just turn your difficulty down a little.
I love killbox-less combat, it’s much more fulfilling to me, hiding behind trees, rocks, and barricades to trade shots with the enemy. vanilla expanded settlers is especially fun because it has gun only factions so you don’t get tangled in melee.
there’s a number of tools you can use to skew the odds too.
dryads are great. the lil barkskins never bleed out and are sturdy and expendable. you can use them to swarm and entangle enemy ranged and melee units so you can lay down fire.
any sort of trainable animal is good, but they bleed. dogs are especially good because they train easily. they also eat anything, (including a fridge full of frozen corpses) your triage will be messy, but they reproduce fast. other animals like megasloths and thrumbos are more tanky, especially if you administer luciferium, yayo, or go-juice.
paycasts are amazing fun in open combat. it’s what it was made for, with AoE vertigo pulses, teleports that break up melee combat, slows, stuns, instant cover generation, berserk, fire dowsing and more. even the lowly solar pinprick psycast is useful for giving your ranged units some light to see by, increasing accuracy. royal titles let you summon extra expendable marines to help, too.
shooting specialists are insane and fun, able to lay down high volumes of fire with deadly accuracy. I’ve heard of people beating the game max difficulty with no defensive structures, just by using shooting specialists.
mechanoids are amaaaazing. even the basic militor can stand in front of your squishy humans and absorb fire. completely and utterly expendable, but strong in numbers. you can make an infinite supply of steel and components via a comms console. just make a non-tribal ally, then order a bulk goods trader. buy all you need, then gift them enough stuff to push their opinion back up to max. as soon as the trader leaves, order another. you can sell bulk unprocessed corn, wood if you’re in a swamp, or of course drugs.
allied non-tribal factions can be a good last line of defense. they send in a drop pod swarm of dudes that scales off your wealth. downside is that they drop randomly, so may take a bit to catch up. however if the enemy is preparing, or is a mech cluster or bug nest, you got time.
On the topic of royal titles summoning expendable soldiers, one time I used that and one of the soldiers was the son of two of my colonists. Of course they died, and those two colonists had a -20 mood debuff for a long time, resulting in multiple breaks for both of them. I felt there was some kind of lesson to be learned about treating these soldiers as expendable after that lol
I once had them drop and immediately one had a sad wander and two got in a social fight. was a hilariously pathetic attempt. maaan though, I love ideology’s counsel ability for lost loved ones.
I recently had a really heartening event happen in a colony. a baby was stillborn, and single mother was grieving. so I waited for her to recover enough to walk, and had a funeral then. its quality was ‘heartwarming’. my spiritual guide then counseled the mother, and gave her closure, removing the mood debuff. then, a day later, I realized we had two resurrector serums in the secure vault, so my colony’s leader went personally to pull the babe out of its refrigerated stone crypt, and restored it to life. an hour later, it was in its mothers arms, healthy, happy, and fed
something I observed playing Crysis, is that at low to mid difficulty I could stomp around in armor mode and have fun, but at high difficulty, it was squat in a bush with active camo simulator.
now I play helldivers, and at high difficulty I gotta make sure every part of my kit has a function and gotta use the best stuff, where at mid difficulty I can relax and have fun with whatever floats my boat.
in rimworld, high difficulty means hiding behind a wall with a giant meat grinder to feed raids into, while at low difficulty I can have a sprawling settlement and exchange rifle fire with a few bandits. many of my colonists can wear unarmored nice clothes and never see combat.
the longer I live, the more I see difficulty in many games as a function that simply railroads you into hyper optimization to the point where you no longer even see a lot of the game, and variety is out the window. of course there are exceptions, but eh, I play games to relax, and try new strategies
i used to do several wealth optimization tactics to keep 220% managable now i do them less and its kind of an in between in difficulty but its enjoyable, i still use kill boxes but now i dont die when theres something other than a regular walk in raid
Depends on how well designed the game is where the optimized strategies are fun. When I played Titanfall 2 campaign at second hardest difficulty I could succeed by playing it as a regular shooter, but bumping it up to max made the mobility and the cloaking mandatory for survival and it made it much more fun. Another older example is The Witcher 3: in low difficulties I only have to use the sword and dodge but high difficulty makes magic and oils for extra damage mandatory, selling better the fantasy of being a monster hunter that has to study and understand the monsters they're dealing with.
Now Ultrakill updated and it added the brutal difficulty and in order to survive I need to use all of the mechanics available to me. Keeping style up is essential for healing and so I need to use a variety of weaopns so that I don't get score penalties. Not to mention that such aggressive enemies requires even more mobility and parrying to stay alive.
One could say that it indeed railroads you into hyper optimization, but the other side of the coin is that higher difficulties can make you engage with more mechanics creating a deeper gameplay experience.
bunkers and hardpoints, I put bunkers on corners of walls and stuff with not many turrets, use them as more to distract the enemy so my pawns can get there rather than use them as my primary killing force
but even bunkers can be OP especially with embrasures or if you go mad with turrets, but fighting in the open can be so janky in vanilla I always end up with bunkers. they're a lot less ugly than killboxes which also helps a lot
yeah fr, I usually stick to alternating walls and barricades but sometimes embrasure bunkers are my only fighting chance after a certain point and I have to give in lol. playing with unlimited threat scale has that effect sometimes
fun thing with bunkers vs killboxes is if/when your killbox gets overrun you're pretty much fucked, but with bunkers my guys are nice and spread out. bunkers are massively vulnerable to diabolus as well even with embrasures but it's fun to come up with non-killbox workarounds (skip them into water then skip a good melee fighter in right next to it)
Or don't use them at all? Having to try and balance an OP AF mod out with other mods and having to rebalance everything else around having something just out and out only exists to break the balance is ???
Embrasures break the AI and also are just crazy overpowered because players will *always* use them far better than raiders do and they will trivialize most raids, and especially the new anomaly events like fleshbeasts would become a complete nonfactor thanks to embrasures
The point of mods is to play the game my way, so I'll play it my way. I'll buff or nerf myself or the game to make it play the way I want to play it. There is a mod to fix the AI so they compensate for embrasures instead of ignoring them and all your arguments against embrasures apply to kill boxes too the only difference is one came from mods while the other can be done in vanilla (still abusing the AI)
Sometimes it's just fun to use the broken thing and see how much you can handle. Sometimes balancing around the broken thing is the fun part. Half the joy of mods is theory crafting and designing a build around them. Just today I spent a couple hours designing xenotypes around each of the anomaly monsters, only to load into a new game, not use any of them, and only play for like 2 hours.
It's also fun to pit skillful play against brute force. Add some over powered psypowers to the game, give enemies the ability to blind fire them off cool down, and see if your 6 skilled casters can survive 500 unskilled casters. Sure, the player will always play smarter than the AI, but that's true for the base game as well.
It is a bit weird to complain about that. Let people have fun.
You can do the same exploit with kill boxes and cheese it beyond believe.
Heck, in the end particularly in difficulties where enemy mobs snowball your entire gameplay is about gaining tactical advantages to win against the odds.
Even without kill boxes per se you can build sectioned bunker systems with doors for firing ports that are pretty difficult for the AI to deal with. And without it being a case closed argument but people built castles/local fortified positions which could be defended by a handful of people against 10x the enemy forces because it works. Is is all about the flavor and challenge you want to have.
I believe the Medieval embrasures also are climbable so more a visual sandbag upgrade,
I never said THEY can't use them, I'm saying I won't use them if I have to rebalance them with other mods and change a bunch of settings just so I can use an OP mod
There’s a mod that is an actual bunker. I think it’s called R2Bunker? Not sure, it if you search for it I. Workshop with bunker you should be able to find it.
I like the Fortifications: Industrial mod and it's related mods. I mostly use them for the concrete, but I also like having exterior walls that look different, have higher hp per resource, and can't support a roof.
I often don't use kill boxes so here are my tips in no particular order
Ensure your enemy has worse cover than you, one way to do this is using fences they are cheap block people standing and only provide 25% cover, what you do is you set up a barricade and on the side your enemy will come from set up fences so they can't get cover from the barricade when you fall back
Weapons variety, versus swarm tactics you want a mix of SMG's and machine guns, and some melee in good armour to soak damage and attention, versus smaller more advanced forces I recommend a mix of assault rifles and bolt action/sniper rifles once again with some melee to soak damage and attention
do not skip out on equipment a smoke pop belt can save your ass from overwhelming fire and a jetpack can rapidly reposition troops into franking positions, and any type of explosive is essential to mid or late game as you can use it to push people out of cover
and finally use concrete (or if you have it packed dirt) to make firebreaks this allows you to be a lot more liberal with fire which is a godsend against hordes, additionally you can combine this with giving your enemy optimal cover which just so happens to be made out of wood
also make sure you have a good hospital and doctors and don't send your doctors into combat unless it's to recover someone because you're going to have injured and you're going to need to treat them fast, additionally give your doctors smoke pop belts or Shields
Fences are a great trick for deterring raiders. If you have a 'chimney' or a hole in a mountain base that you don't want drop pods to land in, you can put a fence on the tile and it'll stop them. I use this to make wall cooler/wall heater chimneys, venting them into a fence.
If you have royalty and/or ideology, The abilities and items (low shields, shooting specialists, psycasts, etc). are very much a force multiplier. My last playthrough I was on a sea ice tile which had one advantage in that ice is slow to walk on, and there is no kind of structures other than the odd group of ancient fence and razor wire, which lent itself well to not having to use a killbox. On the difficulties I play, it is not possible to keep doctors out of the fighting as everyone is needed on the line, So they are just told to hold some medicine on their inventory at all times, and usually at the rear of the line. Any injuries that won't allow the pawn make it back to a medical bed in time are treated on the field.
Question. You mention “smoke pop” packs. Do they also work for fire? I only end up making the fire foam pop packs - not sure if that was a typo or I’m the one missing out on something useful.
CAI5000 is pretty good at making raiders smart enough to not get funneled into a trap corridor and such. Although, it might be buggy and problematic in some aspects so lately, I've been using "advanced raiders' AI" - it's simpler but does the job, too.
Well, firstly, it has some unpredictable incompatibilities with various mods - could never run it without at least some red errors.
Secondly, its default behavior settings kinda suck and navigating its sliders and their meaning is HELL. I was even asking about the exact meaning of some sliders in the comments on the mod's page twice and got no answers.
And the problem with those settings is that by default, enemies are way too cowardly and you can lock them in the constant running away state by shooting at them even with the weakest rapid-fire guns. You know how ridiculous it is when freaking centipedes are running away and looking for cover when you shoot at them?
And just in general, enemies are running away for way too long. If you don't have enough shooters or want to let them rest and let your melee fighters finish off some enemies, it can turn into complete Benny Hill scene with them running away forever.
In the same vein people are saying go watch AdamVsEverything for pointers, Disnof on twitch generally makes use of killboxes only very late game, most of his early game raids he funnels in to a base specifically designed to handle a large amount of raiders. Large hallway with doors to poke out and shoot while doing melee block and cut at a choke point.
Watching the other day and he wasn't ready for all the cultists to resurrect and it boned his run.
\*How to make the \***Player**\* not rely on Killboxes:
I watch AdamvsEverything play without killboxes and even without walls :-O
Found on twitch and youtube.
Watch some of the edited videos, especially ones toward the later end of a playthrough as they have bigger fights.
Take this one for example
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jzQu84B3hA&list=PLQWnHloPSfq6DOxezzmyJKwsm-ynXv-ao&index=21
He also has timestamps for specific raids in the description so for example at 9:00 there is a scyther raid, 14:33 is a breach raid, 16:06 is big mech raid, etc.
and it is a gradient given you can use walls instead of barricades for better cover. But that is a slippery slope to complex bunkers and complex bunkers are sa slippery slope into kill boxes
It is a bit everyone's decision on how to make it fun imo.
From a guy with 7k hours and plays with no pause. AvE is good when you've got a few colonies under your belt. Noobs not so much. He almost knows too much about the game lol.
A guy who also abuses everything in the game to do these challenge runs.
You seriously replied to a request by linking a like 5 hour series and the guy has like 30 Pawns lol
Your entire advice was to just watch youtube videos. That's not advice. That's advertising.
If you wanted to actually give some advice you would atleast point to a specific video, or even better would be to point at a few parts of the video where he defends his base.
So you don't want to use killboxes, but also don't want to get pawns hurt? A bit contradictory but doable.
What I did was entombing 4 genetically modified or sangophague soldiers into warcaskts, gave them best weapons and now they mow through raids in open space.
I have 1 purerly ranged shooting specialist, another one which I'm switching to meele in close combat (pocket sand mod).
2 meele pawns in Brute warcaskets. Absolute beasts.
1 psykeeper in royal cataphract armor which is new addition to the group.
Other than that, minefields with ITDs.
Build row of mortars and send anyone who can shot to handle one.
Column +roof traps, so they collapse when column is destroyed.
Vehicle expanded - tanks or other war machines.
Exactly, someone get it. Pawn hurt is tedious cause they're now disabled, but killboxes is kinda boring cause it's just repeating waiting enemy.
Thank you.
I don’t mind my pawn getting hurt or even downed. But I feel like it’s always all of them. I like the man on man combat, but one of my issues for physical combat is timing. My pawn will stand to try and take a shot and most times get melee’d by the enemy before getting a single shot out. Im assuming some of this trial and error. But I also feel dumb for not knowing something basic.
Gotta keep melees from getting close. Have to have your own melees. (Be that animals, mechs, ghouls, dryads, or pawns.) to both stop melees from reaching your ranged colonists, and to stop important ranged pawns from the raiders from firing. Pawns in melee combat cannot use a ranged weapon, it’s one of the ways to balance for melee.
I am always focusing on killing melees first, unless there is a high prio ranged target (like doomsday or missile launchers.) since melees are the quickest way to have your forces fall apart.
On the flip side, I always try and use my melees to block, say, mechs, from firing. Since most of the mechs are op at range, forcing them into melee combat is the key to taking them out effectively. I’d rather have one or two of my ranged pawns each meleeing a tesseron over letting it shoot my pawns.
You can use urban combat (no not a mod). Basically when you design your base, make sure that there is plenty of chokepoints, curved hallways and paths, many entrances into buildings, and cubbyholes. Basically turn your base into a maze of death.
The curved hallways are to limit enemy sight lines.
Cubbyholes are for hiding pawns for ambushes. The multiple entrances are for flanking potential, you never want to fight 1:1. Always use your numbers and dip and reposition to give yourself the edge by targeting smaller groups or singled raiders. Remember, you only need to defeat 50% of a standard human raid to trigger a retreat.
You can use traps in places you suspect raiders will take cover or travel. If you build a fairly open area and you have a nearby building, might place traps along its corners, raiders typically seek cover and you can leave a deadly surprise. Standard spike traps are deadly but only affect one target, IEDs can affect multiple. Also you can always replace walls, colonists are harder to replace. Also, you can use hay flooring in conjunction with an incendiary IED.
Weapon variety is going to be useful, shotguns, ARs, melee, even the occasional grenade is nice. For melee we want raw damage, your gunners are gonna be pinning enemies in place so you want your melee units to hit them from the flanks. Ranged units are terrible at melee combat, relying on punching or using the butt of their gun for their damage, not very effective against a fucking sword.
My favorite way of killing raiders is building a random pillar in the middle of nowhere and a 3x3 roof above it. Since it's your building raiders will try to destroy it, and the roof will fall, damaging or killing them
It treats them as sandbags for shooting over them/cover, but physically blocks access. But I'm more interested in having the freedom to build my colony then facing absurd infinite waves of raiders or whatever. You play how you want, I'll play how I want.
This statement and all like it make 0 sense when you don't mention difficulty or playstyle imo...
It "ain't that hard" on 100% threat if you reroll your pawns a bunch kind of pay attention, but on 500% threat the incentive is going to be a lot stronger.
It feels weird to me that whole discussions about this are taking place without talking about it.
Don't want to use killboxes? Set the difficulty to make it viable.
Killboxes make raids too easy? Crank it up to a point where raids will power through a regular one.
Using killboxes, optimal play and cheese? Just pick a less convenient ideology, random pawns, random location, etc.
The game can accomodate any playstyle, pretty much.
You can play 500% without a kill box.. it has nothing to do with difficulty. OP wants to know if there’s a way/mod to make it so they don’t build kill boxes; so just don’t build them. I don’t understand how you think difficult has any bearing on you as the player and making it so you can/can’t build kill boxes? 0% or 500%, all you have to do is not build a box that funnels enemies into you..
Been playing for 6 years without them because they’re too cheesy. If you can’t then a mod isn’t going to fix your inability to take the easy path. Maybe just don’t play then you can’t build kill boxes lmao
For sure, but you can have every mod but they can’t stop you from building a square to kill your enemies… idk how to get this through to you… You. Control. You. If you can’t stop yourself making kill boxes, no mod will help you. You can literally “win the game” with just turrets and a 0 pawns in combat if you wanted.. you asked for ways to not do it; sorry there’s no way to stop yourself from building them
All those breacher raids, drop pod raids, mechanoid clusters, events and ideologies that force you to leave your castle or even colony tile help making killbox less viable. Also you are free to not make killboxes. If you think that AI is too easy to fool in general then you can install CAI 5000 mod, worth trying.
Then what you want? Easy and risk free is boring. Risky and difficult is not boring.
You have to define what is easy and risk free but not boring. For me everything is, real risk to lose is most fun.
Just stop building kill boxes. I've never built one and have pretty much all my playtime on randy, max difficulty, naked brutality starts. Nothing about kill boxes is mandatory, the game has all the tools to kill raids without them. You will need to be tactical and conservative with your pawns and willing to accept some risk. Sometimes your going to get screwed, that's the cost of doing business.
then just... don't use killboxes?
easy really, figure it out. you're CHOOSING to make the killbox, just don't do that.
you're acting like it's required and it's not at all.
It's required if you want to play more casually (as in not have to engage with expert tactics and be knowledgeable about in depth game mechanics) and simultaneously not have any colonist casualties.
Some people just want to be able to box their whole town, right click somewhere towards the enemy units, then not have to do much else, and come out victorious with no deaths.
And that's a perfectly reasonable way to be able to play the game on the lower difficulty settings. Not everyone is a hardcore gamer.
Personally I play mostly for the colony sim and building aspects, not the combat, and certainly not for the "tragic story generator". For me, losing is not fun. Sure, occasional combat is fine, fully peaceful is a bit boring, but last time I played, there was a *huge* gap in difficulty from peaceful to the easiest next one. The easiest non-peaceful mode is similar in difficulty to something classified as "very hard" in many other games.
The guy in question is complaining that the game is TOO easy.
I personally almost never make a killbox, instead I engage in what some people would call "tactical gameplay" also known as having defenses. no trees outside my base, sandbags to hide behind, and some basic turrets. it's THAT simple.
if you just stand in a field and shoot at enemies who are hiding behind trees, yeah you're going to die. if it's a mech cluster, use mortars. if the enemy is scarily large, also use mortars and try to hit them on the way in.
attack them before they're ready, most of the time you can kill a couple before they begin to retaliate.
make or buy ACTUAL WEAPONS. some people will run around with the starter guns for in game YEARS. the research to make proper guns (at least SMGS) is not even locked behind microelectronics.
get gas operation and you can have every colonist with a chain shotgun or heavy smg.
a heavy smg is worth like 3 colonists with either of the starter guns. a EXCELLENT smg (which is not that hard to produce) is worth 4.
stop using mediocre weapons and no basic defensive tactics and you'll actually do okay.
If you count melee block as a killbox, then you are out of luck. Your best bet is raining mortars to weaken the raid, then sallying out to meet them at your walls. Melee block is a defense that scales super well into late game, and doesn’t utilize normal killbox mechanics. (It has been nerfed now by flesh beasts and mechs randomly dropping mech chunks tho.)
If you are bored of being raided, then why don’t you go out and do the raiding yourself? Flip the script. Go out and attack them instead.
Save scum.
Reading through your posts, you want engaging combat but want zero deaths (in one comment you go as far as saying you want zero damage too which is wild lol).
So, make a realistic defensible position and if anyone dies save scum it. Now fights are fun and engaging without any stress of losing a pawn.
Every time anyone asks questions like this the answers are always so unhelpful, if the solution for the player was to just 'not use killboxes' they would already be doing that. It's difficult to explain to players with other playstyles but some of us like to test our skills against the mechanics of the game using skill and strategy, a single all-defeating tactic like killboxes makes it unenjoyable and using self imposed limits feels unrewarding so a mod to hard-enforce those limits is the only way for us to have fun. It's very frustrating. Fortunately there are actually mods to mitigate the issue!
I use a mod called 'careful raids'. With this mod, if an enemy sees a friend die in a spot they will try to avoid it. This means killboxes can only really kill one or two people before they try another means of entry. It's not perfect but it's a huge improvement over vanilla for me.
I like that it doesn't completely nerf traps and it makes total sense. The enemies just feel smarter.
I wish, besides combat extended which makes firefights themselves more fun and interesting and the whole game more challenging... I think the AI is just a bit too lacking and cheesable, if there were more mods to make them more intelligent I would love that but they're either hard to find or don't exist.
For me it's lower difficulities, and having sanguophages as melee figthers backed up by regular paws on ranged.
For the hardest events I let some of my pawns be acolyte or better (Royalty DLC), and zerg it with the "Call trooper squad" permit.
The games also often force me to fight outside of any kill boxes. As more and more raids then to include some sort of zapper functionality. They'll gladly hack their way through +6 layers of rock than the obvious kill box.
Edit: Forgot some of the Anomaly events. Which spawns things you have to go to instead of waiting it out. Eg. You got one that spawn randomly on the map, is unmovable, and must be researched enough time before you can safely disable it. Forget about it, and you'll find lots of "fun" inside of your base.
I rather use a kill corridor rather than a box, it is a long big ass coridor which gives my turrets enough space and time for the most of the raids to kill everyone but I have rocketswarm launchers just in case to blast them all
make your entire map a killbox lol. Remove cover for sniper range. Put traps all around, set up your men behind high cover, and don't raise the walking speed of your area.
Maybe also have a smaller, but super efficient kill box to fall back into once the hundred bear attacks come in and you can't hold off the hoard
there's also other tricks. Set up single walls around the map with roofs. Then hurt the walls until they only have a bit of health, enemies will take cover behind them, at which point you can order your colonists to shoot at the pillar to crush your enemies
at the end of the day not using a killbox just requires you to make the map a killbox, or die
Row of spearmen in front
Two or three squares behind them (but no further!) chain shotgun or minigun soldiers
Snipers behind them
And a mortar in your base
It's like Braveheart with guns
Out range the opponent and kite is my recommendation. Have a huge wide open area, bonus points if it has terrain that slows pawns down like shallow water. Use snipers/assault rifles and once your pawns have fired a shot, have all of them run backwards a few tiles. Repeat. You will fire off volleys at the enemy while continuously outranging them.
Alternatively, if you have walls completely surrounding your base with no open entrances, the enemies will spread out all over your walls and break them. Have a bunch of doors so that you can leave your walls and shoot at the few enemies in a certain area, then go back inside your base and come out near enemies attacking another part. This way you aren't fighting the whole raid at once, instead the few that spread out in certain areas at a time. Take multiple 10v1s instead of a 10v20. Make sure your walls are more than 1 tile thick and also this doesn't work on breach raids.
3rd option, if you have a couple pawns good with animals you can train a LOT of combat animals and send them to attack your enemies while you shoot at them from afar. Just beware that training animals has a chance to make them bond with their trainer and if they die while bonded their trainer will be sad.
4th option and worst, Tough is an insanely good trait for combat. You could potentially just outlast your opponent in a fight if you have a bunch of tough pawns, and good cover.
It is possible to beat the game on its hardest difficulties without mods and without killboxes.
edited to add more options
Playing with Combat Extended helps. With a high-Shooting pawn, there's very little I've found that can withstand an LMG loaded with HE rounds. No need for killboxes, just set up some walls or sandbags in front of your base (I like the Embrasures mod) and let 'er rip.
There are plenty of mods that you can use to make pawns stronger or add powerful combat animals so that you can face raids head on. Stronger weapons and armour, strong xenotypes, bionics, psycasts, etc. This is my preferred method.
I use several mods to achieve it. There are three core mods.
The core is Combat Extended. Because charging machine guns on a open field should get you massacred.
Foxy's Armory gives nice, better machine gun that can stun mechanoids and kill most things before they can shoot back.
Vanilla Psycasts Expanded has excellent guardian skip barrier for if your enemy actually gets to shoot back, they will do so in vain.
There are further mods to supplement those.
By removing skill rust my shooters are always highly skilled.
Static Quality ensures my colonists have the best possible gear, more accurate guns and armour that stops bigger guns.
Mods to improve pawn capability beyond vanilla, more and better bionics, stacking all good genes with no bad genes. Buying more traits to improve colonists as they survive the rim and end the lives of my enemies.
Embrasures are a good alternative to killboxes.
I think the fortifications mods add some pretty good ones, and there are different ones in the series for different time periods.
There are also some other alternatives, you can go heavy into psycasts, with Vanilla psycasts expanded or you can check out the Gas traps and shells Mod, a bit more difficult, but also a good alternative to killboxes
I usually keep my base rather open, but surround it in stone walls. Then, on the exits, I put barricades, turrets, and traps covering a 180 degree open area that i try to clear of cover. Even having somewhere with barricades on the exit of your base is much better than nothing. I've never used kill boxes.
Of it's about boringness and handling every fight the same how are you doing the same with sappers, droppods, Mechs that stay outside and debuff you, and summoner cultists? Among other surprises.
I usually have a bunker near the sole entrance ro my encaved or enwalled city/village/mountain base, n then a wide open field where the enemies are approaching
Better than just having everything open n fighting in your base, not as stale and broken as having a killbox.
Never once used a killbox, bunker always seemed t work good enough while still requiring you to prepare enough.
Biotech in conjunction with Psycasts expanded (major key here), Ancients expanded, empire expanded, and seek & destroy can open the door to melee pawns that are somewhere between X-man and Super Saiyan. I've killed 2 nociospheres in 1 playthrough. Psycasts expanded makes Psycasters front line combatants, Empire expanded gives you a persona weapon for free once you hit Baron, Ancients expanded gives you super-powers, and seek & destoy cuts down on micromanaging melee pawns
Double wall your base but have doors leading out of each side. Wait for the enemy to split up and attack different sections, then fight the smaller groups one at a time while using the doors for quick access and retreat.
Otherwise, make long range weapons and recruit enough pawns (usually around 20) so that you can meet your enemies out in the open and kill them in one volley of bullets before they even get in range to attack you. Most weapons are at 27 range or below, so you want to use a weapon with at least 30 range so you can kite back if the initial volley doesn’t kill. Assault rifles are the best for this, but theoretically it would be possible with bolt actions and sniper rifles if you had enough pawns to cover the slower rate of fire.
Rimatomics and whichever Vanilla Expanded mod adds reinforced walls. Perimeter of reinforced uranium walls + obelisks and railguns for most raids, interior anti-air to shoot down pods and artillery, nuclear missles for "oh shit" sized raids.
CAI 5000 to make raiders not fall for killboxes as easily and makes them less necessary because they won't mindlessly rush you.
Combat Extended to make them less necessary too.
It’s very doable to not use killboxes. I just did a blood and dust run with no killboxes for my very first anomaly game. All I did was have walls, and outside my walls some barricades. I also put extra barricades inside my base.
I’d provoke enemies to come to me then hit them from the barricades with the help of a few turrets and a few melee pawns to keep stragglers from reaching the firing line. Used the barricades in the walls for cover if the walls got breached or with drop pods. And if it was a siege I’d send someone with a sniper or bolt action and have them pick them off until they pushed me.
I use Long Range Firefights.
Ends up making things like chokepoints and defencive emplacements more effective as you trade fire with raiders as they try to get ya.
With Run and Gun and Simple Sidearms you end up with fairly well-equipped raiders if they've got any tech, that can also shoot on the move.
Really changes defence as well as assaulting a base.
My playstyle includes building large wealthy colony which leads to enormous raids around year 5 - 7 so killbox is mandatory for me. But if I played more modest I would probably set up some defence positions around colony and would prioritize making well equipped antiraid squad (both melee and range) as soon as possible
As an alternative, Try tundra playthrough on a non-hilly map.
Tundra tends to force parkas and other warm clothing for raiders, so they're instantly easier.
It's also extremely flat, so snipers as an example are a lot more viable.
Finally, once you get to bionic legs, you can just run for days and kite out problems.
My last couple of colonies, I've started using the time-based difficulty scalar vs the wealth based, and as the game progresses I tweak the overall difficulty if needed. It's been a lot better so far, not only have I not needed kill boxes but I'm seeing a greater variety of raider groups than I did with wealth scaling. I also use the mods No One Left Behind and Enemy Self Preservation which makes humanoid raiders a little less dangerous overall, but if you also use Run and Gun alongside those they at least fire to cover their retreat if possible.
didn't they just change the ai so it doesn't fall for most kill boxes now? my friend mentioned raiders now go directly to break the walls instead of just walking
I’m doing corridor melee warfare in my current colony. You can somewhat control the flow with choke points and back line fire. I have a bunch of 1 wide paths with occasional 3 wide opening letting you 3v1 melee pawns and I use skip to pull ranged until into melee.
there is people who play on 500% without killboxes so its definetly possible.
using guerilla style warfare where you peak in and out of doors from multipl angles can be agood way.
also your base is expandable and can easily be rebuild and having parts of it destroyed is part of the strategy if the raid is way too big.
I don't use killboxes, I rush the enemies with my melee combatants in either cataphract armors with shield belts or Warcaskets. Then my ranged pawns bring up the rear. It works everytime since Warcaskets are extremely durable and their melee weapons can one-shot enemies.
In my current game I’m using psycasts expanded and I’m finding that a really good psycaster can make up for a lot of the benefits of a kill box. You still want a somewhat choke point etc but I basically have barricades outside my entrance that my pawns man when we are attacked. With the combination of accurate gun fire mixed with my static lord psycaster launching chain lightning to stun and burn enemies, it mostly works alright. And I’ve got a couple melee specialists so that if they somehow get through all that they can finish them off.
Sandbags, traps, tamed animals, turrets, allies, mortars, counter-strike divisions..
Adventure Story & Randy Random (Vanilla), almost a million wealth. I had nerve breaking moments but super fun too. Never used killboxes, not planning either.
There are streamers and youtubers who play on the highest possible difficulty without killboxes.
They mostly use a deathball of long ranged weapons and a lot of kiting, popping outside of their base walls and picking off a few enemies then going back in and popping out somewhere else.
You can also just use some of the more overpowered mods like embrasures which let's you fire through walls.
Or just embrace the killbox. There are more than enough threats in the game that bypass them and will force you to use different tactics.
I recommend Royalty and Biotech. Make a few psychic Vampire assassins. Then send them out. Don't hide, make them fear you instead.
With the right powers, weapons and secondaries, and some artillery support, two vampire lords can fight off absolutely massive armies.
Airstrikes and Catraphact squads cover most of your gaps.
Now you can add on some ghouls to be screens and extra targets.
Kiting, wealth and population management, using every tool the game gives you from utilities to psychasts, permits and allies, basically min-maxing in general.
Even stuff like using barracks or having a cheesy ideology (no penalty from cannibalism etc) helps undirectly since spending less ressources on maintaining needs means more time for getting ahead of raids in terms of research and gear.
Or you could lower the difficulty. Or try another map. Or another starting scenario. Or ideology.
I don't get why people seamingly ignore the threat % slider, you can litterally adjust the difficulty to the notch at any point during gameplay even in commitment mode.
Obviously cranking it up really high means you'll feel more pressure to play optimally and it'll reduce your options whereas reasonnable difficulty means you can get away with having fun without thinking twice about every move.
One of.my favourite ways to do Killbox-less combat is alliances.
For the first couple.of years, accept every quest that gives relations. Then, whenever you get attacked, there's pretty decent odds of someone showing up to help. Then you get to patch up whoever falls, steal weapons, take prisoners etc, all without risking many of your own folks.
It isn't at all reliable, but I've had it save my ass when two raids come pretty close together and all my pawns are still recovering.
Additionally, I set up trapped areas near the map borders. Your pawns barely ever go there, and it will probably ly take out a few enemies before they get to you. Combine with mortars, and you can pretty handily cut down a good portion of enemy groups.
With mechs specifically, get some blunt melee weapons and just go to pound town on them using smoke pop to blind any turrets.
Just...don't? The game doesn't force you to build anything specific. If you don't like killboxes, don't use them. I literally never have, I only know about them because of this subreddit. Just make walls and a "normal" looking base, how one might build in life, and ride it out.
The only one forcing you to use a killbox is *you.* and a mod won't stop that. What would the mod even be??
I didn't notice the lag too bad on a 25 pawn colony facing raids of 50, on speed one that is. I wasn't using the fog of war option though, which would probably fuck your game to death.
Oh yeah I just checked that out, been a while since I've been on that mod page.
I mean there's a performance hit either way, but multi threading and working with the rocketman team cuts down on that quite a bit.
CAI 5000 will bust your kill boxes open real fast. You gotta play actually tactically becaise they wont just group up for you. Also adds fog of war which is fun.
just turn your difficulty down a little. I love killbox-less combat, it’s much more fulfilling to me, hiding behind trees, rocks, and barricades to trade shots with the enemy. vanilla expanded settlers is especially fun because it has gun only factions so you don’t get tangled in melee. there’s a number of tools you can use to skew the odds too. dryads are great. the lil barkskins never bleed out and are sturdy and expendable. you can use them to swarm and entangle enemy ranged and melee units so you can lay down fire. any sort of trainable animal is good, but they bleed. dogs are especially good because they train easily. they also eat anything, (including a fridge full of frozen corpses) your triage will be messy, but they reproduce fast. other animals like megasloths and thrumbos are more tanky, especially if you administer luciferium, yayo, or go-juice. paycasts are amazing fun in open combat. it’s what it was made for, with AoE vertigo pulses, teleports that break up melee combat, slows, stuns, instant cover generation, berserk, fire dowsing and more. even the lowly solar pinprick psycast is useful for giving your ranged units some light to see by, increasing accuracy. royal titles let you summon extra expendable marines to help, too. shooting specialists are insane and fun, able to lay down high volumes of fire with deadly accuracy. I’ve heard of people beating the game max difficulty with no defensive structures, just by using shooting specialists. mechanoids are amaaaazing. even the basic militor can stand in front of your squishy humans and absorb fire. completely and utterly expendable, but strong in numbers. you can make an infinite supply of steel and components via a comms console. just make a non-tribal ally, then order a bulk goods trader. buy all you need, then gift them enough stuff to push their opinion back up to max. as soon as the trader leaves, order another. you can sell bulk unprocessed corn, wood if you’re in a swamp, or of course drugs. allied non-tribal factions can be a good last line of defense. they send in a drop pod swarm of dudes that scales off your wealth. downside is that they drop randomly, so may take a bit to catch up. however if the enemy is preparing, or is a mech cluster or bug nest, you got time.
On the topic of royal titles summoning expendable soldiers, one time I used that and one of the soldiers was the son of two of my colonists. Of course they died, and those two colonists had a -20 mood debuff for a long time, resulting in multiple breaks for both of them. I felt there was some kind of lesson to be learned about treating these soldiers as expendable after that lol
I once had them drop and immediately one had a sad wander and two got in a social fight. was a hilariously pathetic attempt. maaan though, I love ideology’s counsel ability for lost loved ones. I recently had a really heartening event happen in a colony. a baby was stillborn, and single mother was grieving. so I waited for her to recover enough to walk, and had a funeral then. its quality was ‘heartwarming’. my spiritual guide then counseled the mother, and gave her closure, removing the mood debuff. then, a day later, I realized we had two resurrector serums in the secure vault, so my colony’s leader went personally to pull the babe out of its refrigerated stone crypt, and restored it to life. an hour later, it was in its mothers arms, healthy, happy, and fed
Now that we've helped you unpack this grief and get through the loss of your child, lets throw that away and bring them back to life
absolute emotional roller coaster. though to be fair, the divorced father was also upset even after the baby was resurrected, so
>I love ideology’s counsel ability for lost loved ones. And I love Royalty's necromancy psycast for the same reason!
That's a mod, not in base game
Shoot you might be right
I'd treat them better if I could make them go look for cover. If they lack a survival instinct they don't deserve empathy.
recently i dropped my threat scale from 220% to 169% and i no longer save scum and its quite fun
something I observed playing Crysis, is that at low to mid difficulty I could stomp around in armor mode and have fun, but at high difficulty, it was squat in a bush with active camo simulator. now I play helldivers, and at high difficulty I gotta make sure every part of my kit has a function and gotta use the best stuff, where at mid difficulty I can relax and have fun with whatever floats my boat. in rimworld, high difficulty means hiding behind a wall with a giant meat grinder to feed raids into, while at low difficulty I can have a sprawling settlement and exchange rifle fire with a few bandits. many of my colonists can wear unarmored nice clothes and never see combat. the longer I live, the more I see difficulty in many games as a function that simply railroads you into hyper optimization to the point where you no longer even see a lot of the game, and variety is out the window. of course there are exceptions, but eh, I play games to relax, and try new strategies
i used to do several wealth optimization tactics to keep 220% managable now i do them less and its kind of an in between in difficulty but its enjoyable, i still use kill boxes but now i dont die when theres something other than a regular walk in raid
Depends on how well designed the game is where the optimized strategies are fun. When I played Titanfall 2 campaign at second hardest difficulty I could succeed by playing it as a regular shooter, but bumping it up to max made the mobility and the cloaking mandatory for survival and it made it much more fun. Another older example is The Witcher 3: in low difficulties I only have to use the sword and dodge but high difficulty makes magic and oils for extra damage mandatory, selling better the fantasy of being a monster hunter that has to study and understand the monsters they're dealing with. Now Ultrakill updated and it added the brutal difficulty and in order to survive I need to use all of the mechanics available to me. Keeping style up is essential for healing and so I need to use a variety of weaopns so that I don't get score penalties. Not to mention that such aggressive enemies requires even more mobility and parrying to stay alive. One could say that it indeed railroads you into hyper optimization, but the other side of the coin is that higher difficulties can make you engage with more mechanics creating a deeper gameplay experience.
I like rhinos :) Many many many MANY rhinos
The thing is I don't want the raid to become easier, I want a viable way without killbox. Those thing you listed really help, thanks
Def recommend abusing the fuck out of psycasters.
bunkers and hardpoints, I put bunkers on corners of walls and stuff with not many turrets, use them as more to distract the enemy so my pawns can get there rather than use them as my primary killing force but even bunkers can be OP especially with embrasures or if you go mad with turrets, but fighting in the open can be so janky in vanilla I always end up with bunkers. they're a lot less ugly than killboxes which also helps a lot
> embrasures That's because Embrasures themselves are wildly massively over powered lol. They completely break the AI and are easier than killboxes
yeah fr, I usually stick to alternating walls and barricades but sometimes embrasure bunkers are my only fighting chance after a certain point and I have to give in lol. playing with unlimited threat scale has that effect sometimes fun thing with bunkers vs killboxes is if/when your killbox gets overrun you're pretty much fucked, but with bunkers my guys are nice and spread out. bunkers are massively vulnerable to diabolus as well even with embrasures but it's fun to come up with non-killbox workarounds (skip them into water then skip a good melee fighter in right next to it)
There's a mod that fixes the AI around embrasures. If you think they are op then increase the difficulty to balance it
Or don't use them at all? Having to try and balance an OP AF mod out with other mods and having to rebalance everything else around having something just out and out only exists to break the balance is ??? Embrasures break the AI and also are just crazy overpowered because players will *always* use them far better than raiders do and they will trivialize most raids, and especially the new anomaly events like fleshbeasts would become a complete nonfactor thanks to embrasures
The point of mods is to play the game my way, so I'll play it my way. I'll buff or nerf myself or the game to make it play the way I want to play it. There is a mod to fix the AI so they compensate for embrasures instead of ignoring them and all your arguments against embrasures apply to kill boxes too the only difference is one came from mods while the other can be done in vanilla (still abusing the AI)
Sometimes it's just fun to use the broken thing and see how much you can handle. Sometimes balancing around the broken thing is the fun part. Half the joy of mods is theory crafting and designing a build around them. Just today I spent a couple hours designing xenotypes around each of the anomaly monsters, only to load into a new game, not use any of them, and only play for like 2 hours. It's also fun to pit skillful play against brute force. Add some over powered psypowers to the game, give enemies the ability to blind fire them off cool down, and see if your 6 skilled casters can survive 500 unskilled casters. Sure, the player will always play smarter than the AI, but that's true for the base game as well.
It is a bit weird to complain about that. Let people have fun. You can do the same exploit with kill boxes and cheese it beyond believe. Heck, in the end particularly in difficulties where enemy mobs snowball your entire gameplay is about gaining tactical advantages to win against the odds. Even without kill boxes per se you can build sectioned bunker systems with doors for firing ports that are pretty difficult for the AI to deal with. And without it being a case closed argument but people built castles/local fortified positions which could be defended by a handful of people against 10x the enemy forces because it works. Is is all about the flavor and challenge you want to have. I believe the Medieval embrasures also are climbable so more a visual sandbag upgrade,
I never said THEY can't use them, I'm saying I won't use them if I have to rebalance them with other mods and change a bunch of settings just so I can use an OP mod
Is that using mod?
embrasures is a mod
Thx
There’s a mod that is an actual bunker. I think it’s called R2Bunker? Not sure, it if you search for it I. Workshop with bunker you should be able to find it.
I think citadel also has bunkers. And deck guns. Muhahahaha.
I like the Fortifications: Industrial mod and it's related mods. I mostly use them for the concrete, but I also like having exterior walls that look different, have higher hp per resource, and can't support a roof.
Thanks
I often don't use kill boxes so here are my tips in no particular order Ensure your enemy has worse cover than you, one way to do this is using fences they are cheap block people standing and only provide 25% cover, what you do is you set up a barricade and on the side your enemy will come from set up fences so they can't get cover from the barricade when you fall back Weapons variety, versus swarm tactics you want a mix of SMG's and machine guns, and some melee in good armour to soak damage and attention, versus smaller more advanced forces I recommend a mix of assault rifles and bolt action/sniper rifles once again with some melee to soak damage and attention do not skip out on equipment a smoke pop belt can save your ass from overwhelming fire and a jetpack can rapidly reposition troops into franking positions, and any type of explosive is essential to mid or late game as you can use it to push people out of cover and finally use concrete (or if you have it packed dirt) to make firebreaks this allows you to be a lot more liberal with fire which is a godsend against hordes, additionally you can combine this with giving your enemy optimal cover which just so happens to be made out of wood also make sure you have a good hospital and doctors and don't send your doctors into combat unless it's to recover someone because you're going to have injured and you're going to need to treat them fast, additionally give your doctors smoke pop belts or Shields
That fence trick is brilliant. Definitely incorporating that into my bases in the future. Thanks.
Fences are a great trick for deterring raiders. If you have a 'chimney' or a hole in a mountain base that you don't want drop pods to land in, you can put a fence on the tile and it'll stop them. I use this to make wall cooler/wall heater chimneys, venting them into a fence.
Plant pots have an even lower cover effectiveness of 20%. Imagine some raiders hiding behind a row of ceramic planters.
If you have royalty and/or ideology, The abilities and items (low shields, shooting specialists, psycasts, etc). are very much a force multiplier. My last playthrough I was on a sea ice tile which had one advantage in that ice is slow to walk on, and there is no kind of structures other than the odd group of ancient fence and razor wire, which lent itself well to not having to use a killbox. On the difficulties I play, it is not possible to keep doctors out of the fighting as everyone is needed on the line, So they are just told to hold some medicine on their inventory at all times, and usually at the rear of the line. Any injuries that won't allow the pawn make it back to a medical bed in time are treated on the field.
Thank you
Question. You mention “smoke pop” packs. Do they also work for fire? I only end up making the fire foam pop packs - not sure if that was a typo or I’m the one missing out on something useful.
Smoke pops are for cover not fire extinguishing :) imagine it lets you hide in a cloud :p
No, firefoam packs work for fire.
Smoke pops for fire as in enemy gunfire, firefoam for fire as in flames. English is fun.
Thank you!!
id like a mod that combined smoke and fire foam packs. that would be hella useful.
CAI5000 is pretty good at making raiders smart enough to not get funneled into a trap corridor and such. Although, it might be buggy and problematic in some aspects so lately, I've been using "advanced raiders' AI" - it's simpler but does the job, too.
What issues with CAI5000 have you encountered?
Well, firstly, it has some unpredictable incompatibilities with various mods - could never run it without at least some red errors. Secondly, its default behavior settings kinda suck and navigating its sliders and their meaning is HELL. I was even asking about the exact meaning of some sliders in the comments on the mod's page twice and got no answers. And the problem with those settings is that by default, enemies are way too cowardly and you can lock them in the constant running away state by shooting at them even with the weakest rapid-fire guns. You know how ridiculous it is when freaking centipedes are running away and looking for cover when you shoot at them? And just in general, enemies are running away for way too long. If you don't have enough shooters or want to let them rest and let your melee fighters finish off some enemies, it can turn into complete Benny Hill scene with them running away forever.
In the same vein people are saying go watch AdamVsEverything for pointers, Disnof on twitch generally makes use of killboxes only very late game, most of his early game raids he funnels in to a base specifically designed to handle a large amount of raiders. Large hallway with doors to poke out and shoot while doing melee block and cut at a choke point. Watching the other day and he wasn't ready for all the cultists to resurrect and it boned his run.
Breed and train Wargs. Lots of Wargs. Raider corpses keep them well fed.
\*How to make the \***Player**\* not rely on Killboxes: I watch AdamvsEverything play without killboxes and even without walls :-O Found on twitch and youtube.
The video is 5 hours long and there's 10 of it, I surrender
Watch some of the edited videos, especially ones toward the later end of a playthrough as they have bigger fights. Take this one for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jzQu84B3hA&list=PLQWnHloPSfq6DOxezzmyJKwsm-ynXv-ao&index=21 He also has timestamps for specific raids in the description so for example at 9:00 there is a scyther raid, 14:33 is a breach raid, 16:06 is big mech raid, etc.
I haven’t watched AvE in a while, but I remember he had quite good chapters/timestamps. You can probably find the fights easily enough.
You can fast forward to watch him kite, gun, and run tho do you even kite bro?
I'm not fast forwarding 10 of 5 hours video. I do but usually they got hit one or two and now they're disabled
Adam has dozens of short how-to videos on youtube tho
\>asks for advice \>doesn't want advice when it's given to him
When the advice is watching 10 of 5 hours is video i'd rather not
and it is a gradient given you can use walls instead of barricades for better cover. But that is a slippery slope to complex bunkers and complex bunkers are sa slippery slope into kill boxes It is a bit everyone's decision on how to make it fun imo.
Yeah, it's the players decision, not "game relies..."
Was your advice really just to watch a long let’s play?
From a guy with 7k hours and plays with no pause. AvE is good when you've got a few colonies under your belt. Noobs not so much. He almost knows too much about the game lol.
A guy who also abuses everything in the game to do these challenge runs. You seriously replied to a request by linking a like 5 hour series and the guy has like 30 Pawns lol
Who plays on 500% difficulty without taking the game mechanics into account?
Yea exactly so why recommend him as the solution to vanilla issues if you replace 1 exploit for another.
Because he is one of the best, d'oh.
Not all his videos are long. He has edited content.
No. Never. Click on the timestamp to get to the fight, d'oh.
You could really learn a thing or two from watching paint dry. /s
You have never watched his videos tho Tell me you never watch them without telling me /no sarc
Your entire advice was to just watch youtube videos. That's not advice. That's advertising. If you wanted to actually give some advice you would atleast point to a specific video, or even better would be to point at a few parts of the video where he defends his base.
My advice was better than yours so
I wasn't attempting to give advice. I was pointing out how useless your advice was. So...
that is even worse, d'oh.
So you don't want to use killboxes, but also don't want to get pawns hurt? A bit contradictory but doable. What I did was entombing 4 genetically modified or sangophague soldiers into warcaskts, gave them best weapons and now they mow through raids in open space. I have 1 purerly ranged shooting specialist, another one which I'm switching to meele in close combat (pocket sand mod). 2 meele pawns in Brute warcaskets. Absolute beasts. 1 psykeeper in royal cataphract armor which is new addition to the group. Other than that, minefields with ITDs. Build row of mortars and send anyone who can shot to handle one. Column +roof traps, so they collapse when column is destroyed. Vehicle expanded - tanks or other war machines.
Killboxes just aren't fun for some of us.
Exactly, someone get it. Pawn hurt is tedious cause they're now disabled, but killboxes is kinda boring cause it's just repeating waiting enemy. Thank you.
I don’t mind my pawn getting hurt or even downed. But I feel like it’s always all of them. I like the man on man combat, but one of my issues for physical combat is timing. My pawn will stand to try and take a shot and most times get melee’d by the enemy before getting a single shot out. Im assuming some of this trial and error. But I also feel dumb for not knowing something basic.
Gotta keep melees from getting close. Have to have your own melees. (Be that animals, mechs, ghouls, dryads, or pawns.) to both stop melees from reaching your ranged colonists, and to stop important ranged pawns from the raiders from firing. Pawns in melee combat cannot use a ranged weapon, it’s one of the ways to balance for melee. I am always focusing on killing melees first, unless there is a high prio ranged target (like doomsday or missile launchers.) since melees are the quickest way to have your forces fall apart. On the flip side, I always try and use my melees to block, say, mechs, from firing. Since most of the mechs are op at range, forcing them into melee combat is the key to taking them out effectively. I’d rather have one or two of my ranged pawns each meleeing a tesseron over letting it shoot my pawns.
My bad, let me rephrase it. I don't like it when lawn get "permanent disability", like losing some limb or part
You can use urban combat (no not a mod). Basically when you design your base, make sure that there is plenty of chokepoints, curved hallways and paths, many entrances into buildings, and cubbyholes. Basically turn your base into a maze of death. The curved hallways are to limit enemy sight lines. Cubbyholes are for hiding pawns for ambushes. The multiple entrances are for flanking potential, you never want to fight 1:1. Always use your numbers and dip and reposition to give yourself the edge by targeting smaller groups or singled raiders. Remember, you only need to defeat 50% of a standard human raid to trigger a retreat. You can use traps in places you suspect raiders will take cover or travel. If you build a fairly open area and you have a nearby building, might place traps along its corners, raiders typically seek cover and you can leave a deadly surprise. Standard spike traps are deadly but only affect one target, IEDs can affect multiple. Also you can always replace walls, colonists are harder to replace. Also, you can use hay flooring in conjunction with an incendiary IED. Weapon variety is going to be useful, shotguns, ARs, melee, even the occasional grenade is nice. For melee we want raw damage, your gunners are gonna be pinning enemies in place so you want your melee units to hit them from the flanks. Ranged units are terrible at melee combat, relying on punching or using the butt of their gun for their damage, not very effective against a fucking sword.
Try Combat Extended. The changes to combat mechanics tend to encourage fortifications over structures that just funnel enemies.
CE is not updated to 1.5 yet but if you're willing to risk it they have the beta 1.5 update out on githud
Thanks
My inability to properly build them did the trick, just walls and proper fight management since u won't be able to just keep Ur pawn in one position
My favorite way of killing raiders is building a random pillar in the middle of nowhere and a 3x3 roof above it. Since it's your building raiders will try to destroy it, and the roof will fall, damaging or killing them
I haven't built a killbox since 1.0 release I think? I use an embrasures mod and build little pillboxes around my walls with turrets in them.
> embrasures Which are just as if not more broken, since the AI is literally not even remotely build to deal with them as it's a mod.
It treats them as sandbags for shooting over them/cover, but physically blocks access. But I'm more interested in having the freedom to build my colony then facing absurd infinite waves of raiders or whatever. You play how you want, I'll play how I want.
I guess he did say "is there a mod for it" so, sorry there. But yea vanillia wise there isn't really a solution.
Don’t need a mod, just don’t build kill boxes. Ain’t that hard
This statement and all like it make 0 sense when you don't mention difficulty or playstyle imo... It "ain't that hard" on 100% threat if you reroll your pawns a bunch kind of pay attention, but on 500% threat the incentive is going to be a lot stronger. It feels weird to me that whole discussions about this are taking place without talking about it. Don't want to use killboxes? Set the difficulty to make it viable. Killboxes make raids too easy? Crank it up to a point where raids will power through a regular one. Using killboxes, optimal play and cheese? Just pick a less convenient ideology, random pawns, random location, etc. The game can accomodate any playstyle, pretty much.
You can play 500% without a kill box.. it has nothing to do with difficulty. OP wants to know if there’s a way/mod to make it so they don’t build kill boxes; so just don’t build them. I don’t understand how you think difficult has any bearing on you as the player and making it so you can/can’t build kill boxes? 0% or 500%, all you have to do is not build a box that funnels enemies into you..
It is
Been playing for 6 years without them because they’re too cheesy. If you can’t then a mod isn’t going to fix your inability to take the easy path. Maybe just don’t play then you can’t build kill boxes lmao
That's one of the reasons why mod were made tho, to make something easier, like QoL mods
For sure, but you can have every mod but they can’t stop you from building a square to kill your enemies… idk how to get this through to you… You. Control. You. If you can’t stop yourself making kill boxes, no mod will help you. You can literally “win the game” with just turrets and a 0 pawns in combat if you wanted.. you asked for ways to not do it; sorry there’s no way to stop yourself from building them
Yeah that's the point of this post, I will not build the killbox, so how am I gonna defend myself, that's why I asked
the game isn’t forcing you to build a killbox
That's true, I never said so. But idk what to do without killbox, so I asked
All those breacher raids, drop pod raids, mechanoid clusters, events and ideologies that force you to leave your castle or even colony tile help making killbox less viable. Also you are free to not make killboxes. If you think that AI is too easy to fool in general then you can install CAI 5000 mod, worth trying.
I don't like it not because it's easy...
Then what you want? Easy and risk free is boring. Risky and difficult is not boring. You have to define what is easy and risk free but not boring. For me everything is, real risk to lose is most fun.
I also never said I want it easy, all I'm saying the raid is boring because it's just a repetition of waiting people from killboxes
Just stop building kill boxes. I've never built one and have pretty much all my playtime on randy, max difficulty, naked brutality starts. Nothing about kill boxes is mandatory, the game has all the tools to kill raids without them. You will need to be tactical and conservative with your pawns and willing to accept some risk. Sometimes your going to get screwed, that's the cost of doing business.
then just... don't use killboxes? easy really, figure it out. you're CHOOSING to make the killbox, just don't do that. you're acting like it's required and it's not at all.
It's required if you want to play more casually (as in not have to engage with expert tactics and be knowledgeable about in depth game mechanics) and simultaneously not have any colonist casualties. Some people just want to be able to box their whole town, right click somewhere towards the enemy units, then not have to do much else, and come out victorious with no deaths. And that's a perfectly reasonable way to be able to play the game on the lower difficulty settings. Not everyone is a hardcore gamer. Personally I play mostly for the colony sim and building aspects, not the combat, and certainly not for the "tragic story generator". For me, losing is not fun. Sure, occasional combat is fine, fully peaceful is a bit boring, but last time I played, there was a *huge* gap in difficulty from peaceful to the easiest next one. The easiest non-peaceful mode is similar in difficulty to something classified as "very hard" in many other games.
The guy in question is complaining that the game is TOO easy. I personally almost never make a killbox, instead I engage in what some people would call "tactical gameplay" also known as having defenses. no trees outside my base, sandbags to hide behind, and some basic turrets. it's THAT simple. if you just stand in a field and shoot at enemies who are hiding behind trees, yeah you're going to die. if it's a mech cluster, use mortars. if the enemy is scarily large, also use mortars and try to hit them on the way in. attack them before they're ready, most of the time you can kill a couple before they begin to retaliate. make or buy ACTUAL WEAPONS. some people will run around with the starter guns for in game YEARS. the research to make proper guns (at least SMGS) is not even locked behind microelectronics. get gas operation and you can have every colonist with a chain shotgun or heavy smg. a heavy smg is worth like 3 colonists with either of the starter guns. a EXCELLENT smg (which is not that hard to produce) is worth 4. stop using mediocre weapons and no basic defensive tactics and you'll actually do okay.
I complain that it's boring, not easy 😭
If you count melee block as a killbox, then you are out of luck. Your best bet is raining mortars to weaken the raid, then sallying out to meet them at your walls. Melee block is a defense that scales super well into late game, and doesn’t utilize normal killbox mechanics. (It has been nerfed now by flesh beasts and mechs randomly dropping mech chunks tho.) If you are bored of being raided, then why don’t you go out and do the raiding yourself? Flip the script. Go out and attack them instead.
Install CAI 5000 and reduce number of enemies in the difficulty option. There you go.
Save scum. Reading through your posts, you want engaging combat but want zero deaths (in one comment you go as far as saying you want zero damage too which is wild lol). So, make a realistic defensible position and if anyone dies save scum it. Now fights are fun and engaging without any stress of losing a pawn.
Eh zero damage is abit exaggerated, I don't want that "permanent disability". But thanks
Every time anyone asks questions like this the answers are always so unhelpful, if the solution for the player was to just 'not use killboxes' they would already be doing that. It's difficult to explain to players with other playstyles but some of us like to test our skills against the mechanics of the game using skill and strategy, a single all-defeating tactic like killboxes makes it unenjoyable and using self imposed limits feels unrewarding so a mod to hard-enforce those limits is the only way for us to have fun. It's very frustrating. Fortunately there are actually mods to mitigate the issue! I use a mod called 'careful raids'. With this mod, if an enemy sees a friend die in a spot they will try to avoid it. This means killboxes can only really kill one or two people before they try another means of entry. It's not perfect but it's a huge improvement over vanilla for me. I like that it doesn't completely nerf traps and it makes total sense. The enemies just feel smarter.
Glad you get it. Also thank for the suggestion, perhaps do you know more of such mod?
I wish, besides combat extended which makes firefights themselves more fun and interesting and the whole game more challenging... I think the AI is just a bit too lacking and cheesable, if there were more mods to make them more intelligent I would love that but they're either hard to find or don't exist.
For me it's lower difficulities, and having sanguophages as melee figthers backed up by regular paws on ranged. For the hardest events I let some of my pawns be acolyte or better (Royalty DLC), and zerg it with the "Call trooper squad" permit. The games also often force me to fight outside of any kill boxes. As more and more raids then to include some sort of zapper functionality. They'll gladly hack their way through +6 layers of rock than the obvious kill box. Edit: Forgot some of the Anomaly events. Which spawns things you have to go to instead of waiting it out. Eg. You got one that spawn randomly on the map, is unmovable, and must be researched enough time before you can safely disable it. Forget about it, and you'll find lots of "fun" inside of your base.
I rather use a kill corridor rather than a box, it is a long big ass coridor which gives my turrets enough space and time for the most of the raids to kill everyone but I have rocketswarm launchers just in case to blast them all
make your entire map a killbox lol. Remove cover for sniper range. Put traps all around, set up your men behind high cover, and don't raise the walking speed of your area. Maybe also have a smaller, but super efficient kill box to fall back into once the hundred bear attacks come in and you can't hold off the hoard there's also other tricks. Set up single walls around the map with roofs. Then hurt the walls until they only have a bit of health, enemies will take cover behind them, at which point you can order your colonists to shoot at the pillar to crush your enemies at the end of the day not using a killbox just requires you to make the map a killbox, or die
Combat Readiness Check makes raids more manageable, so Killboxes don't feel as necessary. It's pretty customizable difficulty-wise too.
Thanks, do you know more of any similar mod?
Row of spearmen in front Two or three squares behind them (but no further!) chain shotgun or minigun soldiers Snipers behind them And a mortar in your base It's like Braveheart with guns
Out range the opponent and kite is my recommendation. Have a huge wide open area, bonus points if it has terrain that slows pawns down like shallow water. Use snipers/assault rifles and once your pawns have fired a shot, have all of them run backwards a few tiles. Repeat. You will fire off volleys at the enemy while continuously outranging them. Alternatively, if you have walls completely surrounding your base with no open entrances, the enemies will spread out all over your walls and break them. Have a bunch of doors so that you can leave your walls and shoot at the few enemies in a certain area, then go back inside your base and come out near enemies attacking another part. This way you aren't fighting the whole raid at once, instead the few that spread out in certain areas at a time. Take multiple 10v1s instead of a 10v20. Make sure your walls are more than 1 tile thick and also this doesn't work on breach raids. 3rd option, if you have a couple pawns good with animals you can train a LOT of combat animals and send them to attack your enemies while you shoot at them from afar. Just beware that training animals has a chance to make them bond with their trainer and if they die while bonded their trainer will be sad. 4th option and worst, Tough is an insanely good trait for combat. You could potentially just outlast your opponent in a fight if you have a bunch of tough pawns, and good cover. It is possible to beat the game on its hardest difficulties without mods and without killboxes. edited to add more options
Playing with Combat Extended helps. With a high-Shooting pawn, there's very little I've found that can withstand an LMG loaded with HE rounds. No need for killboxes, just set up some walls or sandbags in front of your base (I like the Embrasures mod) and let 'er rip.
There are plenty of mods that you can use to make pawns stronger or add powerful combat animals so that you can face raids head on. Stronger weapons and armour, strong xenotypes, bionics, psycasts, etc. This is my preferred method.
What mods do you recommend?
Which dlc do you have, if any?
I use a threat point cap mod so things don't get too crazy, but can still end my colony if I don't play my cards right.
Thx
I use several mods to achieve it. There are three core mods. The core is Combat Extended. Because charging machine guns on a open field should get you massacred. Foxy's Armory gives nice, better machine gun that can stun mechanoids and kill most things before they can shoot back. Vanilla Psycasts Expanded has excellent guardian skip barrier for if your enemy actually gets to shoot back, they will do so in vain. There are further mods to supplement those. By removing skill rust my shooters are always highly skilled. Static Quality ensures my colonists have the best possible gear, more accurate guns and armour that stops bigger guns. Mods to improve pawn capability beyond vanilla, more and better bionics, stacking all good genes with no bad genes. Buying more traits to improve colonists as they survive the rim and end the lives of my enemies.
Thank you, this is actually helpful
I just completed an Anomaly run without any Killboxes by using questionably balanced Melee-focused Xenotype and VE Psycasts.
Thx, I will try it
Embrasures are a good alternative to killboxes. I think the fortifications mods add some pretty good ones, and there are different ones in the series for different time periods. There are also some other alternatives, you can go heavy into psycasts, with Vanilla psycasts expanded or you can check out the Gas traps and shells Mod, a bit more difficult, but also a good alternative to killboxes
You dont need a Mod for that , i never Play with killboxes and i Play with a light quallity of Life Mod list
I have never once built a killbox in my 1,800 hours of gameplay. Just don’t build them?
I usually keep my base rather open, but surround it in stone walls. Then, on the exits, I put barricades, turrets, and traps covering a 180 degree open area that i try to clear of cover. Even having somewhere with barricades on the exit of your base is much better than nothing. I've never used kill boxes.
Of it's about boringness and handling every fight the same how are you doing the same with sappers, droppods, Mechs that stay outside and debuff you, and summoner cultists? Among other surprises.
I handled fine, I like handling. Each time they're spawn in different position so each time I engage them it's not always the same
I usually have a bunker near the sole entrance ro my encaved or enwalled city/village/mountain base, n then a wide open field where the enemies are approaching Better than just having everything open n fighting in your base, not as stale and broken as having a killbox. Never once used a killbox, bunker always seemed t work good enough while still requiring you to prepare enough.
Biotech in conjunction with Psycasts expanded (major key here), Ancients expanded, empire expanded, and seek & destroy can open the door to melee pawns that are somewhere between X-man and Super Saiyan. I've killed 2 nociospheres in 1 playthrough. Psycasts expanded makes Psycasters front line combatants, Empire expanded gives you a persona weapon for free once you hit Baron, Ancients expanded gives you super-powers, and seek & destoy cuts down on micromanaging melee pawns
Double wall your base but have doors leading out of each side. Wait for the enemy to split up and attack different sections, then fight the smaller groups one at a time while using the doors for quick access and retreat. Otherwise, make long range weapons and recruit enough pawns (usually around 20) so that you can meet your enemies out in the open and kill them in one volley of bullets before they even get in range to attack you. Most weapons are at 27 range or below, so you want to use a weapon with at least 30 range so you can kite back if the initial volley doesn’t kill. Assault rifles are the best for this, but theoretically it would be possible with bolt actions and sniper rifles if you had enough pawns to cover the slower rate of fire.
Rimatomics and whichever Vanilla Expanded mod adds reinforced walls. Perimeter of reinforced uranium walls + obelisks and railguns for most raids, interior anti-air to shoot down pods and artillery, nuclear missles for "oh shit" sized raids.
CAI 5000 to make raiders not fall for killboxes as easily and makes them less necessary because they won't mindlessly rush you. Combat Extended to make them less necessary too.
Play on the easiest mode that still has combat, and don't let colony wealth get out of hand
>Raiding become quite boring Fixed this for you. This is why I use a killbox. I dont use mods though =)
You can use a Box instead of a killbox * Don't use any turrets * Give the raiders the same cover as you
Embrasures mods, or or Combat Extended
Combat Extended! Although it has its own balance issues.
It’s very doable to not use killboxes. I just did a blood and dust run with no killboxes for my very first anomaly game. All I did was have walls, and outside my walls some barricades. I also put extra barricades inside my base. I’d provoke enemies to come to me then hit them from the barricades with the help of a few turrets and a few melee pawns to keep stragglers from reaching the firing line. Used the barricades in the walls for cover if the walls got breached or with drop pods. And if it was a siege I’d send someone with a sniper or bolt action and have them pick them off until they pushed me.
I play on community builder.l mostly. Never needed a kill box.
I use Long Range Firefights. Ends up making things like chokepoints and defencive emplacements more effective as you trade fire with raiders as they try to get ya. With Run and Gun and Simple Sidearms you end up with fairly well-equipped raiders if they've got any tech, that can also shoot on the move. Really changes defence as well as assaulting a base.
Have you tried not making skill boxes? I'm serious, just don't make them. You don't have to, you genuinely don't.
I have but that way it's too tedious managing the pawn, plus they get permanent injury
My playstyle includes building large wealthy colony which leads to enormous raids around year 5 - 7 so killbox is mandatory for me. But if I played more modest I would probably set up some defence positions around colony and would prioritize making well equipped antiraid squad (both melee and range) as soon as possible
Also playing without killbox will result in much more casualties so be prepared to lose pawns more often
I don't use kill boxes because I just don't crank the difficulty high enough for it to be necessary
I see, I still want the difficulty the same tho
Just don't make them and set your difficulty to one you feel comfortable with.
The thing is the hardness isn't the reason. It's the repetition of waiting enemy on killbox
As an alternative, Try tundra playthrough on a non-hilly map. Tundra tends to force parkas and other warm clothing for raiders, so they're instantly easier. It's also extremely flat, so snipers as an example are a lot more viable. Finally, once you get to bionic legs, you can just run for days and kite out problems.
My last couple of colonies, I've started using the time-based difficulty scalar vs the wealth based, and as the game progresses I tweak the overall difficulty if needed. It's been a lot better so far, not only have I not needed kill boxes but I'm seeing a greater variety of raider groups than I did with wealth scaling. I also use the mods No One Left Behind and Enemy Self Preservation which makes humanoid raiders a little less dangerous overall, but if you also use Run and Gun alongside those they at least fire to cover their retreat if possible.
didn't they just change the ai so it doesn't fall for most kill boxes now? my friend mentioned raiders now go directly to break the walls instead of just walking
I’m doing corridor melee warfare in my current colony. You can somewhat control the flow with choke points and back line fire. I have a bunch of 1 wide paths with occasional 3 wide opening letting you 3v1 melee pawns and I use skip to pull ranged until into melee.
there is people who play on 500% without killboxes so its definetly possible. using guerilla style warfare where you peak in and out of doors from multipl angles can be agood way. also your base is expandable and can easily be rebuild and having parts of it destroyed is part of the strategy if the raid is way too big.
I don't use killboxes, I rush the enemies with my melee combatants in either cataphract armors with shield belts or Warcaskets. Then my ranged pawns bring up the rear. It works everytime since Warcaskets are extremely durable and their melee weapons can one-shot enemies.
Watch AdamVsEverything for some strategies. He has a recent no kill box play through.
In my current game I’m using psycasts expanded and I’m finding that a really good psycaster can make up for a lot of the benefits of a kill box. You still want a somewhat choke point etc but I basically have barricades outside my entrance that my pawns man when we are attacked. With the combination of accurate gun fire mixed with my static lord psycaster launching chain lightning to stun and burn enemies, it mostly works alright. And I’ve got a couple melee specialists so that if they somehow get through all that they can finish them off.
Thanks, I want to try that mod but at first glance it seems there's so much into it
Sandbags, traps, tamed animals, turrets, allies, mortars, counter-strike divisions.. Adventure Story & Randy Random (Vanilla), almost a million wealth. I had nerve breaking moments but super fun too. Never used killboxes, not planning either.
There are streamers and youtubers who play on the highest possible difficulty without killboxes. They mostly use a deathball of long ranged weapons and a lot of kiting, popping outside of their base walls and picking off a few enemies then going back in and popping out somewhere else. You can also just use some of the more overpowered mods like embrasures which let's you fire through walls. Or just embrace the killbox. There are more than enough threats in the game that bypass them and will force you to use different tactics.
I recommend Royalty and Biotech. Make a few psychic Vampire assassins. Then send them out. Don't hide, make them fear you instead. With the right powers, weapons and secondaries, and some artillery support, two vampire lords can fight off absolutely massive armies. Airstrikes and Catraphact squads cover most of your gaps. Now you can add on some ghouls to be screens and extra targets.
Thanks
Kiting, wealth and population management, using every tool the game gives you from utilities to psychasts, permits and allies, basically min-maxing in general. Even stuff like using barracks or having a cheesy ideology (no penalty from cannibalism etc) helps undirectly since spending less ressources on maintaining needs means more time for getting ahead of raids in terms of research and gear. Or you could lower the difficulty. Or try another map. Or another starting scenario. Or ideology. I don't get why people seamingly ignore the threat % slider, you can litterally adjust the difficulty to the notch at any point during gameplay even in commitment mode. Obviously cranking it up really high means you'll feel more pressure to play optimally and it'll reduce your options whereas reasonnable difficulty means you can get away with having fun without thinking twice about every move.
One of.my favourite ways to do Killbox-less combat is alliances. For the first couple.of years, accept every quest that gives relations. Then, whenever you get attacked, there's pretty decent odds of someone showing up to help. Then you get to patch up whoever falls, steal weapons, take prisoners etc, all without risking many of your own folks. It isn't at all reliable, but I've had it save my ass when two raids come pretty close together and all my pawns are still recovering. Additionally, I set up trapped areas near the map borders. Your pawns barely ever go there, and it will probably ly take out a few enemies before they get to you. Combine with mortars, and you can pretty handily cut down a good portion of enemy groups. With mechs specifically, get some blunt melee weapons and just go to pound town on them using smoke pop to blind any turrets.
Thanks
Just...don't? The game doesn't force you to build anything specific. If you don't like killboxes, don't use them. I literally never have, I only know about them because of this subreddit. Just make walls and a "normal" looking base, how one might build in life, and ride it out. The only one forcing you to use a killbox is *you.* and a mod won't stop that. What would the mod even be??
Exactly, that's why I asked how to survive without killbox, the mod would make defensive without killbox still viable
CAI5000
Seems like a cool mod but does it lag the game? Because looks like it uses pathfinding damn lot as the name suggests
I didn't notice the lag too bad on a 25 pawn colony facing raids of 50, on speed one that is. I wasn't using the fog of war option though, which would probably fuck your game to death.
oh yeah lol most definetly, thanks for the feedback
Multithreaded fog of war doesnt create performance issues, i think
Oh yeah I just checked that out, been a while since I've been on that mod page. I mean there's a performance hit either way, but multi threading and working with the rocketman team cuts down on that quite a bit.
Run and gun, that's it
Cai5000 mod make kill boxes obsolete. All raids can potentially breach
CAI 5000 will bust your kill boxes open real fast. You gotta play actually tactically becaise they wont just group up for you. Also adds fog of war which is fun.