Unstable build feedback thread

[Tynan]

Also, considering it, I'm not seeing a ton of reports about killboxes. Why is that? Are the new raid strategies making it no longer worth it? Or are y'all just trying to do something different? Have killboxes been successfully reduced to a non-dominating (but still effective) strategy?

I'd like to know, because it'll inform how I balance turrets going forward.

EDIT: Also FYI, y'all have well outpaced our ability to actually implement the notes that I've been taking. Currently we've got about 12 pages of backlogged tasks to work on, so if something's not done yet it doesn't mean we're not planning it. If you want to take a break testing that wouldn't be a terrible idea, since testing data given now will be a bit distorted since it's played in a context of a bunch of problems we've already got plans to fix.

[Boboid]

Speaking entirely for myself in regards to killboxes I've been deliberately trying to avoid using them since the buffs to autocannons. Partially to try them out and partially because I've been deliberately playing on lower difficulties to get a broader look at the game.

They certainly don't feel as necessary as before, in part due to the armor changes which allow more established colonies to more effectively trade blows with the (typically) less well armoured raids. Autocannons blasting through flak vests like they're made of paper certainly contributes.

All that said I think the game's in a better place since I feel less obligated to totally min-max my base defense. Having said that - not building an at least partial perimeter wall still feels like insanity.
I'm happy to defend an open area 100 tiles wide but being attacked from any angle feels like insanity when a basic wall does so much for so little. Maybe that's just me.
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Fiddling around with a melee heavy colony at the moment which will be interesting regarding kill boxes. Ambushing raids with melee weapons is always going to be an extremely effective melee strategy and melee killboxes can be -in my experience- extremely intricate.
Interested to see how the door nerfs and armor changes play out in a melee dominated landscape.
Still that's all speculation, haven't got my hands on any of it yet.


Really hope that sand/dirt kicking gets changed soon though because even only a few months in that's starting to become a real pain. Having your colonist standing around tying their shoes for 15 seconds is a serious liability, no matter how blind their target is.

[ReZpawner]

Also, considering it, I'm not seeing a ton of reports about killboxes. Why is that? Are the new raid strategies making it no longer worth it? Or are y'all just trying to do something different? Have killboxes been successfully reduced to a non-dominating (but still effective) strategy?

I'd like to know, because it'll inform how I balance turrets going forward.

EDIT: Also FYI, y'all have well outpaced our ability to actually implement the notes that I've been taking. Currently we've got about 12 pages of backlogged tasks to work on, so if something's not done yet it doesn't mean we're not planning it. If you want to take a break testing that wouldn't be a terrible idea, since testing data given now will be a bit distorted since it's played in a context of a bunch of problems we've already got plans to fix.

The killboxes I've tried to make are absolutely useless because 80% of the raids go outside them anyway, and the mechanoids will simply walk through them, and murder everyone on the way. The mechs are in dire need of a nerf, because as it is, they kill the fun of the game. Particularly the drop pods.

Edit: And when I say go outside of them, I mean "will rather break through a 4-thick wall of granite and plasteel than go anywhere near the killbox.
Edit 2: And I've pretty much given up on this being fixed, so the moment 1.0 comes out, I'll edit the ever loving shit out of the diff files until the game is remotely fun again. Sorry, but I can only watch a base die so many times on medium difficulty without ragequitting after well over two thousand hours played since the kickstarter.

[Madman666]

If your aim was to reduce effectiveness of killboxes - its a success, if the aim was to still keep them viable but expensive (steel) tactic - its more or less failure. Not because you have to waste steel on barrel replacement, but rather because nothing goes into killboxes lately. Most raids either drops on your head or has sappers. And why should they, when they can now replace killed sappers and even tribal monkeys can dig in your wall instead and hit your living quarters, where all you can do is pop out of the new paper thin doors and take potshots.

Scattering defensive positions and turrets\cannons across your base is the way to go. On one hand its more fun to have your guys engage in fights more, on the other hand you then proceed to drown in infections as a result. Combat in general feels much more alive with new armor system though. Its still very much random-dependent, but with this system armor actually can make someone quite a tough target, without turning him into overbleeding hole collection.

Maybe I should just mine my whole base with explosive IEDs...

[Lech]

Since cougar and panther are now able to haul and rescue (like all wolfs), can we get lynx to the fox's level, so he can haul too?

[Boboid]

If your aim was to reduce effectiveness of killboxes - its a success, if the aim was to still keep them viable but expensive (steel) tactic - its more or less failure. Not because you have to waste steel on barrel replacement, but rather because nothing goes into killboxes lately. Most raids either drops on your head or has sappers. And why should they, when they can now replace killed sappers and even tribal monkeys can dig in your wall instead and hit your living quarters, where all you can do is pop out of the new paper thin doors and take potshots.

Have to say you seem to be specifically referring to turret-exclusive kill boxes. Not simply funnels where enemies can be most effectively dealt with.
A hybrid approach using turrets as firepower supplements and possibly sponges is quite viable in my experience.
Really depends on your turret-to-colonist ratio and the amount of firepower required of course.

[Madman666]

Its not about turret\colonists ratio. Its about someone actually going where you plan them to go. In B18 i had a killbox with just 4 turrets and like 14-16 guys and they mauled anything to shreds. With tanky autocannons it could be perfectly viable in 1.0 if only raids did care about going into killbox you prepared. It feels like as soon as i complete outer wall ring 90% of raids turn into either a siege, sappers or drop pod raid.

And when its like that, you hardly can count killbox an effective and viable tactic.

[Argonaut]

Also, considering it, I'm not seeing a ton of reports about killboxes. Why is that? Are the new raid strategies making it no longer worth it? Or are y'all just trying to do something different? Have killboxes been successfully reduced to a non-dominating (but still effective) strategy?

I'd like to know, because it'll inform how I balance turrets going forward.

EDIT: Also FYI, y'all have well outpaced our ability to actually implement the notes that I've been taking. Currently we've got about 12 pages of backlogged tasks to work on, so if something's not done yet it doesn't mean we're not planning it. If you want to take a break testing that wouldn't be a terrible idea, since testing data given now will be a bit distorted since it's played in a context of a bunch of problems we've already got plans to fix.

This has been my killbox soo far ( https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198014441161/screenshots/ ) and i must say its proving to be still quite efficient.  The biggest threat (mechs) get kited into the box and than killed by traps and turrets/pawns if they pass.
Raids that drop on top of me dont rly work because of the nice layout of the map i got, a big cave that let me bury myself deep in the mountain soo there isn't a spot where they can land to get around the box.
Sapper raids get rushed by mortar + rocket launchers while the raid crosses a nearby marsh thats outside of the base ( https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198014441161/screenshots/ ) and the rest usually just enters the killbox or does some weird digging on the numerous walls i used to cover the mountain walls.

I haven't had many dead pawns but i did lose some of them to kidnapping to the early raids.

Difficulty is Cass intense.

[5thHorseman]

It feels like as soon as i complete outer wall ring 90% of raids turn into either a siege, sappers or drop pod raid.

I've never used a Killbox. I'm pretty new to the game (Maybe 100 hours total? I love games where that is still considered "new") so I'm still formulating strategies and any I had need reevaluation now anyway. However, speaking from a merely v1.0 perspective I agree entirely with the above.

In my game, I had 5-6 raids (if you count people being chased) early game, then built a northern protected area and wall as that's where people tended to come from. The next few raids were exclusively from the east and south (west is a lake shore). I got my eastern perimeter up and then got 2 raids from the south exclusively. I got that wall up, and the next 4 raids were 2 sieges, drop pods inside my perimeter, and a poison ship also in my perimeter.

I swear all those deadfalls have done is got a trader mad at me when two of his guys stepped on them right after they made camp right where I was expecting raiders would attack.

[Madman666]

Well, those ships drop randomly, it has nothing to do with you building walls. Raids however just immediately switch to those, that specialize on breaking through walls or ignoring them completely. Not that this is something new - in earlier alphas they also started to show up with sappers pretty much all the time. But the thing is - in earlier versions you could risk a tactic and snipe the sapper, which forced them to drop wall breaking and go die in a kill box. Now however i ve seen tribal miners just up and replace the dude i sniped.

And drop pods are just cheesy as all hell.

[Boboid]

I'm personally fairly hesitant to correlate enclosed bases with a change in raid approach location and altered sapper/ect frequency.
It's too easy for negativity bias to totally skew your impressions, even if you've got a large sample size.
Although I'd happily concede the point if I saw objective proof that base design/enclosure altered raids considerably. Just keep in mind that there are lots of factors that could alter raid composition that just coincidentally coincided with building defenses.
Entirely hypothetically if sieges were only possible above a certain wealth threshold and you just happened to always build walls around this time because you had the spare manpower at roughly that time... I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this.

Personally I haven't seen a significant uptick in sappers or sieges that directly correlated with wall construction. Walling off 3/4 of the cardinal directions (Albiet diagonally, god damn rivers) and defending from one side didn't seem to change anything at all. Beyond making it considerably easier to defend.

[Jstank]

CONCERNING KILL BOXES

I understand that if the second raider in the line sees the first raider's head get cut off by a deadfall trap, the second raider would think twice before going into that same area. However, I don't think that a bear would be sneaky and nimble enough to strafe around all my deadfall traps while chasing Paxe for poking him with a fire stick.

I literally was chased through a trap region by a bear, and the bear stepped around all the 'bear' traps. I think that is too much intelligence for one bear, I could be wrong.

[Madman666]

I can't really argue about that, since i don't have any 100% proven information from game files for example. But it does make sense if enclosing access to any constructed furniture and structures such as solars and windmills (anything pricy, that makes prime target for raiders to beat on or steal) did affect probability of raids having sappers. I always enclose my base completely from all sides while leaving closed doors in each side of the wall and one door always held open into my killbox. And once that enclosure is done - you just watch it - they'll come with grenades nearly every time.

I understand that if the second raider in the line sees the first raider's head get cut off by a deadfall trap, the second raider would think twice before going into that same area. However, I don't think that a bear would be sneaky and nimble enough to strafe around all my deadfall traps while chasing Paxe for poking him with a fire stick.

Those traps have ridiculously nerfed chances to trigger on animals for some real weird reason. It says they work 80% of the time, but in fact they always trigger on humans and mechs, but almost never on any kind of animal. Especially if animal is small, manhunting hares and squirrels for example can ignore a hall of 20-30 traps like its nothing (i actually tried that )

Actually i wish there was a mechanic for raiders, that if that raid had someone who survived previous attempt (run away or was released), then that raid would act real smart - mined through traps, tried to go from least defended side and etc - simulated being guided and informed by the survivor about your base. And if there isn't such a guide, they behave as usual.

That would actually make both raids and the decision to release someone much more meaningful.

[Bones]

I'm total newbie and I don't know how to make killboxes, but what I did on my newest colony is working great so far, I made the base close to a mountain and one big corridor and I just let the door open. Instead of making walls far from the base which the raiders like to tear down.

As they enter the base I'm there waiting to shoot them and I leave some melee guys behind a door, as soon as they pass I attack them from behind. I also like to leave some crops just outside the main door and they like to put it on fire losing time and closing their only escape path.

It's great in winter too since I leave some kibble in there and starving animals rush to eat it and I just hunt them inside the base.

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[lanturn171]

As others have said, not many of raids seem to go for the kill boxes. I don't even have much of a kill box as much as a bottleneck though, and only a 1-block limestone wall. I've kinda always assumed that raids will be attracted to the doors, crops, coolers that are exposed to the open map pathing over smooth wall.

My screenshot is of that defense, to the south is just a smooth-walled grazing zone. Mechs/animals have been pretty manageable, because they do path as expected, toward the bottleneck. Human raiders have been going to limestone walls, so I pull them with my only good shooter. This single cannon has felt extremely efficient. Although it's a pinch to put in 600 steel, I'd probably still do it for 1000. I try to clear the cannon zone of any cover, unless it's intentional light bait cover to encourage the longer ranged raiders to move into unfavorable conditions

I think sapper raids can be answered by a supportive power grid so that mini-turrets can be relocated. They also bottleneck themselves at the insertion for sickening levels of grenade carnage and missed-but-hit-the-guy-behind him gun fire. Sappers and drop pods have been challenging, but answerable.

It seems like the delay on drop pods opening is long enough to position for them, but probably not enough time to build any sandbags or move turrets.

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