"Tower Defence" solution: Raiders don't kill you, you'll starve or freeze first.

[todofwar]

I think the main problem right now is they just fight to the death. I think raiders should back off (not leave the map) if you kill a certain portion of them. With fog of war (you get to know their landing point but that's it) they could then be anywhere. Would make it more interesting, as it leaves you on heightened alert.

[todofwar]

I think the best, easiest to implement quickly idea I've heard is having your supplies occupy a space on the map. Raiders are after those, nothing more. They get your supplies, they leave. Which of course leaves you in a bad spot. But they don't instantly know where your supplies are. This could lead to traps for them as they comb your base looking for you. Also, perhaps you can just grab supplies and run, or have a backup base, and the raiders don't pursue right away. They occupy your base for a while, and either leave on their own accord or stick around because you did too good a job building it. This makes raiders a more complex issue. And perhaps there should be a penalty or some other way to limit the number of turrets you have on the map, make raiders a legitimate threat every time they hit.

[Galileus]

I think the best, easiest to implement quickly idea I've heard is having your supplies occupy a space on the map. Raiders are after those, nothing more. They get your supplies, they leave. Which of course leaves you in a bad spot. But they don't instantly know where your supplies are. This could lead to traps for them as they comb your base looking for you. Also, perhaps you can just grab supplies and run, or have a backup base, and the raiders don't pursue right away. They occupy your base for a while, and either leave on their own accord or stick around because you did too good a job building it. This makes raiders a more complex issue. And perhaps there should be a penalty or some other way to limit the number of turrets you have on the map, make raiders a legitimate threat every time they hit.

Eeeeh. Still not addressing the topic.

[todofwar]

I'm starting to think having raiders be a rarer event in comparison to other base destroying catastrophes really would work to improve the game.

[mumblemumble]

Tower defense problem is only for people whom are meta gaming, I find, since for me, relying entirely upon turrets would cost too much metal after a while. Combining disposable turrets and tactical movements of your colony is what really gets things working in most cases.

But I do agree there needs to be more events to give challenges since right now raids are a bulk of the game

[JayNic]

I agree. Raiders are really looking for supplies - they want your goods. Ideally they don't want to kill anyone, or risk their own people, so maybe a bribing system would work too. "Give us XYZ or we're coming in!"
Raiders are essentially farmers: and you're the crops.

I've often thought that if the raiders get away, their specific raiding party should get smarter. Maybe blast a hole through your wall rather than attack the nearest entrance.

I also kinda think that if two raider squads show up and the same time it should complicate matters for the Raiders. A "We got here first" sorta situation that could end up with one of three outcomes:
- They ban together
- They fight it out first
- One group pulls out
Just think about two pirates going after the same booty!

[todofwar]

Tower defense problem is only for people whom are meta gaming, I find, since for me, relying entirely upon turrets would cost too much metal after a while. Combining disposable turrets and tactical movements of your colony is what really gets things working in most cases.

But I do agree there needs to be more events to give challenges since right now raids are a bulk of the game

Yeah, I feel that with further updates (this game is so good already I sometimes forget it's pre-alpha) there will be enough events that raiders will comprise a smaller part overall.

[Morrigi]

I absolutely agree with the OP. "Survival" is not all about shooting wave after wave of mindless minions. The most basic elements of survival are food, water, and shelter from the elements. Yet it always seems that the challenges of these have minimal impact on the long-term well-being of your settlement. Food can be grown with minimal effort or literally falls out of the sky. Water? What water? And the weather has no impact aside from setting everything on fire, and occasionally putting them out.

[Stickle]

I agree that in the long-term, I hope new challenges are implemented to take over a little bit from raiders... And i don't even use turrets anymore (occasionally I'll place a few tactically but I don't built elaborate turret/funnel formations). Eventually, even without turrets, you have enough well-armed and skilled colonists to fight off any raiders with little effort, it's easy to grow enough food so that even frequent blights don't really pose a threat. In big colonies fires can be brought under control quickly, unless they occur during combat and have time to spread.

Honestly, the only two situations that have ever posed a serious challenge to my colonists past that initial phase of the game are mass boomrat madness and the resulting fires that are occasionally a problem, and when Randy Random throws several blights and solar flares in a row, causing serious food issues (and, really, colonists should be able to retrieve food from stockpiles if the dispenser is down).

There should be more things to worry about than just raiders. But the game is at such an early development phase that I'm not worried, I think we'll get much more to think about, all in good time!

[Luckless]

There should be more things to worry about than just raiders. But the game is at such an early development phase that I'm not worried, I think we'll get much more to think about, all in good time!

This was kind of the entire point of putting this thread up. Going through the forums most of what I got was raiders, RAIDERS, raiders, guns, raiders, Raiders, Guns!. Conversations were getting overly focused on improving the game by improving raiders, not by discussing what other elements could be added and improved to make the game more interesting, offer more challenges, and make the game different from yet another strategy/tactics game.

[Galileus]

People talked about raiders because that was the problem at hand. It doesn't mean anyone forgot about other elements. Just check all these awesome topics about morality and human reactions, weather stations or even silliness in game

[todofwar]

I think the other issue is right now the game is designed to be played for two hours, at least according to something on the kickstarter page. So after that you have a solid set up and no more challenges come at you. Eventually Tynan will release updates with more challenges focused on making developed colonies hurt (maybe there could be a nuclear fallout that hits your base, now you have to pack up and leave but the raiders will not scale down as you reassemble a base), but for now he has nailed the two to three hour playthrough with lots of replayability.

[AspenShadow]

I've been keeping my activity in these forums minimal for quite a while now simply for the reason that at this stage in development everything we can suggest, has been suggested and the things that haven't are too complex or could only be added at a much later date.

Yes, the problem with raiders atm is primarily focused around Rimworld becoming a tower-defence and that is down to the fact the AI hasn't been fully-built yet, it's a basic design similar to TD-Enemies to test the combat system works, not to test the player's ingenuity.

And I've always been pushing for more diverse threats than the raiders in the Alpha or people will misinterpret this game as a "Do the best you can under waves of enemies" game, when Tynan specified this game would have a survival element he did not mean survive against regular waves of enemies, but against the environment and against your own colony's psyche.

But yet again at this point the dilemma cannot be solved. It simply requires patience until the game has become a lot more developed and I'm starting to become worried that the forum getting bogged down with so much chatter and debate and suggestions for tweaking the Pre-Alpha is going to encourage Tynan to spend less time adding content and more time modifying existing content simply to ensure the Pre-Alpha doesn't drive people away with it's bugginess.

The game looks good for a Pre-Alpha and I think that's thrown people a little. It's been a boon, yes, but it's also given people greater expectations of functionality than is sensible.
This is still a skeleton game, Tynan has simply stretched a functional "skin" over the frame to release a demo that wouldn't make people think the opposite way and consider Rimworld's eventual completion a distant point on the horizon.

[Sacarathe]

Considering that some of the current player base may grow bored of the raider mechanic, they could be removed from the game, until such a time that here is enough content that the entire game is not, get raided, nurse wounded repeat.