kill box defense question

[Nekochan]

I'm wondering how people defend their turrets from melee. The best I've been able to come up with is putting barbed wire in front of them but this doesn't really stop heavily armored/shielded melee dudes from coming up and waking the crap out of my turrets.

For reference on what I need help with.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2148056819

[jacobellinger]

.move the turrets to the back because the problem you are having is the turrets have a very shallow line of sight with those walls so only so many can shoot at one time. and by the time they get line of sight the attackers are too close to kill before they can get shot.

another thing is your opening needs to be a longer hallway because if you've noticed attackers tend to bunch up and come out of the hallway in a blob but if you make it longer and fill it with sand bags they 1, will take longer walking through it. 2, wont be able to hide because the ai can't stop on a tile a sand bag acupies.

finally note the range of your turrets and try to make it so that they curcle the exit of the hallway at the farthest range you can.

so in short.
1.make the kill box a kill curcle.
2. don't block the line of sight of your turrets with walls.
3. make sure the opening is longer so the enemy has time to 'stretch out' so to speak.


a final note. your really missing out not having a spot for your pawns to shoot from unless there is something i'm not seeing like a secondary kill box some place behind this one.

[Nekochan]

Originally posted by jacobellinger:

.move the turrets to the back because the problem you are having is the turrets have a very shallow line of sight with those walls so only so many can shoot at one time. and by the time they get line of sight the attackers are too close to kill before they can get shot.

another thing is your opening needs to be a longer hallway because if you've noticed attackers tend to bunch up and come out of the hallway in a blob but if you make it longer and fill it with sand bags they 1, will take longer walking through it. 2, wont be able to hide because the ai can't stop on a tile a sand bag acupies.

finally note the range of your turrets and try to make it so that they curcle the exit of the hallway at the farthest range you can.

so in short.
1.make the kill box a kill curcle.
2. don't block the line of sight of your turrets with walls.
3. make sure the opening is longer so the enemy has time to 'stretch out' so to speak.


a final note. your really missing out not having a spot for your pawns to shoot from unless there is something i'm not seeing like a secondary kill box some place behind this one.

I thought about sandbags but I don't want to slow my pawns entering and leaving the base, I'm afraid if I put a blase door somewhere they will try to attack it first.

I'll play with the circle idea later today, but you are saying don't do the sawtooth formation? How do I protect other turrets from one turret blowing up in that case?

While I have the best pawns in all the galaxy (any other opinion is wrong lol). MMy goal is to limit their exposure to the front line and only use them for anything that actually gets in the base. I have pop-ups in a few places to act as decoys in those cases.

[Hedgie]

If you have doors raiders won't attack them if you have that open "corridor"

[HunterSilver]

I'd recommend creating airlocks for your colonists and guests to use to enter and exit your base. Airlocks reduce the ability for enemies to sneak in along with your colonists and even if sufficient numbers of them aggro onto the door and destroy the outermost door, innermost doors will remain safe and enemy raiders will repath. Sappers also won't target them unless you're putting beds inside of the airlock and surrounding your innerwalls with turrets.

This will allow you to boobytrap your killbox more efficiently. The walls on the side are also a huge liability as enemy raiders can use them as cover once your turrets are destroyed.

Similarly you need something to force enemy raiders to move forward or else they'll use your entrance wall as cover. A two wide entrance also lets raiders pour in really quickly. A single tile wide killbox entrance really bottlenecks them and lets your turrets deal with the frontline threat rather than letting them get overwhelmed.

I use a variation of this for most bases and it works fine. I haven't had to fight more than 27 centipedes simultaneously with it, but it works up to that many if you have decent colonists with good guns and psychic powers.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2148087258

Edit: I've also seen a lot of modern killbox variants that fill the hallway and entrance with debris rocks. This likely works better than my method of using sandbags/blockades. Rocks likely force raiders to move forward rather than allowing them to stop and shoot. Enemies walking on sandbags or blockades will generally move forward but can stop and fire from on top of it.

[starbabylon]

I don't use kill boxes at all, but I remember something that sounded interesting: wooden floor and fire, of course you need to change the floor after each use, but wood is generally pretty cheap unless you play certain biomes.

[HunterSilver]

Originally posted by starbabylon:

I don't use kill boxes at all, but I remember something that sounded interesting: wooden floor and fire, of course you need to change the floor after each use, but wood is generally pretty cheap unless you play certain biomes.

The only problem with this is that mechanoids are immune to heat damage and thus fire. Otherwise fire is a great way to injure and panic humans and animals, yeah.

[Nekochan]

More like this?

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2148178967

[HunterSilver]

That works a lot better. The only change I'd recommend is putting sandbags at the corners of your bottleneck so that enemies won't use the walls as cover. The way they path they will try to move over sandbags before they begin to attack, so they'll generally move past cover and into the open where they will eat ♥♥♥♥.

[jacobellinger]

Originally posted by Nekochan:

Originally posted by jacobellinger:

.move the turrets to the back because the problem you are having is the turrets have a very shallow line of sight with those walls so only so many can shoot at one time. and by the time they get line of sight the attackers are too close to kill before they can get shot.

another thing is your opening needs to be a longer hallway because if you've noticed attackers tend to bunch up and come out of the hallway in a blob but if you make it longer and fill it with sand bags they 1, will take longer walking through it. 2, wont be able to hide because the ai can't stop on a tile a sand bag acupies.

finally note the range of your turrets and try to make it so that they curcle the exit of the hallway at the farthest range you can.

so in short.
1.make the kill box a kill curcle.
2. don't block the line of sight of your turrets with walls.
3. make sure the opening is longer so the enemy has time to 'stretch out' so to speak.


a final note. your really missing out not having a spot for your pawns to shoot from unless there is something i'm not seeing like a secondary kill box some place behind this one.

I thought about sandbags but I don't want to slow my pawns entering and leaving the base, I'm afraid if I put a blase door somewhere they will try to attack it first.

I'll play with the circle idea later today, but you are saying don't do the sawtooth formation? How do I protect other turrets from one turret blowing up in that case?


that's why you want them at the back and not the sides. walls seperating them is fine when they only need to fire forward but the way they are in the screen shot they all try to fire sideways.

[Raymond]

Originally posted by Nekochan:

I thought about sandbags but I don't want to slow my pawns entering and leaving the base, I'm afraid if I put a blase door somewhere they will try to attack it first.

Just build the doors and don't let the raiders see your pawns using them during a raid. use sandbag to fill the entrance so they can't take cover over the entrance of the killbox.

[grapplehoeker]

Entry way:
Why slow the raid coming through the entry way down when you can kill and maim many of them instead with traps? Or use traps and sandbags, either way kill, kill, kill ;)
Make your entry corridor two cells wide and then fill it with a zig zag pattern of steel traps.
Killbox:
As for your turrets, don't rely on turrets alone. Support them with your own pawns (you have 16 of them!). Have them shoot from cover of doorways with melee in front and your ranged shooters standing directly behind. The turrets will draw aggro from the raiders, allowing your shooters (who will do more damage anyway) to fire at will.
Think about turret spacing too. You don't want them too close together or else if and when one of them explodes, the blast radius will damage or destroy any turret adjacent to it too.

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by Nekochan:

I'm wondering how people defend their turrets from melee. ...

Kill the melee before they reach your turrets?

The point being - If melee units, presumably shielded, are reaching your turrets so they can beat on them, then you can't ask them nicely to stop doing that... You have to kill them before they can start beating on your turrets.

You've got "turret overkill" going on, there. No "kill maze" with all that effort at planting turrets? Why? Build a maze that has a passage two squares wide, so your own colonists can reset the traps without having to walk on them. At the entrance to your "kill zone" place some sandbags in the passage. Not so the enemy has firing positions, but so they can not stop there and use the walls of the opening for cover - Enemies can not stop moving on top of a sandbag.

Not one fire-foam popper? Why? Those will save you a lot of costly trouble for little expense. And, they'll temporarily short out all shield belts in range... ;) Doesn't that sound nice?

A couple of IEDs in the middle area, preferably next to a sandbag or a wall segment to lure enemies right to that safe looking, but mined, "cover" would be nice, too. A one-segment wall with a roof around it would be extra-special - The resulting collapsing roof would do extra damage after the IED went off and blew away the flimsy wooden wall segment holding it all up. Just make sure not to connect that roof to the supporting walls of your kill-box.

Some snipers and Bolt-Action Rifle users at the far end should have enough range to do some serious damage when raiders first enter and any that pause to attack turrets should be easy targets. Set up some firing positions.

[jacobellinger]

Originally posted by Morkonan:

Originally posted by Nekochan:

I'm wondering how people defend their turrets from melee. ...

Kill the melee before they reach your turrets?

The point being - If melee units, presumably shielded, are reaching your turrets so they can beat on them, then you can't ask them nicely to stop doing that... You have to kill them before they can start beating on your turrets.

You've got "turret overkill" going on, there. No "kill maze" with all that effort at planting turrets? Why? Build a maze that has a passage two squares wide, so your own colonists can reset the traps without having to walk on them. At the entrance to your "kill zone" place some sandbags in the passage. Not so the enemy has firing positions, but so they can not stop there and use the walls of the opening for cover - Enemies can not stop moving on top of a sandbag.

Not one fire-foam popper? Why? Those will save you a lot of costly trouble for little expense. And, they'll temporarily short out all shield belts in range... ;) Doesn't that sound nice?

Some snipers and Bolt-Action Rifle users at the far end should have enough range to do some serious damage when raiders first enter and any that pause to attack turrets should be easy targets. Set up some firing positions.

at the stage of the game he is in traps are a waste of resources. I mean you can still use them but your gonna be lucky if your traps kill even a single enemy do to all the advanced armor and or mechinoids.

Firefome poppers is always good. Snipers are good too but honestly some high quality autimatic guns are better at taking out waves.

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by jacobellinger:

...

at the stage of the game he is in traps are a waste of resources. I mean you can still use them but your gonna be lucky if your traps kill even a single enemy do to all the advanced armor and or mechinoids.

Firefome poppers is always good. Snipers are good too but honestly some high quality autimatic guns are better at taking out waves.

Every trap you decide to not put down is one less trap the enemy has to worry about. At that stage in the game, if he's worried about "trap resetting/building" resources, something is... wrong. (I haven't played in awhile, so if some major changes have been patched in I'd be ignorant. But, I've never been upset about building even just wooden traps. Slowing down the enemy with injuries so they'll take more hits as they hobble towards your pawns is a pretty valuable thing to do.)

On weapons - Sure, HQ weapons of any type are good. I was only thinking about range and protecting his colonists. With all of those turrets firing, it's not volume of fire he needs, it's accurate heavy hits to take out specific targets. Those Raiders are going to be eating fifty kinds of lead from thirty different directions, but none of that is going to be working intelligently to single-out those melee specialists trying to beat on turrets. (Putting in a mix is a good idea, but range, accuracy, and heavy hits can't be ignored if he wants to take out specific targets.)

Then again, land mines are "To whom it may concern" too and are pretty effective. :)

[St3amfails]

if you play with mods I use one called open the windows. Always thought it was silly you could build a spaceship but not build a wall with a hole in it. Adds a lot to base design including giving you a way to protect turrets from melee