Defence tactics

[Pendryn]

Am I the only one who never does the weird funnel strategy? I like having actual battles on sandbag walls, makes it feel less cheaty.

Nah, I like to build little towns, so I always have battles either on the outskirts  with my guys behind some sandbags with turrets blazing, or, if I get caught off guard, the fighting is in the streets with me maneuvering around my own houses and other facilities moving into the enemy flank, or, being outflanked myself, all the while the fires are burning and the destruction is raging. Good. Clean. Fun.

[ShadowDragon8685]

I feel I should point out that the defender is always going to have the home-field advantage. Frankly, by the time you've got a hundred corpses buried in a mass graveyard outside of your base, raiders should probably be doing risk-benefit calculations and deciding that these militant lunatics are not worth trying to attack.

I like to take note of where raiders like to gather before they make an attack. Then I fill that area full of blasting charges. Next time raiders show up there... BOOM.


That's just one of a dozen insurgent-style traps we ought to be able to lay down - spike-filled moats that can't be crossed without a bridge-layer, punji-stick pitfalls that cripple someone's movement speed and start him bleeding out, land-mines, concealed turrets behind nonflammable rock walls that open fire on command...

Honestly, if "Raiders raiders raiders!" is going to be the be all, end-all of challenge in this game, there needs to be a lot more methods to deal with them, otherwise people have no real recourse but to resort to the cheap but effective strategies.

I use chokepoints that still offer a free line into my base, so they advance where I want them to. There's a gun turret-palooza outside, there's another inside, along with the defensive fighting positions of my crew. I'm always nice and considerate, though - I set up nice sandbag bunkers for the baddies to take cover in while trading fire with outer gun turrets. Complete with complimentary blasting charge! 

[air805ronin]

I think an interesting way to be proactive about raiders is to add trip wires to the game.  you lay them down like electrical cable with one endpoint being attached to a blasting charge.  If anything walks across that line is triggers the blasting charge cook off.

Also, research to allow packing rubble around blasting charges to form crude IEDs.

Lastly, perhaps the option to research defensive fighting positions.  In the real world they tend to be like what people would think of as fox holes.  Double lined sandbags in front and sides to provide a hole to fire through, and a channel to funnel rolling grenades into a pit or a sloped roof.  In game they could be one click buildings you can assign 1-2 colonists to.

edit: Upon further reflection defensive aren't necessary since you can replicate them mostly with walls and a sandbag front.  Darn this game for getting my brain working on overtime.

[StriderGunship]

I made my own defense tactics ) and its a bit waffle . This is my base:http://joxi.ru/FoXSUhjKTJA2ARFnmpc My defenses work like that:http://joxi.ru/aYTSUhjKTJBUT0YYBJ4 and that:http://joxi.ru/7ITSUhjKTJA6AakMUig How can you see i made those walls without doors and raiders just come in and start shoot in turrets while my colonists just shooting them with charge rifles,so when they got Sniper rifles that shoots from long distance, to shoot they must come in my turrets and rifles range from there they got killed, they just have no cower and they are dying in like 15 seconds.

P.S. Sorry for my bad english (

[Jones-250]

I can't wait to get my hands on a build to test out some defense in depth schemes that I drew up as a machine gun section leader in the Marines. I've noticed from most streams/LPs that defense are based on a combination of canalization and salients or a single defensive line. I feel like the game would be made very interesting by having to deal with such overwhelming raids that you would need to fall back to different phase lines within your defenses. (A single line would be much more easily penetrated and would spell doom for exposed defenders)

Yeah, you are not alone.  I´ve used my NCO-skills to draw out quite a complex plan of defence, several fallback-options, traps and suddent behind corner surprises. I usually use a sniper battlepair in order to trigger the raider assault, while the enemy is scattered. That causes them to march in a broken up formation, which forms a nice line by the time they reach the base. The beforementioned battlepair continues harassing them from the flanks. The only downside with this tactic is the fact that the colonists are sloppy troopers  and do not really survive out on their own, thus losing alot of their morale while out on the abovementioned missions. Not even to mention the horrible range of the sniper rifles. Our training officer 1Lt T. would explode if he´d see this. The darn things would be more deadly if tossed as javelins. 

[gaixareku]

be alert.
move fast.

[Jones-250]

be alert.
move fast.

Unfortunately the raiders no not use Shock-and-Awe techniques.

[Untrustedlife]

I feel I should point out that the defender is always going to have the home-field advantage. Frankly, by the time you've got a hundred corpses buried in a mass graveyard outside of your base, raiders should probably be doing risk-benefit calculations and deciding that these militant lunatics are not worth trying to attack.

I like to take note of where raiders like to gather before they make an attack. Then I fill that area full of blasting charges. Next time raiders show up there... BOOM.


That's just one of a dozen insurgent-style traps we ought to be able to lay down - spike-filled moats that can't be crossed without a bridge-layer, punji-stick pitfalls that cripple someone's movement speed and start him bleeding out, land-mines, concealed turrets behind nonflammable rock walls that open fire on command...

Honestly, if "Raiders raiders raiders!" is going to be the be all, end-all of challenge in this game, there needs to be a lot more methods to deal with them, otherwise people have no real recourse but to resort to the cheap but effective strategies.

I use chokepoints that still offer a free line into my base, so they advance where I want them to. There's a gun turret-palooza outside, there's another inside, along with the defensive fighting positions of my crew. I'm always nice and considerate, though - I set up nice sandbag bunkers for the baddies to take cover in while trading fire with outer gun turrets. Complete with complimentary blasting charge! 

They will be adding more threats and things to the game, raiders won't be the only thing to worry about when they start working on that. Raiders have a clear disadvantage late game, and this will probably be worked on, traitors for instance, maybe that colonist that came and joined instantly is more then he lets on to be. Perhaps, we will be worrying about mega-beasts. We will have multiple factions.

[Alandil]

At the summit of my longest playthrough I had a huge defence system in place.
The raiders first had to walk through a long tunnel (nearly all the height of a big map long) filled with blasting charges every few steps just out of detonation radius, even starting with blasting charges outside of the tunnel... Then after a chokepoint 5 lines of 7 Turrets with sandbags and my colonists with rifles waited for them.

Wave after wave they poured into their deaths, always leaving a train of dead bodies, blood and rubble behind. As they fled, they flew deeper into the death area, desecrating the ground with all the blood... At some point (since you can't build graves on all terrain) there just was no reasonable room for graves anymore and I started to fire flaming granades at the dead bodies to get rid of them.... At first I just burned the dumping areas full of people, but since the rubble quickly took those over, I then just burned the dead raiders just where they fell to the ground... I migh also have burned some incapacitated but living raiders... There just were too many bodies to check every spot thoroughly...
And the blood.
All the blood...
People trying to clean the floor would just stand there for minutes at the same spot, not sure if in shock or awe, trying to dig through all the layers of blood...

But the raiders still came, more and more, and even faster one wave after the other it seemed. People would go crazy just walking over all the dead bodies trying to reinstall the detonating charges, and eventually could not even reach the end of the tunnel before the next group of raiders arrived.
A single solar flare would mean certain death, considering the masses of raiders steadily advancing everforth. Beside the fact that the sudden darkness would turn them all mad instantly.

After more and more colonists gave up trying to clean and burn the dead bodyparts day by day, there eventually were not enough left to rebuild the defences and another uncountable wave of raiders just swept over the facility. Even the last additional lines of security-detonation-charges could not stop their numbers and the last colonists bravely but negligibly gave their lives.


After that I stopped playing, figuring out that even with a horrible slaughtering machinery like this, the raiders would eventually always win, just by poisoning the ground with their dead bodies, slowly draining the morale out of the colony, as long as there are no mechanics to really make the colonists happy. (especially when wealth is not an issue, since selling the weapons alone might have been enough to clear the debt of Berlin (capital of Germany))


After reading the forums it seems it might have been smarter to just avoid improving defences and rejoice that the raiders threat is much smaller that way.

[RedStorm58]

Flanking.
Normally i will take two colonists and put them in front of the invading raider party.
While they are behind of a mountain of sandbags, five other colonists, normally marines and assasins, go into a corridor, a good distance away to keep the raiders from going there. Then i position these colonists behind the raiders after they detected the distractors. Most of the time this works perfectly.

[ApexPredator]

In my longest play though I have used a WWI style defense. Two lines of rocks/sandbags with turrets on each. On the first defense line I have colonists with M-16s and the rear line 4 or 5 outfitted with M24s. There is a small mountain range just past my M24 reach and just desert between the mountain and my base. I removed all rocks and cacti effectively making a no mans land. The scum bag raiders that want to attack and have cover make a run through sand to get to my sandbags under a hail of bullets. Those that have long range weapons are in the open for my snipers. My desert runs red and in another 100 days ill need a higher sandbag wall to keep the river of blood from ruining my nice carpets.

[Vastin]

Thematically, I'd prefer that the human raids tend to peak and fall off as the group who's been annoying you dies off, or gives up and goes away. So for a while you deal with some sporadic scavengers, then they die off and leave. Then sometime later a big warlike Mad-max style gang gives you issues until you finally kill several dozen of them.

Then you have some kind bizarre extended eclipse, and for 3 days you're under constant attack by swarms of creatures like the things in Perfect Dark, and they're easy to gun down, but half the challenge is just keeping your colonists sane until it finally ends.

Then a Predator shows up and starts trying to pick off your colonists one by one - striking with deadly weapons and fleeing, returning every few days until you can finally trap and kill him, or he claims his quota of 'trophies'.

And yeah - mega-beasts or something like em. Mega-bots. Super-mutants. Whatever.

Also of course, major non-combat events, such as animal plagues, deadly large scale weather events, such as a week-long sandstorm, or other things to break up the potential monotony of 'raid, raid, raid'. Sometimes an extended period of peace can give some of your colonists an opportunity to get up to their own story-lines and mischief to cause you problems.

Far more possibilities than time to code them all, obviously.

[Bodog999]

Don't worry, these tactics won't work for long

Why would these tactics wont work for long

[Untrustedlife]

Don't worry, these tactics won't work for long

Why would these tactics wont work for long

Because he is adding new threats to deal with so that you are not completely invincible/overpowererd once you have mines or killboxes.

[RedStorm58]

I dont use kill boxes or mines. I use my colonists, and it works great. I will tell you several tactics. Run An' Gun:i jave a colonist run up at the raider party, usually with a indecary rifle. He/She would run up and fire the gun, setting most of them on fire. CHARGE!!!:Take ten or more colonists and equip all of them with shotguns. When the raiders approach, run them straight in front of them. Results with some losses, but it does look awesome. Fire.... Take one colonist. Give him molotov. Make most of the raiders follow Him/Her. Go in room. I think you know what happens from here. Look Behind You: take four colonists and put them in a small cave in the path of the raiders. Let the raiders pass by. After they have been shooting at your defenses, bring them up behind them. Make sure your colonists have m-16. Trapped: take a colonist and put them in a cave that is supported by pillars. Have the pillars to be suronded by blasting char. Make to pillars at the entrance. When the raiders come in blow the pillars.