I think that sieges late-game can become easy to deal with, now that mortars are becoming a more and more popular addition to bases. To counter this, I came up with bombardements. This is basically like a siege, but with a few minor differences:
- The shots are fired from outside the map, and thus the source cannot be destroyed
- The large difference makes the shots wildly innacurate.
- The source is from a LRAG (Long Range Artillery Gun), a building 2x6 large, and manned by a single person.
- The LRAG's rounds are not normal mortar rounds. They are MUCH larger, and unstackable.
- LRAG's take a LOT longer to reload then mortars. About 10-30 seconds.
- The LRAG requires alot of late-game materials, like Plasteel.
- The LRAG attack would last a LONG time, maybe even weeks.
- You may be alerted to the location of a LRAG gun prior to an attack, giving you a chance to send out a convoy to end the attack
- During an attack, the location of the LRAG is shown on the map, allowing you to attack the LRAG and stop the attack.
- An LRAG round's impact explosion is a lot larger then that of a mortar.
- Making an LRAG round would require a lot more resources then a mortal shell.
- The LRAG needs power to work. A lot of power.
having a colonist suddenly killed by an explosion that you could not ever have prevented is not fun.
You're basically telling anyone who plays on a flat map...or any map in which they don't tunnel into mountains....that you're removing the ONE viable strategy for fighting sieges (kill the siegers before they start shelling) and must instead just "hope they don't get hit."
You're proposing REMOVING gameplay options in favor of possible unavoidable, completely RNG deaths by shelling.
-1000 from me. I couldn't ever support an idea like this, and given my preference for flat maps, i'd probably disable this event or (if i couldn't, then i'd) savescum until i got a different type of raid every time it showed up, until i got sick of the wasted time and just put down rimworld for a game that didn't remove meaningful player choice.
Limdood use hard words. But is right.
Destruction without prevention is ... not funny. Even if you could attack them by sending a group. In winter, they are more than 4 days on there way. And this group have to be big enough!
No...not nice
With "inaccurate" I ment to the point that the closest it even TRIES to aim is the map. Some fired shots will miss the map entirely, and the ones that don't are VERY unlikely to do any damage at all. But when they do it is devestating.
The only way this could ever see the light of day is for the player to have viable counter strategies. Think ... maybe this happens only if you decide to face a faction large enough, and by then you have a sufficient transport pod coverage that can send a counterattack against the artillery in a few minutes' notice, or have an artillery base of your own as a deterrent.
I will add to this idea.
1. Before a bombardment ever happens you will start to get a series of smaller raids. The raiders are scouts and will not directly attack. Instead they will wander around scouting the map. After a set period, or if they are attacked, the scouts will try to escape the map. If a scout escapes, then bad things happen.
2. A period of days after a scout escapes the player can receive a message (for free or you may have to pay) about activity in a specific map tile with in a set radius of the players base. This is where the off map artillery is being put in place. They player has a reasonable time to respond and go to the site as the artillery takes to to put in place and ready.
3. If the player ignores this...they start to receive rounds from the artillery around the map. The first three shells are launched over a couple days and scouts may be present. These are ranging rounds. If the player does not take action, they will then be shelled for two days. Then raided.
Scout thing is a good mix with this bombardment. Adding threats in other tiles that could damage your base is a neat idea, but very tricky to balance. As said before, winter increases travel time. Possibility of getting ambushed by raiders or manhunter packs on the way there, plus other crap that happens at your base. We would need a lot of time in case those situations occur. I'm sure there are some other issues we haven't gone over but those alone are kind of game-breaking.