I want to hear about exploit strategies!

[Darth Fool]

I have just discovered a way to get past the melee blocking for colonists.  While one colonist is blocking the path and fighting someone, set the other colonists to work on a construction project on the far side of the enemy...then when they are on the blocked square, draft them.  You can thus have an arbitrary number of melee colonists on a single square.  May work with commands other than construction.

[b0rsuk]

I have just discovered a way to get past the melee blocking for colonists.  While one colonist is blocking the path and fighting someone, set the other colonists to work on a construction project on the far side of the enemy...then when they are on the blocked square, draft them.  You can thus have an arbitrary number of melee colonists on a single square.  May work with commands other than construction.

Probably, because it sounds like the game uses soft collisions. The check needs to be not only when entering a square, but when drafting.

[slitherrr]

Hmmm, well *that* is interesting -- batteries can be uninstalled too.  Do they hold their charge in transit?

... testing ...

OH MY GOD!

Do uninstalled batteries lose their charge in a solar flare event?

[DariusWolfe]

Do uninstalled batteries lose their charge in a solar flare event?

I can't imagine they would, given that installed batteries don't lose their charge during a solar flare. Z

As a matter of fact, I think (but would need to check to be sure) that they still continue to charge during the solar flare event; It's just items that draw power that seem to be disabled.

[SimpleMachine88]

Do uninstalled batteries lose their charge in a solar flare event?

I can't imagine they would, given that installed batteries don't lose their charge during a solar flare. Z

As a matter of fact, I think (but would need to check to be sure) that they still continue to charge during the solar flare event; It's just items that draw power that seem to be disabled.

Uninstalled batteries don't lose charge, and batteries do not charge during a solar flare.

PS- I've never actually done this, but I've been told that if you knock out the corners between rooms, you can place a sculpture there, and it will raise the impressiveness of all the adjacent rooms (so up to 4x the beauty).  There's lots of janky optimal ways to construct bases and kill zones that have to do with diagonals, many already mentioned.  Has anything been done about these strats in A15?

Another exploity thing is that very often sterile tiles will increase the impressiveness of a room far more than they should, as in they're better than gold or silver tiles.  The solution, I think, would be to have cleanliness above 0 not increase impressiveness.

And is there ever any reason to make a reasonably sized chicken coop.  You seem to be able to jam as much livestock as you want into as little area as you want.  200 chickens should probably not be able to be housed on 2 tiles.

[Shurp]

Even more ridiculous is that my chicken coop is in the freezer, and the frozen eggs they lay hatch just fine.

[LordMunchkin]

Easy way to kill thrumbos.

In addition to this one, the easiest way I've found to kill thrumbo's, is by simply making a zone next to them with beer. They will drink until they blackout, and if it doesn't kill them the first round, they will drink another beer immediately as they wake up, killing them and dropping their horn.

25-30 beers for 4 dead thrumbos seems a bit easy to me, but I am not sure if it's considered an exploit? Also I saw it mentioned another place, but didn't find it in this post.

Easiest way to kill thrumbos (has this been said yet?):
1. Wait for night & for silly thrumbo to fall asleep
2. Box sleeping thrumbo in with 4 walls (this doesn't awaken the sleeping giant, or anything else - likely including a raid party!)
3. Wait for thrumbo to starve
4. Harvest the horn, meat, and leather
5. Profit.

Animals break down walls to get to food. I found this out the hard way when a couple of gazelle trapped behind my walls opened an ancient danger.

[eadras]

Kind of an exploit involving the AI not using triple rocket launchers properly.  I've had a few sapper raids with 20+ heavily armed pirates and multiple triple rocket launchers, which can do some serious damage.  But when you wait until they are digging at a wall and use the insanity lance on one of them, many of the pirates will rush in to melee the insane pawn, all the while taking massive friendly fire damage, and a grand finale of triple rocket launchers making mince meat out of the whole pile.  I've reproduced this behavior on 3 occasions now.

[NolanSyKinsley]

This is by far my favorite exploit, if/when you patch it, I will be extremely sad.

Basically have a cooler cool a single tile, and then use vents from there, MASSIVELY increases effectiveness of the cooler! I haven't tested exactly how large of a freezer I can make with a single cooler, but I assume it would be massive. This cooler is set to 0F and keeps the 12x12 room at ~20F (I double wall with an air gap for extra efficiency, and I can get it down to -55F with that single cooler!):

[keylocke]

woah. that cooler exploit is fantastic.

also these ones :

I just realized that you can upsurp the only one pawn per square rule by making a 1x1 animal area and assigning all of your animals to it. Strategic placement of this area can prove disastrous to invaders.

PS- I've never actually done this, but I've been told that if you knock out the corners between rooms, you can place a sculpture there, and it will raise the impressiveness of all the adjacent rooms (so up to 4x the beauty).  There's lots of janky optimal ways to construct bases and kill zones that have to do with diagonals, many already mentioned.  Has anything been done about these strats in A15?

Another exploity thing is that very often sterile tiles will increase the impressiveness of a room far more than they should, as in they're better than gold or silver tiles.  The solution, I think, would be to have cleanliness above 0 not increase impressiveness.

And is there ever any reason to make a reasonably sized chicken coop.  You seem to be able to jam as much livestock as you want into as little area as you want.  200 chickens should probably not be able to be housed on 2 tiles.

[kasnavada]

Easy way to kill thrumbos.

I found 2 different ways:
1 - fire strategy.
- Set thrumbo(s) on fire (multiple ways to do so, from grenades to placing wood below them and so on...).
- Shoot it while it runs around being burned.

Fix => I'd find it more logical if thrumbos ignored that they're burning when being shot at. Also when surrounded by lots of people.

This is a bit risky because the thrumbo might not be dead before the fire stops, and works not so well with multiple thrumbos... but I feel not enough.

2 - insanity lance
Works "only" on multiple thrumbos (hahaha)
- target one RESTED thrumbo with the insanity lance.
- It'll attack other thrumbos.
- Wait a bit (they've got LOTS of life, which is why the thrumbo needs to be rested). Then either you've got 1 downed / dead thrumbo, and an almost downed one.

That works best with groups up to 3. With 4 thrumbos they tend to gang up 1 VS 3 so you get only one, but generally they get infected and die anyway.

Downside : needs an insanity lance.

[giannikampa]

My way to kill thrumbos (A14):
a 1X1 stckpile critical priority for beer.
Where? just some square away from the thrumbos.
They prefer trees but eat the most around in half a day. Because they are always hungry they go for the beer eventually. If they moove away the stockpile follows them.

I've the beer and you have an empty stomach.. let's find a compromise, my littlebig white sack of meat

[kuledude]

You can actually force tame animals if you incap them,rescue and then treat(with a little bit of luck you can get a bond), but if you don't get that bond at the first treatments you might aswell kill him......or euthanize(start it and then immediatly stop the pawn before he finishes the Euthanasia process the Anesthesis will apply which will cause the animal to not get up after getting treated), beat up the animal a bit, treat it(hope your lucky), repeat. With a little bit of work you will get the animal on your side.

[DariusWolfe]

I think some of what we're seeing here aren't exploits, so much as they're strategies.

Setting a Thrumbo on fire and taking advantage of the panic reaction is simply smart. I think a big animal is going to be more worried about the big hurt all over its body than the small hurts of your bullets. Same with getting a Thrumbo drunk.

An exploit is the use of a bugs, glitches or game systems to gain an advantage in a manner not intended by the game's designers. While I'd be surprised if he actually intended beer to be used as a hunting tactic, I think it's one Tynan would call fair; It'd work in real life, after all.

[kasnavada]

I think some of what we're seeing here aren't exploits, so much as they're strategies.

Setting a Thrumbo on fire and taking advantage of the panic reaction is simply smart. I think a big animal is going to be more worried about the big hurt all over its body than the small hurts of your bullets. Same with getting a Thrumbo drunk.

An exploit is the use of a bugs, glitches or game systems to gain an advantage in a manner not intended by the game's designers. While I'd be surprised if he actually intended beer to be used as a hunting tactic, I think it's one Tynan would call fair; It'd work in real life, after all.

Thanks for the explanation... and yes... basically, other players are calling "setting fire to the strongest animal in the game so it might be killed with next to no risk"... "use of (...)a game system to gain an advantage in a manner not intended by the game's designers". Same for beer until they die.

It makes no sense for me that the "wisest animals of the universe" (or so the legends say) can be downed in such pathetic and dumb manner.

Actually, as a whole, I think fire in combat is so OP that its clever uses are exploits. I mean pawns can get ears ripped off, mauled, shot off, lose their liver, even one arm and STILL BE FIGHTING !!!! But, if they start burning they enter complete panic mode, running out of cover in stupid movements toward the things that set them in fire and only deigning to start to removing fire from oneself when begin to be major.