Balance feedback requested: Hardest type of raid?

[Eleazar]

I'm not the most experienced.  I've gotten my people off the planet twice, both times in less than 3 years, on 100% and 60% difficulty.

And the hardest type, in my experience, is where they drop out of the sky on your doorstep.  There's no time to prepare, some of your people may be out in the field, and unless you have everything underground, chances are they are inside some or most of your defenses.

Would this be Alpha 9 you're talking about?

No, alpha 8.

I hadn't noticed changes to any of these things in the changlog.

[EscapeZeppelin]

Ugh, drop pods. Simply since they always seem to land directly on my colonists and manage to incapacitate or kill some of them immediately. Last colony I lost three out of six colonists to one drop attack that landed right on top of them.

[monkeystyxx]

For me it's drop pods. Not even close.

Setup-then-attacks are by far the easiest for obvious reasons.

Immediate attacks are fine, you can see them coming even if you don't have time to repair. You know in advance both how many there are, where they're coming from and what they're armed with. Plus if your base is well designed they'll still have to go through the areas you WANT them to go through to get to your squishy bits.

Sieges are a mixed bag for me. IF I have sniper rifles and guys capable of taking the fight to them, they're pretty standard. However if I don't, or I don't have enough rifles, then they can be pretty tricky, especially if they have incendiary rounds.

But drop pods are by far the most difficult. They drop anywhere they damn well please, so you can't prepare a defence in advance (other than getting everything inside a mountain), and you don't know what's coming until it's too late.

Not saying they necessarily need to be balanced, as they're not unfairly difficult, just by far the *most* difficult for me personally.

I'd append that by saying that *anything* is made harder if it's got incendiary weapons, even just a molotov.

[JimmyAgnt007]

Ive had good luck with putting my primary trade beacon inside a killbox to deal with the drop pods so they are less of a concern now.  Sieges are my biggest concern now but if i have snipers then not so much. 

Now, mecha raids have always been a big problem for me.  its been a while but they always seem to steamroll over my turrets and my people never seem up to the task.

Id like a direct fire cannon that uses shells.  Cant shoot over things but causes massive damage with an explosion.  That would just be cool.  Slow tracking so that moving infantry would avoid it for the most part, but slow moving centipedes would get pasted.

[Daemoneyes]

I voted Drop Pods but in all honesty its Crashed Ship Part.

1) crashed ship part
Highest threat because you need thinfoil-helmets or a really happy colony to be able to prepare for it.
Also the bigger the map the bigger the threat, i had it sometimes land so far from me that it took ages to build the defense there and sometimes they would break before i could even start attacking.

2) drop pods
once you figure out that they tend to land near the trade beacon it gets easier but they still can catch you offguard with half the colonists in the open or worse between them.
I had only Mechanoids drop on my in A9 but from what i have seen so far i would bet that half melee with shields and half ranged would be the most effective aside from Mecha with rockets.

3) fast attack
can only catch you off guard in the early game, later at worst one or two of your colonists have to outrun them.

4) siege
Easiest of them all if you have one decent shot with a sniper rifle, i have taken out sieges of 20+ with one sniper.
Also you get the most resources from this one, as you get often 20-40 meals and two hundred or more steel in addition to all the equip.
And shells sell for a decent buck.

[loc978]

Sieges, but only the ones loaded with lots of snipers (the melee ones are hilarious. Like pulling mobs in an MMO). Anything else is easy to lure into a killbox, including drop pods... and the only thing that has a snowball's chance in hell of overwhelming a proper killbox is dozens of centipedes.

So #2 would be any attack with more than 10 centipedes. Nothing else sponges bullets well enough to return a significant volume of fire (though mods can change that. Integrate an RPG, and pirates can do serious damage in very little time... no need for volume).
Ooh, actually... a crashed ship part late in the game that spawns a ton of centipedes can take months to take down with snipers, though usually I can trick them into letting me potshot the part itself to death long before the last centipede goes down.

[Jam]

Incendiary sieges specifically. I had a colony of about 14 pawns and I felt like I had to devote all my pawns to firefighting & sickbay. I was left with the impression that I have to deal with an incendiary siege immediately, otherwise I'll be stuck in a perpetual cycle of sickbay & firefighting. The only other option imo is building everything deep into a mountain, and that isn't always an option depending on the location.

[ctgill]

I've found it's a tie between mechs dropping right on top of you (the way I base I'm a mountain tunneler so my supply cash is just outside my door..my only door and just inside my perimeter defenses.)

Or the sieges... as those shells as mentioned above with my layout.. will more often than not threaten my stockpile of wealth and exportable goods.

It should be mentioned for A9 I started using that added turrets mod which I would think makes it easier for me.. more in my favor.. yet those two raids still hurt and threaten to end my existence even then.

Also I've been playing on Random Randy at the setting below challenge. The name escapes me right now.

[Gaesatae]

Big scyther raids and tribal raids. I'd prefer fighting 5 centipedes at the same time than 5 scythers, I don't even try to hold the defenses against them if I see more than 3. They are the real colony killers for me.

I suposse it depends on different base designs. I build mostly in the open and avoid creating killboxes. I use only 2-4 turrets to cover the whole base. For me sieges are the easiest, they do more damage than the others but they usually leave more resources than they destroy.

[evrett33]

Panty?

[Tynan]

I've adjusted the balance a bit in Alpha9e so this poll is no longer needed for now. Thanks all for voting.

[tommytom]

In 0.9.727, I got beseiged and it came at a horrible timing when everyone was tired and hungry.

I sent in a few survival rifle "snipers" (can't afford or even seen the option to buy a sniper yet) to pick a few off while the rest waited at the gates to defend if they decided to attack.

They never attacked. One of my "snipers" had worse cover and got killed in 3 hits. And I had to send everyone back to eat and rest.

After they rested/ate, I did a full-on attack giving my "snipers" support with more bullets even if it was just as risky and as I was rushing up there with 100% of my forces, a random mortar hit the EDGE of my outdoor-indoor growing zone made out of steel (didn't realize it had 20% flammibility).

I sent one guy back assuming he could handle it.

Long story short, I cleared out the besiegers, every one of my colonists had burns, half of one grow zone completely burned down, the other 2 died from me "smartly" not putting doors between to heat them all simultaneously because it was 800F by the time everyone came to fight the fire and I had to deconstruct the door to let the heat out and to combat the RAGING fire that was starting to spread into the second outdoor-indoor grow zone.

So, yeah, beseiges are massively harder than other raids considering they stick around areas I haven't properly setup to give me an advantage and the fire can hit INDOORS now, so lots of things can catch fire while your soldiers are out fighting.

Luckily, I had a decent enough food reserve, but everyone was having to eat raw food from my cook not being able to keep up (went from 20 reserve meals to 50 now to fix that).

I do miss my 90% grown full grow zone of devilstrand though... that was the worst.

[Tynan]

In 0.9.727, I got beseiged and it came at a horrible timing when everyone was tired and hungry.

I sent in a few survival rifle "snipers" (can't afford or even seen the option to buy a sniper yet) to pick a few off while the rest waited at the gates to defend if they decided to attack.

They never attacked. One of my "snipers" had worse cover and got killed in 3 hits. And I had to send everyone back to eat and rest.

After they rested/ate, I did a full-on attack giving my "snipers" support with more bullets even if it was just as risky and as I was rushing up there with 100% of my forces, a random mortar hit the EDGE of my outdoor-indoor growing zone made out of steel (didn't realize it had 20% flammibility).

I sent one guy back assuming he could handle it.

Long story short, I cleared out the besiegers, every one of my colonists had burns, half of one grow zone completely burned down, the other 2 died from me "smartly" not putting doors between to heat them all simultaneously because it was 800F by the time everyone came to fight the fire and I had to deconstruct the door to let the heat out and to combat the RAGING fire that was starting to spread into the second outdoor-indoor grow zone.

So, yeah, beseiges are massively harder than other raids considering they stick around areas I haven't properly setup to give me an advantage and the fire can hit INDOORS now, so lots of things can catch fire while your soldiers are out fighting.

Luckily, I had a decent enough food reserve, but everyone was having to eat raw food from my cook not being able to keep up (went from 20 reserve meals to 50 now to fix that).

I do miss my 90% grown full grow zone of devilstrand though... that was the worst.

That sounds like quite a story!

[ZestyLemons]

I'm a little late to the party, but I have to say that mechanoid attacks are the hardest to deal with specifically. Drop attacks are already pretty rough with people, but it's only made worse when it's beefy, deadly mechanoids.

[MrSurvivor]

I'm not the most experienced.  I've gotten my people off the planet twice, both times in less than 3 years, on 100% and 60% difficulty.

And the hardest type, in my experience, is where they drop out of the sky on your doorstep.  There's no time to prepare, some of your people may be out in the field, and unless you have everything underground, chances are they are inside some or most of your defenses.

I agree the drop pod thing is the worst.
They sometimes pop PAST your turret defenses. And they kill one of your colonists before you can get the rest of them there. But I think it's pretty normal and that it shouldn't be rebalanced.
But I think that the mechs are the worst in the middle of your base as zesty said cause they take forever to kill and they just shoot everyone before you can prepare.

Seiges, ehhh...I've only had one but it was so easy.
I just threw my people over there and it was an easy battle.
I suggest the raiders having like a 1:3 porportion turret to mortar (ex: 1 improvise turret=3 mortar) to make it a little harder because it's too easy for the seige raid.

For the seige they set up WAAAY on the other side of the map on the largest large mode. I doubt they could even hit me and I was inside a mountain anyways. I got my people behind an abandoned building and it was just far too easy. The raiders should have better defenses instead of just...sandbags.