I was midway through a playthrough when I had a string of bad luck and opened nearly 10 rooms while only getting enough dust to light up one more. As I was getting assaulted by 3 or 4 waves of enemies coming from the same corridor that I had no chance to light, I thought to myself "I have a million industry, but I can't put more minor modules down without dust. If only I could just throw it at them." I've thought about it a little since then, and this is my idea.



Traps work like minor modules, in that they take up a minor module spot in a room. They do not require power, but they have a limited amount of uses (most likely 1 for things like explosives, but possibly a number rooms for a "pheramone lure" to lose potency, or an amount of damage a spike strip can deal before dulling). In this way, you can effectively pay a steep fee to bolster your defenses outside of your effective defensive zone for a turn or two while you get the 2 more dust you need to light the next room, or gather the food you need to level up your replacement character to be able to handle the onslaught.



Alternatively, trapmaking could be an active skill, or maybe even an equipped device with a cooldown, allowing you to place disposable defenses behind your main line, that way if your trap gets triggered, you know your defenses are a little lacking in that direction, and correcting it after you find out, instead of having to line every corridor with backup defenses just in case.



I feel something like this would be a good way to give players another option to keep them from getting ruined by bad luck, without drastically improving their overall strength, since a few traps might help you keep the hoards at bay for a turn or two, you're unlikely to have the resources to keep it up for the rest of a floor.

That could be pretty neat! A trapper themed hero would really cool!

Perhaps also a "mini-turret" with limited ammunition that could be placed in an un-powered room?

I like this idea a lot! I also like basing the traps around a themed hero.



One other idea I had, what if there was a major module that was trap based? The major module would place traps, not bound by minor modules, in every adjacent room. The adjacent rooms would not need power. You would have to research the major module first. The traps themselves would go off once per "round", doing a set amount of damage at ignition, and then would continue to add a slow to each room (or something similar) over time. You could use this to help cover back doors or weak spots with only one room alight. Or you could plant one, adjacent to other rooms with major modules, to add extra defenses along with whatever minor modules you have built. I'd have to spend some time examining the way the levels are designed, to see if this idea would really be effective. I think it might work though.

I could see that being an interesting idea, maybe placing this "trap module" next to your crystal, so that you can have that tiny protection against those 1-hit-from-death enemies that squeeze through, and take you way too long to respond to.