Killboxes and combat, a fix?

[Listy]

In a recent on going thread there was some discussion of Killboxes and the like, and how to fix them. Well I have had a thought, and its more that the issue isn't with killboxes, but the Combat system. It almost forces you into a killbox if you want to survive long-term on the planet.

Another issue is that the game teaches you killboxes from the very start.
I'd like you to cast your mind back to that very first game of Rimworld you played. You remember scrimping and saving and finally building a turret. Then the Tribal attack comes.
You sit there gloating how these savages are going to get the good news from a machine gun. Then the Tribals halt and wipe out your turret with a volley of bow fire...

Mankind logically then says "ok the enemy out range me, so lets build a wall, where they can't out range me."
DING! Achievement unlocked: Killbox mentality.

So from game 1 people are encouraged and taught to build Killboxes.

The issue in this scenario is Range. So why not get rid of different ranges?
I can hear it now as people whip out various range numbers for different guns pointing out how far a bullet can travel. Aye you're right there, however one constant is the size of a human being, and the age old saying "You can't hit what you can't see."
In World war two nearly every soldier involved had a weapon which could kill at about 1km. Yet almost all infantry combats happened at 400-500m. Why? Simply because a person at those ranges is little more than a dot.
At which point it came down to how much effective volume of fire you could put down on the target's area. So here's the idea.

Make all weapons in the game have the same range, with the exception of pistol calibre and thrown weapons. The deciding factor on hitting is rate of fire. So a survival rifle would be better than a long bow.
The reason for this is, if you know the enemy will never out range you, then you don't need to killbox, as you're guns will always be able to reply.

Obviously the Sniper rifle is the odd ones out here as they have optics and can see further. It may be that we need to say good bye to it for the betterment of the game.

Pistol calibre (SMG's and pistols) and thrown weapons can of course have their own range under the maximum. It might be an idea to make Pistol calibre weapons have a higher rate of fire to make up for their lack of range.

[hyperpeople]

You dont have to delete sniper rifles, just say they would have the highest accuracy in high range, while combat rifles would have the highest accuracy in medium range. Their high rang accuracy would be drastically under the snipers, so that snipers still have a good use. You could balance the weapon system with the accuracys in low, medium and high range.

[Kegereneku]

Copypasta.

Myself on the contrary I don't think we need to change the mechanic, it is well balanced.

- You move pawn, they shoot with relative precision.
IF they are injured you usually have the time to pull them back
- Melee now have shield making them perfectly able to get close.
Their only problem is that regardless of skills/weapon the enemy can incapacitate them
- Turret fire by short burst, can be repaired at risk, or take the enemy with it.
They can be overwhelmed, they can be destroyed, they can "sacrifice themselves"

The "Rule of Engagement" IA is what I would change, but not by much.
So far the combat are mostly balanced.
- Tribal/Raider can overwhelm the turret or destroy them at distance
- Players, in attempt of keeping repair bill low try to avoid having a turret blow up (and to retrieve items)
- Melee is dangerous against anyone not equipped or in numerical superiority
Edit : - Sniper are rarer, powerful, but require skill and is vulnerable to any intelligent counter-attack.

But it devolve into Killbox because :
- Every single AI attack in straight line, from one direction.
- Their logic take the path of leastmost resistance to the turret.
Edit : - And the maximal range of turret define the point were you put wall (but again, turrets are balanced as they can be overwhelmed anyway).

To make the typical "Killbox" not worth the cost I don't think we need a SMART enemy. Just an enemy with DIFFERENT Dumb logic (chosen randomly).
An idea : each raid, a portion of the Raider follow a different path-finding process.
- One charge turret like now.
- Another AVOID turret and consider walls something to go through.
- Last one would alway stay at maximum attack range (The chief ?)

To even make it look like tactic, there would be some shared-logic. Some parameter would make the 50% that choose a logic to stay (relatively) together.

Leading in theory to :
- siege don't change
- An entire RAID avoiding turret and attacking from <random new direction>
- Half attacking turret, Half avoid them
- Some staying at maximum range
- Or all charging turret like before

So that ... (tell me if you disagree)
- Plains colony couldn't influence the AIs into a killbox with walls, even THICK walls.
- Walls will slow down enemy considerably (and embrasure could not be abused like turret anymore, you might even need better turrets), making stronghold worth.
- Mountain-bunker either need only one single entrance, or killbox for each. (acceptable it in my opinion)
and we would beg Tynan to make raid less numerous and smaller, and give us embrasure and better turrets... to survive

I do not think that range must change either with the game-mechanic, we need weapons range that are shorter AND longer than (here the common base) turrets.

Giving all weapon the same range wouldn't dissuade from making Killbox. Quite the contrary, it would only diminish gameplay and turn all battle into Archaic Line Battle, to optimize DPS and minimize damage you would never fight in inferior number (including turret) and you would be even less inclined to go fight outside (I won't count the number of time Sniper Riffle allowed me to counter a Siege)

In my opinion it doesn't take much to dissuade from making kill box.
Just having (even DUMB) enemy who prefer to go through walls than face turret would counter the placement of all turret at the same place.

And by this I don't mean "stay away" in term of distance necessarily. Look at many Killbox design, some of the most industrially efficient one literally have service door that bypass them. If Raider were to attack there, we would arrest the killbox designer and shoot him for high-treason.

[LittleGreenStone]

I have mentioned it somewhere else: Making pawns mine/destroy walls and attack by-passing killboxes is a bad idea. People -those who play on actual "difficulty", not friendly basebuilder, would not survive for long.

Also, making weapons have unlimited range is a rather stupid idea in my opinion. That would only force people to build killboxes.


Big, tough and expensive turrets that can out-range most weapons (emphasis on expensive...and tough...and out-range too) would most likely solve the killbox problem. When you have 5-10 colonists, facing 50+ raiders with sniper rifles and rocket launchers and such, these cheap turrets won't do any good unless you do the old killbox thing.
Building a few turrets with adequate range would be one solution.

-Balancing the strength of the turret could be done with this wealth system, as far as I know the size of the attacking group depends on it as well.

-Expensive, so players wouldn't be able to place dozens of them immediately, unlike current turrets. Balancing, its cost is rather easy.

-Long range (but less than a sniper rifle, for obvious balancing reasons) would render killboxes far less useful, as it would only reduce the effective range of these turrets. Or at least it would require one hell of a big killbox.

-Tough, so that you won't just lose a fortune to 3 cave-dweller shooting wooden arrows at it... I still can't wrap my head around that one...

-It works for me. Yeah, it isn't an actual point, but I made some modifications on my own, for I disliked how useless turrets are in vanilla, without relying on killboxes that is... It works out for me well. Turrets are OP, but can't place many of them, are easily overwhelmed so they require the assistance of colonists.

-Mine has a minimum range of 8.

[Darth Fool]

I have mentioned it somewhere else: Making pawns mine/destroy walls and attack by-passing killboxes is a bad idea. People -those who play on actual "difficulty", not friendly basebuilder, would not survive for long.

I disagree.  You are assuming that there would be no rebalancing of the number of attackers coming in a raid.  Part of the point, IMHO, of making the AI smarter is to allow the raids to be smaller, while still being challenging.  If the only way to make the raids challenging is to add #s, then you quickly end up where we are now.

[b0rsuk]

Don't forget current turrets are improvised turrets.

How about a pop-up turret ? Can't be targeted until enemies are in range. Something like Command & Conquer games. Or camouflage. Turret is invisible until it fires the first shot. Then you have to manually camouflage it with a pawn, and it doesn't work if it's currently in view of some enemies.

Or, you know, give the new alpha a chance and try non-turret solutions before you outright dismiss them.

[LittleGreenStone]

I have mentioned it somewhere else: Making pawns mine/destroy walls and attack by-passing killboxes is a bad idea. People -those who play on actual "difficulty", not friendly basebuilder, would not survive for long.

I disagree.  You are assuming that there would be no rebalancing of the number of attackers coming in a raid.  Part of the point, IMHO, of making the AI smarter is to allow the raids to be smaller, while still being challenging.  If the only way to make the raids challenging is to add #s, then you quickly end up where we are now.

If you allow the AI to by-pass turrets (with your rebalance in mind), that'd mean you might find your 3 colonist facing...3 raiders? 5?
If you have 10, then 15 raiders? Any more and you could have serious losses, which isn't fun.
Sure, you could also rebalance the frequency of raids too, along with the rest of the aspects, but then there wouldn't be much left of Rimworld, it'd be a different game.

Against killboxes exist the drop-pod kind of raid, which, unless you mine your way into a mountain, works.
Now in a mountain, I doubt it'd be a good idea to have enemies mine their way into your base just like that, when only the entrance of it is apparent.

[Tynan]

I'm actually currently working on an AI that does pretty much exactly what was suggested in this thread (blow holes into the walls), though it's a challenge to write the geometric analysis for it to do this intelligently while avoiding the killbox itself.

Overall I am hoping to make the enemies smarter and then rebalance by reducing their numbers. Fewer enemies is better IMO; it makes for a better story than swarms of faceless dudes zerg-rushing you.

It may also mean being able to balance *up* the turrets, since they'll now be used in less exploitative circumstances. It'll be a more even fight, structurally.

[StorymasterQ]

Blowing holes in the wall. Do you lob a grenade onto a wall or do you just stuff one into a preexisting glory hole?

[userfredle]

I'm actually currently working on an AI that does pretty much exactly what was suggested in this thread (blow holes into the walls), though it's a challenge to write the geometric analysis for it to do this intelligently while avoiding the killbox itself.

Overall I am hoping to make the enemies smarter and then rebalance by reducing their numbers. Fewer enemies is better IMO; it makes for a better story than swarms of faceless dudes zerg-rushing you.

It may also mean being able to balance *up* the turrets, since they'll now be used in less exploitative circumstances. It'll be a more even fight, structurally.

Damn you go tynan you da man!

I never fathomed the AI would be drastically overhauled so soon in the alpha, cant wait to see the latest work bud

[b0rsuk]

Making an AI dumber is always easy, so perhaps this is a little premature... but it would be nice if AI factions weren't infallible in evaluating your defences. Especially early, they don't need to know where exactly all your turrets are. Tribals might not know that turrets explode, they may or may not be scared of hissing and sparking turrets.

It would be nice to have a single 1 faction type that IS dumb and promotes killboxes. All the others - tribals, settlers, pirates, mechanoids - will learn. Call them "inbred degenerates", insectoids, or whatever. This is a way to make make factions feel unique.

[keylocke]

Don't forget current turrets are improvised turrets.

yea, i've been wondering when turret upgrades and turret variety would be introduced to the base game rather than just mods. though i've tried different turret mods on and i still end up making killboxes anyway, albeit a heck of a lot more deadlier than just using those improv turrets.

I'm actually currently working on an AI that does pretty much exactly what was suggested in this thread (blow holes into the walls), though it's a challenge to write the geometric analysis for it to do this intelligently while avoiding the killbox itself.

Overall I am hoping to make the enemies smarter and then rebalance by reducing their numbers. Fewer enemies is better IMO; it makes for a better story than swarms of faceless dudes zerg-rushing you.

It may also mean being able to balance *up* the turrets, since they'll now be used in less exploitative circumstances. It'll be a more even fight, structurally.

um, does this analysis also include recognizing "decoy" structures and onion-layered maze-like defenses? 

anyways, what i'd also like to see is an "adaptive" raider AI that can switch between different strategies based on the situation.

ie :
-if raiders have more troops, then attacking the homezone takes more priority
-if raiders have less troops, then they will try to AVOID the homezone and just attack colonists outside using guerrilla ambush tactics.

also, i think raiders shouldn't just automatically retreat when they lose morale. i think they should first wait near the map edge to regroup and reassess the situation and then switch strategies if necessary.