ALPHA 48C Military Post: Stochasic Goblins

I'm just going to speculate that the post-bandit-upgrade strategy would still be to play relatively nice with them and rely on everyone else to kill them.

As long as the traders, nations and I guess fishpeople play "by the rules", you can watch the bandits get owned from afar. Just that now you really need to get those guns before RNG sends 6 heavily armed bandits your way.

 

But I like murdering bandits

 

You can always nuke them from orbit. Though I do wonder how effective people have seen the bombing run be?

Certainly I have had ones which hit 4 bandits, but then it's also possible for them to just get nothing, which is a bit saddening

 

version 48-C

Current Threat Analysis: BFI
Which is of course the Bandit-Fishpeople-Invasions triad.


Bandits
Bandits arrive randomly but are persistent (stay on map).
Camps of bandits arrive, set up camp (sometimes multiple camps are near or on top of one another) and generally just patrol around their camp.

Currently, if bandits are Hostile, they will shoot on sight.
If they are Neutral or Friendly, they will not shoot on sight, provided you have not aggroed them before (ie: mainly via the Bombing Run).

When the first bandit camp arrives, you will get the opportunity to make a "deal" with them (ie: let them plunder you a bit in return for not shooting you). However, each time a bandit attack or invasion is triggered (these occur randomly, though the bandit invasions need at least 4 bandit groups) there will be a popup giving you the option to decide between "get plundered" or "fight".
If the bandits are hostile and you decide to give in (at any point), then their overall faction will become Neutral (so they will generally not shoot you).


Threat rating: Low
In general, you get to decide if you want to be shot at by bandits or not. If you want to fight when you're outclassed, that's up to you ^__^

If you want to fight, remember that bandits usually use either Pistols/Blunderbuss (range: 10) or the Jazeil Rifle (range: 18). So muskets (range:15) or carbines (range: 14) are recommended. When you can get your hands on their rifles, it is very useful, make sure you put a rifle on your NCO first!


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Fishpeople
Fishpeople arrive randomly.

Some groups of fishpeople are persistent (stay on map). And I think they wander about the map.
Some groups of fishpeople leave the map as part of their "mission". They may or may not ever even approach your colony.

Currently, you cannot be Friendly with fishpeople, when you meet them your options are "shoot on sight" or "not shoot on sight".
Furthermore, it seems that if your colonists decide to harass fishpeople (sometimes you have no control over this) and the fishpeople aggro, it is possible that all fishpeople will now be hostile to you. Fishpeople groups who are not raiders may or may not encounter your colony. However most of the active threat comes from raiders.

Fishpeople Raiders will randomly spawn with the mission to attack you. You can never avoid fighting them.


Threat rating: Medium (early) to Low (late)
The main threat from fishpeople are the raiders, if they hit you really early on they can be troublesome if you lack weapons. (You can hurry to weapons production, or use a loadout with starting weapons)

The fishpeople mostly use melee weapons (like Coral Clubs) and pistol-like weapons (Spine Guns), which mean even a few pistol-armed soldiers will do well against them. However, their Urchin Grenade (some fishpeople may carry one) can be dangerous, particularly if they manage to "NCO-snipe".


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Invasions
Invasions arrive randomly. There's another scenario where you will be shot by a hostile force (more below).

Currently, invasions spawn 4 or 5 squads, with each squad having a random size which is affected by the day# of the attack. Only hostile nations can invade you.

Threat rating: High (if it occurs) to Nil (turned off)
A large group of 20 hostile soldiers (mostly muskets, Stahlmark may have carbines) has a tendency to steamroll your colony if they are triggered. However, currently it is avoidable (unless you are unlucky and get hit on day 10 or something).

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Coincidental attacks occur because all nations (hostile as well) occasionally send a squad to shoot bandits. They are hostile to all bandits, fishpeople and may be hostile to you. It's possible for such a squad to pass by or through your colony. If they are hostile you will have to fight.

Theat rating: Low (fairly rare) to Nil (turned off)

Of the three foreign nations, one will be hostile at the game start. It takes 4 missions from the Foreign Office to make the hostile nation neutral.

However, random events can cause relations to fall (if relations are very high, then they might still be non-hostile after this event). So you will probably keep your diplomats working at it...

 

Thanks to the ability to remove specific lower-class workers from a workgroup, adjusting your squad's equipment is easier than ever (you will still need to retrain, and re-equipping the NCO still means turning them into a normal overseer).

• Click on the little icons to zoom to the different lower-class
• Find the one you want to change equips for
• Forbid their weapon
• Now, remove them from the group and just... well you can simply send them to farm
• Find some other lower-class and put them in the military squad

In order to get a lower-class to drop their weapon NO MATTER WHAT, just rally your group somewhere quiet and then Frontier Justice the one who won't hand over their gun.

I like the Musket (NCO) + pistols combo, as well as the Rifle (NCO) + whatever else

 

version 48-C

Intimidating Bandits

Intimidating bandits to not attack can be useful, it preserves your standing (so if they are neutral and you succeed, they will still be neutral) and it prevents a possibly annoying fight while protecting your resources.

In short, it's a reward for... redcoats. Apparently that's all, doesn't matter what they actually have....


So, in your scripts\events\bandits_plunder.go there's the following bits:

This is interesting.

• If your number of redcoat lower-class + NCOs is greater than attacking bandits they will not attack and not become hostile (if they were not hostile before).
• If you fail this, then the bandits will turn hostile and attack.

Thus, as bandit gangs should max out at 6 people, the critical number should be 7 redcoats+NCOs. One caveat is I'm not sure what's up with that state.intimidation timer. It might be that you aren't allowed to intimidate if the bandits try raiding you in close succession or something...

I do recommend taking small fights (so if 3 bandits are going to attack your 7 military). Why?

• Farming weapons (primarily rifles)
• You can just run one bandit mission to get them back to neutral again...
• Killing bandits is fun
• Taking out smaller groups means less bandit groups (critically, the "I've never seen it" bandit invasion requires at least 4 gangs)
• Taking out smaller groups means when foreign nations come to wipe out bandit camps, they will do the heavy work of killing or thinning out the bigger groups
• If you kill some bandits, but some escape, they are much less likely to be able to survive the fishpeople out in the wild...
• If there's some cooldown on intimidating, no use wasting it on 2 guys

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The thing is, if I'm going to have two barracks and NCOs, I'm likely to fill up their squads and thus have 10 soldiers. At this point, even a large gang of 6 isn't a major threat if you have set up a wall or something so there's only one way in.

The gang has to make it to you though any fishpeople, traders (especially if you have traders visiting... and your trade depot is placed at the entrance... and then face your gang of rifle/carbine/musket armed soldiers. It's basically suicide for them but if you choose to fight (not intimidate, just straight-up fight) then they will run into your guns and die.

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Story #1
I was once attacked by 1 bandit (vs my 10 guys) so I accepted the fight. The bandit never arrived, they probably ran into some fishpeople and died (I saw the message about a gang being wiped out) so... yeah.

I think I dropped some propaganda and got the other bandits to not shoot me, then went about my business.

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Story #2
Once the colonists got fed up of me being neutral with the bandits. I agreed to "take a hardline stance".

It turns out you can intimidate... even though I couldn't give in to the bandits due to the above event. So I intimidated successfully, and apparently that satisfied the colonists.

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Story #3

As the reputation-increasing bandit missions are so common, I've taken to constantly firebombing the bandits then dropping propaganda on the survivors, and so on... it's one way to make use of your diplomats I guess...

 

Hmm will add more details here, but damage bonuses are interesting, take the following:
Pistol: 5 damage
Rifle: 8 damage

The damage bonuses you can get are as follows:

• Shooter is brutish: +1
• Shooter is redcoat (lower-class): +1
• The nco skill level: (skill-1): so 0 to +4 at Expert
• Tech bonuses: +1 (military offense tech)

So if you carefully stacked it, you can get a lower-class rifleman to have 8+1+1+2+1=13 damage (for a Midding nco).

Now interestingly bandit has 10 heath per affliction, and dies when they get 3 afflictions.
Our own people also get 10 health per affliction and die when they get 3 afflictions. (The defence bonus reduces damage taken by 1, I think bandits don't get bonuses)


Seems there's boxes of say 10 health and if you take more than enough to finish off a box, it ignores the rest.

• So with a rifle, you need +2 bonus to minimize shooting: 3 shots to kill bandit.
• With a pistol, with no bonuses, it will take you 6 shots. BUT if you are able to obtain +5 bonus, then the pistol will only need 3 shots to kill (5+5=10 damage)

I think armored bandits have 20 health per affliction, and 3 afflictions but they take half damage from most things. So you need to pour in 40 damage for each bar...

Musket: 6 damage
Carbine: 6 damage

For invasion-defenders, it seems the foreigners have 10 heath, so a decent rifleman (8+2) should take 3 shots to kill them.
However, a carbine (which can fire repeatedly) would need a bonus of 4 to minimize the shots-to kill. So tech+redcoat+middling overseer works. (And if the overseer is using a rifle, they will take 3 shots to kill, perfect)

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If an enemy is using a pistol to shoot your soldiers, they normally take 6 shots (2 per bar, 3 afflictions). If you get the defense tech, this turns into 9 shots (3 per bar, 3 afflictions). But every other weapon will take 6 shots...

So the way it works, each of your carbiners can kill an enemy with 3 rapidfire shots, while the enemy must shoot 6 (or even 9) times to kill one. Youch, not bad at all.


FYI, fishpeople should have 8 health per box.

 

In addition to these, I've found that farming bandit tents is the most reliable way to get black powder and combat supplies. I'm not sure how important these things are in the game yet, but I haven't discovered the secret to getting a reliable sulfur supply.

 

Black power and combat supplies currently... don't do anything. You can use them in trading but soldiers never run out of ammo currently.

Sulfur, easiest way is to get from the traders. I don't think you can even make combat supplies anymore.

 

There's something interesting about the military training, it seems (have to check) that redcoating will...
1. Be modified by *0.85 with the tech
2. Is modified by 1/(skill level) of overseer.... so a Middling overseer will be 3x faster at training redcoats than an Inept.

However, for overseer to gain skill in Art of War it depends on the lower-class to do things, so the training tech helps a bit (faster training tech is only for redcoating, which needs X amount of pushups etc). Because the faster they finish their pushups, the faster nco can tell them to practice shooting, etc.


NCOs gain skills by "conducting military training" (when they order soldiers about). They need to do it this many times to level: {20,100,200,600}

It stands to reason they will level up faster with 4 soldiers under them, and not at all (I think) if they are by themselves.


It's a but amusing to constantly hear shooting. Thankfully the game's music cues you in that you're not under attack...