What defensive structure are better, wall or sandbag?

[ctrCat]

Also I wander why sandbag needs metals for construction. By wall I mean if my colonist gonna use it like cover and not 9x safe box.

[Glerk]

A combination of both.

[ambi]

I believe the best setup is SWSWSWSWS where S is a sandbag, and W is a wall. If you place your colonist behind a wall, they'll use it as cover and peak over the side to shoot. A wall will also block rockets and explosions while a sandbag won't.

Also, I use a mod that allows you to build sandbags out of cloth or leather. I think it's called Better Sandbags.

[ctrCat]

emmm I just want to ask if whick cover will gives me the best chance to avoid bullet hit. For example: if enemy hide behind sanbag I got 30% chance to hit and if he hide behind wall I got 40% chance to hit.

[Terripan]

Originally posted by klacoste:

I believe the best setup is SWSWSWSWS where S is a sandbag, and W is a wall. If you place your colonist behind a wall, they'll use it as cover and peak over the side to shoot. A wall will also block rockets and explosions while a sandbag won't.

Also, I use a mod that allows you to build sandbags out of cloth or leather. I think it's called Better Sandbags.

Some people also do SWWSWWSWWS where two people fit behind a wall and (optionally) one person fits behind a sandbag. In my opinion, there should be an option to make sand out of stone chunks (sand is just crushed rock, isn't it?) and then sandbags should then require sand and cloth. In my opinion, at least. I don't do computers well enough to able to figure out how to mod.

[ctrCat]

I don't see any benefits to combine walls with sanbags only in order to avoid missed enemy shoot or mg spray intended to hit another target.

[Terripan]

Originally posted by Neuromancer:

emmm I just want to ask if whick cover will gives me the best chance to avoid bullet hit. For example: if enemy hide behind sanbag I got 30% chance to hit and if he hide behind wall I got 40% chance to hit.

Sorry to post 2 comments in a row, your new question didn't exist when I posted my other answer. Walls will give a better bullet cover %, which is why you put them behind the wall in the WSWSW set up. I believe walls give 75% cover and sandbags give 65%, while stone chunks give 50%. There are several factors that go into shooting accuracy, and I don't know how much cover affects hit chance, but it is certainly significant enough that some people use valuable time in the beginning of the game to do controlled burnings of forests and haul stone chunks large distances to get rid of cover for the enemy.

[ctrCat]

yeah thx this is just wat I asking, do u know another bonuses for cover like trees bonus?

[BlackSmokeDMax]

Originally posted by Neuromancer:

yeah thx this is just wat I asking, do u know another bonuses for cover like trees bonus?

To find the number for any item, select it, then click on the i for info in the window in lower left. Should be listed.

[grapplehoeker]

Originally posted by Neuromancer:

What defensive structure are better, wall or sandbag?

Neither.
Because they will only be temporary cover more often or not. You shouldn't plan on having your pawns fixed behind cover anywhere unless it's in a doorway that they can duck behind.
If you stick to static cover such as a wall or a sandbag, then you're allowing your target to get a good firing solution, possible flank and of course there's the shielded melee coming to lop off your limbs. Stay mobile ;)

[Terripan]

Originally posted by grapplehoeker:

Originally posted by Neuromancer:

What defensive structure are better, wall or sandbag?

Neither.
Because they will only be temporary cover more often or not. You shouldn't plan on having your pawns fixed behind cover anywhere unless it's in a doorway that they can duck behind.
If you stick to static cover such as a wall or a sandbag, then you're allowing your target to get a good firing solution, possible flank and of course there's the shielded melee coming to lop off your limbs. Stay mobile ;)

There's a reason my profile picture is a terrapin. I ALWAYS try to go on the defensive side of things. Offense is a last resort used only when the sake of the whole colony is a stake. But melee people seem to be offensive by nature - you usually don't put melee guys behind sandbags to eliminate an enemy force. So what I do with my melee guys is put them behind my ranged attackers, and when any fool tries to hop into my bunker, if they aren't cut to pieces by traps/gunfire then they are typically finished off by my ikwa wielding colonists. The only exceptions to the "no offense" rule is when the enemy is retreating and injured/elderly raiders fall behind and get killed/downed, and the unlikely chance that I get a shield belt, which has only happened once because even 5 years in not a single pirate has acknowledged shields exists on Cassandra Rough.

My bunkers don't really allow for flanking - they are double, sometimes if overkill is required then triple thick walls, with the hardest stone of my map tile on the outer layer and the most common/second strongest, typically sandstone or limestone, being the majority of the rest. This means that unless sappers are brought in, the raiders have to go through the sandbags to get to my colonists - they aren't too keen on busting down walls by hand if they don't need to. This strategy of creating artificial choke points and then armoring them to the absolute extremes rarely fails from the few times I've gotten them up and running. The combination of this being mad expensive/time consuming and my lack of colonies that I've really put quite a bit of effort into means that I've seen limited use of this "turtle" strategy, but it seems to be very effective, despite the fact that raids will and have gotten insane from the wealth boost. I also only really perfected it recently, and since then raiders have just become a caravan of sorts - I trade a bit of medicine and a small amount of land(graves) for more colonists, armor, and weapons.

[ignis]

If you really want to play defensive, you need this:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=722085442

[elipod]

Embrasures are upgrade over sandbags, but still don't iterecept stray shots as well as walls do. When dealing with miniguns, taking cover behind wall is way safer.

[ignis]

Originally posted by elipod:

Embrasures are upgrade over sandbags, but still don't iterecept stray shots as well as walls do. When dealing with miniguns, taking cover behind wall is way safer.

Mixed strategies FTW. Send shielded pawn few steps forward, and minigun is totally useless. Add some cover, and they can stand there showing rude gestures all day long.

Also, don't forget turrets. Turret behind cover can be a great distraction, even if you don't use turret mods, allowing you to snipe enemies while they are busy with them, or to get opportunity to flank.

[Astasia]

To go into a little more detail on walls and sandbags. It depends on the firing angle. Firing directly toward a wall (or door) with a colonist behind it is the best cover, having sandbags next to that wall will not help in that situation. However if the firing angle is like 45 degrees from the wall, the cover behind that wall is much less, and having a sandbag there reinforces the cover while allowing the colonist to continue firing. Multiple objects directly adjacent (including corners) to the colonist can be combined and averaged for cover if the firing line comes from that angle. It doesn't provide "extra" cover, it just keeps a generally high cover value from multiple angles.

The best cover is to not even engage in combat though. It's very possible using traps, turrets and mortars to not have to expose your colonists to any direct combat in the vast majority of situations.

[Syndicake ☠]

I think the wall and sandbag firing line is good against bullets but later raids have a lot of grenades and rockets those can be really bad if you clump your guys up and put walls right next to them since the rocket is more likely to impact nearer to them. Spacing is really important in defensive, especially if the enemy has explosives or a lot of melee. So spread out your guys according to their ideal weapon range. For this reason putting autonomous weapons slightly ahead of your humans is preferable to use up the enemy munitions. Raiders seem to have no concept of conservation.

Another thing is that its better to force the enemy to clump up for the same reason. Also if someone shoots and misses, the bullet has a chance of hitting structures or people in neighboring tiles. So if the enemy is close together even missed shots can still do damage to the attackers. This makes burst fire weapons a really nasty present for receivers in tight quarters.

I wonder if building long corridors without roofs would be a good idea since your guys can shoot from doorways and retreat if melee get too close and its impossible to be flanked in a corridor. It also naturally leads to the enemy clumping up. You can add turns in the corridor so your guys are always firing at ideal weapon range rather than being vulnerable to long range weaponry. Though if it's too long they'll just blast through a wall.

Choke points like that can also be filled with enough traps to make sweet seem sour.