Traps and Fortifications – Dev Blog 20
Fringe Planet is a cold and dangerous place. The peons have very little in the way of defenses, walls and doors will only protect a fledgling camp for so long. This week we have added three new tools to help the peons defend themselves and the place they call home. They can all be used both defensively and offensively
The Spiked Trap
Peons will need to do research in order to unlock this trap – but it will do huge amounts of damage to anything unfortunate enough to step inside it’s ring of spikes. The entire mechanism is visible when snow has been cleared – meaning that creatures (including peons) will be aware that a trap is there. They can try and avoid it (by pathing around it) – however, if a creature is in a panic (wounded, running, confused) – they may just step right into it.
When a Spiked Trap is placed, it can be baited with food – and as such it can be used for hunting. Laying these close to a ManyEye’s Nest, or near a group of sleeping EyeBirds may result in some tasty meat (and other resources) being created. A Spiked Trap has a limited number of charges before it breaks – and it will need resetting each time it is sprung. Additional research will teach the peons to create stronger versions of this trap which have more charges.
When a Spiked Trap is covered with snow, it becomes mostly invisible to all creatures, with the exception of peons. The peon that placed the trap will always know where it is and providing he has a chance to tell to the other peons of it’s location they will know as well. If a peon sees another peon placing the trap, it will also know where it is. In both these cases, the peons will avoid walking near a trap. If neither of these things happen, then a peon may not know that a trap has been placed – and it is down to the peons awareness stat to see if it notices the spikes poking through the snow before it steps on them.
Finally, after a lot of research, various tools can be created to automate the trapping process – baiting, removing resources and resetting can all be automated – creating the potential for some interesting meat machines.
Wooden Barricade
A simple sharpened stick in the ground. Peons will be able to create simple barricades with no research – however the peons initial attempts at creating barricades will be incredibly fragile, and will not do a lot of a damage. By researching, peons will gradually be able to make more damaging fortifications, which have much higher HP. A barricade will do damage the moment any creature touches it, and the barricade itself will take damage whenever it is touched. All creatures will be aware of barricades, but some may not care much about walking through them. If a peon is tired or scared, it may well attempt to run straight through a barricade rather than avoid it.
Additionally, if a player blocks a route with barricades (for instance surrounding the only entrance to building that contains beds), the peons will attempt to carefully bypass the barricade. This check is done against the peons agility stat. It’s inadvisable to do this however, as a peon will almost always take some form of damage while attempting to navigate one.
Circle of Binding
There is one enemy in game which we haven’t mentioned yet. We don’t even have screenshots of it yet (or do we? it might be worth having a look). This enemy is as ethereal as it is deadly, and will happily glide through barricades, travel through walls and float over Spike Traps. The Circle of Binding is the only thing that can stop it.
Additionally, the Circle of Binding can effect all spirits – including the ones that might have escaped from spirit boxes (see this blog post to read more about spirits and spirit boxes : https://fringeplanetgame.com/blog/2018/09/14/dev-blog-13/). So it may be useful to keep these around spirit box storage places, or around machinery which are being powered by particularly powerful spirits.
The Circle of Binding operates simply – when a supernatural entity travels through/across it, it becomes trapped within the circle. The sigils inside the circle will slowly drain the energy of the entity, until it dissipates into nothingness.
Research will need to be done to unlock the Circle of Binding, and there are various upgrades which can be researched to increase the strength of the draining sigils, to increase the strength of the circle (so the strong entities can be stopped). Later on it will be possible to incorporated Circles of Binding into the machinery you create – rather than weakening and destroying the entity, you may be able to use their strength as a useful resource.
This is all for today’s Dev Blog – we hope you enjoyed!
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