Best Combat Strategies

[Hiruuamon]

Ok, I've been trying to read up on combat, nd how to improve, and the general consensus is to leave behind the healer and YOLO the rest of he squad. IS that pretty much it? I have a pretty nice settlement with Concrete walls and a gate that mobs can't easily break, in addition to crossbows on the walls, but at the end of the day, I'm still getting smashed in almost every man-2-man action. Anyway, any pointers would help. I have lvl 2 dummies, and I'll upgrade to level 3 soon, but it seems like my defense is a larger part of the problem. Thanks in advance.

[anywhatshisname]

Combat tip: At low levels, fluffy bunnies could crush you, if Kenshi had any.

But that's not all that bad, actually. Getting wrecked in combat boosts your toughness- it boosts more the more damage you take, and the more you fight while injured (red damage, unbandaged). Tougher enemies that beat you down, assuming they don't kill you, will teach you more about combat.

Combat 101: weapons.

Light weapons attack faster, and every attack boosts your weapon skill and melee attack. Unarmed combat boosts that instead of melee. Look at the weight of your weapon. Wakizashis are always light and quick. Katanas are also light weapons. Light weapons train your dexsterity, which affects how fast you attack, how fast you block, and how much damage your light weapons do. Light weapons generally boost attack and lower your defense.

Heavy weapons hit harder, and have long, wide range swings. You can mow down weaker mobs like wheat at higher skill levels. Heavy weapons require strength to use, and the heavier the weapon, the slower you swing until your strength gets high enough (though still slower than light weapons at high levels). Heavy weapons are tough to use in tight spaces, so you get a penalty when using them indoors.

Polearms have great reach, are faster than heavy weapons, though slower than light, and most do extra damage against wildlife- bonedogs, swamp raptors, etc. Like heavy weapons, they are unweildy indoors. Keep a backup wakizashi or something for those fights in the ruins (wakizashis get bonus to attack indoors).

Sabres are a flip of light weapons. They boost def at the expense of attack. Some have bonus damage versus specific critters- spiders, dogs, etc. Early on, the defense boost can make quite a bit of difference.

[anywhatshisname]

Combat 201: enemies.

Getting facerolled by raptors and hungry bandits? You can lure some of them close to a town like Stack and let the guards do the heavy lifiting on the battles, but that can be slow going.

Bad guys go something like
hungry bandits
scrawny cannibals
dust bandits
bonedogs
red sabres
gutters
gorillos
cannibals

and so on for increasing strength. You can work your way up by fighting, getting beaten, healing, fighting some more, and so on. Do so with a supply of sleeping bags, medkits, and food will work.

You can also kidnap a training dummy to skill up on. Beat down a bandit, steal his weapon while he is unconscious, and put him in a cage. You can research imprisonment under defense at the third level research bench.\

Once he is healthy, give him a weapon, pick him up out of the cage, and put him in a building with just one character- the one you want to train in combat- and let them fight it out. If your guy loses, send your whole squad in to flatten the bandit, heal him up, and stick him back in his cage. You heal up too. Then lather, rinse repeat.

[anywhatshisname]

Combat 301: Armor.

Fighting nekkid will make you get tougher... if you live long enough. Safer bet is to slap on some armor before the gutters are ripping out your entrails.

For armor, you have coverage, blunt defense, cut defense, stun, and harpoon resistance. The latter is self explanatory: harpoon resistance is how much damage that *doesn't*hit you when that harpoon/turret bolt finds you.

Blunt defense mitigates blunt damage, and cut mitigates cut damage. Light weapons, katanas and wakizashis, do mainly cut damage. Cut damage makes you bleed, which is more of a problem for humans and shek than hivers and robots.

Good explanation on how damage and armor works here (h/t Shidan). Scroll down, you'll see it. The meat is in two different posts.

https://www.lofigames.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=10853&p=55015&hilit=armor#p55015

TL/DR: Coverage is how likely it is your armor protects you. Heart protectors have low coverage, but if you somehow manage to get hit there, it mitigates the damage. Plate jackets and longcoats have awesome coverage, but balance this by having less mitigation. When I say mitigation, I mean what % of the damage is resisted by the armor. The remaining damage, you eat.

Heavy armors slow you down. If you are trying to escape cannibals that think your liver might be tasty, this can be a bad thing. But, when they catch you, you might manage to whittle one or down before succumbing to the horde. Higher strength means heavier loads don't slow you down- but heavy legplates for example are more restrictive will always make you slower, regardless of your strength.

Your scouts need to move fast, so give them light armor with good coverage. Longoats and plate jackets are good here. Drifter's pants and either sandals or drifters boots keep it mince and light.

Front line troops will want something a bit heavier. Mercenary plate is tough, but leaves the stomach open. Chainmail is good underarmor protection- keep it away from stealthy-types though. Give them samurai clothpants or sneaky chain cargopants- the former has a bit of coverage on the stomach, so that helps with armor that leaves this open. You can go all the way with full samurai plate, but crippled raptors will be able to waddle faster than you.

Your famers will be dealing with raptors and bandits, so polearms and katanas are a good mix, with decent armor. Give them medium or heavy, whichever your budget allows, they won't be running much.

[anywhatshisname]

Once you are beating down hungry bandits with ease and cleaning up dust bandits and selling their gear for sake money, you can head west to farm beak things- make sure you have a decent combat squad and always leave yourself an avenue of retreat- or south to the swamp. The swamp is a great place to put a base, on the edges you can get decent iron, copper, stone, and water, as well as getting two zones to grow in (swamp and arid). You can make hemp here, and narcotics, which are good cash crops.

Swamp raptors are no joke, though, and the red sabres and swamp ninjas *will* find you eventually. Get walls up, and be prepared to be attacked.

If the swamp gets too easy, start raiding the lands up north. Iron spiders have massively wide melee AoE's, so everybody in close combat is going to get hit.

Good luck, and try not to get eaten by Beak Things.

[Hiruuamon]

Thanks for the combat tips. I have a really huge base now, and I'v also walled in my farming arrea. The game jsut updaed, and placed my whole squad in the middle of the map, so I'm dyign my way back to my base, lol. I've been seeting thing up to do it as you said, with kiting enemies into the killing zone. I get starving farmers on a regular, which I usually ignore, but with 3 crossbow raining down bolts, I was going to start toughenign up my squad, now if I can just get away from these Red Sabres and Swamp Ninjas, lol. Thanks...I guess I'm doing things right so far...now I just need to take my lumps.

[Hatsune Neko Gaming]

if you ended up in the middle of the map then you forgot to uncheck reset squad positions when you imported.
make sure an check that you also still have your base since import with buildings and tech is not checked at default.

[Hiruuamon]

Originally posted by HaTsUnE_NeKo:

if you ended up in the middle of the map then you forgot to uncheck reset squad positions when you imported.
make sure an check that you also still have your base since import with buildings and tech is not checked at default.

Thanks, I'll make sure to watch out for that on the next update. I was so foused on the checkbox regarding losing all my stuff that I misread the location one. It's been interesting tho, as I've been improving my sneaking, lol. I've also discovered alot of new locations on hte map, although I'm not going to b in these area until a long time from now.

[rompier02]

Hi. I don't know if my strategy is the best for combat but if you want to try then go for it. My guys don't use weapons preferring MA. Before you start ,do the basics like increasing str, mine for money etc. Once you have enough to recruit 1 guy, get him/her and buy lots of med kits. Now find a lone bonedog/a stragler and fight. Put all team on passive first. Don't attack together. Concentrate on each party member. Whenever 1 guy gets staggered, the bonedog will turn to the other. Use this oppurtunity to heal yourself and wait till the other guy gets staggered. Just repeat until you deem it necessary to disengage/ said bonedog is incapacipated. If you manage that just bandage him and repeat when it wakes up.

Of course you can just recruit Burn in the Floodlands if it takes a while to gather money for the extra guy. For me lone bonedogs are easily found in the Wend, the northern HN farm with the 3 100% copper node and the areas south of the Flotsam compound. Good luck and good plays warrior.

[Fatbill]

Load up your guys with iron to raise their encumberance past 60% and run around a while, every point of strength you gain will increase your health by one, as well, on top of combat damage bonuses, where applicable.

I also mix up the weapon types in a squad: 5-6 use a katana/nodachi, a couple with saber, 1-2 with heavy weapons, hacker and polearm. Whatever mix you like, with the weapons you pick up.

Don't forget to use the splint ability with your medic, to increase speed when people get leg wounds greater than 50, and it is always a good idea to have a bed roll or two, when you have one guy get that -50 on leg, it is better to stop and let him heal up, than try to get back to civilization at 1/3 speed the whole way.

Mostly it is getting past that first level of enemies, after that, it gets progressively easier.

[3Dguy]

I played just 97 hours of it, but i think i got a pretty solid gamestart without spoiling too much of the surprises in other regions. The great secret is to tear down the ramp to your defense walls with mounted turrets, and the enemy can´t touch you - your guys will mincemeat them with arrows, and no matter how big their army is, they got no chance of winning. You can also block a big building entrance with a small shack - and the thing doesn´t need to be finished either, it will block the entrance and you can go to the mounted turrets on the top of your building to kill them all. I got more than 300.000 cats in loot alone from constant raids, and had to raise disconnected walls inside my fortress to act as sentries (the starving bandits like to attack en mass silently, you don´t seem them coming). It´s good to raise stats with training gadgets and by running overencunbered (for strenght) or lightly equipped (for speed).

[Zourin]

- Give Outpost workers crossbows, particularly fast firing ones (toothpicks) if they're new, and Jitte's as backup weapons. Put them on the rooftops of buildings during an attack and lock the door. You basically just turned them all into rooftop snipers where you don't have to worry about how 'tough' they are.

[Zourin]

I gave my 2 best thieves Ninja blades and Toothpicks. Working as a pair, they can outrun, kill, KO, or kite most opponents, and provide accurate cover-fire in a melee.

Don't underestimate the power of crossbows. Kenshi may throw piles of sticks and swords at you, but you won't easily stop a firing line of heavy crossbows.

[lx]

i dont think there is best in this game. you can do all kinds of useful stuff to defeat the enemy.
for not to get smashed in 1 to 1 you need your guys trained and armed properly.
also combat can be avoided with stealth and KO. bots are kind of dumb. i KO an entire raid with 1 man. like a proper ninja
for defense, the buildable training dummies do not work. you need to kidnap a working one. and dont forget to feed it.

[Zourin]

Take advantage of focus fire and the Block command.

My paltry combat group of seven would be absolutely DEVASTATED by beak things, if I didn't use a limited combination of heavy armor, flanking maneuvers, ranged focus fire, and good old-school MMO style pulling. Whenever the beak thing turns to attack someone, the game gets paused, a block order is turned on, and the block order of the previous target is turned off. Melee characters with heavy armor have Taunt turned on the whole time (doesn't usually work on beak things :/ )

I have at least two medics and a camp with a bunch (4-6) bedrolls laid down on standby. If anyone drops below 30 limb health, I pull them out to avoid dismemberments. Melees are carefully placed in a circle around/behind it, while the two with plate/chainmail/taunt stand next to each other to prevent (and usually fail) it from turning around and hitting the trainees.

For the maneuvers, I had 3 archers (I train my thieves in crossbows) focus firing from reasonably short range. The fastest of which carefully pulls one from the nest from as far away as possible. If more than one get triggered, I stealth him/her and sneak-run away. That usually is enough to reset the group and a different target can be picked.

[Joshuasca]

If you have a base and a farm then you should buy bulls from the nomads. They start young but before you know it they will get big. A bull eats twice as much food as a human, however it only costs 2,000 cats and even with low stats it can break an entire raid on it's own once it is elder. The bull gets some great AOE and does 60-120 dmg. In my game they came to sell me bulls all the time, so it's easy to get a couple (or a dozen). Use the bulls as a vangaurd then have your squad train up on whatever's still squirming around.