Is Cassandra Classic: just one raid after another?

[Exanthos]

To me, this seems like the most merciless AI, as she never gives you anything but raids and maybe a drop pod after every three or so raids. I am on rough difficulty, but I've tried her on easier ones, and that only makes the raiders slightly less well equipped.
Should I just avoid Cassandra?

[Astasia]

Raids are a good thing and important to progress. They deliver weapons and resources, and if you can down them and strip them, sometimes decent armor. Casandra has the most consistant raiding, it allows you to keep on top of things more easily and you always know where you stand in terms of scaling. Phoebe will send raids a lot less often if that's what you want, but they will be at the same strength and might surprise and overwelm you if you aren't prepared. Randy could potentially drop multiple raids on you at once, or he could send you nothing but cargo pods full of feet for an entire quadrum.

If you are dreading raids it's generally a sign you need to up your defenses. It's not too difficult to create defensive setups that allow you to break every raid that comes at you without drafting a single pawn, at any stage of the game, on any difficulty. Traps and turrets can turn raids into free resource deliveries, and then you'll be excited every time one spawns.

[grapplehoeker]

I love Cassandra and I play her on extreme. Sure, she is relentless. She'll keep sending raid after raid after raid, but that's my bread and butter. I wouldn't have it anyother way. I make fortunes from those raids ;)
It has to be said though that she isn't merciless. She can also be quite benign. In between or in place of some raids, she'll send you a little something that will aid you. She'll also help to raise your colony numbers. It's almost seems as if she is intent on setting you up for the raids and that's because that is precisely what she's doing ;)

[Exanthos]

Thanks for the responses

[M.K.]

Tried Cassandra Merciless.
I have had a good base up, strong defenses, can handle almost any raid without casualties.
BUT
I am actually running out of food, as i have to dedicate every single colonist to the repair/maintenance of the defenses, and gathering basic resourced with which to do so.
Not to mention cremating the corpses, i have two crematoriums running 24/7. Feelign a bit Auschwitz, frankly.
.
P.S.
Just how does Cassandra justify sending a tribal raid(35 dweebs), then the very next day a herd of manhunting ELEPHANTS! 12 of them. They seem to ignore passages, they make their own doors, followed 2 days layer with a psychic mech ship **IN** my base, right on my flower garden.
.
I have now dealt with the ship, but half of my base is destroyed by the crossfire and I've had to convert my grain store to a field hospital.
And everyone is too busy tending their wounds and rebuilding walls, the tribals are starting to rot in the battleground.

[grapplehoeker]

That's just Cassandra's way. She's a killer ;)
It's all down to your colonist count and colony wealth. The more you have, the more severe she'll be. For example, in my current playthrough on Cassandra savage, my base may have raids of 30+ hostiles and other events back to back, but over at the tiny mining camp in the tile next door, the raids/events will rarely be more than 2 and the 3 trapped turrets there can deal with that. In fact I pulled everybody back to the main base two years ago and the mining base is still intact lol.

[Immortalits]

I like phoebe, because most 'raid' related events are escaping members of other factions chased down by raiders and I can chose to NOT help them, so I'm not bothered.
I've just got a reminder of how insanely strong uranium slug turrets are... a mechanoid ship crashed in front of my base... I've set up things to kill it quickly...
2 scyters were inside, they've rushed up to my colonists and then that happened:
One of the side uranium slug turrets around 20-25 tiles away missed it's auto targeted scyter and... and it got the back of my resercher... the shot straight up destroyed her entire spine through a MASTERWORK (better armor quality mod) marine armor AND and excelent thrumbofur T-shirt...

As far as I've experienced, if your pawns are well equipped, and you haven't mindlessly created an insanely large stockpile of resources, then the raids and all around power lvl of other combat related events are more like a mosquito next to your ears when you try to sleep, than like a challange, that you're facing...
Altho I'm now a full anti-bionic and because I still haven't modified the growing vats mod for my self to only allow organs / body parts, the missing fingers and the dev mode healer mech serum spawning is a bit annoying sometimes, it's still easy to manage.

If you're setting up and controlling resource production, then you can even make your colony stagnate in wealth, like I've managed to do now.
Closing in on 5th year in my new colony and in the last half to 1 year, the summarized colony wealth haven't changed much, it's moving around 332k +/-3 and insanely slowly increasing because of transitioning armors from excelent to masterwork for everyone.
My muffalo herd with well set up sockpile zones for corn helps me keep the stocked corn in check, the extra meat and corn is also transfered into kibble and that goes to the few male muffalos, because I'm keeping them locked in a small room so they don't overpopulate :D
The undanted extra ones are just helping me to keep up the kibble production XD

The best 'warning' indicator so far for me other than actual raid sizes is the 'trhumbo wandering'.
The ammount of thrumbos are a good indicator of your colony's wealth... if you had 2 thrumbos last time and now 5 comes in after 2-3 months or a year and your know, that your combat power haven't improved much and you've barely kept out the raid previously, then you know you're in big sh*t.
Best if you call in a friendly trader and gift away at least half of your resources.

[Immortalits]

Originally posted by M.K.:

Tried Cassandra Merciless.
I have had a good base up, strong defenses, can handle almost any raid without casualties.
BUT
I am actually running out of food, as i have to dedicate every single colonist to the repair/maintenance of the defenses, and gathering basic resourced with which to do so.
Not to mention cremating the corpses, i have two crematoriums running 24/7. Feelign a bit Auschwitz, frankly.
.
P.S.
Just how does Cassandra justify sending a tribal raid(35 dweebs), then the very next day a herd of manhunting ELEPHANTS! 12 of them. They seem to ignore passages, they make their own doors, followed 2 days layer with a psychic mech ship **IN** my base, right on my flower garden.
.
I have now dealt with the ship, but half of my base is destroyed by the crossfire and I've had to convert my grain store to a field hospital.
And everyone is too busy tending their wounds and rebuilding walls, the tribals are starting to rot in the battleground.

So far I've noticed, that ship drops and thigns like that tend to avoid the middle section of the map, even on flatlands (I dislike mountain bases because of the baseline cheese option).
I'm happily killing off raids with a fortress in the middle, altho only on normal, thinking about cracking up diff a bit now, that my base is up 'n' runin'.

I personally love phoebe cause she lets me take care of my meddling things in my base, lets me do my stuff, but when sh*t happens, that is something interesting, especially in my older games, where I still haven't figured out ways to keep my base's value controlled.
10 raiders easy to deal with... won... 1,5 year later... 50+ tribals swarming me down, everyone downed/killed.

But super hard diffs are not suitable my playstyle, because I'm only playing with fix 10 colonists.
But I might try a big diff crank up once to max just to feel it :D
My previous experiences are that I can't even afford to use bionics or other narural organ replacements, because they increase the value of a colonist too much... just a single bionic implant doubles the value of a colonist, with it's ~1000 silver market price and just a single one would increase the base value by 10.000, not to mention a full bionic setup or archotech...
but now as I'm trying out minmaxing, the masterwork wooden double beds are excelent, wooden floor is just enough, steril tile is only required to the dedicated rooms, others are good with wood and stone tiles. Now as I've focused the wealth / colonists into equipment only and minimized the stored resources, raids became a fly, that I just slap away, so I migh even be able to handle much harder diffs now.