Defensive positions for raiders

[Captain Keen]

I had a thought:

I have defensive positions outside my base, for my colonists to use to fire against raiders. Let's say I also built nice, inviting positions for the raiders to use - a nice granite barricade to fire from, only slightly garnished with incendiary IED's.

Would such a thing attract them? Because it's rather a lot of wasted effort if it doesn't =)

[Cellar_Cat]

It does, but no need to make it a good one, a bit of fence would do if you clear naturally occurring cover like rocks and trees away,

[martindirt]

A classic strategy.
Lure raiders to sht cover, put traps behind the cover.
Make a pillar, build roof. Raiders take position behind the pillar. Shoot the pillar (before that you need to dmg the pillar to 1shot hp). Collapsed roof deal lot dmg on raider. With good chance, you can get more raiders with the roof. Do t forget to remove homezone around the pillar, so your pawns won't repair it, but you need to rebuild it every time (manually), and remove the home zone every time.

Build wooden furniture in your killbox, lay down wooden floor (or hay), place incendiary traps or throw Molotov. Welcome to burning hell.

[Captain Keen]

I'm not so advanced as to have an actual 'kill box' - I have choke points at all entry points to my base, littered with traps, and I have barricades for my guys to fire from. Oh, and a few simple turrets.

My tactics are depressingly simple: I let my ranged guys fire at theirs, and let my melee guys mop up. This hammer, thus far, makes all problems nails.

[The Grand Mugwump]

That's fine until the really difficult raids start showing up. I was using a similar strategy on strive to survive when Randy Random decided I needed a raid wielding 12 bolt action rifles and one random guy with a steel club. That raid completely picked me apart and made me wish I had a kill box to force them into closer range. I tried falling back into my buildings, but they just burned everything they could reach down instead. It was sad and very frustrating.

I do find that building a bridge across a river or lake and covering it in traps is devastatingly effective. Their pathing will almost always prioritize the bridge over wading through the water.

And yes, the raiders will act as if they can't see your traps at all (unless it's the type of raid which can). So putting your traps in positions they frequently use will get them. I don't feel that the trap is worth giving them easy and effective cover as bait though. You'll injure/disable/kill the first raider, but then the next will use the bait cover against you.

[Cellar_Cat]

Falling back out of sight does work to bring them closer, if you play without killboxes. But yeah, if you have crops and flammable buildings out there, you will lose them. Better to switch to stone structures, and if you don't want a gigantic wall around the crops, at least separate them with a few tiles of concrete to keep fire spreading, and keep the high value ones located closer to your base defences.

Then, when they run forward to set them on fire, your people can come out from behind a wall or something and resume shooting.

[martindirt]

Originally posted by Captain Keen:

I'm not so advanced as to have an actual 'kill box' - I have choke points at all entry points to my base, littered with traps, and I have barricades for my guys to fire from. Oh, and a few simple turrets.

My tactics are depressingly simple: I let my ranged guys fire at theirs, and let my melee guys mop up. This hammer, thus far, makes all problems nails.

A killbox is not necessary to (ab)use these strategies.
A single "shooting range" is good enough (ok, some call it killbox):
Let's make a 25*10 box, with only 1 entrance tile on the raiders side, and xoxoxo type defense on your side. X=wall, o=barricade/sandbag.
To prevent hostile snipers to take cover at the entrance, put 1-1 columns on the each side. (Raiders can't stand on columns, can't take cover behind the wall.)
Now fill this box with wooden furniture, place traps behind the. Lay down wooden floor, except the last few tiles in front of your colonists. Make 3-4 tile long stone floor there to protect yourself from spreading fire. When raiders swarm in, they rush to cover behind wooden furniture. The first wave mostly dies from your traps (make the traps out of stone. They hit hard, and fire proof. Unfortunately lot of work for your builders.) When the second wave starts to take position, it's Molotov time. Watch out the melee fighters, they won't take cover. If they coming first, you need to Molotov them earlier.
You can make it better, if you build a 1 tile corridor leading into your shooting range, filled with traps (here you want to use wooden traps, since these will be replaced most often). Place doors leading into this corridor from the side, to prevent your pawns to trigger traps while walking through.

[Captain Keen]

I just want to add that I've completed the game several times. I just don't play on any crazy difficulty. But I've fooled around with some of the more unpredictable story tellers and .. you know, difficulty above normal.

I know this game is kinda about making it hard for yourself - but I prefer to not get blindsided. I've played on permafrozen maps, but I've never invited the game to drop monstrous raids on me. So I've .. picked my challenges =)

I did at one time fish around for a perfect map - a sort of courtyard surrounded by rock, with access only from the northwest. Didn't finish that game though, but it was a very satisfying underground base with only on real approach.