How to bring the colonies out into the open again?

[Alpha393]

Here's a stick for killboxes. Well, more of a masterwork plasteel longsword.

Remove turrets.

Ok that may be a bit extreme. How about buffing turret range and making them 2x2?

And some carrots: bridge and Boardwalk
Bridges can be built over shallow and deep water but can't hold structures. Boardwalks can be built over deep water so long as there's a connection to shallow water within about 8 tiles. Boardwalks can hold structures. Yay for jungle island maps being possible.

Island map: several large islands separated by coastal areas, can only be raided by drop pod or with a new raid type: boat. Kinda like drop pod but starts at the edge of the map and beaches at a desirable location. Basically exists to make coastal bases have to worry about behind themselves and islands actually get attacked.

New minibiome( like the ancient danger or a pond): cavern. Capped off with mountain roof or thin roof, stalagmites line the floor around walls, columns hold up the roof, and pools of magma are sometimes scattered about rarely.

[Darth Fool]

As for RAIDER ? Do you see any middle-east civilian settlement today taking the time to build defensive wall ? Not even redneck would do that.

Do a wikipedia search on Qalat

but failing that follow this link:

http://www.afghanistan-today.org/en/articles/society/162/

Yep, single family home made fortresses in modern times.  Whodathunk it?

[TrashMan]

The only change needed to cave towns is to make mining slower.
The base mining speed is far, FAR too fast for people with basic tools.
Later, once you research mining tools it's OK for mining to be faster.

And what else is needed is NATURAL CAVES.

[Zalzany]

As for RAIDER ? Do you see any middle-east civilian settlement today taking the time to build defensive wall ? Not even redneck would do that.

Do a wikipedia search on Qalat

but failing that follow this link:

http://www.afghanistan-today.org/en/articles/society/162/

Yep, single family home made fortresses in modern times.  Whodathunk it?

Yeah a rimworld colony needs some kind of defense dug into the mountain cheesy hardcore is bit extreme some of them are made like Doomsday shelters where raiders pretty much have no point at all other then a be little nats.. In which case the story teller should hit you hard with more other events like diseases, infestations, solar flares, and drones hat mess with moods. But that is complicated to code in so it knows who is running a damn doomsday bunker lol

[Kegereneku]

Do a wikipedia search on Qalat

but failing that follow this link:

http://www.afghanistan-today.org/en/articles/society/162/

Yep, single family home made fortresses in modern times.  Whodathunk it?

Again...
KEY WORD : civilian, settlement, today.
Not fortress built at the time (800–909 for Qalat) when it was useful for big army above the hundred, protecting them from primitive weapons (and fed from all around unprotected village).

Your link at least it fit the keyword (I had to find new pictures as your link's picture are somehow broken).
I'm actually familiar with those house (I saw a documentary), yes it describe HOUSE made of MUD being surprisingly solid (we already have that) plus a hyperbole that a courtyard + a 2nd floor kinda look like a fortress (especially since Rimworld is flat and seem to have 1meter thick wall).
Still nothing to do with 3 to 20 peoples settlement covering entire village , storage, machinery & farms within defense walls (and roofed) with absolutely no downside.

In a way it even comfort my point : Separate house/building are survivable. It's not like anybody will keep you from building an hotel with courtyard or dig tunnel. We are not trying to "ruin your game" but airtight fortress and bunker shouldn't be superior in all aspects (or at all actually).
Tynan & co solved the "mandatory Killbox design", next is the "mandatory all around defense-wall" & "bunker immunity". Let's hope the latest change on raiders and person-per-tile helped.

Btw : I made two topic to discuss some more possible solution to our problem :
[structure] More "walls" to give more balance opportunity
[gameplay] Reworking Manhunter pack

The hardest part is finding a solution that keep the harsher biomes playable.

[DariusWolfe]

Why should you even try to compare a Rimworld colony to a civilian settlement today? There's basically no comparison, except that the colonists are likely civilians themselves.

But Rimworld isn't a world where civilians get to be civilians. They adopt a militaristic mindset, or they get murdered and eaten; If they're lucky, in that order. Their settlements shouldn't look like civilian settlements from a world where death isn't waiting just over the horizon.

Dude, I fucking get it; We all get it. You don't want to have to build walls around your settlements. I say more power to you; Different playstyles should be supported. But seriously, stop trying to support your perspective by saying that walls aren't realistic, because they absolutely are, as has been proven multiple times in this thread. Maybe they're not fun for you, and that's a perfectly reasonable stance from which to argue for changes. Stick to that gun, die on that hill, and most people here will be happy to lend you their sword, their axe and their survival rifle. Keep harping about walls and realism, and you're going to be the first one eaten by your fellow colonists when times get tough.

But arguing about whether or not walls are realistic is completely derailing the point of this thread, which is to find balanced ways to bring colonies out of the mountains, out from behind the killboxes, and out from behind the pervasive perimeter walls. Make open colonies more than just artificially-induced difficulty; Make them fun.

I think there have been some great ideas (biased, of course, I think mine have been some of the best ones) to do just that, but then every so often we get back to arguing about fucking Walls and the Real World^TM.

Walls in Rimworld aren't going anywhere. Let's stick to discussing fun alternatives.

[Boston]

Again...
KEY WORD : civilian, settlement, today.
Not fortress built at the time (800–909 for Qalat) when it was useful for big army above the hundred, protecting them from primitive weapons (and fed from all around unprotected village).

Your link at least it fit the keyword (I had to find new pictures as your link's picture are somehow broken).
I'm actually familiar with those house (I saw a documentary), yes it describe HOUSE made of MUD being surprisingly solid (we already have that) plus a hyperbole that a courtyard + a 2nd floor kinda look like a fortress (especially since Rimworld is flat and seem to have 1meter thick wall).
Still nothing to do with 3 to 20 peoples settlement covering entire village , storage, machinery & farms within defense walls (and roofed) with absolutely no downside.

Rimworld isn't "today", nor are there civilians on a Rimworld. On a Rimworld, unless you are one of the few people incapable of violence, if you don't fight, you die.

You aren't understanding the fact the the idea of a "civilian" is a very recent idea, like only developed within the last 500 years or so. Before then, you were your day-to-day profession ....... and a warrior.  You would grow some crops, and when the raiders came up over that hill, you grabbed your spear and fought them off. Saw some Natives skulking around, you went in your cabin, grabbed the rifle and fought them off.

[SpaceDorf]

Again...
KEY WORD : civilian, settlement, today.
Not fortress built at the time (800–909 for Qalat) when it was useful for big army above the hundred, protecting them from primitive weapons (and fed from all around unprotected village).

Your link at least it fit the keyword (I had to find new pictures as your link's picture are somehow broken).
I'm actually familiar with those house (I saw a documentary), yes it describe HOUSE made of MUD being surprisingly solid (we already have that) plus a hyperbole that a courtyard + a 2nd floor kinda look like a fortress (especially since Rimworld is flat and seem to have 1meter thick wall).
Still nothing to do with 3 to 20 peoples settlement covering entire village , storage, machinery & farms within defense walls (and roofed) with absolutely no downside.

Rimworld isn't "today", nor are there civilians on a Rimworld. On a Rimworld, unless you are one of the few people incapable of violence, if you don't fight, you die.

You aren't understanding the fact the the idea of a "civilian" is a very recent idea, like only developed within the last 500 years or so. Before then, you were your day-to-day profession ....... and a warrior.  You would grow some crops, and when the raiders came up over that hill, you grabbed your spear and fought them off. Saw some Natives skulking around, you went in your cabin, grabbed the rifle and fought them off.

Oh it has been a bit longer than 500 years, and as your colony was settled, people fell back into that mindset .. true.
But there were Civilians all of the Time, called Women, Children, Old People.

But I have to concede to your that the militaristic point still stands.
One Settlement of Five on a Planet ( shrink it down to continent, even country if you want .. )
composed of some shipwrecked dudes, drifters, refugees and persuaded prisoners ... who call themselves "colonists" I can't see them surviving in a permanent settlement without taking every precaution. Including a City Wall.
I think as a comparison we should use every post-apocalyptic movie.
A few peaceful settlements and a lot of assholes with guns .. usually those settlements have manned walls with all kind of weapons to protect their civilians.

Also most Wartime Villigas have one or two things we can't have in rimworld.
Namely Cellars and Tunnels.

[Boston]

Again...
KEY WORD : civilian, settlement, today.
Not fortress built at the time (800–909 for Qalat) when it was useful for big army above the hundred, protecting them from primitive weapons (and fed from all around unprotected village).

Your link at least it fit the keyword (I had to find new pictures as your link's picture are somehow broken).
I'm actually familiar with those house (I saw a documentary), yes it describe HOUSE made of MUD being surprisingly solid (we already have that) plus a hyperbole that a courtyard + a 2nd floor kinda look like a fortress (especially since Rimworld is flat and seem to have 1meter thick wall).
Still nothing to do with 3 to 20 peoples settlement covering entire village , storage, machinery & farms within defense walls (and roofed) with absolutely no downside.

Rimworld isn't "today", nor are there civilians on a Rimworld. On a Rimworld, unless you are one of the few people incapable of violence, if you don't fight, you die.

You aren't understanding the fact the the idea of a "civilian" is a very recent idea, like only developed within the last 500 years or so. Before then, you were your day-to-day profession ....... and a warrior.  You would grow some crops, and when the raiders came up over that hill, you grabbed your spear and fought them off. Saw some Natives skulking around, you went in your cabin, grabbed the rifle and fought them off.

Oh it has been a bit longer than 500 years, and as your colony was settled, people fell back into that mindset .. true.
But there were Civilians all of the Time, called Women, Children, Old People.

But I have to concede to your that the militaristic point still stands.
One Settlement of Five on a Planet ( shrink it down to continent, even country if you want .. )
composed of some shipwrecked dudes, drifters, refugees and persuaded prisoners ... who call themselves "colonists" I can't see them surviving in a permanent settlement without taking every precaution. Including a City Wall.
I think as a comparison we should use every post-apocalyptic movie.
A few peaceful settlements and a lot of assholes with guns .. usually those settlements have manned walls with all kind of weapons to protect their civilians.

Also most Wartime Villigas have one or two things we can't have in rimworld.
Namely Cellars and Tunnels.

If angry Natives were attacking your homestead, you bet that the wife and the kids would be helping defend it. Hell, the wife would probably have a firearm of her own!
And, if you think the wife and kids would get spared because they were "noncombatants", well .... I've got a bridge to sell to you.

[sadpickle]

Yup, take that back to the Roman Legions who built forts where ever they camped longer than a few days.
They also build this smaller versions of the Chinese wall in Germania and Brittania.

The Romans didn't just wall their forts or cities. They built walls around ENEMY cities they were seiging, to trap people inside. At the Battle of Alesia they build a wall around the city, then ANOTHER wall around the city AND their fort, to keep relief forces from entering or attacking. They were just nuts about walls and building in general.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Alesia

[Reviire]

I'll keep saying it, if guns get buffed to be more lethal and mortars get nerfed, there will be a much bigger incentive to build outside. Currently, it's near impossible to defend against 80 person raids with 10-20 people. Guns just aren't lethal enough, nor do they have enough range.

If you want to survive through that, you need to try your little heart out and use every exploit you can.

Alternatively this could be turned into a colony simulator rather than an arcade wave survival game. In what bloody world will pirates send an army to deal with a tiny little village? Possibly cap it based on your wealth. Small targets will attract the attention of small-time raiders, being completely unnoticed by the pirate groups that can apparently field hundreds upon hundreds of people as expendables.

[MikeLemmer]

I'll keep saying it, if guns get buffed to be more lethal and mortars get nerfed, there will be a much bigger incentive to build outside. Currently, it's near impossible to defend against 80 person raids with 10-20 people. Guns just aren't lethal enough, nor do they have enough range.

That sounds more like endgame raids need to be nerfed. I'd rather not buff guns because that would make the random straight-up assaults at the start of the game more lethal.

[Kegereneku]

Why should you even try to compare a Rimworld colony to a civilian settlement today? There's basically no comparison, except that the colonists are likely civilians themselves.
[...]
But seriously, stop trying to support your perspective by saying that walls aren't realistic, because they absolutely are, as has been proven multiple times in this thread

With that logic we might as well stop any semblance of BASIC VERISIMILITUDE (google that), so let's add a feature to the game so you are forced to build a moat for no credible reasons, and let's call that "logical & realistic" because it happened in the context-less past...

Basic knowledge of history disprove that context-less and gross generalization and if I had to repeat that ad nauseam it's because the the exact opposite keep happening : people "trying to support their perspective by saying that <insert broken yet popular feature> is realistic" ...and thus shouldn't be argued against.

We had the same happening before with Killbox even if was more clearly ridiculous at the time.
"Killbox is a realistic term in the military and history show that fortress are fundamentally like convex killbox that you couldn't go around, please don't add sapper, endless wave of warriors getting killed was common & realistic in medieval time.
...to the point I'll even understand if you believe I'm exaggerating.

But I'm afraid that even if we agree that allmost playstyles should be made viable, we will still end up debating a common point of reference. (cause you see, some people here not only don't believe there's a problem, but that all colonybase should be better fortress)

Rimworld isn't "today", nor are there civilians on a Rimworld. On a Rimworld, unless you are one of the few people incapable of violence, if you don't fight, you die.
[...]
You would grow some crops, and when the raiders came up over that hill, you grabbed your spear and fought them off. Saw some Natives skulking around, you went in your cabin, grabbed the rifle and fought them off.

Oh please... don't start moving the goal post around. If I take you by the word "warrior" (def :  a person engaged or experienced in warfare) is a much more recent & artificial idea than "civilian" (def : anybody not part of a army/militia/police). Going back to when humanity were "pack of apes" there was NO "warriors" because there was no war & no warfare, just opportunistic apes who sometime had pride or were too territorial for their own survival.

Now I'm not going to make you an history course because I hope we can agree that Rimworld tech-level reach beyond Tribal-culture, archaic defense-system and because one of the subtext of my post is how the game "realism" is Dependent on Game-design & Features. Obligatory perimeter-walls aren't "realistic because it work in Rimworld", it's just "something you do because the gameplay punish you if you don't".

I think as a comparison we should use every post-apocalyptic movie.
A few peaceful settlements and a lot of assholes with guns .. usually those settlements have manned walls with all kind of weapons to protect their civilians.

I completely support the context you are building here...
...but good luck to get people to agree that post-apocalyptic bunker should be nerfednot utterly superior to make post-apocalyptic open-village equally viable, how and why.

I'm starting to think that this topic cannot be used to suggest/discuss ideas, only give the Devs some clues of what bother players.


- In the grim world of Rimworld's Forum, there is only bickering.

[Darth Fool]

At the risk of annoying the hell out of people who are invested in this topic, I have decided to post a picture of my most recent adventure in building an "open" colony.  It was played on a vanilla Randy Challenge with a randomly selected biome (flat temperate forest) started in Winter.  The picture was taken after one in game year.  It survived multiple man-hunter packs and raids, and a poison ship.  No fatalities yet and only a few permanent injuries.  Shortly after this picture was taken, a toxic fallout proved to be a great source of meat, and as it came in winter, it did not kill off the crops.  That and a couple more raids proved impotent.   A man-hunter pack of elephants are now recovering in the barn waiting to be tamed...

The only major event that has been suggested in this thread as a reason not to build in the open that has not occurred is a siege, which I suspect could be as problematic as has been discussed.  Everything else has been a piece of cake, largely because the multiple doors tends to cause the AI to lose focus, and the power doors allow effective hit and run sniping.  So, with the current build and balancing I am gonna say that with the possible exception of sieges, there really is not a problem with the game or events forcing under-mountain homes so much as with the fear caused by these events.  At least with Randy, a well planned open colony is defensible. 

Some might argue that it is not truly open because, despite the lack of a perimeter wall, because the rooms are still fully enclosed and that there are no historical examples of buildings with walls on all four sides punctuated only by doors.  I really don't know what to say to those people.  Others may argue that this is not a fair example since I have not used any turrets in the defense of the colony.  They are correct.



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[DariusWolfe]

BASIC VERISIMILITUDE (google that)

Listen. You try your weak-ass low-key insults on me one more fucking time, and I'm going to take off the gloves.

The fact of the matter is that you're wrong, and insulting people's intelligence and repeating the same tired arguments isn't going to change that. Your presence in this thread has led to more bullshit off-topic arguments than helpful conversation, and your suggestions that are actually useful are getting buried in the mud that you keep kicking up.

Also:

I'm starting to think that this topic cannot be used to suggest/discuss ideas, only give the Devs some clues of what bother players.

Seriously? You're half of the reason why this might be true, if not more. I'll openly admit to my share of it because I'm not going to stop calling you on your bullshit, but nearly every time we've descended from discussion of improvements and changes to the game to encourage more open layouts, it's been because you've insulted someone or made your patently false "walls aren't realistic" argument.

Get on the topic, or go away.

Darth Fool: I think this is a good example of how an open colony is viable; The problem that a lot of the discussions here are trying to address is the moderately steep difference in difficulty, and the lack of any sort of real reward for playing this way. I've also argued that open layouts like this may actually be better against manhunter packs than traditional forts (assuming "wait it out" isn't your go-to strategy). Larger raids still seem like they'd be pretty murderous in this sort of layout, since you're going to have multiples of raiders per every colonist, and there's not an easy way to mass fires while the raiders are still grouped up.