Rimdown Challenge - can you save this colony from the Ancient Ship Crash?

Bendingunit3000 · August 21, 2014, 04:03:28 PM

Game is alpha 6.532. Default Classic Cassie settings.

I've been working on this colony for a few days now. Mostly legit playing although I did reload a few times when I felt the RNG God bent me over in a particularly unfair way. The colony growth started slow, but has recently boomed to over 50 members. Unfortunately, I've hit the Cassie wall of difficulty and I just can't survive. I'm wondering if anyone has some brilliant strategies to overcome the horde of mechs that erupt from the crashed ship part (32 Centipedes and 34 Scythers)? I've made three attempts now and just get wrecked every time, even with a circle of turrets and a hastily constructed sandbag/stone wall emplacement. I know I could probably build a safe room and hide while everything gets destroyed, but I might as well just start a new game instead if that's the case.

Some more info if you want to try the challenge:

Rimdown (pronounced Rimdon) has plenty of food, beds, and building resources, including a moderate supply of around 850 metal on hand (more can be had by deconstructing nearby enemy siege emplacements). The colony is a bit power starved currently, although it has plenty of juice to run the defenses if you keep the doors and most of the cosmetic lights powered off. A large and well defended killbox protects the only entrance to Rimdown, however the ship part has landed inside the base so those defenses probably won't be of any help.

The colonists are all equipped with power armor and an assortment of miniguns, M24's, M16's, and R4's. There are also plenty of additional weapons gathered up for sale or for new recruits. Finally, a decent supply of silver is available if you want to try to request aid from the neighbors, or buy something nice for your last meal. The save was made right after the notification of the crashed ship, so you have as much time as possible to prepare. In my attempts, colonists didn't start cracking until about 2 days had passed.

Secondary objective: Colonists nicknamed Wire, Breaker, and Trigger are the original three. They must participate in and survive the battle (they love their home and want to protect it).

Note: By no means is this a perfectly constructed or efficient base, but I'm proud of her and had a lot of fun building.

edit: when I popped the ship to take this screenshot there were 43 scythers and 25 cents. I guess the exact numbers of each type of enemy can vary.

Can anyone win this? Is it even possible?

http://www.filedropper.com/rimdownchallenge

Sir Wagglepuss III · August 21, 2014, 05:18:17 PM

I may just give this a try over the weekend, I'll let you know how it goes should I get the opportunity.

Cyclops · August 21, 2014, 06:18:39 PM

Whoa whoa whoa whoa. Cassandra allows over 50 colonists now? When did this happen? I thought the limit was like 20 colonists.

Lost Cause · August 21, 2014, 07:18:36 PM

Wait? There is a limit?
I've never had a colony big enough to reach it 0.0

Colonial Astronaut · August 21, 2014, 07:42:07 PM

I thought having a colony of 7 was being ambitous O-O how do you manage feeding 50 colonists?

Bendingunit3000 · August 21, 2014, 08:34:33 PM

I have never hit a hard limit on colonists either, on any setting. Of course, the more you have the more ridiculous the raids and mech landings become. My experience is that raids and sieges number up to 150% of your colonist count, although it's impossible to count them all properly. Sieges are my favorite because you get to counter siege them and watch the whole mess implode as they slowly go insane. I do wish that they built more mortars of their own though like in A5. I only ever see them build two now (one explosive and one incendiary), no matter the size of the group. Having them turn into red mist when the mortars went up was a fast disposal method too.

Quote from: Colonial Astronaut on August 21, 2014, 07:42:07 PM
I thought having a colony of 7 was being ambitous O-O how do you manage feeding 50 colonists?

At first? Potatoes. Lots and lots of Potatoes. Then later? More potatoes. It's a Mountain/Coastal map in a desert biome, so there is not a lot of game out there to hunt. I had to research hydroponics fairly early and eventually fertilized around my initial outdoor growing patch to expand it to fill a large room. Only nearly starved once. Eight prisoners at one time and a solar flare that shut down the hydro benches meant that folks had to tighten their belts.

I got very lucky when some mid game mining revealed a cavern inside the mountain with a geothermal vent in it! Everyone got to eat fine meals that night. Except Darkeye. F that guy. He was so lazy. Thought he could shoot and got himself shot instead.

Billy Rueben · August 21, 2014, 10:13:04 PM

I don't suppose you thought ahead and have a few guys with EMP grenades? Maybe even an EMP mortar?

Bendingunit3000 · August 21, 2014, 10:45:46 PM

No one has any grenades equipped. I played around with them initially expecting that the AOE and "stack" damage would be OP. It quickly became clear though that the range was too short to be practical in a major firefight. My early killbox was a lot smaller to accommodate the grenade range but anyone I tried to put in those front positions just got targeted and shredded by gunfire. I've tried equipping everyone with incendiary launchers but they don't have the stopping power to break large waves of enemies.

The EMP grenades did help early on against small groups of centipedes. I was able to lock down up to five, maybe, if I kept them bunched up.

There are no EMP mortars. I don't think they would help anyway if I had built them because the ship is inside the minimum range from where I placed the mortar farm.

Rahjital · August 22, 2014, 02:40:26 AM

I have an idea in mind that could be worth trying, though I would like to try it out first. Unfortunately, you only gave us the map file, which is useless without the world itself. You'll either have to give us the seed and world size, or upload the file itself. (though if you decide to go the uploading route, please choose a more trustworthy filehost)

Lost Cause · August 22, 2014, 02:49:09 AM

Quote from: Bendingunit3000 on August 21, 2014, 08:34:33 PMMy experience is that raids and sieges number up to 150% of your colonist count, although it's impossible to count them all properly.

I can tell you right here and now you are /way/ off on that number unless you play with the 30% wave size setting. Waves can easily outnumber small colonies by 400%. Heck even just taking the centipedes in a mechanoid wave can result in you being outnumber roughly 2or3 to 1 and that probably isn't even close to the limit of a wave size X.x
I honestly don't think colony population has much of anything to do with wave size at all.

StorymasterQ · August 22, 2014, 03:32:27 AM

Colony population is just a portion of the colony wealth, the real variable used to calculate raid sizes. If you have 3 colonists and a million silver, the entire planet's population is going to descend onto you.

Rahjital · August 22, 2014, 03:42:03 AM

Quote from: Lost Cause on August 22, 2014, 02:49:09 AM
I can tell you right here and now you are /way/ off on that number unless you play with the 30% wave size setting. Waves can easily outnumber small colonies by 400%. Heck even just taking the centipedes in a mechanoid wave can result in you being outnumber roughly 2or3 to 1 and that probably isn't even close to the limit of a wave size X.x
I honestly don't think colony population has much of anything to do with wave size at all.

Give it enough time (or get together enough wealth) and you can easily get waves outnumbering your colony 20:1. At that point, it's literally impossible to fight off enemy waves the usual way. You have to use traps, adopt new tactics or anything else that allows you to reduce the risk your colonists can take.

Quote from: StorymasterQ on August 22, 2014, 03:32:27 AM
Colony population is just a portion of the colony wealth, the real variable used to calculate raid sizes. If you have 3 colonists and a million silver, the entire planet's population is going to descend onto you.

Not really accurate: colonists and wealth are added together to get "threat points", which are then multiplied by several factors and used to decide the strength of enemy raids. Each colonists gives 30 threat points, while each 1000 wealth gives 26 threat points. A colony with 50 colonists and 150k wealth will then have (50 * 30) + (150 * 26) = 1500 + 3900 = 5400 threat points (base before being multiplied by ramp-up).

RemingtonRyder · August 22, 2014, 05:27:08 AM

Hmm, well if you have some uranium you could build a nuke. Then you build a spaceship for all of your colonists, blast off with them in it, and nuke the site from orbit.

It's the only way to be sure.

Sprayer2708 · August 22, 2014, 10:25:50 AM

How do all those scythes and centipedes fit in that tiny spaceship part?

Darth Fool · August 22, 2014, 11:39:50 AM

Have you tried turning your colonists over completely to surrounding the ship with turrets? Lots of turrets. Don't even worry about having enough power. What you are looking for is to have a giant chain reaction explosion that kills everything off. A second alternative might be to try and build an automated crushing roof collapse trap as detailed in another thread. It seems to me that either of these options should be viable if you have two whole days to pursue it.