Spike trap
Spike trap
Five spikes under tension, connected to a touch-activated trigger. When the victim disturbs the trigger, the spikes spring forth and strike the victim. Since it is hidden in the surrounding terrain, it cannot be placed adjacent to other traps. Animals can sense these when calm.
Base Stats
Building
- Size
- 1 × 1
- Minifiable
- True
- Placeable
- True
- Terrain Affordance
- Light
- Cleanliness
- -5
Creation
- Skill Required
- Construction 3
- Work To Make
- 3,200 ticks (53.33 secs)
- Stuff Tags
- Metallic, Woody, Stony
- thingCategories
- BuildingsSecurity
A spike trap is a single-use trap that deals heavy, but material dependent damage to the pawn that triggered it.
Acquisition
Spike traps require 45 Stuff (Metallic/Woody/Stony, 450 for SMVs), 3,200 ticks (53.33 secs) of work, and a Construction skill of 3. Spike traps cannot be placed or constructed directly next to each other nor next to any other kind of trap.
Summary
Traps are single use security buildings that may be triggered when a pawn of any kind walks over it.
- The base trigger chance is 100% for enemies, including mechanoids and animals affected by the manhunter mental state. Note that despite the name, animals currently hunting a human pawn for food are not "manhunters" and are not considered enemies.
- Non-manhunting wild animals have a 25% chance to trigger the trap.
- Colonists and tame animals have 0.4% (one in 250) chance to trigger the trap.[Friendly Mechanoids?]
- Friendly visitors and their animals, as well as revenants and sightstealers will never trigger a trap.
However, colonists and non-manhunting animals are aware of the location of traps, and will avoid pathing over them if reasonably practical.[Path Cost?] One notable exception is roped animals being dragged by a handler - the rope limits their movement, overriding their usual behavior.
Prisoners are considered to be their original faction for the purposes of traps. Enemy who you have taken prisoner will retain their 100% trap trigger rate and will ignore traps when pathfinding. Colonists that you have taken prisoner retain their 0.4% trap trigger rate, even during a prison break, and will avoid traps whenever possible.
In all instances, the nimble trait multiplies the trigger chance for that pawn by 10%, that is, a 10% chance for enemies and 0.04% chance for friendly pawns.
Once a spike trap is triggered, it is destroyed. The "auto rearm" option, enabled by default, produces a blueprint to replace the trap.
Each spike trap is considered dirty with a Cleanliness of −5. This reduces the average cleanliness of the room it occupies.
Damage
When triggered, the spike trap makes five attacks against the pawn that triggered it. Each attack does Stab damage. This strikes mainly on the head and torso and usually causes bleeding. The amount of damage dealt by each attack is determined by the following equation:
Damage Per Attack = Trap Melee Damage * Material Sharp Damage Multiplier * rand(0.8, 1.2)/5 |
Where:
- Damage per Attack is the damage each attack does to the target. A spike trap performs 5 of these attacks when triggered.
- Trap Melee Damage is 100 for spike traps
- Material Sharp Damage Multiplier is a material dependent factor.
- rand(0.8,1.2) is a random factor between 0.8 and 1.2. This random factor is rolled once only and then applied to all attacks, it is not rolled for each attack.
The armor penetration of the attack is determined by the following equation:
AP = Damage Per Attack * 0.015 |
- AP is the armor penetration of each attack.
Note that both the damage and AP of the attack in the info screen are misleading. The damage listed is the average sum of the damage inflicted, the AP is incorrectly calculated as if this damage is all dealt at once.
Analysis
Spike traps are invaluable in the earlygame, as one of the few defense strutures available. A hallway of spike traps can virtually end any frontal raid, short of tough or nimble pawns, without your colonists ever seeing combat. A single trap can be fatal to humans or large animals. Multiple traps can fall most creatures, short of thrumbos and heavy mechanoids. But as raids get bigger, it starts to get impractical to replace the traps.
Place traps where you expect raiders to go. Raiders will take the shortest, unobstructed route to a target. Unless they are sappers or breachers, raiders will try and break walls last. Common locations are in the corners of your base, where enemies will likely make turns, as well as narrow areas that receive frequent traffic. If it doesn't seem obvious to you at first, one way to find out is by studying raids that do come.
Material choice
Wood spike traps can be quickly created and placed in large quantities. Stone spike traps are cheap to make, and can kill a humanoid raider in one trap. But given the significantly increased crafting time of both the traps themselves and the stone blocks required to build them, it is often more efficient to simply make several wooden traps. Stone traps are helpful if you're limited by space or type of resource available, and can be a good activity when one has the Work Frenzy Mental inspiration. Metal traps are even stronger and don't take as much time to make, but are expensive in terms of resources.
Stats table
Spike trap | Beauty | Work to Build | HP | Flammability | Total Damage |
Attack Damage |
Armor Penetration |
Market Value |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Material | ||||||||
Bioferrite | -18 | ticks (2.22 mins) | 8,00080 | 75% | 130 | 26 | 39% | 63 |
Gold | 2 | ticks (48 secs) | 2,88024 | 40% | 75 | 15 | 22.5% | 4,510 |
Granite blocks | -18 | ticks (5.37 mins) | 19,34068 | 0% | 65 | 13 | 19.5% | 110 |
Limestone blocks | -18 | ticks (5.37 mins) | 19,34062 | 0% | 60 | 12 | 18% | 110 |
Marble blocks | -17 | ticks (4.93 mins) | 17,74048 | 0% | 60 | 12 | 18% | 104 |
Plasteel | -18 | ticks (1.96 mins) | 7,040112 | 0% | 110 | 22 | 33% | 430 |
Sandstone blocks | -18 | ticks (4.48 mins) | 16,14056 | 0% | 50 | 10 | 15% | 99 |
Silver | -12 | ticks (53.33 secs) | 3,20028 | 40% | 85 | 17 | 25.5% | 460 |
Slate blocks | -18 | ticks (5.37 mins) | 19,34052 | 0% | 60 | 12 | 18% | 110 |
Steel | -18 | ticks (53.33 secs) | 3,20040 | 40% | 100 | 20 | 30% | 97 |
Jade | -8 | ticks (4.44 mins) | 16,00020 | 0% | 100 | 20 | 30% | 285 |
Uranium | -18 | ticks (1.69 mins) | 6,080100 | 0% | 110 | 22 | 33% | 290 |
Wood | -18 | ticks (37.33 secs) | 2,24026 | 100% | 40 | 8 | 12% | 62 |
Version history
- 0.11.877 - Added as Deadfall Trap.
- 0.12.910 - Rebalanced, cannot be rearmed.
- 0.19.2009 - Renamed from Deadfall trap to Spike trap. Damage is increased, material cost and time to build are reduced, and it now has armor penetration (depending on what it’s made of) and a 100% chance to spring on targets and but now require rebuilding each time, rather than being re-armed at no material cost.
Image gallery
Thrumbos running willy-nilly into a trap-maze.