Solution for killboxes??

[RemingtonRyder]

.... No way. Just dont like... stand in the open and fight them. Fighting them on a street is easy as. Everyone hides until they get close, and all at once everyone pops out and hoses them. Fight over. If they look like they are going to manage to shoot someone before they die, just have them duck back around the corner.

Well I don't have a street. I have the colonists take cover, of course, but the damn things hit so hard and I have so few actual shooters. Plus, they're not interested in killing the colonists until I interrupt their wrecking spree.

Yeah, that's right. They go for a particular door and start smashing it in. Then they go for the next one in the base, and the next one, until they've found a room full of things that they can break.

I guess the thing to do is find or buy some shotguns or something close-range for that situation, because I was not prepared.

[Mikhail Reign]

Yeah, that's right. They go for a particular door and start smashing it in. Then they go for the next one in the base, and the next one, until they've found a room full of things that they can break.

And there's your chance. Rooms are brilliant. They cant move out to their max range and use their speed. Get a couple of guys to get to the door and fire into the room.

But yeah. I dunno what kind of colony you have - mountains play different to walls to streets. I play outside, without walls and use the street fighting to my advantage.

When a raid arrives, I move everyone over to that side of town - snipers go out and pick people off to start the assault if its not one - and get in between all the buildings. Snipers focus on brawlers as they come in, normally killing them all. Once they are in charge rifle range, the snipers fall back to a town square while everyone else let off a final volley and then they fall back as well. I use brawlers to flank around and attack from the side, and from down side streets to devastating results - never lost a brawler, its all about using multiples of them on single people. As the raiders move between buildings, colonist with assault fires shread them as they come out onto the street, and then fall back to the next one once to many guys have come thought - normally by this point the brawlers are free again, and they start coming up from behind the remaining raiders and start attacking anyone who is, or is about to, fire on the assault rifle guys and then that's normally about when the raiders break....

[Rahjital]

They're very subjectively your preference - they don't handle siegers at all and the game literally rains loot outside your perimeter to encourage you to not totally turtle up.  They're very expensive in terms of materials and power etc etc.  You're literally saying only dumb people do not build killboxes.  You're also saying the fun ends once you have an unbeatable killbox.  Maybe you shouldn't build the unbeatable killbox.  If you're seriously not able to resist doing this maybe you should mod turrets out or something.

For sieges you can build mortars or a mountain base, both compliment killboxes very well. And no, what I'm saying is that building killboxes is the smart thing to do if you are going for safest colony. I don't use killboxes myself - but it's no challenge if you have to restrict yourself just to have fun. It goes against the philosophy of the game.

[Kaballah]

What are you lobbying for exactly?

[Woyzeck]

Somewhat related to the issue with chances being greater to hit anyone but your target, changing the way weapons miss might help de-buff the killbox set-up. Tighten up the default miss radius. Allow a missed shot to pass through the square of the intended target. Instead of having all the missed shots hit the ground around the target, allow them to keep going for up to their maximum range.

Suddenly the surround-sound killbox, at least, is no longer such a great idea.

[Kingmob]

I never use killboxes, its a completly different game of lets sit behind a wall and see how much we can farm till the ships built.

So my solution would just be to play without them!

You may as well just play on the lowest difficulty if you dont want anything to ever harm you, See its kinda like DF right now, with the bridge killing exploit, its only FUN if you make your own FUN,

I agree, this is why I play on the somewhat lower difficulties, but try out harder embarks and stuff. Combat is not a challenge, so make your own.

[Aarkreinsil]

You know what would be funny? If besiegers would build their own killboxes xD
Like wall themselves in and spam turrets, and as soon as you break their wall in any point, you get hammered by turrets and pirates.

Good ol trench warfare, I tell you

[TLHeart]

I am currently playing my old west town flat lands game, no wall surrounding the town, no automated turret defense. I still have a kill zone, called the town center. Have lost one colonist to a stupid move on my part during a raid of melee guys. He is buried in a field of roses now.

Had three scythers land right on top of town, it is fun to surround them form all sides and just shot them dead. 

Have three awesome melee dudes, who move in for the kills together, while the guns all target the next arriving raider. I am now up to 11 colonists, after 140 days since landing.  Playing on the same level as I always do, Cassandra rough.

All of my colonist live in separate houses, with one wide alley ways between them, and then a 3 wide street. None of the lines into or out of town are straight, they all have turns, and so I can lay in wait for each attacker. 

I have lost a few doors, quickly rebuilt.

Centipedes are a pain, but they move so slow, I out flank them before they reach town, and then they are constantly turning in circles...

A turret defense is not an absolute necessary way to play the game... it is the easiest way to learn the game.

[Kegereneku]

I'm playing it pretty much like TLHeart above.

To me the whole goal of Rimworld is to make possible as many choice as can be rationalized in the setting.
- Village with only a few turrets and sandbag is one choice
- Mountain with only one door and turret all the way to it is another
- Undefended village in a forest filled to death with traps should be one.
- Brick castle with embrasure for low-tech archer could be another one.
Alas, sometime to fit most, sacrifice have to be done and myself I would like to sacrifice the number of raiders so that "killbox" are not necessary unless you invoke (storyteller) a need for it.

Because on the subject of "Killbox being realistically the most logical solution". Globally this is just false. You have to set up many conditions for it to become true (like no obvious weakpoint)
If your entire base in inside a mountain and the killbox IS the only entrance, then ok, for a group of raider it would be the only way in. Equivalent logic if you are simply surrounded by mountain with one way in and you put the most wall and guns here.

But realistically static defense have always been about protecting every direction you think the enemy can attack from and compensating equally for weakpoint.
Castle didn't have small fence all around to guide the enemy where a few WALLS and EMBRASURES were.

As said above, I'm not actually against "killbox". But the fact the game encourage it can be considered a problem.
(I know, we just said we could play without, but not at high difficulty and as said this isn't justified as it being a classic defense system)

Edit : this post is my 300th, so I guess it mean we should defend the SPARTAN WAY.

[RickyMartini]

Edit : this post is my 300th, so I guess it mean we should defend the SPARTAN WAY.

We're surrounded.... these poor bastards...

But you're right. If some genius Tynan would overwork the system in that way that killboxes wouldn't be necessary (and defense strategies like in actual war scenarios would have to be established) then I would totally love and accept that!

[RemingtonRyder]

One thing that I'm working on at the moment is minified turrets.

What this means is that you can build and improve turrets at a smithing bench, and then go install them like you would a sculpture or a TV, and when you have the resources to upgrade it further, you can uninstall it, bring it back and upgrade it some more. For the Alpha 10 version, another modder has helped me out with a DLL to fix an error.

So what I'm considering here is that these minifiable turrets can be very weak in the early game and gradually get better at taking abuse as you mine and trade for resources to improve them. But their firepower would not increase a lot, because that would be unbalanced. Their main job will be to keep the enemy's attention while your colonists sneak into a better position.

I mean okay, you could still probably make a killbox out of them, but why build your defences sideways when you can build them up.

[Kegereneku]

Wow, let's not get ahead of ourself.

Rimworld is NOT a military strategy game, so complex defense strategy shouldn't be needed, and making 'complex tactic' possible might hijack the gameplay or open the door for new kind of exploit.
However you could have a "militarist storyteller", this is a self-contained solution.

My opinion is that you can build functioning Killbox if you want, and have them work, but have them be a costly investment because...
... ideally raid and tribal attack would became much rarer compared to other events.

One thing that I'm working on at the moment is minified turrets.

Interesting, I've often considered (even with the trailer) that Rimworld was lacking in bringing the combat INSIDE the colony, rather than make it a pristine (vomit filled) heaven.

For now Turret are pretty much OP, but once Tynan decide to rework the Tech-tree into something (obviously)grandiose I would love "automated turret" to be way at the end behind manned-turret and corridor(non-rotating)turrets. One could even require a AI-central to command a certain number of turret.

[Rahjital]

The tactical part is one of Rimworld's selling points, it's even on the front page

But yes, hopefully combat will be less important once more features are implemented. Diplomacy, colonist relationships and beliefs, and anything else Tynan might have in plan so that combat is just one in a number of important gameplay mechanics.

[TLHeart]

a very simple way for the ai to react to a kill box, cut the power lines, blow up the geothermal generators, then walk into the base.

[Rahjital]

... and die because the player has loads and loads of backup batteries.

Really though, it would be great if raiders sabotaged power like that, that could completely change the dynamic of the fight.