Sad tidings

[Shurp]

I use 3x4 all the time.  Lay some tile, stick two stone statues in, and you get a +3 "slightly impressive" buff.  I'm too lazy to go for more and it keeps the base size down.  But yes, if you want higher bonuses you'll have to go larger.

(That's 3x4 interior, 5x6 if you're including the walls)

[Canute]

It depend how big i want to grow my colony.
Mosttimes i am doing 5x5 (no special reason, but leave enough room for interior), but 3x2 (double bed + endtable) works fine too if you are low on space.

[Limdood]

When i mentioned cheesing the raids, i meant using things like long trap hallways or the like to abuse the AI.

From a story perspective, you're getting large raids because your colony is rich enough to support (just picking a random larger number here) 15 pawns, instead of the 3 you have.  If you're trying to avoid being robbed, and have no way to fight off a robber, then being or looking poor is a viable defense, or buying off the robber.

A robber isn't going to want to bother with me if i throw my wallet into a trash can and leave.  Similarly if a robber comes to rob me and i toss my wallet onto the ground in between us, he'll probably grab it and leave me alone.  Lastly, I can take the money I have and buy some protection from the robber.

For #1, make caravan, move one tile, and ditch the unnecessary stuff.  Alternatively, move a few tiles and make a new colony, drop the stuff there in a building and leave it.  You can come back later for it.  Raiders might raid it and take some stuff, or they might not, but they won't hit your main base considering that wealth anymore.

For #2, leaving your excess wealth unsecured out in front of your base is the Rimworld equivalent of leaving an offering for your oppressors in the hopes they don't murder you all.  It's actually a pretty common bit of advice from police forces on "what to do if you get mugged" in real life...you take your money out, throw it in one direction, then run in the other.  In rimworld, it means that you get to basically avoid one raid, and lose some of your wealth.

For #3, you could call up a friendly faction and trade with an exotic goods or shaman merchant and grab all the psychic insanity and psychic shock artifacts they have, and sell off your excess stuff.  Next raid, you still have some wealth, but even 3 pawns can stand against 12 if you have 3 each of psychic shock/insanity artifacts.  Alternatively, use all those resources sitting around and make walls with one entrance, and cover that entrance with every turret you have the resources to build (use some batteries and a switch if powering the turrets is an issue)....both of these solutions shore up your defenses with the excess wealth that your tiny 3-man colony doesn't actively need, and as you fight off raids using those defenses, and the defenses get destroyed or used up, your wealth - what the raiders want from you basically - will drop as well.

[Limdood]

btw, to answer the "bedroom size" question - for my base layout, I do the whole thing in pods....13x13 rooms (11x11 interior space) with 3-wide hallways in between.

This means in any given pod i can easily stick:
-A lab with multiple research benches
-4 separate 5x5 bedrooms
-a large dining room/rec room capable of easily being made spacious and beautiful and holding 2 2x4 tables, a few chess and horseshoe pins and a billiards table
- a kitchen and butcher room and freezer
- workshops
- unroofed 121-tile growing zones protected from grazers (or a roofed growing zone that can fit the entirety of a sunlamp's area in it)
- any 2 of: 11x5 hospital, 11x5 guest room (hospitality), 2 4x5 mortar rooms with a 1x5 roofed shell storage in the middle, 11x5 crematorium, etc.

The 3 wide hallways make for good early fighting areas, with my pawns in doorways, and a small group of melee pawns that runs through the interior of pods to hit enemy raiders taking cover from behind.

It takes up a good amount of space, but I have good results with that building style.

[Pangaea]

Thanks for the replies and advice. That "pod" idea sounds interesting, and is sort of similar to what I end up with. I have started a new game, though, and in this one I sort of ended up with a super-structure, bedrooms aside. But later I'll build a separate hospital and prison, and should probably have a barn as well.


(Oh bugger, just noticed some elements of the screenshot got torn off again. No idea why it happens, but it happens in any games irregularly. Maybe a Linux issue of some type - not sure).

Defenses aren't really up to requirements yet, but I've placed some traps in strategic locations here and there, which have worked well so far. Always feels cheesy. But then a large melee raids arrives, and almost kill me. Again. Hah. Easy to get overwhelmed. Shooters are easier to deal with because my cover is better, but when they bum-rush you it's easy to into one-on-one situations and then your pawns go down sooner or later.

There is a large-ish area of mud south of those sandbags, so if I set up a killbox it will likely be there. But right now I'm short on granite after expanding a lot from those meagre beginning (that I usually stick with too long).

Happened to get a mini-gun from a quest, and that thing is pretty mean. Well, it *can* be. Not precise ofc, but it's awesome to see my dude spitting bullets into a crowd of raiders when he gets going. It was *probably* a little overkill to hunt hares with it, but what the hey!

[Canute]

I notice you build your base at the middle of the map (like most other players) again.
So you need to defend at any direction.

Maybe you should consider to build your base at the map border instead.
With just 2 entrances. And keep the front door allways open (or open it when the raid comes).
So raider (beside sapper) will path through the front entrance.
And you can fortify these entrance pretty well will traps, and later with turrets.

[Pangaea]

I notice you build your base at the middle of the map (like most other players) again.
So you need to defend at any direction.

Maybe you should consider to build your base at the map border instead.
With just 2 entrances. And keep the front door allways open (or open it when the raid comes).
So raider (beside sapper) will path through the front entrance.
And you can fortify these entrance pretty well will traps, and later with turrets.

Since I went with a slightly bigger map this time, I figured it was best to have it in the middle to prevent pawns doing overly stupid stuff (or rather reduce the consequences when they inevitably do stupid stuff). We can't build to the map edge, so how would you go about that? Fine if there are mountains, but that's not always the case. Do you have an example image for instance? Just so I can see how you do it.

What I do when raids come is to get people technically outside the base, behind the sandbags (and later killbox, if I build one). That way the (normal) raiders will head that way instead of trying to punch through walls. And when they move that way (mostly from the west in my case), they usually trip over some strategically placed traps.

This is quite early on tribal, so it takes time to get techs (what I like about tribal, plus no starting guns), but this is what the defensive spot looks like currently.



And here are some traps in the south-west, that have killed quite a few raiders. There happens to be a mountain-range further north, all the way up to the edge, so raiders have to walk around it, and then run into these traps -- unless they want to punch through some walls on the base's western end.



Overall it definitely needs to be improved, and it was a close call against a bunch of melee raiders, and three lancers. So far all attacks have come up here, but like always the bigger challenge is sappers, sieges and drop pod attacks. Hopefully I'm able to tech up to cannons and better weapons+armour this time without dying first.

[Canute]

That's a my typical base design.
Yes you can't build straight at the border, but only very few raider would spawn at your backdoor.
And since the backdoor is allways closed and the frontdoor allways open, they normaly would path through the frontdoor to smash your furnitures.


[attachment deleted due to age]

[Limdood]

I feel like building at the map edge makes some raids much much harder depending on their spawn location.

With a centered base, a sapper raid is a sapper raid, and a siege is a siege.

With a map edge base, a sapper raid on the far side of the map is easy to fend off, while a sapper raid spawning next to your wall will cause some serious damage before your pawns arrive.  A siege spawning next to your base is easy to deal with, while a siege on the far side of the map is MUCH harder to sally out to attack before they get established. 

Yes, some raids become easier, but some also become much harder, and in the case of those two, might cause otherwise preventable damage if you'd happened to be in the middle.

Obviously this is different if you can DENY them spawning on certain sides, such as with a coastline or mountains, but in a standard map where you can be attacked from any side, i feel the occasional "bad" raid of a nearby sapper or distant siege could cause unnecessary damage, and by association, more likely to cause avoidable pawn death.

Pangaea also brings up another important point that if you're using the standard game devices for hunting or fetching chunks/slag, or even mining rock, a map edge base means that pawns can (and inevitably will) be caught extra far from base in some sort of bad situation.  If my pawns are on the opposite edge/corner mining as a group (for protection) and a drop pod raid happens, my base is getting seriously messed up before those pawns get back, and any pawns back at the base are in serious danger.  Similarly, if a single pawn or two are out hunting alone and an "immediate attack" raid happens from a bad angle, those pawns might be cut off, and if the raiders choose to head for the exposed pawns rather than the base, they're in serious trouble.

It's not that these things DON'T happen in a centered base, in fact they happen with about the same frequency, but because there is no part of the map excessively far from the base, the negative impact of those situations is reduced.  Travel time back to base is faster from ALL points of the map, and the base pawn's ability to quickly sally out and aid a colonist in danger is improved.

[Pangaea]

That's a my typical base design.
Yes you can't build straight at the border, but only very few raider would spawn at your backdoor.
And since the backdoor is allways closed and the frontdoor allways open, they normaly would path through the frontdoor to smash your furnitures.

Thanks for the image. Looks very solid, at least once you get walls around it. Do you actually start out like this though, with a base pre-built on day 1?

As for the new base...? We have got hit very hard twice now. The first was my own mistake in fairness, as I took on another chased regugee raid. Didn't expect them to come with doomray device and triple rocket launchers  Took a direct him from the triple-whammy and I'm amazed nobody outright died. Maybe flak vests and pants on most of the crew saved them. Many lost limbs, though, and basically the entire base down.

Then 10 (!) scythers attacked us, with almost no warning due to where they spawned and their speed. A few got weakened from traps, but we had 9 guys bashing our heads in. We survived, without casualties, but damn did they hurt us bad. So many lost limbs... One dude lost both eyes. One guy is a body purist, so if I replace his lost arm he'll be mad.

What I'm trying to say here is that I needed better defenses. So here we go.... Killbox it is.



A shame to miss out on that big field of rich soil to the east, but it felt way too far away when I started out, and there are some nice mountains around that helped early on.



Don't have any turrets yet, but if we survive long enough I'd like to get a few autocannons in there as well. That should help when more mechs turn up. Damn bullet sponges.

Oh, and thank goodness I had just built a few hospital beds for the splashing new hospital. Sure as hell needed it with 9-10 guys down and bleeding out.

[Pangaea]

The "story generator" aspect of the game certainly checks out. Marriages, divorces, once-good friends becoming rivals and bashing each other's head in. Repeatedly. Then Cassandra. Oh, you so-and-so. Always worrying when the calm lasts. You know something bad is coming Probably sitting there rubbing her fingertips together, coming up with increasingly sinister plots.

Like a mech drop pod attack. Inside my kitchen which happened to store all the body parts and archotech stuff we had gotten in quests because the freezer and storage was filled to the brim with vegetables, because I panicked a little after running out the previous winter and went larger than life with new farming plots. Just as the last mech hits the ground dead, another message. 23 (!) manhunting arctic wolves. Thank goodness I did go with a killbox this time. And that we had turrets. Would have been a much bigger issue without it. Oh, what's that Cassandra? A toxic fallout? Oh well, at least we have plenty of meat now.

More calm ensues. We finish up the 22nd gladius for another trade mission. But it's been calm too long. I don't dare send out any guys now.

Ah yes, there we go Miss Cassandra. A raid. Mechs. Oh shit. 6 centipedes. Gulp.

Had forgotten how extremely durable these buggers are. Bullet sponges doesn't suffice. But it was fortunate they entered on the west side of the map. Gave us good time to wake up, eat and get into positions. Oh, and turn on the power for the turrets and autocannons. Hard-asses went through no less than 34 (!!) traps before entering the killzone. Not one went down. Quite a few of those were steel traps as well.

But we live to eat another day



Honestly not sure how people survive deep into the game, when you start getting big mech attacks, without killboxes or some other somewhat cheesy tactic.

[Limdood]

I just started playing without save scumming in my most recent game (I have a strong drive to "win" games, and I wanted to try to actually see what happens when I don't "cheat" in Rimworld to do so). 

It definitely improved the story of the game.  I'm feeling more connected to my pawns.  I had one situation where a psychic ship landed at a time when my defenses were down from an earlier raid, and mood was low so I couldn't wait to spring it.  I pinged the ship to spawn the mechs, then called allies for help. Knowing they'd not be able to deal with the whole raid, i sent my guys out to help once they were engaged, but two of the heavy charge blaster centipedes killed all their melee attackers and were drawing a bead on my guys, so i sent in my brawlers.  Took one centipede out and was focusing down the other when a nearby "friendly" rand up and "helpfully" chucked some frag grenades onto one of my guys, killing him instantly.

Normally, that'd be a save scum situation, but since I WASN'T doing that, I angrily grabbed all my guys and focus-fired down the jerk grenadier for what he did.  That made that faction hostile.  A little bit later they sent a peace talks request, which prompted my recent suggestions forum request to be able to attack peace talks instead of trying for peace (can you tell I'm still bitter?).  The whole situation had a lot more impact since the pawn death was permanent.

Also, Kala is a b*tch.  she directly or indirectly causes almost every mood problem in the colony.  She's cheated on 3 people so far, and is now engaged to a 4th...

[Pangaea]

Funny you should mention bad mood, because that reminds me... We had some prisoners and a few people needed new equipment. Out with the knives. But holy cow did the mood take a swing for the worse! Okay, so we harvested 5 parts and killed one of them.

Most of the colony took turns with mental breaks. Not small stuff either. Berserk, killing spree, and one chick simply upped and left. I tried to deal with it by arresting them, but it was too much going on (and the option wasn't available, again, when it failed and they flipped out even worse). By the time my focus got back to the rec room, thinking everything was finally under control -- to my horror I noticed that the mega-widescreen TV we bought for most of our funds was smashed to smithereens. And the same was both snooker tables and one of the poker tables, plus a wide range of other stuff. And I was pleased I managed to save a hospital bed at 4 HP

What just happened now, though, was much harder to take. Sparkles, which is a unique backer personality, was south of the base to fix up one of the traps. A bear happened to be close, and aggroed on her. Maybe they were too close or something. The bear happened to be near the traps when she got there.

She tried to run as best as she could, and I hoped the bear would trigger some of the other traps and at least slow it down enough for her to get away. No such luck. Put a whole crew after the bastard, but it was too far away. Mauled the poor girl something fierce, and ate most of her limbs before the firing crew filled the bugger full of metal. God I hate bears right now!! 

Sparkles had just got married to Red. Still in the honeymoon period. Naturally, Red is distrought beyond belief right now. -20 for dead wife. -10 for dead friend, and -3 for colonist dead. And the +40 for marriage is long gone.

All this while a few guys are on the road to hand over gladiuses in return for.... 2 resurrector mech serums.


So then to a big question. Will this actually be much use on her? I put her in the freezer, but errr... she's kinda lacking a few bits now. I don't assume they will grow back? The serum will just put life into her body?

Not a good way to go 

I was actually really attached to her, and am quite sad right now. First loss for this colony (apart from a sacrificial lamb earlier), and such a pointless death moments after defeating a horde of sapper pirate raiders.

[Limdood]

Yeah, i had to replace a kidney, and mood shouldn't have been a problem....I had one colonist (that everyone liked) died in the same raid that blew out a kidney on someone else, so between the death and the organ harvested, there was a moderate mood penalty....a couple small mood breaks (I try to keep my moods high with 2 hours of recreation time on each side of the sleep schedule, and I make large dining rooms with recreation items and nice floors and art so they get "very impressive rec room" and "very impressive dining room" at once)....but that psychic ship would have caused problems. 

Letting the ship sit would have pushed a few of my more volatile pawns into major break range, and even just waiting a small amount of time (before the psychic drone amps up) would have pushed a handful more pawns into constant minor break risk, and That would mean possible dazes or sad wanders WHILE i'm trying to deal with the ship.

There were a few more breaks after the raid, because 2 more people died.  The poor brawler that took a grenade to the feet, and one of my shooters who took a single heavy charge blaster shot...in the heart.  The same thing that killed the first pawn in a previous raid.  At that point I took some leftover psychoid leaves sitting around (I have the hospitality mod, so visitors hang around and occasionally leave gifts when they leave...I end up with small amounts of drugs or raw drug plants often from them) and started making psychite tea, and altered my drug policy that anyone could drink up to 1 tea per day if their mood fell below 25%.  That helped a lot.  Over the course of 2 years in game since then, I've only gotten 2 pawns addicted to it, and both happened during "psychite binge" mental breaks - and I haven't had to change anything since...those addicted pawns just stay on the same drug policy (it also allows psychite tea to maintain addiction).

My list of mood modifiers I try to maintain is:
- 4 hours of recreation time, split 2 and 2 each day
- a "very impressive" dining room/rec room combination
- individual pawn rooms that, through a combination of size, flooring, and furniture, are at least "mediocre"
- psychite tea, available once per day, for mood below 25%
- fine meals, whenever possible, for everyone, all the time
- a few scattered tables with stools in the far corners of my base so random wandering pawns can still eat at a table.
- VERY large workrooms combined with stockpiles, with nice flooring or a couple statues, so the "spacious" mood buff and the beauty floor/statue more than offsets any beauty penalty from the stockpiles

That generally leaves me only temporary or situational negative moodlets on my pawns...like sick, sweaty, pain, rebuffed, insulted, or things like organ harvests or deaths.

[Shurp]

Pangaea, is Sparkles any sort of body purist?  If not, reviving her and then attaching lots of prosthetic limbs could work.  What would be most interesting to see is if the marriage bonus returns.  She'd be a serious bonus for the colony (especially for Red!)

Honestly not sure how people survive deep into the game, when you start getting big mech attacks, without killboxes or some other somewhat cheesy tactic.

You certainly have to use prepared defenses of *some* sort.  But it doesn't have to be a literal box.  I like to surround my base with two perimeters, the outer with a few holes to funnel attackers, and the inner with lots of holes with my colonists behind to shoot them from.  So it's more of a kill donut than a kill box.

If the range mechanic wasn't so stupid I wouldn't even need an outer perimeter.  The fixed range limit is what drives killbox behavior.  If you could use a pistol at range 50 (albeit with awful accuracy) you wouldn't need that outer wall at all.