Best Non-Gamey Defense

[BasileusMaximos]

I'm looking for ideas that provide the best defense without having to exploit the AI's ineptitude and which look 'realistic'.

I was thinking of surrounding me settlement with walls with the only exit leading to a courtyard entrance with embrasures all along the inside wall so that it makes a literal killbox.  Seems like it would be effective without being too gamey.

[Dashthechinchilla]

Aavak on YouTube has a few, I believe.

I never understood why exploiting your oponents ineptitude is such a bad thing. Hasn't that been military tradition since the dawn of man?

[BasileusMaximos]

Yeah, but doing things like making a giant maze for enemies to go through because they won't think to attack your triple-door passage is just kinda cheap to me and looks silly.

[Nameless]

Then don't do any of that, leave it wide open and let them come in while you shoot them down one by one.

I guarantee you it is way, way more fun that way.

[Mutineer]

Animals. Proper Use of them together with positioning your pawn can let you not to have any static defences except walls and doors.

[BetaSpectre]

In the end all the defenses have a good common idea concentrating damage in a way so that you inflict more on them, then the do to you. This is why most effective defenses turn into kill boxes, no one wants to lose resources IE pawns. Not to mention the recruitment of new pawns is a little too hard considering the amount of fighting they can end up in.

[TheMeInTeam]

Playing the game is gamey.

Provide a ban criteria list of things that are okay vs not okay so that we can anticipate what might be "gamey" in advance, or this is a "state tactics that match my preferences" thread.

I'm not necessarily disagreeing with your premise, it's just not particularly clear.  You could just make a corridor to mow down feral animals with less hassle and otherwise just use hold open on doors + micro pawns out to shoot --> duck back in before getting shot to beat raids, which will work up to and including extreme.  It gets tedious but if you're really well-practiced you'll almost never take damage, and this kind of defending is less vulnerable to sappers than others.

[Devon_v]

Blockhouses are fun. If you have a mod that provides embrasures they're easy to build, but you can also do it with held doors giving you firing ports that can be closed off as the enemy gets close. The terrian you're playing on has a lot to do with it as well. Combat Extended makes a difference in some of the weapon types, notably the close range effectiveness of shotguns even in unskilled hands.

Walls are perfectly valid as sappers will show up as a workaround.

Overall, if you're looking for more combat depth you'll likely want to look into mods because vanilla just sorta turns into tower defense.

[dkmoo]

Lets not forget that what we've labeled "gamey" defenses HAVE HAD plenty of real-life examples in the history of mankind.

IE:
- Incan and Aztec ruins made extensive use of maze traps to protect their various structures/valuables
- Feudal Japanese castle have multi-layered and tier wall structures designed not to block an attack, but rather slow/funnel the attacker into a multi-tiered firing zones.
- Normany beach is effectively a giant killbox.
- "Feigning repairing a _damaged_ opening in a walled city to lure attackers into a kill-zone inside the city walls" has been a valid tactic used in the defense of many cities, as evidenced in the Chinese defense of Mongol invasion, or the Saracen's defense of the Crusaders.

Granted, AI pathing still needs work, but remember that the raiders are NOT supposed to have a detailed layout of ur colony's defense, so for them to choose the path of least "apparent" resistance (ie, walking around thru that open corridor instead of knocking down a door) is not that far-fetched from reality.

[Nameless]

I'm trying out a new defense style in which i'm going to create a giant area as the entrance of my base but the catch is, im going to put a bunch of wooden walls and incendiary IED with the entrance and exit of said area being an open door. Once raid arrives and all gather inside i will get someone to close the doors and watch all raiders just burn to death inside. I think that will be pretty interesting if it can be pulled off.

[dkmoo]

I'm trying out a new defense style in which i'm going to create a giant area as the entrance of my base but the catch is, im going to put a bunch of wooden walls and incendiary IED with the entrance and exit of said area being an open door. Once raid arrives and all gather inside i will get someone to close the doors and watch all raiders just burn to death inside. I think that will be pretty interesting if it can be pulled off.

Lay this area with wooden floors and fill it with a stash of anything flamable (ie, dead-man apparel). this will make the flame spread faster and last longer.

I'm currently playing a colony of almost exclusively trap defense so i have quite a few of these "fire trap" rooms sprinkled in my deadfall trap maze corridors along with a few collapse roof trap rooms.

[ColonistGirl]

I've been playing around with various defense setups lately. Killboxes, trap halls, switchbacks for kiting, etc. The "easiest" is probably the trapped hallway, as it doesn't require power and funnels the enemies down a narrow passage into the base, forcing them to march over traps while being shot at. The switchback kiting setup works really well early on, but later in the game it becomes useless, as there are simply too many raiders to deal with. Then of course there's the standard killbox, which I used for ages, creating a large box with turrets on 2-3 sides, just blasting anything that entered it. The downside to that of course is the sheer amount of power required to run 15-20 turrets, and the fact that they can still be blown to hell by late-game tech raiders with grenades and doom launchers.

My current game(s) are trying out a "tribal only" world where a bunch of colonists have crash landed onto a primitive backwater, and have to try and survive. I start them at the "tribal" level so that research takes a long time, to simulate that they're having to scrape together tech knowledge from incomplete records, just what they remember, etc. It's kind of fun to try to fight off hordes of angry savages with the tiny group of heroic "high tech" people, though early on they're typically armed with bolt-action rifles.

Sadly, I found out that a desert world doesn't really "work", as the tribals refuse to raid due to the extreme temperature. Since they can't use dusters or cowboy hats, they simply won't raid at all, as the planet averages about 150F, with summer spiking up to 230F. Haven't had any mad animal attacks either. So I guess I'm going to have to abandon that game, which is unfortunate.

[SpaceDorf]

Guns, Lots of Guns.

[CannibarRechter]

I never understood why exploiting your oponents ineptitude is such a bad thing. Hasn't that been military tradition since the dawn of man?

Yes, but since the dawn of man, enemies learn, and improve their strategies. Big killbox? "We'll just use this triple rocket launcher here on the other side of your base and go straight through the weak spot."

[kubolek01]

I just fortify all around the base. Sentries and sandbags are good support for man-defence.