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As I've stated several times in this thread already, I have no problem defeating these tribal raids and am not having issues with blobbing my entire army together. My issue is with the massive discrepancy between unskilled tribal ranged units and the damage they can put out relative to all other types of raids, simply because of volume of fire.

A jump from 1% chance to hit to 12.38% is rather significant, multiply that by the numbers you see in an 8000point raid and you get a ridiculous amount of damage done to your pawns for using intended gameplay mechanics.

These are two contradictory statements. How in the world can you possibly see a ridiculous amount of damage being done to your pawns if you don't even allow your pawns to group up in such a way that they can be dealt that damage?

Because in order to prevent friendly fire damage by the very mechanics this game operates, you need to have your pawns on adjacent squares... This does not seem so difficult to understand but I have had reiterate it several times already.

Killboxes aren't an exploit. They're a celebrated tradition of the game for years now! Indeed, I've started my colonies Killbox 1, Killbox 2, Killbox 3, etc...

More seriously though, yes tribal raids are unbalanced and no once you get to higher difficulties you won't be able to best them easily without gamey tactics (killbox or not). We've offered you advice. You say they're beneath your principles. What's more to say? 

If you honestly believe gamey tactics should remain in this game I'd argue you should probably not contribute anything further to this games development as you are clearly content with the current state of combat. Something the developers and many other posters on this forum and elsewhere are adamant need to be addressed.

This is not the first time I've seen posters on this forum advocate for stagnant, unrefined aspects of this game to remain simply because you've grown used to them. It's time you dinosaurs crawl out of the past or go play a modded version, because most of the arguments I've seen in this thread go directly against what I've seen posted by Tynan and his staff as to what the future of this game holds, which is a well refined combat system that doesn't rely on exploiting unfinished features.

As I've stated several times in this thread already, I have no problem defeating these tribal raids and am not having issues with blobbing my entire army together. My issue is with the massive discrepancy between unskilled tribal ranged units and the damage they can put out relative to all other types of raids, simply because of volume of fire.

If putting a ranged unit in an adjacent square of my melee troops to prevent friendly fire is wrong, then that goes completely against the fact that this is the only way to prevent friendly fire in the first place, and seems rather unintuitive.

A jump from 1% chance to hit to 12.38% is rather significant, multiply that by the numbers you see in an 8000point raid and you get a ridiculous amount of damage done to your pawns for using intended gameplay mechanics.

I don't consider gaming the target priorities of the enemy pawns by forcing them to hit my shielded melee troops to be intended gameplay, nor do I feel you should be able to swap in fresh melee troops for when your front line loses its shields. Unless you are managing to kill all their melee troops and free your own pawns, movement is significantly hampered by engagements.

If you have 20-30 mortars firing at once you missed the part where I said "reasonable"

I would highly recommend anyone responding to this thread to build a realistic defensive set up without the use of a mechanic exploiting killbox, and try to defend against an 8000point tribal raid using ~30colonists with reasonable, but high quality equipment loadouts. Even with a proper set up, this will be a much more difficult challenge than any other isolated incident.

I'm merely seeking a way for this difficulty to remain, but in a way that can be effectively minimized with preparation, skill, and proper pawn placement. I actually like how difficult this incident is, I just don't like how crippling it can be to your pawns limbs simply because of the way adjacency affects accuracy, and would prefer if the difficulty came from other means such as improved AI.

I think another major problem that arises here is that most armours don't protect hands and feet which results in extra maiming from high damage projectiles en masse.

I'm not advocating that you group pawns for concentrated fire, I'm saying you need to group your melee and ranged together if you don't want friendly fire incidents.

And you seriously don't have a problem with a 0 skill in shooting getting massive bonuses to hit chance because of adjacency? If as you say its a 1% chance to hit at max range, that means with 8 other tiles, he has a 12.38% chance to hit the melee guy in front, and the guys shooting the melee have a 12.28% chance to hit your ranged character behind(not sure how to factor in cover but I'm assuming you did with the 1%). This is a massive bump in hit chance, for doing something the mechanics encourage you to do unless you don't want a melee buffer for their hordes, or go pure melee.

Well if they stand in impossible-to-miss group -- in which they will never do -- then why they should not get hurt?

The scenario you quoted above was a single ranged pawn behind a single melee pawn, not exactly an unreasonable situation.

I'm not advocating that you group pawns for concentrated fire, I'm saying you need to group your melee and ranged together if you don't want friendly fire incidents.

And you seriously don't have a problem with a 0 skill in shooting getting massive bonuses to hit chance because of adjacency? If as you say its a 1% chance to hit at max range, that means with 8 other tiles, he has a 12.38% chance to hit the melee guy in front, and the guys shooting the melee have a 12.38% chance to hit your ranged character behind(not sure how to factor in cover but I'm assuming you did with the 1%). This is a massive bump in hit chance, for doing something the mechanics encourage you to do unless you don't want a melee buffer for their hordes, or go pure melee.

Edit: typo

The addition of an EMP mine could help solve that problem for a few minutes until you shoot them into incapacity.

AI core requirements would be a good way to limit the number you can have under your control.

Would give another reason to hate solar flares though.

Alright let's set aside real life examples because that's clearly not addressing my initial concern, which is that pawns with no experience or knowledge on how to operate and launch projectiles and guns are putting out massive amounts of lethal or incapacitating damage.

If a 15 skill gardener can fail to harvest a potato, I feel it wouldn't be too much to ask to see a similar potential to fail with ranged weapons used by inexperienced, untrained pawns, rather than just moving these very harmful projectiles onto adjacent squares. If you're fighting Tribals, you need melee troops to engage theirs. If you don't want friendly fire incidents, you need your pawns adjacent to each other. This means these projectiles are going to hit and do full damage a lot more frequently than their actual hit chance implies.

Right, cause you never have to reload, clear a jam, fix your sights or anything on your Awful machine gun. Just hold the trigger in their general direction and the bullets will track your targets behind a solid defensive structure at 50meters.

You're also assuming these people are getting even basic instruction on how to operate complex machinery when the vast majority of people on the Rim probably only get 1 full meal a day that they had to scrounge out of the dirt themselves. These people did not go to school and learn history like you and I, probably don't know what a gun is beyond that its loud and death comes out the other end, and they certainly don't have shooting ranges.

I wouldn't even mind if certain weapons had shooting skill requirements. Unskilled shooters probably don't understand the basics of reloading, safeties(do those exist in the Rim?), chambering a round, sighting targets, calibrating iron-sights/scopes, or lack the strength to even draw a greatbow or throw a 5kg pila.

That makes absolutely no sense. Anyone can pick up a gun and start putting holes in a target with a few minutes of basic instruction. We don't need restrictions on what weapons a pawn can use; having a zero shooting skill is bad enough.

It actually makes a lot of sense for some one who has "barely heard of it(shooting)" as a concept. There is far more to operating a firearm/missile weapon than point and click. Regardless, this pawn with "a few minutes of basic instruction" should not be able to put even the minority of his shots within a meter of his target at max range.

I propose something be done to tone down low level shooting's current capabilities, as right now it's a matter of quantity over quality that I feel is quite unbalanced and unrealistic.

If the current stats are in place when combat AI becomes more dynamic and skilled as I've heard proposed as a solution to the current difficulty curve of raids, there will be some very hard encounters for even modestly wealthy colonies. My suggestions may seem out of place now, while the only way for difficulty to increase is through larger raids, I think you may see my point when the AI becomes better.

As it stands, this game is about the stories that unfold, and I'm finding most of my stories following a band of handicapped colonists with missing hands and feet taken off by primitive hunting weapons thrown by incompetent savages. Not exactly NYT bestseller material.

I have the largest map in advanced settings selected. Map still seems small.

Really? You don't find half your haulers/basic craftsmen running off to Mordor for stone chunks and steel slag from drop pods?

I imagine it's similar to what I've found

Completely anecdotal, though I've heard others mention similar findings. Maybe your food is better and they like your A/C? I'm assuming there is always a base chance of it happening, just increased by environmental factors/pawn needs with it being one possibility versus mad animal.

I think this is actually tied to temperatures, and only related to seasons by a calculation of temperature at a given date. My reasoning for this is when you build a "greenhouse"/indoor fields on a cold map with no growing season, they say out of season temperatures until you put up a roof and get the temps adjusted.

Edit: A quick perusal of my current save's file only yielded results for "temperature" in the tales section and for each of my freezer settings so I'm unable to test my theory.

I personally have not experienced this, but do you know if when it does happen whether it says the animal was tamed by the doctor or whether it self-tamed? If it's counted as by the doctor it should give a % value in the top left scroll text.

If it's self tamed, I imagine it's similar to what I've found with wild animals and crash survivors, that they feel they have a better chance with your colony than on their own. Meaning on an ice-sheet with frigid temperatures outside and no food, the chances of them self taming/joining will be higher.

I imagine the first hunters did have a lot of trouble hitting moving targets with their thrown stabby-sticks. Practice makes perfect after all.

I think a solution to your other point would be to drastically reduce the xp needed for the early levels and increase higher ones, which would actually make those useless pawns able to dig themselves out of their predicaments, while making godlike pawns just as their name suggests. This would make combat skills more akin to the rest of the skill pool, as you probably don't use your level 0-3 pawns for cooking, unless you like food poisoning.

You can always delegate them to melee roles, as even brain damaged boxers can throw a good punch, if not being able to understand why they need to punch things.

I think for raids, it should be that only the most skilled fighters provide real threats to a well established defensive front, allowing you to fight off even the most intimidating raids through skill by eliminating key targets, rather than automatically losing because you didn't have enough bullets flying. You would still risk getting overrun by swarms and bad decisions/positioning, but you would have a fighting chance without being screwed over because 200 tribals throw 40damage pila with an 11.1% chance of losing legs per projectile.

Edit: I just watched a 15skill grower fail to pluck a potato out of the ground and people are arguing that savages should be able to hit within a meter of their target with a great bow they haven't even seen used before at 50 paces. By the flavour text these guys don't even know what shooting is...