Are killboxes mandatory now?

[Shurp]

So I started a new colony in a17... and discovered my old tricks work really badly.  No more leaping out from behind a door and stabbing random wanderers with shivs, no more waiting for attackers to break up and then gunning them down individually.  The AI seems very good at protecting raiders from being spilt up and piecemealed...

...which is unfortunate, because killboxes still work just fine.  Build a box, fill it with turrets, laugh as everything that walks in dies.  My colonists don't even get much of a chance for target practice.

What early game combat tactics are effective when your pawns are walking around with short bows and scrounged pistols?  I gave up on my tribal colony when three scythers showed up and started blowing limbs off my guys armed with great bows.  But my current crashlander colony would handle them just fine thanks to the turret pile.  What options am I missing in between?

[Sola]

Three behind a wall with a one-space opening.  They'll funnel in one at a time.  Not so good vs multiple guns.
Deadfall traps in the path of the enemy, with plenty of doors to re-arm them.  Can't have your peons dying to your own shenanigans.  Making the traps out of stone is better than making them out of wood.  Bonus is that sappers look for turrets (major) and walls (minor) when avoiding your "defenses".  They don't seem to count traps at all.  Place a few turrets in areas to prevent sappers from pathing there, lure them to their death in a line of traps.

For combat, post the initial trapstorm:  wall-sandbag-wall-sandbag-wall-sandbag-wall.  They will walk onto the sandbag to initiate combat, and you can have two to one on a large scale when fighting them down.

personally, I'm not a huge fan of conventional "walk out a pathway into ten turrets gunning you down" killboxes.

[Shurp]

Hmmm, traps do sound like an effective way to survive the first few weeks while researching up to turrets... and then eventually when my economy is built up I can switch from turrets to assault rifles.  I guess I'm just whining because I miss the fun of shiving them.

[O Negative]

I play without turrets, in a valley, and make all of my buildings separate. In the early game, I move around my base in a way that I can still pick raiders off.

So, no. Killboxes aren't absolutely necessary. You just have to weight combat advantages more carefully now.

[Shurp]

How do you work that so you have 4 or 5 guys behind cover shooting at one without the others showing up almost immediately to shoot back?

[O Negative]

How do you work that so you have 4 or 5 guys behind cover shooting at one without the others showing up almost immediately to shoot back?

I have a main building with multiple exits.

My people wait in there for the raiders to start causing a ruckus in other parts of my base. Some raiders decide to attack walls or doors, while others decide to burn my crops to the ground, and some take pot shots at the small (hard to hit) animals I've tamed.

When I can, I prioritize ganging up on a raider armed with a ranged weapon in a flurry of fisty cuffs. 4 v 1 certainly isn't fair, but it gets the job done Once they're down, the other raiders make their way towards me, and I head back inside the main building. The raiders start banging stuff up again, and I just kind of rinse and repeat.

Mind you, the only weapons my people are equipped with right now are short bows (good+ quality) and I have 2/8 pawns that are incapable of violence. Both of them are actually doctors, so it works out. Whenever somebody gets hurt, I bring them back into the main building and patch them up so they don't bleed to death or get severe blood loss while they fight.

Preventing blood loss, I've found, is actually pretty crucial in A17. Blood loss sticks around a lot longer than it used to, and the effects it has on a pawn's ability to fight is substantial.

If my current colony doesn't die soon, I'll try to post a screenshot

[Listy]

I tend to play long games (my A16 settlement had 50 colonists and about two to three decades on planet). For this Killboxes are absolutely mandatory.
I have been wanting to build an open colony for some time, the trouble is Tynan seems hell bent on killing all humans. Every patch the attackers seem to get better, or defences getting weaker. The last positive defence we got was the traps, however many years ago that was.
Admittedly I've not gotten to the point where I'm willing to waste time and money form my colony on mortars, I hear they've been improved.

Hell, I've recently worked out a new defence strategy but I'm loathe to post it here, as I suspect it'll be removed in the next patch. Granted I can live without it, but it makes certain events so much less dull, and gives more options.

[Spocklw]

Well, or you can just abuse animalss, like in previous versions. If you are playing on maps, which can support lots of animals, you can just make a meat shield out of them and just don't care anymore, including infestations. With 100+ fight-capable animals, you just draft your handlers, release the animals and watch or provide firesupport. Combined with mortars, you are basically untochable in mid+late game, plus you usually have enough meat form killed animals and occasional manhunters.

[Shurp]

When I can, I prioritize ganging up on a raider armed with a ranged weapon in a flurry of fisty cuffs. 4 v 1 certainly isn't fair, but it gets the job done Once they're down, the other raiders make their way towards me, and I head back inside the main building. The raiders start banging stuff up again, and I just kind of rinse and repeat.

This is what I used to do in a16, but it seems in a17 they're much better about not splitting up and letting me beat them to death.   It seems very hard to game them.  Or maybe my base layout isn't conducive.  I do have everything bottled up so when they broke into my workshop they had way too much stuff there to smash to be much interested in attacking anything else.  I guess you have to spread out your goodies and leave them unprotected to lure them away?

[O Negative]

This is what I used to do in a16, but it seems in a17 they're much better about not splitting up and letting me beat them to death.   It seems very hard to game them.  Or maybe my base layout isn't conducive.  I do have everything bottled up so when they broke into my workshop they had way too much stuff there to smash to be much interested in attacking anything else.  I guess you have to spread out your goodies and leave them unprotected to lure them away?

They are a lot smarter now, yeah. Their reaction time to their friends being hurt has been improved substantially.

And yeah, you do have to spread out your goodies a bit more. Not necessarily unprotected. The only unprotected goodies I ever have are my crops. They're always big enough to last me two harvests in the late game, so I'm never worried about a blight or anything like that.

[Spocklw]

I noticed, however, that the AI is a lot worse against mortars. When the pawns are marching towards the base and anyone of them gets hit by the mortar, all of them will fall back and start wandering around the on who was hit for a while. If you manage to land two or more hits near the center of their group, it's usually the end of that raid.

[Wanderer_joins]

You can survive crashlanded or rich explorer scenarios without killboxes/ traps/ turrets. It requires more manpower and micro.

On my tribal colony deadfall traps helped surviving the first year, you can certainely do it without traps but then it's a festival of doordancing and heavy micro.

But traps are OP, so i usually set the limit to 1 or 2 traps per colonist. it also help to secure your colony while you send caravans on the road.

[glennt]

I have built a circular base for my latest playthrough - pretty much like this design:

http://www.cropcircleanswers.com/TWI9_Fig7_280.jpg

Where the black lines are in the middle of the circle, I have corridors. I basically wait for the attack and depending on where I can pick off raiders I just get my pawns to attack. A circular design works well as the raiders spread out and attack different areas of the base.

[cultist]

I don't remember this from the patch notes, but traps seem much better than before. Any material can make a decent trap now as the spring chance seems to have been unified in A17.

[DariusWolfe]

I noticed, however, that the AI is a lot worse against mortars. When the pawns are marching towards the base and anyone of them gets hit by the mortar, all of them will fall back and start wandering around the on who was hit for a while. If you manage to land two or more hits near the center of their group, it's usually the end of that raid.

Add some sort of "seek shelter" behavior, and this'd be almost realistic. Aside from the instant panic reflex of "get the hell outta here!" coherent reactions after getting hit with mortars/artillery pretty much don't happen.

Source: 4 years as a Forward Observer; The run-around-like-ants thing even happens with simulated artillery, though to a lesser extent (since there's no shellshock, blood or screaming)