Murderholes, my favorite non-killbox defence

[Wittyson!]

When I play a tribal playthrough, one of my favorite ways to defend is by using a murder hole. What these do is funnel each enemy in a small L-shaped corridor to be defeated by a posse of 3 melee guys at the front and a bunch of recurve-bow users at the back. This allows for melee guys to attack 3 on 1 and limits the effectiveness of ranged users not on your side. I will show a screenshot below to demonstrate what I mean.

[Wittyson!]

Wait, um, how do you post screenshots again?

[HunterSilver]

Take a picture in steam, click the upload button, then click 'share' to get the link to post it. Melee is actually quite good when you force enemies to walk right into your units.

[Bozobub]

F12 in game for Steam screenie, then open Steam and go Steam>View>Screenshots to force an upload (if you haven't finished your game session). The screenshot uploader SHOULD start when you exit any game you've taken screenies in but in my experience it often fails to trigger; if so, just do go to Screenshots, they'll be there.

Once you have one or more screenies you want to share, the trick is to get the right link, so it shows like below. You get this by going to Steam>{Your username}>Content; you' see small versions of every screenie, ever. Click on a given image and it'll pop up in a window, with the link you want at the top. That gives you the nice screenie previews (sorry, totally boring, I don't take many RW screenies ^^'):
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=962663351

If you quote my post, you'll see how the link should appear. If it just ends with a forward slash ("/") it's not a disaster, people will b able to navigate to your link, but it won't be the purty version =).

[Wittyson!]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2117280900

Thanks to Bozobub for the help

[MayoCulpa]

Ohhh yeah! Those are pretty neat. I'd read people describing them but could never get the hang of the pawn arrangement until just recently.

Having a muffalo trained to guard following one of my melee pawns helped me out with this a bunch. It's close enough that the shotgun squad won't hit it, and soaks up damage so the colonists on either side of the door stay up longer.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2091379515

[Raymond]

I can see how this will work in early game. For late game you won't have enough pawns to scale with raider numbers without strict wealth control or against continuous back-to-back raids.

[Wittyson!]

The worst situation you can be in with this is probably with centipedes, as they can pretty much tank anything and always try to fire their gun, which is usually lethal at that distance.

[gussmed]

That's not true. If a centipede is engaged in melee, it doesn't shoot. I've regularly shut down centipedes by attacking them hand to hand. They're unpleasant in melee, but when they shoot they're worse. Typically I'll have one melee attacker and a host of colonists shooting it at range 2.

That said, this isn't an effective defense against ranged attackers. Including centipedes. They just won't move forward past the bend, and the melee defenders have to move forward. At which point the advantage is all to the attackers, since they've got an entire corridor of ranged attackers that can shoot at the melee defender.

Honestly, against melee attackers - the only case where the 3:1 advantage comes into play - I'd rather engage them with guns across an open field.

[Wittyson!]

I have had the problem with ranged attacks with the corridor, I guess just setting up a barricade and wall mix outside will have to be the main strategy, allowing for the murderhole to be when they have to retreat and the melee-guys are the only option.