Normal Outpost Building
Is it just me, or are normal difficulty outposts kinda the most fun difficulty outpost to make? Something about having limited blocks and a small trap economy makes for a really fun challenge. And you have to really consider how you group traps together, since just scattering them throughout your base won't produce the best results.
And at the same time it feels kinda like you're helping to teach newer players. Showing them what kind of things to look out for and what tricks they could use in their own bases. I like to think my bases can show players that there's more to trap placement than placing an Impaler around a corner.
Anyone else feel similarly?
Comments
-
But if you place too many traps together, then you're making a killroom. And that's not fun for the poor Raider.
Not to mention that I would love to know how you place traps to kill Raiders when traps are too slow and the grapple hook exists tbh.
0 -
Traps are at their most dangerous when threats are coming from multiple directions at once, forcing the raider's attention to be divided. This doesn't have to mean killbox though.
I can give a screenshot of this part of my base thats been getting good results as an example (with some blocks removed to make it easier to see what's going on)
At that midpoint of the stairs there, the raider's attention would be split in 3 directions at once. An enforcer on the left, a warmonger ahead, and some traps to the right (a grapple hook, corrosive cube and self-destruct impaler). The imapler on the stairs is second wave so doesnt matter here.
If the player moves forward to deal with the warmonger, he becomes vulnerable to the grapple hook and enforcer. If he tries to deal with the enforcer, he has to deal with the warmonger and grapple. If he deals with the grapple first, by parrying it, he still has to deal with the guards. And if he gets grabbed he has to destroy the impaler, and deal with an enforcer waiting to shoot him in the back if he hasnt handled them yet. If he does that it will start to self destruct, so he has to leave, which is made more difficult by the corrosive cube and enemies if he hasn't dealt with them yet.
Yet there are still ways to deal with this with planning and/or skill. You can deal with the warmonger by either shooting him or allowing you to follow you to a more advantageous position. If you then take out the enforcer, you can either quickly turn and parry the claw, or you get grabbed by it. Then you can destroy the impaler and then grapple out without having to worry about guards. This whole process will usually take players some trial and error to figure out. It's a section that can be challenging for a normal outpost, with all of these traps/guards complimenting each other without being a killbox.
2 -
Your players sound really bad if that works or they're console players, without needing to see how you deal with it, you can just turtle and bait every trap into going off, or just poke with a weapon from the bottom of the stairs. Or just rush in, deal with the small one there, then grapple to down the stairs. Or grapple to the ceiling atop the big one, then dodge the attack through strafing around him and hit him with the sword.
Is this the "smart setups" that all Builders should aspire to do and get away from those meanie killboxes? They seem to get dismantled easily by 5 of 10 possible Raider strategies to this setup.
0 -
The game forums are full of great players, who never fall for simple trap setups. Still, somehow my outposts are equally full of death signs under the most trivial impaler right near the point, where the raider sees a guard. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
3 -
I mean, it's a normal base. Meaning it's largely newer players playing them, so.
0 -
nope, hate building normals. i do it for p1-p4 and it's aids every time. at no point in time do i have the intent to get 0 kills, and there is not many reasonable ways to make a dungeon that can guarentee even 1 kill without slaughtering the rest of the populace because they're just that bad. i don't like having to "dumb down" my creations for people and i contantly feel thats whats required left and right "don't use one way doors" "don't use 2nd wave acid" "don't kill harvey" but raiders are like , "I'll pull my ammo through solid objects" "i'll kite this warmonger out of the base to the edge of the map so it can't chase me anymore" it's disgusting and intensely irritating to see these entitled 5 year olds with computers playing a game i expected to be much more of a challenge and making it fking kindergarten playhouse.
0 -
you utilized "look over here!!! stab" it's a good combo
2 -
If you play for ranking you have to make your outpost as difficult as allowed by the level - restrictions, because you won't get any points from low leveled players anymore or you have to kill them many many times you can even loose points. So of course the traps in outposts of those players are a little bit more challenging than in one where the maker perhaps doesn't care about the ranking.
I have one in normal bordering dangerous at the moment - at least that's what the system say's. I get runs between 40sek zero kills and 9 min 15 kills in the same map.... 1.5 kill ratio with a time of 2 min average clear time. It's designed to challenge a part of the playerbase and let the other farm points, it's normal. You want a real challenge - go brutal. And I still get a kill of some high level players because they underestimate those setups sometimes.
And yes there are ways to kill even good players without spamming for e.g 20 plasmaturrets and flamers and cubes in a single room. Those can be fun too, but i personally appriciate clever trap design more than pure overkill but that's a personal taste if you prefer to disagree that's ok.
1 -
i prefer clever trap design also, but we aren't given many tools to be clever. every single "clever" placement is countered by the slow raider. every... single... one. every trap can be killed before it has a chance to go off if it's not in some form of "killbox" by the communities definition.
0 -
Well, that's the problem every outpost is essentially a killbox per gamedesign.
But there is a world of difference between a "killbox" setup with mainly plasmas and one with boltthrowers. The last get's kills too, but the raider has more chances to suceed because of ammo constrains.
And the slow walking players you can get too... bomblayers are perfect for those, one placed right does the trick, shot them in the back, play a little bit with the aiming range of the trap and the distance to the target use the mods in different setups differently.
Yes it's by design that you can beat every single trap by movement, by parry, by shields and you can even get them to damage each other... because the dev's don't want to have actually impossible maps.
0 -
i don't want impossible maps either, but even now we have people claiming maps are impossible and they aren't. but the builders don't have enough tools to make versatile things so they're all resorting to copy paste. we don't have the means to be properly devious. everyone no-trust shoots all bedrock in case it's holographic, all the angles you can use to hide your traps also reduce their effectivity and are often pointless anyways because they do nothing to protect the trap as a raider can still shoot EVERY TRAP before it triggers (few exceptions related to feet targeting) we don't have the ability to change the angles to fire from unexpected places, we're locked to the grid. even with the same tools but the ability to more fluidly place them we could make more complex and intricate outposts. i'd love to see arrow slits, the ability to drop bombs from a chute that aren't directly in line of sight, i'd like to see mods to change fuse timers, or add map hazards like slick or slowing surfaces. but we just don't have the ability to be creative. so, how do you guarentee prestiege in the game when only one in 3 raiders maybe gives acolades and you get 10-15 raids a day tops? it's not enough. the answer, you build a base that can get the kills you need. well doing that means you get less acolades. so you have to build your base to get more kills, but wait, thats a killbox now.
0 -
10-15 raids a day?
I raise you 6 raids in 24 hours, across three outposts.
0 -
I ve got two active outpost at the moment both i activated today 6:45 CET The small normal one Raank 7 got 10 raids til now the other a medium dangerous Rank 4 got 7 raids until now and while i'm writing the alarms go off for even more raids.
The big brutal i send to retirement in social there is no way at the moment that those get enough raids to upgrade from rank 3 further.
Interestingly i have found some normal small raids more difficult that big brutal ones, so i can't even say that brutals are more time/cost efctive to raid than normals but im only bronze 3 so i don't get so harsh penalties.
0
