Post your defense

[skiddyfisk]

Well I don't light it ALL up for every raid. Just wherever they happen to be walking (usually from the east)

Considering a turret can be defeated by a lone raider with a pistol, I like simple over cheap :v Which is not to say you aren't entirely correct. This thread is giving me ideas.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Well I don't light it ALL up for every raid. Just wherever they happen to be walking (usually from the east)

Considering a turret can be defeated by a lone raider with a pistol, I like simple over cheap :v Which is not to say you aren't entirely correct. This thread is giving me ideas.

Ooooh, I see. I thought they were all two squares apart (so that any of them going off lights the entire minefield off,) but they're three.

[skiddyfisk]

My developing murder-hall plan. Dirt/grass center surrounded by cement. I just light up the bodies on the spot after I haul off their weapons. Charges are to shake off anybody who decides to try and burn my barracks down instead of go directly to the meat grinder.

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[ShadowDragon8685]

My developing murder-hall plan. Dirt/grass center surrounded by cement. I just light up the bodies on the spot after I haul off their weapons. Charges are to shake off anybody who decides to try and burn my barracks down instead of go directly to the meat grinder.

That won't work. They're going to prefer to go on the cement than the dirt, because it's faster, and you don't have nearly enough pillboxed fighting space, nor do you have any turrets to draw fire.

That's an invitation to get overrun.

[LordMunchkin]

How do you stop them from setting fire to your walls? I find that at least one or two raiders ignore my kill boxes and go look for things to set on fire.

[ShadowDragon8685]

How do you stop them from setting fire to your walls? I find that at least one or two raiders ignore my kill boxes and go look for things to set on fire.

Raiders almost never go after walls as a primary target. They only light up the walls if they get an attack of opportunity on the way to pathing to a building to destroy, or if they can't find path to any constructed buildings to destroy.

The way to minimize raiders lighting up your buildings, then, is to provide them a "highway" of concrete to path along that leads right into your kill-box and well away (like, at least 8-10 tiles away) from any walls. This is problematic, since walls require a firebreak, so you're going to want to build your firebreak and then dump rubble atop it to make it not an attractive pathing option to the raiders.

This is also convenient because if they're pathing down a highway that's only one tile wide, you know with a very high degree of certainty which way they're going to be coming from, so you can set up your grave-lined, explosive-equipped killing field to blow all the mothers away while they're traipsing down the bloodsoaked concrete highway of doom lined with open graves.

[savaze]

This game's horrible, I just can't stop playing it.



Tough Kassandra Classic

-7 current colonists, I've had up to 13 (not recruiting assassins, nobles, or courtesans).
-I've had up to 22 prisoners.
-Anvil style Kill-box (combat always runs in fast-fast-forward), taking advantage of the darkness.
-2 Entrances protected by double bottle-necked bomb-rooms.
-Plenty of power with 5 geothermal generators (all external), with only 2 needed (1.5 really) when everything on.
-12 crematorium dumps, burn baby burn, just as dangerous to colonists as raiders when lit (I usually sell/disable the middle 4).
-Food production enough for 35+.
-Only losing colonists if raiders drop on them outside the base (building all the extra generators took it's toll).

Shadowdragon, How'd you get the Kickstarted moniker?

[JohnPalb]

I'm a bit new to this, so I'm running on Cassandra Classic to get my feet wet.  Anyway, here's a simple basic defense which has been working well for me.  I put the cave entrance to my above gound walled settlement far enough away so that my walls aren't an attractive target for a raider to light them up.  The three step sandbag trap at the mouth of the cave is generally enough to slow down any sizable group of raiders so that stragglers are able to catch up.  I've got the forks in the path there because it seems like turning slows them up as well.  I've got a single blast charge in the first rubble strewn chamber to start the hurt, but not to kill.  I'm usually able to get the entire raider group with it.  As they come in to the second chamber, the two retaining walls on either side of the divider extend past the sandbags because I don't want the raiders to be able to use the tunnel opening for cover.  Having the retaining wall extending one block out means anyone attempting to use that retaining wall for cover is opening their back up to the turrets on the opposite side.  I have a second blasting charge in the kill box in case of emergencies(colonists out of position, extraordinarily large raid, etc), but I haven't had to use it yet.

I have my colonists positioned behind the wall segments in front of the doors.  It's rare that any of them will start taking significant damage, but if they do, the doors are there for me to drop them back into safety.  It also helps if there is a particularly large group of raiders that may have the potential to overrun my positions.  If that's the case, I can pull back behind the doors, and jump out for a couple of pop shots somewhere else along the line, at least that's how I imagine it would happened.  Haven't been overrun yet, nor lost a colonist.  Right now, I'm at 11 colonists(2 non com con-artists, which I hold in reserve for rescues or captures if needed, so 9 on the line).  But that seems to be the limit.  I was at 10 for about 40 days, then managed to get a downed raider back to a prison cell with 3 hp, and brought him back from death's door to make 11, but I haven't had another oppurtunity since to add to my numbers.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Shadowdragon, How'd you get the Kickstarted moniker?

Profile -> Modify Profile -> Forum Profile -> Personal Text -> entered whatever.

I recalled that a personalized forum moniker was one of the promises, but I never saw anything about it in my email or whatever. But since I backed, I went ahead and wrote it in myself. Nobody's objected, so I figured it was kosher.

[ShadowDragon8685]

That's... A decent killbox! Very nice, actually. Quite effective,o even if making them crawl over rubble is kind of cheating.

If I may say, though...

1: You can go ahead and mine out that metal. Nothing to stop you.
2: you don't need those lights in the tunnel.
3: I'd put flowerpots in front of your sandbags and build the killbox out a bit, adding doors at the edges. The flower-pots will be pretty, to counteract the "Ugh, so much DEATH" problem, and prevent raiders from pathing over the sandbags.
4: I'd extend the pillbox all the way around the kill-zone, so as to get your enemies in a proper, fuck-you-motherfuckers enfilade. You might have to adjust the lamps so they're not illuminating the pillbox.
5: You can, and probably should, mine out that deposit of ore at the mouth of the cavern. Just sayin'.

I was at 10 for about 40 days, then managed to get a downed raider back to a prison cell with 3 hp, and brought him back from death's door to make 11, but I haven't had another oppurtunity since to add to my numbers.

You won't, not with Cassandra, Kassandra, or Callie, anyway. If you want more, you're going to need to edit the save-game file and replace the storyteller with Randy Random. He DGAF, he'll throw you new colonists all the time, whenever the dice say he should.

[savaze]

JohnPalb,

The trick to getting more colonists on most of the game modes is to keep around 7-8 colonists in play and imprison everything else you get, including slaves and walk-ins. After you have a sizeable amount in jail try to recruit them. I'm not sure where the hardline is on recruitable colonists on these game modes but, it seems to get harder to recruit when you get past 15. The problem I've run into is that the game starts only sending you colonists that can't do much (e.g. assassins, nobles, and courtesans). I had one game where I was doing this and I ended up with only 3 colonists that could work, my initial 3, and 12 that could only shoot/talk.

[LordMunchkin]

Shadow how do you stop raiders from destroying your solar panels?

[ShadowDragon8685]

Shadow how do you stop raiders from destroying your solar panels?

The same way you stop them from destroying your paste dispenser: Build them inside your settlement walls and slaughter them before they ever get into line-of-sight with the solar panels. Just take care not to roof the walls over, which is pretty hard when you're walling in a large block of solar panels or anything else. It takes intent, really.

[JohnPalb]

Thanks for the input, ShadowDragon. The whole thing has a bit of a learning curve to it, but it's been addictive trying to learn, and fun as hell to boot.

1: You can go ahead and mine out that metal. Nothing to stop you.

I'm sure I will sometime soon.  At the moment though, I'm sitting on a decent stack of metal while I come up with plans on what to do now, and I like the idea of having a reserve stash where I can get to it quickly rather than hunting it up through exploration.  Kinda like money in the bank, rather than it burning a hole through your pocket.  I need that, because when I start building, I have a tendency to lay out all my plans in blueprint and blow it all in one go, as it were.

2: you don't need those lights in the tunnel.
3: I'd put flowerpots in front of your sandbags and build the killbox out a bit, adding doors at the edges. The flower-pots will be pretty, to counteract the "Ugh, so much DEATH" problem, and prevent raiders from pathing over the sandbags.

Yeah, I put those lights in because I was getting a lot of near-mental-breakdown experiences while my colonists were dragging the bodies out of there.  But the flower pots would seem to kill two rimworld raiders with one round, so to speak. 

Quite effective,o even if making them crawl over rubble is kind of cheating.

And I didn't realize creating uneven terrain for an enemy to cross while you have them in your sites was considered... unethical?  lol  Although, I do have to say, using the sandbags in the tunnels instead of boulders and miscellanious debris because I couldn't figure out how to have my colonists dump that stuff in there did seem kind of backhanded.  Anyway, I didn't realize raiders wouldn't path over flowerpots, and that seems like a great idea to keep the colonists' heads in the game, but wouldn't a bunch of daisies and daffodils be even more out of place and backhanded than rock and metal debris??  Although, now that I think about it, it seems very Fireflyesque, to have Mal or Jayne Cobb or Zoe hunkered down behind some flower pots and yelling over for some malfeasant miscreants to halt their wrong-doings.  Shiney.

4: I'd extend the pillbox all the way around the kill-zone, so as to get your enemies in a proper, fuck-you-motherfuckers enfilade. You might have to adjust the lamps so they're not illuminating the pillbox.

I was thinking about doing that, but I am having a hard time figuring out how to do it without putting my turrets in my line of fire.  Surrounding them completely with the sandbags might help.  I was leaving the backs open for ease of access if emergency repairs were needed on the fly, but that hasn't been necessary yet, and having someone jump the pillbox bags with a repair kit in hand in the middle of a firefight seems like a dubious proposition anyways.  I'll try it out and see how it works.  Worst that happens is that I just have to wall it up again...  well, that's not the worst.  The worst would be my colonists taking out my turrets because they're in the line of fire, and, without the turret support, getting overrun and all murderified.  That would be bad.  But, I think that's pretty unlikely, so I'll give it a go.

5: You can, and probably should, mine out that deposit of ore at the mouth of the cavern. Just sayin'.

As per number 1, more money in the bank, man.

Anyway, thanks for the tips.  Much appreciated.  I'll put them to good use.  And Savaze, that's an awesome idea.  Never thought of using my prison as an actual prison, rather than an immediate recruiting center.  So, what you're saying is that if I keep my colonists at 7 or 8 max, Cassandra will keep sending me oppurtunities to recruit, which I can then stowe away in the prison until I get an amount that I want, say, 25, and then start recruiting them?  Interesting...  Would Cassandra then up the ante as far as raider amounts during raids go, to meet the challange, or would I then be fighting with a more than 2 to 1 advantage?  Something else to play around with.

[LordMunchkin]

Does rubble/slag provide cover for colonist?