How to bring the colonies out into the open again?

[Barley]

Perhaps we could model the colonist's vitamin D levels and increase disease chance accordingly .

[Johnny Masters]

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+3 for graboids

[JimmyAgnt007]

I like turrets

But i also think there should be a limit. A control console is a nice one, perhaps it requires the research skill, putting those techs guys to good use (might need a new renaming tho).

Good call on the research skill.  its kind of useless after everything is researched.  maybe it determines how many you can control, and shooting skill translates to the turrets skill.

[RemingtonRyder]

Cutting turrets out completely... A very intriguing idea. Any modders willing to test it out in practice?

I'll have a go at it.

[Kagemusha]

I like the idea of dropping automated turrets.
Having a gun emplacement that a colonist has to physically man returns the feeling to a wild west colony situation. I'm thinking Mad Max here actually. Fits nicely with the psychotic raiders.

Not gonna get into AI again since that is a really big thing that deserves its own thread. We know it needs looking at. Let's not clog up too much space with ideas here.

-removing turret automation will return us to a colony feel as opposed to a tower defense fortress feel.
- These are colonists, not combat veterans (even if some of them are), and these are raiders, not psychotic suicidal zerg.

Returning to a simply play style. Reduce the players defensive capabilities and reduce the raider 'threat'. Raids should be raids against a partially defended colony. As soon as players build a fortress then raids should never even happen.

I think somebody modding out turrets entirely and reducing raid density would be an interesting experiment.

I think the major trick to bringing colonies back out into the open is to make it so the mountain is not the only option. People should feel free to build a mountain fortress or a natural town. Both should be viable. The fortress will likely be safe and boring.

I feel that in trying to increase the stick size to smack the dwarfs out of their fortresses we have chased the townspeople into the hills.

[JimmyAgnt007]

automated turrets should stay, if you have no fighters at all then you still need some kind of defense.  they are in a weird place right now, overpowered if you spam them, underpowered on their own and blow up quick.  thats why they need a limiter of some kind without nerfing them in the early game.  also you dont really need a mod to remove them, just dont build them. 

that being said, without turrets, what kind of defenses can we build?  spiked pitfall traps? tripwires? snare traps?  those are just the primitive ones, what about a minefield or maybe camouflage for your snipers so they can shoot but the effective range of the enemy is reduced.  if your guys are behind sandbags then the weapon is considered mounted and gets a bonus to accuracy.

raiders aside, another reason to leave the cave would be fishing! 

[jaeden25]

The idea of removing turrets is pretty ridiculous. If you want to remove kill-boxes from the game then how will that possibly have an effect. All you guys will do is stack your colonists at the choke point instead. No matter what you do to defense, improve or remove people who just want to play kill-boxes will play them no matter what. Stop trying to find a fix for it, there is not one, that's just how RTS games have always worked.

The ONLY way you can stop a killbox strategy is to stop wall building, if wall building is an option then choke points will always be made. It's not defense that is overpowered, it's the building of a choke point that is overpowered.

We need the option to be able to defend an outdoor colony, currently it's to expensive to maintain good defense over a long period of time, the turrets are incredibly weak against mechanoids and explosives, to the point where they only work as a dummy target while my colonists do the work.
Colonists in combat should be the last resort given how few and far between they come. However at the moment they have to put themselves at great risk almost straight away to defend their colony. Colonist controlled defense (not manned) sounds like a good option to lower the risk to the colonists. Also things like guard towers that can be manned to increase the range of colonist weapons, and boost defensive stats so I am not forced to equip everyone with M24's to out-range the enemy.

[JimmyAgnt007]

Tynan has stated he doesnt want pseudo z-levels like towers, battlements, and i assume trenches and tunnels. 

killboxes can be mitigated simply by allowing the raiders to learn to avoid them.  first attack might see them all die in one, but the next might say that digging through the wall is a better idea.  so you then surround your base with killboxes.  then the raiders just drop pod in.  then your base is made entirely of killboxes.  we cant get rid of them so lets not try.  besides, one good mech raid and they tear through them like paper.  the whole system will evolve as updates are released and AI improved.  but rather than kill off playstyles, we need to allow for all kinds.  turret spammers, dwarfers, whatever.

[jaeden25]

Tynan has stated he doesnt want pseudo z-levels like towers, battlements, and i assume trenches and tunnels. 

killboxes can be mitigated simply by allowing the raiders to learn to avoid them.  first attack might see them all die in one, but the next might say that digging through the wall is a better idea.  so you then surround your base with killboxes.  then the raiders just drop pod in.  then your base is made entirely of killboxes.  we cant get rid of them so lets not try.  besides, one good mech raid and they tear through them like paper.  the whole system will evolve as updates are released and AI improved.  but rather than kill off playstyles, we need to allow for all kinds.  turret spammers, dwarfers, whatever.

I agree I don't think it's right to kill playstyles, the more option's the better. I was just pointing out that the other changes suggested will only make the problem worse with open colonies. You also have to remember how hard is it going to be to improve the AI enough to protect itself from abuse.

I can't currently play my playstyle very long though because of how expensive and useless turrets are in the open. One group of mechanoids wipes out my defense, normally 6-8 turrets, sandbags and walls for colonist cover. Against 15 mech or a big group of raiders they kill all the turrets and cover pretty quickly with explosives and I have to micromanage a lot with M24's which is fine, but it costs close to 1400 metal each defense. It's way too much considering I try and make the minimum defense I need.

Also I don't understand why he would hate the idea of a tower that increases range and/or defensive stats. Currently we have all these cool weapons in the game, but there is no way to actually use any of them, or get colonists engaged in a fight. We need more than 1 type of defense in this game, or it's really a waste of time having a combat system at all.

Having more defense options would make some playstyles really easy but it's not a problem, after all if you complain it's too easy you can always make the game harder for yourself by just not spamming turrets or w/e, you aren't forced to spam turrets just because you can. If it was a competitive game it would be a problem, but it's not.

[JimmyAgnt007]

he just stated that if he was going to do anything 3D he would do it all the way and not just some shoehorned code.  either way i dont think its on the TODO list for the time being.

[jaeden25]

he just stated that if he was going to do anything 3D he would do it all the way and not just some shoehorned code.  either way i dont think its on the TODO list for the time being.

The tower's don't have to be 3d though, 'towers' was just a word I used to get my point across. It could be something like just sandbags that have a special interaction like you could 'man' them and take cover behind etc to receive those bonuses. Or that could go for any wall you have constructed also and scrap the need to man them, to help when enemy drop into parts of your base that lack proper defense. This idea could help against taking out sieges with snipers by buildings some cover near them and using the increased range.

[JimmyAgnt007]

ah ok, i think i mentioned something about sandbags giving a bonus somewhere.  I think a better word to use in this case would be a pillbox.  concrete bunker with a heavy weapon and armored door.  would be rather neat!

[jaeden25]

ah ok, i think i mentioned something about sandbags giving a bonus somewhere.  I think a better word to use in this case would be a pillbox.  concrete bunker with a heavy weapon and armored door.  would be rather neat!

Yes, that's what I wanted to say hah, it would fit very well into this game.

[Rahjital]

Removing automatic turrets is not a solution for killboxing abuse, but for the problem that it is possible to get practically infinite firepower with as long as you have enough metal. A single killbox can take dozens of turrets, and if that still isn't enough for some reason, you can just build another killbox behind it and chain them as much as you like. Without turrets, you would always only have as much firepower as many colonists you have. It would not remove the strategy of turtling yourself up in a hole, but it would stop it being vastly superior to all other strategies.

Nobody is objecting to defense being a viable strategy, people just don't like it being the only viable strategy - which it currently is once you are far enough into the game, because fighting off hundreds of raiders with just your colonists is rather futile.

And that's not mentioning other problems with turrets: they take many colonists' roles in combat. I'm pretty sure many people who like turrets would object if we could build an unlimited number of robots that could cook, construct or research, yet it is essentially the same thing. Perhaps turret removal should get it's own thread?




As to other problems, the combat side of the game is not too strong. It can be fun in a city with plenty of passageways and buildings to block the line of sight, but there aren't many tactical options if you fight in the open, and especially not in a typical mountain base. I suppose that's a part of why people want to automate the defense and just want the raiders to die under a hail of turret fire without having to do much. Perhaps if the tactical part of the game was expanded and improved, people would try it out more instead of hiding behind turrets?

[JimmyAgnt007]

in reality, if you got the material (including money) then building lots of guns is a valid method of keeping safe.  thats the whole point of the military. (lets keep politics out of this) so we should keep them.  maybe turrets shouldnt be available from the start? research to unlock them, then improve them.  zerg rush raiders are only in the game because thats all the AI can handle for now.  each new version will have fewer raiders who act better or are individually more powerful.