Killing killboxes.

[Yoshida Keiji]

I cant see your whole base because you left the User Interface open, but about the section you are referring to, I personally wouldn't classify it as killbox or "cheating" as you say.

The two main problems with killbox are:

* It literally removes combat from the game. I cant imagine how could RimWorld be "fun" if fighting is excluded from a player's experience. As in putting all your pawns on the outside of a box while waiting for the AI getting inside is no fighting.

* Because of no combat, a player doesn't really gain any expertise in combat and killbox players oftenly come out with very ridiculous comments/suggestions/complains. They are lame in everything they say and they don't even realize how they "look" to everybody else.


I personally believe that all players will have the "gaming" growing expertise that move players from novice to expert, but killbox players is like they remain trapped in the green area without ever advancing in play style. So just to me, others may differ in opinions, as long as you keep experimenting and refining your layout tactics, you are totally fine. Mind you, from day one in my RW experience, I have never built a killbox myself because I love being challenged and heard about the concepts, first in the wiki, then in the forums and lately in Discord but to me...the game is about fun...so I always go and try wild things, I don't play for maximum industrial efficiency as I see many people do. The way to produce a lot and fast doesn't really interest me. I like to go more relaxed and always doing something different.

The thing is, I grew up so much in combat, that I consider myself combat efficient to the point that my favorite building style is to start minimalistic and "Urban Warfare" oriented, which means I don't even build city walls anymore and just place my pawns in open doors, shoot from there and hide when in danger, once enemies had moved, I peak out and keep fighting. City Walls come somewhere in mid-game for me. And in late game, yeah, double city walls maybe.

I just became so good at fighting to the point that layout doesnt really matter to me anymore. So... just to give you something I'm uploading one screenshot of every save file I kept for you to take a look at how at least I do my bases. It would be really interesting to see how others do as well. If you want the save files I can upload them too. I play all my games in Vanilla so none of them have any mods.



This one was my very first game when B18 Unstable was released for public testing it is Cassandra Rough in Tropical Swamp. Ready to launch the SS. I only put up walls on the West, South-west and North-west. All other sides are completely open... Im including the river as part of my defense line to the East, the south-east has a "Firing Wall", central east has a "bunker" and northern-east also has a mini-firing-wall. There's 2 turrets at the center-western side in case I have to retreat to Urban Warfare and maybe some other turrets but I cant recall them unless I load the save file, but nothing really too strategical, I use turrets mostly as last resort back up.






This is Randy Rough in Desert. What can I say...another Open Base layout with just a mini "Firing Wall" to the West, a very simple "Bunker" at the top center...and the rest again...is "Urban Warfare". The little walls I have built are mostly due to the proximity with the map borders just in case a raid just spawn there and I don't want instant threat, so I built them just to have some "reaction" time only.








This is Randy Intense - Tundra biome: Not much planning needed as I hid inside the "C" large hill and gradually expanded to the West. This time, no "Bunkers", no "Firing Walls"...just City Walls with 3 sandbags in front of each door. Like always there's good "Urban Warfare".

Basically the "key" to Urban Warfare is that from standing on the doors, you should be able to shoot all areas from all angles by having all your ranged pawns somehow on the incoming side and then just move from room to room as battle develops. Also something I will write now so I don't forget to mention later...Absolutely all my games are Lost Tribe.








This is Randy Intense - Cold Bog: This looks like a mess because its like my base is traversed by a large hill, but in reality I just had the large hill as northern wall and late game out of boredom, I pigged a central path and expanded to the north. "Urban Warfare" present as always, the center area could be considered protected by a City Wall and all other areas are just reinforced due to the walls being so close to the rooms.

This base is fun to look at, because the walls materials can easily show you the progression. Wooden were the first ones and stone walls the later ones.








Randy Extreme in Temperate Forest: Again...same sequence...urban warfare...city walls...and one turret in case I need to fall back from the northern walls.








Randy Extreme in Arid Shrubland: Urban warfare + city walls. I played this one very minimalistic and compacted before it shaped like a square. Originally was like a Tetris block or AC/DCs lightning icon and then expanded to the East.

[tmo97]

Why is everyone so biased and lying just to get what they want

"that's what they're playing for."
no it's not, you're doing the thing where you preach in a pep-talk kinda way in order to inspire people but all you're actually doing is convincing people that they have your opinion.
i'm not playing for the challenges. there you go. good job eliminating everyone that has a different opinion than yours by pretending we're just not there.

another thing "When a killbox player asks for a 100 tile range gun you know there's something wrong" no, that's just the moment you got triggered. Your entire post is a slippery slope argument, look it up.

Killboxes. In real life, they work. If you want them not to work, something will have to be deducted from the game that will make things look awkward. True/false?

[TheRetroGamer]

I quite like this idea

[ProfZelonka]

What happens to the game when all the possible paths to the base are 100% covered in the killzone layer? Meaning, that raids tried everywhere, and failed and raiders died everywhere.

What good is this mod then?

[Pangaea]

Don't like it to be honest, for several reasons.

* If Tynan wanted to kill killboxes, there are cheaper ways to do it. Make them hack into the base somewhere else, behind the killbox for instance, which sappers sometimes already do
* Think this system would be very "expensive" performance-wise, especially in the late game when you get hit by raids of 200+ people. Imagine every single one of those constantly re-evaluating paths based on some of the raiders dying on traps. It would be Lag Central
* I've seen some colossal raids with 80+ mechs or 200+ raiders, or 80-100 raiders with 30-40 doomsday+triple rockets. A killbox should quite frankly be an *option* to take on raids like that
* Principally speaking I think killboxes should be an alternative in the game for people who like them, and not be entirely removed. Historically you have versions of killboxes, so in that regard it makes sense for them to remain too.

And based on what I have gathered from some posts of Tynan's on the forum, he doesn't want to remove them either. If he did, they'd already be gone.

One of the magic aspects with the game is that it offers a wide range of choices to us, different gamestyles and difficulties. Some like killboxes, some don't. Some see them as a necessary evil (raises hand). Some play in harsh climates with one dude, and others start with 5-8 well-equipped people. Heck, some customise them to the n-th degree using mods as well. It's good to have this variance in not only the technical difficulty level, but in how people set up and choose to play the game as well.

[ForeverZer0]

Don't like it to be honest, for several reasons.

I tend to agree. In the end, using killboxes is just a play style, no one and nothing is requiring that you use them, and many do not. The same theories hold true IRL when fortifying a base, such as creating choke-points and areas advantageous to the defenders and putting attackers at a disadvantage. The sapper mechanics trying to breach through your defenses through alternative means already exists, as well as ambushes with drop-pods, etc.

I personally cannot think of any game that has an AI has complex as what you are requesting, as was already mentioned, that is a ton of extremely complicated logic that would need computed for each pawn.

[Yoshida Keiji]

The "problem" with people who have become dependent on Killboxes, is that they have actually forgotten to think "out of the box".

It is extremely easy to handle WITHOUT a kill box a raid of 200 hostiles and 80 mechanoids with 50 doomsday's + triple rockets in Randy Extreme. You just need to build "DECOY" based scattered across the map.

The Enemy AI doesn't know to recognize which is your "REAL" base.

Also, Jeffrey Epstein didn't kill himself.

[Pangaea]

Swap one exploit/cheese/whatever for another? *shrug*

Don't think such sweeping and quite frankly inaccurate statements help the debate climate either.

[bugi]

Yeps, if they are made smart enough to avoid obvious killing zones, they should also be made smart enough to also prioritize obviously larger or denser building areas. Latter is actually easier to code and less calculations, and even thematically easier to explain.

See, ask one ability to be removed from the player, the same logic can easily be used to remove plenty more, even the tricks you like...

Also, if we continue with AI smartness development, the ultimate end result would be to also consider the "danger zones" in the world map level (same logic applied, but again much easier to code). The player's colony tile would quickly become one _very_ deadly zone, to be avoided at all cost. AIs would make a few futile attacks in the begin and decide one of two choices: either 1) all-out assault , i.e. large share of their total faction population at the time when your base has maybe 6-10 pawns, barely finishing their first outer wall if you were smart enough to start building one... (i.e. game over) or 2) semi-permanent peace, i.e. independent of their current relations, they would not attack for a looooong time (but will not trade with you either).

In a sense, I like the idea of making the NPCs smarter, but it must not be just one trick, but consider it more widely. Even the player's NPC AI's should also get smarter (there are several easy changes that would make them behave much better and more "naturally"), but that is another topic.

[entelin]

Killbox's are mostly dead now, not sure why people are still talking about it.

With all the raid types we have now, you need to have a variety of defense strategies. One problem with true killbox's is they tend to be rather expensive, and since they don't apply to every raid, having one makes the most dangerous types of raids even more dangerous. A one tile hole in a wall costs nothing, with melee holding the breach, ranged behind, and animals trained for release is probably safer overall than a full killbox.

[ForeverZer0]

Pretty sure massive amounts of people still use them, possibly even the majority of people. The point being, it is just a play style, nothing forced upon anyone. No sense in complaining about them, it is entirely the choice of the person playing them game whether or not they are used.

A "one tile hole in the wall" strategy might be alright early game, but quickly becomes totally obsolete at even the mid-game. A melee fighter with other behind him is not going to hold back a hundred or more raiders, mechanoids, and an army of doomsday rocket launcher-wielding soldiers. Those will also make quite short work of whatever animal release you might have in reserve.

The thing that makes those other raid types "more dangerous" is for the specific reason that the enemy immediately bypasses your strongest defenses and/or avoids your choke-point, whether it be drop-pods or an infestation if you chose to build in a mountain.

[Yoshida Keiji]

@ForeverZero:

The "real" problem at hand runs much deeper than you think. To understand the whole situation you need to understand "Who is Who".

* If people want to always remain in their Comfort Zone, and eternally live in the baby cradle, so be it.
* The "real problem" arises when these lazy arzes, start to make complaints for the sole goal to ensure killboxes are 100% effective for their whole gameplay.
* Any player that has "grown" without killboxes, will find very annoying when "K-Box" dependant players start to whine about any threat that actually Bypasses their sole defense: be it for instance... PREDATORS.
* If you take a look at players like "Shurp", the guy also asked for a rifle that can hit over 100 tiles away... basically the game must be "cheesed" to 500%...
* The next thing he will suggest (if not already, because I haven't played RW for like half a year now and stopped following the forum) will probably be: A rifle that can hit raiders from 3 WORLD tiles away so that Raiders don't even show up on his map.

The problem is that the large percentage of RimWorld player base have never grown past the "Baby Cradle", so when Tynan listens to these babies... the game gets ruined for everybody else...but the crybabies...

[entelin]

A "one tile hole in the wall" strategy might be alright early game.... A melee fighter with other behind him is not going to hold back a hundred or more...

If you are fighting off raids of 100 and needing killboxes to deal with it, then your playing a high wealth game, not necessarily a "mid" or "late" game. With up to around 9 colonists a simple trapped corridor with a corner to a single tile opening with 3-4 melee at the breach and ranged behind one with emp for mechs, molitov for everything else, is very effective and works for base drops and sappers as well. Melee is actually the most effective way of dealing with centipedes in fact since their ranged attack gets shut down. Once you have enough people to do the killbox+chaingun defense then that becomes good to add but only because it allows you to better deal with the kinds of events that will go through the killbox. Killbox's are a double edged sword though because as I said above, they are expensive contributing to raid score, thus also scaling raids that do not go through the killbox.

So all in all, playing without a killbox, when controlling wealth, is in fact optimal, and every single speed run is just a simple corridor with traps. In high wealth games killboxes become an option to consider, but by no means obviously needed.

I therefore decree this topic anachronistic and therefore needless to ever discuss again. Mods, you can close the topic now. XD

[Ramsis]

Take it easy Keiji, no reason to go running and gunning on others because their playstyle doesn't match yours.

[ReZpawner]

Yup. The whole rimworld gatekeeping really needs to go. The strength of the game is that you can play it in so many different ways. Some people want a hard game that ends in defeat, others want to roleplay a medieval settlement without power, others want to create the perfect utopia. All of those options, and a hundred more are valid and awesome in their own ways.