Because really, you simply cannot ask for a combat tip without bumping into them at least once.
Killboxes, I get. It's easy, it's simple, it's low-risk.
But what's so good about sniper rifles? I mean, one or two is nice, sure, but what's so good about them that whenever you ask about combat you almost always get 'get a sniper rifle and snipe them' as an answer?
Well, they have a huge range (duh) so your colonists are pretty safe and they have the potential to incapacitate/kill with just a single shot (as long as the target is not mechanical), which is pretty neat. What else would you want from a weapon?
The AI reacts pretty badly to threats with sniper rifles when they aren't actively charging. When they are in the wait period before a raid, or a seige, you can just move your sniper up to the edge of his range and shoot anyone with a sniper rifle. You are then pretty much free to pick people off with 0 threat until you force them to attack.
The maximal range on a gun is higher than the maximal range that pawns automatically fire at other pawns. This means guns can outrange pawns very effectively and since sniper rifles have the highest range which is higher than the pawn autofire range for raider groups they can't do anything against you. Even if they have a sniper rifle they will not autofire since the max autofire range does not account for max gun ranges.
Killboxes are great when the enemy charges your turret nest. But what do you do when you are confronted with mechanoids guarding a ship part or raiders firing shells at you?
You have to go out and meet the enemy on his turf. And here you can take advantage of the AI. Park your snipers at the edge of the enemy camp and start shooting at the fringe units. Those on the fringe will return fire, but the rest will just mill about aimlessly. And if they do all come at you just retreat a bit, and they'll give up and return to camp.
It seems an unfair tactic -- but there's no other way to take them on when you're outnumbered and the game doesn't provide any other obvious way to split them up and take them on piecemeal.
So first, one of the other neat things about sniper rifles is that if the enemy pawns are "guarding" something (i.e. mechanoids around a downed ship or raiders around a siege camp) once you disengage from the fight, they run back to camp so you can "kite" them over and over again.
I don't really view this as an exploit because using snipers to harass an entrenched position is combat 101. As soon as they enemy mobilizes to respond to the snipers, your sniping team either falls back or sets up a new position. I think that it feels "exploit-y" but I think it's a lot more based on reality then one would expect. Maybe enemy pawns should trigger behaviors to react better like "get to cover" or "send out a fire team to take out snipers"
But then you can use your snipers to lure the enemy into ambushes to divide and conquer... all in all not something I view as an exploit, especially because larger raider camps can easily 'counter snipe' quite well because they have a dozen guys with sniper rifles...
So basically, huge range and high damage which lets you engage without actually putting your colonists in danger huh.
I guess that does make it a more effective choice for enemies who aren't charging at you.
I think I'll still prefer other guns though. I mean, I get what makes sniper rifles so good, and I'll probably keep a few to deal with sieges and such, but it seems like sniper rifles are mainly for stationary enemies. I don't use killboxes, so I think I'll benefit better from other weapons that work better close-range.
I make staggered positions from the enemy encampment back to a main fallback. I hit em with the sniper until they engage, i then pull the sniper back to the position after the new last (leapfrog) the enemies then get attacked by the last position so on and so forth until im back at the main position where they all open up on whats left. It usually ends in a few making it and then running for their lives. Depends on numbers of course and if the enemy is staging, but it works anywhere else.
The main reason I like sniper rifles is Scyther raids. Scythers can attack my turrets without getting in range, but my sniper can then attack the mech without getting in its range. And since it's focused on the turret it will never bother going after the pawn and stand nice and still in the open. Given the power of the sniper rifle and the general poor (at max distance) accuracy of the Scyther, a decent sniper will take down the mech well before the turret blows up.
You probably can get by with just a few sniper rifles; that's enough to whittle down stationary enemies until they flee or get fed up and attack.
One other advantage: you don't have to worry nearly as much about your pawns shooting each other. Whereas if one of your guys has a minigun bullets are flying all over and you have to be really careful where the rest are standing.
under normal conditions taking any damage is painful, losing pawns can turn into complete disaster.
for this reason, everyone eventually fall into some kind of "zero risk bias" and will give everyone sniper rifle to avoid risk of taking damage.
Yeah, that's a basic defect in the way this (and similar) games are set up; it's hard for you to replace any casualties (limbs, pawns, etc.) but the people attacking you have an endless supply of suicidal maniacs. If you're taking any significant casualties in a battle you're going to be ground down to nothing pretty quickly.
This is one of the things that makes turrets so great. Go ahead, blow them up, it's easy to make more!
We need some other resource that can be consumed by battle which takes time and effort to replace but not too much. Ammo, for example... "oh crap, yeah, all my pawns survived the battle, but I'm out of 0.50 sniper ammo, gotta start making more at the reloading bench!"
Maybe if we had alien attack chickens that only took 5 days to hatch and 10 to reach adulthood?
Quote from: RawCode on February 26, 2016, 09:21:54 AM
under normal conditions taking any damage is painful, losing pawns can turn into complete disaster.
for this reason, everyone eventually fall into some kind of "zero risk bias" and will give everyone sniper rifle to avoid risk of taking damage.
Quote from: Shurp on February 26, 2016, 05:41:17 PM
Yeah, that's a basic defect in the way this (and similar) games are set up; it's hard for you to replace any casualties (limbs, pawns, etc.) but the people attacking you have an endless supply of suicidal maniacs. If you're taking any significant casualties in a battle you're going to be ground down to nothing pretty quickly.
This is one of the things that makes turrets so great. Go ahead, blow them up, it's easy to make more!
We need some other resource that can be consumed by battle which takes time and effort to replace but not too much. Ammo, for example... "oh crap, yeah, all my pawns survived the battle, but I'm out of 0.50 sniper ammo, gotta start making more at the reloading bench!"
Maybe if we had alien attack chickens that only took 5 days to hatch and 10 to reach adulthood?
I get by with armor and and a 'You kill us, we slaughter you' mentality.
I don't particularly care if raiders trash our base and kill our people as long as they leave wounded, bleeding, and running for their lives with their allies bleeding on the ground next to our dead.
The fact that I always use combat realism and extended prostetics and organ enginnering might be a factor in that too. Makes it harder to lose limbs and easier to replace them.
Ahhh, yes, if you're playing with a mod that allows you to regenerate organs that's a huge improvement. I think I'll have to dig that up, thanks for the tip!
It doesn't let you regenerate organs, it lets you make prostheses and some replacement organs. You need a bit of research them some materials to make all but the most basic things, and most take quite a bit of high-end materials.
What makes it a winner for me are the cheap early-on prostheses you can make like steel arms, hook hands, wooden feet, etc.
Organs can easily be gotten from prisoners anyways. Every raid gets me at least one prisoner which I can harvest for organs, and I don't lose an organ every battle, so there.
Oh, can't forget that with combat realism, you can make armored vests in smithing benches which when worn, protects your pawns organs.
so if this is a unfair tactic that is basically combat 101, then killboxes are also an unfair tactic that is also combat 101. we should see both of these things in the same light, because there both exploits.
Quote from: quxzcover on February 27, 2016, 01:59:43 PM
so if this is a unfair tactic that is basically combat 101, then killboxes are also an unfair tactic that is also combat 101. we should see both of these things in the same light, because there both exploits.
taking casualties to sniper fire is a real thing. (well, maybe they should be hunkering down, if being fired at from an unknown position(exceeding agro range), to lower hitting chance).
but running blindly to inevitable death(killbox) isnt how most intelligent creature behave.
Quote from: AllenWL on February 27, 2016, 09:45:12 AM
Oh, can't forget that with combat realism, you can make armored vests in smithing benches which when worn, protects your pawns organs.
funny. i havnt really realized that in vanilla u cannot make em.
All armor in vanilla, to my understanding, is either bought or scavenged.
I could be wrong-won't be the first time I made a mistake like that-but pretty sure you can't make armor in vanilla.
Speaking as a vanilla expert of sorts -- no, you can't manufacture much of anything in vanilla. Beer, xerigium, great bows, and devilweed parkas. Anything else you bring to a battle you have to buy.
But if you make enough beer you can afford to buy everything else :)
Quote from: Shurp on February 29, 2016, 06:17:17 PM
Speaking as a vanilla expert of sorts -- no, you can't manufacture much of anything in vanilla. Beer, xerigium, great bows, and devilweed parkas. Anything else you bring to a battle you have to buy.
But if you make enough beer you can afford to buy everything else :)
TBH, this is kind of realistic. As much as I like modpacks like MVP and SK, the idea that some crash-landed guys can manufacture anything from beam weapons to bionic gear in a couple of years is a little silly. It's no longer survival, if I feel I need the option to invade the pirate factions and wipe them out for good.
The issue with vanilla is that there is not that much to do, unless you rack up the difficulty.
Quote from: Shad on February 29, 2016, 07:19:37 PM
TBH, this is kind of realistic. As much as I like modpacks like MVP and SK, the idea that some crash-landed guys can manufacture anything from beam weapons to bionic gear in a couple of years is a little silly.
Maybe, but some basic stuff would be nice. Peg legs are one thing, but I'm fairly certain I could smash together a few pieces of steel and leather to make improvised body armour if I really needed to. I've seen enough Max Max-type fiction to know what "wasteland style" looks like :)
Quote from: Shad on February 29, 2016, 07:19:37 PM
Quote from: Shurp on February 29, 2016, 06:17:17 PM
Speaking as a vanilla expert of sorts -- no, you can't manufacture much of anything in vanilla. Beer, xerigium, great bows, and devilweed parkas. Anything else you bring to a battle you have to buy.
But if you make enough beer you can afford to buy everything else :)
TBH, this is kind of realistic. As much as I like modpacks like MVP and SK, the idea that some crash-landed guys can manufacture anything from beam weapons to bionic gear in a couple of years is a little silly. It's no longer survival, if I feel I need the option to invade the pirate factions and wipe them out for good.
The issue with vanilla is that there is not that much to do, unless you rack up the difficulty.
The weird thing is the inconsistency though. On one hand you can produce solar panels, electrical smelters, work plasteel into melee weapons. On the other hand you can't produce basic firearms or form armor-grade steel into a breastplate. If you look up early WWII era armor vests its literally just that, steel formed into a plate and fastened to the body with some straps, its only recently that ceramics have started replacing plain old steel for military grade armor vests. The complexity comes really just from being able to produce and work the metal itself yet our colonists can already work plasteel into swords and maces so why not plates and helmets?
I only want some permanent scratches to heal so that my "wont ever die" colonists do not reach potato level after a few unlucky battles
Quote from: NoImageAvailable on March 01, 2016, 05:03:45 PM
The weird thing is the inconsistency though. On one hand you can produce solar panels, electrical smelters, work plasteel into melee weapons. On the other hand you can't produce basic firearms or form armor-grade steel into a breastplate. If you look up early WWII era armor vests its literally just that, steel formed into a plate and fastened to the body with some straps, its only recently that ceramics have started replacing plain old steel for military grade armor vests. The complexity comes really just from being able to produce and work the metal itself yet our colonists can already work plasteel into swords and maces so why not plates and helmets?
Inconsistency is a problem. However, I imagine a few people may find vanilla too hard if you have the realistic setup where your power come from simple fuel-powered generators, and solar panels come from sales or drops only.
A few mods do basic metallic armor. So long as you don't expect to survive any substantial amount of gunfire (like historical WW2 armor), and you can bear with how slow it makes you colonists it can make a difference between life and death. I do feel some basic things like that could be made into vanilla too.
As for guns, the ideal situation would be to introduce black powder guns. That way a well developed colony will have access to more advance equipment than bow and arrows, while the modern guns remain that carrot you yearn for.
it doesnt take much technology to make a padded vest with some steel (or plasteel) plates attached or stuffed in it. i believe, plasteel in rimworld can substitute modern metal-ceramics in some way.
Quote from: Shurp on February 29, 2016, 06:17:17 PM
But if you make enough beer you can afford to buy everything else :)
sadly, selling raw hops brings almost the same, as selling beer, w/o working time expences. same goes for producing stuff in general.
Combat Realism fixes this, to some degree - but almost makes them too inaccurate (Can't take a long range rifle on hunting with even my 15 skill people, as they'll miss more than 60% of the shots and just give up and go home - rince and repeat)
Quote from: Grimandevil on March 02, 2016, 05:41:31 AM
sadly, selling raw hops brings almost the same, as selling beer, w/o working time expences. same goes for producing stuff in general.
Yes, the pricing system is broken, things that take labor to make should be worth more than their components.
But the advantage of beer is that you can sell it to pirates *and* to the bulk merchant, meaning you don't have to have monstrous freezers full of hops waiting for the bulk merchant to show.
Quote from: Shurp on March 02, 2016, 10:54:27 AM
But the advantage of beer is that you can sell it to pirates *and* to the bulk merchant
good point.
Does hops even require freezing? Isn't it treated like wood - i.e: it deteriorates outside, but inside, no matter the temp, its fine.
Hops and beer both show an expiration date in my inventory, which is why I freeze em. They're pretty long -- 25 days for hops, beer I'm not sure of. I probably could unload them before that but my freezers are big enough, and having a warehouse full of beer is fun :)
(being able to distill vodka from potatoes would be even better)
back to topic. @OP
try bringing around a dozen of careful shooters with bionic eyes with a minimum of 10 shooting skills. once you start amassing snipers, even large mechanoids can die from 1 or 2 sniper volleys. (more good snipers you have, more chances of critical / deadly hits)
pick snipers with the careful shooter trait. then you can combine it with minigunners/charge riflemen with the trigger happy trait and brawlers/beastmasters with plasteel longswords and a pack of huskies (they are good for chasing fleeing enemies). make them all bionic and give them the best armors. these will be the core of your army.
the colonists with none of those 3 traits are usually just left to work at the base as dedicated workers.(light clothes with no armor so they move faster)
Your minigunners / charge riflemen don't fill your brawlers full of holes?
This is why I gave up on multifire weapons -- my colonists kept shooting each other instead of the enemy. They might miss with sniper rifles but they usually don't hit anyone else.
Quote from: Shurp on March 03, 2016, 03:35:52 AM
Your minigunners / charge riflemen don't fill your brawlers full of holes?
This is why I gave up on multifire weapons -- my colonists kept shooting each other instead of the enemy. They might miss with sniper rifles but they usually don't hit anyone else.
I use my brawlers to cover falling back. While my rifles are repositioning (and not able to fire) I rush lone targets with melee to slow down any raiders who might get to the gunline before they have a chance to volley.
Quote from: Shurp on March 03, 2016, 03:35:52 AM
Your minigunners / charge riflemen don't fill your brawlers full of holes?
This is why I gave up on multifire weapons -- my colonists kept shooting each other instead of the enemy. They might miss with sniper rifles but they usually don't hit anyone else.
i use brawlers to out-flank the enemies and to chase enemies that flee.
they also function as a good distraction, since i can just park them nearby the enemies and then swap them out when they lose their shield.
----
typical battle for me is :
-snipers shoot and bait the enemies to awaiting ambush of minigunners, where we catch them in the crossfire of minigunners and snipers.
-this happens while my brawlers flanks the enemies.
-once the brawlers are in position and in decent cover, they will draw the enemy fire while my snipers annihilate the enemies.
-once enemies starts to flee, the brawlers attack and unleash their pets.
-delicious.
sometimes i prefer to build non-killbox, non-turret bases. i make square bases...a square ring of buildings with doors on all sides, directly across the hallways from each other, and the crops in the middle.
Combat is amazingly fun, since you have to be super tactical. Duck in and out of doorways, run across hallways building to building...
...and use a shielded melee squad to run thru the buildings and pick off the single or small groups of enemies that get separated as they stop to shoot or take up "cover" positions.
Taking out a 4 to 1 outnumbering tribal raid using nothing but manpower because I dodge in and around the buildings is super fun.
I would know. I tried that once. Which is why I never build killboxes.
I never tried building a base with the intention of fighting inside one though. Built so combat indoors is possible, yea, but not so my fighting is done in-base. Though, that could be fun... and with some specialized buildings... hmm...
I've tried something like this -- building a square box base, surrounding it with a line of turrets, surrounding that with a palisade to keep snipers from killing my turrets, and having my guys run in and out of the building to snipe from behind the turrets.
Trouble is that tribals just overwhelm everything. So I need a killbox until I get friendly relations with them. But it works well against everything else.
Wow, you people are really dependent on killboxes for survival, huh?
Me, I don't use them. I play "realistically", that is, with an eye for terrain, and to use "force multipliers".
Of course, I have mods downloaded (like Combat Realism and Combat Realism-Defense, mainly), that make the game/pawns actually believable.
Keep in mind that I usually play in the Boreal Forest, so there is a LOT of water on the map.
I prefer to back myself into a canyon, with mountains on three sides. Preferably, there is either a marsh or a lake (even better), at least partially blocking off the opening
There, I build my pawn (I enjoy playing solo scenarios) a comfy little log cabin. Near the opening to the canyon, where the "path" narrows due to the marsh/lake, I build what is called a "blockhouse". Basically, a little building with gunslits in the walls that you can safely fire from. Around the blockhouse, I have my pawn painstakingly pile up rubble and rocks, and usually build barbed wire fences, in order to slow down the attackers. They can still pass over the rubble/barbed wire, but it drastically slows them down, making them easy pickings for my rifle-armed pawn. When they get too close for comfort, I have the pawn equip a shotgun, or I just have them fall back to the cabin (which has more embrasures/arrowslits to fire from).
Sure, it takes some micromanaging, but I have routed 25+ tribal raids with one pawn , some fortification, and an eye for terrain.
Quote from: Boston on March 09, 2016, 10:37:52 PM
Of course, I have mods downloaded (like Combat Realism and Combat Realism-Defense, mainly), that make the game/pawns actually believable.
[...]
a little building with gunslits in the walls that you can safely fire from.
[...]
Sure, it takes some micromanaging, but I have routed 25+ tribal raids with one pawn , some fortification, and an eye for terrain.
Sounds like you're dependent on a kill box too really. I mean sure, you haven't "boxed" it in (I don't either), but you're relying on a mod that lets you effectively be invulnerable within a building. It's hardly fair to call out peoples killboxes, when you're playing a mod that relies on the same mechanics, and achieves the same effect at the end of the day.
There is a pretty significant difference between a kinda-fortified building that can be broken into easily, and a base carved into a mountain that funnels all the attackers through a single door into the range of multiple turrets.
The pawn isn't invulnerable inside the blockhouse, they just have a high-degree of cover. My pawn has taken an arrow to the face when they leaned around the door, has had tribals break down the door and stab him to death, and has been burnt to death when they set the building on fire. It isn't 100% effective, not like killboxes are. The key aspect of the strategy is not the blockhouse, but usage of terrain. Without the attackers being slowed down via difficult terrain (marshes, shallow water, rubble), the blockhouse would be basically useless.
I also make sure to clear away any trees and bushes away from the blockhouse, usually a "survival-rifle-shot" away from the building. Trees provide a surprising amount of cover.
The whole point of the blockhouse is to 1) provide a degree of cover, greater than that of sandbags, 2) to allow the pawn to fire on the enemy long/effectively enough to force them to break and flee. If you don't shatter them before they get into shotgun range, time to fall back.
All of the above are based on real-life fortification and seige-strategy, by the way.
Also, your description of the base (tucked in with mountains on three sides and water in the opening) is pretty much a killbox itself - just a naturally created one.
As for man-made killboxes, bunkers and fortresses have for centuries been designed with killing zones in mind - locations that attackers had to go through and were covered by multiple lines of fire. If we're going to argue historical correctness/military tactics, a killbox is a completely natural thing to do.
The real problem, and why many people dislike killboxes, is that AI is too stupid to deal with them. This is however also completely true for your 'natural' killbox - AI is still stupid. (I do want to note that stupid frontal assaults on virtually unassailable positions have also for centuries been valid military tactics, so the AI isn't that bad.)
Hmmm, maybe "Combat Realism" is worth trying out, if it extends the range of weapons sufficiently so that you *can* pick off enemy pawns as they charge through the fire zone. The trouble now is that it takes half a dozen shots (at least) to bring one down and getting off that many shots on a single target in 30 squares is difficult, let alone taking down a dozen.
Combat realism's merit isn't in extending the weapon range. It's the fact that you can actually kill a guy without half a dozen shots to the face, and people don't get up after being peppered by 50+ shots from a minigun(which I've seen happen...)
A pawn with no body armor can be taken out with a couple hits(or even a single shot with a rifle[to a vital organ]) with combat realism, which makes combat faster and deadlier. This works to the great disadvantage of tribals, who never come with body armor. A single decent shooter with a LMG can slaughter dozens of tribals easily.
to quote 'charging through rifle fire to get into shotgun range is a good way to get killed'
Anyways, fact remains, ranged combat simply boils down into 'get more bullets/arrows into the enemy then they can get into us', and melee combat in rimworld is too underused/undeveloped to have a solid use in combat. It's melee is useful, yes, but only in certain niche conditions, meaning most simply go for guns. This results in a killbox being the most efficient way to go since, well, let's face it noone likes hauling in dead colonists.