First basic outpost completely overrun.

[Dangalf]

So I basically just started a first outpost, had a ton of building mats and stuff so I figured why not. Built it on the road between The Hub and Squin.

Less than a couple of days later, before I even got walls up, I was getting raided. And not just by one squad at a time, but several. It got to the point where this happened...

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1674873388

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1674873593

I became completely overrun by several different factions, and my squad is now dying every time I try to take it back, EVEN AFTER recruiting 5 more people and hiring mercs, the mercs are completely slaughtered at arrival and I sit here waiting several in game days before I can even recover from the defeat...

Anyone have any suggestions? Did I just happen to choose the worst Outpost location possible?

Edit: the worst part is that the raid events keep happening, and it just keeps getting more and more difficult to recover from this.

[Grimmrog_SIG]

what stats do your people have? you really need to flee for temporary times at the beginning. Mine some trader backpacks full of iron and let your troups run around to train strength, Then skill up some fighting skills.

It is so far not to much wrong getting beaten it trains toughness. Just try to avoid losing people and limbs.

Also in tough battles, as soon as an opponent goes down, try to take his stuff and throw t away so he cnanot get up and use it anymore.

what is also a bit better working tactic is make house doors oppose each other, and build some turrets on them, it grants you an initial higher save time to shoot at opponents and also some time to shoot at them when trying to open the door.


Also, get enough beds, and put people in there to heal faster.

[tebow baggins]

make sure all in squad has medic kits, left shift click on medic button to assign it as a auto job to all of them, if you have enough recruits someone should recover and start healing, the raiders will either attack again or move on, usually move on... they dont seem to attack the bedded, so put the wounded who have been treated on camp beds. after so many beatings your guys level up enough where they dont go down. you can find a rythym in failing, as long as you do not bleed out.. the raiders also burnout, their numbers are not infinite. but they have the numbers to make the birth of your base a nightmare, you'll eventually break a threshold in defenses where your base can be left running AFK., you can also run from every raid and return when they have left, until you have the levels to fight back.

i put the KO enemy stuff in his own inventory which he cannot seem to draw from

[Dangalf]

I did a lot of running away and looting for the first two weeks (in game) of this playthrough, but I've hit this point where I'm overwhelmed by the sheer numbers. It also seems as though the Black Dragon bandits are the worst. They immediately won the first fight and took over the Outpost. My squads' stats are pretty decent and I grabbed a bunch of Shel recruits from Waystation to try and even the odds, but I came back to EVEN MORE bandits occupying my Outpost.

When I get home I'll try to figure this out a bit more tactically, as I've been trying to just brute Force my way back into the Outpost.

[Grimmrog_SIG]

yeah the blakc drgaons are indeed a bit annoying in the beginning of the game, they have higher skills than regular bandits and come with stupid cut weapons. but they sometimes have blue ql weapons so thats some goo loot. maybe try to establish an early production chain, for simple leather cloth (dustcoat) you don't need masses of iron.

[Dangalf]

I was wondering if it would be worth setting up a second smaller less secure Outpost somewhere safer? Or will it get raided to death like the other?

[Grimmrog_SIG]

depends where you are, because that decides who raids you to some point.

I have a little farm in the HN
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1675015006

there turrets ontop of all the corners, it would have been better I would have build the houses door on the left facing the other house. There are no walls, just these few people and they work well with turrets. they grant you good damage and early on the river raptors are good turret training. later the black drgaon ninjs fall rather quickly to the turrest as well.

Maybe make another settlement closer to a town or patroulling area of a major faction they might help you or you can retreat to that town.

[Zorelnam]

I think it's because you settled on the road, so basically all the enemy patrols are quite literally bumping straight into your base.
I recommend to just let the base go and start again in the grey desert, close to outpost, figure out your research over there, then go back to recover your base.
Also you mentioned hiring new people, pay attention to their stats, usually you can tell who is going to win/lose a fight just based on their stats alone. In this game in particular Numbers NEVER make up for lack of skills. a skilled fighter is worth several times more than 3 poorly leveled characters

[Dangalf]

Originally posted by Grimmrog_SIG:

depends where you are, because that decides who raids you to some point.

I have a little farm in the HN
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1675015006

there turrets ontop of all the corners, it would have been better I would have build the houses door on the left facing the other house. There are no walls, just these few people and they work well with turrets. they grant you good damage and early on the river raptors are good turret training. later the black drgaon ninjs fall rather quickly to the turrest as well.

Maybe make another settlement closer to a town or patroulling area of a major faction they might help you or you can retreat to that town.

That's a pretty nice setup, I may try to do something like that just to have a place to make some food and money. I wanted to do something close to Stack, but one of my guys has a prosthetic leg and the Holy Nation keep attacking us when they see him...

[Grimmrog_SIG]

Originally posted by N E C R 0:

Originally posted by Grimmrog_SIG:

depends where you are, because that decides who raids you to some point.

I have a little farm in the HN
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1675015006

there turrets ontop of all the corners, it would have been better I would have build the houses door on the left facing the other house. There are no walls, just these few people and they work well with turrets. they grant you good damage and early on the river raptors are good turret training. later the black drgaon ninjs fall rather quickly to the turrest as well.

Maybe make another settlement closer to a town or patroulling area of a major faction they might help you or you can retreat to that town.

That's a pretty nice setup, I may try to do something like that just to have a place to make some food and money. I wanted to do something close to Stack, but one of my guys has a prosthetic leg and the Holy Nation keep attacking us when they see him...

take off his leg and carry him when you come close to them xD

[Dangalf]

Originally posted by Grimmrog_SIG:

Originally posted by N E C R 0:

That's a pretty nice setup, I may try to do something like that just to have a place to make some food and money. I wanted to do something close to Stack, but one of my guys has a prosthetic leg and the Holy Nation keep attacking us when they see him...

take off his leg and carry him when you come close to them xD

You know what... I never thought to do that, lol. It's tedious, but losing access to Stack really hurt my trade route and all of their available Mercs. Thanks for that idea!

Also, how early on can you research turrets? Is it difficult to obtain?

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by N E C R 0:

So I basically just started a first outpost, had a ton of building mats and stuff so I figured why not. Built it on the road between The Hub and Squin.......

Anyone have any suggestions? Did I just happen to choose the worst Outpost location possible?

Edit: the worst part is that the raid events keep happening, and it just keeps getting more and more difficult to recover from this.

You started your base a bit too early in your game's development. You're still using basic walls with no turrets...

Turrets are the "Number Won Bestest Thing" for base defense. Your total = 0?

Kang with a Strength of 24?? You haven't been putting your recruits through a Strength training program? Gotta carry rocks to grow strong, even Beep knows that. :)

From the icons, your gear is probably not optimal. What about your weapons? Still, doesn't matter, no Strong...

No murder hole, which is obvious, since no Turrets.

"Dark UI" mod? Modding already? :) tsk tsk ;) Play a bit, first, so you can get a feel for the mechanics. (Just an observation - I don't know if you're running any others.)

Money is on the very low end. Buying gear instead of crafting it, yourself? That's not good unless you're buying very expensive stuffs from very special vendors. Even then, you want almost all your gear crafted by your own highly skilled Craftspersons. At the very least, you can get a huge amount of armor smithing trained up in a town off of Leather farmed from animals that happen to be in the area. If you save all the Animal Skins until you're ready, you can train up an Armor Smith almost on turning them into Leather on their own, without even crafting any "armor." They'll be turning out High and Masterwork Dustcoats before you leave town. (Heavier armor isn't worth trying to craft until you get a base and produce the materials, though. Weapon Smithing the same, though you can train it up a little. Crossbows the same, though you can do a fair bit of training for a Crossbow Smith by making Bolts and those are cheap and easy to make in quantity.)

Build a base is not an Early Game activity. You need to be able to handle just about any roving Bandit-type group, including multiples of them. You should be able to roflstomp Dust Bandit camps in terms of your character's capabilities. A base without walkable walls and turrets will be turned into a giant Port-o-Let (Portable outhouse) by anyone who cares to knock on the door.

The groups that attacked you aren't lightweights. They're your Bandit Groups+ subfactions and they're nasty bartards you need to use to train up Turret gunners so you can fend of "Real Threats."

I didn't see any pack animals and not much storage. How did you transport your hundreds of stocked materials and resources? :) Did you stockpile a goodly amount of materials so you could build your base rapidly? It helps a great deal.

Did you try "Running Away?" It is a viable strategy if you're encountering just "too much to handle right now."

In short - You started too early, surrounded your base with cardboard, forgot to hang out a "No Solicitations" sign using your Turrets to hang them from, didn't have at least your main melee characters trained up, didn't have much research done and ended up getting owned by RNG subfaction attacks. That's not shameful, though, but it could have gone much better for you had you worked on some things.

Note: Bunches of people make the same mistake, so don't feel bad about it. You just have to set up things properly so when you start a base, it stays your base.

[Grimmrog_SIG]

Originally posted by N E C R 0:

Originally posted by Grimmrog_SIG:

take off his leg and carry him when you come close to them xD

You know what... I never thought to do that, lol. It's tedious, but losing access to Stack really hurt my trade route and all of their available Mercs. Thanks for that idea!

Also, how early on can you research turrets? Is it difficult to obtain?

if only for the trade route you could just let him at home. but if you might want to have to retreat or get all people through, you need to get creative.

turrest are pretty easy to research. you should be able for soe books if you have the walls already.

[Serina]

The first outpost I built on my first playthrough, I made the same mistake of building without having adequate protection (only had like 5 fresh recruits) and was wiped. If you don't want to hire mercenaries, you need to strengthen your group so you're able to better defend your base.

Not trying to put you down, but as someone else pointed out, your Kang's stats by day 75 seems low to me. My Kang has 36 str, 36 toughness and 24 dex at day 50 and that's with a lot of running around on the map because he has 66 athletics.

You seem to have had decent numbers, I think you just needed to plan better defense and strengthen your core group. :)

What I normally do is buy a house in one of the towns so I can safely research higher tier walls/turrets while strengthening my party at the same time.

[Dangalf]

Originally posted by Morkonan:

Originally posted by N E C R 0:

So I basically just started a first outpost, had a ton of building mats and stuff so I figured why not. Built it on the road between The Hub and Squin.......

Anyone have any suggestions? Did I just happen to choose the worst Outpost location possible?

Edit: the worst part is that the raid events keep happening, and it just keeps getting more and more difficult to recover from this.

You started your base a bit too early in your game's development. You're still using basic walls with no turrets...

Turrets are the "Number Won Bestest Thing" for base defense. Your total = 0?

Kang with a Strength of 24?? You haven't been putting your recruits through a Strength training program? Gotta carry rocks to grow strong, even Beep knows that. :)

From the icons, your gear is probably not optimal. What about your weapons? Still, doesn't matter, no Strong...

No murder hole, which is obvious, since no Turrets.

"Dark UI" mod? Modding already? :) tsk tsk ;) Play a bit, first, so you can get a feel for the mechanics. (Just an observation - I don't know if you're running any others.)

Money is on the very low end. Buying gear instead of crafting it, yourself? That's not good unless you're buying very expensive stuffs from very special vendors. Even then, you want almost all your gear crafted by your own highly skilled Craftspersons. At the very least, you can get a huge amount of armor smithing trained up in a town off of Leather farmed from animals that happen to be in the area. If you save all the Animal Skins until you're ready, you can train up an Armor Smith almost on turning them into Leather on their own, without even crafting any "armor." They'll be turning out High and Masterwork Dustcoats before you leave town. (Heavier armor isn't worth trying to craft until you get a base and produce the materials, though. Weapon Smithing the same, though you can train it up a little. Crossbows the same, though you can do a fair bit of training for a Crossbow Smith by making Bolts and those are cheap and easy to make in quantity.)

Build a base is not an Early Game activity. You need to be able to handle just about any roving Bandit-type group, including multiples of them. You should be able to roflstomp Dust Bandit camps in terms of your character's capabilities. A base without walkable walls and turrets will be turned into a giant Port-o-Let (Portable outhouse) by anyone who cares to knock on the door.

The groups that attacked you aren't lightweights. They're your Bandit Groups+ subfactions and they're nasty bartards you need to use to train up Turret gunners so you can fend of "Real Threats."

I didn't see any pack animals and not much storage. How did you transport your hundreds of stocked materials and resources? :) Did you stockpile a goodly amount of materials so you could build your base rapidly? It helps a great deal.

Did you try "Running Away?" It is a viable strategy if you're encountering just "too much to handle right now."

In short - You started too early, surrounded your base with cardboard, forgot to hang out a "No Solicitations" sign using your Turrets to hang them from, didn't have at least your main melee characters trained up, didn't have much research done and ended up getting owned by RNG subfaction attacks. That's not shameful, though, but it could have gone much better for you had you worked on some things.

Note: Bunches of people make the same mistake, so don't feel bad about it. You just have to set up things properly so when you start a base, it stays your base.

I'm not going to reply to everything you just said, but I think I understand you. I think it's a mixture of not being fully ready for the bandit attacks (most of my party is not combat-efficient and also have realized most of them are wearing backpacks that reduce combat effectiveness) and the outpost itself being in a really awkward spot (did some exploring and found several hostile bandit and Shek camps nearby... woops).

So I think what I'll do is spend some more time around The Hub, using the Shinobi Thieve's training dummies to train up my new Shek recruits, loot them some decent heavy armor and try to get rid of the trading backpacks that are preventing them from fighting properly.

I also did not know anything about crafting armour or weapons, but it's good to know that producing my own will be more effective than buying them from vendors. It was getting pretty expensive.

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by N E C R 0:

I'm not going to reply to everything you just said, but I think I understand you. I think it's a mixture of not being fully ready for the bandit attacks (most of my party is not combat-efficient and also have realized most of them are wearing backpacks that reduce combat effectiveness) and the outpost itself being in a really awkward spot (did some exploring and found several hostile bandit and Shek camps nearby... woops).

So I think what I'll do is spend some more time around The Hub, using the Shinobi Thieve's training dummies to train up my new Shek recruits, loot them some decent heavy armor and try to get rid of the trading backpacks that are preventing them from fighting properly.

I also did not know anything about crafting armour or weapons, but it's good to know that producing my own will be more effective than buying them from vendors. It was getting pretty expensive.

Read over this, it's a decent starting guide:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1576181991

Regular Starving and Dust Bandits should not be an issue. Shek braves/berserkers/whatever, Ninjas, etc are like your "next tier of regular aggressors." Then, you'll likely get visits by Major Factions with demands that you pay them tribute in food, money or participating in Prayer Day... And, if you refuse, they will not be amused.

Make liberal use of Mercenaries when necessary. You can hire a Merc group to protect your base for you. They're pretty decent and you can hire more than one group, too. They won't likely stomp a true major Faction's units, but they could with your help.

Turrets, turrets, turrets... With a properly constructed muder-hole/killbox and a mix of advanced Turrets and Harpoons, you'll pile corpses up in front of your gates.

Items you make are going to likely end up being better than anything you can buy, eventually. Only special one-of-a-kind weapons that are carried by named major NPCs can be better.

But, above all, have fun. That's the only "strategy" you should really pay attention to. If that means building a strong base, then prepare as best you can to do that. If not, that's cool too. :)