How to bring the colonies out into the open again?

[Kagemusha12]

Frankly, given that fortresses are so effective in Real life, I would be surprised if there was a way to balance the game to make them not effective in RimWorld without ridiculous Deus Ex Machina mechanisms. 

The difference between fortresses in real life and fortresses in Rimworld is that you couldn't feed yourself from inside your fortress in real life, which changes the whole dynamic between attackers and defenders. The ability to make a nigh-unbeatable killzone is less problematic when a sufficiently well-supplied enemy can force you to choose between leaving it or starving to death.

At present, the enemy comes in great enough numbers that if you don't have a big defensive advantage they'll kill you, so while I like the idea of promoting more open-field engagements the enemy's numbers are currently tilted toward "killbox or lose." Their numbers would need to be adjusted along with any change that makes you leave your killbox.

Which is, however,why fortresses in real life usdually had food supplies for several months stored within the fortress (and also access to deep wells for water supply), forcing any attackers to spend several months sieging the city.

Compared to RL equivalents of attacks on castles, the attackers in Rimworld usually come in woefully underprepared

Of course they stored food. And yet, starving them out remained the most common way of taking a fortress. In Rimworld, that's not a viable option.

Actually there would be a way:
Usually fortresses in Rimworld are depending on energy generation from outside the fortress (especially thermoelectric generators).
So, first concentrating on cutting off the powerlines between those generators and the fortress (and/or destroying the generators themselves) may hurt you very much ... and may even allow traditional sieging, if all power can successfully be cut ... after all power is needed not only for the sun lamps in the greenhouses, but also for the coolers that keep your food frozen ... else it will rot away in a few days, unless you are very well stocvked with vegetables).
Your only way of escaping this would be having enough metal and wood to build and power conventional generators (and shut off all unneeded power supply)

That said:
Maybe something that makes sieges more successful would be an EMP generator that can be built by the siegers.
(and may be powered by a conventional generator, also being built by the siegers)
This device would be function like a solar flare that shuts down all power supplied devices in your fortress (with the exception of the EMP generator itself and its power generator, of course) and would force you to come out and deal with the siegers (or starve to death after a few days, as the cooling devices for the fridges don't work)

[ToXeye]

Someone tell Tynan that embrasures would help with encouraging people to build outside, since you'd be able to setup better defended. See dwarf fortress for details

Dwarf Fortress has a lot of nice uses of fortifications, as long as you've got spare dwarves to do the defending. Things like traps are overpowered but require the player to stay underground a lot. Constructions in DF easily become the target of trolls and other large creatures, since they are able to smash through walls.

As it is now with Rimworld, there is a few opponents to any build. But there's a difference between dug in builds and open sky builds.

Dug in builds require power, which can only be found outdoors. There is no underground steam geyser. So the player is already forced to be outdoors a lot.

The problem with making Rimworld into what combat realism wants to add, is that for each new player there is going to be a learning curve. Adding mods into the game is up to Tynan... A lot of mods skew the game's focus. The things that are already part of the game make the game what it is. The mods can positively break the game...

*UPDATE* I realize that mountain bases can use wood for power... but it still requires you to plant outdoors.

*addition* I think that embrasures would be difficult to implement properly. The combat system would need to be changed in order to make proper embrasures.

[b0rsuk]

Dug in builds require power, which can only be found outdoors. There is no underground steam geyser. So the player is already forced to be outdoors a lot.

*Ahem* fueled generators. You can run a medium base ( up to 10 colonists) off 2 fueled generators if it's in forest. Actually anyone can buy wood. You just need to be efficient about your power usage.

In colder biomes, fueled generators double as heaters.

[ToXeye]

Dug in builds require power, which can only be found outdoors. There is no underground steam geyser. So the player is already forced to be outdoors a lot.

*Ahem* fueled generators. You can run a medium base ( up to 10 colonists) off 2 fueled generators if it's in forest. Actually anyone can buy wood. You just need to be efficient about your power usage.

In colder biomes, fueled generators double as heaters.

That's pretty cool. There could be some kind of wood smoke coming from generators rendering them volatile to use indoors.

[Lightzy]

Rimworld isn't a game about raids. There's more stuff going on. At least, there should be.
It's fine that you can plan and build correctly and be mostly imprevious to raids.
It's fine.
There are other problems to deal with.


Also, learn from dwarf fortress   --->  AMBUSHES

Then again, it won't work because ambush in rimworld means dead colonists and if you 1-2 dead colonists is game over for most colonies

[Blastoderm]

Ammo is THE reason I won't touch Combat Realism ever again.
Also, guns should be strong but not the only way to win. Now, even 20 skill melee char will die from skillless raider or got crippled by muffalos often. There is no downsides for ranged just like there is no downsides for turtling in mountains.
Don't repeat other devs' design error, when they try to remove some aspect player ofter uses so much it becomes completely unplayable and players still find a workaround.
Force people from mountain and they will start to make their own mountains. Try to encourage open base play, best to start with making it not suicidal option.

[Pax_Empyrean]

Rimworld isn't a game about raids. There's more stuff going on. At least, there should be.
It's fine that you can plan and build correctly and be mostly imprevious to raids.
It's fine.
There are other problems to deal with.

Gosh, and how many of those are easier to deal with from inside your subterranean doom fortress? Would that be... all of them where it makes any difference at all? Dwarfing is never a disadvantage.

[b0rsuk]

Rimworld isn't a game about raids. There's more stuff going on. At least, there should be.

And yet, raids are pretty much the only thing that can destroy a colony. And the only kind of event that meaningfully scales with difficulty.
Manhunters and infestations are technically not raids, but it's the same kind of challenge.

[Franklin]

I'm sure it's been talked to death, but from what I've experienced so far, making mining slower would be a quick way to stem dwarfing a fair bit.

It's rare players will move their base once it's situated, so discouraging early-game dwarfing solves a lot of the issue.

Double the mining resource output, halve the mining speed. The rates can be tweaked, but right now there's little disadvantage in terms of speed with dwarfing vs. building out in the open.

Also there should be a mood hit with being in windowless environments, and adding glass would facilitate a perk to building out in the open.

[Yoso]

You can't really expect people to build a nice little town in the middle of a warzone. You live in the sun you wear a hat, you live in the cold you wear a jacket, you live with the knowledge that dudes absolutely ARE coming to kill you then you build an impregnable doomfortress and you stay close to it. I'm having a great time with the game, I enjoy it in it's current state. Unless raids, mechanoid invasions, and manhunter packs are toned down I'm not leaving the doomfortress- it's not that they're too hard it's just that the only logical way to respond to them is to turtle it up.

[Grubfist]

Digging into a mountain simply makes it easier to cover your sides. I feel like embrasures or even manned gun turrets could allow more open bases because you are able to effectively defend from more angles with less people, so you have less need to force yourself into a corner you dug into a mountain.

[Reviire]

I'm sure it's been talked to death, but from what I've experienced so far, making mining slower would be a quick way to stem dwarfing a fair bit.

It's rare players will move their base once it's situated, so discouraging early-game dwarfing solves a lot of the issue.

Double the mining resource output, halve the mining speed. The rates can be tweaked, but right now there's little disadvantage in terms of speed with dwarfing vs. building out in the open.

Also there should be a mood hit with being in windowless environments, and adding glass would facilitate a perk to building out in the open.

A temporary base outside until a mountain is mined out is easy to setup. Walls go up very quickly. Stop trying to nerf mountains, you're trying to remove a symptom without looking at what's causing it. The entire issue is that building outside is a bloody stupid thing to do, all the threats are designed to be heavy threats to outside bases, while they can't do anything to mountain bases.

For one, raids should scale differently. Give buildings outside a lower market value. There's no need for a huge raid force on a small village outside, but on the other hand, the same things inside a mountain would need that sort of force to do any damage to. Possibly remove time scaling of raiders, or only let it kick in after you reach a certain total building value. Along with that, how about capping raider sizes to say, double your colonists, until you reach a certain threshold. See below.

But if we do that, we'd need something to balance it out. I'm not sure how well it would work, but how about giving the colony some sort of "Defense value". I don't know how it would work exactly, but it could be calculated by trying to calculate a path into your base every few days. The more turrets, doors, walls etc it has to get through, the higher your defense rating. Each sandbag and colonist + equipped weapons would also add to the defense rating. So an open, outside base that you can just walk into would get much lower defense rating compared to a holed up mountain fort.

Also as I said before, I'd still like to see siege mortars changed to direct fire weapons. It would make them worse against outside bases, but they'd be able to shell away at mountain bases, eventually getting through.

I'd like to see some mountain-base specific raids, too. Imagine this, a siege sets itself up outside, gun emplacements, sandbags and all that jazz, and they just sit there while another group goes off to mine into your base, and set explosive charges on walls.

Speaking of which, lets change sappers too. Don't just have them dig through a wall, have them set up explosives on your walls to ruin your day. Sappers are so bad right now.

[b0rsuk]

I'm sure it's been talked to death, but from what I've experienced so far, making mining slower would be a quick way to stem dwarfing a fair bit.

It's been talked a lot, but a portion of the playerbase likes dwarfing and doesn't acknowledge there is a problem.

[Reviire]

I'm sure it's been talked to death, but from what I've experienced so far, making mining slower would be a quick way to stem dwarfing a fair bit.

It's been talked a lot, but a portion of the playerbase likes dwarfing and doesn't acknowledge there is a problem.

There isn't an inherent problem with it. It's a valid playstyle, just as building outside is. The problem is though, building outside is suicide, so you're forced into one playstyle if you don't want the game to ruin you. You don't fix this by removing another playstyle.

[b0rsuk]

You can effectively remove other playstyles by inaction. For example, Quake 2 multiplayer has following weapons: blaster, shotgun, machinegun, super shotgun, chaingun, railgun, grenade launcher, rocket launcher, hyperblaster, BFG10K. Rocket launcher, railgun, chaingun dominate everything else. Good players don't even pick up worse weapons, especially in duels. Shotgun, machinegun might as well not be there. No-brainers are harmful to a game.