Everything About Combat in RimWorld

RimWorld's combat system may seem a little daunting to new players at first, however a few simple guidelines will have you ready to repel attacks and hold ground like a pro.

In every gunfight there is one very important lifesaving rule to remember:
Always use whatever cover is available!

Draft pawns to have them enter combat. While drafted, pawns with a ranged weapon will automatically fire at enemies they see. Walls and other impassible objects will block line of fire. When adjacent to an enemy, pawns will always fight in melee - even if they are holding a gun. You can assign specific targets for both melee and ranged attackers.

There are several other key mechanics in the combat system of the game:

Using the strongest cover available is key to winning a firefight. Pawns will automatically use cover, like sandbags and stone chunks, that they are adjacent to. If you have the time and resources to spare, you can make multi-layer defenses, with rows of cover you can fall back to if you're being overwhelmed. The drawback is that, if enemies advance, they can use your defensive lines as cover.

Walls are the best possible cover, shielding colonists from 75% of bullets. While they cannot be fired through, pawns will "lean" out from a wall and fire from its side. A row of 1-tile wide walls, interspersed with barricades or sandbags, are the strongest formation of cover.

Cover can also be used by your enemies. Chunks of stone and steel slag are much more effective than trees, and should be cleared out. Conversely, if assaulting a siege or mech cluster Content added by the Royalty DLC, you should use any preexisting cover, such as chunks, ruins, or mountains.

Cover can be anything that has the possibility to stop a fired bullet from hitting the intended target. Cover in RimWorld can be found in several forms. Some examples are: Rubble, Sandbags, Walls, the Saguaro cactus, and even animals.

High cover consists of any wall, constructed or otherwise, which a character can lean around to shoot enemies (if they're standing next to the wall). Any wall counts as high cover, and will stop bullets or other projectiles not just from hitting whoever is taking cover behind them, but prevent them from continuing on to hit anything else. It also blocks explosives.
Low cover consists of sandbags, rock or slag chunks, trees, bushes, animals, some types of furniture and structures, and virtually anything else that a character can shoot over. Low cover does not provide as high a chance of stopping projectiles as high cover, but it's still far better than nothing, and it allows your colonists to shoot over it whereas a wall could block your shooters' line of sight to target completely.

Natural cover is anything that can protect you on a newly generated map.
Artificial cover is anything you build; even debris that you move could potentially count as artificial cover.

Cover is multiplied by a factor of 20-100% depending which direction the attack is coming from. Cover works best against attacks coming straight at it, but doesn't work so well against incoming attacks from the sides.

Here's a list of each angle threshold and the corresponding cover effectiveness multiplier in a list - as this doesn't look particularly great in a table:

• a < 15° = 100% effectiveness
  
• 15° < a < 27° = 80% effectiveness
  
• 27° < a < 40° = 60% effectiveness
  
• 40° < a < 52° = 40% effectiveness
  
• 52° < a < 65° = 20% effectiveness
  
• a > 65° = 0% effectiveness

Cover is additionally less effective at point-blank range: cover's only 33.33% as effective when the shooter is directly in front of the target's cover, and 66.666% if the shooter is 1 tile away from the cover.

Sometimes multiple sources of cover also work together to block additional projectiles. For example, shooting at a pawn behind low cover from a diagonal angle will result in 2 units of low cover providing protection at once, each at a reduced efficiency.

Cover effectiveness on tiles at each angle:

Natural cover is anything that is generated when the map is created, and is almost everything you can find on a newly generated map.

Walls

Solid walls in general, from mountain walls to walls of ruins scattered across the map, are all capable of providing good cover. Pawns using walls as cover will fire from behind the corner of the wall.

Walls provide up to 75% cover, but is heavily affected by direction.

Chunks

Chunks provide 50% cover.

They are littered all over the map, in the form of rock or steel slag chunks. They will be used by attackers to gain an advantage over you.
You can also use chunks for protection, but their random placement is unlikely to favor you, so it's advisable to use it only during mobile warfare or as a last resort.

Chunks, in combination with a dumping area, can provide a free alternative to sandbag and barricade emplacements in the early game when cloth or solid materials are scarce. Here is how it works:

• Create a dumping stockpile zone in the desired shape (typically 1 square wide).
  
• The dumping zones accept Chunks and Corpses by default, you can choose only the type of chunk you want.
  
• Select chunks on the map using the "Haul things" option in the "Orders" tab of the Architect menu.
  
• Wait for them to be hauled.
  
• Place Colonists behind this line for cover during a firefight.

Bushes

Bushes provide 20% cover. In general, you'll want to avoid these—especially as they can catch fire very easily.

Trees

Trees provide 25% cover.

Saguaro cactus

A saguaro cactus is a large tree-like cactus with 2 branches. They provide 35% cover.

Animals

A last resort to cover if you have nothing else can be animals. By having animals between your colonist(s) and the attackers, they can actually work as a makeshift barricade (or 'meat shield') by being hit instead of your colonists. Larger animals (e.g. Muffalo) work better for this. However, you shouldn't rely on this, as animals tend to wander off at random. They can, however, become enraged and attack your enemies (or you) if fired upon long enough, so there may be something to it after all.

Pawns

Other pawns can be used to shield your colonist from fire if they are in between them and the attacker. This is a natural shield when going up against a brawler that is backed up by a ranged attacker as their allies will accidentally hit them. Putting one colonist in front of another will also be used as a meat shield for the one behind. A downed pawn can provide cover as long as they're still alive, but once they die they lose the ability to soak up projectiles.

Artificial cover is anything that you can build. (In a sense, rubble could be counted as artificial cover after you have moved it, and are using it as cover.)

Sandbags and barricades

Sandbags and barricades are the easiest and cheapest method of protection, offering substantial survivability potential while maintaining maximum angles of fire — great for shooters that need to cover a wide area of approach. U-shapes are good for one character to hide in. Zigzag patterns will allow multiple characters to cover close together, which is handy if you want to focus fire on a few attackers. They can also be combined with walls to provide additional cover from more angles.

Sandbags and barricades both provide 55% cover. Barricades differ from Sandbags in that they are made from solid materials such as stone, wood and metals, while sandbags use textiles. This allows barricades to be made slightly earlier in game as textiles can sometimes be difficult to find early on, however wood and steel are flammable and not particularly strong. Once stonecutting comes online however, stone barricades are cost effective and fireproof low cover

Walls

Walls can be used as cover as well. Characters will lean around them to shoot. Natural walls work in the same way, and will almost always have more durability than any artificial wall.

Door

A door can be used as a high cover if it stands alone so a colonist can lean around it.

Buildings

Most things that you can build can also stop bullets, although they take damage and will eventually be destroyed, catch fire or explode, if not repaired in time.

• Battery
  
• Nutrient paste dispenser
  
• Geothermal generator
  
• Comms console
  
• Solar generator
  
• Mini-turret (will explode in a 3 tile radius if too damaged!)
  
• Research bench
  
• Hydroponics basin
  
• Stool
  
• Dining chair
  
• Table
  
• Shelf
  
• Bed
  
• Plant pot (low cover)
  
• Torch lamp (low cover)
  
• Sun lamp (low cover)
  
• Standing lamp (low cover)

Not Cover

The following things do not provide cover.

• resources and items that can be picked up (i.e. steel, wood logs, stone blocks)
  
• plants (except for trees, Saguaro cactus, bushes, and raspberry bushes)
  
• minified items
  
• power conduit; power switch
  
• graves
  
• dead bodies
  
• spots (i.e. sleeping spot, crafting spot)

Sometimes you will have to use more clever tactics to defeat your incoming enemies, such as when you're outnumbered, or you don't have suitable ways to cope with the incoming raiders.

Getting attacked, whether by tribals, pirates, hordes of angry animals or by something more alien is a common event in the rimworlds. Defense against these attacks is one of the keys to having a successful colony.

This page details different tactics for defense and visualizations of them, applicable to most stages of the game.

Logistics

During battle, it's often handy to keep colonists with firefighting duties nearby in case a fire breaks out. Pawns lit on fire will run around wildly, unable to attack. Firefoam pop packs will extinguish colonists while preventing future fires. Even if someone is incapable of violence, they can help end fires nearby and rescue people in need.

After battle, you'll likely need to clean up and repair any damage done to your base. Undraft colonists so that they can start on work. Build graves, set up a dumping stockpile accepting corpses, or use an electric crematorium to dispose of bodies, in order to avoid the mood penalty for seeing corpses.

Pause frequently!

The most important combat tip is saved for last. Use the pause feature! The tide of battle changes very quickly with a smoking turret or thrown grenade in the middle of your colonists. Take advantage of the space bar to freeze the action and give your colonists new orders.

Ultimately, colonists are beings with mood, needs, and injuries to take care of. A tired, hungry colonist will become progressively more upset, while pain isn't a particularly pleasant experience. Mental breaks are absolutely lethal in combat, as the pawn will refuse to shoot or follow orders. To prevent this, you should ideally care for colonists before combat starts.

A pleasant base - great dining, recreation, and bedrooms specifically - will keep soldiers' spirits high. Alternatively, you can assign colonists to carry drugs at all times (Assign tab -> Drug policy). Order colonists to take the drug as combat begins. Go-juice, while inherently addictive, confers major combat-related boosts.

Skills

As pawns can only hold one weapon at a time, colonists that are great at one combat stat (Shooting or Melee) are better than one decent at both. Shooting skill has a greater impact the further away a colonist is shooting from, so assign longer range weapons to skilled colonists. Give your best melee fighters the best melee weapons.

Ideally, you should keep your best doctors away from direct combat. In practice, having an extra shooter is more valuable - just don't be overly risky with them.

Triage

Tending to wounded colonists is important to save them from dying. Drafted colonists can immediately tend to others on the field, with or without medicine. Prioritize those who are bleeding out the most. While medicine does not staunch the flow of bleeding of a specific wound any faster, it can stop multiple wounds at the same time.

If a colonist starts to sustain too many injuries, you can use your less combat-skilled colonists to take over while they retreat. If need be, have your injured colonist drop their weapon and undraft them, then have your reserves pick up the weapon and fight in their place. If a pawn takes on too much damage, they may become downed and require rescue.

Ranged

Ranged combat involves the use of weapons from a distance. Pawns wielding ranged weapons will shoot at enemies, because what else did you expect them to do?

Note that RimWorld does not have any ammo mechanics, even for items that visually appear to be finite, like pila and grenades. Doomsday rocket launchers and triple rocket launchers are consumed on use, while every other held weapon is infinite. Weapons will not be damaged so long as they are wielded, and weapon damage has no impact on their combat effectiveness.

Weapon stats

Ranged weapons consist of many attributes:

• Damage: How much health each bullet can do. For reference, the brain has 10 HP, the heart has 15 HP, and the torso (general body) has 40 HP.
  
• Armor penetration: The ability to ignore armor. AP directly subtracts from armor rating; if a weapon's AP > the armor %, then armor is completely ignored.
  
• Stopping power: The ability to stagger, or slow, pawns. A stopping power of 1 can stagger humans and human-like mechanoids. When staggered, a pawn is reduced to 1/6th of their normal speed for 95 ticks (1.58 secs).
  
• Burst count: How many bullets are fired at a time. If a weapon fires multiple shots, there will be a short delay between bullets.
  
• Aim time and Cooldown time: How long it takes between each burst. Aim time happens before shooting, cooldown happens after.
  
• Range: How far a weapon can shoot.
  
• • Accuracy: A weapon's own modifier to accuracy. Shooting skill and other factors also determine accuracy.
• Each weapon has specific accuracy values at Touch (3), short (12), medium (25) and long (40) ranges. Linear interpolation is used for any values in between. (e.g. accuracy at 17.5 tiles is equal to the average of the short and medium accuracy)

There are two summary stats of how a weapon will actually perform:

• Optimal DPS: How much damage a weapon can do, per second, if every shot hits an unarmored target.
  
• DPS (Range): How much damage a weapon can do, per second, factoring in weapon accuracy at a specific range. (Before the shooter's accuracy, armor, etc.)

DPS is a measure of how fast a weapon can deal out pain. Pain shock is the primary way of disabling pawns in combat; hurt them enough, and they will be downed. Note that enemies downed from pain have a chance to die, anyways. Other factors like range, stopping power, and aiming/cooldown time can all impact how you use a weapon in battle, but damage is a stat to be prioritized first.

Effective accuracy

Conventional (non-explosive) ranged weapon accuracy follows the following equation:

Accuracy = (Shooting Accuracy × Weapon Accuracy × Range × Other factors )

In simpler terms:

• Shooting Accuracy is the stat of the shooter. A shooter's accuracy becomes exponentially more important the further a shot is fired. Higher Shooting skill, manipulation, a gunlinkContent added by the Royalty DLC, etc. all improve this stat.
  
• Weapon accuracy is the stat of the weapon. Each weapon has specific accuracy values for shooting at specific ranges. This is a factor applied after shooting accuracy.
  
• Factors like cover, smoke, weather, and body size are all multipliers or offsets to the "final" accuracy. See Weapons#Accuracy for the full list.

If a ranged weapon is calculated to hit, it will hit, regardless of where the bullet visually lands or any defender movement. If the bullet misses, then it can impact other tiles.

Miss mechanics

Whenever a regular ranged weapon misses, the projectile will land within a random distance from the original target depending on the actual accuracy of the shot based on the weapon and the shooter. Stray shots have a 50% chance of hitting nothing, and a 50% chance of hitting another target on the alternative cell it happens to land on. Projectiles can also hit other things that are between the target and the shooter, such as stray animals. Accuracy to maximum miss distances are as follows:
[/previewicon] There are special mechanics in regards to friendly fire, or hitting a pawn from the same faction. [h2]Forced miss[/h2] Many weapons (mostly explosives) have a Forced Miss Radius stat. Forced miss is modified with with distance: [previewicon=35032724;sizeOriginal,inline;изображение_2024-02-05_003250724.png][/previewicon] Weapons with this stat will always land within their forced miss radius, ignoring every factor to accuracy. There is a small chance to use standard accuracy instead, more likely with a small radius.
There are special mechanics in regards to friendly fire, or hitting a pawn from the same faction.

Forced miss

Many weapons (mostly explosives) have a Forced Miss Radius stat. Forced miss is modified with with distance:

Weapons with this stat will always land within their forced miss radius, ignoring every factor to accuracy. There is a small chance to use standard accuracy instead, more likely with a small radius.

Melee involves hand-to-hand combat, with or without the use of weapons. Accuracy is determined with the Melee Hit Chance stat.

Pawns will usually not stack into a cell with other melee attackers. For enemies, only one pawn per cell can attack the same target. Undrafted colony brawllers will not always have collision, so it is possible for them to stack if the threat response setting is set to attack.

Melee combat has strengths and weaknesses. While a pawn can bash with a gun barrel in melee, a fighter with a dedicated melee weapon remains much more effective. However, a brawler may get shot down during their approach. The shield belt was designed to solve that problem. A colony might develop a small strike team of brawlers that can swiftly eliminate threats in close quarters, especially those that have infiltrated the colony.

One of the most common tactics is the melee block (see left). Stand 3 colonists just outside a hallway or door entrance. This ensures that you only fight 1 enemy at a time, reducing their relative damage output. Other colonists can fire behind the melee blockers, though enemy raiders can fire behind each other too. Effective against infestations and melee rushes.

Other mechanics

• Skilled melee pawns have the ability to evade melee attacks when fighting. When the melee blow is dodged, it will always miss, regardless of whether or not it is supposed to hit.
  
• Blunt melee attacks don't cause bleeding (unless a body part is destroyed), but they have a chance to stun enemies for a short time on hit. In addition, most pieces of armor will protect poorly against blunt attacks.
  
• Pawns that engage in melee combat while standing on dirt may 'kick dirt' or 'water' in their target's eyes, effectively blinding them for a short time (-80% sight for dirt, and -50% sight for water).

Friendly fire

Friendly fire is a mechanic in which ranged attacks that missed their target have chance to hit nearby targets, including allies. As such it is important to be careful when you shoot at enemies while allies are in the way or near them, as they may have a chance of being hit as well.

There are several subsidiary mechanics in this process.

First, there is radius of immunity around the shooter in which friendly targets cannot be hit by missed attacks at all. Colonists can shoot over the shoulders of allies up to 5 tiles away from them, but any further and they may be hit. In the image to the right the two radii are displayed. Any pawn standing on a gold or sterile tile cannot be hit by friendly fire by a pawn standing in the center. The inner radius of sterile tiles defines an area in which no pawn standing on one of these tiles will hit any other allied pawn also standing on a sterile tile with friendly fire. Both of these are still the case, even if the actual target is also within with radius. Note that standing inside an open door invalidates this immunity for some reason, allowing pawns to be hit with friendly fire even if inside these radii.

Second is the Friendly Fire Difficulty Setting. This acts as chance multiplier on the existing chance of friendly fire, ranging between 0% and 100% to pawns in the red area of the image or beyond. Note that 100% will not result in all misses causing friendly fire, it only adds an additional scalar to the existing chance.



Friendly fire safety radii:
Central pawn will not hit any friendly pawn on or within the gold radius
Any pawn on a sterile tile will not hit any other friendly pawn on a sterile tile.

Combat log

The game keeps track of all combat actions done by a pawn. This can be accessed through the 'Log' tab for a character, and lets you review combat after the battle has finished or in the heat of it.

Each action is accompanied by some flavor text.

Getting attacked, whether by tribals, pirates, hordes of angry animals or by something more alien is a common event in the rimworlds. Defense against these attacks is one of the keys to having a successful colony.

This page details different tactics for defense and visualizations of them, applicable to most stages of the game.

Core battle tactics

No matter what sort of defenses you use, these battle tactics may be useful.

Melee tactics

Melee soldiers are a useful asset in your colonies, if used correctly. They can disrupt ranged enemies, because being engaged in melee interrupts and prevents ranged attacks, and staggers the enemy thus slowing movement. Ranged enemies are also forced to fight back with makeshift melee attacks with their guns, which are woefully inadequate against a dedicated brawler.

In addition, melee soldiers can fend off invading brawlers charging into your lines, or beat up drop podding enemies.

Shield belts and good armor are usually necessary for your colonists to close the gap between you and the enemy. Melee attackers without the protection of shields are highly vulnerable to gunfire, even if heavily armored. Before battle, hide your melee attackers until all enemy melee attackers are engaged in battle, or put them in line in front of your gunners for quick deployment and damage absorption.

Friendly fire is a serious issue in hand-to-hand combat, as you can easily hit your own fighters. While it is still a bearable problem if their shields are up, once the shields are down you will need to manually retarget to prevent friendly fire.

Melee sortie

This tactic involves using a small element of melee colonists to charge enemy ranged attackers and take the heat off your own gunners.

Can be used to take down annoying long-ranged snipers or small gunner groups. Note that charging at entrenched ranged attackers can also divert their attention from your own entrenched forces to your charging brawlers.

Melee rush

Melee rushing is the tactic of sending your melee attackers to engage hostiles all at once, rather than focusing on shooting them down or sending small parties to take down troublesome enemies.

Melee rushes can work alone, especially with quality equipment; well-equipped melee rushes can hold off an attack and cause raiders to flee despite being slightly outnumbered. They also attract a great deal of friendly fire from the enemy, as they try to shoot down your brawlers, hitting their allies in the process.

If you aren't afraid of friendly fire, it can be combined with a firing squad from a distance for devastating effects. The brawlers cause chaos within the raiding party while the firing squad lays fire to destroy them while the raiders are trying to cope with your brawlers.

Note that enemy melee rushes are not to be countered by your own melee rush; there is a much more effective tactic detailed below.

Peeling

If a vulnerable gunner is under attack by melee attackers, you can 'peel' them away using your brawlers. Have them engage the melee attackers, who will then focus on your brawlers, allowing your gunner to get to relative safety.

Trained animals automatically peel for their assigned masters, if 'Release animals' is Off. The animals will attack any hostiles coming close rather than straying off to attack distant targets.
Setting 'Release animals' to On right when another colonist in distress near the trainer causes the animals to swarm the attacker, peeling them off.

Peeling is a relatively high-risk activity, as you are trying to put a pawn at risk in return for allowing a pawn at greater risk to escape. Peeling pawns should be expendable or decently armored.

Self-defense

Even though they aren't as good as dedicated melee weapons, guns still hurt in melee combat, even surpassing some low-quality melee weapons. This allows shooters to have a fighting chance against melee enemies.

Shooters can fight off small animals quite easily with melee, so have them fight back instead of letting the animal chew them to death.

Melee attacks with guns are a viable alternative if your colonists are adept at melee combat and the guns don't fare well at touch range. Since they don't usually emerge victorious from a 1v1 melee fight unless there is a massive skill gap, have someone else join in the fray, be it a brawler or gunner.

Melee killbox

In the current version of the game, when an enemy is standing between a door, they can be hit by pawns standing directly diagonally to it. This applies even when there are walls between them. This isn't intended though

So, you can design a "killbox" where your melee fighters stand beside a long corridor of doors placed diagonally. Placing a turret near your killbox can prevent the enemy from bunching up.

Body blocking

Enemies can be physically blocked by colonists or animals, denying them access to locations. This can be done to a significant tactical advantage.

Heavily armored soldiers are needed to body block active combatants, as they will take a lot of hits while blocking, and even so they will eventually collapse due to sustained damage. They should also be able to deal good damage at point-blank.

Blocking can be used to slow down prison breaks, seal off escape routes for enemies, or more aggressively to devastate melee only raids, detailed below.

You can avoid heavily injured pawns just by invisibilize your pawns continuously, they will still be blocking enemy drafted pawns in hallways but cant get retargeted. But you have to pay attention, a freshly invisible pawn does not lose the agro of enemies. As an example, if your pawn gets in the door and get targeted by an enemy equipped with a doomsday, the doomsday will be shot at the invisible pawn, there are some ways of breaking the targeting process such as loss of vision, and any kinds of jumps or teleportation

Melee blocking

When faced with a full melee attack, instead of engaging enemies on the frontline, retreat behind your walls, and open doors to use as chokepoints. Leave up to three melee brawlers standing right behind (not in) the chokepoint to block enemies while cutting them down, stationing more nearby as replacements, and gunners behind to fire on the blocked intruders. This forces melee enemies to trickle in and fight with your soldiers one-by-one, making them significantly easier to dispatch of. Make sure all brawlers are heavily armored to block damage, and shielded to block friendly fire.

This is a horribly effective way to defeat melee attacks. Compared to a regular frontline defense, this tactic significantly reduces the casualties your side will sustain. You also don't need to build anything special for this purpose- any opening or door in the wall will do. If you use killboxes then it's best that you build it in a way such that melee blocking attacks can be conducted effectively inside.

Weapons

For maximum pain, use high-DPS guns for your backline for bringing the hurt, combined with quality melee for your frontline to deal sustained damage in between barrages.

For maximum pain, use high-DPS guns for your backline for bringing the hurt, combined with quality melee for your frontline to deal sustained damage in between barrages.

• The chain shotgun or heavy SMG are the weapons of choice in this situation due to their unparalleled close-range DPS.
  
• Miniguns, while effective at shredding the tightly packed enemies behind the chokepoint, are generally not recommended due to the collateral damage to the walls. If you do choose to use them, aim at the middle of the crowd so you can hit as many enemies as possible, while also reducing the damage done to the walls.
  
• Grenades may also be used and can be incredibly effective at stacked melee groups trying to enter through a chokepoint, but should be ground-targeted rather than freely targeted by the pawn, to avoid grenading your own melee blockers. Grenades can land anywhere within 1 tile of the targeted tile, so place your ground target 1 tile further away to avoid accidentally grenading your own forces or blowing up the walls that are enabling you to melee block. Like miniguns, this will often shred the walls of your chokepoint, so building extra layers of walls at the chokepoint can be helpful.
  
• Pawns, both friendly and hostile, cannot stop and stand on top of sandbags, and are substantially slowed while moving over them. This can be used to force targets into a particular tile or slow the progress of an incoming force.

Stray bullets will not harm your tanks if the shooter is not standing too far behind; that means it is not a good idea to use long-range fire.

Combined with measures to force enemies into close range, it may be effective against ranged enemies as well, but beware as enemies can still fire until you start beating them up.

Animal Melee Blocking

Animals can be used as a form of melee blocking by creating a zone for just the single tile immediately in front of the chokepoint or door and assigning a bunch of animals to it. The animals prevent hostile attackers from traversing through that space, and the animals will generally counter-attack en masse anything that attacks them. This often results in substantial injury or death to animals, of course, so ensure the animals used are expendable (ie. not bonded or otherwise critical to the colony), and don't use explosive animals like Boomalopes or Boomrats. This is most effective against non-human threats such as manhunter packs and insectoids.

Spacing out

Each colonist should ideally stand at least 1 tile away from other colonists, thus reducing the chance of enemy bullets hitting somebody else after missing the original target, which deals a lot of damage to static grouped up defenders.

Explosives will also hit fewer people this way, though there are better countermeasures than simply spacing defenders apart.

Dealing with rockets

Rocket launchers are painful to deal with, due to the huge area damage and long range. In the mid-late game they are one of the biggest threats from the enemy.
The best way to deal with them is to distract them to fire elsewhere, in order to greatly reduce the amount of damage received.

Raiders with rocket launchers are often seen in the backline preparing their rockets, while their allies lay down fire at the front. They get distracted quite easily, wasting them on animals or lone colonists. This can be exploited simply by charging them with single units, which will cause them to fire it towards them and away from the rest of your forces. They may fire at point-blank, injuring themselves and their comrades, or with some luck in positioning and fast melee units, you can even intercept them before they can lock on with their rocket launcher, forcing them into hand-to-hand combat and eventually yielding the launcher which can be captured for future use.

This is a high-risk but necessary move to take, and some pawns may need to be sacrificed.

For successful distraction, you have to make your charging units the only available targets for them to consider attacking. If they have a better target with less possible friendly fire, they may attack them instead. To combat this, have all your other units, including animals, stay completely out of range until the rocket launchers have been neutralized.

Psychic insanity lance

Using a psychic insanity lance on a raider will cause their allies to waste rockets on them. Often, this gets rid of all of the rockets in a raid, and also causes a lot of damage. Psychic lances can generally be used from relative safety, due to their extensive range (though they do require line-of-sight to the target), and have a relatively low cost. Targeting the most durable raider will help make sure as many rockets are wasted as possible.

d09smeehan <MHN> a écrit :

Possible things to add to the tactics section: Managing lines of sight

Often (particularly on tribal starts where I am outgunned but not outnumbered) I find it's more effective to simply "let" the enemy into my base rather than try fighting them at the main defensive lines. By adding winding roads, multiple building exits and so on the enemy simply won't have line of sight until you get very close, allowing your pawns to safely charge and lock them into melee combat. That sniper is a lot less scary when you're 5 tiles away with an axe.

You can also kite them to try and draw small groups of raiders into losing engagements i.e. popping out a runner to draw fire, then ambushing the pursuers with overwhelming force when they turn the corner.

Sluntunder a écrit :

pretty good guide, dont forget about pawns that are strong in both melee and shooting: you can give them cybernetic weapons like knee spikes to allow them a formidable alternative than just pistol-whipping

[l0v3rm4n69420]

Ok, thanks for the help
@TaikaJamppa

[TaikaJamppa]

@l0v3rm4n69420 Only the quality of a weapon you use, unless you change to a better weapon, can increase the weapon's DPS and other stats, as far as I recall. Say, Legendary steel dagger VS Masterwork, for example, the Legendary one is a lot better... obviously.

[l0v3rm4n69420]

Is there a way to increase the damage of a weapon, im using a Vanilla psycast expanded combo where i use the killskip psycast, whic teleports me and does a single hit, however if it kills the target it teleports and hits again for free. Im using a legendary sky steel spear to try to get the maximum single hit damage, what are all the (non game settings/dev mode) ways i can buff weapon damage

[KKRLL56]

thank you

[WildTooth]

W guide

[stumbix]

good guide i learnt some stuff i never knew

[KKRLL56]

@d09smeehan <MHN>, Thanks for your comment, I'll add it to the guide

[KKRLL56]

@Sluntunder Thank you, I completely agree with u

[KKRLL56]

@Alaskan Jay, AFAIK It doesn't really matter. Still need to check it though

[MORROGANDER]

thank you!