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As you can see from the dramatic failures involved in the alternatives, they don't work very well.

Honestly, the only alternative I've seen to the killbox is the logic bomb defense, which works by confusing the enemy AI into going in circles until they all pass out or go insane. This is, obviously, not a stable method of defending the base as it relies on the AI not getting changed to not fall for this.

But honestly, I'm not seeing anything intrinsically wrong with killboxes. This is how defenses work in real life, too. Ever look at a medieval castle? If you're fighting guys who do not have siege equipment, this is exactly how defenses work in real life. Heck, my defense for my base is basically a piece of a star fort, a real life killbox.

I suggest beatings with blunt instruments instead. They're more controllable and less likely to cause accidental death or having your prisoners bleed out should the doctor take too long. Pawns cannot aim and their bullets go EVERYWHERE and may damage things.

Well, how many colonists you can keep as individuals before they become faceless tends to vary, but the Monkeysphere theories may have something to do with it. I find that I have no difficulties keeping my pawns straight as individuals well into the 30+ range, personally, but eventually the limited and clumsy UI starts to get in the way of keeping order.

Running your own Abu Ghraib is pretty much the only consistent method of getting medical skill practice in the vanilla game. Otherwise, the decay rate quickly overcomes the rate at which you occasionally have to treat a colonist from locally occurring plagues and animal bites, and if it doesn't, your colony is probably doomed as everyone is being shot to death rapidly.

The sensible option would be that if a background gives a bonus to a skill, that skill is always enabled.

IMO unless we make all raids either drops, or sieges kill boxes will be the main defense. And unless AI was made to avoid it we'll always have em.

Drops are *WHY* you NEED killboxes. Otherwise, all of your colonists would instantly die because it would be impossible to defend as the shooting begins with zero notice. Even without, you'd still need killboxes, simply because you are outnumbered and can afford close to zero losses, while they have infinite men and can throw as many into the grinder as they please.

I'm not saying that there shouldn't be things to try to mitigate the killbox ruining immersion. However, if the raids were all "easy" there would be no need for kill boxes.

Killboxes don't ruin immersion. Killboxes are historical. Ever see the design of a castle? It's basically just one killbox after another.

I never use kill boxes, and honestly I rarely use turrets. The only time I lose a pawn is if I'm negligent and dont have them retreat to cover when I should.  I'v modified the strategy to build my base in a grid while being offset at the edge to prevent raiders from sniping in.  I can safely build out in the center of an open flat map being able to protect my base from any direction.

A: That looks suspiciously like a killbox. You've channeled your opposition into several narrow approaches and then shot them.
B: Many of those colonists look like they've been shot. This is not a sustainable situation because those shots will quickly become fatal. And remember: They have infinite men, whereas you can't afford any losses.
C: The defense only works if all of those guys are standing in those exact positions all the time. However, since many raids give zero warning, with enemies just immediately arriving at your trade beacon and shooting immediately, unless you have a large garrison standing in rotating guard shifts, you instantly die the moment this happens.

You have all the rock chunks and solid cover to use, it's not really super hard to beat any of the vanilla attackers

Well, at least until the attackers start to A: Outrange you, and B: Vastly outnumber you. Remember, in the open, you're going to get to fire maybe one or two shots before the attackers are on your face. You're going to need some kind of structure to prevent this, because colonists are unwilling to simply spray fire to suppress an area without bothering to aim at it.

except the "BOOM MECHANOIDS LAND AT YOUR ENTRANCE GAME OVER" event.

And yeah, as you see, that always happens eventually. SOMETHING eventually lands on your doorstep with zero entrance, and for you, this is a game over. Well constructed killzones DON'T HAVE THIS PROBLEM. Nobody cares about how you solved the easy problems, the hard problems are what is important in the end. Sure, it's perfectly possible to solve most of the other kinds of raids without some kind of killzone, but none of that matters: It's how the system fails that matters. If the system fails, it's worthless.

I think I've seen a combination of backgrounds that rendered a pawn incapable of doing anything at all, just flat 0s and -'s across the board.

So what are you using? If you're burrowing yourself into some kind of chokepoint, that's still basically a killbox. And sure, it might not be HARD to train a colonist for combat, but's...not something that is normal.

There aren't really too many alternatives to killboxes and other chokepoint entrance structures, because building a 360-degree defense is prohibitively expense in both resources and energy, and using colonists to defend is basically impossible because attacks occur instantly with zero warning, so defenses must be fully manned and fully operational at all times, which we presently do not have the numbers to do and do not have the UI features to work without it being a massively tedious micromanagement chore. Besides, manned killboxes are still killboxes.

On top of that, your enemies have infinite soldiers while none of yours can be replaced. You pretty much HAVE to fight extremely cheaply.

Devilstrand is not affected by blight, nor are any other long-grow-time crops. Otherwise they would basically never survive, as a blight wipes out 80-90% (I forget the exact number) every 8 days, and so after 3 blight cycles, only 0.8% would survive, which, out of 100 plots, is still < 1 surviving plot, so no survivors.

According to the datafiles, flares are every 30 days, so anything that takes longer than 30 days will never complete in hydroponics.

Will a hunter carry a carcass back even though he won't haul?  I assume it's similar to how a guy who won't haul will still get materials and bring them to the work site.  If so, early game I still get rid of that guy or sell him to a trader.  Mid-Late game hes my new dedicated hunter.  Even if he doesn't bring carcasses back I would still use him late game to fight.

Yes, but a very curious thing happens: He brings back the carcass...part of the way. Then, for no particularly obvious reason, he gets tired of hauling the corpse back, and drops it in the field and wanders off, and someone else has to finish the hauling because he won't do it. Hunters who can also haul don't do this.

What happens when your guy is a bloodthirsty psychopath and shooting people is his joy in life? I have a guy like that, he loves raiders...

He wants to leave his map plot entirely, presumably after stripmining the entire site. I often wonder why we have an entire rest-of-the-world where there appears to be nothing you can do with it.

It would be even BETTER if they would attack your base, like free meat delivered to your doorstep.