Killing killboxes.

[Breadbox]

It appears that turrets have once again being nerfed to disincentivize the kill box/kill maze play style. I personally don't build turrets or kill boxes but I don't think the solution is to nerf turrets patch after patch.

Players shouldn't have to build killboxes to win nor should kill boxes be the safest, most efficient way to deal with raids. Turret nerfs won't change this until they so nerfed they aren't useable even in kill-box defensive setup, much less a non-killbox one. And even after all that, we'd just left with turretless trap mazes as the next best alternative.

1) Building killboxes can be necessary late-game, depending on the storyteller, the game in general really doesn't like you to be unusually rich, hence modded games tend to face an extreme number of enemies due to the inflated wealth. This is can be unbearable without killboxes. Eliminating this necessity is a prerequisite for other strategies to be fun.

2) Pawns are too precious to risk in combat, they are irreplaceable and your chances of finding a useful one are completely up in the air. This is probably part of the intended experience, but do recognize the problems it causes. If this part of the game is given some leeway, perhaps introduce a universal mercenary system available for everyone with its quirks and drawbacks I know there's a merc mod on the workshop but it's hardly balanced for vanilla.

3)Traps and kill mazes
If you have ever watched anyone play the game, you'd recognize this asinine long winding corridor maze thing filled with traps that dispatch the entire raid with zero player input. The pathing of raider ai will obsessively favor open spaces despite the ridiculously long winding corridor. This should change, make them recognize the existence of doors, make special enemies that could unlock doors or blow up walls, make their behavior unpredictable. Possibly even adding limited sapping(not the obsessive, omnipotent one) behavior to regular raid. Tribals could have hammers which target doors, outlanders could have demoman or something.

4) Sieges
Sieges are pathetic and don't force the player to attack at all. Attackers are forced to build mortar on the spot which means they will always lose the artillery duel. To make things worse I've found I never had to build/research mortars or shells myself as they are supplied by the siege itself. They are literally a weaker standard raid that drops in food, materials, and weapons for you.

I propose make later sieges airdrop pre-constructed mortars that can be installed instantly, uncap the max number of mortars to be above 2 and maybe make the enemy mortars and ammunition rigged to explode when siege fails if that's not enough.

[lugaruclone]

I always joke that if the internet did not exist every player who accumulates enough wealth would eventually discover killboxes on their own, so it is very much something the 'game' makes similar to my other two pet peeves (freezer rooms and non hydroponic greenhouses).

"It feels like cheating but what choice do I have?".

For sure smarter attacks could mean smaller attacks and less dependency on sending a wave of raiders at you. One thing I saw a mod do... and something ants do... is considering a dead raider a 'wall' for a brief amount of time in other words if a raider falls in a trap other raiders avoid that area. Combine this with a behavior that says 'if there is no path, dig a way' and raiders going down a narrow maze of traps would hit one, say 'my path is blocked' and start chipping at the wall until the 'psychological barrier' times out and another raider eats a trap. With raiders digging their way to you you could probably cut the number of them in half and still be threatened... as you say they can turn sapper behavior on and off depending on if there is a path with no make believe dead raider barriers in the way. The idea of some of them having hammers as you say or pick axes or C4 would be nuts.

I love the idea of dropping fully formed mortars and let's be honest... this is what Mechanoids do now as of 'royalty' they drop onto the map ready to rock with their turrets and other goodies. Meanwhile when raiders drop they take all day to set up and even if you do not mortar them you can snipe them really effectively. Personally I've always dreamed of grenade launchers... in between a rocket launcher and a turret, launching grenades from a 'half a map' distance as the rest of the raiders charge towards your defenses.

[Breadbox]

Maybe the limited sapper behavior should be limited to doors only, currently, there is minimal movement efficiency loss since the player could simply replace every other wall segment with door, ridiculous trap mazes should require careful planning or deal the fact that it would hinder your own colonists as much as the raiders.

[LWM]

Oh wow.  That hasn't been my experience with sieges - I find them terribly dangerous.  I'm not keen to start an artillery duel - even one shell landing in a base could be disastrous, and if I go fight them, I don't have any of my defenses.

Given I like to play on slightly larger maps, the time the enemy takes building mortars is almost over before I can even get any soldiers there to respond!

No thank you, let them build mortars themselves.

[RicRider]

I think in general when we talk about these issues with sieges we forget that the game is balanced around medium maps or something like that. I play on the biggest size maps most of the time too and can tell you that if you decreased the amount of time they took to set up you'd make the sniping response impossible and might even lose people that are far out in the field. Well it would be a different gameplay style for sure than it is now, not saying harder or easier.

Also I find a lot of the times that we players think we need killboxes but we don't, we just have to get more creative and use natural choke points on the maps, build panic rooms or bunkers with med beds and medicine in outlying spots near where miners work or caravans go in and out, putting IEDs around the map, etc. There's many things you can do apart from building killboxes but of course most players will just default to automating even the fights whereas players like me prefer microing the fights and automating the everday life of the colony. When RimWorld is a bit too unrealistic or slow to me I just use mods. I wouldn't expect the developers to cave into what I'm trying to do when they intended me to build a ship ASAP and get off the planet ASAP and everything in the game is supposed to pressure you to do that.

[SpaceDorf]

Because of my CPU I use 275x275 Mountain Maps, more is slowing me down to much.
So sieges are mostly ressource drops for me as well. I actually wait until the mortars are build before attacking, then I start sniping the pawns manning the mortars until everybody attacks.
Then I use natural cover and choke points.

I can see the point for killboxes and trapcorridors on flat maps, where there is no natural cover.
And if we are being honest. What else is a medieval castle than a giant killbox filled with trained soldiers and their supply train.

For me, there are two mods that prevent me from using killboxes.

"Embrasures" which prevents the enemy from overrunning me with numbers and I have actual chance to survive a shootout.

and

"More Slaves" through which Slavers have a bigger supply of potential colonists. Not equipped mercenaries but a potential ally you have to invest in.

[mooguy]

I propose make later sieges airdrop pre-constructed mortars that can be installed instantly, uncap the max number of mortars to be above 2 and maybe make the enemy mortars and ammunition rigged to explode when siege fails if that's not enough.

I agree mortars can be made to be slightly more harder.

Maybe 1 mortar can arrive ready to go and another two + have to be constructed.
If the AI builds the sandbags they normally bring on the right angle, it can be pretty dangerous to take on, especially if a few of the raiders have sniper rifles/ doomsday launchers.

Turrets weren't objectively nerfed in the patch, since they cost less and the market value for them went down.
I've been recently playing a run through on savage difficulty, and mech clusters can be seriously dangerous. Combined with infestations, sappers, and drop pod raids, there is still a bit to be scared about.

I do agree that long winded hallways with traps is cheesing it. Maybe increasing their resource cost, market value, time to set up and decreasing damage is a way to go.

Although keep in mind a lot of players with those intense late game bases have been either playing it at lower difficulty, easier biomes and with OP mods - such as decoys, Embrasures, turrets with no drawbacks, infinitive power sources and turn off events like infestations that challenge them.

--

This is my base after 3 years on savage difficulty. No traps and only one turret in the middle to hold up infestations.

[Breadbox]

Oh wow.  That hasn't been my experience with sieges - I find them terribly dangerous.  I'm not keen to start an artillery duel - even one shell landing in a base could be disastrous, and if I go fight them, I don't have any of my defenses.

Given I like to play on slightly larger maps, the time the enemy takes building mortars is almost over before I can even get any soldiers there to respond!

No thank you, let them build mortars themselves.

What is your siege response then? I used to attack the siege position but realized it to be a risk and a big waste of time. Now I just man the mortars and pay no attention.
Maybe I shouldn't have said 'artillery duel' since I rarely ever had the enemy finishes construction of their mortars. If you have incendiary shells, you don't even need more than one mortar.

Turrets weren't objectively nerfed in the patch, since they cost less and the market value for them went down.

Bruh, turrets have been massively nerfed across the board, mini turrets cost the same, it's damage output is cut by 1/3 and its health 1/6. Auto-cannon(damage and ap halved/more than halved) and Uranium slug are hit even harder.

I think the signal is pretty clear that Tynan doesn't like the turret killboxes, I just personally hope something more interesting could be done because raiders still get funneled too easily.

[mooguy]

Bruh, turrets have been massively nerfed across the board, mini turrets cost the same, it's damage output is cut by 1/3 and its health 1/6. Auto-cannon(damage and ap halved/more than halved) and Uranium slug are hit even harder.

Wasn't the plasteel cost reduced form 60 down to 30 for mini turrets and market value reduced 30%? I think the same changed were done for the other turrets too, so you can afford more of them and raid strength won't be as increased as much as a result?

[Pangaea]

This is actually the one thing I'm really upset about in the 1.1 update. It's not just a tuning either -- turrets are nerfed into the ground (and I wasn't even aware of the huge drop in HP, which makes it even worse). It quite effectively have removed turrets from the game, as they are pretty much pointless to build now.

As a player that doesn't use wealth control and like to play long games with (eventually) many colonists, this is a death sentence. In the mid or at least late game, it was necessary to have some type of turret and/or killbox defense to survive. Not to automate combat. To survive.

These changes may mean that playing how I prefer is no longer possible. I always detested using heavy wealth control to ensure more manageable raids, and prefered an active (but later on, turret-assisted) defence instead. It was more fun.

If Tynan really wanted to kill killboxes, this may have done it. Unless people want to use 100 traps in there or something.

But believe you me, taking on 40+ centipedes (and however many other mechs arrive) in the open, effectively without turrets, is not going to be a fun experience. Well, if you survive long enough for such raids to be possible that is.

That is why I asked earlier if this was a balancing trick where they first nerf them to the extreme, and then gradually revert the changes. It's all I can hope.

[dearmad]

This is actually the one thing I'm really upset about in the 1.1 update. It's not just a tuning either -- turrets are nerfed into the ground (and I wasn't even aware of the huge drop in HP, which makes it even worse). It quite effectively have removed turrets from the game, as they are pretty much pointless to build now.

As a player that doesn't use wealth control and like to play long games with (eventually) many colonists, this is a death sentence. In the mid or at least late game, it was necessary to have some type of turret and/or killbox defense to survive. Not to automate combat. To survive.

These changes may mean that playing how I prefer is no longer possible. I always detested using heavy wealth control to ensure more manageable raids, and prefered an active (but later on, turret-assisted) defence instead. It was more fun.

If Tynan really wanted to kill killboxes, this may have done it. Unless people want to use 100 traps in there or something.

But believe you me, taking on 40+ centipedes (and however many other mechs arrive) in the open, effectively without turrets, is not going to be a fun experience. Well, if you survive long enough for such raids to be possible that is.

That is why I asked earlier if this was a balancing trick where they first nerf them to the extreme, and then gradually revert the changes. It's all I can hope.

Turrets still have a place, but not as the main mechanism (they never did) to manage raids or other dangers. There's more to life than killboxes....

https://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Defense_structures

Have fun out there on the Rim.

[Karim666]

ok then orbital drops of T-1000 may be the solution for you!!! CALL  NOW AT 214-555....
lol, reminded me. The good old hardcoreSK t-800 infiltrators as they would make me sit in the killbox. but to be serious i think you can solve part of this problem by forcing the player to move as a yearly thing due to folds ( as ex ) then the player would have to return to there ruiend base.

or you simply teach the AI not to attack through the killbox which i tried with CE team years ago (while they were implementing the melee system...) and baseded it on zenhier implementation of betterpathfinding back then we notcied the AI becoming "a pussy"  so much so if a sniper is trying to push they would all fallback regroup then attack at once just the sniper, thus a raid took more than 2 hours just of us watching them do that. unfortunaly i didn't finish the it and now i'm done my MS i feel i can return to it but god have rimworld changed a lot!!!

[5thHorseman]

The real solution is to make the AI actually have a goal other than "fuck over the player in any way possible."

If they lose all 25 of their guys and one of our guys loses a finger, they win. Any "fixing" of combat that doesn't address that fails to address combat.

[Lexa]

If anything, i feel the new turret changes make killboxes more neccessary - with this very overtuned nerf turrets definitely dont cut it anymore in a open defense, they've been struggling before already, especially past early midgame. Im no stranger to using animals and pawns in my fights against raids but when raids are so methodical and only ever come to wholly wipe you off the map (f.e how raiders always will set fire to your base) this isnt something we can allow happening.

Especially since even a single lone raider not being tied up in the fight will likely lose you half your damn base. And trying up 80+ raiders is impossible without a killbox, even before already.

[Karim666]

The real solution is to make the AI actually have a goal other than "fuck over the player in any way possible."

what?

like entertainment as a goal? what mad scientist would make this AI? see my point is confirmed. the only AI suitble for rimworld is a heuristic search AI that would calculate all possible past, current, future events in order to make a suitble decision.