Untraditional killbox

[Pangaea]

I like to try to take advantage of the terrain when attempting to protect the base, and have done so here too. But it feels too small currently, so I need to adapt it. For now I haven't put any traps in the hallway either, I just wanted to buy some time to get into position. We all know it's a bit cheesy, so I'm trying without now. Hope we don't die.



When we have the techs, I was thinking to put uranium turrets on the left and remove parts (or the whole) inner wall. Maybe they'd get sniped by a horde of lancers from across the lake then, I'm not sure. In that case I may have to forgo the idea of being able to snipe other enemies, and instead wall up the other side.

It's always a bit tricky how to place turrets in these killboxes. So damn easy to get one-shot from friendly fire, especially when you get stormed by a million melees so they're all in your face.

How would you go about designing a killbox/-zone here?

[Vlad0mi3r]

Is that overhead mountain at the top of that kill box?

If it is the first thing I would be doing is fill it in and change the shape of the kill box. You don't need and infestation right when you are being attacked by Mechs.

[Shurp]

Why do you have the fire zone aligned north-south instead of east-west?  If your colonists were lined up on the left they wouldn't have to walk as far to get into position, so setup would be faster.

[Pangaea]

I tried to take advantage of the lake, while also retaining those rich soil fields since I don't many many of them. But the idea has been to expand the (inner) wall westwards, so the rectangle is more evenly squared, or probably longer east-west than north-south. Then I could place some turrets on the left side, and maybe some mini-turrets up north (they may not reach though).

Perhaps that was a poor decision, and I should have placed it much further left. But then the animals wouldn't have much grazing areas, and they kinda need that :| It may have been feasible to line turrets and colonists north and west of the lake, with a killzone entry in the bottom right of the lake, or thereabouts.

That would quite heavily restrict grazing and "fallback" areas though, which I'm not sure I like. Particularly if I don't line the hallway with traps, like I have cheesily done previously (well, in successful colonies that is, hence the partial return to it now), I imagine we can quite easily get overwhelmed when 200+ guys storm us. It's simply way too many to handle, even more so when they all enter totally unharmed (or near enough).

Wealth bombs up so damn quickly once we're able to build flak armour and better clothes, so raids from now on will most likely be very brutal. We shall see. But I need to do something about this thing, because right now I don't really dare go in there to begin with

[Pangaea]

It has been through a couple of live tests now, the last one with uranium slugs as well.



It has been okay for now. But a continuing worry, like in previous games, is when you get bumrushed and the autocannons start firing into the pack by the sandbags, including your guys. Easy to get friendly fire one-shot.

In theory at least, what I like with the slugs is that they're now able to reach many sections of the base. The killbox (provided centipedes don't venture too far in), across the lake, and in the south-west where many sappers have broken through.

So far only a few people have tried to engage the slugs from across the lake (and it ended badly for them), but if a horde of mechs do that, or if triple rocket launchers or something can reach, then they're basically toast. I like that at least the uranium slugs can't friendly fire us due to the wall, but from experience this is a bigger issue with autocannons, because I tend to shut off the slugs unless faced by centipedes. Autocannons are more useful against human raiders in general (especially in the mid to late game when they come very heavily armoured), but it's so darn dangerous when they turn to us instead of the 'box' entrance.

Will probably have to experiment a bit, depending on what happens in future raids. Just about everything is sappers anyway, but a few have come the 'normal' way.