that seems to me to be RP-fuzzy (the high expense of trap kits, relative to virtually everything else.)  The point is, it prevents trap spamming in an unassailable way (short of massive collaboration, and that should be encouraged, I think).  Now, whether or not this works with the server environment is another matter.  An "OnClientExit" script could, with very minor modification, pull the untriggered, unrecovered traps and place them back in the player's inventory, though I'm sure that introduces a new set of problems.  Regardless, discussion is good.

[J-ser]

steverimmer - 10/17/2006  7:20 PM

Yeah...I said it would be hard to abuse them if the amount that could be set at anyone time could be limited.  Mind you imagine the scene above in Layonara;
..................................................................................
Don't forget as well, when a rogue lays a trap successfully they come out of hiding so anything within visual range would be on them straight away.  I actually don't think that traps in Layo are actually any more damaging than wizards spells of the same level and a wizard doesn't have to craft his spells and then sneak around setting them up either.

Thats what I get for not reading posts carefully.

Though epic traps can do a good 200 points of damage. I've never seen epic level wizards in action, but I doubt they can do that much with a single spell.

[Dorganath]

Well of course besides the fruity behavior of trap event scripts, there is the other issue of the fact that our traps are all standard Bioware traps, and so shifting to a custom behavior for the various events also causes us to duplicate and replace every single recoverable trap in the game as well as make those items the craftable ones...of course, that doesn't help the traps which are already in people's inventories.
  Naturally, with time, effort and a lot of work, we can get around that. Perhaps it should become one of those "ground-up" efforts for V3...but still...lots of work.
  Then again, I'm pretty tired right now, so I could be making a mountain of a molehill...perhaps I should give up posting for the night.

[steverimmer]

J-ser - 10/20/2006  2:33 AM

Though epic traps can do a good 200 points of damage. I've never seen epic level wizards in action, but I doubt they can do that much with a single spell.

That is very true but there's no way that a rogue will be able to use epic traps regularly until they're level 20+ anyway, unless they are rogue/clerics with the trickery domain.  But not only that....what would you prefer?  

An epic trap that causes 200 points of damage but has to be crafted or bought and then placed in an area where it may or may not actually be triggered  when something goes over it.

Or a targetable mass death spell that does not have to be crafted or bought and can be used several times in a row (This is definitely possible with the right equipment worn).  A spell that even if it fails has other effects as well as damage.  A spell that even if you've just cast several of them and have run out, can be replenished again within 10 RL minutes.

You can see straight away that a wizard has all the advantages over a rogue, even if said rogue did spam the area with epic traps.  But even so spamming an area with traps requires time spent crafting and then placing them and then disarming all the ones which never went off.   To be honest I think that the best way to go concerning traps is to;

1.  Make trap crafting easier...using materials that a rogue can gather.
2.  Limit the number of traps that can be set within an area or period of time.
3.  Allow the cleanup script to gobble up armed traps...this can be RP'd as misfires or defective traps.
4.  Increasing the weight of traps might also dissuade rogues from carrying  too many as well.
5.  Possibly having to use a trap crafting kit to actually craft traps.  This kit would be able to break in the same way as other crafting kits (ie: Sewing Kit).  Of course no reqular merchant is going to sell these, so it'd have to be someone 'shady in nature'.  It may also be craftable itself but if so then it should be created from materials a rogue could gather himself.

[Stephen_Zuckerman]

*Casts Resurrection on the thread as V3 gets closer.*

[Praylor Falcus]

Traps or for sissy's ......learn to fight

[J-ser]

BIG mistake Praylor...