Alpha 5 and sieges

[Teovald]

I am enjoying my time with alpha 5 a lot ! 
One thing that bothers me is that I have found a tactic to break a siege that may be a little too powerful. 
When I get besieged, I equip my best shooters with sniper rifles. 
First, they dispatch the sniper wielding besiegers if there are any.  It is usually possible to pick them one or two at a time, versus my 4 or 5 competent shooters. 
When they are no longer a menace, they snipe the mortars. It is a very efficient way to destroy them, and the explosions and fire can kill the surrounding ennemies. 

I wonder if this is an expected strategy or an exploit. The besiegers never try to mount a counter assault on my sniper team.  The only downside is that snipers are prone to mental breakdowns since they have to travel a lot and snipe for a at least a whole day while looking at people dying.

[CountJeffrey]

Well I'm sure Tynan will be reading what people post abut alpha 5 and what people have come up with to defeat sieges. I am sure in future updates he will balance sieges so that a sniper team isn't over powered.

[mrofa]

Its not a powerfull tactic keep in mind that killing them one by one consume alot of time, which could be spend on something else like sleeping or eating to not get insane

[N-Tempest]

unfortunatley, lacking sniper-rifles (we has pistols... gangsta, innit?) I've not found a decent way to avoid losing my entire base to a mortar raid...

Ok, i've been playing for a while and am starting to get on with everything, then a group of raiders nearly a HUNDRED strong drop in, lay down mortars and lay waste to everything i've spent the last six or seven hours building...
once, that sucks. twice, that's annoying... EVERY TIME i get a siege, it's goodnight gracie.

[Emjay]

Interestingly I too have had huge issues with this. I do however like it when you are able to reverse it and use mortars for yourself. Ive had a couple of large attacks that have been seen running away because my mortars are firing fiery death upon them.

I am intrigued however as to what constitutes to good aim on a mortar. I presume high shooting skill would help here but does it really have an affect or is it always random?

[Tynan]

Shooting skill doesn't affect mortar accuracy as of now.

I am aware of the sniper-vs-siege semi-exploit. Thinking about ways to counter that - I may just have the siegers go into assault mode once about 25% of them have died.

[Emjay]

Shooting skill doesn't affect mortar accuracy as of now.

I am aware of the sniper-vs-siege semi-exploit. Thinking about ways to counter that - I may just have the siegers go into assault mode once about 25% of them have died.

You could always set the percentage of mortars built to a number based on how many raiders spawn, then out of that number hold what is required to man the mortars back whilst the rest act as they would normally and after a short period start an assualt.

Because of how devastating the mortars are however im not sure whether limiting the number of them would be worth thinking. I just had a raid of around 7 mortars which completely decimated my base. I can understand that later on in the game that would be fine but I had a small colony of around 7 people and so as you can imagine 7 mortars with a team of around 20 raiders made it a little difficult to stay alive longer than a couple of minutes.

[Tynan]

Can you post the savegame of that? Because 20 raiders and 7 mortars doesn't sound right to me. What storyteller is this?

[Nasikabatrachus]

I think it the sniper exploit would be 50% solved if the mortars attacked the colony as a whole rather than just the nearest colonist. For me, most of the benefit is in stopping the damage to my structures rather than actually gaining the ability to destroy the siege with a sniper (they all seem to run out of food eventually anyway). It's a secondary decision whether to try to kill a few of the enemy to give the whole group a morale hit or to try taking out their mortars. On the other hand, I don't think I could even afford to send a colonist out to snipe if I needed my colonists to constantly fight fires.

Overall, I wish sieges were more about punching holes in the colony's defenses so that the enemy could attack. I've found they're usually very well-powered anyway, so a real offense against them often isn't an option, although I wouldn't want to get rid of the variety provided by having to play at guerilla warfare. They're definitely something the game needed.

[HalfBrother]

The first siege I've had was 6 mortars (5 incendiary, 1 explosive) along with 15 pirates. This was on Chill Callie around day 90, with 6 colonists. I sent in a couple snipers to knock out the mortars, but base suffered some minor damage (solar panels and farms burned up). I'd say it's not that much of an exploit because the pirates usually advance to shoot you. However they went insane quickly, probably halving their numbers by the second day. I didn't even have to kill them, so many became dazed that they eventually starved.

[DaNewb]

Shooting skill doesn't affect mortar accuracy as of now.

I am aware of the sniper-vs-siege semi-exploit. Thinking about ways to counter that - I may just have the siegers go into assault mode once about 25% of them have died.

I think a simpler and better solution would be to have the raiders "react" after simply being shot at.  Have them stop focusing on the mortar shots and go into either a defensive mode behind good cover and at least some of them shooting back, or have them go into a slightly more aggressive mode where they seek cover in range to shoot back.  Don't let them just sit there for awhile and be exploited while the first 25% of them die.

Another option would be to have them simply build walls instead of sandbags, this would seriously increase the defense of the entire mortar party, where the player must now do what most people do to the ai raiders.  They are forced to move into closer range just to be able to get a shot off.  Both the raiders and mortars would be completely safe from a distance, and players could attempt to rush in and kill them or break through the walls.  Unless of course the player can out mortar the enemies.

[BetaSpectre]

So I assume this means that sieges never have thousands of raiders who zerg rush? If so I am pleased and so will my gaming performance :3.

Snipers are quite rare and ineffective against large groups. However, I hope that in a future update in a siege half of the raiders attack the walls while half lob mortars toward your base

With the update surface structures are less useful but subterainian ones are golden. This also makes me fear solar flares a tad great update xD,

[psilous]

I've seen seiges of around 30-40 setting up about 8 mortars.

[Ender]

so far i absolutely love seiges, though i have noticed that when attacking them early, after each raider gets shot (it seems to only really take a couple of hits on them) they usually panic and run, its fairly easy to break sieges with your own attack squad.

[BetaSpectre]

so far i absolutely love seiges, though i have noticed that when attacking them early, after each raider gets shot (it seems to only really take a couple of hits on them) they usually panic and run, its fairly easy to break sieges with your own attack squad.

Which is a lil more realistic if you ask me, cause I'd run too if all my buds and I were shot.