Alternatives to killboxing

[warden]

Yup. Turrets handle everything and all the food comes from farming, so colonists don't even need to carry weapons. Also, it seems artistic people just rain down from the skies quite often. I got a level 18 art dude as my first ever escape pod crash. Well, off to work with you right away, there's the table and there's a lot of wood.

[TLHeart]

I have no problems using tactics to kill the approaching people. Even out numbered 2 to 1, I can win.... what kills me in most games is the rage attacking animals due to  a wave of bad mojo. Turtles and wild bores will tear you colonists to pieces, no matter how good you are at tactics out in the fields.... need defenses against them. animal kill boxes it is.

[Kaballah]

Easier than you'd think.  I have a colony of over 100 that has never fired a single shot.  Turrets.

Haha ok, now would you say the game's difficulty has FORCED you into this situation of 100 colonists that you don't bother to put a gun on because there is no alternative, because uh

e: It's just weird that people equate "The game is easy if you build 5,000 turrets" with "The game is really hard if you do not"

[Veneke]

I really agree with Monkfish. The currently overwhelming benefits of the killbox would be reduced pretty significantly by requiring turrets to be manned and supplied with ammunition. The killbox would still work but assuming that turret ammunition is unlocked as artillery shells are, and the AI's preference melee pawns with shields continues, things would appear to look an awful lot better.

Haha ok, now would you say the game's difficulty has FORCED you into this situation of 100 colonists that you don't bother to put a gun on because there is no alternative, because uh

e: It's just weird that people equate "The game is easy if you build 5,000 turrets" with "The game is really hard if you do not"

The point being made here is that there's no reason to use any other defence than an automated killbox. It is the single best approach to your colony's defence in the entire game. It is basically impenetrable if designed correctly, only has a weakness against the odd solar flare, can be constructed immediately, and offers no danger whatsoever to your colonists. If you're using something other than a turret-lined killbox it's because you want to, not because it's an optimal strategy.

Now, no one is saying that there shouldn't be an optimal strategy. The argument being made, by the OP and others in the thread, is that the killbox strategy needs to offer fewer benefits or run more risks in order to give the player an interesting choice. Currently the game offers a terribly uninteresting choice in terms of how to defend your colony where the killbox is clearly superior in every respect to any other form of defence.

It has very little, if indeed anything, to do with the difficulty of the game.

[Kaballah]

The point being made here is that there's no reason to use any other defence than an automated killbox. It is the single best approach to your colony's defence in the entire game. It is basically impenetrable if designed correctly, only has a weakness against the odd solar flare, can be constructed immediately, and offers no danger whatsoever to your colonists. If you're using something other than a turret-lined killbox it's because you want to, not because it's an optimal strategy.

- It costs vast amounts of steel and power, so in terms of efficiency, no not really
- Colonists aren't even weak vs the odd solar flare
- You can trade immediately, you can make bows at the smith immediately (just in vanilla)

I mean you can absolutely play the game however you enjoy it best but your criteria for efficiency and what is optimal are very subjective.  I mean ok, resources are generally common enough that it's not hard to build and power a huge array of turrets, but that being "best" is strictly your preference.  And actually the OP and others have said repeatedly that yes, the game is too hard unless one builds an impregnable kill box.

[Veneke]

- It costs vast amounts of steel and power, so in terms of efficiency, no not really
- Colonists aren't even weak vs the odd solar flare
- You can trade immediately, you can make bows at the smith immediately (just in vanilla)

I mean you can absolutely play the game however you enjoy it best but your criteria for efficiency and what is optimal are very subjective.  I mean ok, resources are generally common enough that it's not hard to build and power a huge array of turrets, but that being "best" is strictly your preference.  And actually the OP and others have said repeatedly that yes, the game is too hard unless one builds an impregnable kill box.

The cost of building, maintaining, and powering a wall and a killbox is trivial, especially if you manage to build into a valley or tunnel into a mountain. If you get a very unlucky set-up you might have to forgo lights for a while but the mood modifier for darkness is pretty minor.

Colonists aren't weak against a solar flare, and you can craft bows. That's nice I suppose. The killbox is still a safer and more effective means of dealing with the enemy than running around with your colonists hoping no pirate with a M-24 (sniper rifle I think it got renamed to in the last update?) gets a lucky RNG roll and shoots off someone's head, or their melee folk don't close the gap in time and start hacking off limbs.

The single most valuable resource in the game is colonist ability and skill. You can buy spare limbs and neurotrainers but the good spare limbs are expensive, and neutotrainers are rare. You can also recruit more people, but there's no guarantee that they'll have the skills you want, won't have been wounded terribly in the process of capturing them etc. It's also distinctly more effective, as you can dictate the range of the engagement and even go so far as to prevent the enemy from ever being able to fire at you at all. Putting your most valuable resource at risk when there are cheaper and more effective ways of dealing with the enemy is a bad strategy. That's not personal preference my friend, that's just the math. Factor in the fact that I might care whether one colonist or another lives or dies and it should be pretty clear why the automated turret killbox is the go-to defence for any colony.

I skimmed the thread again just in case I missed a slew of comments about how the game was too hard without a killbox and all I spotted was your posts replying to nobody in particular, and SSS mentioning that not using a killbox restricted him to lower difficulties. As you know yourself it isn't true that not using a killbox restricts you to lower difficulties. It is quite possible to run a successful defence on a higher difficulty without a killbox and it's really only the sudden 'Mechanoids everywhere!' event (which you mentioned back on the first page of this discussion) that can really finish you without the killbox.

Are you perhaps confusing some folk suggesting that the solution to the killbox problem is to have fewer or weaker enemies with them complaining that the game is too difficult without a killbox? If so, that's not what's going on here. Those are simply bad suggestions to fix the underlying problem that the automated killbox is too good. The idea would be that if defeating the enemy in the open was as easy as it was to have an automated killbox handle it that more people would build in the open. Those suggestions ignore the fact that this doesn't address the fundamental point of the OP - which is that the killbox is the most effective defence.

There are two solutions to the killbox problem really. You either need to reduce the benefits that the killbox brings, or you need to accept the killbox as something that'll happen and make the enemies stronger. The former means that you need to bring the colonists out into the open even if you have a killbox (hence the suggestion for manned turrets). The latter means that you need something like portable artillery to allow raiders to circumvent, or severely damage, a killbox before entering it. The problem with the latter is that (even if you get around the AI problems) it'll force everybody to build killboxes as the increased enemy capabilities will likely make it even more difficult to take the enemy on in the open or with an open plan base.

So it really boils down to reducing the benefits of the killbox, and that basically means exposing your colonists to threats.

[Kaballah]

The cost of building, maintaining, and powering a wall and a killbox is trivial, especially if you manage to build into a valley or tunnel into a mountain. If you get a very unlucky set-up you might have to forgo lights for a while but the mood modifier for darkness is pretty minor.

People don't construct things like this because it's cheap on resources, and frankly I think the guy who built this one would be insulted to hear you say that.   

Colonists aren't weak against a solar flare, and you can craft bows. That's nice I suppose. The killbox is still a safer and more effective means of dealing with the enemy than running around with your colonists hoping no pirate with a M-24 (sniper rifle I think it got renamed to in the last update?) gets a lucky RNG roll and shoots off someone's head, or their melee folk don't close the gap in time and start hacking off limbs.

You were talking about turrets saying they can be constructed immediately, well so can bows (if you have wood, which is not a given).  Safer, sure, but safety is not the only benchmark and it isn't an objective measure of "best" - there isn't one, it's a sandbox game.  It's totally fine to be risk averse and turtle up, and it's also totally fine to not turtle up and grab 20 or so guys with some form of weapon and hit R and mash things.  You can also see exactly what equip all of your invaders are using before you even engage them, so there's no reason the guy with the sniper rifle is particularly more dangerous than the guy with the knife unless you play passively and allow him to pick is own engagement.  Any form of hard cover between you and the sniper dude means you have total control over when you engage and how far away he is, and the only advantage of that rifle is range.

The single most valuable resource in the game is colonist ability and skill. You can buy spare limbs and neurotrainers but the good spare limbs are expensive, and neutotrainers are rare. You can also recruit more people, but there's no guarantee that they'll have the skills you want, won't have been wounded terribly in the process of capturing them etc.

Building an unbeatable kill box with dozens of turrets is pretty counter to your point here, as you will get many fewer surviving invaders to capture.  I don't disagree that new colonists are valuable, of course they are, but if everything that walks into your entrance is immediately turned into hamburger (possibly literally) ...

I skimmed the thread again just in case I missed a slew of comments about how the game was too hard without a killbox and all I spotted was your posts replying to nobody in particular, and SSS mentioning that not using a killbox restricted him to lower difficulties. As you know yourself it isn't true that not using a killbox restricts you to lower difficulties. It is quite possible to run a successful defence on a higher difficulty without a killbox and it's really only the sudden 'Mechanoids everywhere!' event (which you mentioned back on the first page of this discussion) that can really finish you without the killbox.

"Every colonist is valuable, and rarely well trained/equipped for combat, so tell me. Exactly what reason do we have not to use killboxes Tynan? What other ways do we have to protect our colonists without such high risk?"

"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."

etc, I mean interpret these however you like but they boil down to "I can't win unless I do this thing"

[Darth Fool]

Personally, I think building automated turrets should require parts from a mechanoid.  Not so much because I think it is necessary to eliminate kill boxes, but because it makes more sense to me then having fairly sophisticated friend or foe systems built out of just scrap metal.

[antibodee]

We don't want to eliminate turrets.  Maybe requiring plasteel or silver, but even that is going too far.

[Foxador]

If you want a easy way to just abuse the AI and game mechanics you can just make a kill box where the enemy can't fight back.  By having a entrance that's just flooded with either rock chucks or sandbags the enemy can't fight back since you can't technically stand on sandbags but you can walk through them. So they end up just slowly walking through the area while getting shot. I put up a picture that's just a small example but I've done better with other saves I don't have handy. 

You also don't need turrets or any kill boxes to get by just fine.  In my last game I used nothing but bows and tribal cloths but I was able to handle every enemy just fine with only like three people dying after over 40 hours.  The thing is, and this is another abuse of the AI, if you have no turrets the enemy doesn't have a prime place to attack so they end up wanting to attack your walls if you have your people in safety.  In my second picture you can see my home and how it's set up.  Since the enemy wants to attack they walls they get stuck attacking them for awhile while my guys walk out and kill someone then hide in another room before getting attack, wait a moment for any enemies that wanted to attack me to reset, then go back and kill another one or two.  It takes a micro but you can walk out killing 10-15 people without getting hit.  It goes faster if you have melee weapons like spears since they hit hard and fast which means you can walk onto a clueless guy smacking your walls and insta kill him before moving to someone else.

The only threat are mechnoids and only by the scythers since they move super fast.  The big worms are just dumb enemies that have massive health but crappy weapons and crappy range and they're quite easy to kill it just takes forever.

[attachment deleted due to age]

[Woyzeck]

The simplest solution I've found for both negating interest in turret killboxing and furthermore bringing combat outside has been to:

1- Make armor behave more realistically - i.e. Much higher protection ratings (that is what armor is for, and if it doesn't do it reliably, well, historically speaking a lot of expensive but questionably useful military equipment has wound up tossed into roadside ditches by those who didn't want to be weighed down by it), and making power armor give a movement speed bonus.

2 - Create a proper grenade-launcher or RPG so even a very nice static set-up with lots of interlocking fields of fire can be crippled by raiders. Similarly, I give mechanoid centipedes better armor and a better weapon balance. Scythers get one explosive weapon and one incendiary weapon - they act to soften up defenses ahead of the centipedes.

Additionally I would have turrets require a gun and a controller module to build. Planning ahead for that my personal mod already includes a Sten/Sterling type SMG and an automatic rifle based off of this:
http://www.forgottenweapons.com/british-308-sterling-prototype/

The idea is the Sterling type firearms serve as cheap, but not very accurate full-auto weapons, and amongst the very few firearms that can eventually be produced by colonists.

[Kaballah]

1- Make armor behave more realistically - i.e. Much higher protection ratings (that is what armor is for, and if it doesn't do it reliably, well, historically speaking a lot of expensive but questionably useful military equipment has wound up tossed into roadside ditches by those who didn't want to be weighed down by it), and making power armor give a movement speed bonus.

PA is already super blatantly the best armor choice in just about all cases, I really doubt Tynan will buff it (if anything it needs some fairly hard nerfing)

[Veneke]

People don't construct things like this because it's cheap on resources, and frankly I think the guy who built this one would be insulted to hear you say that.   

You don't need a killbox that size. You build something that size because you find it interesting, or you're bored, or any one of a number of reasons that have nothing to do with being efficient. A 12x12 killbox will handle basically everything the game will ever throw at you for a fraction of the resources it cost to build that design.

You were talking about turrets saying they can be constructed immediately, well so can bows (if you have wood, which is not a given).  ... there's no reason the guy with the sniper rifle is particularly more dangerous than the guy with the knife unless you play passively and allow him to pick is own engagement.  Any form of hard cover between you and the sniper dude means you have total control over when you engage and how far away he is, and the only advantage of that rifle is range.

I'm not saying that any way is wrong to play, I'm saying that the best defence is the killbox. Why is this even something that you're arguing? Do you actually think that playing an open plan defence is superior to the killbox defence?

Hard cover has absolutely nothing to do with picking the engagement range. At all. With a killbox I can guarantee that my turrets are always engaging at their optimal range. In the open you can't guarantee that with anything. You can certainly work towards it, and the better you are the more likely it is to work out, but you can't guarantee the engagement range.

Building an unbeatable kill box with dozens of turrets is pretty counter to your point here, as you will get many fewer surviving invaders to capture.  I don't disagree that new colonists are valuable, of course they are, but if everything that walks into your entrance is immediately turned into hamburger (possibly literally) ...

Nonsense. Between the AI providing you with slave traders and randomers who join your colony, prisoners who are incapacitated by the killbox (which isn't as unlikely as you seem to suggest), and a killbox which is basically impregnable you can guarantee the safety and growth of both your colonists and their high-value skills.

"Every colonist is valuable, and rarely well trained/equipped for combat, so tell me. Exactly what reason do we have not to use killboxes Tynan? What other ways do we have to protect our colonists without such high risk?"

"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."

etc, I mean interpret these however you like but they boil down to "I can't win unless I do this thing"

The first paragraph you've quoted is the same point I made above about colonists and their skills being the single most important part of the game. Why risk them in the open when you can use a killbox? It's nothing to do with the game being too difficult if you choose a non-killbox defence. It's about the risk to your colonists being too high to justify the use of anything other than a killbox.

The second paragraph you quoted does seem to suggest that the game is too difficult without the killbox, although much like SSS's point I think he's simply unfamiliar or uncomfortable with managing an open plan defence. One of the key advantages of an open plan defence is that you don't need 360 defences. You also usually have plenty of warning of an impending attack, colonists are basically constantly ready, and - while I don't know this for certain as he's a little unclear - the micromanagement chore he talks about would seem to be the movement and fire controls. That's just something you have to deal with in an open plan defence.

[Woyzeck]

PA is already super blatantly the best armor choice in just about all cases

As it should be. It's a full harness of bullet-proof plate with power assistance, negating the major issue that put full suits of plate armor out of use in the first place.

For balance I simply make it even more expensive, and give it work speed penalties so wearing it 24/7 is only practical for dedicated soldier/haulers. I also make sure the only pawns spawned wearing it are crypt soldiers and elite mercenaries. The improved armor stats not only make them much more dangerous (especially if you don't have your own PA troops yet), but also greatly increases the odds they will simply escape alive even when you do win battles.

[TDATL]

As it should be. It's a full harness of bullet-proof plate with power assistance, negating the major issue that put full suits of plate armor out of use in the first place.

This is a common misconception. Plate armor did not limit the users freedom of movement. Each suit was hand crafted and continually fitted for it's wearer. Said wearer also practiced and trained in the armor extensively to build up their strength and endurance. You had to train for wearing it but it didn't impede you.

An untrained person trying to wear a set of plate armor that was tailor designed for a different person (and at a specific point in that persons life) would move like the stereotype of plate armor. But the same could be said of an untrained person trying to use an authentic English long bow. If you haven't trained to use them then you will either be completely incapable of using them or massively slowed down.

The reason plate fell out of use was the mass deployment of firearms that were capable of punching through it (and any other body protection of the time.) The people who would have worn plate (nobles) stayed farther back from the fighting from then on. This likely played a large part in the steep decline of nobles that started around this time.

It was only in the last couple of decades that we have developed body armor that can stop rifle fire, be mass produced, and worn with a short training time (months instead of decades.) Just look at WWII uniforms. The only protective gear they wore was a helmet because hiding behind something was the only practical method of protection.

With modern day material sciences we could make a plate armor equivalent that wouldn't impair a users movement and would make them almost impervious to rifle fire. HOWEVER, such armor would have to be crafted for each individual and said individual would have to both train extensively in it's use and continually participate in it's ongoing adjustments. This would be prohibitively expensive. This was true of plate armor when it was used as well. The difference was plate armored troops provided a unique tactical advantage that made them worth the cost back then. These days we use armored vehicles to fill that tactical role better and cheaper.

A futuristic full body armor system like we see in RimWorld (that can be worn in minutes by anyone) doesn't just need to carry it's own weight. It needs to self-fit like Back To The Future clothes. Without both of these features it would impede the user significantly.

Thus ends todays lesson on "pointless trivia that will never come up in real life."