Early Siege

[Shurp]

So I've been on the planet all of 28 days when some siegers show up to blow my colony apart.  What is the recommend strategy for dealing with a siege when all you have are some bows, pistols, and other inadequate weaponry?  My usual strategy is to just load the auto-save and try again but I thought I would ask and see if there is something obvious I'm missing.

[A Friend]

A. Got lances? I usually use an insanity lance as a distraction while my pawns move for CQC.

B. You could try hunkering down and wait for them to fall asleep then go whack them.

C. If you've got IED traps researched, you could wait for them to fall asleep and then plant the artillery shells around each raider and then one trap to detonate them all. You can leave single shells in place by building IEDs and then cancelling them once a pawn installs a shell.

D. When in doubt, savescum/dev mode -> destroy -> click raiders.

Edit: Okay now I keep thinking of creative ways to deal with sieges for some reason.

When the raiders are sleeping, you could build walls around each one. Then deconstruct a wall and have your guys deliver a beatdown on one raider while the others try to break free. Then rinse and repeat on the others.

[Canute]

B: is my favourit solution.
Mosttimes the mortars fire on a special target, mosttimes a pawn, try to move him away from your base, and keep him moving when the mortar got reloaded.
Once the siege people are sleeping, Build some 1x1 at ideal distance for your bows next to the siege camp.
You just can set any pawn to construction just for this task.

Once the Cover walls are build, assault the sleeping siege crew all your pawns at one, try to pick the ones with good distance weapons/grenades. Kill them with fists or mellee weapons, and grab their weapons for yourself.
After you kill a few they will assault your base and awake, then you need to go behind your cover walls you build before, and fight them with your bows and the plundered weapons.
After a few more kills, they should flee. And since you got better cover then they, you should win.

[ahowe42]

If the seigers actually sleep, figure out which have the better weapons.  Send your best fighters to sneak over to right next to these guys, then simultaneously attack.  The element of surprise may give you enough advantage to down those guys and take their weapons.  The others may even just flee at that point.  Caveat Emptor: I've never actually tried this, as I've never gotten an early siege when my weapons sucked.  Alternatively, what if you send a colonist to commandeer their mortar while sleeping, and fire a shell on them :-)?

Related question: Why is it that seige mortars can fire shells across the whole freakin' map, while my mortars only show such a limited distance?  Not fair :-(

[Shurp]

You have it backwards.  The "range" that shows on your mortar is where you *can't* fire.  You can fire clear across the map too, you just can't bomb your own base.   (Note this applies to bombing the siegers with their own mortar too; even if you could commandeer it you could only use it to bomb your base, not theirs

Sounds like waiting for them to sleep is the standard solution... but doesn't that mean doing a lot of repair work on your colony while they're bombing you?  Sounds exceptionally annoying, with the added risk of one of your pawns getting blown up.

[Canute]

If you let them fire at their own yes.
Move a pawn close to them, so the mortarcrew see him and then they fire at him instead your base. Dont forget to move him.

[ahowe42]

You have it backwards.  The "range" that shows on your mortar is where you *can't* fire.  You can fire clear across the map too, you just can't bomb your own base.

:-O ok, that's cool.  Boy, do I feel sheepish

[Listen1]

Since it's only 28 days in, micromanagement is the way to go.  Try to pull some of the units away, gank them. With the right angle and positioning, you can almost negate the friendlyfire it would cause.

I've already sent chickens to act as meat shield on top of the raiders... the chickens actually killed them. But using animal areas can help you position them without using the "Release" command.

This can be done the second the Siege start to minimize damage.

[Lizardo]

Should have sent rabbits, it's traditional.

[Marvin the Martian]

I had an early siege in my current game and I don't remember it as a big issue, more a nice bonus package of ore and food. There were only a few pirates and the survival rifle in the hands of a good rifleman (woman actually) was enough, sonce their armament was primarily low range stuff. I moved the rifleman, so that a single pirate was in range, but kept her behind trees or some stone chunks for cover. Two more colonists with a pistol and a bow were a little further away. If someone came closer, the rifleman retreated to pull the pirate into range of the other two pawns. Kill. Repeat. Get steel. I should have waited till they finished the mortar.

[Alenerel]

I got an early siege as a tribe and thought that trick of stealing their mortars while they sleep. I forgot about it and they start to shoot -.-

I didnt know what to do but I didnt pause the game either, they fired a lot of shells, not a single one hit and they ended up attacking and falling in the traps.

[Shurp]

How large was your base at that point?  Mine is about 50x50 (I just finished building my second greenhouse).  I can't imagine their aim is *that* bad, though I guess I could have lived with a few smashed windmills and walls.

[Alenerel]

well my base was pretty "big". i had a big chunk of mountain surrounding it so i could expand freely there. if its a small base then this "strategy" (forgetting about attack XD) wont work.

[steenhole]

I usually look forward to sieges because of the resources.  Most of the time, they can be managed w/o too many problems.

1-If you have a mountain base, they usually can't hurt you.  The exception are incendiary mortars.

2-Click the raiders and see what their stats are.  Early raids usually don't have skilled pawns.

3-Either target the rifle holders or the constructors.  If you kill the constructors, the raid will usually shift to base assault.

4-Send as many pawns as you can.  It tends to make it safer for each individual pawn.

5-Spread out your shooters.  If you cluster them, the raiders will mass fire and increase the chances of hitting you randomly.

6-Try to keep melee pawns near your best shooters in case their melee charges.

7-If for some reason they have skilled shooters, wait for sleep.  Concentrate all attacks on the skilled ones after they are asleep.  When they wake, at least the skilled ones will be dead.

8-With an average raid crew, I don't like to wait.  Their sandbag defenses can make it much tougher to kill them.

9-If I have mortars, I just shell them to death.  Incendiary works works well in non-rain conditions.  The raid crew occupies itself putting out fires.

All that being said, I had one raid where a skill 2 shooter, armed with a survival rifle, one shotted a sniper with skill 12, and then shot the arms off of my other sniper, skill 11.

"No $#GG!@ way!"  --Reload.

[Shurp]

Yeah, once siegers get their sandbags built they're much more difficult to deal with.  My usual strategy is to plink their constructors while they're building.  But that's later in the game when I have survival rifles to plink with.  Beating them to death while they're sleeping is the only thing I can imagine working in the early game.  I'll try that next time.

And the reload is always handy