Looking for some base management advice

[arbee81]

I'm finally turning my bad base habits around. Bulked up my main production base and a secondary money base with a still to churn through apples.

Added a few radar/intercept bases and decided on 5 decent hands, 5 suicide slave troops, 10 dogs, and one hwp if possible for defense. Probably overkill, and still working on actually putting all that together, but I think I've got a fighting chance now.

And of course, there hasn't been even a whiff of a crackdown since

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[Solarius Scorch]

Has anyone tried Fire Pits and Gas Chambers? Are they efficient? Are they fun?

[legionof1]

They are unfortunately somewhat situational at best. In the case of the gas chamber stargods, dark ones, and power armor the damage is nullified often leaving the player at a vision disadvantage from the smoke. Similar case with fire resistant mobs for the fire pit, although that resist is more rare.

Without good Thermal vision you put your self at a vision disadvantage against almost all factions. Prior to thermal vision they both where much better. As it is now i would never build either.   

[khade]

Any way we could research CCTV and get visual on the whole base.  Guess if we can figure that out, might be fair for the computer to get some access too, in their bases,, and that might cause base attacks to be harder.

[Eddie]

If we were to get CCTV, we can also give it to the interior of UFOs if they are landed and disable them if they crashed. Also there is the possibility of outside cameras on your/their craft giving vision to the vicinity. The possibilities...

[khade]

For bases, I'd probably require an actual room to get benefit, if possible, a requirement of someone physically being in the room, and whichever side had control of that room can see pretty much every major area, security cameras in the sewers are likely to have a spotty coverage.

Still powered larger UFOs could have a security room, where if you can clear and control, you could see the rooms of that UFO.  This could also go with internal lights going out if the reactor goes, and emergency lights for fun.

Invisible units probably would just show up as dots on your map though, unless you got actual visuals.

This is assuming any of those are possible.

[Starving Poet]

Fire pits are bad - I tested them on stream.  While the fire is nice, after one bombs goes odd, the AI doesn't want to path through it so it forces enemies into the sewers - significantly prolonging the fight.   It sort of negates the whole purpose of having a trapped choke-point in the first place.  I assume the gas would be better though, since it doesn't screw with pathing.

[legionof1]

No it doesn't screw pathing, but the number of factions/units that mostly ignore daze damage is quite high and if one bomb goes off you have a smoke cloud filling an entire base tile. An lo and behold the same guys that ignore the damage have either sense or 60% thermal vision. So against the most threatening factions your shooing yourself in the foot. 

[Ethereal_Medic]

Sounds like the player needs 'other' ways to bottleneck invaders.
Firepits are not that great to a degree but gas chambers do wonders to stop enemies inside the sewers.

I would like to have a building that deploys 1 defensive unit (turret) to help defending your base.
Stuff like this:
Maschinegun-Pit = Turret with heavy maschinegun (just like the carryable item but can shot 2x a turn)
Rocketlauncher-Bunker = Adds 150 defense value with 90% hitchance. Can shot HE Rockets just like the sentryrocket-turret but with less power, more area effect and no waypoints.
Laser-Gatling Defense = Adds 250 defense value with 100% hitchance. Can shot laser like the fatty but more powerful and 2x a turn.
Bomblauncher-Pod = No defense value but this thing can shot a blaster launcher 'rocket' OR a stunbomb like the items and with no power-loss over the distance travelled.

The 'map' for those facilities has to be like this:
The deployed item 2x2 has to be in the middle of the 'building', small and 'narrow' walls stops it from moving so it can get more than 3 TU's for turning and firing.
It's kind of a variation of the basic corridor-tile but no ladders to climp and open connections to the adjusted tiles.
The frontplate has to be strong enough to soak up damage (to a degree since 99% of crackdowns uses plasma weaponry only)
Sides and rear weaker and the HP pool should be 100+.
The tile could have 1-2 spawnpoints for hands.

Stuff like living space and storage space can be added if needed.
Thoughts?

[Ethereal_Medic]

Has anyone tried Fire Pits and Gas Chambers? Are they efficient? Are they fun?

If you call 'fun' that this basetile will 'shot' on your own soldiers, I guess not.
Firepit does quite some base-dmg for burn-type but the gas chamber is better in most cases. Sadly the smoke-screen the gas chamber creates stops your vision. Maybe the smoke-fix of the current patch has solved the issues with camo-smoked targets.
If you place a trap, you have to leave a 'save' passage in your hideout construction if you go for cleaning the remaining forces.
Otherwise you have to pass through your own firetraps and gasbombs.

[ivandogovich]

With both Firepits and GasTraps, the hidden bombs can be spotted using the mini-map.   This makes it possible for the player to navigate through them to some degree.

[Ethereal_Medic]

With both Firepits and GasTraps, the hidden bombs can be spotted using the mini-map.   This makes it possible for the player to navigate through them to some degree.

To some degree
Try navigate through those 'traps' by using the vents or the sewers. You'll get hurt/stunned 100% of a time due to narrow passage ways.
Base Defense needs some work @ some day since RNG for unit deploys and missing feedback for the player where on the map the suicide flashbanger with a primed barrelbomb will spawn makes my experience with Hideout Defense a very bad time.

Every enemy faction spawns with a full arsenal of plasma weapons (1-shots your gals until decent armor available) and with a full set of "terror units".
They frequently use the sewers and taking ages to move to the next ladder and the player can't climb down into the sewer himself or garantees a situation where your hand fails to kill the foe with a reactionshot while his gun garantees a kill. The cost of TU's to move is too high. You can barely affort to move 2 tiles or run out of TU's for 2x snapshot.

Following Factions shouldn't be allowed to field plasma-weaponry at any stage in the game.  Dark Ones, Humanists, Mercs, Provincial Govt., Raiders and Spartans.
All 'true' plasma weapons should be assigned to no one else than Academy, Traders, Church and Star Gods.
All other factions need thier own set of weapons to stop situations where Minor Factions kick your ass with weapons they never had access to before.
Only trusted personal with deep connections to the star gods should have the gift of using plasma weaponry and not a bunch of Raiders, Spartans and Nazis having these toys.
The guns are voodoo-locked so how are those goons able to fire them? Most of them can't even use proper laser guns but crackdown your turf with plasma scorchers and blaster launchers?!

In other news:
High-tech weaponry for those minor factions while fighting a crashsite cruiser/heavy gunship and other stuff can sport plasma weaponry and microwave cookers because:
If the player can shot down a cruiser/hv. gunship he will have the tools to fight the upcomming battle but a crackdown is something a player can't influence unless he has the technology to shotdown the sentry/fighter and rolls a 20 to avoid been spotted anyway

Plz fix OR give us real defensive base-buildings to fight the plasma-ownage and RNG-Unitdeploy. Samsites and flak-cannons could have a secondary usage for hideout defense other than failing to gundown assault-transporters and boarding torpedos.

[legionof1]

Complaints about hideout defense difficulty aside you will likely never get your request. Enemy equipment is determined by map/craft so all hideout defense are the same gear set because they are perfectly identical as a far as the engine cares. Actual terrain is pulled in from a separate piece of code. Same with units. It is presently an all or nothing setup.

To grant your request, at a minimum you looking at make a clone of hideout defenses setup code for every faction. So something like 20 copies, if the engine can even understand the copies at all which i strongly suspect it can't.

[Ethereal_Medic]

So the least time-consuming solution could be better buildings that offer defensive tools like maschinegun nests / rocket towers and stuff.
My complains aren't pulled form thin air tho. If it's too much work to equip every faction accordingly, just give the player a better way to fight plasma-weaponry during times where the hideout can barely bring laserguns and chainmail/full-platemail at best to nullyfy plasma-dmg.

I bought quadlaunchers/chinese dragon for each hideout to even the odds.
I will try to use landmines/proxy mines in my future crackdowns to give feedback for this strategy.
I expect 1 bomb in the sewer and 1 bomb next to the door should give enough warning where the sewer-rats are crawling.
Just those vents tho... can't realy use bombs there with all the loot randomly chilling on the ground there...

[legionof1]

I find dragons a bit too difficult to use in base defense because the radius is so large. On normal maps it's easier to get the angle needed to not get caught in the blast(because square blast propagation). Bases have lots of straight lines of sight and the dragon radius is is almost exactly the size of the base from edge to edge.

To easy to kill yourself and still not clear a hanger or elevator, again due to blast propagation being square.

I tend to use panzerfausts instead. 120 base damage with 25% armor pen is usually sufficient for most things. The poor accurate range cap doesn't matter as much in bases closer quarters. Small aoe size is a bit a mixed blessing, your unlikely to blast yourself on a fumbled shot at close range but harder to hit multiple foes in the hanger areas.