Do You Need Killboxes?

[makisekurisufcker]

I kinda consider Killboxes "meta" or exploiting the AI, so I usually avoid them. But is this game designed around using kill boxes? That I'm playing wrong by not using them?

What have I done...

[The Yeen Queen]

Killboxes certainly do make handling most raids easier, but it's perfectly possible to manage without them.

[makisekurisufcker]

Originally posted by Night Foxx:

Killboxes certainly do make handling most raids easier, but it's perfectly possible to manage without them.

I've been okay without them, sure I take casualties here and there but that's the game. I'd rather that than play meta, and it's not like I play on the hardest difficulty with Randy anyway.

[BobDoleReigns]

Its a cheese strategy plain and simple. You might as well do save scum mode if you want things to be easy.

[Hykal]

People can play however they like, killboxes, save scumming, devmoding, spawning with miniguns, do what you think it's fun. It's a sandbox, not a Souls game.

[Steelfleece]

Don't forget the embrasures. Sometimes killboxes just aren't enough of an advantage!

[Hones]

You do whatever you want to do, it's that simple. This is a single player game. Anyone whining about others "playing wrong" or "using cheese" or whatever should just stop with that ridiculous gatekeeping nonsense.

In higher difficulties it definitely helps with several types of raids a lot if you use them. If there are several hundred tribespeople coming after your 20 colonists, there is simply no way to fight them out in the open without getting overrun.
And killboxes are simply a thing in reality. Castles had them. You know what was done to overcome them? The enemy would send sappers, to dig around your defenses, they would send breachers to break down your fortifications, or they would try and besiege you from afar.
Sounds familiar?

That the AI in Rimworld is limited and doesn't react properly to seeing the guys in front of them getting mowed down is a bit unrealistic, yes I give you that.
Or is it?
Human-wave-style-warfare was a thing through all of human history and is still done today. Just take a look at how the Russians have been throwing their people wave after wave against fortified positions in ukraine for the last year.
It's not pretty, it's not clever, but it's a thing that exists.

In conclusion: Do whatever is fun for you. If you want to use killboxes, use them. If not, then don't.

[Attic Goblin]

Depending on your map, it may not be easy to build a killbox. If raiders attack me through a major mountainous choke point, I build a killbox. If raiders attack me from all sides due to open fields, I build straight embrasure walls. Both work, and having no walls/embrasures and just having sandbags or whatnot works fine. To be fair, I do use the popular gunplay-altering mod: Combat Extended. Some players do not like killboxes and well, there is a mod or few that SIGNIFICANTLY improves raider AI, making killboxes utterly useless.

Also consider the distance between raiders to your walls and your colonists to your walls. You really want to be able to set up your pawns before raiders whale away on your defenses, which is why a majority of killboxes feature lengthy corridors filled with traps and/or sandbags to slow them down. Not forgetting your environment! Hot deserts and frozen ice caps are decent at weakening raiders before they arrive. Heatstroke/Hypothermia both reduce consciousness which will help them miss shots. Mechanoids are great for destroying you killbox or not.

In the end, it really only matters how you want to play. Personally, I love playing Rimworld as a colony sim and not a tragedy sim. I weigh multiple factors in whether or not I build a killbox. Call it cheese, call it genius, play how you want.

[AmesNFire]

'Killboxes' aren't needed unless you're playing a 'losing is fun' difficulty mode and specifically want to mess around with the combat in the game.
The vast majority of raids can be easily defeated with some basic defences and colonists (assuming you actually use tactics and don't rely on AI pathing).

[BigPiggy49]

I avoid trying to cheese the AI. I view rimworld as a very roleplay-y game, and doing things like killboxes and making the most powerful ideology kinda fly in the face of the spirit of the game. As for defenses, I usually set up a few sandbag hardpoints, and fight them head on. It feels more dramatic and more fun that way

[makisekurisufcker]

Originally posted by BigPiggy49:

I avoid trying to cheese the AI. I view rimworld as a very roleplay-y game, and doing things like killboxes and making the most powerful ideology kinda fly in the face of the spirit of the game. As for defenses, I usually set up a few sandbag hardpoints, and fight them head on. It feels more dramatic and more fun that way

Prety much how I feel about it. I just see so many killboxes that I wondered if they were an integral part of the experience. Doesn't seem like it.

[Dis Lexic]

The thing is, killboxes make perfect sense from a roleplay perspective. The objective of the game is to have your colony of idiots survive, right? So any smart person who wants to keep themselves alive is going to rely on giving THEMSELVES every advantage over the enemies. Walls, ditches, traps, spikes, all of these things are things that people built in real life in order to survive attacks. People like to say that they are cheesy and they are, but that is quite literally why you build them. You WANT to cheese the hell out of any attackers, if you dont, you die.

[XelNigma]

Can't help but notice people saying you can play however you like and coming up with excuses to justify killboxs and other cheese and cheats.

But OP isn't asking for your moral stance. They are asking if it's possible to play the game with out killboxs.

It's very telling so many jumped to defending killboxs when it wasn't even being attacked, almost like they feel guilty about it or something.

[The Blind One]

Yes it's possible to play the game without killboxes but I wouldn't recommend it on higher difficulties. Even on medium difficulty (strive to survive) things start to ramp up pretty heavily after a few years and you'll quickly get overrun unless you utilize some form of chokepoint mechanic. Sometimes just putting your guys behind a door with a blocker and gunners behind will get you the win and this tactic can quickly become mandatory late game.

As much as Tynan allegedly hates killboxes and wants to prevent them he doesn't really discourage it in any significant way and in many ways encourages it by the way the raider mechanic actually works. All it really would take to make killboxes useless is a minuscule amount of improved AI that avoids killboxes or trap corridors by going around them once they've triggered them but sadly that's not implemented in the slightest.

Right now once they enter your killbox they all keep moving forward like a bunch of zerglings with no brain or consciousness of the fact that every one of them is walking into a death trap once they turn the corner.

While killboxes were a real world thing, no army would ever send in ALL their troops into the killbox. Usually army commanders would try to trick their opponent into thinking they had walked into the killbox so that all the defenders troops would be there defending the chokepoint while they tried to breach the backdoor which would be less well defended at that point. The AI sometimes tries to simulate this 'somewhat' by having the raid be split into multiple groups, which can cause some chaos but generally speaking they are still dumb as bricks and you can just take out each group one by one.

[Rootiga]

It is not designed around them, it is just easier for people to do it. The sappers and tunneling raids were added specifically to counter the cheese. I personally never use kill boxes because they honestly make the game boring to me. I enjoy the colonist combat, some people don't

[Jigain]

Originally posted by XelNigma:

It's very telling so many jumped to defending killboxs when it wasn't even being attacked, almost like they feel guilty about it or something.

It's also very telling when someone jumps to attack anyone who mentions "killbox" in a non-negative way when the topic of the thread was whether or not the game was designed around them and playing without them is wrong, almost like they have a personal vendetta against them or something.