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[ajtru]

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[keylocke]

^holy crap. this is awesome! 
perfect for a last line of defense (yea, turrets are expensive in the long run) but still, +1 internets for you.

[AcDie]

gj soldier nice foundation, but maybe use stone walls instead metal?

[colonistPally]

I have a similar formation where I funnel them in line of sight with this weird snaky map I was blessed/cursed with and it does the trick. Not abusing it *that* bad though. It maybe takes out 1 or 2 ... and the stupid things are going to blow up anyway. It also gives me way more latitude to have my guys at safe line of sights and so the raiders don't abuse the cover from all the destruction they make...

I could see how you could make a string of these and live forever if abused to that extent.

Not sure what could be done about it. In fact I'm not sure why they don't just back up and shoot it. The two turrets must confuse them.

I think (if I was the raider ai) I would move 3-4 guys in. Move them to one side, kill the 1st one , more them to the other side, kill the other. I'd still take losses but maybe I'd lose one guy per 2 turrets? I guess though if you got too excited you could do 2 turrets per side, or more. Then my tactic wouldn't work. But it'd be more expensive for you. Or hell I could just target the power lines. I wonder if the raiders don't have that priority set?

I wish like anything we could 1v1, record the game, send it in, then code the AI whatever way it was defeatable...... Because I like the way you think defensively. It would be an absolute riot to just siege you game after game after game coming up with all this insane tactics stuff.

[keylocke]

I wish like anything we could 1v1, record the game, send it in, then code the AI whatever way it was defeatable...... Because I like the way you think defensively. It would be an absolute riot to just siege you game after game after game coming up with all this insane tactics stuff.

agreed. players are capable of lateral thinking so there's plenty strategies and tactics that could evolve on a base building game with destructible terrain.

(ie : players can lay siege and force their enemies to starve to death or something, rather than blindlessly charge in on a kill zone.)

edit : since the base on the screenshot seems to be an underground bunker type relying on outside solar panels for power, then even sending a single enemy troop with frag grenades, blasting those panels apart while they're not looking and using harassment tactics would actually be quite effective.

they will eventually be unable to grow food indoors, forcing them outside on the verge of a mental break.. then all i have to do is give them a little "push" and then madness can do the rest of my work for me.

zero casualties using only one troop with a very particular set of skills. yay.

[Vas]

Yea, it's quite silly to have a tiny turret with the same size explosion.  I think he's trying to make turrets so bad that no one wants to use them.    They are already useless against snipers and random grenades that get close.

Maybe if a turret is detected, a sniper is always spawned with the wave and the wave waits behind the sniper till the turret is down.  Would be one new strategy for waves.  But then again small rooms like you've made, a sniper would be useless in.  Maybe the ability for the enemy to make new holes in rock. Tunnel into your base from another location.

[dd0029]

You don't even need to be dug in to do something like this. Stone walls are a beautiful thing.

Triple thick walls are nearly impregnable. Here's my most recent raider trap entry.



If you notice the damage marker in the middle of the entry funnel, that's where big groups often get hung up beating on the wall. Singles or pairs will occasionally make their way down into the kill box where my colonists are in 4x4 blocks to mow them down. Generally the raiders spend their whole time stun locked and don't get off any shots.

You will notice that the entry is currently plugged. My little mans were getting a bit too skittish after slaughtering scads of other little mans. So I closed the door. The raiders will beat on the walls until they get frustrated and leave. For added entertainmnent, grenadiers will occasionally get really frustrated and start chucking grenades at the walls and hit their "buddies". The most I lost was a stretch of four blocks on the outermost wall.

I will say that I got ludicrously lucky with this start position. I had a steam vent you can just barely see in the south west corner of the picture. Then as I was mining back for rooms, I found another vent. All the power I could ever want.

[Tynan]

Good to know! Thanks for explaining these.

[keylocke]

so i started a new game (i decided to just use the debug mode for this one since i was just testing stuff) and i was goofing around trying to make dd0029's killbox a bit more compact, then i found another cheap exploit while doing so.

doors!

here's a pic of how they ended up getting piled on top of each other in front of the door.
(also, try to ignore the dead bodies inside the base. i was testing out how the AI handle indoor battles before this. and well... they seem to like hugging walls and kicking it. it was really strange)



anyways, a conveniently placed door to the only entrance to my base seemed to attract more attention from the raider AI making them completely ignore my troops that are shooting at them. they were so slowed down by debris trying to go melee attack the door and by the time they managed to get a couple of shots off, the message about raiders fleeing pops out and then they got mowed down while attempting to flee trough the debris.

[colonistPally]

Hah debris fields. This is how Colony 9 lasted so long (and got lagged out until Semmy saved me).

I really like your guy's's's ideas. I wish we could pvp this would be sooooooo much fun!!!!!!!!!

Now I look at stone walls completely differently. Watching you guys is so amazing.

Also I don't think turrets are heading towards obsolences for any reason. The AI prioritizes them even if they're unpowered. So I can just build them unplugged and still use them as a sort of pendulum for my m-24 troopers. I don't need them to really have any other value than AI priority. Only bad thing is obviously the AI generates more based on my turrets which has been really causing me to think I only need enough turrets to fall back behind or.. something.

Hard to explain. :-( Anyway.

I love these screenshots. They're so fun!

[Vas]

Multiplayer would be nice, it'd also be incredibly hard to implement.  There are multiple theories I have on how one would do multiplayer in this game, if the devs would even consider it, but from what I saw, I don't even think he will consider any sort of multiplayer at all.

[colonistPally]

Multiplayer would be nice, it'd also be incredibly hard to implement.  There are multiple theories I have on how one would do multiplayer in this game, if the devs would even consider it, but from what I saw, I don't even think he will consider any sort of multiplayer at all.

Yeah I know. I started a new thread about it. I'm just trying to think of a way to make it absolutely simple barebones just for us hardcore folks. :-) Then we can blow each other up with turrets all day long, hehehe.

[sparda666]

inb4 turret explosion nerf

or raider AI to maintain distance from turret or be more agressive to walls

[keylocke]

i made a couple of revisions on the defenses, trying to apply the stuff gleaned from this thread. (ie : debris field ambush killzones + exploding turrets + door decoys + force fire frag grenades) and here's what i've come up with (i used debug mode again for easy editing/testing)

this first image shows a spawned single bandit raid worth 1000pts, they were easily herded towards the killzone as expected.


this second image shows the aftermath of that battle with zero friendly casualties while only acquiring minimal structural damage.

(note1 : check the bodies of the raiders that tried to ignore my troops and tried running towards the door leading towards a dead end prison cell)

anyways, this outer defense seems great against single enemy raids. total cost of repair is around 14 stone blocks. (results may vary)



shortly afterwards (no rest for the colonists), i decided to go for a tougher challenge to test out the defense. this time i spawned 3 raider parties worth 1000pts each.

(note : image 1 shows something awesome about the combat AI. instead of all of them rushing in at the same time, some of the raiders stopped midway and let their 'scouting party' go do their thing, before rushing in themselves)

this image also shows that i decided to pull my troops back inside of my base rather than engaging the raiders outside. it shows how i incorporated ajtru's exploding turret method as part of the secondary defense plan.

(note: zerg rush. lol)


this last image is the aftermath of the battle. again, zero friendly casualties on my side with moderate structural damage. (mostly due to the exploding turrets)

anyways, the AI did a weird thing during this phase of the battle. i noticed that after a while, they stopped charging at me and kept doing headbangs against the wall. so to test it out, i sent a single soldier with an R4 to start picking them off one-by-one (i undrafted the other colonists).

the weird thing about it, is that none of them retaliated back.  they just kept headbanging the walls until they die from gunshot wounds or ran away.

(note : Jordy the surgeon is a pretty cool guy. Eh kills raiders and doesnt afraid of anything. lol)



so, to sum it up. having multi-tiered defense systems seems to be quite effective in being able to deal with varying levels of enemy threat. it also allows players to keep repair costs down to a minimum. 

----

anyways, thanks to ajtru and dd0029 for sharing their ideas. you guys are awesome.

[colonistPally]

I did my own play on this last night. The raiders have to walk through a stone < shape with a | dirt wall on the other side. Behind the dirt wall I have several more stone outcroppings.

I have cannons parallel above and below the < shape. The raiders walk through without firing a shot, go to get cover. The turrets start firing and some of them are almost close enough to explode on them. As they walk through, they hop the dirt mound to take cover from the turrets, turn around and start firing. I have 9 guys with m-24's and pulse rifles waiting to shoot them in the back.

Even if I don't get mobilized on time it works from the south. I've only lost one guy and it was because the AI walked him into them for some reason and I caught it a second too late. For some reason the AI walks my colonists into them. I assume to put out fires..

http://youtu.be/xP-8HaOtMyc?t=1h52m7s

I don't quite get the raider AI tricked into turning around until some time in pt 2. (which is stuck at 95% which always happens, thanks stupid youtube.)