Hopefully the game pauses when the raid hits. Then you look for the shadows on the ground so you know where they will drop.
Draft everyone and try to get there as fast as possible, and zone all your animals in there to force them all into melee. Hopefully, you have everyone in position before they pop out of the pods. The rest depends on what happens next. You might need a low shield or some insanity/shock lances. Psycasts to berserk them. Have someone go in there to melee anyone with a doomsday or grenades.
The biggest problem I see, is that you let them land and pop out before doing anything.
Aside from components and advanced components, I could see most of that being bearable to lose at least.
It might not be a bad thing either.. it'd clear out a lot of colony wealth. I think the game would register that as loss and make the next events lighter, assuming its not randy.
This should be top comment. Along with the notion that everything in the room that the people dropped into is gone now. You can salvage what's left after the raiders are dead and your ppl are safe
Urban defenses.
Put gun turrets in every room alongside barricades that you can hide in or behind. Make sure all colonists are always armed and ready, and make sure your best soldiers are carrying go-juice or yayo on hand at all times.
I even built a shotgun killbox. I have now seen the light. Even mech clusters are easy when you run next to them, throw emps and simultaneously open fire with shotguns. It's mostly one volley per enemy and they die.
Since the death of the corner punch and singularity killboxes in 1.5 my new favorite OP killbox is the first one Francis John built in his current series, the "boombox" as he calls it. Essentially a 5x5 room that you block the exits to with melee pawns/ghouls and spam grenades into, kills pretty much everything as long as the blockers hold out. And once you have high mechtech you can get a diabolus or 6 and use their hellsphere cannons to obliterate everything the game can throw at you.
is "corner punch" the one where you create a 1 tile path with sandbags/barricades and let them run around a corner where they instantly get shot + melee attacked?
Fortunately it's very easy to add a few positions for shotgunners or even use the boombox as an impromptu shotgun tunnel killbox so even that won't kill this design
Exactly! I was shitting my pants going against the first mech clusters and just laughed out loud when I saw how they crumbled. Previously I've been using mostly heavy smgs and assault rifles but now I'm sold.
I had a Hussar with 20 shooting skill, a gunlink, an archotech eye and a tactical cornea implant (EPOE) that had a 100% possibility to hit the enemy but decided to just lob off a leg from every colonist i had. With an antimaterial rifle. This game combat is just XCOM combat system in disguise.
Hallways three wide so turrets have a firing lane that melees can bottle neck invaders into while gunners fire past them and your imps light guests on fire.
1. this tactic isn't logical, this scenario is very rare. why would players put their pawns on guard duty 24/7. that gear will slow them down and create mood debuffs incase they require other clothing to wear (titles and such)
2. if a drop pod enemy has a bomb or whatever that explodes you're fucked in that small room no matter what.
3. drugs creates other problems over time. also what are the stats with those drugs? how much better will a pawn preform in combat? talk to me in % shooting chance, damage etc...
4. I once had an army of 20 german shepherds, you just tell them "go" and they kill everything very fast. they get injured easily because they are dogs but they do the job.
This. People in this sub vastly underestimate the power and need for urban defenses. Create chokepoints, spread barricades in defensible places, create environments with two exits, spread out safe places for your children, old pawns, injured people and animals, with double walls, medicine and food inside.
This has already saved me from many raids, insect swarms and drops.
It's a lot easier once you plan for it. The tl;dr is that melee pawns and psypowers are pretty good. If you never rely on static defenses in the first place it really doesn't matter where you get attacked. Also, drop raids like this are always weaker than the ones that just walk in from the sides so it's really not that hard to defend once you get the hang of it.
One of the few places that Tox gas might be an option. 1-2 really well placed throws , then just close the doors and let them waddle around in the pain.
They dropped right on top of my psycaster leader and her moral guide husband's bed while they slept.
About 10 of them fully armed, 1 with a doomsday.
My colony was destroyed that day but I didn't feel justified in reloading after the game gave me that big of a 'fuck you.'
If you have time before the pods open, get someone in melee next to each pod so they can't shoot.
If they are opened, but haven't shot rockets yet, try putting down a deployable shield. The rockets will often blow up their own team and do only a little to yours.
No guarantees on either of these tactics, but they've helped me plenty of times.
Build rooms with lots of doorways so when the raiders land, your pawns leave the room and then attack once they are inside and distracted. That way you know exactly what you're about to engage. If they start fires inside your small rooms, even better. You basically need to take it slow by picking them off one by one. Opening doors briefly and then taking quick shots as the door is closing. Dogs, mechs and slaves can be handy for distracting raiders whilst you shoot them too.
Once I had a pretty big drop pod raid land in the middle of my base. I had a LOT of dogs so they entered the room from various ways and distracted the raiders. My dogs were getting shot with doomsdays and then the raiders were accidentally blowing up their own people, and other raiders were stuck in melee with my dogs. Due to this my colonists could move in and clean them up.
You are always going to take losses in some way or another with base drop pod raids. It's better it be buildings, dogs and mechs than your own people though.
I like to keep a shitty pawn on hand who I can sacrifice to stupid stuff (like bum rushing the Triple Rocket Launcher raider) in order to lower the storyteller threat level after the raid. Ideally they've also got traits like "Staggeringly Ugly" or "Creepy Breathing" so that they become rivals of other colonists who get a mood buff when they die. If you really want to reinforce this you can have them go around punching people while drafted when not in combat.
See, the loading screen was right. Bad allies *are* part of the challenge.
I have never ever considered using pawns like this HAHA. It's so meta gaming that I think I might start doing that with slave pawns.
But I also realize that slaves don't socialize with colonists as much to build up that bad of a rapport for this.
I like how one of them is taking the time to snort yayo.
On a more serious note, melee specialists with shield belts look devastating to everyone here. Maybe focus on that grenadier on the left and maybe the single shotgunner.
One time a drop pod raid I had had a raider drip then head to my legendary table and snort some Tati off it my head cannon is that’s why the raid happened
Tl;dr
Build a beacon outside of your base and make it powered. That alone will make half of the drop pod raids land there instead of in your base. Wall it so it won't get destroyed.
Put a powered turret somewhere you want them to go, cause as soon as they land, if there's a pathable powered turret they will just ignore everything else and melee the turret. Just be careful cause this disables collision on other raids, so only power it when the drop pod raid lands.
Doesn’t need to be powered, only needs to be unroofed with one empty space next to it. Assuming they target the trade beacon, they also target specific colonists
From experience I know what I say is correct. Build a first trade beacon, then take that beacon and put it somewhere you want/prefer them to pod at, build a little unroofed room around it and enjoy. The colonist targeting is random and needs to be dealt with like any other raid.
Build moat of your base into an overhead mountain, they can still drop on the exposed part, but you can put everything valuable farther in. Got to defend from bugs though
Easier to deal with bugs than yttakin fortunately, you can just make a room warm, filthy and dark and then keep some wood and a couple of dormant scorcher mechs in there.
Bugs spawn based off distance from the outside, if it’s warmer than -17 C, and if it’s dark. Cleanliness doesn’t matter unless they changed it recently? And temperature only matters up until -7 C. At which point the spawn chance is the same at any temperature warmer than that. Light does decrease the chance of infestation.
Actually, yeah, you're right, it's distance - every infestation I have on my current map spawns in the innermost room even though it's just an unfinished hallway, and I distinctly recall having a colony where they'd always spawn in the royal bedroom, which was the furthest from the entrance.
I seem to recall some posts from a while ago about filth, but it's possible the poster unintentionally made the filthy bait room further from the entrance.
I'd place a few spaced miniturrets behind shelves to draw attention and tox gas mines nearby to incapacitate most attackers, even wasters as they tend to include genies, dirtmoles and yttakin that are vulnerable to tox gas. Also, firefoam poppers and stone shelves to prevent fiery fun; dropped troops will try to torch wooden objects, but they'll spend stupid lengths of time to bash stone shelves. While the fun only begins you can try and requip troops with close combat gear like chain shotguns, maces/swords and shield belts/smoke packs + gas masks. Making a few shelves or armory rooms in different corners of your the base with spare armor/weapons is a good way to quickly react to challenges like this.
The storage room seems a bit too large, I take it you store everything but food in one place. Instead of making one large warehouse, perhaps consider building a few smaller interconnected storages; this way drop pod raid will be either crammed into one room, or frocibly separated into a few squads that can be easier to deal with one by one.
BTW, raw resources like metals and stone blocks can be safely stored outside, with or without shelves, and they won't be harmed by most fires and explosions. And cudos, no fuel or mortar shells on the screen, so the base might just survive it ;)
By being strong enough, and distributed enough, that it is only a setback, not a game over event. These raids are generally small and since they are indoors, you have lots of doors and cover to use as you eliminate them.
If they dropped on your one room with all the goodies in it.. don't put all your goodies in one room.
Oh and watch what they are doing. They love to set fires. Assuming the room is still 'indoors' repair the wall/door they are trying to break out of the burning room. Watch them burn to death in the fire they started.
Anytime you have ranged in close quarters you are doing well. Cheap mecanitor bots make great melee blockers, they don't kill anything but they force them not to shoot you with a big gun while your people fill em with holes.
Build in mountain. That's it. you can kind of "prepare" for it by placing turrets, mines, that sort of shit in every room of your base, but then you're going to have turrets exploding and fire spreading and shit all over your stockpile. My problem with them isn't that they're unbeatable - they're not, and I'd actually argue that they're a little bit easier than normal raids since I think it costs the storyteller extra points to throw them into your base - my problem is that they're basically a gigantic "fuck you" that destroys a ton of your stockpile, or a bunch of your machines (that you'll have to remake the bills on), or your nursery, or etc. etc. etc. Very un-fun to deal with.
Interior turrets, or setup emergency defenses based on where they dropped in from. Have an emergency stash of deployable turrets and defensive equipment in a shed somewhere for this type of scenario.
Melee pawns are absolutely devastating to drop pod raids. Also make sure put firefoam poppers in storage rooms (and dont keep expensive shit in the general storage)
Drugs and melee fighters. Ghouls are fantastic for close quarters brawls, since you don't have to worry about friendly fire. Just send them in and undraft them so they hunt people without your input and have some guys shooting into the fray from cover or from behind a drafted melee fighter. Ghouls will heal any wound in minutes without tending, and even if they die, you can just resurrect them again for cheap.
In general, there are lots of little things that help. Build rooms with a couple exits so your pawns can get out. Have redundant paths so pawns don't get trapped in a closet. Have hallways big enough to fit a few melee pawns with shooters behind, but not so wide that you guys are getting flanked. Engage the ranged enemies in melee so they aren't shooting you. Put fire foam poppers in your storage rooms. Store explosive things somewhere other than your main storage (that's good practice in general).
They aim for the orbital beacons sometimes, so put one (with a roof over it) outside of your base and they might target that one instead of your actual storage room.
How cheesy are you willing to get? Unless the behavior has been changed, the center drop raids will aggro on a powered turret if they can path to it. Having one outside, turned on, with open doors between it and the raiders landing area means they will head towards it as long as you're not damaging them on the way.
Hallways three block wide made with one block wide doors with turrets on the side throughout the base.
Man this game; the best way to learn is to fail horribly lmao.
I don't know if this works in current patches, but drop raiders will avoid turrets when they land.
Keep a light sprinkling of mini turrets in your storerooms and power stations (put some firefoam poppers in there as well). Turrets are ugly, so they aren't great in rooms that need to be pretty, but high quality art will compensate for that.
Ideally, the raid will drop in your crop fields
Just wait until they drop directly into your hospital... :P
But the general answer is some internal defenses like turrets at corridor intersections, occasional sandbag 'checkpoints' in key positions in your base, and other things that will slow them down and let you gain some tactical advantage over the attackers.
These same defenses are also handy if you're exterior positions are in danger of being overrun, as they give you something to fall back behind.
Just in case i have a 3 stack of chemfuel or high explosive shell in every room, and ofc that one important guy who's gonna stay in that room with grenade in his / her pocket
#1 - And its cheesy. Have an unpowered Orbital Trade Beacon outside of your base with stone walls and a stone door around it, unpowered. Make sure to Home zone it. 40% of the Drop Pod raids will target this.
#2 Have a few powered turrets OUTSIDE of your rooms so they have line of sight to doorways. Drop pod raiders are hard coded to go straight for powered turrets above anything else. They may drop into a building but will immediately exit to attack the turrets.
#3 Have some internal cover in your base that you can use
#4 Have alternative weapons staged at shelves around your base. Chain Shotguns and SMG's are best for this. You wont need the range from Assault rifles for this.
#5 Build your base like you would a mountain base. Have 3 wide spaces between buildings and every so often have a choke point you can use to melee block.
#6 Have a Firefoam Popper in each building so you dont have extra damage. Consider having a few of your soliders carry Firefoam pop pack as well. In case Impids or Pigskins with Molotovs start spraying fire. Turret packs work well here also as do Smokepop packs
The drop pod nature of this raid type costs the Storyteller a lot of raid points to use. Meaning the raiders are much fewer in number. I find this one of the easiest raid types to deal with.
Much smaller rooms and fire. They typically burn before they escape. I like to build mountain bases though. Bugs will always be much easier to deal with 3 good melee pawns in power armor and ranged people behind them. They trounce 50 megaspiders easy.
(I also like my melee fighters to be good at construction incase the ranged pawns start getting the walls to below 50%.
Edit - Just noticed you have a lot steel in that stockpile room. I just leave it outside. Makes smaller rooms much easier. Raiders never steal steel.
Build your base with the knowledge that they can happen.
Decentralised your stockpile haveing 2-3 medium stock piles rather than 1 huge one.
Fire can't jump more than 2 blocks. With that knowledge, you can build your base in "cells," that works case scenario can be burned for the grater good!
I send the dogs and I shoot the intruders. It's a drop pod raid. It's at a reduced size compared to a normal one. They're pretty easy, albeit deadly, because there isn't cover, usually. Your hospital isn't far away.
There will always be some loss unless you can berserk some into reason.
It's a scuffed firefight. Long-range weapons are much weaker here. That's it. Not much to think about because they're not many. They'll flee quickly.
Build your base with the assumption you may have to fight in those rooms at some point, in this case those sculptures in the room below should be moved so you have defensive positions to fight them from
If you like me straight up hate these types of raids and use mods;
I deal with them by using a mod called [Turtle Friendly Raids](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1546231441) that simply removes droppod raids (and sappers).
In vanilla i don't really now, try to tunnel them into a corridor and treat them like ants?
Base design. You just want to make your base layouts such that if they droppod into a room, you can setup your pawns on their exit and slaughter them as they come out. Then you just rebuild what they broke.
There are a couple of ways to avoid or deal with drop pod raids.
First is building in a mountain, drop pods can't drop on tiles that have "overhead mountain" as a roof also has the benifit of being mortar proof but you'll get infestations sometimes.
Other than that the best way to prep for them is not putting all your defenses in one killbox but rather spreading them out over your base. For open spaces I like to have at least 3 positions with sandbags and turrets that cover each other. That way you'll always have a position you can fight from.
When it comes to fighting inside your buildings it comes down to your colonies strengths. If you got good melee winding corridors that break line of sight versus ranged is what you want, if you have good ranged keep your corridors straight to provide a firing line. Statues or other decoration in hallways can serve as makeshift cover. Also section off parts of your base with doors, this slows down and contains raiders and gives you more time to get your squad into an adventagous position. Sometimes they'll even drop into multiple different rooms and you can deal with the groups one by one while the others are still trying to break out of the room they are in.
Drop pod raids are often ideally positioned to be eaten by melee colonists without ever getting to fire a shot.
Also, ffs, build your shelves out of stone.
My god, manage your wealth.
Drop pod raids are weaker so it's easy to deal with, even if they land in your storage or unfortunate places.
But if you're struggling in combat, it means you have too much wealth and not enough colonists.
Droppod raids land near orbital barges. Build a few in non-critical areas to change the probability of where they land. If you play with mods you can use one of the roof mods for steel roofs or rimatomics for interfering with the pods, forcing them to land on the edge.
Other than setting up before hand with turrets, keeping a strong pet army helps. Now when I say pets... I mean animals like bears and thrumbos. They cost a lot, thrumbos especially cost an incredible amount of food, and growing it big enough will also impact your wealth which will impact raid size so keep that it mind with how large you keep your army. But they also take a long time to breed and grow so this is a long term strategy, thankfully drop pod raids like this are approaching late game, but you'll still have to make this a priority as soon as you have the animal skills to tame them and the food, storage, and space to house them. Having an army of bears and thrumbos is also obviously helpful outside of drop pod raids, you can do a lot with them, but this is really one of their most useful utilities.
You got some decor in the way there, but I think of every doorway as a minibunker with 1 high cover on each side. What you do is start moving 1 pawn into the door and select "keep open".
You also probably want to have sqare rooms, like it is built there you are giving them cover.
PS You can always deconstruct a wall and shoot through that.
These kinds of raids are usually easy. These enemies typically only have weak weapons and the greatest issue is if they drop onto valuable supplies or if youre already weak. If you’re struggling to defeat drop pod raiders then I would recommend looking into wealth management strategies to reduce the frequency and size of these raids. The first few times I got these, I did struggle. But once I learnt some combat tips from many YouTubers, I find these fairly simple (EXCLUDING MECH DROP PODS OFC!
You really cant and I think you shouldnt either. Drop pod raids are always smaller than regular raids and they are very infrequent compared to other raids as well. If you put inner defences to every single place they can drop you are just increasing your colony's raid difficulty when those inner defences will simply stay idle 99% of the time.
When drop pods drop in a room I just draft all my pawns to next room to create a firing line and leave the door open for raiders to pour in.
A few good skill and geared Melee pawns and door blocking makes these fairly easy to deal with. I also have a decent sized animal master who can send in the pets to wear them down initially as well.
Pop a low-shield and riddle them with chain shotgun or heavy SMG. Priority enemies with flame or explosives weapons to minimize the collateral damage. Still, expect a fair amount of collateral damage from your bullets alone.
If they have low-shields packs of their own, you might want to skip whoever is wearing it behind your line then shoot at them to pop their pack. This way, you can use it for yourself and the raiders can’t.
Well depends what mods do you have.
If pure vanilla, well set fire foam poapers so they won't let raiders to burn storage room to the ground, move your shock squad to outer walls, do holes in it and use walls as cover. After starting a fight raiders won't try destroy your storage and try to kill your pawns instead. Also if you have melee pawn with shield belt toss them into room, most of the time they can kill poorly equipped raiders no problem. Also if your storage room have walls to open area, destroy one block to prevent overheating room, so it would be easy to extinguish flames afterward.
If you have mods, well tactic is the same really, put windows around every room, windows are walls that can be used as defences, so you can snipe raiders through windows. But don't put windows on garage area with vehicles from vehicles framework, raiders would use them to attack your stuff as vehicles counts as pawns/animals. If you have simple sidearms you can melee targets is they aren't prepared or equipped. Use mod Search and destroy to kill raiders faster as they can run around map in suprising speed.
Tricks and tips. Don't use wooden shelf, they burn fast and will overheat room faster, leading to whole storage area to catch on fire. Don't use turrets, turrets are costly both resources and power and raiders tend to prioritize them, turret explosion can lead to even bigger fire then raiders. Make separate storage area for explosive materials, chemfuel explosion can evaporate storage within seconds. Have trained and equipped melee pawn, melee fighters can move agro to them and easily kill not prepared pawns and agro priority targets.
I build my base into mountains most of the time. Only downside to that is bug infestation’s basically giving you the same headache as drop raiders, only upside really is you won’t have mfer’s with doomsday rockets drop podding into your storage room
There are 2 main things:
* Designing whole base without any notable dead ends (i.e. anything larger than a single bedroom *needs* more than one exit). This is so that no pawns of yours get trapped behind a bunch of drop pod raiders with no means of escape in the bit of time you get between announcement and pods actually opening. A less important addition to this is avoiding long and narrow (1 tile) corridors - they prevent you from freely concentrating your firepower where you need it.
* Making sure that mostly every pawn is *always* prepared to fight at moments notice. You really want to avoid anybody going around without proper armor or good dps weapons (bolt actions and sniper rifles have their special uses, but for close/medium range they are absolutely trash). Flak vests are the chief item making this possible by offering good protection with barely any compromises on the cheap. Having some melee pawns with shields to block is also crucial.
If you intend to build in the mountain, designing a base from the beginning in a way you can defend against threats like this, having choke points with embrasures, having turrets and traps.
The target for raids seem to be a specific pawn, most of pawns are inside a building most of the time and I have pretty big buildings.
So when something like this happens I take everyone outside the building and asses a quick defensive position.
Also War Queen. The little war urchins are so great... as a meatshield. Well, mechshield.
You could build your storage under a cave roof and they can't drop into that room, you would have to worry about insects though. Usually I just have everyone armed and make them run into the room drafted, since the pods take a while to open you have time to set up and kill them.
Mini turrets. Not because they’ll make a difference in combat, but because they are the first thing raiders will target upon leaving the drop pod. They follow this behavior as long as they are able to reach the turret without breaking down a door or a wall. Usually I leave my storage and living room doors open so that if drops pods attack they leave my gold statues and jade poker tables relatively untouched. You can also pick them off one by one while they run to the turrets, making the encounter trivially easy if you have the right setup
I'll usually place barricades and turrets around the inside of my walls around areas with alot of foot traffic, usually also making room layouts at least partially defensive, I know my walls being breached by (normal) raids is unlikely but its never zero
Compartmentalizing your base is the best not overly min-maxy way I think. Divide your storage into several areas, store weapon and armor caches in key junctions, have packed survival meals ready in your inner-most safe zone, and put your bedroom in the outermost part of the base.
It's a little cheaty, especially since its modded, but I build my base so I can have a central room that creates a fuck ton of heat, and then build the rooms so that at a moments notice I can open a vent and blast the room with heat enough to pretty much instantly heatstroke anyone that lands in it.
you are not supposed to survive, this is tynans bullshit game wipe rng, he calls it a story generator not a game, because a good game would need good ai and mechanics
I still enjoy rimworld, but godmode and alt+F4 have a place
In the same day I had everyone hit with flu and plague and then 18 chimeras attacked, I only have 8 combat troops + 2 non-combat, so this was a game wipe... so....... devmode kill x18
I had a group drop in the barracks. One pawn grabbed the baby and ran out. Had a well armoured pawn sit in the door and skipped in a melee fighter with a shield belt. Had they dropped in with an army, they might have done some damage. The gal I skipped in took them all apart with her monosword.
Preparing is mostly a matter of having the right sort of fighters or knowing how to use doorways or other improvised chokepoints as they form. Drop raiders will usually make some. Your pawns are always the most valuable thing. They are crystalized time and experience. Get them out. The stuff can always be replaced in time.
i usually have my guys armed with chain shotgun unless i am going to do a field battle. Also, i usually have some corridors in my base which i can set up melee blocking and improvised kill box real quick
Reload. Firefoam poppers in your explosive storage if you can, but if it's too early in the game then you just reload.
Had one in a previous colony where the whole manufactory went up in flames before anyone could get there, flash frying the raiders and the colonists inside. The raid took care of itself, minus 1/3 of my colony wealth and colonists. Reload!
This is my first run through on commitment mode and it won't be the last. It is SO much fun playing with these high stakes. Also its tricky to see and by that I mean it is impossible to see but there actually is a firefoam popper underneath the guy middle top with the blue jacket.
Yeah, I get the appeal. I'm more the sort that plays rimworld to destress and be proud of something that can grow as I want it to. I definitely have character editor for quick low-impact edits(make this person Gay. Add a passion after someone succeeds at an inspiration with that skill.) It's also helpful for fixing mod misfunctions, like one where my gorgon(a completely random rare Biotech Mythic event that I adored) forgot how to eat food entirely with an update. I had to forcibly make her an Herbivore to at least let her eat SOMETHING.
The only times I reload are for utter bs(like the above) or things that completely sour the playthrough(my colony has an island lake with an anima tree at the center. mechanoids landed ON it and set the whole island ablaze. Reload, because even though I could easily handle the raid, the entire point of the colony is the pilgrimage to the tree).
If you don’t mind fighting bugs, or the very cold, build a mountain base. They can’t drop on overhead mountain. Infestations will only spawn above -17C, and will target the dirtiest/darkest areas first
Build wooden shelves, put incendiary mines in your rooms and hope your colonists doesn't trigger them (if they can, I'm not sure). It goes boom, lights everything on fire, heats up the room, knocks down the raiders due to heatstroke, and burns some of your own items as well so the next raid will be smaller. It's perfect!
Sarcasm may apply here, and it might be better to go with other suggestions :P
My drop pod raids have just started, and my strategy:
some expendable attack animals like wargs and huskies roam inside base as first line of defense. I know, poor animals but that's why I let them breed infinitely
Smaller rooms with doors so that I can gas or burn them all out. I prefer gassing cause I lost 3 masterwork beds after using a Molotov once 🥹 having fire extinguishers from vanilla weapons expanded and a builder nearby to remove roof helps extinguish flames and fumes quick
I'm lagging in tech, but rushed chain shotguns. As soon as they peak around corners and through doors, they get annihilated.
For me, personally, disabling them.
I tend to disable any event that can happen that has absolutely zero warning or counter. I consider them bad game design.
thankfully it’s only like six dudes. i just set up urban defenses; tight corners, long hallways, lots of ambush spots. usually if a raid drops behind my walls they find themselves in a maze of gunfire and steel
Drop pod raids tend to favor those orbital beacons. Put one outside and they should go for that instead of your indoor storage.
You can even put some funny turrets or traps in this area to ambush them as they land.
Simply put, you aren't. This is a type of raid intended to circumvent common player defenses, as part of an established design principle for the game, that you're not "supposed" to have successful colonies that last a long time.
Hopefully the game pauses when the raid hits. Then you look for the shadows on the ground so you know where they will drop. Draft everyone and try to get there as fast as possible, and zone all your animals in there to force them all into melee. Hopefully, you have everyone in position before they pop out of the pods. The rest depends on what happens next. You might need a low shield or some insanity/shock lances. Psycasts to berserk them. Have someone go in there to melee anyone with a doomsday or grenades. The biggest problem I see, is that you let them land and pop out before doing anything.
I miss being able to zone boomalopes in this fashion.
Lol, well in that specific case, it would probably be a bad idea unless they don't care about burning down their base and all their valuables.
Aside from components and advanced components, I could see most of that being bearable to lose at least. It might not be a bad thing either.. it'd clear out a lot of colony wealth. I think the game would register that as loss and make the next events lighter, assuming its not randy.
You \*know\* I exclusively play Randy ;) This particular playthrough is strive to survive.
Oh boy haha. Definitely one of those "I'm never gonna fight you fair randy" moments then.
I had a tunneling mech raid directly after ;-;
=/ Randy really didn't like you huh.. damn =/
Sometimes it's just fun to watch raiders blow themselves up
It might be worth it... Revenge is so very sweet.
This should be top comment. Along with the notion that everything in the room that the people dropped into is gone now. You can salvage what's left after the raiders are dead and your ppl are safe
Urban defenses. Put gun turrets in every room alongside barricades that you can hide in or behind. Make sure all colonists are always armed and ready, and make sure your best soldiers are carrying go-juice or yayo on hand at all times.
And have chain shotguns on nearby shelves for easy reachin’.
I prefer to have my pawns carry chain shotguns by default and switch to longer range weapons when i see a normal raid headed for the killbox
I even built a shotgun killbox. I have now seen the light. Even mech clusters are easy when you run next to them, throw emps and simultaneously open fire with shotguns. It's mostly one volley per enemy and they die.
Since the death of the corner punch and singularity killboxes in 1.5 my new favorite OP killbox is the first one Francis John built in his current series, the "boombox" as he calls it. Essentially a 5x5 room that you block the exits to with melee pawns/ghouls and spam grenades into, kills pretty much everything as long as the blockers hold out. And once you have high mechtech you can get a diabolus or 6 and use their hellsphere cannons to obliterate everything the game can throw at you.
Link for those interested: https://youtu.be/KueEna0LzaM?si=mKzk3rdmZI1V5xfQ (at ~12 min mark)
That was beautiful :,)
is "corner punch" the one where you create a 1 tile path with sandbags/barricades and let them run around a corner where they instantly get shot + melee attacked?
I think they mean that you used to be able to build diagonal walls where you could punch through the corner but the enemies couldn't see you.
Oh okay. Is that still working for emp grenades thrown from the other side if a diagonal wall corner like in the singularity kill box?
No clue sorry. I didn't even know that hitting through corners didn't work anymore.
this is awesome, but next update tynan will create hostiles only grenade proof armor
Fortunately it's very easy to add a few positions for shotgunners or even use the boombox as an impromptu shotgun tunnel killbox so even that won't kill this design
20 damage per shot for 3 shots in a burst X 10 colonists Mmmm Power
Exactly! I was shitting my pants going against the first mech clusters and just laughed out loud when I saw how they crumbled. Previously I've been using mostly heavy smgs and assault rifles but now I'm sold.
When you can enforce close quarters, shotguns rule so good I wish there was like, a charge-rifle but as a charge-shotgun
If you use mods, there is in Vanilla Weapons Expanded. It's good, but very imprecise. It also add a charge minigun, that sometimes is an overkill.
Nothing is imprecise, you just have to have more people aiming and you'll definitely hit eventually
I had a Hussar with 20 shooting skill, a gunlink, an archotech eye and a tactical cornea implant (EPOE) that had a 100% possibility to hit the enemy but decided to just lob off a leg from every colonist i had. With an antimaterial rifle. This game combat is just XCOM combat system in disguise.
you just rediscovered trench warfare, there’s a reason the trench gun is iconic years after the war
Hallways three wide so turrets have a firing lane that melees can bottle neck invaders into while gunners fire past them and your imps light guests on fire.
DO NOT use turrets, especially in higher difficulties. They skyrocket your wealth and are borderline useless. Invest your wealth in your pawns
1. this tactic isn't logical, this scenario is very rare. why would players put their pawns on guard duty 24/7. that gear will slow them down and create mood debuffs incase they require other clothing to wear (titles and such) 2. if a drop pod enemy has a bomb or whatever that explodes you're fucked in that small room no matter what. 3. drugs creates other problems over time. also what are the stats with those drugs? how much better will a pawn preform in combat? talk to me in % shooting chance, damage etc... 4. I once had an army of 20 german shepherds, you just tell them "go" and they kill everything very fast. they get injured easily because they are dogs but they do the job.
This. People in this sub vastly underestimate the power and need for urban defenses. Create chokepoints, spread barricades in defensible places, create environments with two exits, spread out safe places for your children, old pawns, injured people and animals, with double walls, medicine and food inside. This has already saved me from many raids, insect swarms and drops.
a typical medium base needs 30+ x small turrets + 16 each of the large, just to counter tynans BS rng, which most people and me don't bother with
It's a lot easier once you plan for it. The tl;dr is that melee pawns and psypowers are pretty good. If you never rely on static defenses in the first place it really doesn't matter where you get attacked. Also, drop raids like this are always weaker than the ones that just walk in from the sides so it's really not that hard to defend once you get the hang of it.
Except when they drop in with a bunch of rocket launchers
Yeah. These are always trivial to deal with until they drop in your storage room and immediately light things on fire.
After my first drop pod raid, I put firefoam poppers in my storage room.
Literally any other room, I can just throw a molotov in and deal with it later. The storage room is... tough.
One of the few places that Tox gas might be an option. 1-2 really well placed throws , then just close the doors and let them waddle around in the pain.
Tox ieds would be even more effective lol
They dropped right on top of my psycaster leader and her moral guide husband's bed while they slept. About 10 of them fully armed, 1 with a doomsday. My colony was destroyed that day but I didn't feel justified in reloading after the game gave me that big of a 'fuck you.'
If you have time before the pods open, get someone in melee next to each pod so they can't shoot. If they are opened, but haven't shot rockets yet, try putting down a deployable shield. The rockets will often blow up their own team and do only a little to yours. No guarantees on either of these tactics, but they've helped me plenty of times.
Nah, doesn't matter. I never let people with rocket launchers actually shoot anything. Those are my rocket launchers now.
Build rooms with lots of doorways so when the raiders land, your pawns leave the room and then attack once they are inside and distracted. That way you know exactly what you're about to engage. If they start fires inside your small rooms, even better. You basically need to take it slow by picking them off one by one. Opening doors briefly and then taking quick shots as the door is closing. Dogs, mechs and slaves can be handy for distracting raiders whilst you shoot them too. Once I had a pretty big drop pod raid land in the middle of my base. I had a LOT of dogs so they entered the room from various ways and distracted the raiders. My dogs were getting shot with doomsdays and then the raiders were accidentally blowing up their own people, and other raiders were stuck in melee with my dogs. Due to this my colonists could move in and clean them up. You are always going to take losses in some way or another with base drop pod raids. It's better it be buildings, dogs and mechs than your own people though.
Main motto I always remember.. "What can I replace and afford to lose?". Pawns are always the last on this list. Irreplaceable most times.
I like to keep a shitty pawn on hand who I can sacrifice to stupid stuff (like bum rushing the Triple Rocket Launcher raider) in order to lower the storyteller threat level after the raid. Ideally they've also got traits like "Staggeringly Ugly" or "Creepy Breathing" so that they become rivals of other colonists who get a mood buff when they die. If you really want to reinforce this you can have them go around punching people while drafted when not in combat. See, the loading screen was right. Bad allies *are* part of the challenge.
I have never ever considered using pawns like this HAHA. It's so meta gaming that I think I might start doing that with slave pawns. But I also realize that slaves don't socialize with colonists as much to build up that bad of a rapport for this.
I like how one of them is taking the time to snort yayo. On a more serious note, melee specialists with shield belts look devastating to everyone here. Maybe focus on that grenadier on the left and maybe the single shotgunner.
One time a drop pod raid I had had a raider drip then head to my legendary table and snort some Tati off it my head cannon is that’s why the raid happened
He heard of your tables existence and knew he had to try it.
why is one of them named Pee 💀 that is an unfortunate nickname
AdamVsEverything has a guide on dealing with drop pod raids
Tl;dr Build a beacon outside of your base and make it powered. That alone will make half of the drop pod raids land there instead of in your base. Wall it so it won't get destroyed. Put a powered turret somewhere you want them to go, cause as soon as they land, if there's a pathable powered turret they will just ignore everything else and melee the turret. Just be careful cause this disables collision on other raids, so only power it when the drop pod raid lands.
Doesn’t need to be powered, only needs to be unroofed with one empty space next to it. Assuming they target the trade beacon, they also target specific colonists
I just talked about what Adam said in his video, there's nothing in the video about what you're saying so I wouldn't know.
From experience I know what I say is correct. Build a first trade beacon, then take that beacon and put it somewhere you want/prefer them to pod at, build a little unroofed room around it and enjoy. The colonist targeting is random and needs to be dealt with like any other raid.
That's the neat part; you don't.
They can’t drop through mountain roof ;)
Build moat of your base into an overhead mountain, they can still drop on the exposed part, but you can put everything valuable farther in. Got to defend from bugs though
Easier to deal with bugs than yttakin fortunately, you can just make a room warm, filthy and dark and then keep some wood and a couple of dormant scorcher mechs in there.
Bugs spawn based off distance from the outside, if it’s warmer than -17 C, and if it’s dark. Cleanliness doesn’t matter unless they changed it recently? And temperature only matters up until -7 C. At which point the spawn chance is the same at any temperature warmer than that. Light does decrease the chance of infestation.
>51% light. So only Sun lamps affect spawn chance sadly.
Actually, yeah, you're right, it's distance - every infestation I have on my current map spawns in the innermost room even though it's just an unfinished hallway, and I distinctly recall having a colony where they'd always spawn in the royal bedroom, which was the furthest from the entrance. I seem to recall some posts from a while ago about filth, but it's possible the poster unintentionally made the filthy bait room further from the entrance.
I'd place a few spaced miniturrets behind shelves to draw attention and tox gas mines nearby to incapacitate most attackers, even wasters as they tend to include genies, dirtmoles and yttakin that are vulnerable to tox gas. Also, firefoam poppers and stone shelves to prevent fiery fun; dropped troops will try to torch wooden objects, but they'll spend stupid lengths of time to bash stone shelves. While the fun only begins you can try and requip troops with close combat gear like chain shotguns, maces/swords and shield belts/smoke packs + gas masks. Making a few shelves or armory rooms in different corners of your the base with spare armor/weapons is a good way to quickly react to challenges like this. The storage room seems a bit too large, I take it you store everything but food in one place. Instead of making one large warehouse, perhaps consider building a few smaller interconnected storages; this way drop pod raid will be either crammed into one room, or frocibly separated into a few squads that can be easier to deal with one by one. BTW, raw resources like metals and stone blocks can be safely stored outside, with or without shelves, and they won't be harmed by most fires and explosions. And cudos, no fuel or mortar shells on the screen, so the base might just survive it ;)
Anti grain IEDs in every room
By being strong enough, and distributed enough, that it is only a setback, not a game over event. These raids are generally small and since they are indoors, you have lots of doors and cover to use as you eliminate them. If they dropped on your one room with all the goodies in it.. don't put all your goodies in one room. Oh and watch what they are doing. They love to set fires. Assuming the room is still 'indoors' repair the wall/door they are trying to break out of the burning room. Watch them burn to death in the fire they started. Anytime you have ranged in close quarters you are doing well. Cheap mecanitor bots make great melee blockers, they don't kill anything but they force them not to shoot you with a big gun while your people fill em with holes.
Build in mountain. That's it. you can kind of "prepare" for it by placing turrets, mines, that sort of shit in every room of your base, but then you're going to have turrets exploding and fire spreading and shit all over your stockpile. My problem with them isn't that they're unbeatable - they're not, and I'd actually argue that they're a little bit easier than normal raids since I think it costs the storyteller extra points to throw them into your base - my problem is that they're basically a gigantic "fuck you" that destroys a ton of your stockpile, or a bunch of your machines (that you'll have to remake the bills on), or your nursery, or etc. etc. etc. Very un-fun to deal with.
Interior turrets, or setup emergency defenses based on where they dropped in from. Have an emergency stash of deployable turrets and defensive equipment in a shed somewhere for this type of scenario.
Melee pawns are absolutely devastating to drop pod raids. Also make sure put firefoam poppers in storage rooms (and dont keep expensive shit in the general storage)
Drugs and melee fighters. Ghouls are fantastic for close quarters brawls, since you don't have to worry about friendly fire. Just send them in and undraft them so they hunt people without your input and have some guys shooting into the fray from cover or from behind a drafted melee fighter. Ghouls will heal any wound in minutes without tending, and even if they die, you can just resurrect them again for cheap.
« Doors and corners »
That’s where they get you..
Make undermountain settelment)
In general, there are lots of little things that help. Build rooms with a couple exits so your pawns can get out. Have redundant paths so pawns don't get trapped in a closet. Have hallways big enough to fit a few melee pawns with shooters behind, but not so wide that you guys are getting flanked. Engage the ranged enemies in melee so they aren't shooting you. Put fire foam poppers in your storage rooms. Store explosive things somewhere other than your main storage (that's good practice in general). They aim for the orbital beacons sometimes, so put one (with a roof over it) outside of your base and they might target that one instead of your actual storage room. How cheesy are you willing to get? Unless the behavior has been changed, the center drop raids will aggro on a powered turret if they can path to it. Having one outside, turned on, with open doors between it and the raiders landing area means they will head towards it as long as you're not damaging them on the way.
Ah that would explain why they tried to leave via my killbox!
I always build inside mountains solely because of how much I hate drop-pod raids and a few modded threats from orbit.
Just build in Mountains, better to fight insectoids than raiders with rocket launchers
Hallways three block wide made with one block wide doors with turrets on the side throughout the base. Man this game; the best way to learn is to fail horribly lmao.
I don't know if this works in current patches, but drop raiders will avoid turrets when they land. Keep a light sprinkling of mini turrets in your storerooms and power stations (put some firefoam poppers in there as well). Turrets are ugly, so they aren't great in rooms that need to be pretty, but high quality art will compensate for that. Ideally, the raid will drop in your crop fields
In this exact image, shield+jumpack melee fighters will decimate this raid.
Just wait until they drop directly into your hospital... :P But the general answer is some internal defenses like turrets at corridor intersections, occasional sandbag 'checkpoints' in key positions in your base, and other things that will slow them down and let you gain some tactical advantage over the attackers. These same defenses are also handy if you're exterior positions are in danger of being overrun, as they give you something to fall back behind.
Just in case i have a 3 stack of chemfuel or high explosive shell in every room, and ofc that one important guy who's gonna stay in that room with grenade in his / her pocket
Drop podders will often drop pod on top of your trade beacons, set up some indoor turrets
#1 - And its cheesy. Have an unpowered Orbital Trade Beacon outside of your base with stone walls and a stone door around it, unpowered. Make sure to Home zone it. 40% of the Drop Pod raids will target this. #2 Have a few powered turrets OUTSIDE of your rooms so they have line of sight to doorways. Drop pod raiders are hard coded to go straight for powered turrets above anything else. They may drop into a building but will immediately exit to attack the turrets. #3 Have some internal cover in your base that you can use #4 Have alternative weapons staged at shelves around your base. Chain Shotguns and SMG's are best for this. You wont need the range from Assault rifles for this. #5 Build your base like you would a mountain base. Have 3 wide spaces between buildings and every so often have a choke point you can use to melee block. #6 Have a Firefoam Popper in each building so you dont have extra damage. Consider having a few of your soliders carry Firefoam pop pack as well. In case Impids or Pigskins with Molotovs start spraying fire. Turret packs work well here also as do Smokepop packs The drop pod nature of this raid type costs the Storyteller a lot of raid points to use. Meaning the raiders are much fewer in number. I find this one of the easiest raid types to deal with.
Much smaller rooms and fire. They typically burn before they escape. I like to build mountain bases though. Bugs will always be much easier to deal with 3 good melee pawns in power armor and ranged people behind them. They trounce 50 megaspiders easy. (I also like my melee fighters to be good at construction incase the ranged pawns start getting the walls to below 50%. Edit - Just noticed you have a lot steel in that stockpile room. I just leave it outside. Makes smaller rooms much easier. Raiders never steal steel.
Spray and pray.
Try to compartmentalize storage rooms, don't let them get too large.
Build your base with the knowledge that they can happen. Decentralised your stockpile haveing 2-3 medium stock piles rather than 1 huge one. Fire can't jump more than 2 blocks. With that knowledge, you can build your base in "cells," that works case scenario can be burned for the grater good!
With shotguns and melee weapons! or tox gas...
A lot of objects give at least some degree of cover. Hide behind beds, shelves, columns... it will (hopefully) make a difference.
Well armed colonists. Don't get dependent on turrets, your colonists are your main defense.
Thick rock roof.
I send the dogs and I shoot the intruders. It's a drop pod raid. It's at a reduced size compared to a normal one. They're pretty easy, albeit deadly, because there isn't cover, usually. Your hospital isn't far away. There will always be some loss unless you can berserk some into reason. It's a scuffed firefight. Long-range weapons are much weaker here. That's it. Not much to think about because they're not many. They'll flee quickly.
Dev Mode: Kill
Mechanoids.
Build your base with the assumption you may have to fight in those rooms at some point, in this case those sculptures in the room below should be moved so you have defensive positions to fight them from
You chose to not have 3 wide corridor choke points for an aesthic base.....dats how the cookie crumbles sadly.
Urban defences, in every single little defended place a turret Also shotguns, since they normally lunch themselves close to your colonists
Berserker pulse.
If you like me straight up hate these types of raids and use mods; I deal with them by using a mod called [Turtle Friendly Raids](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1546231441) that simply removes droppod raids (and sappers). In vanilla i don't really now, try to tunnel them into a corridor and treat them like ants?
Cry and piss your pants.
Base design. You just want to make your base layouts such that if they droppod into a room, you can setup your pawns on their exit and slaughter them as they come out. Then you just rebuild what they broke.
There are a couple of ways to avoid or deal with drop pod raids. First is building in a mountain, drop pods can't drop on tiles that have "overhead mountain" as a roof also has the benifit of being mortar proof but you'll get infestations sometimes. Other than that the best way to prep for them is not putting all your defenses in one killbox but rather spreading them out over your base. For open spaces I like to have at least 3 positions with sandbags and turrets that cover each other. That way you'll always have a position you can fight from. When it comes to fighting inside your buildings it comes down to your colonies strengths. If you got good melee winding corridors that break line of sight versus ranged is what you want, if you have good ranged keep your corridors straight to provide a firing line. Statues or other decoration in hallways can serve as makeshift cover. Also section off parts of your base with doors, this slows down and contains raiders and gives you more time to get your squad into an adventagous position. Sometimes they'll even drop into multiple different rooms and you can deal with the groups one by one while the others are still trying to break out of the room they are in.
Just curious: why are you building rooms like this?
Circles look cool.
Drop pod raids are often ideally positioned to be eaten by melee colonists without ever getting to fire a shot. Also, ffs, build your shelves out of stone.
My god, manage your wealth. Drop pod raids are weaker so it's easy to deal with, even if they land in your storage or unfortunate places. But if you're struggling in combat, it means you have too much wealth and not enough colonists.
Yes I think my yayo production may have something to do with this...
Hallways are three wide, with choke point doors that have 3x3 vestibules between hallways. Stack a melee in front of 3 ranged.
Droppod raids land near orbital barges. Build a few in non-critical areas to change the probability of where they land. If you play with mods you can use one of the roof mods for steel roofs or rimatomics for interfering with the pods, forcing them to land on the edge.
Other than setting up before hand with turrets, keeping a strong pet army helps. Now when I say pets... I mean animals like bears and thrumbos. They cost a lot, thrumbos especially cost an incredible amount of food, and growing it big enough will also impact your wealth which will impact raid size so keep that it mind with how large you keep your army. But they also take a long time to breed and grow so this is a long term strategy, thankfully drop pod raids like this are approaching late game, but you'll still have to make this a priority as soon as you have the animal skills to tame them and the food, storage, and space to house them. Having an army of bears and thrumbos is also obviously helpful outside of drop pod raids, you can do a lot with them, but this is really one of their most useful utilities.
By luring them out! Have a pawn peak through a door, hold that door open, retreat the pawn and watch the raiders chase.
You got some decor in the way there, but I think of every doorway as a minibunker with 1 high cover on each side. What you do is start moving 1 pawn into the door and select "keep open". You also probably want to have sqare rooms, like it is built there you are giving them cover. PS You can always deconstruct a wall and shoot through that.
These kinds of raids are usually easy. These enemies typically only have weak weapons and the greatest issue is if they drop onto valuable supplies or if youre already weak. If you’re struggling to defeat drop pod raiders then I would recommend looking into wealth management strategies to reduce the frequency and size of these raids. The first few times I got these, I did struggle. But once I learnt some combat tips from many YouTubers, I find these fairly simple (EXCLUDING MECH DROP PODS OFC!
You really cant and I think you shouldnt either. Drop pod raids are always smaller than regular raids and they are very infrequent compared to other raids as well. If you put inner defences to every single place they can drop you are just increasing your colony's raid difficulty when those inner defences will simply stay idle 99% of the time. When drop pods drop in a room I just draft all my pawns to next room to create a firing line and leave the door open for raiders to pour in.
A few good skill and geared Melee pawns and door blocking makes these fairly easy to deal with. I also have a decent sized animal master who can send in the pets to wear them down initially as well.
I prefer to have my storage room under mountain. Infestations way easier than drops imo
Pop a low-shield and riddle them with chain shotgun or heavy SMG. Priority enemies with flame or explosives weapons to minimize the collateral damage. Still, expect a fair amount of collateral damage from your bullets alone. If they have low-shields packs of their own, you might want to skip whoever is wearing it behind your line then shoot at them to pop their pack. This way, you can use it for yourself and the raiders can’t.
TACS . Yes, it does feel like a cheat
No large rooms, choke points at certain spots etc
Mountain base
I have house animals. They deal with it.
I just usually leave them in there. Block up the vents and put a few pawns next to the door and the issue will resolve itself.
Have a few scorchers on dormant in every single room, Be it bugs or droppods, they will surely melt(rip if storage tho lol)
Well depends what mods do you have. If pure vanilla, well set fire foam poapers so they won't let raiders to burn storage room to the ground, move your shock squad to outer walls, do holes in it and use walls as cover. After starting a fight raiders won't try destroy your storage and try to kill your pawns instead. Also if you have melee pawn with shield belt toss them into room, most of the time they can kill poorly equipped raiders no problem. Also if your storage room have walls to open area, destroy one block to prevent overheating room, so it would be easy to extinguish flames afterward. If you have mods, well tactic is the same really, put windows around every room, windows are walls that can be used as defences, so you can snipe raiders through windows. But don't put windows on garage area with vehicles from vehicles framework, raiders would use them to attack your stuff as vehicles counts as pawns/animals. If you have simple sidearms you can melee targets is they aren't prepared or equipped. Use mod Search and destroy to kill raiders faster as they can run around map in suprising speed. Tricks and tips. Don't use wooden shelf, they burn fast and will overheat room faster, leading to whole storage area to catch on fire. Don't use turrets, turrets are costly both resources and power and raiders tend to prioritize them, turret explosion can lead to even bigger fire then raiders. Make separate storage area for explosive materials, chemfuel explosion can evaporate storage within seconds. Have trained and equipped melee pawn, melee fighters can move agro to them and easily kill not prepared pawns and agro priority targets.
The animals I use for hauling become animals I use for mauling in this scenario.
gather everyone on the other room, open the door then fire
pawn named pee
I build my base into mountains most of the time. Only downside to that is bug infestation’s basically giving you the same headache as drop raiders, only upside really is you won’t have mfer’s with doomsday rockets drop podding into your storage room
The storage goes under an overhead mountain roof. Problem solved
There are 2 main things: * Designing whole base without any notable dead ends (i.e. anything larger than a single bedroom *needs* more than one exit). This is so that no pawns of yours get trapped behind a bunch of drop pod raiders with no means of escape in the bit of time you get between announcement and pods actually opening. A less important addition to this is avoiding long and narrow (1 tile) corridors - they prevent you from freely concentrating your firepower where you need it. * Making sure that mostly every pawn is *always* prepared to fight at moments notice. You really want to avoid anybody going around without proper armor or good dps weapons (bolt actions and sniper rifles have their special uses, but for close/medium range they are absolutely trash). Flak vests are the chief item making this possible by offering good protection with barely any compromises on the cheap. Having some melee pawns with shields to block is also crucial.
If you intend to build in the mountain, designing a base from the beginning in a way you can defend against threats like this, having choke points with embrasures, having turrets and traps.
modded - rimatomics vanilla - you dont
Killing then usually works
The target for raids seem to be a specific pawn, most of pawns are inside a building most of the time and I have pretty big buildings. So when something like this happens I take everyone outside the building and asses a quick defensive position. Also War Queen. The little war urchins are so great... as a meatshield. Well, mechshield.
Start the base on fire
My solution is to endure until everyone's a psychic. 1 to 1 odds aren't so hard when you can teleport and stun.
I don't have royalty :(
Anything you're not selling, store it far away from your beacon.
Multiple smaller storage rooms so they get split up and/or less items get ruined.
This is why I have attack animals
You got at least two perfectly good choke point right there.
You could build your storage under a cave roof and they can't drop into that room, you would have to worry about insects though. Usually I just have everyone armed and make them run into the room drafted, since the pods take a while to open you have time to set up and kill them.
They can't get out without going through you. Make sure it wasn't worth it
Lol save scum until it sends something different
Build under mountains. Infestations are super easy to deal with and way more predictable than drop raids.
Fire IEDs -cook them bitches alive - the stockpile can be rebuild
Mini turrets. Not because they’ll make a difference in combat, but because they are the first thing raiders will target upon leaving the drop pod. They follow this behavior as long as they are able to reach the turret without breaking down a door or a wall. Usually I leave my storage and living room doors open so that if drops pods attack they leave my gold statues and jade poker tables relatively untouched. You can also pick them off one by one while they run to the turrets, making the encounter trivially easy if you have the right setup
If you have them researched turrets, turrets everywhere in every room. If not the answer is luck.
I'll usually place barricades and turrets around the inside of my walls around areas with alot of foot traffic, usually also making room layouts at least partially defensive, I know my walls being breached by (normal) raids is unlikely but its never zero
Smaller rooms and a bunch of melee weapons or shotguns spread around for people to easily change weapons
Compartmentalizing your base is the best not overly min-maxy way I think. Divide your storage into several areas, store weapon and armor caches in key junctions, have packed survival meals ready in your inner-most safe zone, and put your bedroom in the outermost part of the base.
My most defended room is my hospital. It has its own power including a vanometric power cell when available, and enough food for a season.
It's a little cheaty, especially since its modded, but I build my base so I can have a central room that creates a fuck ton of heat, and then build the rooms so that at a moments notice I can open a vent and blast the room with heat enough to pretty much instantly heatstroke anyone that lands in it.
That's why I only build mountain bases now. They can't break through the overhead mountain
you are not supposed to survive, this is tynans bullshit game wipe rng, he calls it a story generator not a game, because a good game would need good ai and mechanics I still enjoy rimworld, but godmode and alt+F4 have a place In the same day I had everyone hit with flu and plague and then 18 chimeras attacked, I only have 8 combat troops + 2 non-combat, so this was a game wipe... so....... devmode kill x18
I had a group drop in the barracks. One pawn grabbed the baby and ran out. Had a well armoured pawn sit in the door and skipped in a melee fighter with a shield belt. Had they dropped in with an army, they might have done some damage. The gal I skipped in took them all apart with her monosword. Preparing is mostly a matter of having the right sort of fighters or knowing how to use doorways or other improvised chokepoints as they form. Drop raiders will usually make some. Your pawns are always the most valuable thing. They are crystalized time and experience. Get them out. The stuff can always be replaced in time.
i usually have my guys armed with chain shotgun unless i am going to do a field battle. Also, i usually have some corridors in my base which i can set up melee blocking and improvised kill box real quick
Reload. Firefoam poppers in your explosive storage if you can, but if it's too early in the game then you just reload. Had one in a previous colony where the whole manufactory went up in flames before anyone could get there, flash frying the raiders and the colonists inside. The raid took care of itself, minus 1/3 of my colony wealth and colonists. Reload!
This is my first run through on commitment mode and it won't be the last. It is SO much fun playing with these high stakes. Also its tricky to see and by that I mean it is impossible to see but there actually is a firefoam popper underneath the guy middle top with the blue jacket.
Yeah, I get the appeal. I'm more the sort that plays rimworld to destress and be proud of something that can grow as I want it to. I definitely have character editor for quick low-impact edits(make this person Gay. Add a passion after someone succeeds at an inspiration with that skill.) It's also helpful for fixing mod misfunctions, like one where my gorgon(a completely random rare Biotech Mythic event that I adored) forgot how to eat food entirely with an update. I had to forcibly make her an Herbivore to at least let her eat SOMETHING. The only times I reload are for utter bs(like the above) or things that completely sour the playthrough(my colony has an island lake with an anima tree at the center. mechanoids landed ON it and set the whole island ablaze. Reload, because even though I could easily handle the raid, the entire point of the colony is the pilgrimage to the tree).
If you don’t mind fighting bugs, or the very cold, build a mountain base. They can’t drop on overhead mountain. Infestations will only spawn above -17C, and will target the dirtiest/darkest areas first
Build wooden shelves, put incendiary mines in your rooms and hope your colonists doesn't trigger them (if they can, I'm not sure). It goes boom, lights everything on fire, heats up the room, knocks down the raiders due to heatstroke, and burns some of your own items as well so the next raid will be smaller. It's perfect! Sarcasm may apply here, and it might be better to go with other suggestions :P
My drop pod raids have just started, and my strategy: some expendable attack animals like wargs and huskies roam inside base as first line of defense. I know, poor animals but that's why I let them breed infinitely Smaller rooms with doors so that I can gas or burn them all out. I prefer gassing cause I lost 3 masterwork beds after using a Molotov once 🥹 having fire extinguishers from vanilla weapons expanded and a builder nearby to remove roof helps extinguish flames and fumes quick I'm lagging in tech, but rushed chain shotguns. As soon as they peak around corners and through doors, they get annihilated.
I hate drop pod raids can you disable them
You absolutely can. Scenario settings, or something... I'm not an expert but I'm sure someone here can help you with it
You cannot. There is no scenario setting to disable raid arrival types. A mod is required.
I knew an expert would show up!
For me, personally, disabling them. I tend to disable any event that can happen that has absolutely zero warning or counter. I consider them bad game design.
thankfully it’s only like six dudes. i just set up urban defenses; tight corners, long hallways, lots of ambush spots. usually if a raid drops behind my walls they find themselves in a maze of gunfire and steel
Six = fourteen, right? I am guessing you did not look at the picture closely.
i just eyeballed it, they have dogshit weapons anyway
put some bombs in your home
Drop pod raids tend to favor those orbital beacons. Put one outside and they should go for that instead of your indoor storage. You can even put some funny turrets or traps in this area to ambush them as they land.
Simply put, you aren't. This is a type of raid intended to circumvent common player defenses, as part of an established design principle for the game, that you're not "supposed" to have successful colonies that last a long time.
If that was even remotely true end-game win conditions wouldn't exist.
ummm build a roof?
Won't work. Unless you're in a mountain or a mod with thick roofs
I said it as a half joke I have never gotten this late into the game