Is strafe thrust important for walls (traps) in meta game? i'm unsure about sacrifying some forward thrust for strafing, as my ship must be agile to outmanouver the opponent, but still fast enough to reach it
Strafe speed and walls...
Danwood Traps and single walls generally have different goals since you have to pilot traps with RTS while you can DC a single wall. For traps (or splitter walls) you usually want multi-directional thrust to make piloting in RTS a lot easier. However, in the meta currently (at 1.5mill credits) having a lot of forward thrust as a wall is pretty much mandatory since you need at least around 18 forward-facing engine blocks and 8 flak to catch and kill missile orbiters. So, most 1.5mill walls at the moment are all forward thrust and use DC.
I actually don't think traps and splitter walls have much of a use at the moment, since there aren't many slow ships that are vulnerable from the rear to kill with them. However, the meta hasn't been fully optimized since the thrust and TB changes yet, so this could change.
I see you're already in Excelsior, so if you have any more questions or want feedback on your ships feel free to post them in the classroom channel.