Vehicles+Defense Weapons Ideas(with skeleton stats and requirements)

[Cassey]

I'd rather see vehicles over any sort of turret upgrades. I agree that they'd add to the simulation and give us way more options, as at the moment I'm pretty guilty of the 'Killbox' tactic.

Spent the day trying to work a non-cave killbox.  Managed to survive the first 4 raids, but was losing ground, lost it all on #5.  I was using a combination of (6) turrets, each with a small sandbag wedge, and a channel full of rock and blaster charges (walled in 7 wide so the charges would not destroy the wall).  The blaster charges are nice and cheap, but had timing problems when two of my crew decided to take a stroll down the kill zone for no apparent reason.

Would you happen to have a screen shot of a kill box setup that works against M-24 wielding raiders?  Ideally one outside, not dug into a cave?  I'm guessing I'm doing something fundamentally wrong - which isn't unusual for me in games like this!  Super ideally it would be a design you could grow into as your power up your camp (e.g. starts with 4-5 turrets powered by a geo-thermal, then grows as you add solar panels and the raids get harder).

Thanks in advance!

[Littlemule]

I think that turrets would be good if you didn't start with them but researched them later in the game and followed a tech tree of small buffs like armor, range etc . The thought of manned turrets is really appealing too
Extra metal expense, time constructing them, extra armor, more power consumption (would stop building masses of them) would make them more valuable as the time invested in them is to great to throw them away

Slower rate of fire but higher damage (like a .50 cal) too hehehe 

[liberty0522]

Now, I'll admit that I'm not a pirate king, but I thought the point of being a pirate/bandit/raider/whatever was to maximize the amount of loot you gain whilst minimizing the amount of casualties you take. Even Vikings didn't go bloodthirsty killcrush murdering when they could just make off with the cash and vamoose.

If you want to stop the game from being a turret defense game, make the bad guys who show up have different and varied objectives. They might want money, and just leave you alone if you fork it over. They might be starving, and might be willing to kill to get your food, but equally as happy to just take food and leave. (Or they could even potentially be recruited, if you have enough plenty to make it clear that settling here is a good idea.) They might be lawmen looking to confiscate your heavy weapons, and will leave peacefully if you turn over everything you have above the bolt-action rifles, or at least, everything you convince them you have. (As if.)

In most of the cases, though, they should be looking to get their objectives and leave. There might also, of course, be true pirates who follow a code of all-or-nothing, where if you don't capitulate they hunt every last person in your settlement down, or outright fanatics who won't be satisfied with anything but death, but by and large they should be willing to let you pass if you appease them - whether that means handing over money, food, metal, or even members of your colony as slaves.

And the should also have different thresholds of when to cut and run. Except for the kind of zealot fanatics who fight until the last pulse of the last man's blood squirts out of his wounds, the rest should have cut-and-run thresholds. Slave-hunters looking for an easy score should probably bug out as soon as they realize they're not going to be getting any slaves here without a steep price in their own blood, same with bandits who are after money. Folk who are desperate for food should have a higher threshold, as should law-men who take exception to your outpost (and for some reason aren't willing to evacuate you,) and pirates who are willing to kill every last one of you. (Just because they're willing to kill all of you because you chose to resist doesn't mean they're willing to kill all of them when you choose to resist effectively.)

Also, there should probably be some kind of ranged stun weapon that can stop people from running reliably, so you can get close and incapacitate them. I hardly ever get prisoners because my effective means of fighting off bandits results in platoons of corpses rather than so much as a single prisoner. Obviously, slavers would want to use this on you, but you should be able to use it to stop runners and drag them to your jail cell for a nice thorough beating.
[/quote]
I completely agree, was thinking this myself as i watched my base fires finally being extinguished, just to have another raid report come in. I wondered "why can't I just pay them off?"

[ShadowDragon8685]

I completely agree, was thinking this myself as i watched my base fires finally being extinguished, just to have another raid report come in. I wondered "why can't I just pay them off?"

Aye, I've got tons of cash. I'd quite frankly rather pay danegeld than clean up the corpses and try to hock the guns. (Though admittedly, a lot of my money does come from my gunrunning, so I wouldn't pay them all off!)

[Littlemule]

I actually don't want to add more turret stuff because turrets aren't really helping the game.

The issue at hand is degenerate defensive strategies, and my planned solution basically involves siege tactics that require players to send colonists out to take down camping groups of raiders who are bombarding them with artillery and somesuch. Take it from a defensive game to an offensive one.

I love this idea of being in a siege.  The idea of pinning down raiders comes to mind too, so you can flank them. Makes the fights more tactical and tense

[murlocdummy]

I actually don't want to add more turret stuff because turrets aren't really helping the game. I'm even on the verge of cutting them. They take the fight away from the characters and make it a tower defense optimization game, which isn't what RW is supposed to be.

The issue at hand is degenerate defensive strategies, and my planned solution basically involves siege tactics that require players to send colonists out to take down camping groups of raiders who are bombarding them with artillery and somesuch. Take it from a defensive game to an offensive one.

Vehicles are also a problem, I'm afraid, just because handling them in a tile-based engine like RW's would be extremely difficult.

Hope this makes sense!

I wonder why nobody mentioned what Dwarf Fortress did, and create stealth units?  Having goblin rogues that don't get picked up by the turret or settler line-of-sight would allow for a more complex gameplay environment.  Not only that, but adding in a "perception" skill, as well as a perception skill check every time a stealthed (yes, I know that that's not a real word) unit enters an LOS would add the need for a vigilant guard system.  Not only that, but having the stealth skill only work for turret and settler LOS would open up the entire arena of using the LOS of domesticated animals to detect stealthed bandits/mafia/government commandos.

From a more simplistic standpoint, having a stealth/perception skill would enable enemy troops to sneak behind the player's killboxes, as well as allow player commandos to infiltrate enemy artillery camps.  For the sake of having a great, well-rounded game, it's important to remember that not every player will have the same playstyle.  The whole point of downplaying one playstyle is to lift up others to allow a proper balance.  Some people will like taking the real-time tactical squadron approach, which would require training facilities to be built into the game.  Some people like to bunker down and play the SUPER TURTLE, like aerojet029, which requires turrets and an upgrade system, complete with purchaseable cannon shells and missiles from passing ships for all of your turret defense needs.  Then, there are those like me, who like to play accountant, and will be more than willing to fork over cash/resources whenever necessary to protect the base's productivity.

Many people will play with some mixture of these tactics, but all of the tactics must be available for use in order for the game to work properly.

As for the question of vehicles, the only things that would work in a tile-based game would be one-tile vehicles such as ATVs, bikes, animals, and flying gun drones.  Or maybe abusing the Arrest command to carry around lazy Nobles.  It's really too bad that there can't be proper vehicles like in Fallout Tactics.  I really liked running people over with my pre-war tank, then finishing them off through the escape hatch.