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Telsa Cola posted:I wouldnt say that is a kill box, at least not how I have always seen the term used in LPs and in other forum disxussions. The specific killbox design I have always seen is something like this. Mzbundifund's design is absolutely a killbox, it's just a killbox-in-progress. "Funneling guys into an intended open box to shoot them in an advantageous manner" is pretty much a killbox if you're being at all consistent in your definition, in my opinion, because no matter how elaborate you make the trap you're still relying on the AI's preference to move into the most "open" way into your base that they can find. I can build a lovely two lane trap corridor with a half dozen mini turrets and some sandbags/walls for my dudes to hide behind by the end of year 1 and that's absolutely what I would call a killbox even if it's not remotely as elaborate or as effective as the endgame monster traps. That said, I don't regard killboxes as exploitative any more than any other optimal way of play in Rimworld is exploitative. Tynan knows all about them and if he didn't want them to work he could pretty easily make them not work in a variety of ways. They've been the preferred method of defense for most people in Rimworld since early alphas and aren't a secret and multiple raid and attack types were literally introduced to the game to act as something of a counter to that type of defensive play. They are literally why drop pod raids and sieges exist! Getting good at building smart defensive setups in Rimworld isn't really any different from getting really good at any other aspect of Rimworld, imo; if it gets boring to you, change it up. It's like how surviving in a temperate forest with year round growth makes the survival aspect of the game super easy so you move on to harder climates/biomes if you're bored or keep playing temperate forest if you don't. It doesn't mean setting up in year-round temperate is exploitative. Kanos fucked around with this message at 17:00 on Sep 10, 2019 |
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Sep 10, 2019 16:56
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Millions dead by Vauban and his invention, the 17th century killbox.
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Sep 10, 2019 17:14
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Coolguye posted:Defence in Depth Stuff I would be quite happy if you could take some pictures of some of your layouts. It'd be lovely to see how it's done and may provide a nice alternative/inspiration for primary or secondary defences.  Also relating to my earlier comment, has anyone ever dabbled with the Vanilla Expanded furniture: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1718190143 Some of the extra stuff is tempting but I was curious if anyone had actually experienced if, and if they found the extra items useful or not. I am trying to have a mod list that isn't too impossibly heavy, mainly keeping to large broadstrokes stuff like the Hygiene mod and Rimatomics/Rimfeller.
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Sep 10, 2019 17:28
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A killbox is something explicitly designed to exploit the dumb AI decisions of the very simple raider UI. That's the end of it.
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Sep 10, 2019 18:16
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Given that raiders ignore the constraint of resources and magic whatever they need out of thin air (such as raw pawn counts when the raid starts), I don't feel particularly bad about using killboxes.
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Sep 11, 2019 00:36
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Hell I dont feel bad about using the terraforming mod to make impassable terrain  Sometimes if I dont feel like dealing with a raid I'll use the dev tools to whip lightning at them until they leaveI usually try to play some semblance of fair but some forts I just go actually no you can NOT punch my turrets
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Sep 11, 2019 00:48
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Things I’ve done to incoming raids I don’t want via devmode: 1: lightning 2: destroy 3: set local boomalope herd to manhunter 4: mental break berserk all rocket launching pawns
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Sep 11, 2019 00:58
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SkySteak posted:Also relating to my earlier comment, has anyone ever dabbled with the Vanilla Expanded furniture:
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Sep 11, 2019 02:50
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Asimo posted:It and the expansions are really nice. There's honestly nothing really game changing in there, but there's more options for decorative furniture (like being able to set up a bar rather than a table for example) and some minor boosts to comfort from having wardrobes to go with dressers and whatnot. The spacer and security addons are probably the most game changing, and even those tend to be more focused around utility than power. I really like them overall. Good to hear! When it comes to the the Security Stuff, I expect a lot of the content to end up being eclipsed by the Rimatomics goodies, but regardless it should provide some interesting options.
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Sep 11, 2019 05:32
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SkySteak posted:Good to hear! When it comes to the the Security Stuff, I expect a lot of the content to end up being eclipsed by the Rimatomics goodies, but regardless it should provide some interesting options. Speaking of Rimatomics, I honestly haven't really played with any of the weapons other than the railgun. I've tried messing around with the others, but they all seem like too much cost for something that'll die to raiders just like anything else. Maybe the Obelisk is some secret OP sauce but I can't see using tesla coils outside of a tightly enclosed space or those plasma machine gun... things... Marauders? Railguns are great though, and once I get off my KSP kick and start playing Rimworld again, I need to finish building my ICBM.
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Sep 13, 2019 00:00
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I keep forgetting to actually research the rimatomics weapons, I just get mad with power () and start carpeting my base with electronics. Every door must be an auto door, even the door to the electric room that nobody goes into except during a solar flare to set up the reactor to be rebooted.
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Sep 13, 2019 00:08
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The marauder is a beast. It'll melt huge blobs of centipedes. Oblisks are maybe not worth it but they are cool. The area denial one (forget the name) can actually be completely walled of and still target areas, so it's not really at risk of being destroyed.
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Sep 13, 2019 08:29
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Teslas are actually pretty great because they're relatively cheap and do HUGE damage per shot so they often put guys down in one or two shots like sniper turrets depending on where they hit. I wouldn't replace my entire defense grid with them but for the turret placements that are closer to the enemies they're pretty great.
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Sep 13, 2019 08:35
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I've gotten to the point where my defenses just outright kill attacking pawns. I'd rather down a bunch so I can recruit them instead. Should I just downgrade my uranium slug turrets to the weaker turrets or is there a better option through RimAtomics or another mod?
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Sep 13, 2019 19:42
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One of the glittertech mods has two different pain weapons that incapacitate with a minimum of injury (though particularly one of them risks zapping the victim too hard. Still, better than fixing a rifle slug to the brain).
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Sep 13, 2019 19:48
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If you’re not already using Death Rattle, that can help by making things like a lost liver or stomach not an instant death. Life Support mod goes well with this. Then, could also use Custom Death Randomness to ensure your storyteller isn’t just making all downed pawns die on down.
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Sep 13, 2019 20:07
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Custom Death Randomness is a must have to me. Even with zero randomness I find I get few survivors since everyone catches something to the neck or heart. One guy I saw drop with both lungs destroyed and only minor damage to the actual torso. Thanks to Death Rattle I got him inside and got his brain scooped before he died  I only need two more
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Sep 13, 2019 20:19
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Kanos posted:Teslas are actually pretty great because they're relatively cheap and do HUGE damage per shot so they often put guys down in one or two shots like sniper turrets depending on where they hit. I wouldn't replace my entire defense grid with them but for the turret placements that are closer to the enemies they're pretty great. I'm not a huge fan of rimatomics (it's a little too much complexity for what I'm looking for), but when I did try it I remember that Tesla coils would stun mechanoids, too. They also tended to down enemies without outright killing them due to most of their damage going into causing horrific full-body burns instead of destroying specific vital organs.
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Sep 13, 2019 20:27
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Death Rattle might solve my problem. I do have a bunch of spare organs because *mumbles* that I haven't really had any use for. I'll give it a shot.
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Sep 13, 2019 23:00
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Big Spoon posted:I've gotten to the point where my defenses just outright kill attacking pawns. I'd rather down a bunch so I can recruit them instead. Should I just downgrade my uranium slug turrets to the weaker turrets or is there a better option through RimAtomics or another mod? Alternatively, you could use the psychic shock lances that are in the base game to incapacitate a few selected candidates before they reach your defenses. Any brain damage can be repaired with healer-mech serum or replaced if you have mods that add brain augmentations. I've also been experimenting with the psychic insanity lance on enemy pawns armed with triple rocket and doomsday launchers. Unfortunately the berserk pawns don't have enough time to use their weapons on their allies but they do cause a nice fistfight.
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Sep 13, 2019 23:20
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The trick is to que up a mortar salvo, and *then* trigger the insanity lance.
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Sep 13, 2019 23:33
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Honestly Death Rattle makes that problem worse because of the 33% of pawns that are actually downed, a good number of them will actually be basically un-salvageable because they got shot in the throat and will suffocate to death and there's nothing you can do about it. If you've got a bunch of spare organs laying around you can save the ones that get shot in the heart or liver or w/e though yeah. It's really meant more for rescuing already-recruited colonists.
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Sep 13, 2019 23:48
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Keeshhound posted:I'm not a huge fan of rimatomics (it's a little too much complexity for what I'm looking for), but when I did try it I remember that Tesla coils would stun mechanoids, too. They also tended to down enemies without outright killing them due to most of their damage going into causing horrific full-body burns instead of destroying specific vital organs. The Astra Militarum 40k mod has the webgun that basically tases people that you could use. Combine that with the Misc. mod series' modular turret and you can do quite a number on both raiders and prisoners trying to break out. Custom Death Randomness may be required. If you don't want to use the full 40k mod (understandable, though I'd recommend at least trying out the Thud Gun from the turrets addon because multi-shot incendiery artillery is delightful) you can delete most of it and just keep the netgun around. It's fairly short ranged, so you'll have to be at least a little creative to properly apply it.
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Sep 13, 2019 23:57
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Incoming Chinchilla posted:The marauder is a beast. It'll melt huge blobs of centipedes. Oblisks are maybe not worth it but they are cool. The area denial one (forget the name) can actually be completely walled of and still target areas, so it's not really at risk of being destroyed. Kanos posted:Teslas are actually pretty great because they're relatively cheap and do HUGE damage per shot so they often put guys down in one or two shots like sniper turrets depending on where they hit. I wouldn't replace my entire defense grid with them but for the turret placements that are closer to the enemies they're pretty great. The problem I run into is that static defenses cost resources. Now you might say, "Of course, everything costs resources! But defense in depth can cost PAWNS!" And you'd be right, however a well managed DID, where you can scoop downed idiots out of the line of fire or otherwise ensure that most of your nerds aren't dying every raid changes the cost to just time spent in sick bay and whatever medicine you need to treat the initial wounds. This honestly seems to come out favorable toward pawn-based defenses in my experience because if I lose powerful, expensive emplacements I have to not only spend the resources but also the time to rebuild them. And if those are the focus of my defense, they get killed more often because what else are the raiders going to shoot at? Replacing railguns when a large enough raid gets to them is obnoxious enough on its own. Replacing two railguns, two marauders, and however many other sundries would get expensive fast. Or I could just send the gaggle of idiots with bullet wounds to the doctor, rub some herbs on it, and call it an evening. It might also be a factor of that by the time I'm getting raids that most other people are needing killboxes to answer, I'm sitting around with 20+ pawns to work with. That was a lot of rambling, but it comes down to the fact that I tend to lose more statics than pawns, so I shy away from statics because I could instead use the minerals and time to build guns and armor. Cup Runneth Over posted:Honestly Death Rattle makes that problem worse because of the 33% of pawns that are actually downed, a good number of them will actually be basically un-salvageable because they got shot in the throat and will suffocate to death and there's nothing you can do about it. If you've got a bunch of spare organs laying around you can save the ones that get shot in the heart or liver or w/e though yeah. Death Rattle also doesn't actually modify the down chance last I checked, so if you want to up your survivor rate, you need Death Rattle AND something to chance the death-on-down chance.
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Sep 14, 2019 01:00
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I've always found it rather difficult to fall back from opponents once engaged, especially if melee opponents are involved.
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Sep 14, 2019 01:11
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Custom Death Randomness is the other one
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Sep 14, 2019 01:12
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Galaga Galaxian posted:I've always found it rather difficult to fall back from opponents once engaged, especially if melee opponents are involved. If you're doing a DiD you want to use doors a lot to control access. Even just a brief interlude for them to punch a wood door down will give you time to reposition.
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Sep 14, 2019 01:34
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Weird post/username combo. Also, I feel like supplementing extensive pre-prepared defenses with emplaced heavy weapons is a tactical lesson that humans largely learned in the early 1900s. Of course I'm six years into an incredibly successful colony with 20+ pawns and I have yet to research turrets, but as soon as I get 'em I am for sure supplementing my defensive positions with 2-4 slug turrets each.
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Sep 14, 2019 04:55
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My approach to colony defense is honestly the exact opposite. I'd trade losing static defenses any day to preserve the life and well-being of my pawns, because I can always get more steel/components via trade, deep drilling, and mining outposts but getting usable pawns is a crapshoot. Every time your pawns are exposed to fire you're running the risk that you're going to get that brain injury or that insanely lucky heart/neck shot that takes them out outright, and this continues to be a recurring risk even once everyone is in power armor. Even non-fatal injuries that can be fixed, like organ damage or limb/eye loss, represent risk(surgery failures on transplants) and cost(affording replacement limbs, which can be rough early). Recruiting a pawn without terrible garbage traits is complete RNG, and training them takes a long rear end time, whereas getting a few hundred steel to replace some turrets takes no time at all comparatively.
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Sep 14, 2019 11:51
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Yeah. I'm currently running a colony with the rule that I have to recruit every pawn at any opportunity and it's amazing how awful most of them are. Chemically fascinated pyromaniacs everywhere. I've stopped bothering to try and avoid the ODs at this point. As a result I do have a solid front line of expendable pawns, but even then I use a line of uranium turrets to tack the hits. Pawns are so soft and the rng can be brutal. I had my top chef and top constructor both get their brains evacuated by a single blaster volley the other day. Also good luck fighting off 40 centipedes with no turrets.
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Sep 14, 2019 14:06
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Kanos posted:My approach to colony defense is honestly the exact opposite. I'd trade losing static defenses any day to preserve the life and well-being of my pawns, because I can always get more steel/components via trade, deep drilling, and mining outposts but getting usable pawns is a crapshoot. Every time your pawns are exposed to fire you're running the risk that you're going to get that brain injury or that insanely lucky heart/neck shot that takes them out outright, and this continues to be a recurring risk even once everyone is in power armor. Even non-fatal injuries that can be fixed, like organ damage or limb/eye loss, represent risk(surgery failures on transplants) and cost(affording replacement limbs, which can be rough early). Another thing to think about, every time a pawn is wounded, that's time spent healing that the pawn could be working. If a pawn is downed, that's a lot of worktime missed, not only for that pawn, but for the medic who has to tend and feed them. If static defenses take the brunt of an attack, I generally find that the area is cleared within a day and fully restored and repaired within 2-3 days, plus I still have pawns to fall back on should Randy decides to be Randy and go for round 2. If pawns take the brunt of it, cleanup takes a lot longer because my manpower is reduced, and should a second raid show up I now have to decide between having weaker defences or putting the wounded on the line. Of course, there is a third option for defense, which involves 20 mortars, but that doesn't tend to leave much loot behind 
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Sep 14, 2019 14:43
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LonsomeSon posted:Weird post/username combo. After all, what is a turret but a miserable pile of gears.  Don't get me wrong. I have railguns and devastator mortars set up to provide fire support. But anything less than that feels to ineffective for how easy it is to destroy once you start hitting that 20+ pawn range. In the beginning I think it makes total sense if you are lacking bodies to meet the challenge of a raid.
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Sep 14, 2019 17:09
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Enola Gay-For-Pay posted:What kind of church did you have? The only mod I know that has churches is the Cthulhu stuff, is there a less Lovecraftian church mod? Just a building that looks like a church with the various arcane things in it from the magic mod, more of a magic workshop. There's the mana storage batteries so a mage can go in and get charged up, there's an arcane forge, there's a mausoleum.
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Sep 14, 2019 17:36
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man, multiplayer is actually pretty fun in this. I miss a few qol mods that aren't compatable, but its jamming to have extra eyes on the field. also if your turrets are blowing up then turn them off when they take a lot of damage and the enemy wont shoot at them.
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Sep 14, 2019 20:38
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Some critters have a lot of blood.
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Sep 15, 2019 03:06
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winterwerefox posted:Some critters have a lot of blood. What's up with your colonists bar? I imagine it's a mod but it looks way more informative than the normal one
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Sep 15, 2019 03:17
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Danaru posted:What's up with your colonists bar? I imagine it's a mod but it looks way more informative than the normal one Colored Mood Bars is the name as I recall. Does what you'd expect.
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Sep 15, 2019 03:23
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It's very helpful and I always use it. Needs to be rolled into retail.
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Sep 15, 2019 03:27
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Neat, thanks!  I always have to squint at the bar to see how full it is, especially with larger pawns
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Sep 15, 2019 03:29
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isndl posted:Colored Mood Bars is the name as I recall. Does what you'd expect.
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Sep 16, 2019 02:13
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