Scaling raids just by numbers is ridiculous

[glob]

I've just got a poison ship with I don't know how many mechanoids as I can't select them all. It is possible to select maximum 80 objects and it looks like there are about 150 scythers and the same number of centipedes. The worst thing is that for a decent colony of about 20 pawns this number is just as easy beatable as the one havng 20 mechanoids. 12-15 emp mortars shooting in salvos keep them all in permajam while they stay around the ship, and melee pawns just rip through them. It just takes some time. The problem is that every such raid massively overloads colony with resources. It is impossible to utilize that much or sell that much, it is much more than gets spent on producing EMP shells, the steel and plasteel just keep accumulating and overload very quick all the avalable space. And by the way did you try to click 200-250 times on health tab and choose jobs - extract left blade, extract right blade or shutdown, again and again?
Pirate raids have exactly the same problem, though their stuff at least partially can be utilized through crematorium and smelting table. But it is also broken, it takes too much time to cleanup the map and then burn all the crap. Also when such raid falls from the sky in the pods the metal chunks from the pods scatter a lot of space and early or later they accumulate on the map to signifficant numbers.

Something should be done with this, in my opinion it is broken as the only way is to give all the resources to traders for free, just to save the space. The raids should scale by numbers only up to a certain point, and then their power should be scaled in some other way, I don't know how exactly though. But at the moment it is broken.

[Snafu_RW]

And the mods you are using are..?

[Shurp]

devmode destroy tool will get rid of all the crap clogging up your map

As for artillery, yes, the richer the target environment, the more effective it is.  Maybe you could try a more difficult method of dealing with them?  Though I can't imagine 20 pawns surviving several hundred mechs in a firefight.

[Songleaves]

Well the game is sort of "supposed" to end with you escaping the planet, and isn't really designed for infinite, qualitatively different ramp-ups in difficulty. Something else could be added to make it more difficult, but what happens when you become strong enough to deal with that also?

[Goldenpotatoes]

Well the game is sort of "supposed" to end with you escaping the planet, and isn't really designed for infinite, qualitatively different ramp-ups in difficulty. Something else could be added to make it more difficult, but what happens when you become strong enough to deal with that also?

Then you slap on another win condition with the player's colony being stable enough to persist on the rimworld with the other colonies. You're right in that the game isn't meant to have a colony with several years put into it, but there should still be a point where if the player has managed to cement themselves into the world for that long and the ever-expanding raid numbers aren't making them leave, then you should probably consider that a win for them and let them keep playing as is or give them the reward of an ending so they can start a new game.

If anything instead of the game's current ever-expanding raid system, it should hit a point where the player has to do something similar to the ship's wave survival where they get a warning beforehand that the planet's pirates have had enough of your existence and plan on a seasonal-long siege against your fortifications, including both mortar strikes and regular raids during the time. If the colony still stands after this, call it a day and let the player have their win.

[Yoshida Keiji]

Once raids start to exceed 200 enemies, replace per number for attacks using:

* Orbital bombardment targeter
* Orbital power beam targeter

For more challenge to players.

So you can get 200 raiders + 3 of them activating the targeters at your base.

[glob]

And the mods you are using are..?

No mods. Vanilla.

[glob]

Well the game is sort of "supposed" to end with you escaping the planet, and isn't really designed for infinite, qualitatively different ramp-ups in difficulty. Something else could be added to make it more difficult, but what happens when you become strong enough to deal with that also?

It's not even a about the difficulty, it's about overloading colony with too many resources due to the sheer numbers of mobs in raids. In my opinion cleanup of any raid should be manageable in one day and should be converted in a sane amount of resources.
Also maybe add some superproject which would require, say, 100000 steel, 300000 silver and 30000 plasteel to complete and signifficant amount of the same resources for maintenance. We need something to burn the resources without ending the game. It's not a replacement of the soluton of the problem with numbers in raids, but just a way to make endgame more interesting.

[Ser Kitteh]

Raids should be more difficult not by throwing more enemies but by being smarter.

Examples:
1. Raids can be both head on assaults but also sapping from different points.
2. Raiders should have good weapons, good armor and maybe the odd bionic.
3. Raids can come in quick succession rather than one large mega raid.
4. Raids can come through multiple directions.
5. Raids should have orbital weapons (questionable in how this can be applied fairly)

At some point the game stops due to lag death and rather than fun and challenging fights.

[dburgdorf]

It's not even a about the difficulty, it's about overloading colony with too many resources due to the sheer numbers of mobs in raids.

Combat is not an aspect of the game with which I'm intimately familiar, especially at the end-game stage, but one obvious (and fairly simple) possibility comes to mind to address this issue. If there are reasons why this wouldn't work, I'm sure someone will point them out.

If high-value raids generate too many pawns, why not just add one or more very powerful pawn types to each faction def? That would allow more powerful raids to be generated without the necessity of relying upon absurdly high body counts.

[SpaceDorf]

If high-value raids generate too many pawns, why not just add one or more very powerful pawn types to each faction def? That would allow more powerful raids to be generated without the necessity of relying upon absurdly high body counts.

This would mean investing raid points in combat skills, traits and possibly bionic implants in addition to equipment.
A further possible addition would be making the "survival rate" more flexible and give killing helpless combatants an additional debuff.

But adding to raider AI rather than numbers is also a good Idea.

[glob]

Raids should be more difficult not by throwing more enemies but by being smarter.

Examples:
1. Raids can be both head on assaults but also sapping from different points.
2. Raiders should have good weapons, good armor and maybe the odd bionic.
3. Raids can come in quick succession rather than one large mega raid.
4. Raids can come through multiple directions.
5. Raids should have orbital weapons (questionable in how this can be applied fairly)

At some point the game stops due to lag death and rather than fun and challenging fights.

1 would work only if they would sap through the thick stone, not as they do now when they choose the thinnest part.  And anyway this would just force me making all outside walls thicker, even those in stone.
2 is already a reality in high-level raids. I buy Psychic shock lances for the raiders with bionics, to capture them alive, harvest bionics and let them go. Sometimes I burn 3-4 lances per raid when I have enough of them.
3 is also reality, sort of. There are raiders in full power armor and with decent charge and sniper rifles. Also there's about 10-20 raiders per raid with doomsday and triple rocket launchers. So everything degrades to  "open a door with a melee pawn, let the ranged pawns who stay behind shoot once or twice from their charged rifles, then close the door before a shot from doomsday launcher, repeat with another door" when if I'm not able to stop the raid just by making one unit insane with a Psychic insanity lance, then pounding them with mortars while they stand confused.
4 would be a bit harder than it is now but not much, as raids tend to split between the sides of the base anyway
5 I'm afraid this would make the game unplayable

Unfortunatelly it is not easy to find a way to balance such stuff. It is obvious that if the number of mobs would be reduced they should get some powers to compenste the lost numbers. But these powers should give the colony a chance to defend against them.