I am just getting hammered in my current game. I switched from Cassandra to the laid back storyteller but I'm still being hit with 15 tribesmen who are better equipped than my sickly 10 people (I'm in year 3 struggling). I basically just built a giant granite box with big slits (it looks like morse code going all around my base). For some dumb reason I thought I'd be able to shoot over them but I can't.
Can you all give me some basic suggestions that won't make the game too easy? I don't want anything exploitive, but right now I'm getting just annihilated.
You probably need more guns. Pistols are cheap and effective at close range. Survival rifles cost a bit more but give you important range. Assault Rifles are great at wounding and weakening enemies as they approach, but are rather more expensive.
Fortifications and cover are helpful against enemies using ranged weapons, but can make it hard for your pawns to support each other when swarmed by tribesmen.
What I usually do is mass-produce pistols at my machining table until everybody has one, then give rifles to my best shooters, and a gladius to any brawler. Pistols stand in a close group to support each other, rifles wound enemies at a distance and target/suppress enemy ranged units. Brawlers target incoming melee, with pistol backup.
I'm not a pro at this game, but it seems to work reasonably well.
Quote from: Hans Lemurson on February 05, 2017, 02:53:32 AM
You probably need more guns. Pistols are cheap and effective at close range. Survival rifles cost a bit more but give you important range. Assault Rifles are great at wounding and weakening enemies as they approach, but are rather more expensive.
Fortifications and cover are helpful against enemies using ranged weapons, but can make it hard for your pawns to support each other when swarmed by tribesmen.
What I usually do is mass-produce pistols at my machining table until everybody has one, then give rifles to my best shooters, and a gladius to any brawler. Pistols stand in a close group to support each other, rifles wound enemies at a distance and target/suppress enemy ranged units. Brawlers target incoming melee, with pistol backup.
I'm not a pro at this game, but it seems to work reasonably well.
Sounds like a good strategy, I'll have to start that in my own game.
Just build a classic killbox. Corridor with steel traps, with sandbags and pillars at the end to use as cover for your pawns. Do not close it with any doors, so tribals will most likely chose to go trough as the easy way. I don't think this is an exploit, its a basic defense system. If you have brawlers/melee, make them steel longswords. Assault riffles for shooters. After 3 years you should have the technology to build turrets or charge riffles. 15 enemies is too much to handle without any defense system. And don't worry, if your defense performs very well (no casualties), then each next raid will be stronger than previous, so it won't be too easy.
Like someone previously mentioned, your first priority should be getting everyone a decent weapon. Pistols for ranged people and steel gladius for melee guys. Your next priority should be getting some long range and close range speciality weapons; the survival rifle and machine pistol. Use the machine pistol to hose down melee dudes who are running for your gun line and the survival rifle snipe enemies in cover. I like to combine the machine pistol with the pump shotgun for close quarter carnage. Similarly, the LMG is great when combined with the survival rifle. By the mid-game, you should have enough resources to produce an armored vest and kevlar helmet for each of your colonists. Clothing is also important when it comes to protection which is why I favor button-up shirts and dusters over t-shirts and jackets (better coverage). On the melee side, you should gradually transition to steel spears by this time as well. For ranged, meanwhile, you should incorporate assault rifles, heavy smgs, and sniper rifles into your arsenal (pistols -> assault rifles, machine pistols -> SMGs, survival rifles -> sniper rifles). When you have all or most of this, you're in the late game. By this time you should be focusing on getting power armor, charge rifles, miniguns, steel longswords, and bionics for all your guys. Charge rifles are powerful close-mid range weapons that should pretty much supersede most of the above while the minigun is the ultimate crowd control weapon. Steel longwords are slow but powerful (when you're satisfied that you won't really need plasteel anymore build plasteel longswords). Keep a couple sniper rifles around for long ranged stuff. That's pretty much it! ;D
Without seeing your base, I can't really make any specific comments. However, you should make sure to spread out guys as much as possible in whatever area you're defending. Also try to eliminate areas the enemy can use as cover such as rubble or trees. Finally, line your entrance with at least a couple rows of deadfall traps (use doors to allow your colonists to rearm them and exit the base safely) and fill the space in between with incendiary or explosive IEDs. Turrets are somewhat optional; they can be useful if you have incapable of violence colonists or need a distraction (put them in a forward position out of the main line of fire).
On a sidenote, I now realize that I haven't really discussed grenades, rocket launchers, combat drugs, or incendiary launchers. Grenades are great, if you can get them, for large groups of enemies such as tribals. In this case, you actually want to create cover in your defensive areas for the enemy. This let's you control where they run and thus it make it easier to kill them with grenades. Still, it's pretty risky (one pila shot and your done). EMP grenades are good for mechanoids if you have cover (say your guy is hiding around a corner before he grenades them). Otherwise, it's basically suicide for the pawn involved (might be worth the sacrifice if they get a grenade off). Rocket launchers are simply devastating. It's well worth it to equip a mediocre pawn with one as a single shot can kill many raiders and severely damage mechanoids. For optimum play, have a spare weapon in a rack nearby for the pawn to grab once they've fired their load. Go-Juice is also wonderful if you accept the risks involved. Sadly, I really have no real experience with incendiary launchers. I rarely see the AI use them and have never once used them in the time since they were introduced. :(
Bloodthirsty, Trigger Happy Dudes with Shotguns.
With cover and retreat tactics those guys obliterate anything.
Hobbys : Hunting and Hauling.
Longsword and mace are both good. The main difference is that longsword will cut limbs and kill, when mace will immobilize opponents so they can be imprisoned and recruited.
And for the killbox. I build something like this and it perform very well. Stone blocks at the entrance stops raiders to get cover behind the walls, so they must get in. When they are in, there is no going back, they move forward and die. Deadfall traps are arranged in a way so my pawns or visitors can get trough without hurting themselves. There is a stone floor so fire will not spread too much. My pawns are hiding behind pillars and lean out to shoot. Sandbags are also helpful. Turrets are mostly plasteel, i slowly replace them from steel when they getting destroyed. But this should also work good without turrets. Kill area is unroofed so its 100% lit in daylight for better shooting accuracy for my pawns. Shooters area is roofed so its 0% lit, this decreases chance of shot by enemy. Also turrets are roofed so they wont get damaged in the rain. I hold few weapons in weapon rack nearby, so i can quickly equip my pawns in rocket launcher of sniper rifles if i get a siege or alien ship. Turrets can be switched off by nearby switch, but i have enough power to run them all the time. Granite walls between turrets are a must, so one exploding turret will not ignite others. Explosive traps are good for centipedes, they like to walk along the wall. My walls around the base are 5 tiles thick and are made from granite, so any sappers attack will take a lot of time to get trough, usually i waste them before they manage to destroy a single tile. For entry into base i have three granite autodors in 5 tile wall. Regular doors do not perform well, its taking forever to open each of them, and it matters when my pawn is chased by a mad animal or a raider. It is hard to buil such thing at once because its work and materials demanding, but you can build in small steps and upgrade.
[attachment deleted by admin due to age]
Survival rifle is the best early weapon. It has good damage, good range and good accuracy. Only downside is that it's a bit slow.
The simplest way to stop a normal raid is a long, winding but unblocked path into your base filled with traps or turrets. Most raiders will never make it to your doorstep. Just make sure you have an alternate exit for your pawns.
My base is just a big wooden thing in the middle of the map. I had almost no mountain to burrow into so the enemy can and does attack from any side. Because of this I can't figure out how to "funnel" them into a specific area or part of my base. Any tips on how I can make that happen? Thanks for all the help thus far!
Quote from: jpinard on February 05, 2017, 11:57:47 AM
My base is just a big wooden thing in the middle of the map. I had almost no mountain to burrow into so the enemy can and does attack from any side. Because of this I can't figure out how to "funnel" them into a specific area or part of my base. Any tips on how I can make that happen? Thanks for all the help thus far!
Start by surrounding it with a 1 tile thick perimeter wall.
Quote from: b0rsuk on February 05, 2017, 12:29:15 PM
Quote from: jpinard on February 05, 2017, 11:57:47 AM
My base is just a big wooden thing in the middle of the map. I had almost no mountain to burrow into so the enemy can and does attack from any side. Because of this I can't figure out how to "funnel" them into a specific area or part of my base. Any tips on how I can make that happen? Thanks for all the help thus far!
Start by surrounding it with a 1 tile thick perimeter wall.
I have a very large amount of farmland. Do you suggest I keep that inside or outside of my walls?
If it's not devilstrand or trees (grow very slowly), you can keep it outside for the time being. Sometimes raiders ignite fields if they pass right over them, but this is usually no big deal.
Why you wont show your base here?
Quote from: jpinard on February 05, 2017, 12:32:24 PM
I have a very large amount of farmland. Do you suggest I keep that inside or outside of my walls?
As was suggested, just mostly wall off your part of the map. I included a screenshot example of my last base.
In that example, I started by making small 1-width wall pieces connecting the mountains around my base pretty early on, long before building that huge stone house complex. My people lived in some wooden/stone huts just south of where the prison is, partly reusing some large old structure that was already there. I purposefully never built walls to the north, where my fields are. I had a few defensive positions there, though. This is the intended "war zone".
Much later I upgraded my walls to two spaces thick and built a few turrets around the base so I have something to help out when sappers get overly annoying. The northern exit out of my valley never got walled in - its well defendable to fight and does not need to be, since I want one entrance so most attackers go to a reliable place. The wall to the southeast would have been much closer to my buildings if I had not seen that steam vent back then and decided to include it at the cost of 20odd extra wall squares.
[attachment deleted by admin due to age]
There's 3 ways. More or less. (Against large assaults)
Kill boxes - boring. One entry point usually with 10,000 turrets watching it.
Choke points - similar but not designed to be exploitive. Normally it's a thin opening in a street or hallway or rock formation. Guard the entry point with sandbags and soldiers.
Frontline - sandbags outside the perimeter with lots of explosives beyond them. (This works really well against tribals as many trigger IEDs and then your gunners pick off whoever makes it through.)
In the event you need to wall back, have a second line normally more reinforced with gun turrets. But try to thin the numbers before retreating.
Against smaller numbers:
Skirmish - head out into the field and engage the enemy then breaking line of sight. (Lots of micromanagement and pausing.)
Against large groups waiting to attack or sieges:
Suppression - 3 - 6 mortar crews in the safer part of the colony that rain serious amounts of damage on enemies is tight clusters. Can easily reduce a force of 60 pawns to 24 before they realise the extent of the damage.
This is all from my vanilla experience using open plan colonies normally with no walls. Eventually I build walls sometimes but I rarely use gun turrets and never use obvious kill boxes with like a single path drowned in sand bags and traps.
A good tactic is to line the outside walls with traps though. Extra layers of defense and all that.
I don't mind having to haul colonists that get injured mid battle to the hospital though and I quite like having my troops scarred and damaged over the years.
If you want role play and good stories don't do kill boxes.
If you prefer to play city builder then kill boxes are safe but you can be so much more creative...
I have a few problems instituting some of the suggestions. First I don't have enough money and resources to make/purchase much of what is suggested. I am obviously just not very good at the game yet.
Second, is friendly fire. In some battles against no gunned tribesmen I end up with tons of bullet holes sometimes. Like when someone gets to me ranted people and I need to move my melee guy against them he gets riddled with my own bullets. This won't be a problem if I can get to a point where defenses are static but so far is been a really big issue.
Quote from: jpinard on February 05, 2017, 07:48:51 PM
I have a few problems instituting some of the suggestions. First I don't have enough money and resources to make/purchase much of what is suggested. I am obviously just not very good at the game yet.
Second, is friendly fire. In some battles against no gunned tribesmen I end up with tons of bullet holes sometimes. Like when someone gets to me ranted people and I need to move my melee guy against them he gets riddled with my own bullets. This won't be a problem if I can get to a point where defenses are static but so far is been a really big issue.
The things I suggested above do take nothing but a bit of stone (even wood walls will do in a pinch, it is all about forcing the pathing of enemies to your designated battlefield) and perhaps a bit of steel for a turret or two and some sandbags. Oh, and of course some ranged weapons, but the starting two and a few long bows should suffice, and each raid by bandits will give you a good change of "upgrades".
Friendly fire can be a pain, but you can alleviate most of the issues by good positioning prior to the outbreak of the actual firefight. Some pointers:
When a raid event starts, hit space immediately and check them out. I like to not click the warning but scroll manually since then you can always hover over the warning to see where they currently are, directonwise. Anyways, if they attack at once, consider how long it will take for them to arrive and if need be, draft your guys immediately. If you want to play it safe, draft everyone, even the noncombatants, just so those id... err your valuable colonists do not run into the fight because they decided that now is the perfect time to haul that stone brick.
When drafted, place your shooters in a rough line vertical to the direction the enemies will come from, and behind cover. If needed, grown trees will do, but walls are of course better. Try to have most of your shooters more or less in one line with a few spaces between each - you can put long ranged pawns to the sides and a bit further back, but that can sometimes create friendly fire zones and needs to be micromanaged. On the other hand, they are pretty safe there and can basically stand in the open because enemies always shoot the closest things first. As a last nuance, place your melee guys near but slightly behind your main gunline. If you have looted some personal shields, instead place them on a flank slightly forward so they are not directly in the firing lines but closer to the enemy and draw some fire.
After positioning, wait for them to come to you (the obvious exception would be sieges, of course). If you really want to, pause and micromanage firing orders to maximize concentrated fire on a few at a time, but I rarely bother (mostly important against incendiary launcher or superweapon wielding bandits).
If during the fight melees somehow get close enough to attack a ranged fighter of yours, select a melee pawn and order him to attack that guy and draw your ranged guy back. Depending on injuries (from shooting or melee), retreat colonists to safety when neccessary.
When combat is over, hit space to pause again and check out your wounded and the possible captures. If some of them start to eat, you should usually let them, but make sure seriously wounded people go to a hospital bed at once. Make sure your docs treat them when they arrive, and try to capture all enemies that do not have completely negative traits if you have room in your prison. The last step can be ignored if your condition is critical, of course.
When the dust settles, unforbid everything there, strip the corpses and haul them somewhere out of sight. I like to set hauling priority to 1 for a day or so on most colonists after a fight so all that loot and corpses get where they should asap.
The moment you set up some basic defences, all of this gets even better since you can place your shooters behind preconstructed 1-space-walls for optimum cover and likely have a turret to draw fire out on a flank.
A killbox with defensive positions for your pawns and turrets to soak the brunt of the front would be useful.
You can make a simple one by making a wall to your base area like so:
------
---- -----
x x
x x
W W W
Lines are walls, X for turrets, and W for defensive cover in which you position your pawns behind.
The raiders will have to funnel through the walls into that gap and straight into your waiting turrets. Your pawns with ranged weapons would then pick them off as the raiders attack the turrets. Keep your melee pawns on the edges of the defensive cover to attack raiders who attempt to flank you. So far its worked quite well for me and is very effective against tribal raiders.
Also, you'd want to equip a survival rifle at least on all your ranged shooters for the extra range. Having an assault rifle would work wonders but if you simply do not have resources to make them. A great bow is actually good enough. Bows actually do pretty significant damage and have decent range with a low CD.
If you have opted out of killbox design (congrats) then may I suggest a layered defense with multiple entry points?
This approach has its advantages and disadvantages, of course. First advantage is that, with multiple entrances, the enemy force will usually split equally between them. They will try to enter from a couple of places at once, instead overwhelming you at one place. This is actually a good thing! You can use this to set the pace of the fight i.e. choose the time and place of the fight, or lure them from one entry point to another.
The second advantage is that failure at any point in the defense lines will NOT negate your whole defense strategy. Ability to retreat and regroup, delay and pin the enemy (in one word, adapt to the situation) is priceless. It is means the difference between life and death.
The third advantage is that most of your defenses are still inside, just in case Randy decides to drop some mechanoids right on top of you.
There are some disadvantages, of course. I've found this strategy to be particularly vulnerable to a combination of manhunter pack and a raid at the same time (a rare occurrence). The adaptation was to add another door in between the layers, but still.
In case you are wondering how this looks in practice, let me show you how this looks on a base that I've done recently (around 10 pawns in total).
http://imgur.com/a/XGCBg
Admittedly, I've got lucky with the steam geysers and the map in general, but the principle is the same regardless. Three entries per side - all three defended from the one in the middle. Long and straight walls/ clear line of fire in all directions to be able to deal with sappers. No cover for the enemy. Multiple layers that enable tactical retreat. Most of the defenses are in reserve at all times. U-shaped bunkers that protect you much more the higher the attacking angle. Either:
1. This one has unobstructed view angles, and offers great protection.
face towards enemy
SSSSSSSSS
SPSPS S S
WWWWWWWWW
or,
2. This one has slightly lower firing arcs, but offers superior protection to the side and some protection against rockets.
face towards enemy
SSSSSSSSS
WPWPW W W
WWWWWWWWW
3. In case of lots of melee attackers, stack your swordsmen in front of your shooters. They won't do team damage this way. So:
face towards enemy
SSSSSSSSS
WPWPW W W
P P
WWWWWWWWW
S - sandbags
W - wall
P - pawn
Main problem with those "benevolent" posts (read "condescending tips") is the fact that if your colony is doing bad, spending resources to make a defensive perimeter will hurt you even more. Also posting a colony layout image would've helped a lot.
Anyway, here are my "i'm about to lose but I won't go down without fight" tips.
• be sure to set an "I surrender" area. That's a walled section usually 25 x 37 (that's 2x13 on 3x13 for roof coverage), with 1-2 openings, and a storage area in the far end containing a couple of valuables in it (art, gold, 10 glit med, etc). It serves as bait for enemies. If your colonists are indoors, and there are no other items outside the attackers will steal what they can and leave.
• if you manage to get a break from attacks / bad events you can set the far end of that area for covered shooting positions with sandbags, butcher tables and walls. Also you can turn this into the infamous killbox (turrets on each side, all connected to a single switch) and place firefoams all over the place. Plenty of pics / videos on how to make one, but always consider your budget (power, firepower and materials)
Main idea is to force the attackers to that specific area, not have them attack your walls where they please.
I understand you have a lot of farms and open land, right? No need to enclose the farms in walls. Just set a main "castle", haul all your valuables inside, put the "I surrender" box at castle entrance and you are set for a long time. Just be sure to direct all your colonists inside and forbid doors when raid starts.
It seems very simple, and it is, as long your colony value is low. Make sure to keep it low, at least until you get decent weapons / armor.
Hope it helps.
the simplest defensive tactic is cover, spread and decoy:
cover:
just have something to stand behind. the more things you're behind, the more cover you have. the BEST cover is gained by standing behind a wall (the pawn will lean out around the corner) with a sandbag on the side they'll lean out. Yes, you'll still be hit occasionally, but way less than standing in the open or even behind a tree.
spread:
Spread means don't place your pawns adjacent to each other. Missed bullets scatter to adjacent squares. Leave at least 1 empty square between any 2 pawns when being shot at. If you're attacked by minigun enemies (or heavy harge blaster centipedes), then leave at least 3 spaces between pawns, as those weapons have higher miss radius.
Decoy:
Enemies shoot the CLOSEST (but not on fire) pawn to them. This means that you can use less valuable or harder to injure pawns in cover close to the enemies. personal shields are amazing, but even a naked, unimportant pawn will buy you some time (and the reduced hit chance from cover is likely to just down them rather than kill). Even nonviolent pawns can be drafted to stand in cover. If you have multiple melee/nonviolent pawns that you use for this, you can rotate them as they start getting injured or their personal shield breaks. A very nice trick is that you can ignore the previous 2 rules for pawns placed behind the decoys, since they won't be shot at (but beware: if the decoys get lit on fire or downed, the enemies will suddenly switch to the pawns behind!)
With those rules, you'll come out of most fights without any serious casualties...excluding a random brain shot or something thats pure luck.
One last tip, 1 on 1 fights are a terrible idea...you always want local superiority. This means that if the enemy splits up (such as sending melee pawns ahead while ranged take cover, or splitting up to 2 different buildings) you back away or hide in cover anywhere you're outnumbered, and you rush to fight anywhere that you outnumber them. If you have a few melee pawns, they can be fantastic for this, popping out of a building to triple team someone will get you a few cuts, but is otherwise a rather low risk way to take out a few enemies.
Checkerboard maze of steel or plasteel deadfalls will do the same job as turrets in a killbox.
However you can also just make a compound like this
http://i.imgur.com/vbsnOSE.jpg
And dive out with 4-6 people to melee raiders that get separated to death. A good shooter with a fast weapon (pistol, machine pistol, even AR) can also pop out of a door, shoot, and get back behind it before return fire. Hold interior door open so you can move.
One variant I want to try out is to leave extra space on either side of the interior door, so that I can have a personal shielded pawn open the door, causing up to 4-5 pawns to auto-target a raider, then after shots go off move personal shield pawn back inside. This completely negates the cooldown period for moving after firing, meaning weapons like AR/pistol/shotgun would be borderline untouchable, as only these weapons on enemy raiders could hit you, and only if they defeat hard cover + don't hit personal shield.
Quote from: taha on February 06, 2017, 08:52:23 AM
Main problem with those "benevolent" posts (read "condescending tips") is the fact that if your colony is doing bad, spending resources to make a defensive perimeter will hurt you even more. Also posting a colony layout image would've helped a lot.
That is not really fair.
What most people here (including myself) proposed was nothing you could not whip up with a bunch of stone blocks and a very small amount of steel with just a few constructors and 2-3 workdays. A few cover colums and a turret or two as decoys cost almost nothing and the positioning tweaks we suggested are 100% free. The most recent posts also added the use of traps and ways to make melee guys work, which is again very cheap and could possibly be incredibly helpful.
If someone had posted "well, just build 20 turrets and a perfect killbox around it and place your 10 guys with charge rifles at the points marked with an x", you might have a point. If someone had posted "raids are easy, git good", you might have a point about being condescending, but I see nothing of that sort in this thread.
@OP
Just had a nice "example fight" in a relatively new colony. Had a new-guy-chased-by-pirates event before my defenses were built.
I sadly forgot to take multiple screenshots, but the only ones of my guys that moved were the two meles on the top of my battle line - they were a bit forward from their position at the beginning of battle to draw some fire and if needed intercept those guys that almost made it to my shooters.
As you can see, I have one damaged pawn - shot by a sniper rifle in the arm, but luckily nothing serious. The shield on Shanda was almost down, iirc. With less pawns, I would likely have taken a tad more damage, but fights like this are quite doable.
My pawns are not overly strong, btw - most of the guys there have only self crafted mediocre short bows and bad shooting stats - about 50% of my damage output are the two guys with the starting weapons and one with a shotgun I found on some attacker during summer.
[attachment deleted by admin due to age]
As for cheap cover.
Rock chunks are your friends.
Instead of Building Sandbags place a dumping stockpile and fill it with chunks.
The first defense posts I build in my colony look like this
C C C CC
CWWWC
Three walls surrounded by chunks.
I can place two shooters behind the walls, with a secure spot to retreat a wounded.
The middle spot is also great to place a backup melee pawn if I can't retreat fast enough,
or a Non-Fighter for immidiate MedEvac.
Those dotted around the base are cheap reliable defenses, which deny the enemy the use in my direction.
Quote from: hwfanatic on February 06, 2017, 05:13:13 AM
/picture
Thanks for that awesome write-up. This is unrelated, but in your picture don't your colonists get angry because you have them in such tight confines? I think you saw the "critique my base" thread and you can see what an apparently stupidly sized production room I have. If I can make it that small... that would change my game dramatically. Or do you have a mod that changes room size parameters?
I don't use such mods.
As stated in this other thread, the space requirements have been reduced considerably for A16. I used to have much larger bases.
But also the inner yard is considered a room and an extremely spacious one at that. They spend a lot of time in it and their space requirement is thus filled. This is something I've been experimenting with lately. It has its advantages and disadvantages.
Quote from: hwfanatic on February 09, 2017, 08:44:10 AM
No longer true in A16. Single-tile corridors work fine if they are at least 10.5 tiles long. 3x5 bedrooms also work very well. They can even be made decent with superior furniture and some floor tiles.
Also, do note that furniture and pawns themselves no longer fill space in the same way they used to.
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/comments/5l4oe6/another_unsung_minor_improvement_in_alpha_16_that/dbt3byt/
I can confirm this to be true in practice.
Quote from: SpaceDorf on February 07, 2017, 03:18:10 AM
Those dotted around the base are cheap reliable defenses, which deny the enemy the use in my direction.
Hmmm, you might be too clever on this one. The rubble will prevent the enemies from using the walls for cover, true. But can't they just use the rubble for cover?