Do fences give notable cover bonuses for raiders?

[[CSF] Tman]

For context, i got the game a couple of weeks ago and my base is in an open area surrounded by 3 mountains, with a river that just cuts right into the main giant mountain I am building into.

It's great because so far raiders and animals ignore the exterior wooden walls of my compound and beeline straight to the river that goes into the mountain, so i set up some barricades that my guys can shoot from and widened the river entrance to remove cover

I set up fences on the non-river areas i mined out and it does a great job slowing the enemies down even further, but i noticed that some of the raiders may be using the fences as cover.

Do enemies get a significant cover bonus hiding behind a fence? if so, is there a better structure i can build that still slows them down but doesn't give them cover?

[conqueror_of_will]

Click on the fence, click on the i button in the panel in the bottom left corner. This will bring up an info screen. Somewhere on that list it will say what cover bonus it provides.

Also, while you have a pawn drafted and selected hover your mouse over an enemy and it will show you what your odds to hit are as well as a breakdown of what is affecting those odds. If the enemy is receiving any cover bonuses it will be listed there.

[gimmethegepgun]

Yes, they do. However, fences are very flimsy, so it won't take very long in a firefight for you to destroy them.

[Akadai]

Any cover is better than no cover. Fences do have a small HP pool, so they're easily destroyed. The VE Security module allows you to construct barb wire, if you're looking to craft something that slows and doesn't provide cover. Otherwise I'm not too sure on what to suggest. Most things that will slow a person down will also provide a small amount of cover

That or just build traps I guess

Raiders will typically seek out anything that might help provide cover, even a small amount, this includes trees and slabs of stone chunks (yes, even those provide cover)

[[CSF] Tman]

thanks a bunch guys, you three all provided really great information

I just had one more question: If the tile a raider is standing on is a river tile, does that give the raider more or less cover when he is standing behind a fence?

[Gnasty Gnorc]

Rock chunks give 50, trees (I think?) give 25, and walls give 75% cover, I think

I forget the name of the mod, but there’s one that adds barbed wire that slows enemies down that walk through it.

You clicks also build essentially a guided path for them with walls, and fill that pathway with sandbags or stone chunks. It will slow them down and since they’re on it, not behind it, they won’t get the cover bonuses as they’re forced to walk through it single file to get out.

[[CSF] Tman]

Originally posted by HD Plugin:

You clicks also build essentially a guided path for them with walls, and fill that pathway with sandbags or stone chunks. It will slow them down and since they’re on it, not behind it, they won’t get the cover bonuses as they’re forced to walk through it single file to get out.

I think I accidentally did that when i walled up the open spaces between the mountains, enemies path straight to the river even if they spawned on the other side of the map now

if the raiders had sappers, will they still head for the river opening or just blow open the nearest wall?

[Akadai]

It's not really the tile they're standing on that provides the cover, so standing in a river tile doesn't really matter. It's what's around the tile that matters

This works with pawns too. I typically stack my pawns in 2 tile formations. The pawn in front acts as cover for the one behind. The one behind will shoot over the shoulder of the one in front without causing friendly fire accidents. This only works in 2 tile lengths. So... if you stack 3 pawns for example, the one furthest back might shoot the one up front

So in short, even a pawn acts as cover. You can get creative by giving one a shield, or extra defenses

Edit: Sappers will often look for ways to get into your base and avoid traps and turrets. They act quite differently and have sometimes surprised me by finding a tiny weakness in my base that I wasn't aware of. Though they have at times been quite dumb too and tried to dig through a mountain that didn't even connect to my base

[[CSF] Tman]

Originally posted by Akadai:

It's not really the tile they're standing on that provides the cover, so standing in a river tile doesn't really matter. It's what's around the tile that matters

This works with pawns too. I typically stack my pawns in 2 tile formations. The pawn in front acts as cover for the one behind. The one behind will shoot over the shoulder of the one in front without causing friendly fire accidents. This only works in 2 tile lengths. So... if you stack 3 pawns for example, the one furthest back might shoot the one up front

So in short, even a pawn acts as cover. You can get creative by giving one a shield, or extra defenses

Edit: Sappers will often look for ways to get into your base and avoid traps and turrets. They act quite differently and have sometimes surprised me by finding a tiny weakness in my base that I wasn't aware of. Though they have at times been quite dumb too and tried to dig through a mountain that didn't even connect to my base

ah ok, while there isn't multiple z-levels like in dwarf fortress I wasn't sure if there was changes in "elevation" relative to the single z-level everyone was on, so I wasn't sure if a pawn would experience a change in coverage if he was knee deep in mud or water

I also didn't realize that sapper ai operated differently compared to normal raiders, thats actually pretty cool!

[[CSF] Tman]

I noticed that hydropower was a thing in the game, how does that work?

Can you stack watermill generators side by side to increase energy production?

Or do you need to space out the generators to increase efficiency of each generator?

[Akadai]

Putting watermills too close to each other makes them less efficient. Much like the wind turbines, they'll have a box to show their zone of efficiency. With watermills, this is the space to avoid other watermills interacting with

[[CSF] Tman]

Originally posted by Akadai:

Putting watermills too close to each other makes them less efficient. Much like the wind turbines, they'll have a box to show their zone of efficiency. With watermills, this is the space to avoid other watermills interacting with

ok awesome, will its zone of efficiency be affected if it goes past the map edge but is far enough from other mills that neighboring mills aren't affecting it?

cuz the mountain that it goes into is so big that the mountain continues up to the edge of the map and I don't think anything spawns in the river on that end because the river has rock walls on either side of it

I could try taking a screenshot of the area my colony is in so you could see what im talking about, but i don't think you can upload images in discussions

[Akadai]

I'm not actually sure on that one. I've never placed one on the map edge/river edge before, so a screenshot probably wouldn't matter. Mine are usually near the center area of a river, but I typically only have 2 or 3 setup. For me, they're more supplemental power sources. My main power comes from modded power sources like Rimatomics

[Astasia]

Fences give 25% cover. Providing the enemy with bad cover is useful for getting them to stand where you want them to. You can put traps next to fences for example to bait raiders into stepping onto that specific tile, or you can use low cover objects to get enemies closer into your killbox and exposing their sides to flanking attacks. Usually people use stools for this which have 20% cover, but fences aren't really significantly better. If you have fences near where you are fighting and enemies are using it for cover, I wouldn't really worry about it, it's better they use a fence then something like a chunk or tree. Without cover for the enemy they tend to rush your position and negate your own cover anyway. If your pawn is on one side of a sandbag and an enemy pawn is on the opposite side of the sandbag, that cancels cover bonuses, enemies will do that a lot if they can't find their own cover.

[[CSF] Tman]

Originally posted by Akadai:

I'm not actually sure on that one. I've never placed one on the map edge/river edge before, so a screenshot probably wouldn't matter. Mine are usually near the center area of a river, but I typically only have 2 or 3 setup. For me, they're more supplemental power sources. My main power comes from modded power sources like Rimatomics

I probably use mods in the future, but it's my first playthrough, so I'm going full vanilla before i start using them

My river is set up kinda weird compared to yours. only half of the river is outside of the mountain and the center of the river is pretty much the opening that raiders enter through

[Akadai]

Originally posted by Astasia:

Fences give 25% cover. Providing the enemy with bad cover is useful for getting them to stand where you want them to. You can put traps next to fences for example to bait raiders into stepping onto that specific tile, or you can use low cover objects to get enemies closer into your killbox and exposing their sides to flanking attacks. Usually people use stools for this which have 20% cover, but fences aren't really significantly better. If you have fences near where you are fighting and enemies are using it for cover, I wouldn't really worry about it, it's better they use a fence then something like a chunk or tree. Without cover for the enemy they tend to rush your position and negate your own cover anyway. If your pawn is on one side of a sandbag and an enemy pawn is on the opposite side of the sandbag, that cancels cover bonuses, enemies will do that a lot if they can't find their own cover.

That's a pretty amusing tip, I might have to try that one. I can already picture a couple fake bunkers for raiders that will be their doom that I could make. That should give me a good laugh