Door nerfs, killbox nerfs, more sappers, armor buffs, etc

[TheMeInTeam]

Putting a wall around the base is going to remain very competitive because of its cost : utility, even if you do still need measures against sappers + drop pods.  With alterations to sappers these actually play pretty similarly, you want to be able to defeat in detail inside the walls.

I suspect Taynan wants to demolish the outer walls in the sense of "Sniper Turret", "Plate Armor" and "Open Base".

It's like an outpost of a pirate.

It's not going to happen with present AI logic and manhunters.  Unless those change I can't picture a statistical alteration to present options that would accomplish it without breaking the game completely.

Movement control is central to defeating larger numbers based on the present raid types.  To an extent this is even true for drop pod raids, they simply demand that whatever you put inside your base still has some flexibility in that regard.

[giltirn]

I also have never understood how people use mortars effectively. In B18 they would only hit once in a blue moon, and I understand they have been nerfed even more since then. While you can of course have 5-10 mortars and waste hundreds of shells, this is ridiculously expensive both in terms of the steel and chemfuel resources, but also in the time spent making the shells. I already spend most of my time strapped for steel as it is!

[Greep]

I also have never understood how people use mortars effectively. In B18 they would only hit once in a blue moon, and I understand they have been nerfed even more since then. While you can of course have 5-10 mortars and waste hundreds of shells, this is ridiculously expensive both in terms of the steel and chemfuel resources, but also in the time spent making the shells. I already spend most of my time strapped for steel as it is!

This is true, it is mostly something for a very rich base with deep drilling and lots of enemies.  Mortars are probably completely ineffective on medium and lower. 

[TheMeInTeam]

Mortars start being useful for their cost vs those 50+ man raids later on.  Otherwise they're largely just anti-siege, and awkwardly better at that on high difficulties compared to middle/low.

[zizard]

Basically all raids I'm heving in current version are sappers, sieges and drop pods - all of them created to avoid all types of defence player can have. New update also makes enemies learn where traps are, so they would become useless after several raids too.

Sieges ate the nerf bat though since they don't have year 1 massed sniper rifles.  As soon as you have a few mortars, you'll basically always force the siege to attack before it builds + fires its mortars

Read about my actual experience with mortars vs sieges above.

Were you targeting manually?

[Oblitus]

Basically all raids I'm heving in current version are sappers, sieges and drop pods - all of them created to avoid all types of defence player can have. New update also makes enemies learn where traps are, so they would become useless after several raids too.

Sieges ate the nerf bat though since they don't have year 1 massed sniper rifles.  As soon as you have a few mortars, you'll basically always force the siege to attack before it builds + fires its mortars

Read about my actual experience with mortars vs sieges above.

Were you targeting manually?

Yes.

[mndfreeze]

My biggest issue with the new changes is the early game, not the late game.  Granted I've always enjoyed the struggle of a playing from nothing start, or tribal with its long research costs, etc, but now I keep running into issues where I can't seem to make it to a high enough tech level fast enough before the raids become to strong. 

I've lost so many colonies in just the last 2 weeks to sappers and seige parties.  I either can't armor up well enough, fast enough, to take em on, or I have no way to control the fight well enough and just get overwhelmed once they get inside my base, whether its designed openly, or closed off.

With kill boxes being a thing before, at least I could build a base that I could survive with just colonists and cover until I got to turrets and such, but now I can't even live that long lol.

What difficulty/scenario? Why not lower it?

I did already! haha.  I used to always play randy extreme or cassandra extreme.  Now I'm struggling with rough/hard.  I'm not disagreeing with your design goals or anything, Just having a hard time getting to the point of what you mentioned as the new meta will shift to.  It feels to me like the pace of the enemy difficulty like when sappers and seiges start showing up, or poison/psychic ships, is too early on now for how much you have to get done to get a colony to that point.  Like now we have a lot more steps from initial start to turrets and good defense strats, but the harder fights are still spawning at the same points in the game so I'm not nearly as built up as I would have been before.   

On the few crashlanded games I've played it definitely wasn't as bad, but still pretty rough.  The scaling just seems a little off balance.   I think if enemy spawn events were pushed back a bit in the time line it would fix it for the most part.  It really just seems like the event escalation balance doesn't match the additional time sink thats in the game now with research needed to make yourself safe.  Perhaps the tribal research points need to be lowered just a bit to help counteract all of the increased steps and scaling, but IMO even crashlanded feels a bit off.

Also just so it's said, I'm not a new player at all.  Been playing a really long time so it's not like I'm just making noob mistakes and stuff.   

[giltirn]

Apologies for more theorycrafting but I just noticed the new sniper turrets. More turrets? I thought the idea was to encourage more tactical play, not just making one giant killbox out of your base! IMO turrets should be a tool for shoring up weak areas of your defenses, or as a trap in themselves; not the go-to strategy for raid defense. Also, if we are being pushed towards a turret meta, how are we supposed to survive in the late game when enemies become more numerous while resources become more scarce? I forsee mining camps and trader spamming becoming utterly essential, especially on non-mountainous maps. In B18 you can keep up with the threat with stone walls, doors and traps, using your base to guide and funnel the enemy. It seems this will no longer be viable 

[Oblitus]

Apologies for more theorycrafting but I just noticed the new sniper turrets. More turrets? I thought the idea was to encourage more tactical play, not just making one giant killbox out of your base!

Don't worry, they are utterly useless.


[attachment deleted due to age]

[Jibbles]

Apologies for more theorycrafting but I just noticed the new sniper turrets. More turrets? I thought the idea was to encourage more tactical play, not just making one giant killbox out of your base! IMO turrets should be a tool for shoring up weak areas of your defenses, or as a trap in themselves; not the go-to strategy for raid defense. Also, if we are being pushed towards a turret meta, how are we supposed to survive in the late game when enemies become more numerous while resources become more scarce? I forsee mining camps and trader spamming becoming utterly essential, especially on non-mountainous maps. In B18 you can keep up with the threat with stone walls, doors and traps, using your base to guide and funnel the enemy. It seems this will no longer be viable 

I hope they'll keep adding more security options. All these different types of turrets to vanilla, never thought I'd see the day.  Well, I haven't needed to spam a bunch of turrets around my base yet. If you do just do that then yeah, it'll eat up your resources and good luck protecting all of them.  Your post about handling larger raids.. You got quests for better rewards. I've had several for anti-grain for example. Got mortars (only useful for large raids IMO), weapons like doomsday, incendiary; very handy if you're good at it. The options are growing. Hopefully the risks for quests will be properly tuned when it's all done.  Just seems like you're bummed out that you can't cheese the enemy as easily. Are the raids smaller than b18? Seems like it.

Don't worry, they are utterly useless.

Wow! So I had to dev test the sniper turret after seeing that.  Not sure how I feel about them.  The time it takes between each shot feels about right.  Was able to take down some pawns with power armor in one shot so that's neat. A pawn can still absorb multiple shots by these.  Of course the hit is rng... So I had several shots land back to back, then other times where it took over 20 shots to even land a hit.  I mean they seem somewhat useful to me but... the 200 steel for barrel change is also a bit harsh for that IMO.  To be honest, I'd probably be more bitter towards them if they didn't land any hits in a real raid which is likely to happen at some point. 

[zizard]

Turret shooting levels need to match their use, not just be a flat 8, or let us upgrade them through AI installation. Could even (maybe for a mod) have turret AI that e.g. avoids friendly fire, shoots at closest / furthest, and highest / lowest armour, etc.

Regarding armour layers, if each layer is tested separately, with armour penetration applied to each layer, then regular clothing almost does nothing. Since each gun usually has at least 15 penetration and clothing rarely goes above 30 sharp, even when made out of strong material like heavy fur. The EHP increase due to 15 final armour is only around 10%. This is also why wood armour is terrible. Interestingly, blunt gunshots can still penetrate, i.e. hit the brain.

I noticed that caravan quests often give a huge amount of the same item. e.g. 2020 patch leather for 4 resurrection serum or 69 shortbow for 7 healer serum. I suggest that when there are more than 2-3 of such items, that the game should try to add some different kinds of rewards, like 2 healer, 2 psychic lances, and a doomsday, for example.

I also suggest adding some more tiers of mechanoids. Even a single scyther or centipede can be overwhelming in early game, and then masses of 30 are tedious late game. Early on they should send some inferior types, and later, some of the spam should be replaced by elite units.

[Greep]

My thoughts on the sniper turret are mostly that shooting accuracy at very long range is what pawns are better than turrets at, plus they can aim at specific targets which is usually important at range (killing rocketeers first).  So I'm not seeing a whole lot of use for it even if it was good.  It's a cute concept, but seems a bit redundant.  Maybe if you had an economy fort that literally had no shooting pawns but even then, eh.

As for theorycrafting, I doubt Tynan cares about that in this thread anyways, it's not like a forum-wide rule.  It's just he has to read every post in the 1.0 thread, so its his thread his rules.

[Jibbles]

My thoughts on the sniper turret are mostly that shooting accuracy at very long range is what pawns are better than turrets at, plus they can aim at specific targets which is usually important at range (killing rocketeers first).  So I'm not seeing a whole lot of use for it even if it was good.  It's a cute concept, but seems a bit redundant.  Maybe if you had an economy fort that literally had no shooting pawns but even then, eh.

OH yeah! Not being able to manually target is a real bummer, especially since it's possible that it can shoot your pawn. That's some scary stuff. I was thinking maybe these would be good for luring raiders if anything. Not sure how well that will work just yet tho but the costs is still too high IMO to consider that as it's main use.