how do you design an open base effectively?

[CptZhu]

^

[Cannenses]

What terrain do you have? Mind sharing a map? Easier to use a point of reference.

[CptZhu]

I wish I could post screenshots in the comments

[CptZhu]

Originally posted by Cannenses:

What terrain do you have? Mind sharing a map? Easier to use a point of reference.

https://gyazo.com/d1cd855eaf42b6c27d34d1ccc7190e35

[Morkonan]

If you mean "without a wall" then:

Use the walls of buildings to limit access to entrances and the interior spaces of your base.

Make good use of Bunkers as defensive positions and use buildings/walls to screen your retreat to secondary positions.

Traps = Good.

Large buildings should always have defensible areas worked into their construction. Long hallways are broken up by "L" shapes with defensive positions that increase the numbers one can bear against the enemy and that allow one to attack the limited front that rushing enemies present at those choke-points.

Doors. Doors are good. Lock them open if they're slowing you down during peacetime, unlock them during a Raid so they close.

Build a "Safe Room" in case everything else fails and make sure there is a protected line of retreat to it. Make sure it has enough room, put PSEs in there, a switch with a battery and that controls exterior turrets that can cover the doorway is nice... Get in there, lock the door, "hope."

[Cannenses]

The layout plan for this type of terrain is different than what I'd do - but that's a personal choice. But you're blocking one of the geysers (for geothermal generator) if you need for later.

I will share more info in a bit.

[MortVent]

Stagger lines of sight/firezone.

Create killzones, not necessarily killboxes but areas where you can funnel attackers into a shooting gallery.

Have defense structures for you to use to defend (think pillboxes/bunkers) as well as use traps/turrets. Or simply barricades in places for shooting positions

And don't forget the usefulness of things like fences, trees, etc. Things that normally don't get though of as defensive but do provide some cover or slow foes. I actually had a lot of use out of trees planted in the middle of my main pathways for minor cover (or simply walls with doors in random spots to give my people a way to get through and then have cover on the other side)

[Cannenses]

As a general rule, for open bases, I would do this:

1. Use more than one building.
The alleyways and buildings itself will become the defensive kill-zones if they parachute in on top. If not, you can take your time to prepare a defence.

If your actual buildings are your kill-zones, you stop worrying about laying better or additional traps, special doors, etc. You get on with it, the raiders can drop on top, but you are already familiar with which location to start shooting -- both inside and outside, because you've been staring at your own buildings the whole game.

Note: My buildings have more corners than necessary (map, below).

2. Go closer to one side of map.

Does not matter which side -- as long as you're not smack in the middle. I know this is not "convention" and I have seen many suggestions against this. The reason I do it is that I know which direction the game AI chooses to send raiders (at least in the beginning). It will stop sending this side consistently once you consistently stop the raiders without much loss (in wealth).

If it's truly in the middle, they come from all sides, all the time.

3. My map as example:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2659959817

Orange -- main building (no residents, only slaves and prisoners).

Green -- residence building, closest to edge of map. Allows pawns to react faster to this edge of the map, where raids will come most often (in the beginning).

Red -- stock & materials, mainly delivered by animals (hauling), but next to residence. If I need a pawn to collect/haul item just as they need to rest or as they wake up, it's more convenient.

4. I never build "layered" kill-zones. It's too much hassle and I'm too lazy, lol.

5. Animals Pens (and therefore, grow-zones too)
Placing of pens is very important - for food delivery, slaughtering, caravan packing, counter-attack, etc. Mine is just north of kitchen (top-left of Orange) and caravan spot is also nearby to kitchen and animals (beside the kitchen, again top-left of Orange).

[ichifish]

Open bases are like open marriages: they can go well for a long time but get upended in the blink of an eye.

Along with the advice above I’d add that good tactical play (and micro) is a must, so you have to know your pawns well and be able to push them hard. Psycasts are game-changers, as are the usual tools of lances and jump packs. I only started using open bases once I’d been using those things to fight most raids in the field.

The time that it takes raids to reach your base from the edge of the map is “free shots.” Use it to wound as many as possible, especially for melee rushes.

Make sure you have a room for your last stand that doesn’t offer enemies many opportunities to shoot into. Basically a door that faces a wall a few tiles away is good, a door that faces the whole map is bad.

Keep in mind that you can’t just lock the doors to keep out manhunters, so it’s good to have a space that everyone can be locked into with the necessities to keep busy and fed for a day or so. On my last map that was the workshop, which had a shelf (LWM’s deep storage) with a table, stools, bedrolls and survival meals for caravanning.

All that said I still put up walls in places where there’s good terrain to force enemies to path in ways that advantageous to me, and when I’m getting massive mech raids late game I generally give in and build a wall around the base.

[Spack Jarrow]

use single wall for cover , it has 75% cover rate when shooting , bags or doors inbetween single walls , because they slow down the enemy , provide cover from awkward angles and let you shoot trough, you can also place slabs around your defences (as in create dumping zone and then carry rocks) and clear out area that you expect enemy to come from , from all rocks and trees.

Enclose any electronics , enemies will try to go for it, steal or destroy.

I tend to create outpost/bunkers in the early game with single entrance trapped
Melee defender holding the choke these can be as small

[Païtiti]

You dont because open bases do not work. At some time the sheer amount of raiders will eventually overwhelm you and kill your pawns. It is not the heavily armored droppod raids which are the issue here but melee mobs and manhunter packs as they will rush you down. So only when played on low difficulty they are somewhat viable but not on higher ones.

[coyo7e]

Open Bases are fine until the first toxic fallout.

[Monty]

Open bases absolutely work. I do have a perimeter wall, but it is there mainly to delay enemies while i assemble the troops. It will always have at least 3 openings 5 cells wide onto the main roads into my base.

Melee and manhunters can be dealt with by drawing them into the spaces between buildings to limit the number of melees. Aside from the main road, the gaps between buildings can be anywhere from 1 to 3 cells wide. The buildings normally 7x7 or 7x14. It will take a bit for the enemies to work their way around your choke point to flank and i am either prepared to deal with them or have room to fall back to another choke point.

Roofed walk ways take care of toxic fallout. If the span is too far, build some wall segments 14 cells apart and roof between them. Build some lights to light the path to keep walking speed up and your done. best thing is you can smash the supports to remove the roof quickly, bonus points if there are raiders under it.

Recently i have started spreading my crafting stations into various locations around my base with small stockpiles of relevant resources. If i am at the point of being overrun, one of these has been broken into and the raiders will choose to steal what they can and leave. Better to lose a stack of components than a colonist.

My main defence plan is to hold the main roads leading the the centre of my colony with long ranged pawns who form the main fighting force. Melee and grenadier pawns move into the narrow paths between buildings to flank ranged enemy units or close in behind melee enemies. Place traps in places you know the enemy will try to take cover.

[Spack Jarrow]

The real problem of open bases is that you always get attacked by higher number of enemies. You're always fighting 2v1 as far as pawn count is considered if you think of this in terms of pure dps , the whole exercise is dire. Last time I checked even Disabled pawns add full points into threat calculation... from my observation every pawn in your party adds 1-2 enemy pawns and that becomes more extreme as you go over pop limit.
Every 10k or so of wealth 1 more pawn gets added and Threat also goes up over time.
Everything is ok , you get large pause , then suddenly Space cops attack with long range weapons that easily outdps you.

The True way to play this game is "not to play". The less wealth the better, The less Pawns also better, You're better of running in rags , but have a good weapon , than fully kit out your pawns god forbid you install bionics. Which is sad I hate systems that punish player for trying to play it.

This is also why modded Rimworld is hit and miss, because it requires additional Wealth in order to get to the "fun bits" , you'd be stacking 10's of thausands of wealth in Production facilities.

Slaves Count as "Fully Fledged" Colonists , when realistically you can't arm them with anything sensible other than maybe stun-granades, so slavery is punished.

Every time A pawn doesn't die to an event, the game in essence gets upset

Animals , that have high trainability also feed into threat.
You want to play the game without cheesing , you have to take every penny into consideration. At least on higher difficulty levels.

This might be slightly outdated, because I haven't checked the threat method in a little while , but the general sense has always stayed the same.

Finally You take on a mission to Save someone , 3 Raids drop you from 3 different side and in the middle of these 3 raids, another unrelated enemy attacks. Good luck with that event chain

Combat:
Let's talk about Rimworld combat, Skill does not matter in Rimworld as much as you think, you see , because threat gets proportionally bigger to your wealth and colony size, you cannot compansate with skilled shooters.

1 no weapon makes enuf dps to warrant 3v1 mid-late game.
2 even a single shot can essentially halve your accuracy

A lvl 20 melee can loose to level 1 if lvl 1 hurts the other one first by a lucky roll.
Say you get hit in your hand and your Manipulation goes down by 50% , add pain (therefore lower consciousness). You're dead meat.
Don't get hit is the name of the game.

[Monty]

Originally posted by Spack Jarrow:

The True way to play this game is "not to play". The less wealth the better, The less Pawns also better, You're better of running in rags , but have a good weapon , than fully kit out your pawns god forbid you install bionics. Which is sad I hate systems that punish player for trying to play it.

I feel like you are over exaggerating the effects of wealth a little.

The armour and weapons your pawns are using is only a fraction of the total colony wealth. Colony resource should always go to better armour, better weapons, crafting stations to make better gear and then the rest of the colony. The better you make your pawns, the lower the chances of losing one.

There is an option to turn off wealth scaling which can be done at any time under the storyteller settings. Without wealth it will just be time that scales threats, reaching max after 12 years by default.