Messages

[...] raids are either 8-14 good equipped or 30+ tribes people.

Wait until you start getting hit by raids of 80+ equipped people, or well over 100 tribals. Suddenly Sandbags are very useful.

As to the defence. What I used to do was have a kill box that did three things.
1: Exposed the attackers to fire as they moved to:
2: Sandbags to provide cover. These were at the top range for my trigger happy grenade throwers. So all the attackers would hunker down there.
3: There was a door right next to it which lead to a blind corner where I had 8 close combat types.

Apart from sandbags at the entrance to prevent people standing outside the kill box, and Sandbags just next to the bland corner to the close combat chamber to stop people standing outside and shooting I only used layered Sandbags to prevent the enemy from closing with my firing points. That way for authorised visitors it was pretty quick to get in and out. For attackers it was a pain.

However with the recent changes to equipment racks I'm not sure how to defend a colony. I suspect/hope that T9's are going to be the way forward and just build a burning box which combusts with the raids inside it. That is at least my plan, not sure how well it'll work.
I did find that if you make the graves inside the killbox then they get set on fire and the bodies burnt, however the grave remains. Meaning you can effectively get rid of bodies and not need to research cremation, or have the bodies lying about.

Its not every day that the Game developer shows up to personally snuff your colony:
http://i.imgur.com/8b7kKNL.jpg

Although I am a bit more concerned about the company he's in. Meet Amanda:
http://i.imgur.com/fq4pMUb.jpg

Who, despite it being -6 outside, rather likes her gadgets:
http://i.imgur.com/Wd0GHxy.jpg
To the extent that she's rejected the warm coats the rest of the map are wearing.

Do armour and shield deteriorate during every day wear?

I ask as at the moment I'm stockpiling all my armour and shield and before every attack I race everyone out to grab protection then to the front lines. Even with just four sets of armour its getting to be a real ball ache.

Maybe for simplicities sake, and my sanity, it'd make sense to only deteriorate when hit? After all stuff like thorns and rubbing cloth together when you walk isn't going to even be noticed by armour plate. You need a amount of energy to cause degrading damage.

Or failing that have a "drafted" selection for the self dress mechanics that Tynan is working on? So that when drafted they armour them selves.

Speaking of which, Can we please have a hurried up release of the self dress mechanics? Micromanaging just ten colonists dress is already making me think of heading back to A8...

Well After I have the one prisoner to train Social, if I don't want them due to injuries or Traits I don't pick them up, and send out my melee squad to batter them to death and keep up their melee skills.
That's only in the late game I normally just let them snuff it on their own accord if its early game and I'm busy and don't have the time.

People alive right now are potential colonists!

Bit more worried about the Cave world tunneller to be honest...

What actually happens is that they are frozen for maybe a year or so while the starship accelerates towards the speed of light. At that point relativity happens, hundreds of years can pass, and they won't experience more than year or so frozen.

Oh, here we go. That theory is the biggest pile of BS ever conceived.
[...]
There is ZERO QUANTIFIABLE EVIDENCE to substantiate this... moronic theory.

Even the Big Bang Theory has more evidence than that verbal vomit.

Uh... are you sure?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilation#Velocity_and_gravitational_time_dilation_combined-effect_tests

Anyway I suspect this is not the time nor the place (nor the Velocity...) for such a very big argument.

So the micromanagement problem is known and temporary to Alpha 9.

[/quote]

And there was much rejoicing!

[the]

I'm not a very good tactician so i tend to play with Randy in Builder mode. I've found it a far better bet for casual gameplay where i can build a solid colony without getting spanked by the first group of raiders. The other storytellers (including Phoebe) ruin everything in ever-increasing waves so fast it's not funny.

As i've played more and have gotten maybe just slightly better i've increased the difficulty to the next step since Randy the Builder tends to send just 1 or 2 raiders against your 5-6 colonists and a few turrets, even later on. I always imagined Randy was the obliterator among the storytellers, but at least in the two easiest settings he's... the easiest. 

A good trick to learn is cover. My defence stratergy goes something like this:

Use boulders (Remember dumping stockpiles can be used to form boulder walls)>  sandbagged redoubt> Perimeter wall > defensive line (that's two single cell walls, two cells apart with sandbags between them) > Primitive Killbox > full killbox

Try something like Embrasures Mod, or the Weapon Rack 'exploit', if it's not fixed yet.

Yeah that's all gone now. you can walk over weapon racks (not really sure it was an exploit).
Which scuppered my plans to do a traditional fortress with the perimeter wall being having firing slits and all my colonists with sniper rifles. Then we just muster to which ever side of the wall is under attack, and take up positions.

You can still waffle entrances quite efficiently. There's effectively no limit to the number of raiders you can kill with two trigger happy grenadiers with proper positioning.

While I see your point (to a certain degree) about impassable objects you can fire *through* which can be used to exploit the AI into standing out in the open rather than trying to run past you and take cover behind your lines - You're effectively exploiting the AI anyway, so why not simply offer them cover-points you have flanks on anyway? Or that are adjacent to turrets. Or are in range of grenades.

The Ai *WILL* seek out unintelligent cover locations if you provide them, it's a mainstay of a lot of killboxes.

My experience in A8 was that some would seek cover, while the others would try to assault through to your colony.

And that's before mentioning the new incendiary launcher, which is more or less designed for crowd control or that you can soak an absurd amount of firepower with proper personal shield usage.

To be fair I've not yet gotten to see a T9 yet in A9. The colony I had got Boomrat Psychic wave after 8 months of game play. At one point was alarmed by the fact the enemies were spawning with equal manpower, and better armaments than my colony at one point, and that was on casual.

This thread is a gold mine! Many thanks to you all.

If anyone has other thoughts, I am all ears.

Good to hear, that's why I started it.

Event:
Lost Key.
One of the colonists looses his door key card. He can't open any other doors until another colonist gets to him. (Use the "Rescue colonist" functions perhaps?

A good nights sleep:
No matter the conditions a Colonist has had a really good nights sleep. + morale effect.

Can someone explain to me a little bit about this venting I've been hearing about? I'm a bit confused as to what it is being used for as some comments make me think one thing, while another is making me think of something else.

On one hand, some comments give an obvious and logical impression, creating an escape for the hot air generated by a cooler on the outside of the freezer, so that it doesn't build up.

And then there are comments that seem to imply... venting the freezer interior itself? Is this actually something people are doing or am I just reading those comments wrong because it seems to me that having a hole in my freezer roof would only serve to let the cold air out faster. There's enough heat escaping through the doors and walls...

?

We were talking about this issue here, when I had problems a couple of days before:
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=10662.0

My reply #7 has details of venting, including a diagram.

I can't imagine any situation where I would use anything other than a sandbag or a solid wall as cover.
I can't even pinpoint what you're specifically referring to - when you say " that a mechanic has been pulled from the game" without any context

In A8 Butcher Tables, Research benches and Gun racks could all be made from Plasteel (Although not the Butcher table which is why I stopped using it) giving good hit points. They were impassable, but colonists could fire over them.
So it was common to use them as Embrasures in a Bunker or firing line. Allowing your colonists to fire over them, while being unable to be charged. When you've got ~30 colonists and you're getting charged by 100+ you can't physically produce enough firepower to stop the charge. Meaning that the enemy will reach that line of sandbags cross over it and then overwhelm your colonists.

The ability to fire in, while not in danger of being charged meant that it brought you time to whittle down the numbers. Now that option doesn't exist so now any long term colony either has to be very smart about its defence, or is pointless because its doomed.

In short: Sandbags don't do enough. Any other form of barricade option we had has been removed. Equally grenades seem much more useless now. As you have to be so close to the enemy that you'll just get murdered by charges.

Yeah it does, 5 tiles cross-shaped. Pawns set on fire burn for a rather long time, during which they run around in panic. Forgot to mention, due to overall reduced damage turrets can take quite some punishment now before blowing up.

The new balancing takes some time to get used to, til now I rather like it, more than before, where you commited genocide on a daily basis

Good to know. On the Damage thing are you sure? Because I was getting a hell of a lot less colonists than normal, mostly because they all seemed to end up dead. Although that might simply be I wasn't causing enough damage and people were therefore legging it before capture.

Well I just got The Psychotic wave with Boomrats. So that my current colony doomed.
Hopefully my new one will make use of all I've learned in the last two days, and will be a bit better. Its Underground time.

[...] incendiary launchers got a huge buff [...]

As in the Gun formally known as the T9? Does it actually have a blast radius now? IF so I might have to start thinking about using them. (when I get some)

A9 seems to have taken a step backwards from long term play.

In the old A8 you could use some placeable items as barricades that you could shoot over. Which was very useful for dealing with the unending constantly ramping up hordes.

However that mechanic has been pulled from the game, now the bad guys can just walk over any obstacle you care to set up. This is leaving me in a bit of a bind.

So anyone one got any decent defences now you can't make a bunker that's going to hold on for more than 30 seconds? My current colony, well I'm looking at it and wondering how I'm going to defend it.

Tynan: With the recent insulation changes, along with this one it really feels like you're forcing us underground with the traditional complex killbox.
To date all but one of my colonies have been overground ones with the colonists in the front line manning the barricades against the oncoming horde.
Equally it feels like you're taking a step away from the long term play which was one of the beauties of this game. It Felt like you could dig in and stay.
Maybe for the next build a 1x2 Barbed wire barricade or thicket that's impassable. Something like this:
http://www.fallingpixel.com/products/32604/mains/barbwire04_prev01.jpg