I want to hear about exploit strategies!

[b0rsuk]

When there's a delayed raid or a siege, they don't decide to attack until a certain number of them are DEAD. So when I send a colonist to harass them with a survival rifle, each of the raiders takes a turn getting shot at. I wound as many raiders as possible. Then, when it's time for attack, the alive fraction of the original are limping, have shaky hands or can't see. If I'm able to equip more than one long range colonist, they often take so much damage in the final chase that they run away before reaching my colony. In the end, I'm able to kill several invaders wound others, and rout the rest without exchanging fire.

[NeverPire]

Using chickens to delay mechanoids attack for days.

This works for every type of raid really... sappers and grenadiers killing themselves while trying to murder all your chickens is hilarious. xD

It doesn't work well for classic raids because any brawler can kill chickens easily, while receiving some friendly fire of course.

[Thyme]

When there's a delayed raid or a siege, they don't decide to attack until a certain number of them are DEAD. So when I send a colonist to harass them with a survival rifle, each of the raiders takes a turn getting shot at. I wound as many raiders as possible. [...]

I was doing it wrong all the time! Always thought it's best to simply kill as many as possible. Though, when raided by preparing raiders, a portion of them will chase your sharp shooters when they're under fire.

[Hans Lemurson]

Double-Farming:
Crops of cannot be planted on any tiles adjacent to trees.  However, if you plant the trees AFTER sowing your crops, they will both grow side-by-side.  You can grow 60-70% intact fields of crops between freshly planted trees to nearly double the productivity of farmland.  Some micromanagement is required since the default tree placement is dumb, and you cannot replant crops without clearing the trees (so long-growing crops are ideal), but it's worth it when suitable farmland is scarce.

...It is also clearly an exploit, since it gets around the prohibition on planting crops next to trees and making tree-farming "free".  Not quite free since it does take some of the land and you can't replant until after harvest-time, but it still lets you get more out of your land than was likely intended.

edit: have a picture!  (This is part of the exploit report and not just me crying out for attention.  Honest!)

Here is a picture of my glorious fuel-farm and its double-cropping exploits.  It is recovering from a fuel shortage caused by my failed attempt to expand the operation.

Here we can see Poplars growing happily among Potatoes and Devil-Strand.  The trees in the potato-patch were planted randomly by the pawns, and the ones in the Devil-Strand were planted under my firm and direct guidance.  The random-pattern has 24 trees in a plot, but the carefully-ordered patterns in other plots have 30 trees.

[Thyme]

Growing multiple crops was common back in the days of my grandparents. Nowadays, oddly, it's illegal. It was done for the reasons Hans mentioned: Productivity because farmland was "scarce" (Farmers had much less farmland, they had to grow that way). I don't really see it as an exploit, as RimWorld is a harsh place (and it takes a lot of micro). Up to Tynan to decide.

[cotocobr]

I just figured out how to kill the infestation bugs without a real fight. Just dig a long tunnel and shoot them from a distance with the survival rifle. Easy. I'm pretty sure some of you figured this out before me too!

So let me just request that if you find an exploit strategy, please report it. These kinds of things are basically bugs, and they break the game (even if people sort of "like" them, they harm the overall experience). So please report them!

I'd love to hear about any exploits you know of in this thread. Are there other no-risk ways to defeat infestations or sieges? The ones I know of are:

- Shoot infestation bugs from long range
- Open the roof and let infestation bugs freeze
- Shoot siegers with sniper rifles (until they attack)

Sometimes when the invaders do siege they will seek iron on the map, and often they try to pick up iron from places near their colony in groups of 2 people, the unbalanced is that they do not attack you, so you can easily kill them and Wait for them to come again and again until they decide to attack your colony

Sorry if i made any mistake,I translate this from portuguese

[Tynan]

Thanks for the info everyone. These reports are useful.

I don't think we can fix them all but I'm try to grab the most important and fixable ones.

One note: Please try to only post exploit reports. Please do NOT post:
-Discussions about what is or isn't an exploit
-Ideas to solve exploits or discussions thereof
-Low-effort "me too" posts

Thanks!

[b0rsuk]

How to render ancient cryosleep caskets toothless:

By the way the scarabs at the bottom are peaceful - might be a bug. Not only they don't attack the guy who came out of the casket, but even my colonists.

[b0rsuk]

From another thread. Pretty cunning:

I order often two ore more caravans at same time, when they are hostile together. They fight on my market place. I can get their stuff, heal the wounded and become either new colonists or better standing to the factions. *g*

A fairly simple and natural fix would be trade caravans from hostile factions trade insults but not shoot each other.

[NeverPire]

By the way the scarabs at the bottom are peaceful - might be a bug. Not only they don't attack the guy who came out of the casket, but even my colonists.

It has already happened in one of my games so I think it's not a bug. You can even tame them but they don't breed.
In my knowledge, it's the only way to get tamed scarabs.
The strange thing is that cryo people have scarab bites scars and wounds but scarabs don't attack them.

You can easily exploit that if you want by injuring some of scarabs and let them fight cryo people.

[Jstank]

I was watching Rhadamant's play through and noticed that if you dig out an area where rock and deep water meet you can shoot from the outcropping without the AI actually firing back at you.

[Zhentar]

A lone colonist with a personal shield is nigh invincible in the face of charge blaster & minigun centipedes, as long as they're kept at a sufficient range. This by itself makes it easy to use a decoy to split off centipedes from a raid. But the personal shield at least prevents them from dealing damage to the centipedes.... or does it?


Just line 'em up and let them take each other out (well, not all of them, but good enough).

[SpaceDorf]

I think smart Micromanagement does not count as an exploit
Since everybody can become a victim to friendly fire.
And sometimes the slugs get lucky, two or three hits from a salvo can ruin your day.

[Zhentar]

It's not something I would really be inclined to call an exploit either, but Tynan's OP makes it pretty clear that he wants to hear about tactics that significantly mitigate combat risk (and a few posts up makes it clear he's not interested in arguments about what to call those tactics).

In that screenshot, Arseny is bleeding because he did take a hit or two while running around to switch which centipede was shooting which. But even injured he could outrun them and wait for his shield to recharge before resume encouraging friendly fire.

[b0rsuk]

It's an exploit because - repeating what I've heard - you're exploiting the fact that friendly fire in this game is deadlier that direct fire. If you're putting lots of rounds in the air and there's an ally on the way to target, he will take more hits than an enemy would take with unobscured line of fire. If this holds true, and my own experience suggests it does - provoking a centipede to shoot another is more effective than directly shooting a centipede.