Are you surviving? (Cassandra Classic)

[Halinder]

I have a Cleopatra run and only have nine colonists, one with a minigun and the rest with M24's. I have no mods on, and my turrets wipe most raids without needing to get to the second line of defense. I shot the psychic AI drone with mortars and have given the mechs some room so they kill raiders as well. My advice is position rock chunks slightly away from your turrets so that raiders will take cover but are too far to get good shots off. The only issue with this tactic is mechanoids, which don't really need cover and will probably wipe your defenses, and tribals, who tend to come in such large numbers that there aren't enough cover slots and they rush your defense. Works great for pirates though.

[_alphaBeta_]

I just made it to the day 100 (unfortunately I don't think my stat uploads are making it through since the the log shows server errors), but just barely. Spaceship construction has started. I created a hall of death with stone walls which has helped, but it's only a matter of time before I've overwhelmed. The problem with the hall of death (at least they way I'm deploying the concept) is that if it doesn't survive the initial shootout, you're done for. I've been trying to pack as many turrets into a larger area that fires on a smaller area. I have an 'L' turn to get into the hallway to ensure the turrets have range on anyone turning the corner (if the walls stay intact no one can fire on the turrets from out of their range). Click screenshot below for a larger view.



The issue is the weakness of the turrets and they're tendency to explode, causing a chain reaction of explosions wiping the entire defense out. While I agree it should be this way for balance (actually the whole hall of death idea and stacking of turrets really shouldn't be viable in the future), I'm not sure what else to do with what's available in this Alpha. The obvious answer is to spread the turrets out, but then I don't have enough firepower to repel the attack. With a good amount of turrets partially damaged, as soon as one of those turrets explodes it's over.

I think the number of attackers is alright, but the player needs more options to repel the numbers since attack groups always seem to have more numbers than you have colonists. We need traps, stronger turrets, bunkers etc. More suggestions here.

The other issue is weapons for the colonists. There's really no way to arm them with proper weapons until you're actually able to survive one of the more advanced assaults and scavenge the weapons. Trading opportunities are too random, expensive, and in too low quantity to be that useful. We really need the ability to craft weapons, perhaps some specialty ones that the enemy doesn't have. A little piece of "home technology" that the colonists have from their world. Smaller raids in between would be helpful as it would give the colony an easy victory with access to better equipment. Then again, how much sense does it make for some pirates to fly in outnumbered. Then again, they could have just underestimated the colony strength.

[Tynan]

Thanks for the save, I'll take a look.

[superpirson]

So I have a trap pack mod, and I have been playing around with trap mechanics.  The problem I have is most true deadly traps (ie landmines, firebombs, ect) are single use, and early colonies don't have the population or time to rebuild everything in between raids.
Adding better structural reinforcement is something I intend to do in my mod, whitch will hopefully allow for proper bunker-building.

What we really need are more realistic raiders. Raiders who want money should come to the colony to steal money, and leave without incident.
Most real raiders never fire a shot, they just use intimidation to get what they want. Consaquently, you shoud have the option to comply with raiders' demands, at least untill you can defend yourself.

[_alphaBeta_]

What we really need are more realistic raiders. Raiders who want money should come to the colony to steal money, and leave without incident.
Most real raiders never fire a shot, they just use intimidation to get what they want. Consaquently, you shoud have the option to comply with raiders' demands, at least untill you can defend yourself.

That's a good idea, actually. I could part with some of my initial silver until I'm fully up and running. Pirates are supposed to extort anyway. The "pirate king pack" purchase tier talks about negotiations, so I'd assume this is on the eventual radar. Would be cool to have some representatives meet your colonists. Not all the time, but more "civilized" pirates.

Regarding traps, I see your point on the single-use aspect. Still, it wouldn't be very different from resetting defenses from a conventional castle siege. Refill those cauldrons of boiling oil, rock tumblers, burning logs etc. Attacks happen infrequently enough to make this feasible I believe.

There's also the possibility of expanding beyond single-use. How about a hidden flamethrower that's disguised like a rock or pops out of the ground or wall? Same with turrets or wall mounted machine guns that present themselves out of a compartment that looks like a wall. Essentially defenses that are not readily identifiable until you get too close, at which point, it's too late for you. This could be balanced, especially if weapons have finite ammunition.

I'm probably over-thinking now, but since even pirates come from a unified faction, they probably should catch on to traps eventually, especially if there are survivors that escape. Then again, you could move things around. In general, it would also be nice if attackers anticipated the possibility of traps (in a non-specific way initially) to a certain extent. This may reduce occurrences of the entire force making a run at your base (especially when they consider that some nasty anti-personnel weapons may be waiting), which would prolong battles and create skirmishes to a certain extend enhancing game play. For this reason, I feel the player should ultimately be responsible for activity the trap or initiating its activation. Otherwise, the player should be able to specify some very specific conditions before activation. A premature activation of a very effective hidden trap (which is useless at range) needs to be taken seriously by your colonists.

[Beanie]

I just built the spaceship and got 10 out of 11 colonists off the planet safely without mods or cheats of any sort. However I did revert to an earlier save state twice during the game.
Just to let everyone know that it can be done.
I used 3 normal mortars and 2 incendiary mortars to fight off sieges.  Leaving the other colonists to tend to normal duties and swap shifts when those manning mortars got tired. I found this method to be effective. Providing you move quick to man the mortars as soon as the raiders appear.
Base defences included a corridor of death planted with blasting charges with 3 turrets at the end around a corner, forcing those with longer ranged weapons to come closer to their doom.
That's pretty much it. Of course late on in the game, metal was scarce. However, raider sieges provided me with enough metal left from their destroyed mortars to recycle towards building my ship.
Hope this little post helps those who like me were having trouble with this latest version. Don't give up. 

[superpirson]

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There's also the possibility of expanding beyond single-use. How about a hidden flamethrower that's disguised like a rock or pops out of the ground or wall? Same with turrets or wall mounted machine guns that present themselves out of a compartment that looks like a wall. Essentially defenses that are not readily identifiable until you get too close, at which point, it's too late for you. This could be balanced, especially if weapons have finite ammunition.

well, in my mod, I do already have an electrified floor which can electrocute enemies, in exchange for obscene amounts of stored power.
in effect, power is it's ammo. to be able to use it, the colony needs to have a large and robust energy infrastructure.

[anexiledone]

I'm struggling on the easiest difficulty after this update. Even though I don't think the update changed any of the things I encountered.

Things are going great. My 4 colonists are prospering. Have a nice double wall surrounding my colony, turrets, sandbag emplacements, life is good. Then out of nowhere, a 6 man raider group of guys with pistols and 1 with molotovs. Should be easy enough.

I wipe all of them out quickly, though the molotov guy got a throw off. Witnessing the deaths of 6 people made my combat colonists decide they will just up and leave the colony. The fire spreading caused a roof to collapse on the one colonist left. In a matter of seconds, my colony was wiped out by their 2nd encounter using the easiest story teller.

My colony fell apart because we all felt bad for killing people who came in and tried to kill us. I think I give up lol

[mrofa]

Well it seems that colonist got some of mood modifiers of thier own, that are hidden since in my last play my body hauler didnt go insane even once while my constructor that was building my new solar panels had to run to my special room all the time to get his mood up. This was mostly becouse there was psychic drone with -25 to mood, still body snacher didnt had that problems at all.

[_alphaBeta_]

My colony fell apart because we all felt bad for killing people who came in and tried to kill us. I think I give up lol

I think this is the nexus of the issue. The dead body penalty probably needs to depend on what affiliation these bodies had before they died, and to a certain extent how they died. Seeing some random pirate who was intending to kill you dead on the ground (especially because you shot him in defense of your life) shouldn't bother you a whole lot. Seeing your dear friend that helped you survive since crash landing dead should be more upsetting.

I also think the current state of the body (i.e. how long dead) should have an effect as well. While a dead body is always upsetting to a certain extend, a decomposing/rotting body is probably more so. Lessening the initial dead body penalty would also alleviate some of these issues.

[ProAnMac]

My colony fell apart because we all felt bad for killing people who came in and tried to kill us.

Lessening the initial dead body penalty would also alleviate some of these issues

Why not just add in some kind of "relieved that we managed to defend against a raid" mood bonus in for a day or so?
It could counter some of those penalties and enable you have a little time to return to the usual colony life.   

[superpirson]

Why not just add in some kind of "relieved that we managed to defend against a raid" mood bonus in for a day or so?
It could counter some of those penalties and enable you have a little time to return to the usual colony life.

I like that "relived we fought off the attack" moodlet idea. that would help a lot with reconstruction.
I thought the affiliation dependent mood penalty for seeing a dead body was already on the list to be implemented, but I don't see it anywhere. that is indeed a necessity.

[_alphaBeta_]

Why not just add in some kind of "relieved that we managed to defend against a raid" mood bonus in for a day or so?
It could counter some of those penalties and enable you have a little time to return to the usual colony life.

Also sounds good to me, and rather realistic. I think I'd feel better if we just fended off an attack from people trying to kill us. I'm not sure it will be enough with large scale battles, however. It hasn't been any of my games, but others are dealing with dozens or even up into the hundreds of dead on the map. I'm not sure if the current dead body mood penalty has a cap. There's also the issue of the player not necessarily clearing the bodies as the number one priority. They may choose to repair their base first and secure important infrastructure first which may take longer than a day or whatever time frame this bonus would be active for.

[Beanie]

Why not just add in some kind of "relieved that we managed to defend against a raid" mood bonus in for a day or so?
It could counter some of those penalties and enable you have a little time to return to the usual colony life.

I think this is a good idea. As long as that mood bonus isn't too high, otherwise it might defeat the point of events having psychological effect in the first place.