Alternatives to killboxing

[REMworlder]

It's definitely possible to defend without killboxes. I play on Cassandra Extreme and don't do it. You just have to be comfortable with the strengths and weaknesses of the different weapons, and not be afraid to counterattack out of your base. With personal shields now in the game, colonists are more maneuverable than ever.

For people who don't use turrets at all, I don't understand where do you find all these colonists who can shoot at all. Do you just leave everyone else to die ?

Oftentimes yes, or I sell them into slavery after using them to increase my warden's social skills.

[akiceabear]

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.

I don't think a castle is an appropriate comparison, especially if trying to appeal to realism as a justification - here is a quote from Wikipedia on the cost of building a castle:

In case you should wonder where so much money could go in a week, we would have you know that we have needed � and shall continue to need 400 masons, both cutters and layers, together with 2,000 less skilled workmen, 100 carts, 60 wagons and 30 boats bringing stone and sea coal; 200 quarrymen; 30 smiths; and carpenters for putting in the joists and floor boards and other necessary jobs. All this takes no account of the garrison ... nor of purchases of material. Of which there will have to be a great quantity ... The men's pay has been and still is very much in arrears, and we are having the greatest difficulty in keeping them because they have simply nothing to live on.

My understanding of the game is that each pawn is intended to represent one single person in real life (in the RimVerse), not an abstraction of 10/100/1000. As a result, we shouldn't use the "real life" defensive structure built over many years with a relatively large and stable social hierarchy, but rather one similar to a shipwreck where only 3 people survive on a desert island, with a few crates of supplies from the ship.

A (genuine) question probably better suited for another thread: Am I the only one that assumes a desperate shipwreck as the closest fair comparison going into this game? Assuming others are on the same page with the shipwreck scenario - how large does the classical shipwreck crew balloon over time? Or do they generally slowly succumb to the elements until escape/death?

A separate question: how did single-family log cabin homesteaders protect their property in colonial America? I truly mean single family (e.g. a dozen or less total members to rely on for labor), not a garrison from the British Navy with a compliment of laborers.

[b0rsuk]

A (genuine) question probably better suited for another thread: Am I the only one that assumes a desperate shipwreck as the closest fair comparison going into this game? Assuming others are on the same page with the shipwreck scenario - how large does the classical shipwreck crew balloon over time? Or do they generally slowly succumb to the elements until escape/death?

That makes us two of us! Cheers!
And all these people wanting brain surgeries, ability to craft personal shields, nuclear reactors, vehicles...

[MsMeiriona]

A separate question: how did single-family log cabin homesteaders protect their property in colonial America? I truly mean single family (e.g. a dozen or less total members to rely on for labor), not a garrison from the British Navy with a compliment of laborers.

Defend from what? Animals? Walls, fences, fire. Criminals? The hunting rifle most likely. In those rare cases.

[TDATL]

A separate question: how did single-family log cabin homesteaders protect their property in colonial America? I truly mean single family (e.g. a dozen or less total members to rely on for labor), not a garrison from the British Navy with a compliment of laborers.

Answer: They didn't. Not beyond wild animals and robbers that they (heavily) outnumbered. If a large group of robbers or a native nation wanted to destroy a homestead then it was gone. They might have to deal with the retaliation of the army/militia of what ever country those people belonged to, but that wouldn't save the homestead if they were attacked.

If a war party came then you ran and hid. Weapons were for dealing with criminals, wild animals, and to enable people to form a militia/posse in the event they have advanced warning.

Now if those same settlers had automated machine-gun emplacements then the situation would be different. But as you noted that is a pretty stark deviation from the normal shipwrecked theme.

I don't think such a thing would work out well as a game though. Not if we are managing individual homesteads (dozens of people.) There is too little room for error and mistakes are far to punishing at that scale. If we were managing the actual colony (hundreds of people) it would be a different thing. But that is basically a different game.

tl;dr version: This game is never going to be "realistic" in the way you are talking. It is more like playing through "tall tale" survival stories that have gotten more and more extreme with repeated retelling. It could even be said that the game itself is that progression and the point you die is when the suspension of disbelief is broken by the audience hearing the tale.

[Kaballah]

:Rant incoming:... Especially in the early game, losing just a single colonist can land you in a very bad spot, as it is nigh impossible to run everything you need to do with less then three people without serious micromanaging. Generally you at least have:

A dedicated grower to keep your farms maintained.
A dedicated hauler, so all that food you just harvested doesn't go to waste.
A dedicated chef, doing nothing but cooking all day.
A dedicated scientist to get all the research done.
A dedicated doctor so you have a reasonable chance you succeed in medical tasks.

Without these five roles filled, the basic functions of a colony become rather limited.

Thinking about this some more, your whole point here is nonsense.
- Farming is entirely optional, you can hunt (or eat the two-legged meatbeasts)
- Cooking is also entirely optional, but nice; you absolutely do not have to have dedicated cooks though
- There's a pretty small amount of research in vanilla and tbh any colonist who is not totally unable to research at all can get it all done in ~150 days, and really about half of it is totally optional stuff like carpeting, hydroponics, hydraulic picks, cryptosleep caskets, ship tech
- The only doctor functions that require really good skills are installing artificial limbs.  Simple bandaging wounds is stuff anyone that is able to do medical labor at all can do.  And oh well, a dude died oops.  The artists have something to sculpt about.

[Joshuasca]

And oh well, a dude died oops.  The artists have something to sculpt about.

thats a good way to look at it

[rtiger]

:Rant incoming:... Especially in the early game, losing just a single colonist can land you in a very bad spot, as it is nigh impossible to run everything you need to do with less then three people without serious micromanaging. Generally you at least have:

A dedicated grower to keep your farms maintained.
A dedicated hauler, so all that food you just harvested doesn't go to waste.
A dedicated chef, doing nothing but cooking all day.
A dedicated scientist to get all the research done.
A dedicated doctor so you have a reasonable chance you succeed in medical tasks.

Without these five roles filled, the basic functions of a colony become rather limited.

Thinking about this some more, your whole point here is nonsense.
- Farming is entirely optional, you can hunt (or eat the two-legged meatbeasts)
- Cooking is also entirely optional, but nice; you absolutely do not have to have dedicated cooks though
- There's a pretty small amount of research in vanilla and tbh any colonist who is not totally unable to research at all can get it all done in ~150 days, and really about half of it is totally optional stuff like carpeting, hydroponics, hydraulic picks, cryptosleep caskets, ship tech
- The only doctor functions that require really good skills are installing artificial limbs.  Simple bandaging wounds is stuff anyone that is able to do medical labor at all can do.  And oh well, a dude died oops.  The artists have something to sculpt about.

All of that can be very well situational. There are a fair number of maps where hunting is not a sustainable option, and you need to do both if you really want to feed your colonists something better then potato soup. For me, generally the doctor is also the scientist, as both of those roles are situational. As for cooks, if you want to help keep your people happy, you need a good cook. Eating paste is only barely better then eating raw food. A dedicated hauler comes more into play in larger colonies, and you generally only need one pawn like that.

Regardless, your going to have particular colonists at particular jobs if you really want to make someone good at that job. More often then not, these specialized colonists are terrible when the fighting starts and expensive to lose.

[Kaballah]

Bah.



- No farming
- NO HUNTING
- Everyone eats simple meals of zombie flesh or, when we are lucky, fresh human meat
- 3 or 4 people with cooking enabled, whoever happens to be near the stove with free time makes meals; I've made a nutrient paste dispenser like once ever in my time playing the game, food is so plentiful why would you bother?
- All research was completed a long time ago, even the optional stuff and extra things added in mods, by nonspecialized colonists (tbh research really needs a ton more stuff in it)
- And yes, gosh sometimes colonists are unhappy and sometimes they even flip out

To be fair I rolled cannibals to start, which anyone can do if you really just want to be a cannibal colony but farming is super productive even with nonspecialized people doing it.  The illusion is that you absolutely have to have skill 20 people doing every task.  IMO the only skill you really need somebody to have at high levels is Social, so you can convince prisoners to join your colony, because this has a hard threshold.  Everything else, whatever meh trade for it/take from invaders.

[Kaballah]

And why would you run a colony this way?  So you can have sculptures like this in every room:

[Gennadios]

To be honest, I blame the AI directors for the killboxes.

Every game with one of those that I've played basically turns into one refined strategy to deal with the AI trying to kill you. You never have time to relax, you will never be attacked by a group that your colonists can handle as-is because the storyteller is constantly upping the stakes to the point of being rediculous (my old ALPHA 6 games always ended with the inevitable 30 strong group of raiders coming in contact with a 30 strong group of visitors, the resultant stutter from the battles would render the game unplayable.)

Basically, the game is brutal but predictable, players can count on enemies not digging through walls and silver not in storage not counting as colony wealth, so the winning strategy is killboxes and artificially deflating colony wealth to buy some time before the mechanoids show up.

If enemy tunneling gets implemented? I'm sure there will be a new winning strategy to arise in a week or two.

Better tuned storytellers could take some of the edge off, but let's just say they weren't a selling point for me when I was looking at the game.

[Captain Sho]

Don't quote me on this but I believe i remember Tynan saying he has somewhat agreed with this issue and that the enemy AI just really needs to be smarter. I imagine he still plans on updated the AIs at some point (Game is still in alpha after all), it is just not a simple task just enjoy your barrels of fish while they last, or give your self a challenge and not just have one entrance

[lusername]

Basically, the game is brutal but predictable, players can count on enemies not digging through walls and silver not in storage not counting as colony wealth, so the winning strategy is killboxes and artificially deflating colony wealth to buy some time before the mechanoids show up.

This is actually not true, anything on the map counts towards wealth. Mechanoids are actually the easiest of enemies to take on, pretty much the ONLY enemies you can regularly and safely engage in the open, because they are of highly predictable composition and capability, generally manifesting themselves in the form of what are essentially two separate kinds of raid in rapid succession than a single giant blob: Scythers are fast, attack you first, but are relatively fragile and can be dispatched with turrets, while Sheep are very slow-moving and short-ranged, and can be engaged by mobile forces with rifles (which is even suggested in their description).

[Kaballah]

Enemies actually do try to break down walls if it seems to them easier than just walking to your entrance, I've had a number of maps where enemies spawned quite far away and would often stop to bang on walls on the way.  Sometimes they actually just give up because your entrance is too far away and they don't manage to break a hole in your walls and leave without doing anything else.  The hardest scenarios are when your map is wide open, like the pic I showed last post and enemies can just walk straight to your door, but on the other hand you can also rush a fire team to any siegers just as quickly.  I mean yeah ok, constructing a strong kill box makes all the fighting really trivial but it's not like it's super hard otherwise even on max difficulty.

[Gennadios]

while Sheep are very slow-moving and short-ranged, and can be engaged by mobile forces with rifles (which is even suggested in their description).

Just how short ranged? In my experience the flame cannon ones match survival rifles in range and take massive amounts of damage. Longbows and Sniper rifles can outrange them but your colonists will starve or go insane before they bring one down with a longbow, and my average game only generates a handful of sniper rifles.

Also, shooting colonists have also become incredibly hard to find in this alpha. Mechanoids tend to overrun my bases long before the game actually provides the means to take them on at range.