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

[5thHorseman]

The only adaptive dangers in the game are raids, and the preparation for those is the fundamental constraint on base building. If you make it so that raids essentially ignore defenses, either through their ability to tunnel through walls or batter down doors, you remove our ability to prepare and thus remove half the game.

Very very well said. I was trying to figure out why I was getting a slow buildup of distaste for playing and you worded it perfectly. The penalty for not being able to handle a raid is generally a colony wipe, and the more you're forced to go pawno y pawno with raiders, the more likely (read, assured eventually) you are to lose the colony.

Plus, I *LIKE* being smarter than the enemies.

[Tynan]

It's clear that Tynan has a goal in mind with these changes, specifically for us to fight out in the open mano a mano and forgo base defenses.

No, that's not the goal at all.

What I'm trying to avoid is really simple, one-piece-fits-all base defenses that solve every problem risk-free. Your base defense should be contextually adapted, complex, varied, interesting, and should fare differently against different threats.

Also related is that caravan fights and attacks on enemy sites, where you have no base, should be viable, as base defense should also be viable. This implies that base defenses are useful but no particular defense is absolutely necessary versus a given threat.

[Grubfist]

It's clear that Tynan has a goal in mind with these changes, specifically for us to fight out in the open mano a mano and forgo base defenses.

No, that's not the goal at all.

What I'm trying to avoid is really simple, one-piece-fits-all base defenses that solve every problem risk-free. Your base defense should be contextually adapted, complex, varied, interesting, and should fare differently against different threats.

Also related is that caravan fights and attacks on enemy sites, where you have no base, should be viable, as base defense should also be viable. This implies that base defenses are useful but no particular defense is absolutely necessary versus a given threat.

Which personally, I appreciate. I like building bases that are more like a collection of nearby buildings with some security checkpoints and sandbags and such. It contributes more to a sense of story for me than always building some kind of gigantic death fort. I'm trying to follow the narrative of some survivors trying to make it on a harsh world, not of a lost band of space marines waiting for pickup and fortifying their evac point to a ridiculous degree.

[Perq]

I kinda read conflicting opinions, not sure if these come from the same people.

Some people claim that armors are useless and not worth doing.
Some people claim that nerfing killboxes renders their pawns too easy to damage, and combat is too RNG to risk.

Aren't good quality armors answer to that? I mean, sure - you will get bullet to the brain once in a while, but now we have means of healing such wounds. All it comes down to is whenever you can get those. And tbh this is more interesting (overcoming difficulties) over nothing ever happening to anything and you simply sitting inside your killbox building up your ship.

Dunno D:

[TheMeInTeam]

The more you expose yourself to RNG, the worse you will do on average.  There's very little in this game you have to leave up to RNG, much less than people here think.

The question is why a player, knowing an option that doesn't risk a pawn's brain exists, should pick options that do.  That's especially an issue when you increase the number of dice rolls per raid. 

- Roll 99% odds 3000 times across a game and you're going to get popped. 
- Roll 80% odds that many times and you're going to lose your colony. 
- Do everything right, and you're only losing stuff when you actually make mistakes.

Which option are players going to pick?  As their skills improve, increasingly the third one.  "Sometimes you lose no matter what you do" rationale is bad for the game.  What you do *should* matter, and it *does* matter...apparently more than most of the community thinks.

[Scavenger]

It's clear that Tynan has a goal in mind with these changes, specifically for us to fight out in the open mano a mano and forgo base defenses.

No, that's not the goal at all.

What I'm trying to avoid is really simple, one-piece-fits-all base defenses that solve every problem risk-free. Your base defense should be contextually adapted, complex, varied, interesting, and should fare differently against different threats.

Also related is that caravan fights and attacks on enemy sites, where you have no base, should be viable, as base defense should also be viable. This implies that base defenses are useful but no particular defense is absolutely necessary versus a given threat.

I want a challenge, it's part of why this game is one of the best out there. Do you really find it fun to have next to no risk? You mentioned sitting behind a sandbag and hitting fast forward, not seeming to realize that's exactly what you do with most kill boxes haha. Ditching minimal effort cheeses(like killboxes and animal hoards) and making you actually position, kite, change things up every single fight, is the whole point of combat and a challenge. And walls, gun turrets, and kill boxes are far from useless, their purpose is to fill in a few gaps and support your troops, not win the fight for you.

The only thing i want more, is more things in the terrain to affect what i build and where. So far, it is mostly just affected by mountains, temperature, and water. A lot of the replayability for me is crafting a new base and play style around my environment. Taking advantage of natural choke points from hills, rivers, and marshes. Swamps added a bit to it with very dense trees. I would love to see more! Maybe quick sand, sink holes, building on higher/lower elevations(this would be cool with a penalty or bonus to accuracy!), open lava field..?

[giltirn]

Tynan edit: Sorry, I deleted this by accident. Very sorry, I read it though!

[giltirn]

It's clear that Tynan has a goal in mind with these changes, specifically for us to fight out in the open mano a mano and forgo base defenses.

No, that's not the goal at all.

What I'm trying to avoid is really simple, one-piece-fits-all base defenses that solve every problem risk-free. Your base defense should be contextually adapted, complex, varied, interesting, and should fare differently against different threats.

Also related is that caravan fights and attacks on enemy sites, where you have no base, should be viable, as base defense should also be viable. This implies that base defenses are useful but no particular defense is absolutely necessary versus a given threat.

I want a challenge, it's part of why this game is one of the best out there. Do you really find it fun to have next to no risk? You mentioned sitting behind a sandbag and hitting fast forward, not seeming to realize that's exactly what you do with most kill boxes haha. Ditching minimal effort cheeses(like killboxes and animal hoards) and making you actually position, kite, change things up every single fight, is the whole point of combat and a challenge. And walls, gun turrets, and kill boxes are far from useless, their purpose is to fill in a few gaps and support your troops, not win the fight for you.

The only thing i want more, is more things in the terrain to affect what i build and where. So far, it is mostly just affected by mountains, temperature, and water. A lot of the replayability for me is crafting a new base and play style around my environment. Taking advantage of natural choke points from hills, rivers, and marshes. Swamps added a bit to it with very dense trees. I would love to see more! Maybe quick sand, sink holes, building on higher/lower elevations(this would be cool with a penalty or bonus to accuracy!), open lava field..?

I don't use killboxes as replacing turrets is annoying and expensive. I prefer building my base to funnel enemies through traps, split them up, and to use sally ports to flank them with weapons fire and sometimes melee. My defenses are geared around being able to reposition myself to negate enemy fire. Doors are a fundamental part of this design, hence my concern.

[Perq]

Sappers can't destroy your walls if you base is surrounded by turrets. You really don't need to have one opening to your base in which you place all your turrets in.

And given that there are less raiders corresponding to the value of your base now, you can add more turrets that won't always be used (but will cover openings that sappers could otherwise use), but won't contribute as much to raid size.

[arcweldx]

I like all of the changes. I like all of the things that challenge simple solutions like "I have a wall, I don't need to worry about anything now."

Doors are fine. Wooden doors too weak? Build out of stone (it's great that the speed of wooden doors is now offset by their weakness, it also makes autodoors more important). Still having problem with things bashing through the doors? Make double-stacked doors. Make sure you have firing points to the sides to harass anything trying to break through. Have multiple layers of defenses. A system of strong points throughout your base. Adopt hit-and-run tactics and a base layout that allows this (helps to deal with being outnumbered).

The idea that the changes now force use to slug it out toe-to-toe is nonsense. Approach things more creatively, definitely. That's not a bad thing.

[zizard]

Agreed. In most encounters we are massively outgunned and outmanned - our only defense is our wits and our preparation. If you nerf all of our actual defensive strategies then we are just rolling the dice over and over until we get a 1; game over. This is boring. If anything we should be seeing defensive strategies being buffed. I don't mean killboxes, but things like traps, embrasures and moats should all be in the base game.

I agree with this. If the goal is to make varied defences, then they should add more kinds of defences. Almost a tautology. I get that nerfing a strong strategy can bring weaker ones into play, but that only works if those other strategies actually exist. All we have for defence is the wall, door, trap, turret, and mortar, which boils down to only a few (like 2-3) broad strategies.

[Tynan]

I honestly think it'll take time for the meta to catch up to the current design.

Old design favored very "closed" bases - lots of walls to funnel and control enemy movement.

Now that sappers are stronger, such a closed-paradigm design can be a liability. It may be better to strategically "open" the base to create fields of fire for the extremely powerful autocannon turret and recently-buffed mini-turret. Using lots of walls to block movement actually fights against this since it blocks LOS from your turrets.

I can imagine a format with a wide perimiter wall, with a large "moat" of territory just inside covered by overlapping autocannons (maybe this is farm/grazing land), with the compact town inside that. The idea is enemies come through a gap in the wall and get mowed down as they cross the open zone.

There's other approaches too. I've seen town-like designs with turrets covering long straight streets, Paris 19th-century style.

Autocannons have a long range and can cover a very large field if placed well.

Basically the paradigm of walls being the be-all-end-all control mechanism is changed; walls are now both useful but also a liability against your turrets since they block LOS. It will take time for old assumptions to work themselves out. I think a lot of people are mostly still talking "in relation to B18", not just judging the game as it is. It'll take time.

[Scavenger]

It's clear that Tynan has a goal in mind with these changes, specifically for us to fight out in the open mano a mano and forgo base defenses.

No, that's not the goal at all.

What I'm trying to avoid is really simple, one-piece-fits-all base defenses that solve every problem risk-free. Your base defense should be contextually adapted, complex, varied, interesting, and should fare differently against different threats.

Also related is that caravan fights and attacks on enemy sites, where you have no base, should be viable, as base defense should also be viable. This implies that base defenses are useful but no particular defense is absolutely necessary versus a given threat.

I want a challenge, it's part of why this game is one of the best out there. Do you really find it fun to have next to no risk? You mentioned sitting behind a sandbag and hitting fast forward, not seeming to realize that's exactly what you do with most kill boxes haha. Ditching minimal effort cheeses(like killboxes and animal hoards) and making you actually position, kite, change things up every single fight, is the whole point of combat and a challenge. And walls, gun turrets, and kill boxes are far from useless, their purpose is to fill in a few gaps and support your troops, not win the fight for you.

The only thing i want more, is more things in the terrain to affect what i build and where. So far, it is mostly just affected by mountains, temperature, and water. A lot of the replayability for me is crafting a new base and play style around my environment. Taking advantage of natural choke points from hills, rivers, and marshes. Swamps added a bit to it with very dense trees. I would love to see more! Maybe quick sand, sink holes, building on higher/lower elevations(this would be cool with a penalty or bonus to accuracy!), open lava field..?

I don't use killboxes as replacing turrets is annoying and expensive. I prefer building my base to funnel enemies through traps, split them up, and to use sally ports to flank them with weapons fire and sometimes melee. My defenses are geared around being able to reposition myself to negate enemy fire. Doors are a fundamental part of this design, hence my concern.

Sounds like Fortnite PVE:P Just make a super trap base and chill while they melt.

[Scavenger]

I honestly think it'll take time for the meta to catch up to the current design.

Old design favored very "closed" bases - lots of walls to funnel and control enemy movement.

I can imagine a format with a wide perimiter wall, with a large "moat" of territory just inside covered by overlapping autocannons (maybe this is farm/grazing land), with the compact town inside that. The idea is enemies come through a gap in the wall and get mowed down as they cross the open zone.

There's other approaches too. I've seen town-like designs with turrets covering long straight streets, Paris 19th-century style.

Autocannons have a long range and can cover a very large field if placed well.

Basically the paradigm of walls being the be-all-end-all control mechanism is changed; walls are now both useful but also a liability against your turrets since they block LOS. It will take time for old assumptions to work themselves out. I think a lot of people are mostly still talking "in relation to B18", not just judging the game as it is. It'll take time.

I rather like a kiting retreating style of combat. Several rows of sandbags, with some narrow walled corridors here and there spread out to create retreat channels. I open with a few volleys from mortars, then when they get in range, they take some hits from colonists and auto cannons, and when they get in range to retaliate, i pop in a walled corridor and retreat, then pop out at the next row, and shoot, with some traps on their side of the first row of sandbags. And i repeat, retreating safely when they get too close, while auto cannons pelt them and they are slowed by traps. The final sandbag wall has the usual stone wall sections for bonus cover. Occasionally ill send out a pet hit squad led by a melee to pick off outliers, snipers, or runners.

It's almost a more open variant of the killbox, but allows for actual fun micromanagement and lets the colonists keep active throughout. I plan to test a nice stone floor for it so i can pop some fire bombs down too. May not be the most optimized, but its great fun! Just a challenge whenever sappers decide not to walk the boulevard of broken limbs:P

[Panzer]

I honestly think it'll take time for the meta to catch up to the current design.

Thats what I actually like about the balancing process, the rules change and you need to figure out a new best approach to old problems, but I can see why some players find that unsettling, people tend to get set in their ways, not everyone welcomes change.
Regarding the subject of exposing your pawns to more risk, I think the game gives you a lot of leeway to rectify "RNG gone wrong", I mean we can craft prosthetics now, there is luciferium vs brainscars, isnt there healer mech serum to revive dead people as well?
Having a pawn die sucks, but its not the end of the world and knowing I might be able to revive said pawn later on, I can more easily accept him dying. Rimworld isnt constructed in a way that causes everything to collapse once you re missing a chesspiece, not even on extreme.