My one complaint about Rimworld...

[FMK]

... is that Miniguns can't target an area, and are forced to target "things." It doesn't make any sense, since you're obviously not going to try and pinpoint shoot someone with a Minigun -- you're going to fill an area with bullets and shred anyone who passes by.

Fortunately, a sandbag is a good workaround -- albeit requiring a bit of maintenance:

But for balance reasons, I guess I can see why -- 60 centipedes and 24 scythers cut down in a heartbeat, and nothing in the path damaged except the mechs due to bullet-logic.

[minami26]

Wow a 10 year colony amazing..
Yeah its bit frustrating that you cant target a ground, but due to the way tynan made it for now the ground cant be targetted because it is a terrain entity therefor an invalid target so it needs to be a specific target e.g pawns or buildings in order for the attack to work.

edit: owh, the target ground thing is already there, didn't look at weapons that much, my mistake sorry!

[BetaSpectre]

Place sleeping spot, force fire. But man its awesome youre still using colonists for defense after all that time.

[FMK]

Wow a 10 year colony amazing..
Yeah its bit frustrating that you cant target a ground, but due to the way tynan made it for now the ground cant be targetted because it is a terrain entity therefor an invalid target so it needs to be a specific target e.g pawns or buildings in order for the attack to work.

Well the thing with that is, targeting the ground is already programmed in and works fine -- see frags and molotovs. It's just not set for Miniguns (or any other gun). But yeah, between being in a mountain and with a defense that shreds any number of enemies, the only thing that could defeat this colony is my computers inability to handle the raider amount -- I've already had to turn it down to 60% for that reason, even with keeping colony wealth low as best as I can.

Really wish the game would have a hard cap for raider count.

Place sleeping spot, force fire. But man its awesome youre still using colonists for defense after all that time.

I don't know why it never occurred to me to use a sleeping spot, that's brilliant. I spent a good hour trying to figure out what to use for a target, and that sandbag got damaged the least. But damage is irrelevant when you can just replace it instantly at will.

Also yeah, colonists for defense are the only thing that can stand up to the insane amount of mechs and raiders at this point. My only use for turrets is strategically placing them to give enemies a target to lock onto so they'll path to it rather than smashing random things that are closer.

[Barley]

Uh, how did all those people die on the path between your killzone and the front door?

[Halinder]

Uh, how did all those people die on the path between your killzone and the front door?

Guessing from the blood, people who tried to run but bled out.

[skullywag]

Target ground is a flag in the xml. Check my more weapons mod ive done it there with my flamer thrower and my flaregun. Easy to change.

[FMK]

Uh, how did all those people die on the path between your killzone and the front door?

At a point I was using a different design which made most pawns just stand at that one clump until going crazy, at which point they killed each other/starved -- never bothered to clean them up. However, I got tired of mechs trickling in 5 at a time and thus decided to find an efficient use for Miniguns.

Target ground is a flag in the xml. Check my more weapons mod ive done it there with my flamer thrower and my flaregun. Easy to change.

Oh, I know it can be changed in the xml, I just prefer playing games completely unmodded, which is why it bothered me that Miniguns don't have it by default.

[Aristocat]

Force Fire added in Minigun, L15Lmg, M16, Charge rifle, Uzi, Shotgun. (can target ground instead of specific target.)

Also shotgun that actually shoot like shotgun, Lmg and minigun shoot continuously, actually accurate m24,

https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=7167.0

If you don't want mod you can also go in Defs/thingDef and add this in each weapon
        <targetParams>
          <canTargetLocations>true</canTargetLocations>
        </targetParams>


e.g.

  <ThingDef ParentName="BaseBullet">
    <defName>Bullet_Minigun</defName>
    <label>minigun bullet</label>
    <graphicPathSingle>Things/Projectile/Bullet_Small</graphicPathSingle>
    <projectile>
      <damageDef>Bullet</damageDef>
      <damageAmountBase>8</damageAmountBase>
      <speed>70</speed>
    </projectile>
  </ThingDef>
  <ThingDef ParentName="BaseHumanGun">
    <defName>Gun_Minigun</defName>
    <label>minigun</label>
    <description>A multi-barrel machine gun with an extremely high rate of fire. Mechanoid-built.</description>
    <graphicPathSingle>Things/Item/Equipment/Minigun</graphicPathSingle>
    <soundInteract>InteractRifle</soundInteract>
    <baseMarketValue>900</baseMarketValue>
    <techLevel>Spacer</techLevel>
    <weaponTags>
      <li>MechanoidGunHeavy</li>
    </weaponTags>
    <equippedStatOffsets>
      <MoveSpeed>-0.25</MoveSpeed>
    </equippedStatOffsets>
    <verbs>
      <li>
        <verbClass>Verb_Shoot</verbClass>
        <cooldownTicks>40</cooldownTicks>
        <hasStandardCommand>true</hasStandardCommand>
        <projectileDef>Bullet_Minigun</projectileDef>
        <forcedMissRadius>2.4</forcedMissRadius>
        <warmupTicks>250</warmupTicks>
        <range>32</range>
        <accuracyTouch>0.79</accuracyTouch>
        <accuracyShort>0.42</accuracyShort>
        <accuracyMedium>0.18</accuracyMedium>
        <accuracyLong>0.06</accuracyLong>
        <burstShotCount>30</burstShotCount>
        <ticksBetweenBurstShots>4</ticksBetweenBurstShots>
        <fireSound>ShotMinigun</fireSound>
        <targetParams>
          <canTargetLocations>true</canTargetLocations>
        </targetParams>
      </li>
    </verbs>
  </ThingDef>

[christhekiller]

Ive always found mineguns work fine... I mean, I don't have a whole army of minigunners like you... But currently I have two minigunners (both with the rapid fire skill) and I set them to fire into large crowds when they're coming and they usually tear into the group en masse

[Tynan]

Funny you discovered this; it's actually a bit of an exploit. Bullets are more likely to hit targets that they just randomly pass over than those they were actually fired at :p

[Darkfirephoenix]

Funny you discovered this; it's actually a bit of an exploit. Bullets are more likely to hit targets that they just randomly pass over than those they were actually fired at :p

Wait a minute! Does that mean we should aim at the wall behind the enemy instead directly at them?!

Come to think about it: I tried to break a siege and took 2 snipers from my colony to destroy the mortars and nearly everytime someone walked in the path of the bullet they died... Wow stray bullets are far more dangerous than aimed ones! 

[christhekiller]

[insert gif of someone shooting something randomly into the air and the bullet bouncing around until it finally hits its target right between the eyes]

[FMK]

Funny you discovered this; it's actually a bit of an exploit. Bullets are more likely to hit targets that they just randomly pass over than those they were actually fired at :p

Can't take all the credit for it, I remembered reading on another thread on here how animals in the crossfire were more likely to get hit than the actual targets, so I figured "what if I purposefully make shots be crossfire for the actual targets?"

[RemingtonRyder]

I guess the thing to remember is that pawns do not take up 100% of a particular tile.  Accordingly, stray bullets are as likely to zip past or graze than actually hit a pawn full on if that pawn is in a completely different tile to the target.  Doesn't make bullets any less dangerous, but it might stop pawns from being bullet magnets.