Opposite To Claim

[Mikhail Reign]

I would like a button to remove ownership of an object/building to counter the 'claim' one. Would help with forward bases - by 'unclaiming' them raiders wouldn't get stuck up smashing a wall of a building miles away from the battle, that isn't used and isn't helping them at all.

[b0rsuk]

So you want a button to control where raiders can attack ?

[Darkhymn]

I don't see why they shouldn't attack our undefended holdings. Additionally, I'm not even sure what the claim button does in terms of gameplay, as you can dismantle and use unclaimed structures and mortars without doing so anyway.

[lusername]

Claiming doesn't do anything, far as I can tell. I've seen raiders randomly decide to smash up premade abandoned buildings anyway. Eventually they realize it's taking forever and all the other raiders are looking at them funny, and give up and go attack the base with everyone else.

[skullywag]

The claim button literally changes the faction that owns the building in the code. The faction owner controls things like homezones and also what buildings that can fire can target and who can man it.

[lusername]

The claim button literally changes the faction that owns the building in the code. The faction owner controls things like homezones and also what buildings that can fire can target and who can man it.

Except that it apparently doesn't, because homezones are a separate interface that you can designate or undesignate at will, to indicate whether or not colonists should attempt to perform maintenance on it, and you can man enemy mortars just fine without claiming them. It seems like it's a deprecated functionality that no longer serves a meaningful purpose. It clearly toggles the flag you mentioned, but that flag doesn't appear to DO anything.

[skullywag]

hmm perhaps this has changed, i know automated turrets still use the enemy of owning faction stuff, so perhaps its for future use, wouldnt surprise me.

[lusername]

I can't say I've seen an automated turret fire on a structure on its own, though, and there isn't really a good reason why it should, given that the structure is "incapacitated" and cannot move or fire back, which automated turrets also don't automatically fire upon: If you want a turret to fire on an incapacitated enemy, you have to order it to do so. Maybe this would become an issue where you are faced with enemy automated turrets that are somehow erected within range of your own automated turrets, but this condition cannot normally arise in game, nor would/should you be allowed to simply claim that turret by handwave and make it magically yours.

In short, it seems like a deprecated functionality that doesn't serve any real function in the game anymore, as whatever it's toggling is not actually used.

[skullywag]

i meant in terms of what it can target, for example when i added turrets and mortars to my purple ivy mod it wouldnt fire until i added a faction to it as it needed to do the friend foe calculation in the faction list before it could fire.

[lusername]

Well, sure, the turret probably needs a faction to identify which guys to fire upon. But this isn't really a functionality you would be manipulating via the claim function. You shouldn't be able to simply claim hostile automated turrets, and automated turrets shouldn't be automatically firing upon anything you could claim anyway, since anything subject to the use of the claim selector is inert. The factional affiliation of an inert object is thus pretty much wholly irrelevant, as it is NOT checked for purposes of determining what to repair or what can be deconstructed.

[skullywag]

I agree, im stating theres other things in the code or things coming to the code in the future that might make this neccessary, yes to us players it does seem to be a pointless action, onlky Tynan can really explain why this is a thing.

[lusername]

I'm thinking it was there because it seemed like a thing to have at the time, but given how things presently work, I have difficulty conceiving of a situation in which the factional affiliation of an inert object would matter barring some really drastic changes. The claim functionality, for instance, indicates that it permits colonists to maintain said object, but this functionality has been superceded by the "Home Zone" function to keep colonists from running off across the map to maintain something that the player wishes to simply abandon. It certainly isn't used by Raiders to determine what to attack, otherwise you could confuse and decoy said raiders by erecting a web of expendable pylons to bait them into attempting to destroy these valueless, inert structures, delaying them and causing them to probably kill each other with their wild firing.

[Vexare]

So using the claim button is/was a thing?

I have personally never used it and often wondered what it's for in terms of changing how the game detects my colony's vulnerable bits. I had a colony last build which was a short ways off from one of those dreaded crypto-sleep tombs and since it was right in the path of most stuff coming our way, I decided to block off the three entrances with stone walls until such time as I was ready to deal with the contents of the caskets myself rather than a random stray bullet spicing things up for me.

Well oddly, those three single stone block walls became a favorite attack point for raiders which as stated by someone else, invariably caused the other raiders to look at the attackers kinda funny until they finally gave up and moved over to the proper attack squad trying to get into the real entrance of my base. This did give me the idea to create 'decoy walls' which served the purpose of the same thing, spreading out the attackers to areas I don't care about them destroying. I never used the claim button and made sure they were not covered by home-zones so I didn't have idiots running out there trying to repair them in the middle of a siege... so I had to deduct it was the construction itself which held the code to attract them and not anything I'd designated. Is this still the case?

[lusername]

It's hard to say. I had some raiders the other day decide to OPEN the ancient mechanoid tomb of doom and concentrate on the task long enough to knock down the wall. A mass of sheep and scythers promptly boiled forth. The raiders all horribly died. There's clearly something which makes them decide whether or not to target a structure at all, since the mechanoids were perfectly happy to go and attack my stuff, but never attempted to bust their way out of their box on their own.

All in all, however, it seems pretty clear there's absolutely no advantage to using the claim button. At best, it has no meaningful effect, at worst it will alter the AI's behavior in ways that don't necessarily work in your favor.