What's so good about sniper rifles?

[keylocke]

back to topic. @OP

try bringing around a dozen of careful shooters with bionic eyes with a minimum of 10 shooting skills. once you start amassing snipers, even large mechanoids can die from 1 or 2 sniper volleys. (more good snipers you have, more chances of critical / deadly hits)

pick snipers with the careful shooter trait. then you can combine it with minigunners/charge riflemen with the trigger happy trait and brawlers/beastmasters with plasteel longswords and a pack of huskies (they are good for chasing fleeing enemies). make them all bionic and give them the best armors. these will be the core of your army.

the colonists with none of those 3 traits are usually just left to work at the base as dedicated workers.(light clothes with no armor so they move faster)

[Shurp]

Your minigunners / charge riflemen don't fill your brawlers full of holes?

This is why I gave up on multifire weapons -- my colonists kept shooting each other instead of the enemy.  They might miss with sniper rifles but they usually don't hit anyone else.

[Mikhail Reign]

Your minigunners / charge riflemen don't fill your brawlers full of holes?

This is why I gave up on multifire weapons -- my colonists kept shooting each other instead of the enemy.  They might miss with sniper rifles but they usually don't hit anyone else.

I use my brawlers to cover falling back. While my rifles are repositioning (and not able to fire) I rush lone targets with melee to slow down any raiders who might get to the gunline before they have a chance to volley.

[keylocke]

Your minigunners / charge riflemen don't fill your brawlers full of holes?

This is why I gave up on multifire weapons -- my colonists kept shooting each other instead of the enemy.  They might miss with sniper rifles but they usually don't hit anyone else.

i use brawlers to out-flank the enemies and to chase enemies that flee.

they also function as a good distraction, since i can just park them nearby the enemies and then swap them out when they lose their shield.

----

typical battle for me is :

-snipers shoot and bait the enemies to awaiting ambush of minigunners, where we catch them in the crossfire of minigunners and snipers.
-this happens while my brawlers flanks the enemies.
-once the brawlers are in position and in decent cover, they will draw the enemy fire while my snipers annihilate the enemies.
-once enemies starts to flee, the brawlers attack and unleash their pets.

-delicious.

[Limdood]

sometimes i prefer to build non-killbox, non-turret bases.  i make square bases...a square ring of buildings with doors on all sides, directly across the hallways from each other, and the crops in the middle.

Combat is amazingly fun, since you have to be super tactical.  Duck in and out of doorways, run across hallways building to building...

...and use a shielded melee squad to run thru the buildings and pick off the single or small groups of enemies that get separated as they stop to shoot or take up "cover" positions. 

Taking out a 4 to 1 outnumbering tribal raid using nothing but manpower because I dodge in and around the buildings is super fun.

[AllenWL]

I would know. I tried that once. Which is why I never build killboxes.

I never tried building a base with the intention of fighting inside one though. Built so combat indoors is possible, yea, but not so my fighting is done in-base. Though, that could be fun... and with some specialized buildings... hmm...

[Shurp]

I've tried something like this -- building a square box base, surrounding it with a line of turrets, surrounding that with a palisade to keep snipers from killing my turrets, and having my guys run in and out of the building to snipe from behind the turrets.

Trouble is that tribals just overwhelm everything.  So I need a killbox until I get friendly relations with them.  But it works well against everything else.

[Boston]

Wow, you people are really dependent on killboxes for survival, huh?

Me, I don't use them. I play "realistically", that is, with an eye for terrain, and to use "force multipliers".

Of course, I have mods downloaded (like Combat Realism and Combat Realism-Defense, mainly), that make the game/pawns actually believable.

Keep in mind that I usually play in the Boreal Forest, so there is a LOT of water on the map.

I prefer to back myself into a canyon, with mountains on three sides. Preferably, there is either a marsh or a lake (even better), at least partially blocking off the opening

There, I build my pawn (I enjoy playing solo scenarios) a comfy little log cabin. Near the opening to the canyon, where the "path" narrows due to the marsh/lake, I build what is called a "blockhouse".  Basically, a little building with gunslits in the walls that you can safely fire from. Around the blockhouse, I have my pawn painstakingly pile up rubble and rocks, and usually build barbed wire fences, in order to slow down the attackers. They can still pass over the rubble/barbed wire, but it drastically slows them down, making them easy pickings for my rifle-armed pawn. When they get too close for comfort, I have the pawn equip a shotgun, or I just have them fall back to the cabin (which has more embrasures/arrowslits to fire from).

Sure, it takes some micromanaging, but I have routed 25+ tribal raids with one pawn , some fortification, and an eye for terrain.

[porcupine]

Of course, I have mods downloaded (like Combat Realism and Combat Realism-Defense, mainly), that make the game/pawns actually believable.
[...]
a little building with gunslits in the walls that you can safely fire from.
[...]
Sure, it takes some micromanaging, but I have routed 25+ tribal raids with one pawn , some fortification, and an eye for terrain.

Sounds like you're dependent on a kill box too really.  I mean sure, you haven't "boxed" it in (I don't either), but you're relying on a mod that lets you effectively be invulnerable within a building.  It's hardly fair to call out peoples killboxes, when you're playing a mod that relies on the same mechanics, and achieves the same effect at the end of the day.

[Boston]

There is a pretty significant difference between a kinda-fortified building that can be broken into easily, and a base carved into a mountain that funnels all the attackers  through a single door into the range of multiple turrets.

The pawn isn't invulnerable inside the blockhouse, they just have a high-degree of cover. My pawn has taken an arrow to the face when they leaned around the door, has had tribals break down the door and stab him to death, and has been burnt to death when they set the building on fire. It isn't 100% effective, not like killboxes are. The key aspect of the strategy is not the blockhouse, but usage of terrain. Without the attackers being slowed down via difficult terrain (marshes, shallow water, rubble), the blockhouse would be basically useless.

I also make sure to clear away any trees and bushes away from the  blockhouse, usually a "survival-rifle-shot" away from the building. Trees provide a surprising amount of cover.

The whole point of the blockhouse is to 1) provide a degree of cover, greater than that of sandbags, 2) to allow the pawn to fire on the enemy long/effectively enough to force them to break and flee. If you don't shatter them before they get into shotgun range, time to fall back.

All of the above are based on real-life fortification and seige-strategy, by the way.

[Fluffy (l2032)]

Also, your description of the base (tucked in with mountains on three sides and water in the opening) is pretty much a killbox itself - just a naturally created one.

As for man-made killboxes, bunkers and fortresses have for centuries been designed with killing zones in mind - locations that attackers had to go through and were covered by multiple lines of fire. If we're going to argue historical correctness/military tactics, a killbox is a completely natural thing to do.

The real problem, and why many people dislike killboxes, is that AI is too stupid to deal with them. This is however also completely true for your 'natural' killbox - AI is still stupid. (I do want to note that stupid frontal assaults on virtually unassailable positions have also for centuries been valid military tactics, so the AI isn't that bad.)

[Shurp]

Hmmm, maybe "Combat Realism" is worth trying out, if it extends the range of weapons sufficiently so that you *can* pick off enemy pawns as they charge through the fire zone.  The trouble now is that it takes half a dozen shots (at least) to bring one down and getting off that many shots on a single target in 30 squares is difficult, let alone taking down a dozen.

[AllenWL]

Combat realism's merit isn't in extending the weapon range. It's the fact that you can actually kill a guy without half a dozen shots to the face, and people don't get up after being peppered by 50+ shots from a minigun(which I've seen happen...)
A pawn with no body armor can be taken out with a couple hits(or even a single shot with a rifle[to a vital organ]) with combat realism, which makes combat faster and deadlier. This works to the great disadvantage of tribals, who never come with body armor. A single decent shooter with a LMG can slaughter dozens of tribals easily.

to quote 'charging through rifle fire to get into shotgun range is a good way to get killed'

Anyways, fact remains, ranged combat simply boils down into 'get more bullets/arrows into the enemy then they can get into us', and melee combat in rimworld is too underused/undeveloped to have a solid use in combat. It's melee is useful, yes, but only in certain niche conditions, meaning most simply go for guns. This results in a killbox being the most efficient way to go since, well, let's face it noone likes hauling in dead colonists.