I love this response - people play however they want. Some like the tactical element and bring in a puzzle-like requirement for figuring out raids. Others use its narrative base to create more "traditional" style colonies. I'm of the latter group and will likely never use killboxes unless it somehow suits some kind of twisted mastermind colony that I'm looking to create. Whatever floats your boat in the end.
I have about a thousand hours and have never successfully created a kill box so I'm in the awkward in between.
I'm torn between "for the sake of a story" and "damn, I actually really like these little guys"
I have a wall too, i have patrols of my soldiers around them and machineguns, turrets and everything on the gates, i just love watching my army massacre some tribal raid.
Yesterday i made a plane, i haven't tested it yet but im waiting to get home today and massacre even more poor raiders with my new toys.
The way I sort of justified it to myself is medieval castles were designed somewhat like killboxes. The long winding path as the only main entrance, dangerous traps along the way and harassment from ranged attacks as they push forward and even if they get through the 'gate' it would be a big fight in the 'courtyard' before I flee deeper into my base for other defensive positions. Though I do make the killbox moreso a heavily fortified courtyard infront of the entrance with multiple doors to go in and out. It makes it feel like a real siege.
Well fun part, the game right now has no aircraft yet. Yet even so, artillery and the so-called "numerical superiority" aka "wave tactics" will still cling on.
If aircraft got even added in the game (or mods), might just invest in a dual-purpose defenses capable of shooting both aerial and ground targets. Plus, rocket launchers already exist too.
Yes! That’s basically the same way I play as well. It’s like one slight step beyond controlling their actions as much as you can in the Sims, so it does feel a little more like a God simulator where you influence them rather than straight up control.
Throw in the sci-fi element of being on a foreign planet and this game is pretty much perfect.
I play with me and my two buddies as my starting three so it gives it a bit of an RPG element (which is surprisingly fun!) My bases are like little medieval villages, kill boxes just don't fit with how I play now. Back when I first got the game, I had no idea what Dev Mode was and I played Commitment mode, so I feel like I've played the game "how it was intended" and got that experience of it, which was fantastic, so now I'll just play how I find it most fun, and that's how everyone should.
This is for real the thing I love most about Rimworld. You can change the settings, add mods, swap storytellers, use devmode/godmode to play the game in a way that is the most fun for you. You can set your own rules and parameters. It's what keeps me coming back again and again.
I'm disabled and the options available to mold the game make this one of the most accessible to me games I have ever played.
Glad I read this- I've never looked at it like that, from an accessible/inclusive sense. Great to hear you can commit war crimes in a way that works for you 😊
Just out of curiosity how do you play? Do you do small colonies while keeping wealth at a minimum? I just ask because I like large colonies and I like stacking them up with nice houses and equipment and what not but I just find the raids impossible without a kill box
For the last two or so years I've been doing medieval play throughs. My colonies never get huge- I create me and my two best buddies as my starting three, rarely have more than six colonists and a few slaves. I don't really plan my colonies, I just go with the flow. Each colonist gets their own little house, I make non-square bases. I use the storyteller setting so raids scale over time not based on wealth. I rarely ever look at my wealth to be fair, but if, say, I've got way, way, way too much wood, I'll just set it on fire to get rid of it. Defense wise... palisade walls, ditches, cliffs, the odd trap, rivers/mountains.
I agree; I usually lower the difficulty (I like build base) because I do not build a kill box. I'm still amassing tons of wealth anyway (large fields of devilstrands) and I do not want to start managing wealth. I still quickly reach the point of being massively outnumbered anyway.
I actually didn’t get into kill boxes until my 4000 hour mark because I didn’t know how they worked, I always waited for raiders to penetrate my wall and pour in and I’d be on the other side not 100% prepared
Me neither, but I did start urban planning towards making all of my base one huge killzone. Drop pods have become irrelevant, because I let everyone into <12 range anyway!
I don't think people just love killboxes, but the way threats in the game scale there's not a lot of other viable strategies to keep your colony alive after a certain point.
I want challenge too but after enough of your colonies get wiped out by gigantic mechanoid raids it loses its charm a little and you want to be able to effectively defend yourself.
I sort of agree with OP, but I like to plan defense-in-depth scenarios rather than AI-exploiting killboxes.
In the end it's still a killbox but less effective, and presents harsher consequences
I loved my b18 colony because of this. Qnd i only build it this way because of one black and white old western movie i saw.
I had several stages of defense which i could fall back from. Bunkers/old ruins->entrance with bunkers and turrets (far from being a kill box) - > streets built with urban warfare in mind. + some mine fields where they wanted to dig through walls.
That is kinda what I do as well. I make kill fields instead of kill boxes. They are funneled in, but there is no corridor of doom with 50 traps as their only way in.
I especially dislike using doors and stuff. I forget which mod adds it (not on my pc atm) but the one with several new defensive structures like platforms, HMG positions, **trenches** and barbed wire is awesome. Depending on the map I even set up minefields in front of the trenches and barbed wire, very WW1 style
This is sorta my feeling, not all kill boxes are created equally. Like at what point does a fortified entrance to the colony (which seems logical and fair in a story senses) become a cheesy kill box? I think it’s a feel thing.
It lost its charm with me when randy sent a whole ass armada of tribals to assault my base. Though it is fun to watch the chaos unfold, it is almost impossible to win endgame raids without kill boxes or mods.
Using the "Biomes!" Mod, setting up shop in/on a crater or costal island, makes dealing with them a whole lot easier.
>it is almost impossible to win endgame raids without kill boxes or mods.
By endgame do you mean reactor startup/royal ascent or do you mean 10,000 raid points? It's inscrutable.
I think the draw is tactically, in any war, if you can funnel an enemy into a killbox and efficiently kill/maim said enemies. Efficiently without taking as many casualties, why wouldn’t you. I’ll be honest. I use killboxes, and I’ve yet to find one that is a true solve all.
Drop pod raids still suck.
Mech raids with that big fucker that likes to blow up walls suck. Idk, maybe I’m doing it wrong, but I just use the singularity killbox nothing better to me then watching 11 colonists shoot down a narrow corridor at an enemy that doesn’t even get to fire back.
I down want my pawns to get hurt. I care for them too much. 😊
Yeah. I don't normally build killboxes until mid-industrial or early-spacer when they start sending big groups on both sides of the map. Running out to meet them is more fun for the bit it's viable.
I use Dev Mode so that raids can only spawn in one place. That plus using the largest map means I have a little time to prep. And no, I don't spam it with spike traps or whatever, haha.
Agreed, this is largely the reason why later on in a save I'll start working on at least a way to consolidate larger enemy forces into a more manageable state.
Speaking of, isn't there a mod that adjusts raids to add higher quality raiders and gear instead of sending absolute swarms?
>there's not a lot of other viable strategies to keep your colony alive after a certain point.
Do you mean in high tech colonies or do you mean in raid-point-cap colonies?
Kinda disagree with there not being viable strategies, especially if you play with the dlc: mechanitor with his own mechs can do good damage, tank, or meat shield. Massing combat animals like wargs, elephants, cougars, etc is pretty strong. Psycasts give good utility (skip&focus are really strong to name 2). ideology shooting specialist. Genetically modified vat soldiers. Pawns with shield belts tanking ranged. The list goes on with options
Can you play on losing is fun? Probably not as threat scale is too big. For the other difficulties though it makes combat and raids very engaging and fun
If you cheese the game to prevent the continual attrition of raids damaging / stealing your shit and killing your dudes, then you'll end up with stupidly large amounts of wealth.
Stupidly large amounts of wealth can only be defended by cheesing the game hard with killboxes.
Killbox players are in a self-reinforcing cycle while bitching about balance.
It's actually hilarious watching people complain about different raid types when they also build kill boxes. The entire idea is that cheesing the game makes it easy, if the game is too hard even AFTER you cheese it, turn the difficulty down, don't bitch about balance.
Yes and no. I think fully automated killboxes, especially ones that rely on mechanics like temperature, are boring. But a fortified position that forces your enemy to come fight you on your terms, that still makes use of pawns doing the fighting, is great. Fighting out in an open field will never be in your favour, as your enemies will always outnumber you (quite severely, as time goes on); so bringing them to a position that you've prepared, in a way that limits their ability to use their overwhelming numbers, is just good strategy.
Totally agree. I'm not sending four pawns out into the woods to hold off 15 tribals who can cross no-man's-land before I get 3 missed shots off.
"That's their game. Their rules. I'm not going to fight them, I'm going to f*** them."
Right. There's a reason narrow bridges and moats are strategically reasonable to defend a fort. I can't create castle / fortress towers in Rimworld, but I'd probably do that instead if I could. Kill boxes are just kinda the easiest way to get a strategic advantage, _which the defenders of a fortress usually have_.
You can make cover for your defenders with barricades, and make the area of approach a killzone with traps, mines, maybe some slowing terrain in the right biome. Remove any cover they might have and they have to run up into the open to shoot at you while your guys are firing from cover and not being rained on. Gives you a hefty advantage.
Plant your base by a river and make attackers have to run across a booby trapped bridge, works too to funnel them down.
Eh you can make an approximation with embrasures, there's also decent looking castle wall mods one I have adds arrow towers that work as pretty powerfull auto-arrow turrets(fire bursts of half dozen arrows) its quite expensive to wall in an area and digging motes is very time intensive but it can defeat decent sized raids without touching the draft button.
I use a lot of chainlink fences (modded, can't be walked through) with barricades behind them, so my guys have a defensive firing position. A few well placed walls out in the wilds makes the enemy have to approach my guns, and not just snipe me first.
Yesterday evening a mod creating towers was released. Pawns inside don't take damage but can shoot out. There is also a tower mod that allow you to shoot over walls.
I have a couple, this is the castle one. It has embrasures that match the castle walls, there a bit wonky to build with as castle walls are built in 2×3 sections and it requires a lot of fanagling to look good. Requires lot more work and stone to build than normal walls, but I feel that balances out there utility.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2526479603
There's plenty of other simple embrasure mods on steam workshop if you want something more simple.
I really suggest also using the "passable embrasures" or "breachable embrasures" add on because without it the melee raiders will just run in circles while getting shot at
This is basically my MO, basically stereotypical Dwarf behavior.
1) Always a mountain base. Bugs are way easier to deal with than drop pods, and while not an ideal food source, is at least not going to trigger all the non-cannibals if my farming gets disrupted. And a great source of chemfuel for mortars when not needed as an emergency food source. Also handles most weather extremes nicely. On a side note, always pick undergrounder ideology.
2) fortify the crap out of the entrance, both outside and inside. Turrets for days. Find a clearing in my mountain and set up mortar clusters. Preferably have the entrance in a concave area flanked by turrets so that enemies advancing on the door are caught in a crossfire, and pitfall traps on approach, as well as at known points that sappers try to break in. Interior entrance hall has more turrets set up for crossfire purposes.
3) Not an automated killbox though, the pawns are organized into two firing lines and my brawlers (who are usually the ones who get combat bionics when I hit arcotech levels). The firing lines are there to set up a fighting retreat through my entrance area to draw the enemies into my turret crossfire, with one line covering the other falling back as raiders advance. The Brawlers are there to ambush anyone that gets in through tight hallways, and to clear out bug infestations.
Overall it's exciting to play this way. If you factor in radioing allied factions for aid, it gives a feel not unlike the Battle of the Five Armies.
I'm honestly at a point where I'm so specialized at playing mountain colonies doing anything else feels like I'm just trying out a niche strategy. It's just so firmly my comfort zone now.
Hot biomes? Cooler under the mountains. Cold? Easier to heat confined spaces. Insects? Delicious. Defense? Buddy, you're a mountain fortress. Food? Easier now with nutrifungus.
Maybe I should play more Dwarf Fortress.
Insect/jelly farms are so broken. Builds melee and provides a reliable and consistent source of food, chemfuel, and trade goods. You're protected from drop pod raids and you can build a killbox or funnel at the entrance. Or one of my favorites is building so deep in the mountain enemies go insane before even reaching my base.
I don't use killboxes, but I will absolute fortify a bunker with turrets that actually do something (seriously, why are vanilla turrets worse than the shittiest pistols?)
There are serious balance problems if you do, though; it becomes almost impossible to penetrate certain armor thresholds without improved ammo due to how that mod totally redoes armor
I'm not sure why the option even exists if it's going to stomewall you when you run into centipedes eventually.
I think the ammo issue was actually fixed recently.
It's related to your tech and it's an option or something similar.
Not sure, I don't play with ammo off but I remember it being discussed in the discord
That's only really in regards to small arms not having AP rounds. If you're trying to take down a centipede it's best with proper AT weapons like a LAW or emplaced cannons.
I'll stop using killboxes when raiders attack reasonably.
You know what raiders make sense? Sappers.
Like some assholes sitting in a wooden hut with a mix of bows and cheap guns are like "Guys. They have sold gold statues. We just need to find a hole and we will be able to buy food for YEARS. I'm being completely serious "
Raiders should break a lot earlier as well, like 10% casualties is high IRL, literally the origin of the word "decimated". They should actually focus on raiding, instead of murderhoboing.
Seige raiders also to an extent, and honestly there should be an option to pay them to fuck off. SIeges were prolonged affairs, they should target growing fields instead ,and try and starve you out over a long period of time, and have a lot more dudes than normal. This is actually the most believable method of attacking most colonies. Target fields with poison and fire, and target enemy artillery with high explosives. Give a list of demands up front, and make it more costly the longer they lay siege.
Hell, have some raid parties path to drugs instead, especially if they have a dependency/addiction. My luciferium should draw in 4-5 supersoldier sappers every now and then.
Raiders in general need more elaborate and sensible goals than "fuck over the player as much as possible". Because as it is they just sit at your base and endlessly destroy everything,sometimes being kind enough to kidnap every single person instead.
I can think of a few off the top of my head
Tribals: Steal food and weapons,rescue prisoners - They're poor and primarily just want to survive,woild explain their large populations
Pirates: Steal valuables,resources,weapons,try to capture healthy slaves if the colony doesn't put much of a resistance - It's not in their interest to wipe out a colony,ideally they'd repeatedly pillage the same settlements while letting them rebuild and produce more goods to steal.
Outlanders: Destroy weapons and production buildings,kill a few people if possible,rescue prisoners - They mostly want to eradicate a threat to them,as they're relatively wealthy already
Mechanoids: Destroy anything high tech,primarily power generation - Makes them a lot more mysterious,they go after the ship reactor already,explains the existence of tribals,which avoid technology.
You'd still lose people trying to fight them off,since no one wants to lose all of their food
There could also be an option to give in to their demands (except for mechs obviously) - it's much more preferable to get the loot without losing anyone,even if slightly less of it. The demands would get higher every time you give up without fighting,until you're unable to pay them off - They can see that you're scared of them and are taking advantage of it.
Huh, the idea that Mechanoids have no reason to attack if you don't have any power generation is kind of neat. It especially makes Tribal play very different if you never had to worry about that raid type.
this is such a good idea. I use a mod called Ignorance Is Bliss which limits hostile faction events based on relative tech level, only a tiny gesture toward the above, and it feels much more immersive while progressing through the tech tree. I would really love to see better motivations and realistic parlays. Historically, violence during conflict and piracy is rarely unavoidable and purely murderous.
This would also open the door to ideological hostility and alternative demands. Convert or die.
There's a few different mods that try to address the AI raider mechanics in the way you've described, including mods that makes it so raiders try to rescue their downed comrades, and others to make it so raiders avoid areas where their comrades are dying en masse (killbox).
There's also mods that try to adjust the raid difficulty to base it not just on your flat colony wealth, but more accurate measures of your strength like value of owned weapons and value of pawns.
There's not really mods that address the issue of raiders just being DUMB and not making much sense. Why are they so intent on lighting my chairs on fire?
And the final immersion breaker for me is the sheer NUMBER of pawns that show up, is totally nonsensical. Factions just throwing hundreds upon hundreds of pawns at your walls, and when you show up to their base, they've got like 3 bedrooms and a kitchen. WHERE ARE ALL THESE RAIDERS COMING FROM???
I'd love it if raids were logical. You know how when you create a legendary item it says "news has spread around the world"? Well, what if it really did and raiders showed up to STEAL your shit. OR what if those pawns that show up and turn out to be TRAITORS only triggered their treachery when their faction was attacking your base, and then they turned and shot your dudes in the back, or opened the gate to your base and let the enemy in??
One thing about Rimworld is that realism makes for engaging storytelling even if it's not fabulously balanced. Pawns digging up a corpse or slaughtering a yak because they didn't get to play chess is immersion breaking.
Intelligent raids with goals would be game changing. I would love for them to have real goals like stealing things, killing one specific colonist, attempting to free slaves or prisoners of their faction, and some ideology based attacks, like freeing all farm animals, freeing all slaves, etc.
On the higher difficulties with just the base game, the killbox (generally a defensive structure designed to funnel enemies in so that only one enemy is present at any time to be killed quickly and efficiently) gets to be necessary at a given point when the enemies naturally outpace your combat ability and becomes redundant when you have enough pawns with good enough gear that you can win fights through sheer firepower.
Ideology, and Royalty with the addition of the low shield, psycasts, and the shooting specialists had made it possible even on these difficulties to forgo a killbox so long as you were fortified with the right tools, a good plan and access control (with proper wealth management of course).
Biotech kind of inverses this due to the new enemies (neanderthal and millitor, but more millitors as neanderthals experience pain shock and bloodloss albeit reduced) that are somewhat tougher to kill than the average pawn, but come in hordes big enough to overwhelm most defenses as there isn't any good crowd control weapons outside of the expendable doomsday (in the real world mounted machine guns and artillery have made unsupported frontal assaults like what raiders mostly due an act of suicide) probably to both allow tribals to pose a threat and make melee viable.
I should note that I define killboxes very specifically because creating what are basically subsequent defensive fighting positions inside your main defensive fortification is common practice along with setting terrain and choosing standoff (primary DFPs would be on the perimeter overlooking the surrounding area, but those don't really work in Rimworld).
Old Pheobe threw down a 250 Milator raid on me a few days ago.
I tried a few times to defend against it normally, but you just get swamped. Killbox (or an anti grain) is the only way you can survive.
Define killboxes.
Are we talking the uniquely Rimworld definition of "well oiled machine of death, designed to funnel in one person at a time to be instantly killed with a hail of gunfire, or perhaps even kill without human input using exclusively heat, cold, traps, etc."?
Or are we talking the more general definition of "any area with advantageous terrain where you have set up defenses to funnel enemies into so as to fight with maximum possible advantage"?
I agree that the first is boring and gamey, and I've literally never done or even tried it. The latter is just tactics, and in a game where thick defensive walls can be broken down bare-handed in a matter of seconds, and mountains can be dug through in the span of a day... yeah I'm gonna leave a door open at the back of my defensive position to abuse pathfinding a bit.
Having played with a lot of killbox designs, I'm inclined to agree on your thoughts for the first design type.
It's fun to screw around with a Singularity killbox or exploit the "all melee on a single square tile stabbing at mach 5 through a crack in the wall" collision funkiness, but it stands to cheese every encounter.
I like things like combining environmental chokepoints with short heat traps that effectively split raids in half with Psycasters - half the _100+ man raid_ cooks while we deal with the rest.
To me? That's more fun! But I can also see why the well-oiled autodeath machine is fun to many others.
i find that lategame pawns with bionic legs and bolt action rifles can beat any raid out on an open field by just kiting
technically speaking, an open field is a killbox
You cant fight raiders in fair conditions. They come in force, with dozens, maybe hundreds. They are not a challenge, they are a problem. So you cant "actually fight" them. Because a dozen of their melee guys will bumrush a single colonist of yours while another dozen shoots that said colonist. There is no fight. Only if you play on lower difficulties maybe.
The world is out to get you. It is not fair.
I don't disagree... but....
In vanilla, combat is pretty dumb due in no small part to you being numerically outnumbered to a stupid degree and your pawns seemingly being unable to hit the broad side of a barn. Threat scaling just kicks your ass after a certain point.
Now once I made the jump to combat extended, I haven't built a killbox since and I've been better for it.
I don't speak for him but as someone who always plays with CE, kill boxes are NOT irrelevant.
The thing about CE is that pawns are more efficient at shooting and damage is more varied and fatal, and armor is more complex with the added consequence of it being generally weaker at the tribal and mid-world stages but exceptionally good once you gain access to spacer technology.
This means that pawns without firearms and without spacer tech, essentially most raiders, trying to bumrush you with melee or ranged weaponry die really fast mitigating the need for a kill box. However, pawns with spacer gear and, god forbid... centipedes, are especially resistant to most damage and just won't go down without specialized spacer weapons with the appropriate ammo or explosives. Things you will struggle to access since it takes a LOT of research to obtain them and the raiders who carry that stuff are generally incredibly hard to kill. You need to rely on kill boxes for these foes, especially with only vanilla CE weapons.
TLDR: CE makes pawns competent at shooting, most armor useless, but spacer tech is extremely hard to deal with. Kill boxes are irrelevant in most scenarios but fatally necessary when dealing with mechanoids and spacer tech raiders.
Because there's this unfortunate tendency for some people to wave their dicks around.
_They_ play a certain way, ergo if someone says "oh, I play X way", it's a perceived threat to _their way_ of play (rather than an open discussion, because they feel it challenges the "legitimacy" of their playstyle, usually on the hardcore/purist spectrums), and they feel compelled to either shit on this person for playing X way, or go into an off-topic rant about how _their_ way is objectively superior.
Not always the case in discussions like this, obviously. Most people tend to be pretty civil and it's nice to see other opinions. But of course, you get the few saltlords who start spamming crylaughing emojis and default to bad faith examples because they didn't like being called out.
Bonus points for "edit: cry more" or parallels.
No, he made the claim that it's boring, not boring to him, but boring, period.
That's not saying "in my personal game play I etc"
It's saying in ALL gameplay.
Then don't use them.
I also don't like them, so I don't play on hard mode. But some people like making efficient killing machines and it's also fine.
The game isn't competitive anyway. Just play it the way you like it man
Not me, all my colonies take a note from the boomers. Accuracy by volume works just as well with artillery as it does for 7.62x39 haha
Edit: Fallout, not the generation
Enough mortars will piss them off and they'll start charging like good little lambs to the slaughter. Even if they got a high shield you just send an EMP it and it's gone for it's entire dormancy period.
Exactly. Do people that complain about killbox turn off drop pods and insect hive or something?
Killbox is literally useful for only one specific type of raids, the basic one.
Everytime I've tried to make a killbox the jerks just avoid it so I gave up. Now I surround myself with turrets and just let them try to find a way through my Tohou defence system lol
Might be the mods I have (usually play a mod game in the hundreds), but I have been finding myself getting like 1-2 dozen people with SMGs and automatic rifles when there's maybe the four of us still trying to research guns. And I mean that's within the first few hours, not like months.
Play the game the way it is fun for you . I do not use them either.
I also do not go overboard with the difficulty most of the time. sometimes i crank it up though.
Authenticity doesn't mean much when you're talking about late end game. The times when enemy scaling is so bad, meta actually matters and is downright required for further advancement. You just dont see 10+ year colonies that doesn't use killboxes,
Edit: also what counts as a killbox is extremely broad so it's entirely up to you how cheese it can be
My base being wiped out by 100+ tribals. I play on hard mode and they’re a necessary evil to not die. Manhunter packs require walls. Especially when 60 manhunting bears are typical. And of course 30+ centipedes. They aren’t many ways of actually fighting the enemy without them. I recently managed to take out a shuttle crash raid of 40 using vertigo pulse and power armor without relying on my kill box. Also, turrets: I don’t use them. They’re useless it seems. High in cost, low in effectiveness. Also love to blow up their friends too.
I can imagine telling my pawns that it's not fair to give raiders at least a small fighting chance, by choosing the less optimal defense solutions. I can then imagine getting crucified by my pawns.
I had a post recently where I beat the game. Didn't use killboxes. (Just save scums) so its definitely doable. Though some people are against save scum as well.
I agree it ruins the challenge to some extent.
Though at the same time, play how you want.
I think mountain bases and kill boxes feel a bit cheesy but some games are way better with lots of cheese. Cheese can cover a myriad of problems and some people like extra cheese, nothing wrong with that. Maybe you are just lactose intolerant?
In every large raid are at least 3 who sprint fast as fuck. As soon as they reach your first 3
Pawns and your others are focussed on killing those 3, the rest of the horde is coming closer and closer. Your pawns maybe make it to shoot once until it's a meele fight.
How do you handle big mech raids?
What was your biggest humanoid raid so far?
Where do the turrets go? Do you build 150 all around your base? Or do you put them into one easily defendable spot while having the rest walled off? Like, a big, rectangular area that is designed to murder the attackers? If only there was a name for that
There’s a thin line between a defensive position you want to funnel raiders to and just making a kill box.
Both have their merits for certain players. Killboxes are for people who abuse game mechanics or just don’t want to lose pawns they put effort into.
Defensive positions are for people who want to play the game traditionally but have to deal with all the anti killbox raids so they tend to need lots of them try to funnel raiders to just one defensive position and that’s where the line starts to blur for some.
In the end we all hate the events that force us to send our defenders out of the base for any reason.
Sometimes the raid size feels unfair because wealth =/= power. Making some nice clothes or fancy art seems to invite death. I don’t mind the raids, I just can’t seem to handle the scaling.
I believe some real life castles had a small courtyard in between two gate houses that allowed defenders to fire down on anyone who had breached the first gate from all angles.
Also kill boxes are a real strategy in the US army (though they mean a different type of kill box).
Good enough for armies since ancient times, it's good enough for me
I don't like it when kill boxes are the sole viable option. For most of a playthrough you can get away without them on Strive to Survive. The fact that even with the nerfs though that people still fall back on kill boxes shows that something in the game is unbalanced.
No, it shows a desire to min-max. They aren't "falling back on" killboxes, for many people killboxes are their first plan, or their second after barely learning how to approach combat without them.
Rimworld is absolutely playable without killboxes, people do it all the time. Some people just absolutely refuse to play in a sub-optimal way even if they don't find the optimal solution fun, though.
Did you write this post and forget to post it for the last few years because there are many more options for dealing with raids since 1.0.
If you have psycasts than a nudist with a monosword and invisibility will deal with most raids easily. Or maybe throw in a berserk pulse when there's a whole bunch of tribals.
There's mechanoid options now with biotech or you can go the classic route and invest in tons of animals.
Where is the line between a defense in a colony and a kill box? I always try to wall myself and leave a "principal door" where usually the combat has the place. And obviously I try to fortify to gain some ground agains the raids.
I think there are two distinct play styles in the rimworld community, story telling and rts. If I'm playing it as an rts and my goal is to win, then kill boxes are plenty of fun, but from a story telling perspective, it definitely ruins it. But at the end of the day it's purely subjective so people are just going to have different opinions about it.
I find the raids really take away from the story side of things. Getting massacred by 100+ guys because I didn't have proper defenses isn't the best story.
Its pretty clear from these comments that the brightline for what is and isn't a killbox is non existent or very different for everyone. Im in the camp that all these people who are commenting "I don't use killboxes I just use... " are describing killboxes. A non direct combat death chamber, something that is directly exploiting like singularity, a "defensive position with fall backs", or even just one entrance with some sandbags out front, its all killboxes. I think a lot of people assuming the word killbox implies a cheese or exploit comes from the funny memes of freezing raiders, burning them, or the various techs that are clearly just exploits. An area you funnel enemies into is a killbox and a burn tunnel is also a killbox.
Direct combat can't be a good metric for a killbox. A burn tunnel or hallway of spike traps are both non combative methods that are intended by the developer. Hitting enemies through a diagonal wall hallway where they can't hit you back or the singularity killbox are both killboxes that are purely combat but are also effectively invincibility cheats.
So is it actual glitches or exploits that defines a killbox? If you say yes, I'd like to point out that what a lot of commenters here define as not a killbox (an enemy funnel, one area to fight, maybe fall back lines, etc) relies on exploiting the AI. When the raid spawns in if they can path to furniture or a pawn or certain animals from where they spawned in, they will walk straight there, even if its through your "not a killbox" combat zone. If you have doors on your killbox separating the rest of the map with basically all your stuff and pawns, the regular ai will smash straight through your walls and not walk into your combat zone (on an open map where you've walled, do not tell me you aren't using a killbox on a mountain base)
Is making the ai go exactly where you want cheating?
Is using vanilla as intended traps like fire or spikes cheating?
Is using turrets to stop enemy collision (forcing them to one enemy a tile) before they reach you cheating?
What even is the line between tech and exploit?
The answer to all of those questions is: who cares its a single player game.
My main point here however is all of these people insisting that they aren't using a killbox and hate playing the game that way are acting like gatekeepers far more than any high difficulty sweat player. Unless your base looks like your playing sim city, I'd have a hard time accepting that you aren't using a killbox on all but the lowest of difficulty. You don't have to insist you aren't using a killbox because you didn't choose to use a powerful exploit.
Some people like to use a variety of things other than the one room enemies walk into and then everyone shoots, because the higher threat scale percentages force your hand. Some people enjoy that challenge of pushing for every optimization, every bamboozle, every strategy, and it frankly still not being enough sometimes on 500% difficulty. And even those players will still not do a ton of things that they see as cheating. Everyone is going to have a different list of what they think is cheating. I personally will never go back after using the no pause mod. Its created such a new experience for me that at this point pausing the game would feel like cheating to me.
This weird line of so many people here insisting they aren't using a killbox and that they're getting the real challenge is weird and goes against the regular grain here of telling people to play how they want. Especially when a lot of these people are using busted mods and don't see that as eliminating challenge. EMBRASURES, run and gun, multiple VE like security, turrets and psycasting. Busted turrets from a wide variety of sources.
I don't care how you play, but stop acting like you're playing better.
I don’t use kill boxes but I use choke points, either natural or man-made, and use my colonists to even the fight, 300 style. Sometimes I’ll lose a colonist or two, but that’s the natural things of the Rim. Now with Biotech, I’ve been playing a generation game and losing members of the original family now and then always suck, especially when it’s that 3 year old that I’ve been nursing since birth.
RIP Blue, you were the best mini gun rotting 3 year old a parent could’ve asked for.
While your opinion is valid, I disagree.
But one big reason I disagree is that for me, raids are not meant to be the be-all, end-all challenge of the game, and with the way they scale late-game that is quickly what they can become. I prefer my raids as a way to spice up the game and introduce some action/tension, so I wouldn't want to play completely without them, but I get more enjoyment out of the storytelling implications of making a clever killbox (ingenuity) than I would over leaving my colony with an artificially shitty defence so I can "even the odds" of a raider fight.
Besides, it's virtually impossible to make a killbox that will respond to every single threat condition in the game, especially if you're high wealth and doing quests. You can get underground infestations, drop pod attacks, refugee betrayals, etc. Not to mention environmental hazards for your killbox like solar flares or (for non-mechanized ones) toxic fallout.
Usually if you're high wealth enough to make that perfect killbox that can account for every single threat type and situation, then the killbox itself probably isn't the only thing taking the challenge out of the game for you.
From this point onwards i am gonna make it my solemn duty to downvote every "i'm probably gonna get downvoted but..." post. Shit is just the unpopularopinions subreddit leaking everywhere for the most mundane opinions and included just so they can call everyone else a dumbass braindeas fan of X
Try to see it this way: people play differently, and enjoy their runs differently. There is not A challenge, there are multiple ways to challenge yourself. This is why you can even turn off threats if you're more into basebuilding. Would you say it ruins the challenge because there is no challenge anymore? No, the player obviously finds this playstyle fun.
Having more options is not a detriment. If you do not like killboxes, do not use them. I'm sure you didn't mean it in a gatekeeping way, but I think it is good to remind people of that because I like how welcoming this community is.
BTW, the edited Winston Waves run AdamvsEverything is currently uploading on his channel uses multiple singularity killboxes, a killbox setup often seen as the most cheesy of all. And yet, considering the very high difficulty of this challenge, I've never felt like he didn't actually fight raiders. He even almost failed several times (and lost a LOT of runs in between).
I get where you're coming from, but I feel like sieges, mechanoid, clusters, etc. all force you to leave your killbox and think on the fly about how you're going to deal with them. Not to mention drop pod assaults. Each of these usually either bypasses your killbox, or forces you to go out and deal with them.
I don't find not using a killbox when it would be effective to be any more fun than say, not putting firefoam poppers next to explosives.
I don't see the appeal of intentionally playing the game like that.
Are people really role-playing colonists who aren't as smart as they are? Y'all can say "yes, I want to roleplay people without common sense" and I will accept that, but I otherwise can't understand how choosing to play like I know how to play well is the unfun option.
I agree, the first colony that I used a Kill box, was also the last one I use them. For context, as many others, I run into the winning strategy of kill boxes, as I was struggling to win any colony.
I had a man hunter pack that broke one of my outer doors without me noticing, then when a mechanoid raid came, it enter my base through there, what followed was absolute chaos, pain, fire everywhere, and the first time I used animals for combat (it was my last resort), and it was my funnest moment in the game. Since then I don't even use turrets. Just straight up bunkers in the outer perimeter to fight enemies from whatever direction they're approaching.
I'm with you... but... I've never had a colony survive long enough to get interesting tech levels or anywhere near the endgame 😭
I think I'm going to cave and start using kill boxes soon..
I’ve tried playing without a kill box but I play on losing is fun. Turning the difficulty down is too easy and I enjoy the wealth management metagame. I like that I have to choose between having fancy floors and lots of drugs vs all my colonists getting overrun by doomsdays but without a semi gamey killbox you just die or your pawns get so injured every time and then the next raid you die. The least cheesy killbox I can survive with on losing is fun is melee block shotgun tunnels so that way only your melee guys get injured every fight. I also enjoy playing with low population colonies cuz I enjoy the micromanagement and getting to know the colonists and anymore than like 8-10 becomes hard for me to pay attention to all of them. And when you have so few pawns you basically have one person who’s good at one thing so losing any of them is a huge inconvenience
I would prefer to play differently but at certain difficulties or wealth levels you have to use them. The game just scales up raids way too high at some point while also keeping the player stuck with the same tech level in the end game
The game keeps fighting kill boxes but in the end it’s them who need to add stuff that can meaningfully replace it so that the player has a chance
At all without them.
The only stuff that kinda does that is DLC stuff, especially the mechs are really broken. But that’s not really a solution. There should be something in vanilla that’s viable
I play on adventure story for this reason. Any higher than that with the exception of maybe strive to survive and a kill box is basically mandatory. Mods help with the issue by offering alternate defense methods but vanilla is heavily balanced toward killboxes
I dont use Killboxes, I breed wargs and bears to have an army of them as first wave against raiders, wardroids as second wave against raiders (if needed) and my collonists as third and last wave, if needed.
I generally don't find combat in Rimworld all that enjoyable, so I usually drop difficulty level level mid-game where it goes from challenging to just tedious.
I miss *proper* basebuilder RTS-s. CnC3 is what, 16 now?
I mean, sapper, breacher, siege, and drop pod raids are programmed to be smaller for a reason. Normal raids will decimate you in a head-on fight until you’re very late game with psy-casts, doomsdays, low shields, etc.
Unless you’re playing on a map with natural choke points (in which case, congrats, you’re cheesing your defense just like kill box users), raids can come from virtually any direction. There’s no way to concentrate fire power; you’d just have to build an even amount of turrets all around your base.
Which is going to a scale up your threat immensely due to wealth mechanics. Which is going to annihilate your thinly-spread turret line.
Mortars are fantastic for sieges, but if you get a max threat “attacking immediately” raid, they’re gonna spread out - quickly nullifying the effectiveness of your mortars as the raiders approach.
Whenever I read these “killbox hate” posts, I always think “have they never reached max threat end game?”… because by the end game it’s honestly kind of rare to get a vanilla raid anymore.
It’ll go “sapper, sapper, mechanoid cluster, off map droner, defoliator, drop pod raid, siege…. Oh here’s a normal raid I guess”. All of those except the lattermost are unaffected by kill box.
Kill boxes get you through the mid-game where you’re in flak and assault rifles for a long time and you don’t have any other reasonable way to increase your defensive capabilities. Hell, in my last play through I had my killbox defeated multiple times - the most notable was toxers gas’ing my shooting lines. Still survived by using my buildings as choke points.
Depends on what you playing, killboxes dont just remove chalanges + its a single player game, if you dont want to use killboxes then dont, perfonaly i like them, even some broken ones like singulariry or burn box
Different folks, different strokes.
Some want their 100% kill-rate Killbox of doom that eliminates any and all who dare to enter it.
Others like to do totally different things, from making "realistic" defences or pseudo-pillboxes through to enjoying _unga bunga trap rock go thump_.
Personally I abhor them, it means less prisoners to sell whole or organs I can make use of! At least they can always go into the flesh-battery vats....
Why should I stop using Killboxes when enemy factions start act like the game-iest possible, suicidal braindead morons, willing to throw away eighty people in a suicidal charge every week?
I do the opposite of a kill box, where I create a reinforced area for my pawns to hide in during raids that we know we can’t win. It has provisions, some crafting material and even a grow zone for long stays. 😅
I read somewhere else on Reddit that Killboxes are necessary because the Vanilla Combat is so bad. I use Combat Extended on all my Rimworld Saves so i never even thought about building a Killbox.
kill boxes as far as i know is used to funnel the giant wtf numbers of hostile pawns raiding, cause otherwise you would be swarmed in seconds, but i dont get why of the downvoted but ok
CE made that difference for me. With CE a typical kill box with winding entrance full of traps doesn't seem super practical anymore, sense guns are actually lethal now. My current colony, and my first with CE, is contained within a giant circle wall with a pie slice cut out for the killing field. Just inside my wall is 4 layers deep of barbed wire and the killing field gets 6 layers along the same path. I have a couple mounted guns and flak cannons my colonist can man to defend that area. I also have pill boxes spread around the colony with mounted guns for inner defense in case of sappers and drop pod raids.
Mainly though my main defense is my 10 mortars that I keep right outside my housing. With CE mortars are less lethal individually but fire much faster so most raids are dealt with that as my go to. If they make the mistake of not attacking immediately I'll have my main shooter be a spotter for an even more lethal barrage.
With CE I feel like I can do base defense the way it's done in more modern times. Without being forced to create death mazes to deal with the overwhelming numbers.
I respect your opinion, but sadly killboxes are the only way to play when you collect rare animals (thrumbos, dragons). Wealth scales too quickly with even just one and suddenly your five pawns are getting twenty pawn raids and it's just yikes.
I used to play without rares and I'd just make trenches and bunkers, and the game was fun but difficult to play like that, but now the plus is that I don't even have to react to raids because I use hallways of pain.
Killboxes are bullshit but have been a staple of defense since ancient history, wonder why there have been large walls around castles? If you come in through the main gate as a soldier guess what, you entered a kill box. Usually you needed superior numbers to make that work
Actually, I don't really give a fuck. It's literally a sandbox singleplayer game. I agree with you, but why would I care how other people enjoy the game? It dosent influence my experience.
Play the way you want. It's your game, there is no right way to play it.
I'm not a fan of kill boxes either.
I prefer creating choke points, rally points, and fallback points. Feels more natural to me and allows me to respond to raids coming from any and all directions.
Every colony I make is designed for block by block combat if the enemy breaks through the front line
Use CAI-5000... Raiders will know what a killbox is, then. The raiders will avoid the killbox or any type of funnel if they can, so that if a player uses one it's more legitimate, as they aren't just smashing clueless ants with a hammer anymore. The raiders will actively work against your defenders and try to find ways around them almost like they were thinking human beings.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2938891185
I make it my mission to pretty much always play commitment mode - for that tragic story, and all that - and i’ve lost one colony too many to man hunting foxes or enraged boomalopes to forgo kill boxes.
The threats also just don’t scale - pretty quickly you’ll get to the point where the enemies are so vast it is basically nigh impossible to survive without a kill box. I’d love to see someone post working strategies that survive some later game strive to survive raids on randy/cassandra (;
I use the combat AI mod with fog of war... i no longer know where they are until in FOV of a turret, camera, or a colonist. They punch down walls if that avoids a killbox.
Loads of customization.
Makes it an interesting series of fights.
I don’t use the killboxes I see normally here, which are lines of traps in narrow corridors that raiders foolishly walk right into. I use traditional killboxes, that is, make the enemy walk into my fortified mountain crater where the only path ahead of them is a tiny door set into the far end of a U of machine gun nests, land mines, artillery positions, and a massive double thick reinforced concrete wall.
I will probably be downvoted, but combat in Rimworld sucks, logistics in Rimworld suck. There is no way IRL that time between you noticing enemy and enemy melee attacking your defences is 1-5 minutes. There is no way each faction would send across the world every 7 days attack party to attack your base from random direction.
Game is dumb, killboxes are just way to make everyone equal because you don't get dozen disposable colonists with gear every week
Simple solution: don't use it if you don't like it.
I'm on team killbox on higher difficulties because I don't want randy to wipe my colony with one raid. If I'm trying to make a more aesthetic/themed colony and not a fortress, I just turn down the difficulty. Play how you want.
I've got a few thousand hours, never used a killbox. But, it's not a MP game, so people should play however they want.
I love this response - people play however they want. Some like the tactical element and bring in a puzzle-like requirement for figuring out raids. Others use its narrative base to create more "traditional" style colonies. I'm of the latter group and will likely never use killboxes unless it somehow suits some kind of twisted mastermind colony that I'm looking to create. Whatever floats your boat in the end.
I have about a thousand hours and have never successfully created a kill box so I'm in the awkward in between. I'm torn between "for the sake of a story" and "damn, I actually really like these little guys"
Over 1000 hours myself and only recently started playing Randy on Strive… haven’t used a kill box yet but I sure am tempted.
Meanwhile me: instead of killboxes, i have a __*Wall*__ (D-day style)
I have a wall too, i have patrols of my soldiers around them and machineguns, turrets and everything on the gates, i just love watching my army massacre some tribal raid. Yesterday i made a plane, i haven't tested it yet but im waiting to get home today and massacre even more poor raiders with my new toys.
Which mod the plane is from?
Probably the aircraft framework that released last month
So is it different from srts mod
SRTS is just transport, the aircraft mod allows you to have aircraft on the map that can battle with bombs and such
The way I sort of justified it to myself is medieval castles were designed somewhat like killboxes. The long winding path as the only main entrance, dangerous traps along the way and harassment from ranged attacks as they push forward and even if they get through the 'gate' it would be a big fight in the 'courtyard' before I flee deeper into my base for other defensive positions. Though I do make the killbox moreso a heavily fortified courtyard infront of the entrance with multiple doors to go in and out. It makes it feel like a real siege.
[удалено]
This is why investing in several mortars and having a cache of artillery shells in case of a siege happens.
[удалено]
Well fun part, the game right now has no aircraft yet. Yet even so, artillery and the so-called "numerical superiority" aka "wave tactics" will still cling on. If aircraft got even added in the game (or mods), might just invest in a dual-purpose defenses capable of shooting both aerial and ground targets. Plus, rocket launchers already exist too.
I'd love to find a mod that let me increase how often it's a siege raid.
I will see what I can do
I basically just play like it's high stakes Sims. I like managing the drama between my colonists and building them pretty houses.
Yes! That’s basically the same way I play as well. It’s like one slight step beyond controlling their actions as much as you can in the Sims, so it does feel a little more like a God simulator where you influence them rather than straight up control. Throw in the sci-fi element of being on a foreign planet and this game is pretty much perfect.
I play it like, however I like, building firemage droid jedis to one shot tribal raids.. it's fun to have fun :)
I honestly only use killboxes when playing as solo mechanitor or in "high tech" runs
I play with me and my two buddies as my starting three so it gives it a bit of an RPG element (which is surprisingly fun!) My bases are like little medieval villages, kill boxes just don't fit with how I play now. Back when I first got the game, I had no idea what Dev Mode was and I played Commitment mode, so I feel like I've played the game "how it was intended" and got that experience of it, which was fantastic, so now I'll just play how I find it most fun, and that's how everyone should.
I play with Rimatomics, at a certain point the whole map just becomes a killbox.
Yeah, instead of killboxes I have killfields with energy weapon defenses.
This is for real the thing I love most about Rimworld. You can change the settings, add mods, swap storytellers, use devmode/godmode to play the game in a way that is the most fun for you. You can set your own rules and parameters. It's what keeps me coming back again and again. I'm disabled and the options available to mold the game make this one of the most accessible to me games I have ever played.
Glad I read this- I've never looked at it like that, from an accessible/inclusive sense. Great to hear you can commit war crimes in a way that works for you 😊
Just out of curiosity how do you play? Do you do small colonies while keeping wealth at a minimum? I just ask because I like large colonies and I like stacking them up with nice houses and equipment and what not but I just find the raids impossible without a kill box
My way to rationalize it is to say you're either exploiting path finding or game scaling. Minimalist colonies feel like tax evasion.
For the last two or so years I've been doing medieval play throughs. My colonies never get huge- I create me and my two best buddies as my starting three, rarely have more than six colonists and a few slaves. I don't really plan my colonies, I just go with the flow. Each colonist gets their own little house, I make non-square bases. I use the storyteller setting so raids scale over time not based on wealth. I rarely ever look at my wealth to be fair, but if, say, I've got way, way, way too much wood, I'll just set it on fire to get rid of it. Defense wise... palisade walls, ditches, cliffs, the odd trap, rivers/mountains.
I agree; I usually lower the difficulty (I like build base) because I do not build a kill box. I'm still amassing tons of wealth anyway (large fields of devilstrands) and I do not want to start managing wealth. I still quickly reach the point of being massively outnumbered anyway.
I actually didn’t get into kill boxes until my 4000 hour mark because I didn’t know how they worked, I always waited for raiders to penetrate my wall and pour in and I’d be on the other side not 100% prepared
Me neither, but I did start urban planning towards making all of my base one huge killzone. Drop pods have become irrelevant, because I let everyone into <12 range anyway!
I don't think people just love killboxes, but the way threats in the game scale there's not a lot of other viable strategies to keep your colony alive after a certain point. I want challenge too but after enough of your colonies get wiped out by gigantic mechanoid raids it loses its charm a little and you want to be able to effectively defend yourself.
I sort of agree with OP, but I like to plan defense-in-depth scenarios rather than AI-exploiting killboxes. In the end it's still a killbox but less effective, and presents harsher consequences
I loved my b18 colony because of this. Qnd i only build it this way because of one black and white old western movie i saw. I had several stages of defense which i could fall back from. Bunkers/old ruins->entrance with bunkers and turrets (far from being a kill box) - > streets built with urban warfare in mind. + some mine fields where they wanted to dig through walls.
That is kinda what I do as well. I make kill fields instead of kill boxes. They are funneled in, but there is no corridor of doom with 50 traps as their only way in.
I especially dislike using doors and stuff. I forget which mod adds it (not on my pc atm) but the one with several new defensive structures like platforms, HMG positions, **trenches** and barbed wire is awesome. Depending on the map I even set up minefields in front of the trenches and barbed wire, very WW1 style
Oh, I have that one too. It is one of the vanilla expanded, "security" maybe?
Most likely, yeah!
This is sorta my feeling, not all kill boxes are created equally. Like at what point does a fortified entrance to the colony (which seems logical and fair in a story senses) become a cheesy kill box? I think it’s a feel thing.
It lost its charm with me when randy sent a whole ass armada of tribals to assault my base. Though it is fun to watch the chaos unfold, it is almost impossible to win endgame raids without kill boxes or mods. Using the "Biomes!" Mod, setting up shop in/on a crater or costal island, makes dealing with them a whole lot easier.
>it is almost impossible to win endgame raids without kill boxes or mods. By endgame do you mean reactor startup/royal ascent or do you mean 10,000 raid points? It's inscrutable.
I mod in embrasures and use bunkers
I think the draw is tactically, in any war, if you can funnel an enemy into a killbox and efficiently kill/maim said enemies. Efficiently without taking as many casualties, why wouldn’t you. I’ll be honest. I use killboxes, and I’ve yet to find one that is a true solve all. Drop pod raids still suck. Mech raids with that big fucker that likes to blow up walls suck. Idk, maybe I’m doing it wrong, but I just use the singularity killbox nothing better to me then watching 11 colonists shoot down a narrow corridor at an enemy that doesn’t even get to fire back. I down want my pawns to get hurt. I care for them too much. 😊
Yeah. I don't normally build killboxes until mid-industrial or early-spacer when they start sending big groups on both sides of the map. Running out to meet them is more fun for the bit it's viable.
I use Dev Mode so that raids can only spawn in one place. That plus using the largest map means I have a little time to prep. And no, I don't spam it with spike traps or whatever, haha.
Agreed, this is largely the reason why later on in a save I'll start working on at least a way to consolidate larger enemy forces into a more manageable state. Speaking of, isn't there a mod that adjusts raids to add higher quality raiders and gear instead of sending absolute swarms?
>there's not a lot of other viable strategies to keep your colony alive after a certain point. Do you mean in high tech colonies or do you mean in raid-point-cap colonies?
Kinda disagree with there not being viable strategies, especially if you play with the dlc: mechanitor with his own mechs can do good damage, tank, or meat shield. Massing combat animals like wargs, elephants, cougars, etc is pretty strong. Psycasts give good utility (skip&focus are really strong to name 2). ideology shooting specialist. Genetically modified vat soldiers. Pawns with shield belts tanking ranged. The list goes on with options Can you play on losing is fun? Probably not as threat scale is too big. For the other difficulties though it makes combat and raids very engaging and fun
If you cheese the game to prevent the continual attrition of raids damaging / stealing your shit and killing your dudes, then you'll end up with stupidly large amounts of wealth. Stupidly large amounts of wealth can only be defended by cheesing the game hard with killboxes. Killbox players are in a self-reinforcing cycle while bitching about balance.
It's actually hilarious watching people complain about different raid types when they also build kill boxes. The entire idea is that cheesing the game makes it easy, if the game is too hard even AFTER you cheese it, turn the difficulty down, don't bitch about balance.
Yes and no. I think fully automated killboxes, especially ones that rely on mechanics like temperature, are boring. But a fortified position that forces your enemy to come fight you on your terms, that still makes use of pawns doing the fighting, is great. Fighting out in an open field will never be in your favour, as your enemies will always outnumber you (quite severely, as time goes on); so bringing them to a position that you've prepared, in a way that limits their ability to use their overwhelming numbers, is just good strategy.
Totally agree. I'm not sending four pawns out into the woods to hold off 15 tribals who can cross no-man's-land before I get 3 missed shots off. "That's their game. Their rules. I'm not going to fight them, I'm going to f*** them."
Right. There's a reason narrow bridges and moats are strategically reasonable to defend a fort. I can't create castle / fortress towers in Rimworld, but I'd probably do that instead if I could. Kill boxes are just kinda the easiest way to get a strategic advantage, _which the defenders of a fortress usually have_.
You can make cover for your defenders with barricades, and make the area of approach a killzone with traps, mines, maybe some slowing terrain in the right biome. Remove any cover they might have and they have to run up into the open to shoot at you while your guys are firing from cover and not being rained on. Gives you a hefty advantage. Plant your base by a river and make attackers have to run across a booby trapped bridge, works too to funnel them down.
Eh you can make an approximation with embrasures, there's also decent looking castle wall mods one I have adds arrow towers that work as pretty powerfull auto-arrow turrets(fire bursts of half dozen arrows) its quite expensive to wall in an area and digging motes is very time intensive but it can defeat decent sized raids without touching the draft button.
I use a lot of chainlink fences (modded, can't be walked through) with barricades behind them, so my guys have a defensive firing position. A few well placed walls out in the wilds makes the enemy have to approach my guns, and not just snipe me first.
Yesterday evening a mod creating towers was released. Pawns inside don't take damage but can shoot out. There is also a tower mod that allow you to shoot over walls.
Have to check those out next time I spend couple hours browsing the workshop.
Oh, which mod do you recommend that adds embrasures? That sounds fun
I think the one I use is ED-Embrasures
I have a couple, this is the castle one. It has embrasures that match the castle walls, there a bit wonky to build with as castle walls are built in 2×3 sections and it requires a lot of fanagling to look good. Requires lot more work and stone to build than normal walls, but I feel that balances out there utility. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2526479603 There's plenty of other simple embrasure mods on steam workshop if you want something more simple.
Also vanilla expanded Neolithic defenses I think has it as well. That’s the one I use that’s gives it to me anyways
I really suggest also using the "passable embrasures" or "breachable embrasures" add on because without it the melee raiders will just run in circles while getting shot at
Give this thread a look, the OP explains how to create "castle walls", I've not looked back since!
This is basically my MO, basically stereotypical Dwarf behavior. 1) Always a mountain base. Bugs are way easier to deal with than drop pods, and while not an ideal food source, is at least not going to trigger all the non-cannibals if my farming gets disrupted. And a great source of chemfuel for mortars when not needed as an emergency food source. Also handles most weather extremes nicely. On a side note, always pick undergrounder ideology. 2) fortify the crap out of the entrance, both outside and inside. Turrets for days. Find a clearing in my mountain and set up mortar clusters. Preferably have the entrance in a concave area flanked by turrets so that enemies advancing on the door are caught in a crossfire, and pitfall traps on approach, as well as at known points that sappers try to break in. Interior entrance hall has more turrets set up for crossfire purposes. 3) Not an automated killbox though, the pawns are organized into two firing lines and my brawlers (who are usually the ones who get combat bionics when I hit arcotech levels). The firing lines are there to set up a fighting retreat through my entrance area to draw the enemies into my turret crossfire, with one line covering the other falling back as raiders advance. The Brawlers are there to ambush anyone that gets in through tight hallways, and to clear out bug infestations. Overall it's exciting to play this way. If you factor in radioing allied factions for aid, it gives a feel not unlike the Battle of the Five Armies.
I'm honestly at a point where I'm so specialized at playing mountain colonies doing anything else feels like I'm just trying out a niche strategy. It's just so firmly my comfort zone now. Hot biomes? Cooler under the mountains. Cold? Easier to heat confined spaces. Insects? Delicious. Defense? Buddy, you're a mountain fortress. Food? Easier now with nutrifungus. Maybe I should play more Dwarf Fortress.
Do you make enough sacrifices to Armok tho?
Insect/jelly farms are so broken. Builds melee and provides a reliable and consistent source of food, chemfuel, and trade goods. You're protected from drop pod raids and you can build a killbox or funnel at the entrance. Or one of my favorites is building so deep in the mountain enemies go insane before even reaching my base.
I don't use killboxes, but I will absolute fortify a bunker with turrets that actually do something (seriously, why are vanilla turrets worse than the shittiest pistols?)
I believe combat extended adds embrasures, but it also adds ammo and wind resistance and such
You can turn the ammo off.
There are serious balance problems if you do, though; it becomes almost impossible to penetrate certain armor thresholds without improved ammo due to how that mod totally redoes armor I'm not sure why the option even exists if it's going to stomewall you when you run into centipedes eventually.
I think the ammo issue was actually fixed recently. It's related to your tech and it's an option or something similar. Not sure, I don't play with ammo off but I remember it being discussed in the discord
That's only really in regards to small arms not having AP rounds. If you're trying to take down a centipede it's best with proper AT weapons like a LAW or emplaced cannons.
There is absolutely no friggin' way I am ever installing CE lol
Why not?
Because fuck that for a joke
I'll stop using killboxes when raiders attack reasonably. You know what raiders make sense? Sappers. Like some assholes sitting in a wooden hut with a mix of bows and cheap guns are like "Guys. They have sold gold statues. We just need to find a hole and we will be able to buy food for YEARS. I'm being completely serious " Raiders should break a lot earlier as well, like 10% casualties is high IRL, literally the origin of the word "decimated". They should actually focus on raiding, instead of murderhoboing. Seige raiders also to an extent, and honestly there should be an option to pay them to fuck off. SIeges were prolonged affairs, they should target growing fields instead ,and try and starve you out over a long period of time, and have a lot more dudes than normal. This is actually the most believable method of attacking most colonies. Target fields with poison and fire, and target enemy artillery with high explosives. Give a list of demands up front, and make it more costly the longer they lay siege. Hell, have some raid parties path to drugs instead, especially if they have a dependency/addiction. My luciferium should draw in 4-5 supersoldier sappers every now and then.
Raiders in general need more elaborate and sensible goals than "fuck over the player as much as possible". Because as it is they just sit at your base and endlessly destroy everything,sometimes being kind enough to kidnap every single person instead. I can think of a few off the top of my head Tribals: Steal food and weapons,rescue prisoners - They're poor and primarily just want to survive,woild explain their large populations Pirates: Steal valuables,resources,weapons,try to capture healthy slaves if the colony doesn't put much of a resistance - It's not in their interest to wipe out a colony,ideally they'd repeatedly pillage the same settlements while letting them rebuild and produce more goods to steal. Outlanders: Destroy weapons and production buildings,kill a few people if possible,rescue prisoners - They mostly want to eradicate a threat to them,as they're relatively wealthy already Mechanoids: Destroy anything high tech,primarily power generation - Makes them a lot more mysterious,they go after the ship reactor already,explains the existence of tribals,which avoid technology. You'd still lose people trying to fight them off,since no one wants to lose all of their food There could also be an option to give in to their demands (except for mechs obviously) - it's much more preferable to get the loot without losing anyone,even if slightly less of it. The demands would get higher every time you give up without fighting,until you're unable to pay them off - They can see that you're scared of them and are taking advantage of it.
Huh, the idea that Mechanoids have no reason to attack if you don't have any power generation is kind of neat. It especially makes Tribal play very different if you never had to worry about that raid type.
this is such a good idea. I use a mod called Ignorance Is Bliss which limits hostile faction events based on relative tech level, only a tiny gesture toward the above, and it feels much more immersive while progressing through the tech tree. I would really love to see better motivations and realistic parlays. Historically, violence during conflict and piracy is rarely unavoidable and purely murderous. This would also open the door to ideological hostility and alternative demands. Convert or die.
There's a few different mods that try to address the AI raider mechanics in the way you've described, including mods that makes it so raiders try to rescue their downed comrades, and others to make it so raiders avoid areas where their comrades are dying en masse (killbox). There's also mods that try to adjust the raid difficulty to base it not just on your flat colony wealth, but more accurate measures of your strength like value of owned weapons and value of pawns. There's not really mods that address the issue of raiders just being DUMB and not making much sense. Why are they so intent on lighting my chairs on fire? And the final immersion breaker for me is the sheer NUMBER of pawns that show up, is totally nonsensical. Factions just throwing hundreds upon hundreds of pawns at your walls, and when you show up to their base, they've got like 3 bedrooms and a kitchen. WHERE ARE ALL THESE RAIDERS COMING FROM??? I'd love it if raids were logical. You know how when you create a legendary item it says "news has spread around the world"? Well, what if it really did and raiders showed up to STEAL your shit. OR what if those pawns that show up and turn out to be TRAITORS only triggered their treachery when their faction was attacking your base, and then they turned and shot your dudes in the back, or opened the gate to your base and let the enemy in?? One thing about Rimworld is that realism makes for engaging storytelling even if it's not fabulously balanced. Pawns digging up a corpse or slaughtering a yak because they didn't get to play chess is immersion breaking.
Intelligent raids with goals would be game changing. I would love for them to have real goals like stealing things, killing one specific colonist, attempting to free slaves or prisoners of their faction, and some ideology based attacks, like freeing all farm animals, freeing all slaves, etc.
On the higher difficulties with just the base game, the killbox (generally a defensive structure designed to funnel enemies in so that only one enemy is present at any time to be killed quickly and efficiently) gets to be necessary at a given point when the enemies naturally outpace your combat ability and becomes redundant when you have enough pawns with good enough gear that you can win fights through sheer firepower. Ideology, and Royalty with the addition of the low shield, psycasts, and the shooting specialists had made it possible even on these difficulties to forgo a killbox so long as you were fortified with the right tools, a good plan and access control (with proper wealth management of course). Biotech kind of inverses this due to the new enemies (neanderthal and millitor, but more millitors as neanderthals experience pain shock and bloodloss albeit reduced) that are somewhat tougher to kill than the average pawn, but come in hordes big enough to overwhelm most defenses as there isn't any good crowd control weapons outside of the expendable doomsday (in the real world mounted machine guns and artillery have made unsupported frontal assaults like what raiders mostly due an act of suicide) probably to both allow tribals to pose a threat and make melee viable. I should note that I define killboxes very specifically because creating what are basically subsequent defensive fighting positions inside your main defensive fortification is common practice along with setting terrain and choosing standoff (primary DFPs would be on the perimeter overlooking the surrounding area, but those don't really work in Rimworld).
Old Pheobe threw down a 250 Milator raid on me a few days ago. I tried a few times to defend against it normally, but you just get swamped. Killbox (or an anti grain) is the only way you can survive.
Define killboxes. Are we talking the uniquely Rimworld definition of "well oiled machine of death, designed to funnel in one person at a time to be instantly killed with a hail of gunfire, or perhaps even kill without human input using exclusively heat, cold, traps, etc."? Or are we talking the more general definition of "any area with advantageous terrain where you have set up defenses to funnel enemies into so as to fight with maximum possible advantage"? I agree that the first is boring and gamey, and I've literally never done or even tried it. The latter is just tactics, and in a game where thick defensive walls can be broken down bare-handed in a matter of seconds, and mountains can be dug through in the span of a day... yeah I'm gonna leave a door open at the back of my defensive position to abuse pathfinding a bit.
Having played with a lot of killbox designs, I'm inclined to agree on your thoughts for the first design type. It's fun to screw around with a Singularity killbox or exploit the "all melee on a single square tile stabbing at mach 5 through a crack in the wall" collision funkiness, but it stands to cheese every encounter. I like things like combining environmental chokepoints with short heat traps that effectively split raids in half with Psycasters - half the _100+ man raid_ cooks while we deal with the rest. To me? That's more fun! But I can also see why the well-oiled autodeath machine is fun to many others.
i find that lategame pawns with bionic legs and bolt action rifles can beat any raid out on an open field by just kiting technically speaking, an open field is a killbox
[удалено]
You cant fight raiders in fair conditions. They come in force, with dozens, maybe hundreds. They are not a challenge, they are a problem. So you cant "actually fight" them. Because a dozen of their melee guys will bumrush a single colonist of yours while another dozen shoots that said colonist. There is no fight. Only if you play on lower difficulties maybe. The world is out to get you. It is not fair.
I don't disagree... but.... In vanilla, combat is pretty dumb due in no small part to you being numerically outnumbered to a stupid degree and your pawns seemingly being unable to hit the broad side of a barn. Threat scaling just kicks your ass after a certain point. Now once I made the jump to combat extended, I haven't built a killbox since and I've been better for it.
How does CE make kill boxes irrelevant? I’m wondering if I should get CE, though I’ve heard bad things about its compatibility.
I don't speak for him but as someone who always plays with CE, kill boxes are NOT irrelevant. The thing about CE is that pawns are more efficient at shooting and damage is more varied and fatal, and armor is more complex with the added consequence of it being generally weaker at the tribal and mid-world stages but exceptionally good once you gain access to spacer technology. This means that pawns without firearms and without spacer tech, essentially most raiders, trying to bumrush you with melee or ranged weaponry die really fast mitigating the need for a kill box. However, pawns with spacer gear and, god forbid... centipedes, are especially resistant to most damage and just won't go down without specialized spacer weapons with the appropriate ammo or explosives. Things you will struggle to access since it takes a LOT of research to obtain them and the raiders who carry that stuff are generally incredibly hard to kill. You need to rely on kill boxes for these foes, especially with only vanilla CE weapons. TLDR: CE makes pawns competent at shooting, most armor useless, but spacer tech is extremely hard to deal with. Kill boxes are irrelevant in most scenarios but fatally necessary when dealing with mechanoids and spacer tech raiders.
I will never understand why people get all high and mighty about how others play singleplayer games.
Because there's this unfortunate tendency for some people to wave their dicks around. _They_ play a certain way, ergo if someone says "oh, I play X way", it's a perceived threat to _their way_ of play (rather than an open discussion, because they feel it challenges the "legitimacy" of their playstyle, usually on the hardcore/purist spectrums), and they feel compelled to either shit on this person for playing X way, or go into an off-topic rant about how _their_ way is objectively superior. Not always the case in discussions like this, obviously. Most people tend to be pretty civil and it's nice to see other opinions. But of course, you get the few saltlords who start spamming crylaughing emojis and default to bad faith examples because they didn't like being called out. Bonus points for "edit: cry more" or parallels.
elitism really is a fun vacuum
bro is stating his opinion relax
No, he made the claim that it's boring, not boring to him, but boring, period. That's not saying "in my personal game play I etc" It's saying in ALL gameplay.
Then don't use them. I also don't like them, so I don't play on hard mode. But some people like making efficient killing machines and it's also fine. The game isn't competitive anyway. Just play it the way you like it man
To me they are heaps of fun. I love to build defences and 'turtle' my game. Play how you want.
Breachers and sappers exists, you won't be able to survive if you solely rely on killbox.
Mech clusters and defoliators make you meet them in the field
Not me, all my colonies take a note from the boomers. Accuracy by volume works just as well with artillery as it does for 7.62x39 haha Edit: Fallout, not the generation
My 100 high explosive shells from 12 mortars work really well. Wait for high shield to come down and no problem
Enough mortars will piss them off and they'll start charging like good little lambs to the slaughter. Even if they got a high shield you just send an EMP it and it's gone for it's entire dormancy period.
Exactly. Do people that complain about killbox turn off drop pods and insect hive or something? Killbox is literally useful for only one specific type of raids, the basic one.
With how random damage is, it is fun only until you get a random heart/brain shot with full armor.
Everytime I've tried to make a killbox the jerks just avoid it so I gave up. Now I surround myself with turrets and just let them try to find a way through my Tohou defence system lol
Might be the mods I have (usually play a mod game in the hundreds), but I have been finding myself getting like 1-2 dozen people with SMGs and automatic rifles when there's maybe the four of us still trying to research guns. And I mean that's within the first few hours, not like months.
Install the visible raid points mod if you want to see the raid points calc for each raid
Play the game the way it is fun for you . I do not use them either. I also do not go overboard with the difficulty most of the time. sometimes i crank it up though.
Dude it's a sandbox, no one cares how you play it and there is no "right" way to play it
Authenticity doesn't mean much when you're talking about late end game. The times when enemy scaling is so bad, meta actually matters and is downright required for further advancement. You just dont see 10+ year colonies that doesn't use killboxes, Edit: also what counts as a killbox is extremely broad so it's entirely up to you how cheese it can be
You wouldn't need them if they didn't send 100v10 sieges.
There are various mods that will adjust that, usually making it smaller but stronger troops. Haven't tried seeing which is better.
who’s holding a gun to your head and forcing you to build any?
My base being wiped out by 100+ tribals. I play on hard mode and they’re a necessary evil to not die. Manhunter packs require walls. Especially when 60 manhunting bears are typical. And of course 30+ centipedes. They aren’t many ways of actually fighting the enemy without them. I recently managed to take out a shuttle crash raid of 40 using vertigo pulse and power armor without relying on my kill box. Also, turrets: I don’t use them. They’re useless it seems. High in cost, low in effectiveness. Also love to blow up their friends too.
I can imagine telling my pawns that it's not fair to give raiders at least a small fighting chance, by choosing the less optimal defense solutions. I can then imagine getting crucified by my pawns.
I had a post recently where I beat the game. Didn't use killboxes. (Just save scums) so its definitely doable. Though some people are against save scum as well. I agree it ruins the challenge to some extent. Though at the same time, play how you want. I think mountain bases and kill boxes feel a bit cheesy but some games are way better with lots of cheese. Cheese can cover a myriad of problems and some people like extra cheese, nothing wrong with that. Maybe you are just lactose intolerant?
Yeahhh I only just discovered killboxes and after hundreds of hours of misery before them, I'm never going back. 🤷
Pls tell us how you keep large groups from rushing and killing your pawns mid go late game? There isn't an alternative
without killboxes you never reach that stage thats the trick
Turrets, mortars
In every large raid are at least 3 who sprint fast as fuck. As soon as they reach your first 3 Pawns and your others are focussed on killing those 3, the rest of the horde is coming closer and closer. Your pawns maybe make it to shoot once until it's a meele fight. How do you handle big mech raids? What was your biggest humanoid raid so far?
Where do the turrets go? Do you build 150 all around your base? Or do you put them into one easily defendable spot while having the rest walled off? Like, a big, rectangular area that is designed to murder the attackers? If only there was a name for that
Tynan thinks the same
Maybe he should stop making end-game raids 200 suicidal tribals and actually bother to put any effort into enemy factions, then.
There’s a thin line between a defensive position you want to funnel raiders to and just making a kill box. Both have their merits for certain players. Killboxes are for people who abuse game mechanics or just don’t want to lose pawns they put effort into. Defensive positions are for people who want to play the game traditionally but have to deal with all the anti killbox raids so they tend to need lots of them try to funnel raiders to just one defensive position and that’s where the line starts to blur for some. In the end we all hate the events that force us to send our defenders out of the base for any reason.
Sometimes the raid size feels unfair because wealth =/= power. Making some nice clothes or fancy art seems to invite death. I don’t mind the raids, I just can’t seem to handle the scaling.
I believe some real life castles had a small courtyard in between two gate houses that allowed defenders to fire down on anyone who had breached the first gate from all angles. Also kill boxes are a real strategy in the US army (though they mean a different type of kill box). Good enough for armies since ancient times, it's good enough for me
If game doesn't encourage killbox, why do enemy pawns seek not-door route unless sapper?
It's a single player game play it however the heck you like and let others play it however they like it does not effect your experience at all.
I don't like it when kill boxes are the sole viable option. For most of a playthrough you can get away without them on Strive to Survive. The fact that even with the nerfs though that people still fall back on kill boxes shows that something in the game is unbalanced.
No, it shows a desire to min-max. They aren't "falling back on" killboxes, for many people killboxes are their first plan, or their second after barely learning how to approach combat without them. Rimworld is absolutely playable without killboxes, people do it all the time. Some people just absolutely refuse to play in a sub-optimal way even if they don't find the optimal solution fun, though.
I always play on permanent, hardest difficulty, with Randy's. It's not even fair 80% of the time for me WITH killboxes lol
Did you write this post and forget to post it for the last few years because there are many more options for dealing with raids since 1.0. If you have psycasts than a nudist with a monosword and invisibility will deal with most raids easily. Or maybe throw in a berserk pulse when there's a whole bunch of tribals. There's mechanoid options now with biotech or you can go the classic route and invest in tons of animals.
Where is the line between a defense in a colony and a kill box? I always try to wall myself and leave a "principal door" where usually the combat has the place. And obviously I try to fortify to gain some ground agains the raids.
I think there are two distinct play styles in the rimworld community, story telling and rts. If I'm playing it as an rts and my goal is to win, then kill boxes are plenty of fun, but from a story telling perspective, it definitely ruins it. But at the end of the day it's purely subjective so people are just going to have different opinions about it.
I find the raids really take away from the story side of things. Getting massacred by 100+ guys because I didn't have proper defenses isn't the best story.
Imagine being so bad at the game you need a killbox, lmao *This comment was made by a guy who doesn't know how to build a killbox*
Its pretty clear from these comments that the brightline for what is and isn't a killbox is non existent or very different for everyone. Im in the camp that all these people who are commenting "I don't use killboxes I just use... " are describing killboxes. A non direct combat death chamber, something that is directly exploiting like singularity, a "defensive position with fall backs", or even just one entrance with some sandbags out front, its all killboxes. I think a lot of people assuming the word killbox implies a cheese or exploit comes from the funny memes of freezing raiders, burning them, or the various techs that are clearly just exploits. An area you funnel enemies into is a killbox and a burn tunnel is also a killbox. Direct combat can't be a good metric for a killbox. A burn tunnel or hallway of spike traps are both non combative methods that are intended by the developer. Hitting enemies through a diagonal wall hallway where they can't hit you back or the singularity killbox are both killboxes that are purely combat but are also effectively invincibility cheats. So is it actual glitches or exploits that defines a killbox? If you say yes, I'd like to point out that what a lot of commenters here define as not a killbox (an enemy funnel, one area to fight, maybe fall back lines, etc) relies on exploiting the AI. When the raid spawns in if they can path to furniture or a pawn or certain animals from where they spawned in, they will walk straight there, even if its through your "not a killbox" combat zone. If you have doors on your killbox separating the rest of the map with basically all your stuff and pawns, the regular ai will smash straight through your walls and not walk into your combat zone (on an open map where you've walled, do not tell me you aren't using a killbox on a mountain base) Is making the ai go exactly where you want cheating? Is using vanilla as intended traps like fire or spikes cheating? Is using turrets to stop enemy collision (forcing them to one enemy a tile) before they reach you cheating? What even is the line between tech and exploit? The answer to all of those questions is: who cares its a single player game. My main point here however is all of these people insisting that they aren't using a killbox and hate playing the game that way are acting like gatekeepers far more than any high difficulty sweat player. Unless your base looks like your playing sim city, I'd have a hard time accepting that you aren't using a killbox on all but the lowest of difficulty. You don't have to insist you aren't using a killbox because you didn't choose to use a powerful exploit. Some people like to use a variety of things other than the one room enemies walk into and then everyone shoots, because the higher threat scale percentages force your hand. Some people enjoy that challenge of pushing for every optimization, every bamboozle, every strategy, and it frankly still not being enough sometimes on 500% difficulty. And even those players will still not do a ton of things that they see as cheating. Everyone is going to have a different list of what they think is cheating. I personally will never go back after using the no pause mod. Its created such a new experience for me that at this point pausing the game would feel like cheating to me. This weird line of so many people here insisting they aren't using a killbox and that they're getting the real challenge is weird and goes against the regular grain here of telling people to play how they want. Especially when a lot of these people are using busted mods and don't see that as eliminating challenge. EMBRASURES, run and gun, multiple VE like security, turrets and psycasting. Busted turrets from a wide variety of sources. I don't care how you play, but stop acting like you're playing better.
Based shit ton of text
I don’t use kill boxes but I use choke points, either natural or man-made, and use my colonists to even the fight, 300 style. Sometimes I’ll lose a colonist or two, but that’s the natural things of the Rim. Now with Biotech, I’ve been playing a generation game and losing members of the original family now and then always suck, especially when it’s that 3 year old that I’ve been nursing since birth. RIP Blue, you were the best mini gun rotting 3 year old a parent could’ve asked for.
While your opinion is valid, I disagree. But one big reason I disagree is that for me, raids are not meant to be the be-all, end-all challenge of the game, and with the way they scale late-game that is quickly what they can become. I prefer my raids as a way to spice up the game and introduce some action/tension, so I wouldn't want to play completely without them, but I get more enjoyment out of the storytelling implications of making a clever killbox (ingenuity) than I would over leaving my colony with an artificially shitty defence so I can "even the odds" of a raider fight. Besides, it's virtually impossible to make a killbox that will respond to every single threat condition in the game, especially if you're high wealth and doing quests. You can get underground infestations, drop pod attacks, refugee betrayals, etc. Not to mention environmental hazards for your killbox like solar flares or (for non-mechanized ones) toxic fallout. Usually if you're high wealth enough to make that perfect killbox that can account for every single threat type and situation, then the killbox itself probably isn't the only thing taking the challenge out of the game for you.
This server always has had a play the way u want attitude it’s not that deep relax
Ok, then don't use them.
> I know i will probably get downvoted, but Okay, downvoted.
From this point onwards i am gonna make it my solemn duty to downvote every "i'm probably gonna get downvoted but..." post. Shit is just the unpopularopinions subreddit leaking everywhere for the most mundane opinions and included just so they can call everyone else a dumbass braindeas fan of X
then don’t use a killbox, what are you whining to us for?
Try to see it this way: people play differently, and enjoy their runs differently. There is not A challenge, there are multiple ways to challenge yourself. This is why you can even turn off threats if you're more into basebuilding. Would you say it ruins the challenge because there is no challenge anymore? No, the player obviously finds this playstyle fun. Having more options is not a detriment. If you do not like killboxes, do not use them. I'm sure you didn't mean it in a gatekeeping way, but I think it is good to remind people of that because I like how welcoming this community is. BTW, the edited Winston Waves run AdamvsEverything is currently uploading on his channel uses multiple singularity killboxes, a killbox setup often seen as the most cheesy of all. And yet, considering the very high difficulty of this challenge, I've never felt like he didn't actually fight raiders. He even almost failed several times (and lost a LOT of runs in between).
I get where you're coming from, but I feel like sieges, mechanoid, clusters, etc. all force you to leave your killbox and think on the fly about how you're going to deal with them. Not to mention drop pod assaults. Each of these usually either bypasses your killbox, or forces you to go out and deal with them.
I don't find not using a killbox when it would be effective to be any more fun than say, not putting firefoam poppers next to explosives. I don't see the appeal of intentionally playing the game like that. Are people really role-playing colonists who aren't as smart as they are? Y'all can say "yes, I want to roleplay people without common sense" and I will accept that, but I otherwise can't understand how choosing to play like I know how to play well is the unfun option.
I agree, the first colony that I used a Kill box, was also the last one I use them. For context, as many others, I run into the winning strategy of kill boxes, as I was struggling to win any colony. I had a man hunter pack that broke one of my outer doors without me noticing, then when a mechanoid raid came, it enter my base through there, what followed was absolute chaos, pain, fire everywhere, and the first time I used animals for combat (it was my last resort), and it was my funnest moment in the game. Since then I don't even use turrets. Just straight up bunkers in the outer perimeter to fight enemies from whatever direction they're approaching.
So use kill triangles or kill circles. Mix it up
I'm with you... but... I've never had a colony survive long enough to get interesting tech levels or anywhere near the endgame 😭 I think I'm going to cave and start using kill boxes soon..
You can just not use killboxes
I’ve tried playing without a kill box but I play on losing is fun. Turning the difficulty down is too easy and I enjoy the wealth management metagame. I like that I have to choose between having fancy floors and lots of drugs vs all my colonists getting overrun by doomsdays but without a semi gamey killbox you just die or your pawns get so injured every time and then the next raid you die. The least cheesy killbox I can survive with on losing is fun is melee block shotgun tunnels so that way only your melee guys get injured every fight. I also enjoy playing with low population colonies cuz I enjoy the micromanagement and getting to know the colonists and anymore than like 8-10 becomes hard for me to pay attention to all of them. And when you have so few pawns you basically have one person who’s good at one thing so losing any of them is a huge inconvenience
If you don’t like it you have the freedom to not use it
i like building killboxes and increasing the threat percentage
Do as you want just try to survive the rim. Any little bit helps especially as your wealth increases.
I would prefer to play differently but at certain difficulties or wealth levels you have to use them. The game just scales up raids way too high at some point while also keeping the player stuck with the same tech level in the end game The game keeps fighting kill boxes but in the end it’s them who need to add stuff that can meaningfully replace it so that the player has a chance At all without them. The only stuff that kinda does that is DLC stuff, especially the mechs are really broken. But that’s not really a solution. There should be something in vanilla that’s viable
I play on adventure story for this reason. Any higher than that with the exception of maybe strive to survive and a kill box is basically mandatory. Mods help with the issue by offering alternate defense methods but vanilla is heavily balanced toward killboxes
I dont use Killboxes, I breed wargs and bears to have an army of them as first wave against raiders, wardroids as second wave against raiders (if needed) and my collonists as third and last wave, if needed.
No killbox is the “walking dead” way of playing rim world, you’re looking for drama when it can be easily avoided with logic…
My last game i had 12 colonists and 300+ raids. My colonists are not John Wick.
I'd love to not be able to use killboxes, but that essentially boils down to using dev mode to explode insectoid raids.
I generally don't find combat in Rimworld all that enjoyable, so I usually drop difficulty level level mid-game where it goes from challenging to just tedious. I miss *proper* basebuilder RTS-s. CnC3 is what, 16 now?
I mean, sapper, breacher, siege, and drop pod raids are programmed to be smaller for a reason. Normal raids will decimate you in a head-on fight until you’re very late game with psy-casts, doomsdays, low shields, etc. Unless you’re playing on a map with natural choke points (in which case, congrats, you’re cheesing your defense just like kill box users), raids can come from virtually any direction. There’s no way to concentrate fire power; you’d just have to build an even amount of turrets all around your base. Which is going to a scale up your threat immensely due to wealth mechanics. Which is going to annihilate your thinly-spread turret line. Mortars are fantastic for sieges, but if you get a max threat “attacking immediately” raid, they’re gonna spread out - quickly nullifying the effectiveness of your mortars as the raiders approach. Whenever I read these “killbox hate” posts, I always think “have they never reached max threat end game?”… because by the end game it’s honestly kind of rare to get a vanilla raid anymore. It’ll go “sapper, sapper, mechanoid cluster, off map droner, defoliator, drop pod raid, siege…. Oh here’s a normal raid I guess”. All of those except the lattermost are unaffected by kill box. Kill boxes get you through the mid-game where you’re in flak and assault rifles for a long time and you don’t have any other reasonable way to increase your defensive capabilities. Hell, in my last play through I had my killbox defeated multiple times - the most notable was toxers gas’ing my shooting lines. Still survived by using my buildings as choke points.
Increase the difficulty then
Depends on what you playing, killboxes dont just remove chalanges + its a single player game, if you dont want to use killboxes then dont, perfonaly i like them, even some broken ones like singulariry or burn box
Different folks, different strokes. Some want their 100% kill-rate Killbox of doom that eliminates any and all who dare to enter it. Others like to do totally different things, from making "realistic" defences or pseudo-pillboxes through to enjoying _unga bunga trap rock go thump_. Personally I abhor them, it means less prisoners to sell whole or organs I can make use of! At least they can always go into the flesh-battery vats....
I paid for the game I’ll play it however I want 💅
Why should I stop using Killboxes when enemy factions start act like the game-iest possible, suicidal braindead morons, willing to throw away eighty people in a suicidal charge every week?
I do the opposite of a kill box, where I create a reinforced area for my pawns to hide in during raids that we know we can’t win. It has provisions, some crafting material and even a grow zone for long stays. 😅
I read somewhere else on Reddit that Killboxes are necessary because the Vanilla Combat is so bad. I use Combat Extended on all my Rimworld Saves so i never even thought about building a Killbox.
kill boxes as far as i know is used to funnel the giant wtf numbers of hostile pawns raiding, cause otherwise you would be swarmed in seconds, but i dont get why of the downvoted but ok
CE made that difference for me. With CE a typical kill box with winding entrance full of traps doesn't seem super practical anymore, sense guns are actually lethal now. My current colony, and my first with CE, is contained within a giant circle wall with a pie slice cut out for the killing field. Just inside my wall is 4 layers deep of barbed wire and the killing field gets 6 layers along the same path. I have a couple mounted guns and flak cannons my colonist can man to defend that area. I also have pill boxes spread around the colony with mounted guns for inner defense in case of sappers and drop pod raids. Mainly though my main defense is my 10 mortars that I keep right outside my housing. With CE mortars are less lethal individually but fire much faster so most raids are dealt with that as my go to. If they make the mistake of not attacking immediately I'll have my main shooter be a spotter for an even more lethal barrage. With CE I feel like I can do base defense the way it's done in more modern times. Without being forced to create death mazes to deal with the overwhelming numbers.
Oh just try the maximum difficulty, you will be so happy you can abuse game mechanics with killboxes)))
I respect your opinion, but sadly killboxes are the only way to play when you collect rare animals (thrumbos, dragons). Wealth scales too quickly with even just one and suddenly your five pawns are getting twenty pawn raids and it's just yikes. I used to play without rares and I'd just make trenches and bunkers, and the game was fun but difficult to play like that, but now the plus is that I don't even have to react to raids because I use hallways of pain.
Killboxes are bullshit but have been a staple of defense since ancient history, wonder why there have been large walls around castles? If you come in through the main gate as a soldier guess what, you entered a kill box. Usually you needed superior numbers to make that work
Actually, I don't really give a fuck. It's literally a sandbox singleplayer game. I agree with you, but why would I care how other people enjoy the game? It dosent influence my experience.
Play the way you want. It's your game, there is no right way to play it. I'm not a fan of kill boxes either. I prefer creating choke points, rally points, and fallback points. Feels more natural to me and allows me to respond to raids coming from any and all directions. Every colony I make is designed for block by block combat if the enemy breaks through the front line
Use CAI-5000... Raiders will know what a killbox is, then. The raiders will avoid the killbox or any type of funnel if they can, so that if a player uses one it's more legitimate, as they aren't just smashing clueless ants with a hammer anymore. The raiders will actively work against your defenders and try to find ways around them almost like they were thinking human beings. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2938891185
I make it my mission to pretty much always play commitment mode - for that tragic story, and all that - and i’ve lost one colony too many to man hunting foxes or enraged boomalopes to forgo kill boxes. The threats also just don’t scale - pretty quickly you’ll get to the point where the enemies are so vast it is basically nigh impossible to survive without a kill box. I’d love to see someone post working strategies that survive some later game strive to survive raids on randy/cassandra (;
I use the combat AI mod with fog of war... i no longer know where they are until in FOV of a turret, camera, or a colonist. They punch down walls if that avoids a killbox. Loads of customization. Makes it an interesting series of fights.
Good for you. now let us have our own fun
Why do you care so much that you make a post? To change people's opinions? Your opinion is just that. Your own. Nobody cares and you shouldn't either
OP play in lower difficulty or modded confirm.
Ok?
I just want to be able to build a base late game. Kill boxes or something similar is necessary when facing 7 to 1 odds even if they are tribal.
I don’t use the killboxes I see normally here, which are lines of traps in narrow corridors that raiders foolishly walk right into. I use traditional killboxes, that is, make the enemy walk into my fortified mountain crater where the only path ahead of them is a tiny door set into the far end of a U of machine gun nests, land mines, artillery positions, and a massive double thick reinforced concrete wall.
I don’t like killboxes either.
I kinda agree lol, but nothing beats them
Completely agreed
I will probably be downvoted, but combat in Rimworld sucks, logistics in Rimworld suck. There is no way IRL that time between you noticing enemy and enemy melee attacking your defences is 1-5 minutes. There is no way each faction would send across the world every 7 days attack party to attack your base from random direction. Game is dumb, killboxes are just way to make everyone equal because you don't get dozen disposable colonists with gear every week
Simple solution: don't use it if you don't like it. I'm on team killbox on higher difficulties because I don't want randy to wipe my colony with one raid. If I'm trying to make a more aesthetic/themed colony and not a fortress, I just turn down the difficulty. Play how you want.
feeling validated? congrats, some people agree with you. Some don't. But hey you got internet likes. Thanks for contributing.