Invading

[Desmondsdead]

I would love to be able to invade other colonies. To make runs for there supplies and there people. I'm tired of just sitting and waiting for there raiders to come to me I'd love to take the fight to them.  Go all out and make the raiders have a huge host of people as to deter u from going there to often. But I t would be cool if you could increase or deacrese their attach based on it interactions with them. Like in don't want to mess with this group they killed and then at Timmy in front of bob and then hung bob in a gibit cage for us to find.( witch would either scare them or make them vengeful )

[sirdave79]

Shout out for this. Sitting there waiting to receive the big stick is less fun than using your own big stick. Pre emptive player raiding could/should have an effect on raider numbers from that settlement. Your getting into the realms of needing at least some sort of pseudo cencus and/or population control/management and tracking for everything aside from the players assets. Could be expensive.

[CasualSteal]

I don't know if we will ever have large maps with all your neighbours around and you could wipe them out, but someone could probably use something like the existing siege mechanics to create a mod that could do a small scale replica of an enemy colony.

It would entail something like this:
Day 5: A group of raiders (size depending on difficulty) arrives off screen and sets up a colony from supplies dropped or carried in.
Day 6-10: Basic structure is built with beds and a food supply.
Day 15: A small party, 1-2 guys head towards your base, are used for harassment and if injured return to their colony.
Day 20+: harassments are frequent but unlike typical raids are small party and occur every few days and a few shots back at them scare them off.
Day ?: Your colonists get tired of this constant annoyance and wipe them off the map causing the raider base event to finish and switch back to the larger raiders that are default.

[_alphaBeta_]

I don't know if we will ever have large maps with all your neighbours around and you could wipe them out, but someone could probably use something like the existing siege mechanics to create a mod that could do a small scale replica of an enemy colony.

It would entail something like this:
Day 5: A group of raiders (size depending on difficulty) arrives off screen and sets up a colony from supplies dropped or carried in.
Day 6-10: Basic structure is built with beds and a food supply.
Day 15: A small party, 1-2 guys head towards your base, are used for harassment and if injured return to their colony.
Day 20+: harassments are frequent but unlike typical raids are small party and occur every few days and a few shots back at them scare them off.
Day ?: Your colonists get tired of this constant annoyance and wipe them off the map causing the raider base event to finish and switch back to the larger raiders that are default.

This would be my preference for an approach. The main enemy bases are still "off the map" and inaccessible keeping with the current theme for other factions. This may be important if the intent is not to have a standard skirmish setup where you win after destroying everyone's base in each corner of the map. As you say, it's another form of attack like sieges. It also introduces another layer of strategy on whether or not a preemptive attack would be best. The longer you wait, the stronger the other colony becomes.

Friendly colonies (with smaller forward deployed bases that are visible on your map) would also be kind of neat. They may be susceptible to attack from a common enemy introducing more strategy on whether you should try and defend them to keep around for trading as an attack buffer. This would certainly strengthen the diplomacy system as well, though I don't know the extent to which that's the intention. Tynan has said he doesn't necessarily have long-term plans (I'll cite a recent source), so we'll see what direction he takes us in. I'd say there's enough indicators floating around that imply the diplomacy system is going to continue to expand.

Of course this may be a good amount of work since essentially AI factions would need to know how to build a basic base and defend it. We're partly there with sieges, but I imagine bases would be more work still.

[ApexPredator]

Would give you more incentive to wipe them all out instead of letting them flee and could be only a part of a certain story teller. I would enjoy this idea.