Hello.
First of all, deployable barriers do not mess up with pawn AI as you won't be able to trap enemies anyway - the barrier can be moved through, and in fact is quite easy to traverse. It's just like a deployable sand bag.

The shield generator draws as much energy as a sun lamp when it's INACTIVE, but Activated one draws 4x as much energy.

Yes, you can improve the killboxes easily with these new devices, but the question is if you're really bothered about balancing when you build a killbox. Killbox is a cheat, let's not lie to ourselves. Funneling enemies using silly AI into a 2 block wide corridor to pick them off with a plethora of turrets is an exploit and in no reason a way the game is meant to be played, hence we didn't consider killboxes during our testing.

If you want to make a killbox, the type or amount of turrets won't change the fact that a killbox in itself, is unbalanced.

Enemy siege can use artillery, but can also use mortars or the mix of both. Artillery used during siege is essentially a rapid firing low accuracy version of a mortar, which in this scenario is actually superior to mortars due to the fact that accuracy doesn't really matter when shelling a standing object.

Dear Oskar,

thank you very much for the super detailed and fast answer!

Sorry for my thoughts about the deployable barrier - you already said in the mod description that it's traversable. Stupid headaches, haha. Also sorry for the siege scenario - even in Vanilla siege enemies won't install gun turrets which I thought they'd do at the time of writing.

Concerning killboxes: I am still on my first playthrough (though having played dozens to hundreds of hours) but have never considered killboxes as cheating or overpowered, before. It still feels like the natural thing to do as a base defender as you would also protect your turrets and try to lure your enemies in a trap. Well, but real life enemies would barely walk in those killbox traps, would they?...

...hmm, how do you survive on higher difficulties without killboxes, then? I can't just spam turrets all around the base, enemies would destroy these in a matter of seconds. I'd increase the turret density and put some walls around them....aaaaaand we're back to killboxes. Any recommendations or links to recommended threads discussing this issue would be highly appreciated! Already started looking myself.

What I tend to do is start off by choosing a strategically important place to make my base at - a feature you completely skip when making a killbox, which takes away all the fun. Settling inside the valley surrounded by mountains is always a good choice. Perhaphs use a river as a natural defense.

I then proceed to fortify the perimeter with trenches, sandbags and gun complexes. Some turrets every now and then, but when raid occurs I muster my military personnel and take battle positions. It is crucial that soldiers sleeping quarters are spread around the entire base, so even if some of them have a long way to walk, the others will mount the defenses immediately.

By creating a killbox, you essentially remove content. Guns become irrelevant, armor becomes irrelevant, strategy in the field becomes irrelevant. Enemies will always funnel into your tiny box of doom and just die, to the point where you don't actually need to draft a single pawn most of the times.

Now, it's your choice how you want to play this game, but there is so much fun in maneuvering your troops in the field and using nature to your own advantage. Most of the times, if I think I can tackle a raid, I take the fight to them and move away from my defenses.

Thank you very much for your detailed answers, Oskar! May I ask on which difficulty you usually play or have tested this? Any remarks on differences, there?

i have a suggestion for you. if you use a mod that makes easier the game, why not using a mod makes harder the game, i am using ''harcore blue moon corp'' mod and I have no worries for any mod that makes game easier.
But in this mod one thing is seems too unbalanced to me: sentry gun, it doesnot consume any power, at least you should add a self mini solar panel to it,

Originally posted by Oskar Potocki:

What I tend to do is start off by choosing a strategically important place to make my base at - a feature you completely skip when making a killbox, which takes away all the fun. Settling inside the valley surrounded by mountains is always a good choice. Perhaphs use a river as a natural defense.

So as a strategy how to avoid killbox you're advice to build semi-open killbox :) Funny (actually REALLY good killbox utilize landscape too - AI not completely dumb, but in good locations even sappers will forced to enter into killbox).

Plus "killbox" ~ bunker. And bunkers were A THING during WWI and WWII, only modern guided weapons changed it a bit.

Originally posted by Oskar Potocki:

But in this mod one thing is seems too unbalanced to me: sentry gun, it doesnot consume any power, at least you should add a self mini solar panel to it,

This sentry gun is much weaker then even vanila mini-turret and have a troubles to hit anything. Are you sure it should be nerfed even more?

And finally my own balance suggestions:

1) Artillery need rebalance. Currently it's a major buff to raiders, while player can't utilize them as they're WORSE in everything then mortars - larger size with not compatible increase of hp & very low accuracy while they're more expensive (yean, long range bombardment feature... that mostly useless plus I heared have a memory leak).

My only idea if you don't want to buff them - direct fire mode as option, that make artillery VERY accurate but with a range of ~uranium turret. This will make it at least interesting option for a player.

2) DOCUMENT your changes! Shield generators combustion issues & temporary nature of barbed wires should be mentioned. Vanila stuff never forget to warn you about something so important.

3) Double autocannon turret should get at least minor buff to health. Both it and basic turret have same 450HP, while doubled have almost doubled cost. True, it have doubled RoF too, so I think really minor buff like +50HP would be enough.

Why I ask it?
a) Turret is REALLY expensive and mostly end-game stuff when enemies have great firepower themselves.
b) It's breaking logic of your mod - military turret is same doubled vanila turret, but it have boosted HP.

4) Bear trap need some additional explanation. Currently it's look incredible weak compared with vanila trap (35 damage 52% pen for 65 steel vs 100 damage 150% pen for 35 steel in case of steel spike trap). I really don't want even to build them to test

5) Shields are underpowered for very expensive (advanced comps!) late game stuff. Still I can't come with exact values to change yet.

But IMHO most of their possible abuses are possible only with something like Rimatomic to generate a lot of power to feed many shields. And in that case... Huh are you sure you should take measures to prevent peoples abusing your mod via others completely unbalanced ones?

I'm player who love to build mega-bases without any wealth management (past early game ofk), so as for me unreliable shields is more like meh. ED ones were one of the best - expensive, power-hungry but very reliable (+ I always was able to know when they would fail) sadly they're abandoned.

P.S. I really want to admit how beautiful your turrets. Yean, really look like 100% vanila. Great job!

Thank you for all your valuable feedback. I will make sure to have another round at rebalancing things soon. Here's some queries I can answer right of the bat:

1) Artillery works as intended as it's meant to be less accurate, but allow for long range bombardment. I didn't want it to be just a "more powerful" mortar. Mortars are fine, I don't want to eclipse them with something just generally more powerful - instead I want players to build both: mortars for base defense, artillery for attacking enemy settlements.

There is no memory leaks. Only one person claimed to have it and failed to provide any proof it originated from our mod. None of the other 30k subscribers reported issues with memory leaks. Our system removes the generated grids periodically.

I for one had some fun with long range bombardments, especially with RimCities - send in my boys, hunker down and begin blasting 6 artilleries to level the city.

2) We do have a changelog which lists down the most important changes - these two included.

3) Will look into that. A lot of people worked on that mod and the base xml was out of my hands so it's possible it slipped past QA checks - and with the sheer amount of xml in this mod, I had a lot of checking to do.

4) Except you don't need to rebuild a bear trap - you build it once and it stays there forever, you just rearm it. Vanilla traps need to be rebuilt with resources every time.

5) Shields are something we are constantly looking into. They might be underpowered, I can't confirm or deny it, until I do some more testing. It all depends what enemies you're up against really - my colony easily survives raids by tribals with just one shield generator, but shields melt after the first salvo of a 5k mechanoid raid.

Originally posted by Oskar Potocki:

2) We do have a changelog which lists down the most important changes - these two included.

Hmm. My point was - update in-game tooltip too as ~95% of players never read changelogs&patchnotes :)

Originally posted by Oskar Potocki:

4) Except you don't need to rebuild a bear trap - you build it once and it stays there forever, you just rearm it. Vanilla traps need to be rebuilt with resources every time.

This should be included in tooltip too.

Originally posted by Oskar Potocki:

my colony easily survives raids by tribals with just one shield generator, but shields melt after the first salvo of a 5k mechanoid raid.

Exactly! Tribal raids aren't so scary (especially with your all-mighty flamethrower turrets <3) to build shields but mechanoids & rocket launchers it's completely another story - this why we want shields, to at least give us a some time under fire.

I suggest you to balance shields more around inferno cannons & blasters then bows&pila :)

corisai , you dont think when speaing :), i didnot say nerf them just place a mini solar panel, and you dont need to oppose everything :D

HMG complex have 50% armor penetration while it's upgraded version with charge rifle something like 30%. Isn't seems right.

And main question - are your shield generators unable to stop drop pods?! O_O

Mechanoid raid landed exactly on powered & working small generator.

If it working as intended then congratulations - you'd ruined everything from ED shield mode. >_<

P.S. Shield generators description still lack any info about their tendency to make fires =/ This is important information, you shouldn't leave such nasty surprises to player.

@corisai
They stop drop pods, but not all of them. Each drop pod deals I believe 100 damage to the shield. The moment enough drop pods get absorbed, the shield pops allowing remaining pods to land.

Originally posted by Oskar Potocki:

@corisai
They stop drop pods, but not all of them. Each drop pod deals I believe 100 damage to the shield. The moment enough drop pods get absorbed, the shield pops allowing remaining pods to land.

The problem that your shields are disabled before enemy actual appearance AND do not store their "health" after battle.

This mean they will 100% reliable allow drop pods to land & do not interfere into it. Multiple reloads all gived same results - mechs drop pod had landed before any of my three shields are raised (while I had more then enough energy & batteries to charge them rapidly).

ED shields had worked in similiar way but they'd saved shield hp (and allowed to charge it between batlles), yours are not.

I may have just found the perfect solution to the killbox-balancing problem, Oskar. :)
What do you think of the mod? Developed by the famous Andreas Pardeike.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=864601386

how I do my killbox's is to turn my colonists into turrets. I have a funnel into my base, 2 cells wide, which the baddies go into. Then at the end of that they turn a corner to face my colonists, who are armed with some kind of shotgun (preferably chain/charge shotguns) and incendiary launchers.

Flame turret is too overpowered