Can you defend effectively without either turrets OR doors ?

[b0rsuk]

We all know turrets and killboxes by now. You may dislike Rimworld playing like a generic tower defense, but they get the job done.

Meanwhile some players boast about turretless colonies. In 90% cases or more they just use their own brand of cheese - door peeking and pot shots.

Door peeking is very effective at killing overwhelming forces. It may be too effective.

I don't actually remember the manhunter pack that I didn't kill to the last animal. In theory it's a good idea to stay inside until they leave. In practice, it's free meat even without letting turrets explode. Have 2+ doors and take a pot shot whenever there are no animals right beside it.
But without doors, manhunters rip mechanoids and tribals to pieces.

What I'm saying is that players who don't rely on turrets rely on door peeking equally heavily. The de facto situation is that vanilla Rimworld has its embrasures for most purposes, you just need to back away when a melee enemy comes close to the door. For optimum cover place doors parellel to the direction of advancing enemies.

Over-reliance on a single defense mechanism - turret or door - is equally bad, in my opinion. They're both very static and make combat not interesting. There's no maneuvering, flanking, positioning.

Try a flat map without building turrets AND without placing your shooters in doorways. It's extremely hard. You are allowed to hide from manhunters, but not shooting at them from doorways.

[Kaballah]

I run my colonies like this with all melee defenders and it's pretty fun.  I do build walls and choke points, but the outer compound (power infrastructure etc) is left unblocked by doors.

What I'm saying is that players who don't rely on turrets rely on door peeking equally heavily.

no, not really

[b0rsuk]

And how do you get so many decent melee fighters ? Training Melee skill is much harder than Shooting: you lose fingers and toes left and right. And in early game you can't produce armour to do something about it.

[Kaballah]

If you get your choke point(s) up you don't need all that many.  And yeah sometimes a colonist loses a finger or even an arm or leg, oh darn ^^  If you can force enemy shooters into melee range then they get mashed because they're essentially weaponless.  Manhunter packs are very difficult to completely clear but you can deal with them the same way shooter colonists do (hide indoors or pop in/out of a door).  The only thing that's really nasty is the mechanoid ship part incidents, and it doesn't have to do with your point but anyhow I just mod them out because I don't enjoy the cheese required to deal with them.

I do play with Skullywag's melee shields mod but I don't embark with them and you can't make more until you unlock smithing anyway.

[b0rsuk]

I appreciate your input from another point of view.

Do you consider placing IED traps around the ship 'cheese' ? It works quite well in the early game. For example in the first Autumn I had a poison ship. I placed 4 IED traps, one on each corner. I poked it, and it turned out it contained a Scyther and two Centipedes. The Scyther triggered two IEDs and died. The Centipedes were then easily dispatched with a pair of survival rifles.

Have you tried using EMP + melee against mechanoids ? There's no friendly fire other than a personal shield going down.

But forget mechanoids - you make hunting sound tricky. Do you need a group of burly men to take out a wild boar quickly ?

[Thane]

Glad I could inspire a whole thread ^.^

Though I agree to get any sort of long term colony you must rely on a good hunk of sharp cheddar. Whether that cheddar be horseradish flavored or plain is up to us.

I find the turretless door forts to provide a more interactive fighting style with a great deal more entertainment than kill boxes.

I'm pretty sure I couldn't survive without using one or the other though. Providing good enough cover so my outnumbered and outgunned colonists can survive, without some method for immediate retreat, is nigh impossible; especially with all the movement penalties colonists quickly accrue from scars and scratches.

Even sitting in darkness, behind sandbags, with walls on either side, shooters will still be quickly neutralized if their are 3, or more, raiders focus firing them. Having a nice firefight like in the game trailers isn't an option, when even a modestly sized raid can wipe the floor with colonists in a fair fight, or at least kill and maim enough of them that their is no way to move on.

Makes me consider keeping my colonies artificially poor when I try open layouts. A nice burn room where anything that is not necessary right this second is quickly vaporized to avoid larger raids.

[GarettZriwin]

I use ranged troops, no turrets or mortars, natural cover, walls of my colony and corridor to retreat if needed to change position and if I can at least one meele guy with animal skill to charge with my bears.

Tribals can me microed, they stand no chance to assault rifles and power armor troopers that can be ready in ~1 year

Mechanoids can be sniped or blasted with rockets and M16, and rockets are given by game very cheap, if terrain does not let you kill raider zooks you can always par mere 400$ for shock lance which will not only get rid of zook but also let you get his weapon much cheaper than buying it from trader.

Raiders are just free loot and I don't exploit game so no caravans too so I don't have to fight weaker version of raiders.

[Kaballah]

Do you consider placing IED traps around the ship 'cheese' ? It works quite well in the early game. For example in the first Autumn I had a poison ship. I placed 4 IED traps, one on each corner. I poked it, and it turned out it contained a Scyther and two Centipedes. The Scyther triggered two IEDs and died. The Centipedes were then easily dispatched with a pair of survival rifles.

Have you tried using EMP + melee against mechanoids ? There's no friendly fire other than a personal shield going down.

I think being forced to construct a specific death box around the ship part or get completely demolished is very unfun so I just don't bother with it at all.  Centipedes also have really retarded melee stats (not only do they do tremendous damage per hit, they have a very fast attack speed).  I just don't give a crap about the ship part events at all and am totally fine leaving them out of the game.

But forget mechanoids - you make hunting sound tricky. Do you need a group of burly men to take out a wild boar quickly ?

Hunting stuff up to boar/alphabeaver size with melee is no big deal.  You take a little damage and sometimes have to micromanage hunts because the hunter will interrupt the hunt job and return home for medical treatment, but I don't think a boar/beaver has ever downed one of my melee hunters.  If you want to kill muffalos or deer bear or something then yes you bring a group in military mode and gank a bunch at one time.

e: when a hunter does get interrupted by an animal fighting back, you can just right click -> 'prioritize hunting' and they'll finish the kill

[Kaballah]

Even sitting in darkness, behind sandbags, with walls on either side, shooters will still be quickly neutralized if their are 3, or more, raiders focus firing them. Having a nice firefight like in the game trailers isn't an option, when even a modestly sized raid can wipe the floor with colonists in a fair fight, or at least kill and maim enough of them that their is no way to move on.

This is a big reason I like melee defenders, because with all ranged you are either cheesing invaders' AI with turrets taking all damage for you, or you are trading shots with them.

[Songleaves]

With the manhunter packs, all you need to defeat them is a fast enough colonist. Send them out to greet the manhunter packs, they all chase that colonist, have that colonist run laps around your base as the rest of your colonists shoot them. You can also run into groups of traps.

[chchgreen]

i havent been playing rimworld too long, but i found killboxes pretty boring.

i do like building fortifications and a couple of turrets in the main entrance to my compound, but i like to fight raiders out in the open, using the terrain and trees as cover, with a few vietcong tunnels to retreat to better firing positions and just keep harassing.
i like to split my forces up, so i can flank them and encircle them. i leave a route of retreat for them to take that ends up with them getting ripped to shreds from flying lead from multiple angles.

next game im going to start focusing mostly on melee fighters. jade weapons for everyone! just like my ancestors!

[Boston]

As with almost everything else in Rimworld, there are mods for this.

While part of me is excited for A14, a an equally-if-not-larger part is not so excited, for the sole reason that Combat Realism is no longer going to be updated. Combat Realism is one of those mods that I refuse to play without, as the enemies become less human and more "human-shaped bullet sponges" without it.

Other than that, I do the following:

1) USE TERRAIN, basically "Fortification 101". Not just mountainsides, but lakes and marshes, anything that slows down or impedes the movement of enemies is good.

2) With the above in mind, build a blockhouse, a 5x5 building with embrasures on all 4 sides. This blockhouse will cover the approach to your colony, over the rough terrain, the sides of the valley I build my colony in 99% of the time, and the path back to my colony.

3) Negate cover. Trees, unsurprisingly, give a decent amount of cover to approaching enemies. This; 1-makes it harder for your colonists to shoot enemies, and 2- lets the enemy get closer, which makes it more likely for the enemies to kill/wound your colonists. Therefore, I usually clear trees and brush out to a distance of 1 1/2 bow-shots away from my blockhouse.  Since I build 99.999% of the time using wood, this gives me  building material and firewood as well.

4) Use overlapping fields of fire. My colonies are usually built around a central "plaza", around which buildings like barns, common houses (combo kitchen and dining/rec room), personal cabins and workshops are built. This plaza is not only a good place for weddings, parties and trading groups to gather in, but is also the "last line of defense" for my colony.  If the raid group manages to force their way past the blockhouse, all my "noncombatants" will take up arms inside the various buildings, which have line-of-sight and embrasures focused on the central plaza. Since this central plaza has no cover and is close to the shooters, they are therefore much more effective, and get filled full of bullets and arrows from multiple directions.

The above strategy works well with firearms, especially shotguns, and even with bows.

[Shurp]

So the internet ate my longwinded post... garrr... here's the concise version:

1) When you're outnumbered and outgunned, tactics aren't going to help much, unless you use strong cheese.  I find that with a few turrets I can get by with only mozzarella strength cheese -- I shoot the attackers while the attackers shoot my turrets.  And I don't have that many turrets, my colonists have to do most of the shooting.

2) Crippling afflictions are the worst aspect of letting your colonists get targeted.  I might write an organ replacement mod to deal with this -- especially if I can figure out how to use devilstrand as the base to grow organs on.

[Kaballah]

That's what prisoners are for 

[RazorHed]

Lots and Lots of bear traps !