Best Killboxes for Mid Game RimWorld
Vložit
- čas přidán 18. 09. 2022
- A lot of people ask me while I'm streaming about best defenses for RimWorld raids, and I think there are several really great options. In fact, I usually change how my defenses are setup from one colony to the next, or as my colonies change/grow.
That is why I decided to create this video which shows 9 colonists fighting the same 2 raids using each of the following: a door as a choke point, a traditional killbox/spike trap maze, a column hallway and the "Corner Killer" diagonal killbox. Ultimately it turns out, the traditional killbox is not really very effective (though the spike trap maze is).
Check me out on Twitch for live streams of RimWorld (and sometimes other games): twitch.tv/elanaorama
Let me know in the comments if you want me to do a similar video on sieges and breachers! - Hry
![RimWorld Guide: Pathing & Collision - Make Raiders go where you want them! [1.5, 2024] Check Comment](/img/n.gif)
If you're interested in the Singularity Killbox design, check out this video from AdamVsEverything czcams.com/video/uH9oyC9KZlE/video.html it's pretty crazy!
I can't seem to get it working. Ranged units still shoot at me. I think im using the wrong gun (cuz i have so many modded in) but then what's the right gun?
@@MaestroAlvis the singularity? I've honestly never tried it. I will say though that the killboxes that should prevent them from shooting at you are nullified if you use the run and gun mod. Then they can shoot the whole time while moving. Hope that helps!
@@elanaorama that does help. Damn. My desire for a better game has foiled my desire to cheese a good game.
@@MaestroAlvis hahahahaha totally fair. I play with run and gun sometimes and I really enjoy it but you basically need a whole different set of tactics
Yeah, the singularity killbox is the most efficient one I've tested so far. You can kill raids with +100 centipedes/raiders without getting a single hit on your pawns. And it is very fast and cheap to build.
Simple mod for the chokepoint - put a 1x3(or longer) wall outside the door! This prevents them from lining up shots from outside, forces them to get close range to the door.
thanks yea! i figured that some walls would solve it and tried just a single wall on either side of the choke point in my mechinators run. i like the idea of 1x3 to increase the protection!
The column is such a great strat. The things you don't think aboutwhen you've been playing so long until someone puts it in front of your face!
Great video!
Yay, thanks rb! Yea I really really like the column hallway
After 500 hours I've still been to lazy to make a trap hallway/killbox. I don't like how they look but I've lost so many colonies to raids in the past. thanks for making this, I now finally realize how viable these are.
yea I totally get that. you might wanna try run and gun (a mod) if you don't want to use killboxes. it changes the fighting tactics a lot because both you and the enemies can shoot while moving, but it allows more flexibility in building in my opinion
Thanks for the suggestion!
very entertaining and well done video! you're very knowledgeable about mechanics and I hope there's more to come! looking forward to it as you earned a new subscriber :)
Thanks zanger! That's awesome! Definitely more to come soon! I'm moving so the uploads are a bit scattered rn
Thank you! If you wish to completely avoid friendly fire in your "corridor" set up; replace a few walls with the ambrazures near the engagement point. The enemy should not be able to stop and return fire. (untested) For the choke point you have to build a wall, 3-5 sections, in front of your entrance, one space away and fill that space with sandbags. (tested)
This was really insightful. I'll be reconsidering my colony's defenses now.
nice! i'm glad! thanks for watching
Man i've been using old killbox strats and this is helping me a ton.
Yayyy! I'm so glad.
Check out the singularity kill box. Double cheese if you set up the corner killer leading into the singularity to let your melee have some fun first.
Ah, you mention it at the end and just chose not to cover it.
Yup! I recently watched Adam's video--it's really cool. I'm gonna have to try the singularity corner killer combo! That sounds insane
There's no challenge in doing that tho, might as well activate god mode
@@Davids6994 Don't be stupid. I know that you're used to playing only Phoebe Chillax but other people like to go for the higher difficulties and rough starts which is impossible without efficient strats.
@@felipdn3329 do you feel satisfied when Randy throws at you those 50+ centipede raids and you chew through them with the singularity killbox with 6 pawns shooting+2 using emp grenades since they can't even shoot back if done correctly. Does it make you feel smart? Or do you comprehend that a mentally challenged kid could copypaste it and go unchallenged no matter what comes towards him? But hey, maybe you have special needs too.
Thanks for the comparison! I always considered the classical killbox to be highly resource intensive.
My pleasure! Thanks for watching. Yea it does seem to be when there are some really effective methods that don't require resetting after every raid!
Love this! Thank you. BTW I saw someone do a version of the column hallway, but the walls were made of cooling units so the enemies all die of hypothermia before they get to your pawns. :D
Hahaha OK that is kind of incredible! I want to see it/try it!! Thanks for watching and commenting
@@elanaorama absolutely! Thank you for the post. I haven't played since before royalty so this has all changed and is amazing to relearn.
Ty for your work.
A lot of these weren't optimized very well. The standard killbox should have lots of rocks and sandbags to slow raiders down. The corner killbox should be a longer path, so more pawns can get a punch in, and a pawn stationed next to the sandbag exit can actually shoot around the corner a couple squares down the hallway. The chokepoint killbox was also executed poorly because there was no wall one space away from the door to make sure raiders with ranged weapons form up and shoot through the door--you got lucky in your example raid both because most of the fighters were melee and because the raider with the service rifle and armor happened to run around the corner and in rather than approaching directly and setting up a shooting position into the door from behind his friends. Finally the column hallway works best when each of your colonists have extreme long range weapons AND chain shotguns which they switch out depending on the distance to the closest target. The goal of a long length is to give you more shots before melee contact, and the length of the hallway beyond the range of your weapons is wasted materials.
Yeah, plus the basic killbox should split up the raid into individual colonists, having fences or barricades with small gaps in between them in a long hallway leading up to the single entrance helps, plus they could be rounding a hallway full of barricades that forces them into a wide open area. I think she was right about the resource cost though, even wooden traps and turret replenishing costs can be pretty pricy
Write this on your job interview
My current killbox is just 40 lancers setup in 3 rows. Any raider that walks through the 1 tile wide hallway out into the open takes fire from 3 different directions at once and gets INSTANTLY murdered.
Apocritons and Warqueen sand Diabolusususes also get mowed down in basically just 2 volleys each. It is ludicrously effective against any enemy i've come across.
Though I am becoming very fond of using tox gas against living raiders. It's incredibly effective at killing, as well as just downing people to capture alive. So good. You can have your maze setup with just a couple of tox grenade throwers keeping the whole thing full of gas at no cost. Marvelous.
nice! yea this video is pre-biotech/1.4 but those are some pretty cool tactics with biotech! that said, the infrastructure to support so many lancers must be insane!
Thanks for the tips, Elana!
No problem! Hoping to do more video likes this going forward!
a really fun one if not very efficient is essentially you build a reinforced bunker with pillars and have a door to access the entrance and the exit. you lock the enemy in with vents to your geothermal, smith and a bunch of heaters and cook them, also helps if you have fire turrets but thats a mod iirc. the mega oven is fun as its not super expensive save for using power and initial steel bunker setup
Fun, never seen some of these designs. Thanks elana :>
Awesome! I love to hear that. Glad you enjoyed the video!
This was incredibly useful. Usually I just make theme park lines full of traps (wood so I can afford the resources), and I'm looking forward to trying something new.
I'd also be curious to see a comparison between the standard killbox you have here vs. another version of it I've seen, one that comes to a point at the bottom instead of immediately spreading out wide. The one here looks kinda like a half-circle, the other looks more like ice cream on a sugar cone -- it forces the enemies to stay grouped together as they enter the killbox and has more distance from the entry point to the colonists (I assume that requires medium to long range weapons that fire at a decent rate), so your shooters have more time before melee has to step in and can do more focused damage. Of course, it doesn't have turrets, so I don't know which is more of an advantage. I haven't actually used either.
Ma favorite “killbox” to use against mechanoids (specifically centipedes) is to make a ring of 8 meleers behind a wall with at least 2 using zeushammers and the rest wielding other ultratech melee weapons (preferably persona monoswords). Up to 3 or 4 can be friendly scythers. Once you have the ring set up, have a psycaster skip a centipede to the other side of the wall, then immediately after skip it into the center of the ring. I’m my experience, if they don’t die after all 8 people attack it simultaneously the moment it skips in, they’ll die before the zeushammer’s EMP wears off.
It works great against breacher raids since it can be set up anywhere. After they blast a hole in your wall, set up the ring right next to the hole and use a couple of skips to get all the centipedes and termites into the center of the “killbox.” If you want to be really safe, hit them with as stronger EMP effect before skipping them in, but be sure not to hit anyone with brain wiring, shield belts, or friendly mechs.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t work on the biotech boss mechs. They’re “too big” to skip. For them, I just spam berserk and berserk pulse.
The thing I love most about the standard killbox is there’s an element of automation. With smaller threats I don’t necessarily need my pawns there to shoot, because traps, and potentially turrets, take them down first. Helpful if half my colony is away on a caravan or in biosculptors or whatever.
Yea that is a really good point! That is a great benefit of using traps and turrets in a more standard kill box, though this one would need some changes for the turrets to be more effective.
That said, I don't typically let my defenses take on threats without readying my fighters, so it's nice if I can save some resources.
It's amazing how many different ways there are to play this game! Thanks for watching!
@@elanaorama yep the turrets are a little better in recent patches, but i find that i dont use them until i am already raid capped, as their effectiveness is ofset by the cost of building and repairing them along with increased raid points from wealth, until i am capped out on raid points i find a pawn with a gun more effective than a turret.
Raids are scaled off of how many pawns are in your base at the time of the raid. So sending out caravans are not a problem in that regard.
I have a silly question, are these all tested in the latest Bio release? I ask because I made the Singularity Killbox (?) recently because I was told it was the best, now it sort of worked but I had put in fences to slow down inbound enemies and maybe I should have used the dirt patch or sandbags because the two raids I had destroyed every fence I put down, I was like wait why are they doing that, but I was like OK whatever. Previously I would just build a rectangle at the range of the assault rifle and put in a door at the near side with whatever those walls with slits in the at the base end and just shoot everything. I sometimes dug rows of trenches in to slow down the enemy but I tended not to build a roof so I always have to deal with plant growth, which I dislike, so sometimes I would build a roof. I have not had bad luck with that. If I have money and time I sometimes add turrets to both sides' fronted by sandbags, it adds a nice touch of extra damage.
Very good video, thank You so much!
I'm glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for watching.
very clear and useful! Subscribed.
Yay! I'm happy to hear that. Thank you for watching!
All of these would work significantly better, in particular the standard killbox and the corner killer, if you have a turret with LOS blocked by a closed door just outside. This forces the raid to enter combat before it gets inside, and makes them 'pop out' and start colliding before they enter the killbox. Means they move much more slowly through the killbox and lets you get more shots off on them before they start overwhelming you.
So they go combat mode even if the door is closed, so the turret wont be harmed. Have I understood that correctly? If so, then this is a really helpfull advice that I'll keep in mind for sure.
yeah it was def a little unfair to compare the ranged kill boxes with melee kill boxes like the diagonal one looks great for melee but but if 3/4 your colony cant brawl for shit doesnt work to well i imagine
@@TheFlashgames777 yeah, that's right. Doors don't technically block los the way walls do so the turret can 'see' them so they are considered in combat, even though the turret won't actually shoot at them and they won't target it
Feel like you could combo these into eachother and get even better results, especially with the melee corner kill box, basically have an initial spot where melee pawns can thin the herd then have the path lead to a column hallway or something, perhaps with a long s curve to allow your pawns time to reposition
Oh heck yea. That sounds soo good! I have to give that a try
But remember, if the kill box/ maze gets to long, they will just dig through your defense. Always a huge danger.
thats what i do in my builds, you can set up points where they can bunch up and you can throw grenades in
I've always used just a long 1 box line and been fine until infestation, or toxic fallout, etc etc, and I just move my entire base and start new tile in different environment. Really fun.
ooo interesting--i don't know a lot of players that relocate so much. that's a cool way to play
I still need a kill box for the later centipede waves. I don't use turrets or spike traps, but I do make a cover room for melee casters and a grenadier on each side where you have turrets. Skipping a stunned centipede into the middle of a melee group is awesome.
oooh that's a good idea--it definitely sounds (more) useful to have grenadiers in those spots where the turrets are. This colony felt a little melee heavy and small for that, but the turrets were obviously not very effective in those spots.
I always seem to have tons of mechs just dropping into the middle of my base during end/late game raids. Skipping (centipedes especially) into melee is great! I am also a huge fan of berserking one or two centipedes in the middle of the group while they approach to have them fight each other for a while. Thanks for watching!
Hello, which mod shows you the red dots as enemies when you zoom out on the map?
Hi! Camera+ (by Brrainz) is the zoom mod. That should be the one that creates those red dots for enemies/mad animals. Thanks for watching!
Right now I'm using a wooden spike trap hallway leading into a wide open killbox filled with attack rino's. I haven't had a single colonist injured in a non-sapper raid, and rinos reproduce decently fast.
Oh that's incredible! I once had a pack of battle megasloths that helped me finish one colony. Love it!
@@elanaorama Right now I'm sitting at 31 rinos. If I can keep my wealth down I should be able to finish this one out. I like the pillar hallway idea. Thinking of a modification for my next colony. Thanks for the ideas!
I usually do a choke point but with a spiketrap hallway(but I don’t use steel cause that’s expensive.)
And just angle the hallway with a corner so only like two or so ranged raiders can shoot at them at a time
Nice! that is probably the best way to do it based on these tests!! Though I do love the column hallway, especially if resources are super limited and you don't feel like you can do traps. For my spike trap hallways, I do use steel when I have it, as it is the best, but of course in a pinch I'd use stone blocks or wood too. Thanks for watching!
Great analysis. I have not tried it yet, but it seems that a corner trap used as a weakening device, followed by a short column hallway would work wonderfully.
Yea! A lot of people suggested combining them based off this video, so I actually did a "killboxes from the comments section" video where I tested something similar to what you suggest. It worked really well!
Thanks for watching! Check out the 2nd one if you're interested: czcams.com/video/6dkrrDzBuL0/video.html
one of the things missing in that corner killbox or the column hall, is the breaking of the pathing of the raides like AdamVsEverything explains on his video about pathing. if you put a turret near the entrance of the killbox, the raiders kind of make a single file line spaced out evenly.🤣
I used to use traditional killbox designs for chain shotguns and heavy smgs but these just seem so much cheaper and more efficient. I could see the melee specialist you get from supremacy doing absolute work with this. Could also get an animal specialist from animal personhood to flank and unleash battle bears on the raiders from behind.
yesss that would be next level!! sounds soo good! thanks for watching
The choke point really benefits from a single person with frag grenades in the second line, set to throw with a manually set target.
Btw, check out the "defensive positions" mod. It's a really nice convenience mod that enables you to set four different defensive positions individually for each pawn and send them there with a single click.
Oh yea I love defensive positions! I use it a lot in my main highly modded runs.
Oooo frag grenades are a great idea especially for the choke point where you won't blow up your own structures! Thank you for watching!
Right Leg : Cut Off (Fresh)
“Definitely a bit injured”
Lol
lol "tis but a scratch"
great showcase. couple pointers:
- use Animals or mechanoids (Biotech DLC) on the front line as they are cheaper than pawns. any unit that can be zoned and wont flee can "Block" as you can just zone them into a 1 tile zone.
- I prefer Heavy SMG over Chain shotgun as the accuracy formula favors weak shooters on the SMG. past ~16 shooting Assault Rifle or Charge Lance are the way to go
- the "Standard" killbox relies on a balance between firepower and enemy HP. if you cant kill the stream of enemies at the first tile by the door you will eventually get over-run on a large enough raid. the spike traps just eliminate the first few and will have to continuously need to be extended in order to keep up with raid size. you are far better off boosting your firepower than extending the traps.
- any exterior door with 3 tiles of space inside can be used as a "chokepoint" killbox. however I would suggest that you at least double wall the doorway as friendly fire will open it a lot faster than you would like.
- additionally there are 2 forms of "chokepoint" killbox: ranged raid and melee raid. for the ranged (as mentioned elsewhere) you want a wall just past the door to limit firing lines. for the melee form you keep it open and want to have your "trigger happy" pawns towards the back (no more than 5 tiles from the exterior wall) armed with grenades. the grenades have an enforced 1 tile miss radius so if you target the ground with the radius 1 tile away from your door you will absolutely crush any melee/insect/animal raids.
- often the best counter to a raid is an animal pulser as you can just lock the doors and enjoy the show.
- the DLCs really decrease the difficulty. the royalty DLC strongly increases pawn power through the casting system, and the new BioTech DLC gives a host of new changes to customizing pawns.
Edit: lastly, the raid size calculation always biases a higher number of pawns. the amount of infrastructure required to support 1 additional pawn is less wealth (and therefore raid size) than the firepower that 1 pawn can bring to the line. eventually the storyteller is programed to cap raid size so additional pawns just further push the balance in your favor. if you are having trouble leveling shooting, train up your pawns using a smoke launcher on an animal, if you are having problems getting them equipped caravan and trade more aggressively.
since 1.3, animals that aren't trained to attack/guard will flee if you zone them to a spot where they need to tank--it's one of the worst changes to the game since i started playing. you have to train them up now! i did some testing with attack rhinos in my new killboxes video -- pretty interesting stuff. I also used some improved choke points/killboxes. I agree that the size of the colony/fire power is the main issue with the traditional killbox, but i feel like for mid game/smaller colonies that's common.
I also prefer heavy SMG/assault rifles depending on skill--I was trying to challenge myself with not giving the absolute best weaponry possible... especially since it's supposed to be for mid game when you may not have all the best options yet and when you DONT have 20+ colonists... although i usually give an assault rifle to anyone who is a level ~12 or better, not just 16+
I respectfully disagree. the DLCs have made the game harder, especially keeping people happy with their different ideologies and trying to defend against enhanced mechs or humanoids when you are neither... that plus the changes to the base game/storyteller difficulties that were 100% meant to make the game harder. psycasts are incredibly strong--idk why ppl don't use them more!! i def enjoy the challenge/variety w the dlcs lol
I have thousands of hours in this game--it's hard to fit all the possibly relevant information in a 15 minute video lol definitely a lot of good points you made that new players need to keep in mind (e.g. friendly fire, animal pulsers, training shooting) thanks for watching
@@elanaorama Thanks for putting the video together and going through all the fine detail. My intention was not to slight your video, only to share some additional information and what has worked for me. Rimworld is a very complex game and there are tens of hours of describing the minutia, so no one going to fit it all into a single video. I've seen 15 minute videos just describing the cooking mechanics.
Most of my opinions about the game difficulty has to do with the raid cap more than anything. The amount of wealth we need to reach raid cap is the same, but the individual power of the pawns is greater so the same base in vanilla up to Biotech has had more firepower with each DLC. Building up to that point however is definitely more complicated than it was in vanilla and raids have an added level of complexity to deal with as well.
I think a lot of the difficulty comes from trying out different playstyles. Most of my runs have used the same Ideology and enough tricks from the different DLCs to mitigate complexity substantially; IE ascetic royalty, wealth mitigation, standardized base design, Numbers mod etc. My playstyle definitely skews into the warcrimes camp, so most of my priorities end up working out to the raid size vs firepower gain and that shapes my progression. Most of the games I play end up with me trying to min/max everything and RimWorld is a deep enough well to keep me busy for a long time. :D
Thanks for the video. Curious if wood spike traps are a good compromise. (sorry if you address this later in the video, im only half way through lol)
For sure wood is a good option for traps especially in a forest biome! I'm actually using wood traps in my mechanitors colony. It doesn't have the same damage so you should do a longer trap hallway.
Thank you for showing the collomn one. I was searching for a kill box that is not entirely game breaking like the corner melee one or the chinese one.
Yeaaaaaa I think that is a big reason why I like the column one so much!
Bad review on the "standard" killbox. Several things are wrong with your setup, so it's not working properly .
thank you i really need this
I'm glad it helps! Thanks for watching!
4:30 TIL my go-to kill box was horrible. No wonder I keep getting destroyed.
Super insightful tutorial, thank you!
No problem! I'm glad you got something out of it.
And I definitely understand--I used it for years! TY for watching!
In the coke point set up wouldn’t friendly fire be a huge issue? How is your back line not hitting your front line?
You can have your units 3-4 rows behind others and no friendly fire will happen. Better shooters may be able to avoid friendly fire another row or two back (5-6 rows), but I try not to risk it. Good question! Thanks for watching!
I actually use the "standard" killbox for mostly ranged raids, but without turrets or spike traps. I put a maze as entrance with a fence on every other tile to spread the raiders out. And I make sure they have to turn a corner before they enter the actual shooting area (where they can't stop, so place sandbags/barricades). They trickle in nicely one by one, and with around 8-10 shooters I'm able to take on a raid of the size you have shown pretty well. Because of course you're right, spike traps are damn expensive (resources and time to build). Corner + singularity killbox feels a little too much like cheating to me 😅 And melee raids (or manhunters) always the chokepoint. Doesn't even have to be a "killbox", I just open a door in my perimeter wall and place my pawns like you did.
yea there are a lot of options for affecting their pathing to get them to spread out -- i just use the columns and the long shooting hallway for it! To me it seems to do well whether the enemy is manhunters, melee, or ranged!!
I also don't tend to use the cornerkiller as much because of the cheese... And yea if your colony is range heavy or full of melee you will absolutely need to take that into account. A long shooting range is gonna be incredible if your colony is full of great shooters with high quality assault rifles. Gotta keep that in mind for sure when we're picking our defenses! thanks for watching!
For the corner killer could you swap the sand bags for pillars to prevent them shooting
Is the corner killer two auto doors or what is that in the pathway?
yea it's full of open doors to slow down the raiders as they walk through. Thanks for watching/commenting!
You have a great Voice for non-native speakers, Excellent Video.
Awesome! That's great to hear! But do let me know in the comments if you ever have questions
also i have combined the corner killer with the standard killbox on my current playthrough i have 30 pawns and 6 are brawlers, so i just set up a corner killbox at the end of my standard box and let the melee kill who they can and the smg get the rest
Interesting! I like that idea. Ive been messing around with choke points at the end of the trap maze where the raiders get in sight of the shooters. I should try the corner killer there next time! Thanks for watching!
All of these can be upgraded by adding collision to the raiders. Currently all of them clump up together which makes the raid so much harder, with collision they don't clump up and come 1 by 1.
Yea for sure! I like to test which setups can work even when they are bunched up, but it'd be safer to ensure they spread out before entering
What's the advantage of so many columns? E.g. don't they have to form a single file even if there's only a few columns?
Also, you mention friendly-fire, but I'm wondering why that isn't an issue for the first solution you show (the simple two-door approach)?
Columns don't allow pawns to stop on their tile, but do let them path through. This means that ranged opponents can't stop further down the hallway and start shooting at you (especially good for late game when raiders could bring heavy explosives). Friendly fire only occurs at around a 4+ tile range, if an ally is within that range they won't be hit by gunfire.
@@FalconCritical Ah, makes sense. Thanks for explaining.
Kung fu kids said it perfectly! I like getting shots off while they travel the column hallway and can't shoot back/can't stop. Doesn't work with the run and gun mod of course. Thanks for watching!
My own "standard" killboxes that I've used for the past 1000 hours of playing rimworld have been a big rectangular arena with 10 times more turrets lining the walls protected by a comb of walls and sandbags in front of them and then when long range turrets were added, big guns at the end of the hall with my long range weapon colonists who have full cover behing plasteel walls and of course plenty of firefoam to deal with inferno cannons and a buddy system to put each other out in case someone ignites.
I'd really only lose 6 out of 20 turrets in a big raid, but now with the advent of breaching raids things are more tricky.
choke point design is compact enough you could put it throughout base between sections for defense against drop pods
Yes absolutely! It can go a long way against drop raids. I also like to setup choke points throughout my mountain bases for infestation defense!
If you put doors at the end of a column hallway, you can shoot raiders and then simply shut the door when they get close, open others elsewhere. A variant of this taking advantage of the AI's desire to find cover before shooting back has been a viable no-damage setup since alpha until now...vs standard raids. But those were never the main threat to a base, the highest threat is sappers, followed by drop pod/siege (you could lift siege with sniper micro though, after which you can jack the mortars to interfere with future sieges even w/o tech for it). Door abuse + line of fire then ducking out of return fire was the most consistent way I found to take 0 damage to standard raids.
The corner killer is at its best with animal abuse, as animals can overstack into the corners last I played. Insane damage from that, way more than the game intends (1 shots things that take the hit rather than just damage/slow). But it requires annoying animal maintenance. Probably less resource-taxing than re-arming traps.
Choke point approach really enjoys grenades at scale. If not doing that, you probably want to mix with a much shorter column setup that forces raiders around the corner so they can't stop + shoot (or worse throw grenades/fire rockets into your choke).
Doors got nerfed like crazy in 1.0, they shut way slower than pre-release. Auto doors can still do the micro trick of peek-firing, have fast aim time weapons and make someone else open/shut the door, allowing your people to shoot. Some weapons can't fire back at all, even if the enemy AI is trained on you. Practically none can if you let the AI resume something else to get some extra reaction time.
I been playing rimworld for years and it always astounds me how killboxes works for everyone else when I could never get them to work as intended. They just break the walls or just drop pod in, completely negating the kill box I built.
so I always have to build my colony like a resident evil umbrella corp base. More defenses pointed inside than outside and only having 5-6 colonist to use as a elite fire team. Most hallways are always ridden with fire/acid/nano swarm mines or spike traps with automated turrets at the end. Each room has a turrets with a mine at the entrance with another at its center.
I play with a few QoL/realism mods like Vanilla Expanded and which ever version of metal/stone doesn’t burn. All walls are doubled beefed up and all interior furniture is flammable by design.
Hey shadow butcher! Yea I get that. That's why I mentioned the part about leaving doors open in the killbox you want to use and how this will only work for standard raids. I started working on content for non standard raid types and just released a video on sieges. Go check it out! I definitely want to do breach raids as well as they can be really rough! Thanks for watching!
I thought you can only place 6 traps in a row before raiders will stop going through them and attack the walls instead. I haven't kept up with the patches. Perhaps a patch came out that allowed this?
would epm grenades not be more effective than launchers in a killbox?
Yea someone else said that too. It sounds like they would!
Interesting tests. I tend to use a standard killbox for ranged attackers and a choke point one for melee attackers, so I guess it's not surprising that the standard one performed poorly.
Also, you might want to use EMP grenades rather than the EMP launcher if you can. I'm pretty sure the grenades shoot faster.
oooo very interesting. Yea it would make sense that the chokepoint performs way better in a melee heavy than a standard killbox. Good call on the grenades/launcher. I am pretty sure the grenades are also cheaper to make
@@elanaorama AND grenades have a much more manageable area of effect
I personally do a mix of traditional trap hallway and the corner killer myself. Traps to get rid of the melee and fast pawns
Yea that's a really solid combination for sure. Traps are super good but I feel like you can't rely on only them especially for end game!
I never tried the column hallway, I'll need to try it in my next run. Although I think the columns give them more cover from gunfire than the sandbags does.
actually columns are only 25% cover compared to 55% cover from sandbags/barricades!! it's also less than chunks which would give raiders 50% cover.
Thanks for watching!
I tend to make large killboxes with plenty of turrets ( yes resource intensive, but what else am i going to spend it on.) And leave one part free of turrets for the colonist to shoot from.
Don't forget that the killbox also jacks up the wealth of your colony bringing bigger raids. It's kind of a trap if you ask me. It's just so much more interesting to me to make each raid a tactical challenge. If you're just going to design the perfect nearly automatic killbox, why have raids at all? It's not like base survival is that difficult in this game.
Yea Yarnosh--that's a fair point. I like changing it up, and that's why my defenses look different with each run. I absolutely agree that a killbox that is nearly automatic wouldn't be very fun for me either. Going without killboxes altogether is a very fun challenge--i should def do more of it. I don't tend to worry about the wealth of my colonies very often (maybe I should worry more lol)
do you do outer walls? or just village style colony? village style is definitely the hardest but also the most realistic.
Thanks for watching!
@@elanaorama I normally do a village style colony surrounded by walls and mountain.
I'm not sure if this still works, but used to be that if you left (or dumped) the bodies of a wave of raiders in the spiked trap corridor & gave a roof, then you could break the moral of human raiders before they reached the end (cumulative "Saw a dead body" & "in darkness" debufs). However, I don't think it would do much against mechs etc, so perhaps making it longer & use cheap wooden traps would be worth a try?
Interesting. I never thought to try that! I do wonder if that would have been nerfed in one of the big updates. Yea a long spike trap hallway with wood spikes is good if you don't have enough steel and wood is plentiful on your map. I will always use steel if possible, but any traps are better than none
Damn that column hallway is so good gonna keep it in mind but I don't think I'm gonna use it I like having to deal with some of the shooters atleast
You should also try the door killbox where you have just a line of opened doors for enemies to walk through and because they're up against eachother it drastically slows down the enemies while the rest of the box is either sandbags or barricades so enemies can't stand on those tiles while you shoot out through one or more doorways on the other end of the killbox
yea that sounds just like the singularity killbox i mention in the video! I haven't tried it yet but it seems like it's SUPER effective. I pinned a comment with a link to AdamVsEverything's video on it--it's really well done.
@@elanaorama Just watched the video, yes this is 100% the killbox I was talking about, I've seen it used before but never heard it's name before so thank you ^^
You shouldn't be using traps in the Standard Kill Box at all.
Use the column hallway in place of the traps. Now there is no waste of steel and the raiders are forced to spread out.
If you put a small L-shaped column hallway in front of the chokepoint killbox, then you solve the problem of raiders shooting from out of range of your melee.
Francis John is a big fan of the normal killbox design, but in his current series on sea ice, he has experimented with the melee corner killer and the singularity killbox, he says they are too OP. lol
In my opinion, anything that protects your pawns limbs or lives is a valid option. Even the more resource intensive options are cheaper than having to replace a limb, or a pawn. Personally I like the 2 wide trap hallway with alternating fences, your pawns can zig zag between the traps but the enemies will avoid the fences and run over the traps. This is very resource intensive, but totally worth it, assuming you have lots of steel, or build a longer hallway with wooden traps.
To prevent the enemies attacking as a group, an unpowered turret behind a door, causes them to pop out before they reach their "evolution chamber". lol
Very informative video, thanks. Illustrates why traditional killboxes are the absolute worst. :)
Yes! I've also been watching Francis John's series. It helped inspire me for sure 😂
I agree on resource intensive being worth it especially when it can save lives/limbs. I like the idea of your trap/fence combo maze. I might have to try it like that! Thank you for watching and commenting!! I appreciate it
Thanks for the tips
No problem! I'm happy it helped
That kill box is designed as you said for chain shotguns and you haven't got too many of them and you have a bunch of people with melee weapons. Ditch the turrets, ditch the traps, ditch the curve give everyone a ranged weapon preferably minigun, charge rifle, heavy smg, assault rifle and make the defensive line the max distance of you can shoot with a minigun. Replace the traps with sandbags which will separate the enemies to come in 1 at a time. The major problem with the kill box you have is that there is cover for the enemy very close to the opening and the aiming time means that the first few seconds the raiders enter is basically free time for them to get to this cover. The cover should be granite or plasteel walls and barricades alternating with your shooters behind the wall parts. 5 people with heavy smgs would have saved the day I reckon.
you said it all mate
yea i find shot guns much more effective in a different design,
miniguns are traps in killboxes, they destroy your walls and barricades most of the time instead of raiders. They have their uses on the open for supressive fire but on your killbox they do more harm than good. chain shotguns/smgs/assault rifles on the other hand are god weapons on short/medium/far range.
And never forget your emp grenade on a corner in case a mech raid happens
@@ravell2854 You have to build your walls out of something stronger and yeah you'll have to repair them but miniguns have been tested and are the best killers. See John Francis' videos.
@@ravell2854 Francis John even. Fucking people with 2 first names as a name.
very informative and good video but what about Termite mechs? They can just bore past the airlock.
Yea! i need to do another video on breach raids for sure - sappers and termites! i did one on sieges already because the defense tactics are very different depending on the raid type. You can try opening a door and taking some of them on in a choke point, usually works a bit better for sappers than termites. The sappers won't redirect, but the other raiders will attack you if you start attacking them. For termites, try to spread out and stay behind cover and hopefully stun them with EMPs/psycasts. they are some of the rougher raids for sure. thanks for watching!
What mods are you using?
Is the drop down for your resources on the left of the screen a mod? If so please share with me, having all of your resources listed on the side drives me insane!
No I'm pretty sure that is actually one of the vanilla settings/options! I like the collapsed categories wayyy better. Thanks for watching!
THE TUNNEL OF PAIN
What about the Corner Killer but with pillars instead of doors would that still work? This has made me want to play Rimworld again
Yea that's a good idea. the doors slow them down and spread them out more, but you could do a bit longer corner killer with some doors and a line of columns at the end so you don't have ppl shooting like I did in the tests.
You should play again! It's so good! I can't stop and it's been 4+ years hahaha 😂
on the corner one u need a turret near the entrance to 'pop' the enemies out of each so they then enter one by one, doesn't need to be powered i think too lol
Yea! That's right. I knew there was something that didn't seem right. It wasn't as effective as expected. I'll have to try that out. Thanks!
choke+corner is my go to strat next run thx
Yea choke points are soo good, if you have the melee people for it. I've been doing a bit of a corner with a fence or two since this video/all the discussion
Winner and I'm gonna consider the corner killer because it can have spikes also
1:49 Flak vest + exotic material duster > marine/recon/cataphract armor. Great protection with very little movement penalty.
Yea! i tend to use a flak vest and duster most often in my colonies, although I'll never say no to a few sets of recon armor. Only a handful of the colonists have flak vests--i'll need to get on that!
@@elanaorama give your colonists flak vests, dusters, and armor. Strip everyone naked. See what they pick. They'll most likely go with the dusters and flak vests. More fairly strong layers > fewer much stronger layers.
Perhaps the best part is movement speed. Being able to actually run away or being able to get into position faster is sometimes more important than marginally better damage mitigation.
@@hiredgoon4269 yea for sure. That's a good idea to see what they pick.
The movement speed penalty is really rough, especially for more challenging (non-standard) raids/scenarios!
i still preffer the snake maze with spike trap/sandbag/spike trap etc coming into a 10x10 room with turrets at the end embrazors on the sides for colonist to hide behind and u shaped trench pits to slow them down 😊😊
fr
Yesss that sounds awesome! This testing definitely showed me how effective the trap maze is, if you have the resources...and how many ways there are to defend your colony!
Choke point seemed best but you need to prevent line of sight into it, a windy corridor with some columns at the box end should do it.
Yea it's very effectivd when you have three melee and a smaller colony! I've started doing just a simple turn with a few fences to slow them down before they hit the choke. It works a lot better than what I did in this video!
@@elanaorama Is there a “safe zone” for you melee guys from your shooting guys? You had two rows of shooters behind one row of melee and they didn’t seem to be at risk. Do they need to be in adjacent squares or is there some other requirement?
Is this set to peaceful difficulty? I honestly would not recommend any of these strategies if you want to keep your pawns alive for the next raids. The attackers can and will shoot on the column as soon as they walk into the unit in front of them and are force stopped.
I just finished a run on cass strive to survive with an insanely wealthy colony using the column hallway. Yes in some cases they can shoot on the columns, which I believe i did say in the video. A lot of players prefer the challenge of not using a completely broken setup where the raiders can't ever hurt you.... What I shared does work for me to keep pawns alive and finish the game. To each their own I guess!
This was interesting af
i'm glad! i was sort of just goofing around testing some different options... I have used all of these (some more than others) but never against the exact same raid. was a learning experience for me as well! thanks for watching!
what if u did corners followed by the columns?
I think that would do really well as long as you can figure out an efficient way to cover both/move your people!
Watch these with my kid. Love the channel
awesome! i'm so glad you're enjoying it!
Hmmm, this gives me an idea. In my current game I am just getting ready to build my first Kill Box and this gives me an idea on how to mix them together- first phase being the corner kill box followed by a choke point, then a spike trap hallway and lastly a classic spike trap hallway with the turret room last, which ideally you'd never have to use and then rarely have to rebuild the spike traps, if at all. I'm going something like that with my current game. Nice video!
That is a pretty brilliant idea! Save some of the resources but if it's a bad raid you have back up options. I really like it. Thanks for watching!
Good Clean Audio!
Thank you! It's taken me a while to get to this setup, so it means a lot to see this comment!
In your first killbox, why dont your ranged units shoot your melee units?
She grouped her pawns three ranks deep. Pawns can safely shoot through two rows of friendly pawns. If there had been a fourth row that row would have the chance to inflict friendly fire on the first row. Also I think for this to work you can’t have any gaps, I.e. just a first and third row of pawns.
Yup what Ben said - By grouping them close (within three rows), you can guarantee no friendly fire! Thank you both for watching/commenting!
@@benbotanel1582 ive got 2 pawns in a 1 block wide hallway. Could that prevent one from shooting past the other?
@@MaestroAlvis if the pawns are right next to each other and firing in the same direction there shouldn’t be any friendly fire
question why not use wooden spike traps?
Wood is definitely a good option if you don't have a lot of steel and you're in a forest/have a lot of wood. They don't hit as hard so I try to have a longer trap hallway if they're wood
u need to build turret infront your killbox(outside your wall) to force raid to seperate and dont crump up.
somethind like this.
door.
door. turret door.
door.
also. dont forget to turn off turret so raider dont attack it
I am aware of this method, but it feels a bit cheesy/unrealistic to me--I prefer to make them spread out through actual attacks by my colonists. BUT, of course, the beauty of rimworld is we can all play however we want and that is a cool strat for those who want to use it!
thank you for mentioning it as some other viewers/commenters may want to try it!
my defense is a fusion of the chokepoint and killbox with wallsandbackcovers to give me the chance to negate incoming rocketfire.
yea anything you can do to try to protect your colonists from incoming shots is huge! i'm not sure what you mean by back covers, but i'm glad you found something that works for you! thanks for watching
@@elanaorama i wrote wall and sandbagcover wrong, its a line mixed with mix of two wall tiles and a sandbagtiles repeating from one end to the other so my colonist can use the 75% wallcover + the walls abillity to catch stray bullet and a sandbag tile so they can still shoot the targets. if 1 symbolizes a wall and 0 a sandbag it would look kinda this way
101101101101101101101
i have to thank i really liked the video
Awesome! I'm so glad! Yea that makes sense. I was trying to do something like that but I didn't have two wall per sandbag. Going to try your way next time!
The standard killbox being so trash is the result of years of nerfs to turrets, courtesy of Tynan. They're borderline useless now other than being a glorified chemfuel trigger to blow up entire raids with traps instead.
yea for sure. a standard killbox used to be sooo effective, but not so much anymore. so is that what you do? setup a field of ied traps? not a bad way to do it
WOW this is great info, im still a noob in this game and can barely managed 5 people.
it takes a while to get the hang of everything but it is soo good and so worth it. thousands of hours and 4+ years later, and i still can't get enough! i'm glad you enjoyed it!!
i think the main reason the standard killbox looks so bad here is because you are using shotguns and not enough pawns/firepower, that pirate raid had shield belts, and you had nobody throwing emp grenades, if you were to lengthen the killbox and have HSMG or charge rifles on every pawn and be throwing emp and grenades i think it would have went much better
Yea using EMPs on the shield belts is a good idea. Definitely not enough pawns or firepower in this colony for that killbox setup! Agreed! There are numerous improvements that can be made to that box especially in a colony with so many melee pawns! Need to make a sequel 😂
trap winner... I like trap base. Tnks for test area.
Yea for real! As long as you have the resources, gotta use a trap hallway. I'm glad you like the tests. I will definitely be doing more tests videos!
What about a killbox where you just drop a roof on the enemies. That's pretty effective in dwarf fortress.
Oooooo interesting tactic. I feel like I gotta try that! Ty!
@@elanaorama i don't know how overhead mountain tiles work but that could be especially devistating.
@@MaestroAlvis You gonna get tired pretty soon from clearing all fallen stuff
Trust me,the man who's colony lives in mountain and been making architecture mistakes nonstop until i finished building . -.
If I have a ranged unit fire from behind another unit within 180 degrees of the shooters target it usually results in a pink mist. And one less teammate. hah!
I throw my noggin here in the comments. My tipp for mele- or single row death trapps is for the pawn builtup ontop of each oher of the enemys. To negate that just build a turret at the entrance of the death tunnel encombed with a row of walls unpowerd and a door facing the raiders. This tipp helps later in midd to engame so that enemys then only get in the trapp one at a time and not flood the trap. Hope it helps someone. And sorry for my bad English hehe
I think the best combination is a corner killbox with heat traps, but heat traps can't work on robots. I think because the flamability level is 0
Ooo interesting. Are heat traps a modded thing or do you mean like an incendiary ied so they catch fire?
@@elanaorama I highly recommend using Molotov cocktails to heat up, not to burn the room. besides being very easy, the temperature can also rise very quickly, drop items cannot be burned and also no raider will escape. the drawback is that when reinforcements come, they will be easily killed by raiders or fall in pain and eventually die (if unlucky)
If you want to make it, between the fire room and the heat trap, Build barricades for fire resistance and wooden fence gates for raider seals, then set the gates on fire. Good luck
Not the best and most optimal, but i used to put "ceiling traps", basically one wall with the max amount of ceiling built on, then damage the wall to 1 hp, and when the raiders passed by it, my sniper just shot the wall dorpping the ceiling and i dealing massive damage, again, not optimal at all, but pretty funny to do XD.
15:13 wow...I was stunned for a short time.
What has Adam Conover to do with Rimworld...?
Oh wait...Adam Versus Everything, not Ruins Everything... xD
hahaha that Adam is also very good at what he does lol!
@@elanaorama well I checked "ur" Adam...
and yeah... xD
Singularity Kill Box...
That Dude got a masters degree in Rimology, and Doorgraphy...
thank you
It was my pleasure--thank you for watching! I'm hoping to make more content like this going forward 🙂
Isn’t it if you build a roof on your defensive position can make the enemy has less chance to hit you ?
Nope, that hasn't worked for the last few versions actually. Unfortunately.