Dealing with raids

[CyberDown]

So how are people setting up colony defenses. I keep reaching a point where raids of 4+ people with explosives do the following:

Ignore killbox and start trashing my buildings or power
Grenade if my colonists are anything close to a pack
Turrets seem a pointless distraction that can be punched to death apparently.
Raider ignores the fight and proceeds to light everything on fire.

I do love the defense aspect but the frequency of the raids and how damaging they are with explosives, both with colonist and structures, and how ineffective most colonists are (do i really need to take 3 high skilled shooters?) at combat, it usually ends all the same way, raid happens and too many are recovering, or someone does an explosive and downs everyone.

How are people managing this? Other games seem to have much more effective defenses. Every restart I put more focus on defenses, but the results are the same.

[Astasia]

Raiders are not interested in killboxes and will generally ignore them if there isn't some sort of bait. Typically what you want to do is have a killbox with a door that leads into your inner base where things like coolers and wind turbines and other objects can be accessed, and then leave that door open so raiders will try to path through the door to get to the good stuff in your base. Then you defend at that door and kill them as they try to pass through, at which point they try to defend themselves. This generally works for everything except breach/sapper raiders, or obviously center drop raids that land inside the base. If you really don't want to have an open door you can build things inside your killbox for raiders to attack, even cheap stuff like stools will work here, though you will want a number of them depending on raid size, only so many enemies can decide to attack an object at once.

The basic turrets have two uses, one is as an explosive trap basically. If you place one or two turrets they aren't going to contribute much to combat, but enemies will attack them instead of your colonists frequently, and when they get low on health they explode and damage nearby enemies. This costs a bit of steel but means less risk for colonists. If you don't want turrets to be disposable, you need to have a lot of them so they rip enemies apart before they can be significantly damaged.

Focus your colonist's fire on enemies with explosives, weapons with stagger (LMGs) can be useful here if they don't die fast enough, preventing them from getting a chance to use them.

Yes raiders aren't on your map to fight for the most part, they want to steal stuff and do damage to weaker objects. They are raiding you, not trying to wipe you out. Make sure you have an outer wall protecting anything they might want to attack or damage, force them to go through your killbox to reach those targets.

[Veylox]

4 + people is nothing, only one or two of them should have explosives. Have a good economy in your colony (drugs, usually), and buy psychic shock/insanity lances, only use them for breach/sapper raids. They have good range and allow you to instantly take out VIPs from a fight. Insanity lance on the grenade guys will even have them try to kill their allies. Some psycasts can be useful to completely disable major threats too.

Raids that ignore your killbox should be fairly rare unless you set it up poorly. As long as you left a single open path to your main living area (no closed doors in that path), most raids will walk in there, right into the killbox, only sappers/breachers/drop raids won't care.

There are effective defense options in Rimworld, they're just not where you expect. Turrets are garbage, traps as well. With a proper box though, you could beat most raids without using a single colonist, and of course zero injury on your side. The more firepower you have and the less enemies can get in your range at once, the better. Fighting against the hardest raids in this game involves ;

1) slowing enemies down to the point where they can only reach you one by one
2) Unleashing ungodly amounts of firepower on the one enemy that's trying to reach you
3) reload before the next one comes in.

If you let the enemy attack as a group or choose where they'll attack you from, you'll just lose, because raids will inevitably outnumber you at some point, and since they only exist to kill themselves on your colony they don't care about dying, every pawn an enemy raid loses in an open gunfight means nothing to them since they have infinite resources, but any pawn YOU lose is a major setback. You can't afford to have "fair" fights

[Wasted]

save lances for guys with triple rocket and doomsday rocket launchers

[CyberDown]

I think it was more a combination of wood for building material, poor combat stats on the starters, and the difficulty level being higher than it should be. Also wasnt research maxxing ect.

Still havent gotten drop podded, but, just a barricade square and some traps seem to be doing fine early game.

Part of my issue with the killbox is...I dont want to bait it with beds ect i like my colony to look functional. I may create an outer hallway with no door, traps, and a "pop out" system on the other side after the traps.

I still worry about indoor explosions and fires. Part of the game i guess, and might not be so brutally damaging using stone walls and tile vs wood. Im the kind of player that would love something like "protect the beacon" that i could properly defend while keeping the living quarters part of the base looking like that. Watched a few vides and people were making like a junk clutter room to sleep/research/store and then that trap hallway. I dont like that personally.

Ive played other games like this where its more a predictable tower defense wave attack. Might look into the zombie mod after this run, though i do love the human attackers i can imprison and possibly convert to worker aspect.

At least i get where the raiders will attack and why now and can prepare for that. If there was a mod that made them target my people, a specific room, or an object, id take that over how its currently designed though.

[brian_va]

Originally posted by CyberDown:

Part of my issue with the killbox is...I dont want to bait it with beds ect i like my colony to look functional.

you dont need to bait the box with anything. have a door from the killbox into your base and have it held open. things like power generators, coolers, horse shoe pins and so on are normally behind your walls anyways, and the held open door allowing access to those types of items will be the bait.


https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3104189853

not really a killbox, but at the top right theres the held open door allowing access to everything inside, that will draw the raiders where you want them.

[HunterSilver]

For most raid types, you do not want to engage them in a killbox, it is actually far better to saunter out and attack them on the field, setup an impromptu defensive position, or to use an 'I win' button on them.

For small groups of humanoid raiders that do not have long range weapons, shoot them to injure them and then kite them until they pass out from bleed damage. This will never kill them. Works amazing against enemies with melee weapons and grenades.

Grenadiers, tesserons, impoids, scorchers, and anyone with a rocket launcher is designed to wreck killbox setups and flush groups from cover. You're better off scattering your units and moving them whenever their spot gets dangerous.

If you can, get melee units, give them psychic powers, and have them skip these units immediately into melee to quickly disable and kill them.

Here's my killbox setup and base design to make it work. Note that it's critical to not fully close it off or else enemies will just attack walls and beeline for those instead. Exposed coolers and lights are enough to bait enemies to walk through the killbox instead of tunneling through, unless they're a sapper team.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3104237943

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3104238071

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3104238137

[MadArtillery]

Always important to remember grenades are short ranged, groups like the pigs that rely on lots of boom and shotties which sounds like what's giving you trouble you just want to go out and fight in the open. If you keep some long range weapons like bolt actions on hand you can do a lot of damage before anyone even touches your base. Ambush points for melee units are also pretty good, tieing em up and cutting them down. Pawns with movespeed bonuses are great for preventing scary ranged enemies from doing things if you leave ambush doors or flanking doors in your base.

[-HoK- Cian]

I try to keep at least one psychic animal pulser in stock at all times. Nothing says F you to a raid like an entire map's worth of animals going bonkers and killing anything not safely inside a walled in area.

I save those for the really out of control raids.

[ACS36]

Traps are good for the early game and should be able to handle mostly everything if set up right. Your problem is probably just not having a good way for raiders to get into your base so they're going to break down walls.

Really though if you have biotech/royalty melee pawns with good armor and shield belt are way to go. They'll handle pretty much anything easily on 100-220% difficulty slider

[MadArtillery]

Originally posted by ACS36:

Traps are good for the early game and should be able to handle mostly everything if set up right. Your problem is probably just not having a good way for raiders to get into your base so they're going to break down walls.

Really though if you have biotech/royalty melee pawns with good armor and shield belt are way to go. They'll handle pretty much anything easily on 100-220% difficulty slider

Do have to +1 that. Melee is highly underrated. Stuff like plasteel plate early on especially if you get a shield belt early can tank so rediciously much damage. Well worth spending an inspiration on.

[Paroe]

Originally posted by CyberDown:

I think it was more a combination of wood for building material, poor combat stats on the starters, and the difficulty level being higher than it should be. Also wasnt research maxxing ect.

Still havent gotten drop podded, but, just a barricade square and some traps seem to be doing fine early game.

Part of my issue with the killbox is...I dont want to bait it with beds ect i like my colony to look functional. I may create an outer hallway with no door, traps, and a "pop out" system on the other side after the traps.

I still worry about indoor explosions and fires. Part of the game i guess, and might not be so brutally damaging using stone walls and tile vs wood. Im the kind of player that would love something like "protect the beacon" that i could properly defend while keeping the living quarters part of the base looking like that. Watched a few vides and people were making like a junk clutter room to sleep/research/store and then that trap hallway. I dont like that personally.

Ive played other games like this where its more a predictable tower defense wave attack. Might look into the zombie mod after this run, though i do love the human attackers i can imprison and possibly convert to worker aspect.

At least i get where the raiders will attack and why now and can prepare for that. If there was a mod that made them target my people, a specific room, or an object, id take that over how its currently designed though.

tbh a completely enclosed base is just going to spawn drop pod and sapper raids. Ideally you want a 25-50 tile "hallway" with no deterrants, then you set up a sandbag or embrasure line for cover and have a defensive line.

Personally, ill make a small entry-path about 5 to 7 tiles wide then make it about 15 to 20 tiles long with healroot trees from vanilla expanded and sandbags at the end. Firefights end peacefully when they fall unconscious due to healroot trees "antisceptic smell" debuff because theyre trying to shoot from cover, and melee guys can be picked off easily by your own melee guys.

[Astasia]

Originally posted by CyberDown:

Part of my issue with the killbox is...I dont want to bait it with beds ect i like my colony to look functional.

If you don't want to hold open your base interior, there are ways to make "functional" bait in your killbox that looks normal. For example you can give your turrets their own power supply, a solar panel or two and some batteries and stick them between your killbox and base but still "exposed" so enemies can path to them. This means you don't have to worry about toggling power on your turrets and gives raiders something to target so they will move toward your killbox. Another option is to put some tables and chairs/stools right behind the killbox, again pathable by enemies, but the function would be to give your soldiers somewhere to sit and eat after the raid is over so they don't eat on the ground amidst all the corpses. Crematoriums are also good bait and those would make sense to have right in your killbox for quick cleanup.

[Paroe]

Originally posted by Astasia:

Originally posted by CyberDown:

Part of my issue with the killbox is...I dont want to bait it with beds ect i like my colony to look functional.

If you don't want to hold open your base interior, there are ways to make "functional" bait in your killbox that looks normal. For example you can give your turrets their own power supply, a solar panel or two and some batteries and stick them between your killbox and base but still "exposed" so enemies can path to them. This means you don't have to worry about toggling power on your turrets and gives raiders something to target so they will move toward your killbox. Another option is to put some tables and chairs/stools right behind the killbox, again pathable by enemies, but the function would be to give your soldiers somewhere to sit and eat after the raid is over so they don't eat on the ground amidst all the corpses. Crematoriums are also good bait and those would make sense to have right in your killbox for quick cleanup.

Another thing you can do is put a statue or a monument in your kill box - oneo f the vanilla expanded mods gives me obelisks, which are great bait when made out of something valuable.

[MadArtillery]

You can also just put out something valuable and they'll piss off. I had a raid once walk up, grab a golden axe from a previous raid and just walk back off the map without ever fighting me. It was quite entertaining.

[CyberDown]

New approach is working. I figured out to wall off cooler vents and take the roof off, and then i bait with turrets from a blockade box surrounded with traps. I use stone walls. Built an orbital transmitter to keep them away from geovents, which are walled.

This time if they come through the roof burning damage will be minimal everything is stone.

assault rifles for most seems to fix a lot of things as well.

I would love a wave defense mod where the enemies would go through a small tower defense bit