Hundreds of hours in, I've built various boxes and seen other guides. Yours is the first guide I recall that addresses the attack range radius with a semi-circle, and addresses logistical issues like weapon storage and food. Very thorough! I don't play much any more, but totally subscribed!
If you take another stab at Rimworld in the future, try to keep it interesting by not walling your colony, and especially don't build killboxes. More fun that way.
@@Trickyman26 sorry for late reply. To answer your good question: Tactics mostly. Usually I have a town like colony, which is surprisingly defendable. I retreat there after the defensive positions get too heavy. Then it's about trying to divide the enemy to smaller groups, creating pockets of resistance which shoot from the distance slowing them down, and close assault groups which will take them out eventually. Individual medics and EMP grenadiers run around a lot. Of course it's risky and sometimes a pawn or two gets killed, but way more fun than to see the exact same thing happening again and again.
@@JakeKilka True, I would definitely like to play without killboxes. I just never have enough bravery when its getting harder and harder to defend. I see your point in tactics here, but it still sounds crazy to me. If I understand it right, after retreat from defensive positions, you are doing kiting enemies in several groups at the same time with some melee fighters to finish them off? It could be interesting to see some guides on "How to defend colony without killboxes". Good challenge. Because killboxes are just boring.
important note for the very early game, a hallway that forces people to walk on wooden spike traps can be extremely effective, just a good way to disregard raids before you can get a quality killbox set up
What I learned from this video: „Who needs good weapons? Who needs turrets? You just need one Anita and a cloning facility and you are protected forever."
17:30 I always try and remind myself that the heavy SMG is basically a bolter, which has the added bonus of making it feel like all my pawns are space marines
You forgot to mention the following, the killbox roofed to make darkness. Darkness will slow down even more enemies advance. Replace sandbags with stone chuncks, these will slow down even more than a sand bag and at some point enemies are just crowded one near one and you can place a mine to cause a serious damage, they cannot run away fast and get damage of it. You can also use roof traps or place cloth floors near killbox and set it on fire before enemies walks there they catch fire and won't advance or fire at you, instead run on chaos and all you have to do is killing them.
@@8b8b8b Balance a roof on a piece of very damaged wood. Place a mine behind the wood, where your enemies would go for cover. The mine blows, and the roof comes down on them too.
@@FrancisJohnYT I agree with Ray K., Question for you though: You say Randy kicks off above 50 colonists & Cassandra above 16 (which seems counter intuitive to me), do you know how many Phoebe will put up with?
Melee with Shield Belts behind the barricades. Riflemen behind the wall segments. And chain shotguns peppered into the group makes short work of quite significant raids and allows for an adaptation of placement for Infestations without regearing people on the fly. I play on Royalty expansion now quite often, and the melee weapons there are quite insane. A nimble brawler with high melee and no other good qualities makes for a fantastic royal even if you cryosleep them frequently to keep demands down during stress spirals.
That "9 times out of 10 centipedes are gonna be what ends your colony" comment resonated so much with me, damn. It's actually the main reason I want to build a killbox, I wish there was an option of using a killbox only against mechanoids but raiders have the same pathfinding, so I feel human raids end up being very one-sided thanks to the killbox. But without a killbox those stupid scary marshmallows set my colony on fire and shoot the head off of all my colonists. This is the most detailed video about killboxes that I watched. So you definitely deserve the single like I can give you, I'd give more if I used multiple accounts :D
I see you to have suffered under the scary marshmallows. It's the inferno cannons that cause me the most grief, pawns run around leaving cover and then lose their head to a heavy charge blaster. EMP grenades and excessive fire power are the only solution.
Same, due to excessive amount of marshmallows my colony now suffers from diabetes. Hate those guys. My first annihilation was due to a quest to house a freaking BEAVER that is hunted down by mechanoids. I thought it is going to be easy but DAMN was i wrong. Those marshmallows just shredded my people. I almost saved it with only 1 colonist remaining but still failed. Before i deleted the run I used the last colonist to freaking slauter that beaver and cook it then eat it. You aint going nowhere you little turdshit. Anyways enough rambling more rimworld.
I remember my first mech invasion. I was so confused. My colonists had two knives and a shitty pistol.. and the centipede had a mini gun. Luckily, that doesn't happen anymore.
Just want to say you went really indepth into explaining the mechanics behind cover, which is something I can't say about other tutorials. You've given people watching this video the knowledge of designing their own defences instead of just copying an existing style without understanding why it works. Well done and keep it up!
I can't recall if I've commented on this video or not, but a second time won't hurt if I have. This video has been a life saver! Thank you eternally for making it. You have no idea how many times I've come back to this to reference what I'm doing next for my killbox. It makes planning things out so easy. Now if only I could figure out how to get my pawns' shooting skills up without wasting countless hours hunting every living thing on the map when they could be doing something more productive.
Wow, I didn't appreciate how well this video is done in terms of technical info and building the most effective killbox with the most effective cover until I watched another video I won't name that implied it may contain new info as of 2021.
This is very helpful, I’m playing on adventure story because I was working on a mountain base project, and it’s very late game, but still my entrance had a hallway leading into an expanse of 8 turrets and my colonists, but for some reason I couldn’t ever defend too well against attacks, this has helped me out tremendously, thank you very much, now I’m actually defending well
Killbox masterclass! Excellent work, 750 hours in and I still hadn't figured out why I had to keep moving people to get them to target the entrance. Thanks for improving my game.
One thing I can recommend to solve the whole lagg issue surrounding the spreading out of enemies due to their combat stance is to place an unpowered turret somewhere around the entrance of the killbox and surround it with doors. The enemies will still "see" the turret and will get engaged in combat stance, spreading them out before they enter the killbox.
Did not figure out that little tip for a while, I think I heard about it when I built a base on an active combat tile and had to deal with daily tribal raids. The Turrets behind doors saved our bacon hard.
@@DapiroStanislav now there's a test! I think the 20 pawns will win, because they still have more DPS, plus, they get 20 tries every round to kill 100% of the enemies, while the one pawn can only down 5% at a time. I hope I said that in a clear way.
I used to get a bit sad when you would spend all this time working something out in a game and you never really get to share it. The knowledge gets lost and other people get to repeat all your mistakes trying to figure out the same things. I like the tutorials as it feels like your giving something back for all the helpful comments and suggestions people put in the comments. You should see my early Rimworld episodes, it's painful how bad I suck.
One trick that may help make your killboxe slightly more effective is to also use it to degrade tainted apparels and rotten corpses. Items that are laying on the ground slightly slow down pawns that climb them without providing any cover. By slowing down raiders, you can give tainted apparels and corpses a little bit of use as they degrade away.
I did a bunch of testing before in the video before this one just so I could do the kill box right. I think the Heavy SMG needs a different name, for the name alone I assumed the LMG was far superior.
I don't even play rimworld, but i watched this all the way through. i love your voice, cadence, detail, explanations, all of it. You make great content.
Well it depends. I for example don't build a killbox in the early game, just a belt of rocks has to do it, and then the short range of the smg can be a pain. Even early midgame you probably can't craft the smg and have a mixed bag of weapons with different ranges. Maximizing your dps can be nearly impossible in a killbox with that. So it has a fairly limited time to truly shine, from the time you can craft it, until it gets replaced by the charge rifle. And only if you decide to build your killbox based around its range.
If you plan your kill box for the SMG, the kill box will still work for whatever smattering of weapons you end up with. Also I don't know about you but I find Charge rifles to be crazy expensive, they are amazing and my preferred weapon, but mass production is a problem until the very later game.
Yeah they are quite expensive and i may underestimate the amount of time you can get good use out of the SMG, since i'm spoiled by mods. That aside tho, the short range is still a big minus outside of the killbox. I may put a bunch on shelfs near the box but for everyday duty i find it too unflexible to be called best
Francis John btw, I love the style of your videos, somewhat fast talking, explaining your moves and a lot attention to detail! The pace of your videos are very engaging
One thing to consider before passing up on the assault rifle is with more range comes less enemies that can shoot at you! Enemies with weapons with less range will have to run through your killbox to get to you which you can have lined with traps or obstacles to slow them down. I'm a big fan of the "Kill trench" where I use sniper rifles, charge lances and ARs on my pawns under the support fire of a half dozen or so uranium slug turrets!
I cannot appreciate this enough. You not only went over why, but how, when, where, left, right, up and even down. The tips about what guns to use, how to use them and how to do the research was crucial for me as a noob. Subscribed and moving on to "How to manage infestations". Thanks for your content.
This guide is amazing - 500 hours in Rimworld and I learned so much. Criminally undersubscribed channel - going to go and watch all your other Rimworld videos. Hope you keep making content like this.
I often like to build killboxes around lakes. This forces enemies to walk in shallow water or mud to go around deep water. As a bonus missed bullets from your side are not hitting same area all the time so there is less need for plasteel walls. But sometimes they simply stop looking for cover, stop and shoot. I also like to reconnect damaged turrets to dead power to limit loses. And it's good idea to have strong anti-melee option, for example fall back position with one door that is left open and plasteel walls next to it ;)
Great job. Ive been doing single pawn runs for a while now (hardest vanilla), so I only use kill boxes designed for melee (so op). But I love your technical videos!
@@coops3600 it's hard to describe but I'll try. Make a maze with a single gap to make the pawns funnel in single file. Think like a long "c" at the bottom of the c make a 2 down 1 over 2 down path with 2 sandbags at the opening. Only 1 sandbag should be in the path the other should poke out. Place a turret on one side of the sandbag and your pawn gos on the other. Sheildbelt and plasma swords/zeushammers are a must. The turret keeps the pawns from hiding behind walls and shooting you to much (just move your pawn so they dont have a clear shot) they will rush in, move your pawn back over, rince and repeat. Vertigo pulse and berserk pulse make it far easier as well
Great video. I would love a video giving some tips to base layout in the event of drop pods. You would be someone I trust to give good advice :) Cheers
I look at the organic bases people build and I just can't understand how they do it. It must take forever for them to decide where everything goes. I would just end up building things in the wrong place, give up and restart.
SMGs typically are kitted out with large caliber bullets for close range stopping power (sometimes even with hollowpoints). So it makes sense that they do more damage per round, but are less accurate at range. ARs have smaller caliber but higher grain rounds with superior rifling for long range accuracy and penetration.
@@jessecapra2350 They're not large rounds, but they're wider diameter than rifle rounds (mostly). Look at the diameter of a 9mm and a .45 ACP (11.43mm) round compared to a 5.56 round, for instance. 5.56 is only a 5.7 mm diameter round which leads to higher penetration due to the smaller surface area of contact. The stubbier 9mm and .45 rounds lend to better stopping power due to increased diameter and surface area (also a smaller gunpowder load).
@@thetylersherman sure they're larger than one but they're not big by any means. They're scarcely larger than 7.62×39 in diameter. 45 is sure. But PCCs using 9mm is FAR more common.
@@jessecapra2350 In the context of this video, I believe he's discussing the heavy SMG which I believe is a UMP chambered in .45. 7.62 are pretty big rounds, too.
Its a video game, so its about balance and damage roles as much as anything. Outside killboxes SMG pawns have trouble closing to range with enemies with ARs or any of the longer ranged weapons without taking damage first. Sniper rifles will straight up instadown your pawns sometimes. This killbox sets the engagement range to make SMGs viable, outside the killbox SMGs a just 'good' all around. For REAL WORLD damage comparisons there is an entire YT rabbit hole for that, but the tl;dr of it is basic AR calibers do WAY more damage than a pistol caliber round even with expanding bullets. (search hydrostatic shock)
Great video as always Francis, thank you for putting in the time to do the testing and thoroughly explaining yourself. a couple more video ideas: Sappers and sapper mechanics, Assaulting a pirate base, defense progression through early game, and some stuff about initial pawn/starring area selection and early game skill priorities/recruitment. I think a lot of content creators downplay the power of having nearby trading partners and a good road system and instead focus on mountain v flatland and year-round growing; I've already learned a lot from your Nomadic tribal play-though and didn't realize how strong it was.
Oh, and I forgot, you could do a guide describing your 15 x 15 grid. It would let you do some reflection about if it worked out the way your were hoping for and/or how you could improve upon it. :D
I'm still trying to figure out how to deal with sappers reliable, currently I just figure out where they likely to attack on the map I'm on and then just have defences ready there. I think a quick talk on the grid design is in order as well, I might modify it slightly but by and large I found it very useful, made expansion orderly.
@@FrancisJohnYT Hi, just wanted to share that sappers seem to love bedrooms, meaning you can have "trap" bedrooms to guide sappers away from the main raid, tis quite random though. A more considtent method is to not use any sentry on the killbox so they path into it, but its quite power hungry due to the amount of sentries needed to cover the rest of the base. Hope it helps.
If I remember correctly, sappers has a different internal pathing than most raiders, viewing single walls as nearly non existent and dogs right through. Early methods of dealing with sappers was to have a base filled with depowered sentries, since the sappers couldn't tell the difference between powered and depowered. Don't know if this is still a viable solution for 1.1, but it did work in 1.0. Edit: there was also an older method of just thickening the walls to like 4+ layers, but I believe that strategy was countered in 1.0.
@@FrancisJohnYT again, working with old information, but I remember there was a setting in sandbox mode that showed "Avoid grid" or something that sappers used to path into the base. I remember an old video where unpowered turrets could be used to prevent sappers from digging through walls within their LOS; based on how the game calculated "avoided areas". no idea if its been patched out though. Edit: wow I didn't see the other 2 replies that basically said the same thing. my apologies for being redundant. UA-cam's notification reply box could use some work.
Great info about killboxes. A killbox is very important for many reasons as it was covered in the video. On top of all that was covered in the video, one more aspect that is important. Is that before you have any armour, or good armour, available you need the cover just so your pawns don't get too many injuries or killed during the fights/raids. Since armour isn't something that you get that early (depends on difficulty and luck ofc) you need as much cover as you can get so your pawns don't get injured, or worse, killed. Since for some reason cloth or leather isn't good as armour... :P
I wana mention, placement of where your gonna box matters depending on your map layout. Having a small pond behind your firing line (or river) can actually help significantly versus fire effect. (Albiet a colonist who uses the river to stop BEING ON FIRE still gets a negative moodlet "I am soaking wet Q.Q" Having a slick of mud at the entrance of your killbox can be quite helpful too as it slows better than dirt/stone.
Burned wooden floor is excellent for kill boxes. -50% moving. End game kill boxes should have lots of art around them for +15 mood. I burn inspirations on chain shotguns. The range is short, but they're the best weapon for any non-killbox fight.
LMG, and it's upgrade minigun, scales with the size of battle. The bigger the battle the better it is. With a killbox that funnels enemies in 1 by 1 though it's not that good.
dont underestimate the incendiary launchers and molotovs having a raging fire at your kill box entrance can be very good against anything biological also in situations where you cant make a sandbag snake to space enemy's out like in infestations or sappers that dont get shelled in time. also having 3 melee blockers in a door way backed with good short range weapons very handy in those unprepared fights. - oh he hase a vid on some of those strategies too nice!
Lemme add another tip for killbox (sorry if someone else added really have no time to read 603 comments at the moment): -Add roof on top of your cover area (granite wall + sandbag defences), and illimunate the area where the raiders come in if possible. This provides your pawns to shoot them accurately since its illimunated where they shoot at and your pawns will get shot less likely since you have a roof on top which provides darkness for your pawns. And yeah raider shoot chances will be dropped if the target is in the dark. Aaand good luck everyone...
Light and dark no longer affect shot chances, they patched that out. Later in the game I put light and a roof around my pawns area to improve mood and protect from rain/fallout. Also put in several statues to improve mood further.
Gread video, learning a few things to try on my setup. As for the SMG vs AR damage thing, it somewhat makes sense. Within their range, larger caliber smgs like the UMP pack quite a punch. .45ACP is a shorter range round, but hits like a truck, esp. with special ammo. AR ammo like 5.56 or 5.45 is a compromise. It's meant to be controllable on full auto, at longer ranges, so it relies on a fast, light round. It trades a lot of stopping power for lower recoil and longer range. If you look at the history of the m16/m4, and the complaints about it, one of them has always been poor stopping power vs other calibers.
That is true, but only for unarmored targets. When modern combat-grade armor enters the scene, most SMGs drastically drop in effectiveness, since pistol rounds can't really penetrate modern soldier's armor. Especially low velocity.45 caliber. Intermediate cartridges that AR fires, however, still going to hurt and have some stopping power against armor.
Can confirm it drains shield belts instantly, but depending on stage of the game and the size of the raid I usually just get away with straight up shooting the shields down. Shields take double damage so half the HP for actually destruction purposes.
For those of you out there who dont want to do killboxes, but want as close to vanilla experience as possible I reccomend one of the many barb wire mods. Some just slow pawns, some damage, and some provide minimal cover; it all varies, but helps to avoid getting stuck doing a killbox
4th time coming back here and I just like to say that I like to add breaks in the barricade/wall pattern where my pawns can be out of sight. Helps a lot in early when centipedes take forever to kill. You can draw them closer or force their charge blasters on an early cooldown by hiding.
Some things probably changed in new versions, but the basics are pretty sure the same. Thank you, I'll modify my killbox using these guide. I also used fences on the open ground to slow down enemies, not sure though if they provide any cover, need to check it.
This is a 2 year old video. I’m not 100% how much the game has changed since then. I’m very new to this game just got it today. I can’t wait to build a killbox.
It has changed a fair bit since then but killboxes still have a place. The big game changer was mechanoids getting siege units so they could smash through walls, so when they show up you can't use a killbox on them. But a good killbox will still sort out a lot of raids.
Some tips for overall defence: It's good to have strong melee fighters (at least 3) to block doors in 3-wide corridors, with 6 shooters behind them. This way you can defend yourself when then use drop pods or break through your defences. Also don't make the killbox too big, remember that Cassandra and Phoebe has cap at 18 colonists, Randy 50 - above it they will everything to thing up the numbers.
Big fan of 3 tile wide corridors melee blockers and grenades :) I did a video on how to kill bugs using that very trick. As for going to high in numbers I went up to 25 with Cassandra and it made almost no difference. She may get tougher but with so many extra pawns I did not notice. I'm going to try going to 100 with Randy and see how he reacts.
I refuse to play without the industrial rollers mod anymore . Got a pulling zone that covers the whole kill box and pulls all dead bodies and loot as they die haha
I like to put in turrets, blocked off by walls such that they can only shoot (and be shot by) invaders close to the sandbag line. This is because turrets are expensive and I hate when they are taken out by rocket launchers etc. I was surprised when there was no statement either for or against such a tactic.
I've been watching your oxygen not included lets plays and next thing you know im looking up kill box ideas on rimworld and am excited to see a man managing a baby base making us a good kill box design
Great tutorial! I only wish you'd also included some tips on how to structure your base so enemies will reliably find their way into your killbox. Perhaps you could do a tutorial on base layout someday?
Just wall in all your base and the kill box is the only way to enter your base so the enemies have a clear path to your base (u can still use door for multiple entrance).. Any enemies that is not a sapper will go to your kill box..
Wow it's almost as if the term "heavy" before SMG denotes that it's heavier than typical SMGs. I agree though, the terms in game are more describing the actual gun rather than their effectiveness.
Efficient is a corpse freezer with your pawns excluded but your carnivores and hauler animals allowed. Dont even need to burn the tainted clothes, the bears take care of it all.
HAHA I stopped playing Oxygen not included and used to watch your videos. Then I started Rimworld, searched for a guide, and my fav. UA-camr in this section is here again HAHA. Great
having 3 colonists with heavy armor, high melee, shield belts, and good bonk weapons kill mechanoids well enough, especially if you also have 3 colonists with high shooting and chain shotguns behind them. You just line them up at a blind corner covered by bags and the mechanoids are forced around the corner into the dps of everyone at once. Bonus points if a 7th colonist is chucking EMP grenades at the wall corner from behind them constantly. Works for organic enemies, but tbh i prefer the oven killbox trap because of how hands off it is.
FWIW an SMG is like a Thompson SMG, AKA "Tommy gun" that you see in old gangster movies. Those are using .45 caliber rounds. Whereas an assault rifle like the M-16 uses 5.56mm ammo, which is .223 caliber, or about half the diameter of those .45s. An assault rifle like the AK-47 uses 7.62mm rounds, which is a pretty big round, but still much smaller than a .45. Long story short: the SMG/AR in the game is roughly equivalent to real life in relative stopping power/range. ARs are preferred as main battle rifles because of their accuracy at mid range. A true LMG would still be running AR sized rounds, but putting them out at a MUCH higher rate than an AR, typically requiring a belt for ammo, and either a liquid cooled barrel, or an air-cooled barrel which can be easily swapped in battle.
For those of you who whine about killboxes being exploitative of AI pathfinding, guess what?! We've been making killboxes in real-life for millennia! After all, castles were more than just walls with crenellations that provide cover to archers and gunners on top of the walls. (Speaking of, I'd call the design of having wall pillars and sandbags that help to provide lots of cover for shooters, as featured in Francis John's killbox designs, as essentially crenellations.) In fact, we have at least 2 real-life equivalents to the concept of a killbox: Murder Holes, which were typically located within castle gatehouses, and were designed to allow defenders to pour hot oil, stones, or other ranged weapons onto whatever attackers managed to break through the outer gates, and Corridors of Death (also known as a Zwinger), which were designed to allow defenders within the walls that lined both sides of a narrow corridor to rain death onto any attackers within.
@@FrancisJohnYT Sorry. It's just the castle nerd in me speaking out loud. (BTW, I'm subscribed to a medieval-oriented UA-camr called Shadiversity, whom has covered plenty of medieval concepts, including castle design.)
The problem with this comparison is that there are copious effective counter strategies to real-life killboxes, which is why people always have to scrabble around a bit for obscure historical precedent when they make this defense. in rimworld, the AI is so bad that killboxes aren’t just a strategy they’re *the* strategy. Essentially the only effective defensive strategy at high levels of play. Which is a little boring. fortunately there are mods to fix this.
@@rwulf There are sappers, there are drop pod raids, there are sieges and there are solar flares (turrets go on a nap). So killbox is not the whole strategy, but only part of defense. But I see your point, AI has it's limitations, can be cheesed and it's unable to counter your exploits like human may do.
I sometimes use a "no man's land" around my base with choke points blocked up by melee pawns. I dont personally like killboxes, but if you're inexperienced I would suggest learning how to fight without them, because you cant bring a killbox when you raid another settlement, and successful raids can be very rewarding. My preferred method is to buy consumables like animal pulsers and berserk lances. Also, a high level psycaster, I have never seen an ai pawn use a psycast outside of rimworld of magic, so no matter what you have a distinct advantage. That said, a newer play wouldn't even survive most mid game raids without a killbox of some sort
I've beaten the game in every biome but ice cap on Merciless/Losing is Fun without any kill boxes at all. I prefer interlocking bunkers with double doors shooting at double thick walls. A well placed EMP grenadier is key as well.
Any thoughts on this? For my killbox cover instead of alternating wall,barrier,wall I do wall, wall, barrier, wall ,wall, barrier, etc. 3 people can shoot through one opening, two shooting around the wall and one guy with just the barrier as cover (although I just put the pawns behind the wall and leave the barrier part open for melee if needed.) Using this at the 15:52 arrangement your 13 block wall has 8 openings (counting the outside pieces) for 13 shooters. You can cut this down to just 4 openings with 12 shooters (outside pieces covered), or 5 openings with 15 shooters with 2 walls between each opening.
Fun fact: I like to build my killboxes on top of a ford in a river. This way the enemy is slowed to 30% speed even when inside the killzone, and there is no need for cleaning all the blood as the river bathes them clean, ready for the skin extraction factory....
But how do you prevent enemies from entering from the side, over the water? Wooden walls on bridges? If yes, don't they get accidentally destroyed too easily, opening the killbox?
@@crow1crow1crow You can make the killbox pretty wide so the side walls are far from attacks. Unless there are sappers those walls will stay up the whole game.
@@crow1crow1crow Its not really that much of a problem. The enemies usually take the fastest route, so they go over and then over again. Also I use a mod that has walls with firing ports, so I can fire at them from there too, but unmodded can use turrets. You will lose several, but it helps to separate the shooters from the melee and give my colonists more time to deal with each. So its not even a physical box, just a firing area. The 30% compensates nicely the lack of one entrance point, but right kind of ford does the same thing anyway.
Turrets along the sides CAN be effective, but I got into a situation just now where I had a caravan out, so I only had 8 pawns to man a box similar to this one. I had them toward the middle, which mean that when the 20+ scythers I got hit with went after the turrets, it took them out of the targeting zone of most of my pawns in the center. I had to scramble to try to get some pawns out to the edges, but by then the scythers were up close. Luckily I had no deaths, but I was within seconds of losing two pawns, ended up with 5/6 of the others pretty messed up as well. Might have made it through with no injuries at all if the mechs had stayed in the optimal kill zone. So if you are going to do turrets, make sure that you have enough pawn firepower on the edges.
I'd stay with a smaller kill box and expand it as you hire more pawns. I'm having similar issues with my current kill box but it is a very very close range one.
@@FrancisJohnYT I actually moved the turrets out into the open, in the center. I've got four right now out in the center of the box, spaced far enough that they won't damage each other if they blow up. So far they have been untouched except when I did a test with the Psychic Animal Pulser when I had a herd of 7 Thrumbos and 12+ Boomalopes. Ended up with 3/13 pawns reasonably mangled, which I don't think is too bad.
I made good experience with a much longer killbox and sniper rifles and wooden spike traps all the way through the entrance with the sandbags as well as in the killbox itself. Half of the raiders will be killed by the traps or at least wounded (what lowers the hit chance) and the rest will be killed on a long range with the sniper rifles.
The tutorial was more for making a killbox to stop centipedes as they are they biggest killer of late game bases. At the same time it can take care of anything else that shows up as a nice side effect.
The most important part youve left out is to never put bunched up pawns behind barricades. Barricades offer no protection against missed bullets, which will contribute the majority of hits is this setup
love the tactics discussion but a little (off topic) hint from reality .. do NOT stand close to walls to take cover, walls lead bullets so only if it's direct cover and the wall is between you and the shooter, it may helps if it's well angled it's a death machine
Each to their own, the joy of Rimworld is you can mod it to suit your style of play. I have a tendency to prefer vanilla games and when it comes to dealing with 60 centipedes I could not conceive of any other solutions just yet.
![RimWorld Guide: Pathing & Collision - Make Raiders go where you want them! [1.5, 2024] Check Comment](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/eTJf0-pusxQ/mqdefault.jpg)
Hundreds of hours in, I've built various boxes and seen other guides. Yours is the first guide I recall that addresses the attack range radius with a semi-circle, and addresses logistical issues like weapon storage and food. Very thorough! I don't play much any more, but totally subscribed!
If you take another stab at Rimworld in the future, try to keep it interesting by not walling your colony, and especially don't build killboxes. More fun that way.
@@bhministry I know how the game works, I have over 2000 hours in it. defensive positions yes, but no killboxes, trap tunnels etc.
@@JakeKilka So how will you defend your positions against 50+ centipedes?
@@Trickyman26 sorry for late reply. To answer your good question:
Tactics mostly. Usually I have a town like colony, which is surprisingly defendable. I retreat there after the defensive positions get too heavy. Then it's about trying to divide the enemy to smaller groups, creating pockets of resistance which shoot from the distance slowing them down, and close assault groups which will take them out eventually. Individual medics and EMP grenadiers run around a lot. Of course it's risky and sometimes a pawn or two gets killed, but way more fun than to see the exact same thing happening again and again.
@@JakeKilka True, I would definitely like to play without killboxes. I just never have enough bravery when its getting harder and harder to defend. I see your point in tactics here, but it still sounds crazy to me. If I understand it right, after retreat from defensive positions, you are doing kiting enemies in several groups at the same time with some melee fighters to finish them off?
It could be interesting to see some guides on "How to defend colony without killboxes". Good challenge. Because killboxes are just boring.
important note for the very early game, a hallway that forces people to walk on wooden spike traps can be extremely effective, just a good way to disregard raids before you can get a quality killbox set up
Just make sure you have doors installed so that your pawns can get around without walking on the traps.
I always use wood traps in my hallways if I like in a forested area
Did a “incapable of violence” only run, it was necessary
@@kahlzun I had to figure that one out the hard way haha
If u have alot of stone available use that for the traps they do more dmg
What I learned from this video: „Who needs good weapons? Who needs turrets? You just need one Anita and a cloning facility and you are protected forever."
The Future is Female. And with a name like Anita, she is probably a Latina, so you are doubly dead!
@@stardaggerrihannsu2363 Extreme levels of cringe
17:30 I always try and remind myself that the heavy SMG is basically a bolter, which has the added bonus of making it feel like all my pawns are space marines
thats what I was thinking
SPESS MEHRENS
PURGE THE HERETIC!
Metal Bawkses!
I was thinking about that when I was putting in a bionic eye to a pawn that had his original eye ripped out
You forgot to mention the following, the killbox roofed to make darkness. Darkness will slow down even more enemies advance.
Replace sandbags with stone chuncks, these will slow down even more than a sand bag and at some point enemies are just crowded one near one and you can place a mine to cause a serious damage, they cannot run away fast and get damage of it.
You can also use roof traps or place cloth floors near killbox and set it on fire before enemies walks there they catch fire and won't advance or fire at you, instead run on chaos and all you have to do is killing them.
JaJe Never thought about using roofs as traps, interesting
Chunks provide good cover for them to shoot back
@@ryanthompson525 he's saying instead of sandbags use chunks. They can't use them as they can't stop on-top of them
@crgzero that's been patched, burnt floor gives 93% walk speed now
@@8b8b8b Balance a roof on a piece of very damaged wood. Place a mine behind the wood, where your enemies would go for cover. The mine blows, and the roof comes down on them too.
This was a masterclass in killbox. I had an idea of the basics but this just took it to a new level. Thanks, man!
Good luck, but be aware that Randy nearly always finds a way around your kill box eventually :)
@@FrancisJohnYT I agree with Ray K., Question for you though: You say Randy kicks off above 50 colonists & Cassandra above 16 (which seems counter intuitive to me), do you know how many Phoebe will put up with?
@@helphelpimbeingrepressed9347 According to the wiki it's 18 pawns.
rimworldwiki.com/wiki/AI_Storytellers
@@FrancisJohnYT Ah cheers, great vids btw
Melee with Shield Belts behind the barricades. Riflemen behind the wall segments. And chain shotguns peppered into the group makes short work of quite significant raids and allows for an adaptation of placement for Infestations without regearing people on the fly. I play on Royalty expansion now quite often, and the melee weapons there are quite insane. A nimble brawler with high melee and no other good qualities makes for a fantastic royal even if you cryosleep them frequently to keep demands down during stress spirals.
That "9 times out of 10 centipedes are gonna be what ends your colony" comment resonated so much with me, damn. It's actually the main reason I want to build a killbox, I wish there was an option of using a killbox only against mechanoids but raiders have the same pathfinding, so I feel human raids end up being very one-sided thanks to the killbox. But without a killbox those stupid scary marshmallows set my colony on fire and shoot the head off of all my colonists.
This is the most detailed video about killboxes that I watched. So you definitely deserve the single like I can give you, I'd give more if I used multiple accounts :D
I see you to have suffered under the scary marshmallows. It's the inferno cannons that cause me the most grief, pawns run around leaving cover and then lose their head to a heavy charge blaster. EMP grenades and excessive fire power are the only solution.
EMPS
Same, due to excessive amount of marshmallows my colony now suffers from diabetes. Hate those guys. My first annihilation was due to a quest to house a freaking BEAVER that is hunted down by mechanoids. I thought it is going to be easy but DAMN was i wrong. Those marshmallows just shredded my people. I almost saved it with only 1 colonist remaining but still failed. Before i deleted the run I used the last colonist to freaking slauter that beaver and cook it then eat it. You aint going nowhere you little turdshit. Anyways enough rambling more rimworld.
I remember my first mech invasion. I was so confused. My colonists had two knives and a shitty pistol.. and the centipede had a mini gun. Luckily, that doesn't happen anymore.
Shield belts and zunes hammers, go juice to close the gap
Just want to say you went really indepth into explaining the mechanics behind cover, which is something I can't say about other tutorials. You've given people watching this video the knowledge of designing their own defences instead of just copying an existing style without understanding why it works. Well done and keep it up!
Just started playing, got really overwhelmed, this helped a lot thanks
This game has a very very long if very slow learning curve. Enjoy the journey it's going to have a lot of up's and downs.
I can't recall if I've commented on this video or not, but a second time won't hurt if I have.
This video has been a life saver! Thank you eternally for making it. You have no idea how many times I've come back to this to reference what I'm doing next for my killbox. It makes planning things out so easy. Now if only I could figure out how to get my pawns' shooting skills up without wasting countless hours hunting every living thing on the map when they could be doing something more productive.
Have your pawn shoot some prisoners and patch them up
I don't know if it has changed but it used to be that you could just shoot walls and stuff and it would raise shooting skill
Tame animal + smoke launcher... GL!
Been sitting for a few days trying to find some nice guides on killboxes and then you just show up! God damn i love you man
I know how you feel, I went looking for ages ago and no one had anything that fit the bill. Have fun plotting the demise of your enemies.
@@FrancisJohnYT what mod are you using for the window in the corner
@@mikehunt3420 Mods are all listed in the description, that one is called Mini map. Makes dealing with raids take so much less time.
10:55 they are doing the "we made a mistake by attacking this colony" dance
In my opinion I think writhing is a more accurate description :)
@@FrancisJohnYT Potato, potato
this killbox is timeless , using it still in ideology , love it :) thank you for your amazing content
Wow, I didn't appreciate how well this video is done in terms of technical info and building the most effective killbox with the most effective cover until I watched another video I won't name that implied it may contain new info as of 2021.
This is very helpful, I’m playing on adventure story because I was working on a mountain base project, and it’s very late game, but still my entrance had a hallway leading into an expanse of 8 turrets and my colonists, but for some reason I couldn’t ever defend too well against attacks, this has helped me out tremendously, thank you very much, now I’m actually defending well
Over 500 hours in the game and I still learn new things. This video is awesome, thank you. I subscribed immediately
Killbox masterclass! Excellent work, 750 hours in and I still hadn't figured out why I had to keep moving people to get them to target the entrance. Thanks for improving my game.
One thing I can recommend to solve the whole lagg issue surrounding the spreading out of enemies due to their combat stance is to place an unpowered turret somewhere around the entrance of the killbox and surround it with doors. The enemies will still "see" the turret and will get engaged in combat stance, spreading them out before they enter the killbox.
Did not figure out that little tip for a while, I think I heard about it when I built a base on an active combat tile and had to deal with daily tribal raids. The Turrets behind doors saved our bacon hard.
13 Anitas, 16 shooting skill.
That's 208 Anita-shoots, a new standard unit to measure killbox potency.
Maybe I should not have used a stone cold terminator for testing, it was totally unfair. Still very enjoyable to watch.
@@FrancisJohnYT If you have small killbox, chain shotguns are the best. Cheap and super effective
One guy with 20 skill vs 20 with lvl 1, who will win?
@@DapiroStanislav now there's a test! I think the 20 pawns will win, because they still have more DPS, plus, they get 20 tries every round to kill 100% of the enemies, while the one pawn can only down 5% at a time.
I hope I said that in a clear way.
honestly, ty for your tutorials, combined with your playthroughs and its been a fun and informative ride.
I used to get a bit sad when you would spend all this time working something out in a game and you never really get to share it. The knowledge gets lost and other people get to repeat all your mistakes trying to figure out the same things.
I like the tutorials as it feels like your giving something back for all the helpful comments and suggestions people put in the comments. You should see my early Rimworld episodes, it's painful how bad I suck.
So comprehensive, if I had to recommend only one video on kill box design, it would be this one.
One trick that may help make your killboxe slightly more effective is to also use it to degrade tainted apparels and rotten corpses. Items that are laying on the ground slightly slow down pawns that climb them without providing any cover. By slowing down raiders, you can give tainted apparels and corpses a little bit of use as they degrade away.
Really great weapon comparison, I didn't know SMGs were so efficient
I did a bunch of testing before in the video before this one just so I could do the kill box right. I think the Heavy SMG needs a different name, for the name alone I assumed the LMG was far superior.
Came to UA-cam looking for an answer on how to survive larger raids. Job done, thank you sir
for the first 5 minutes I thought this was some weird Oxygen Not Included gamemode, didn't realize Francis did other games.
I don't even play rimworld, but i watched this all the way through. i love your voice, cadence, detail, explanations, all of it. You make great content.
Huh, who would’ve thought the heavy SMG is the best for the most part of early and mid game
Well it depends. I for example don't build a killbox in the early game, just a belt of rocks has to do it, and then the short range of the smg can be a pain. Even early midgame you probably can't craft the smg and have a mixed bag of weapons with different ranges. Maximizing your dps can be nearly impossible in a killbox with that. So it has a fairly limited time to truly shine, from the time you can craft it, until it gets replaced by the charge rifle. And only if you decide to build your killbox based around its range.
If you plan your kill box for the SMG, the kill box will still work for whatever smattering of weapons you end up with. Also I don't know about you but I find Charge rifles to be crazy expensive, they are amazing and my preferred weapon, but mass production is a problem until the very later game.
Yeah they are quite expensive and i may underestimate the amount of time you can get good use out of the SMG, since i'm spoiled by mods. That aside tho, the short range is still a big minus outside of the killbox. I may put a bunch on shelfs near the box but for everyday duty i find it too unflexible to be called best
@@nait5340 Great points on weaponry outside the killbox, but this is a vid about killboxes and 'best' is in regards to this specific topic.
cheers.
Francis John btw, I love the style of your videos, somewhat fast talking, explaining your moves and a lot attention to detail! The pace of your videos are very engaging
One thing to consider before passing up on the assault rifle is with more range comes less enemies that can shoot at you! Enemies with weapons with less range will have to run through your killbox to get to you which you can have lined with traps or obstacles to slow them down. I'm a big fan of the "Kill trench" where I use sniper rifles, charge lances and ARs on my pawns under the support fire of a half dozen or so uranium slug turrets!
I cannot appreciate this enough. You not only went over why, but how, when, where, left, right, up and even down. The tips about what guns to use, how to use them and how to do the research was crucial for me as a noob. Subscribed and moving on to "How to manage infestations". Thanks for your content.
Ditto
These guides are great. Going through the whole series. Thank you!
This guide is amazing - 500 hours in Rimworld and I learned so much. Criminally undersubscribed channel - going to go and watch all your other Rimworld videos. Hope you keep making content like this.
I often like to build killboxes around lakes. This forces enemies to walk in shallow water or mud to go around deep water.
As a bonus missed bullets from your side are not hitting same area all the time so there is less need for plasteel walls.
But sometimes they simply stop looking for cover, stop and shoot.
I also like to reconnect damaged turrets to dead power to limit loses.
And it's good idea to have strong anti-melee option, for example fall back position with one door that is left open and plasteel walls next to it ;)
Great job. Ive been doing single pawn runs for a while now (hardest vanilla), so I only use kill boxes designed for melee (so op). But I love your technical videos!
Can you elaborate on what you mean by kill boxes designed for melee?
@@coops3600 it's hard to describe but I'll try. Make a maze with a single gap to make the pawns funnel in single file. Think like a long "c" at the bottom of the c make a 2 down 1 over 2 down path with 2 sandbags at the opening. Only 1 sandbag should be in the path the other should poke out. Place a turret on one side of the sandbag and your pawn gos on the other. Sheildbelt and plasma swords/zeushammers are a must. The turret keeps the pawns from hiding behind walls and shooting you to much (just move your pawn so they dont have a clear shot) they will rush in, move your pawn back over, rince and repeat. Vertigo pulse and berserk pulse make it far easier as well
Great video. I would love a video giving some tips to base layout in the event of drop pods. You would be someone I trust to give good advice :)
Cheers
Alternativ title: Thats why SMG is the best weapon
The fact that these tutorials still works after 2 years
Fantastic tutorial... I spent so many time and resources deploying traps and it just don't worth it as much as a nice killbox setup like that! Thanks!
I look at the organic bases people build and I just can't understand how they do it. It must take forever for them to decide where everything goes. I would just end up building things in the wrong place, give up and restart.
SMGs typically are kitted out with large caliber bullets for close range stopping power (sometimes even with hollowpoints). So it makes sense that they do more damage per round, but are less accurate at range. ARs have smaller caliber but higher grain rounds with superior rifling for long range accuracy and penetration.
9mm is not a large caliber...
@@jessecapra2350 They're not large rounds, but they're wider diameter than rifle rounds (mostly). Look at the diameter of a 9mm and a .45 ACP (11.43mm) round compared to a 5.56 round, for instance. 5.56 is only a 5.7 mm diameter round which leads to higher penetration due to the smaller surface area of contact. The stubbier 9mm and .45 rounds lend to better stopping power due to increased diameter and surface area (also a smaller gunpowder load).
@@thetylersherman sure they're larger than one but they're not big by any means. They're scarcely larger than 7.62×39 in diameter. 45 is sure. But PCCs using 9mm is FAR more common.
@@jessecapra2350 In the context of this video, I believe he's discussing the heavy SMG which I believe is a UMP chambered in .45. 7.62 are pretty big rounds, too.
Its a video game, so its about balance and damage roles as much as anything. Outside killboxes SMG pawns have trouble closing to range with enemies with ARs or any of the longer ranged weapons without taking damage first. Sniper rifles will straight up instadown your pawns sometimes. This killbox sets the engagement range to make SMGs viable, outside the killbox SMGs a just 'good' all around.
For REAL WORLD damage comparisons there is an entire YT rabbit hole for that, but the tl;dr of it is basic AR calibers do WAY more damage than a pistol caliber round even with expanding bullets. (search hydrostatic shock)
Great video as always Francis, thank you for putting in the time to do the testing and thoroughly explaining yourself.
a couple more video ideas: Sappers and sapper mechanics, Assaulting a pirate base, defense progression through early game, and some stuff about initial pawn/starring area selection and early game skill priorities/recruitment.
I think a lot of content creators downplay the power of having nearby trading partners and a good road system and instead focus on mountain v flatland and year-round growing; I've already learned a lot from your Nomadic tribal play-though and didn't realize how strong it was.
Oh, and I forgot, you could do a guide describing your 15 x 15 grid. It would let you do some reflection about if it worked out the way your were hoping for and/or how you could improve upon it. :D
I'm still trying to figure out how to deal with sappers reliable, currently I just figure out where they likely to attack on the map I'm on and then just have defences ready there. I think a quick talk on the grid design is in order as well, I might modify it slightly but by and large I found it very useful, made expansion orderly.
@@FrancisJohnYT Hi, just wanted to share that sappers seem to love bedrooms, meaning you can have "trap" bedrooms to guide sappers away from the main raid, tis quite random though. A more considtent method is to not use any sentry on the killbox so they path into it, but its quite power hungry due to the amount of sentries needed to cover the rest of the base. Hope it helps.
If I remember correctly, sappers has a different internal pathing than most raiders, viewing single walls as nearly non existent and dogs right through. Early methods of dealing with sappers was to have a base filled with depowered sentries, since the sappers couldn't tell the difference between powered and depowered. Don't know if this is still a viable solution for 1.1, but it did work in 1.0.
Edit: there was also an older method of just thickening the walls to like 4+ layers, but I believe that strategy was countered in 1.0.
@@FrancisJohnYT again, working with old information, but I remember there was a setting in sandbox mode that showed "Avoid grid" or something that sappers used to path into the base. I remember an old video where unpowered turrets could be used to prevent sappers from digging through walls within their LOS; based on how the game calculated "avoided areas". no idea if its been patched out though.
Edit: wow I didn't see the other 2 replies that basically said the same thing. my apologies for being redundant. UA-cam's notification reply box could use some work.
Legendary tutorial, best I've seen so far
Great info about killboxes. A killbox is very important for many reasons as it was covered in the video.
On top of all that was covered in the video, one more aspect that is important. Is that before you have any armour, or good armour, available you need the cover just so your pawns don't get too many injuries or killed during the fights/raids. Since armour isn't something that you get that early (depends on difficulty and luck ofc) you need as much cover as you can get so your pawns don't get injured, or worse, killed. Since for some reason cloth or leather isn't good as armour... :P
Yeah, a stray headshot early on with even a weak weapon and your best doctor can end up a vegetable.
I wana mention, placement of where your gonna box matters depending on your map layout. Having a small pond behind your firing line (or river) can actually help significantly versus fire effect. (Albiet a colonist who uses the river to stop BEING ON FIRE still gets a negative moodlet "I am soaking wet Q.Q"
Having a slick of mud at the entrance of your killbox can be quite helpful too as it slows better than dirt/stone.
Burned wooden floor is excellent for kill boxes. -50% moving.
End game kill boxes should have lots of art around them for +15 mood.
I burn inspirations on chain shotguns. The range is short, but they're the best weapon for any non-killbox fight.
Burned wooden floor is now 95% MS
LMG, and it's upgrade minigun, scales with the size of battle. The bigger the battle the better it is. With a killbox that funnels enemies in 1 by 1 though it's not that good.
Really great video! Thank you. Gonna try my first kill box now!
dont underestimate the incendiary launchers and molotovs having a raging fire at your kill box entrance can be very good against anything biological also in situations where you cant make a sandbag snake to space enemy's out like in infestations or sappers that dont get shelled in time. also having 3 melee blockers in a door way backed with good short range weapons very handy in those unprepared fights. - oh he hase a vid on some of those strategies too nice!
... but it burns the loot and the sweet human meat & leather. :(
Fantastic video.
Thank you for all the contribution!
Lemme add another tip for killbox (sorry if someone else added really have no time to read 603 comments at the moment):
-Add roof on top of your cover area (granite wall + sandbag defences), and illimunate the area where the raiders come in if possible. This provides your pawns to shoot them accurately since its illimunated where they shoot at and your pawns will get shot less likely since you have a roof on top which provides darkness for your pawns.
And yeah raider shoot chances will be dropped if the target is in the dark.
Aaand good luck everyone...
Light and dark no longer affect shot chances, they patched that out. Later in the game I put light and a roof around my pawns area to improve mood and protect from rain/fallout. Also put in several statues to improve mood further.
@@FrancisJohnYT oh i didnt know that honestly. Good to know. Thanks for clearing it out :thumbsup:
Gread video, learning a few things to try on my setup. As for the SMG vs AR damage thing, it somewhat makes sense. Within their range, larger caliber smgs like the UMP pack quite a punch. .45ACP is a shorter range round, but hits like a truck, esp. with special ammo. AR ammo like 5.56 or 5.45 is a compromise. It's meant to be controllable on full auto, at longer ranges, so it relies on a fast, light round. It trades a lot of stopping power for lower recoil and longer range. If you look at the history of the m16/m4, and the complaints about it, one of them has always been poor stopping power vs other calibers.
That is true, but only for unarmored targets. When modern combat-grade armor enters the scene, most SMGs drastically drop in effectiveness, since pistol rounds can't really penetrate modern soldier's armor. Especially low velocity.45 caliber. Intermediate cartridges that AR fires, however, still going to hurt and have some stopping power against armor.
holy shit, I can tell that you've played this game for a long time... Amazingly comprehensive tutorial!
Excellent work! I read recently that EMP grenades also deactivate shield belts but have yet to see that in action.
Can confirm it drains shield belts instantly, but depending on stage of the game and the size of the raid I usually just get away with straight up shooting the shields down. Shields take double damage so half the HP for actually destruction purposes.
@@FrancisJohnYT Double damage? Huh.
Didn't know that.
Finally a video going very in detail about kill boxes
For those of you out there who dont want to do killboxes, but want as close to vanilla experience as possible I reccomend one of the many barb wire mods. Some just slow pawns, some damage, and some provide minimal cover; it all varies, but helps to avoid getting stuck doing a killbox
4th time coming back here and I just like to say that I like to add breaks in the barricade/wall pattern where my pawns can be out of sight. Helps a lot in early when centipedes take forever to kill. You can draw them closer or force their charge blasters on an early cooldown by hiding.
Some things probably changed in new versions, but the basics are pretty sure the same. Thank you, I'll modify my killbox using these guide. I also used fences on the open ground to slow down enemies, not sure though if they provide any cover, need to check it.
It still works in the new versions. Generally I don't use fences in the open ground area of the killbox. They provide cover for enemies.
Dude amazing video, seriously. Great job explaining everything!
This is a 2 year old video. I’m not 100% how much the game has changed since then. I’m very new to this game just got it today. I can’t wait to build a killbox.
It has changed a fair bit since then but killboxes still have a place. The big game changer was mechanoids getting siege units so they could smash through walls, so when they show up you can't use a killbox on them. But a good killbox will still sort out a lot of raids.
This was very informative and concise concidering the amount if info provided.
Some tips for overall defence: It's good to have strong melee fighters (at least 3) to block doors in 3-wide corridors, with 6 shooters behind them. This way you can defend yourself when then use drop pods or break through your defences. Also don't make the killbox too big, remember that Cassandra and Phoebe has cap at 18 colonists, Randy 50 - above it they will everything to thing up the numbers.
Big fan of 3 tile wide corridors melee blockers and grenades :) I did a video on how to kill bugs using that very trick.
As for going to high in numbers I went up to 25 with Cassandra and it made almost no difference. She may get tougher but with so many extra pawns I did not notice. I'm going to try going to 100 with Randy and see how he reacts.
Brilliant video mate, very helpful.
Love your layout, this is so functional
I refuse to play without the industrial rollers mod anymore . Got a pulling zone that covers the whole kill box and pulls all dead bodies and loot as they die haha
Thank you for the save file i use blueprints to save your killboxes and just made adjustments when needed.
I like to put in turrets, blocked off by walls such that they can only shoot (and be shot by) invaders close to the sandbag line.
This is because turrets are expensive and I hate when they are taken out by rocket launchers etc.
I was surprised when there was no statement either for or against such a tactic.
I've been watching your oxygen not included lets plays and next thing you know im looking up kill box ideas on rimworld and am excited to see a man managing a baby base making us a good kill box design
Great tutorial!
I only wish you'd also included some tips on how to structure your base so enemies will reliably find their way into your killbox. Perhaps you could do a tutorial on base layout someday?
Just wall in all your base and the kill box is the only way to enter your base so the enemies have a clear path to your base (u can still use door for multiple entrance).. Any enemies that is not a sapper will go to your kill box..
This is the best killbox tutorial ive seen
Wow it's almost as if the term "heavy" before SMG denotes that it's heavier than typical SMGs.
I agree though, the terms in game are more describing the actual gun rather than their effectiveness.
Thank you! I appreciate the good tips!
The crematorium right next to the killbox is... efficient thinking...
Efficient is a corpse freezer with your pawns excluded but your carnivores and hauler animals allowed. Dont even need to burn the tainted clothes, the bears take care of it all.
for pictures of the killbox anyone using windows can just hit windows+shift+s and you can snip by dragging and dropping what you want as an image
Thanks for the nugget Francis.
cheers mate.
HAHA I stopped playing Oxygen not included and used to watch your videos. Then I started Rimworld, searched for a guide, and my fav. UA-camr in this section is here again HAHA. Great
Have only done a few, but have plans to add a bunch more. Have learned so much in my last couple of playthroughs.
Damn Rimworld is serious business
I think I logged 900 hours before I beat it on the hardest setting.
Amazing tutorial. Thanks!
I dont speak english but i understand perfectly what you saying thanks you ^^
having 3 colonists with heavy armor, high melee, shield belts, and good bonk weapons kill mechanoids well enough, especially if you also have 3 colonists with high shooting and chain shotguns behind them.
You just line them up at a blind corner covered by bags and the mechanoids are forced around the corner into the dps of everyone at once. Bonus points if a 7th colonist is chucking EMP grenades at the wall corner from behind them constantly.
Works for organic enemies, but tbh i prefer the oven killbox trap because of how hands off it is.
Fantastic video you explaned everything very well thank you so much!
FWIW an SMG is like a Thompson SMG, AKA "Tommy gun" that you see in old gangster movies. Those are using .45 caliber rounds.
Whereas an assault rifle like the M-16 uses 5.56mm ammo, which is .223 caliber, or about half the diameter of those .45s. An assault rifle like the AK-47 uses 7.62mm rounds, which is a pretty big round, but still much smaller than a .45.
Long story short: the SMG/AR in the game is roughly equivalent to real life in relative stopping power/range. ARs are preferred as main battle rifles because of their accuracy at mid range.
A true LMG would still be running AR sized rounds, but putting them out at a MUCH higher rate than an AR, typically requiring a belt for ammo, and either a liquid cooled barrel, or an air-cooled barrel which can be easily swapped in battle.
Here I am using three cruise missile which practically erase even their bodies within seconds.
Anita is a fcking beast, sanquine and steadfast on a gunner, she will never break during a firefight
For those of you who whine about killboxes being exploitative of AI pathfinding, guess what?! We've been making killboxes in real-life for millennia!
After all, castles were more than just walls with crenellations that provide cover to archers and gunners on top of the walls. (Speaking of, I'd call the design of having wall pillars and sandbags that help to provide lots of cover for shooters, as featured in Francis John's killbox designs, as essentially crenellations.) In fact, we have at least 2 real-life equivalents to the concept of a killbox: Murder Holes, which were typically located within castle gatehouses, and were designed to allow defenders to pour hot oil, stones, or other ranged weapons onto whatever attackers managed to break through the outer gates, and Corridors of Death (also known as a Zwinger), which were designed to allow defenders within the walls that lined both sides of a narrow corridor to rain death onto any attackers within.
For someone who likes Killboxes, your very defensive........... I could not resist.
@@FrancisJohnYT Sorry. It's just the castle nerd in me speaking out loud. (BTW, I'm subscribed to a medieval-oriented UA-camr called Shadiversity, whom has covered plenty of medieval concepts, including castle design.)
@@ShadowWolfTJC MACHICOLATIONS!!!!! (I don't remember spelling of this word)
The problem with this comparison is that there are copious effective counter strategies to real-life killboxes, which is why people always have to scrabble around a bit for obscure historical precedent when they make this defense. in rimworld, the AI is so bad that killboxes aren’t just a strategy they’re *the* strategy. Essentially the only effective defensive strategy at high levels of play. Which is a little boring. fortunately there are mods to fix this.
@@rwulf There are sappers, there are drop pod raids, there are sieges and there are solar flares (turrets go on a nap). So killbox is not the whole strategy, but only part of defense.
But I see your point, AI has it's limitations, can be cheesed and it's unable to counter your exploits like human may do.
I sometimes use a "no man's land" around my base with choke points blocked up by melee pawns.
I dont personally like killboxes, but if you're inexperienced I would suggest learning how to fight without them, because you cant bring a killbox when you raid another settlement, and successful raids can be very rewarding.
My preferred method is to buy consumables like animal pulsers and berserk lances.
Also, a high level psycaster, I have never seen an ai pawn use a psycast outside of rimworld of magic, so no matter what you have a distinct advantage.
That said, a newer play wouldn't even survive most mid game raids without a killbox of some sort
Don't forget the stairway to heaven killbox part.
I found putting chairs directly behind the granite walls to be useful.
@@capofantasma97 I suspect so your pawns can sit while shooting, which increases comfort, which is good for their mood. Lazy buggers.
As a rimworld noob I was very shocked to see the number of colonists you have
The more colonist the better, so long as your computer can handle it.
I've beaten the game in every biome but ice cap on Merciless/Losing is Fun without any kill boxes at all. I prefer interlocking bunkers with double doors shooting at double thick walls. A well placed EMP grenadier is key as well.
Any thoughts on this? For my killbox cover instead of alternating wall,barrier,wall I do wall, wall, barrier, wall ,wall, barrier, etc. 3 people can shoot through one opening, two shooting around the wall and one guy with just the barrier as cover (although I just put the pawns behind the wall and leave the barrier part open for melee if needed.)
Using this at the 15:52 arrangement your 13 block wall has 8 openings (counting the outside pieces) for 13 shooters. You can cut this down to just 4 openings with 12 shooters (outside pieces covered), or 5 openings with 15 shooters with 2 walls between each opening.
Fun fact: I like to build my killboxes on top of a ford in a river. This way the enemy is slowed to 30% speed even when inside the killzone, and there is no need for cleaning all the blood as the river bathes them clean, ready for the skin extraction factory....
But how do you prevent enemies from entering from the side, over the water? Wooden walls on bridges? If yes, don't they get accidentally destroyed too easily, opening the killbox?
@@crow1crow1crow You can make the killbox pretty wide so the side walls are far from attacks. Unless there are sappers those walls will stay up the whole game.
@@crow1crow1crow Its not really that much of a problem. The enemies usually take the fastest route, so they go over and then over again.
Also I use a mod that has walls with firing ports, so I can fire at them from there too, but unmodded can use turrets. You will lose several, but it helps to separate the shooters from the melee and give my colonists more time to deal with each.
So its not even a physical box, just a firing area. The 30% compensates nicely the lack of one entrance point, but right kind of ford does the same thing anyway.
If you put a barricade in front of the grenadier door it makes it a bit safer :D
Turrets along the sides CAN be effective, but I got into a situation just now where I had a caravan out, so I only had 8 pawns to man a box similar to this one. I had them toward the middle, which mean that when the 20+ scythers I got hit with went after the turrets, it took them out of the targeting zone of most of my pawns in the center. I had to scramble to try to get some pawns out to the edges, but by then the scythers were up close. Luckily I had no deaths, but I was within seconds of losing two pawns, ended up with 5/6 of the others pretty messed up as well. Might have made it through with no injuries at all if the mechs had stayed in the optimal kill zone. So if you are going to do turrets, make sure that you have enough pawn firepower on the edges.
I'd stay with a smaller kill box and expand it as you hire more pawns. I'm having similar issues with my current kill box but it is a very very close range one.
@@FrancisJohnYT I actually moved the turrets out into the open, in the center. I've got four right now out in the center of the box, spaced far enough that they won't damage each other if they blow up. So far they have been untouched except when I did a test with the Psychic Animal Pulser when I had a herd of 7 Thrumbos and 12+ Boomalopes. Ended up with 3/13 pawns reasonably mangled, which I don't think is too bad.
I made good experience with a much longer killbox and sniper rifles and wooden spike traps all the way through the entrance with the sandbags as well as in the killbox itself. Half of the raiders will be killed by the traps or at least wounded (what lowers the hit chance) and the rest will be killed on a long range with the sniper rifles.
The tutorial was more for making a killbox to stop centipedes as they are they biggest killer of late game bases. At the same time it can take care of anything else that shows up as a nice side effect.
Heeyyyy Francis, thanks for all the video game science. I used to ignore the heavy smg. I thought they suck because they're cheap. Have a good day.
I was also of the same opinion until I tested them. Wonder if they will nerf them if they become popular.
SMGs are killbox gun, way less useful in normal gunfight end easly outranged by other guns
"Useless because it's cheap" and "good because it's expensive" are dangerous attitudes
You wanna get away from these as quickly as possible
holy shit im just partway through the tribal start and when he said dogsbody i nearly lost it
i cant wait to see how they grow into this hahaha
The most important part youve left out is to never put bunched up pawns behind barricades. Barricades offer no protection against missed bullets, which will contribute the majority of hits is this setup
"Oh, and a deer wandered in here as well"
[Pictured: gazelle]
I hope you start another play through soon Francis
love the tactics discussion
but a little (off topic) hint from reality .. do NOT stand close to walls to take cover, walls lead bullets so only if it's direct cover and the wall is between you and the shooter, it may helps if it's well angled it's a death machine
Mods have me coverd thank you
Each to their own, the joy of Rimworld is you can mod it to suit your style of play. I have a tendency to prefer vanilla games and when it comes to dealing with 60 centipedes I could not conceive of any other solutions just yet.