Alpha 5 and sieges

[psilous]

I'm fascinated by this mechanic and hopefully some of my feedback can get your brains going.

The AI needs some sort of a motive and goal coded in that is the driving force behind the act of a siege.  Retaliation for a prior act, aggressive expansion, resource scarcity, etc. could all color a siege in completely different ways.

As for the shelling, I like the idea of limiting the resource, but if there was some way for the AI to assess battle readiness of the colony, that might help to generate agency for the next action of the attack. 

For example, if I assign (Leader) to Frank, Frank runs a check to see if Turrets are visible from his location, if the visible attack point has power, if colonists are visible, and what time of day it is.  If these conditions are met, Frank issues a storm order to accomplish the team's goal (steal crops, steal uranium, kill Bob who killed their teammate in a prior attack, etc.)

Lastly, I would also code in a battering ram of sorts. These crazy avatars knock down metal doors a bit too easy for my taste, and a battering ram would be a nice modifier that could make it a bit more realistic.

Sorry for the wall of text!

This is all a fairly new feature and I'm sure we'll see advances on this towards alpha's 7 or 8. Looks like next round of improvements involve map generation and such.

[user553]

I found really easy way to break the sieges.

All you need is 4-8 explosive mortars. Start shelling pirates as soon as they arrive. You only need to land two lucky hits to destroy 1 mortar.

Mortar self-detonation -> chain reaction with nearby mortars -> lots of dead pirates -> tantrum spiral -> pirates shooting each other -> more mortar explosions -> siege broken.

To make sieges dangerous, pirates
1) should not cluster their mortars
2) should have "dead zone" like player-placed mortars have. Now they use mortars on the nearby tantruming pirates, creating more chain explosions
3) should target important structures instead of hostiles. Now they are too easily distracted by mechanoids / single colonist / visitors / tantruming pirates

[Nibiru1221]

Something is not right about the balance here.... Why not allow the player to strategically send in snipers to take out the mortar raiders?? How else are we supposed to defend our base?

Seeing that mortar aim is super poor and if we've made our own mortars then us hitting the small raider camp is really hard opposed to the raiders hitting somewhere on our base. Even if the raider mortars miss their intended target then they will likely still hit something we see as important.

It sounds to me that the purpose of the mortar sieges (from the developers side) is to setup an unfair advantage to the player, making it so we have such a hard time coming up with a solution. Then once bigger mortar sieges happen then it's pretty much game over.

So what's the intended resolve to dealing with the mortar attacks?

[BetaSpectre]

I'd say one out of 8 shots will hit on target or close enough to count.

If you can survive a siege for longer than 4 days the raiders should automatically suicide.

If you burrow into a mountain and set up ship reactors you can hold out against a siege indefinitely but the raiders can not. Expensive but worth it for allowing free energy.

That said the intention of raider sieges is simply broken 5 colonists vs 90 raiders is a no brainer, now add a trench and defenses and those 5 colonists have no hope of winning especially if they have to walk across a field of dead bodies.

That said the best strategy is simply not to fight end game or if you do hit hard and hit often.

[mrofa]

Something is not right about the balance here.... Why not allow the player to strategically send in snipers to take out the mortar raiders?? How else are we supposed to defend our base?

Seeing that mortar aim is super poor and if we've made our own mortars then us hitting the small raider camp is really hard opposed to the raiders hitting somewhere on our base. Even if the raider mortars miss their intended target then they will likely still hit something we see as important.

It sounds to me that the purpose of the mortar sieges (from the developers side) is to setup an unfair advantage to the player, making it so we have such a hard time coming up with a solution. Then once bigger mortar sieges happen then it's pretty much game over.

So what's the intended resolve to dealing with the mortar attacks?

Its not true actually, i think that siges are broken with large disadvntage to raiders. First thing is the sniper element that draw mortar fire. Second that that one sniper can solo kill entire sige. Its quite easy on large siges and more trickier on smaller ones.
For smaller ones i try to destroy mortars that have food in thier blast radious, raiders eat alot and food drop last them around 2-3 days if i remmber correctly so destroying it is good, also killing few raiders and making hurt few others give them - mood making them go insante faster.
Large siges oh man ... this is quite n/c my solo sniper did kill so much large siges with just 5 - 7 shots. Strategy is simple really aim and try to destroy mortars that are close to each other, since in large siges they are mostly clustered, and if your lucky you will only need to destroy one mortar and chain reaction will do the rest.
Only couter to sniper are raider snipers but they can be killed, weak point of this strategy is when sige is stationed between the moutains with just only one way of approach and have few snipers on the front, since this will take around a day or 2 to kill the sige and will require sniper colonist rotation.

[Nibiru1221]

The thing that got me was somewhere I read someone said that sending a sniper in to take out a raiding mortar party was an exploit.. Then Tynan said something about going to make it harder for people from doing this.

So the enemy can sit way off on the other side of the map and nearly destroy our base with fire or simple damage and that's all okay, but us sending a sniper out to pick them off from a safe distance is an exploit??

I don't think it's an exploit... Why else have sniper rifles in the game if not to keep at a safe distance to pick off the enemy?

There already seems to be enough against this attempted solution since the sniper could easily get shot by the mortar or he could get hungry or sleepy and if he's too far from base then could go crazy and either leave or wander off.

[BetaSpectre]

On large maps I completely agree, but on tiny maps the sniper solution is rather OP.
unless they outnumber you 30 to 1.

[Headshotkill]

Weird how paradoxially the more 'difficult' a siege becomes, the more easy it is to destroy it, however if they get one complete volley then the carnage at your base is extreme.

[user553]

Well, I'm on day 250 with Cassandra Classic (no savescumming), and sieges feel like a free metal to me.
I have 8 colonists and 8 mortars. I've never bothered sending my colonists outside the perimeter to break sieges. Few volleys is enough to create chain reaction with exploding mortars, after which the siege consume itself in tantrum spiral.

[Klaatu]

I don't think it's an exploit... Why else have sniper rifles in the game if not to keep at a safe distance to pick off the enemy?

I agree, especially when the enemy is equipped with M-24's and miniguns as well. It isn't a I-win button fire and forget situation to setup snipers, it takes a little effort on the player's part.