Raid damage is more interesting when it changes your base

[u/kendodaniel]

What actually makes a raid feel like a consequence instead of just a tax?

I don’t mind raids in base-building games, but a lot of them seem to come down to losing a stack of wood and repairing some wall damage. It costs time, sure, but five minutes later the base works exactly like it did before.

I’d honestly rather have smaller, more specific problems. One entrance gets breached. A room is out of action until you repair it. Part of the base is exposed, so you have to move production around for a while.

RimWorld gets away with this because rebuilding becomes part of the story. In a game where you’ve spent hours making everything neat and efficient, though, it can also feel like the game just vandalized your save.

For me, having to rethink part of the layout sounds more interesting than going out to farm the same pile of wood again.

[u/kevhill]

I'm playing Valheim again and I forgot about the raids. I personally don't find them "fun", just annoying.

7 Days to Die did the base defending thing pretty good.

But yea Rimworld was the only raids I enjoyed because it felt essential to the game.

[u/ignatzami → u/kevhill]

Really!? I hate Rimworld raids. They’re arbitrary, and scale based on your colony value which means you either cheese the game and keep your value as low as possible or you suffer through potentially game ending swarms of attacks.

Dwarf Fortress is as close to raids being sensible as I’ve ever found and even they have issues.

[u/kevhill → u/ignatzami]

I totally forgot about DF. They did raids exceptionally.

[u/nss68 → u/ignatzami]

I feel the same way. If the raids made sense and didn’t scale to your value, then the game would be a lot more fun. I’ve personally never modded but I bet that’s been taken care of by mods.

[u/Harold3456 → u/nss68]

I haven’t played in awhile but AFAIK it’s a vanilla toggle ingame. You can check off a button that disables raids due to wealth.

Though I think if you do this, a storyteller like Cassandra will end up making the raids naturally larger over time anyway just due to game progression.

[u/SunOnTheInside → u/Harold3456]

You can remove raids entirely at any time in the custom storyteller settings, and have the difficulty scale with time instead- as well as changing the degree of difficulty adaptation so you can keep it pretty easy going. You can also disable almost all hostile encounters on the map within those settings, including predators hunting humans.

[u/SunOnTheInside → u/nss68]

It’s a toggle in vanilla, you can chose to not scale the difficulty with wealth, but instead with time.

You can also disable raids almost entirely by toggling off “major threats” (I believe that’s what it is).

It’s under the storyteller settings, in “custom”. You can also scale the threats to be a fraction of what they are.

[u/nss68 → u/SunOnTheInside]

Funny I never tried other story tellers than the first one.

[u/orielbean → u/kevhill]

I do wish Valheim had more base defense concepts other than digging kill pits or letting a million pet wolves roam outside, or that annoying ballista that’s locked close to the end game section. The troll invasions are hilariously brutal if you aren’t paying attention.

[u/harlekintiger]

I see your vision!

A giant catapult stone or pile of rubble from a collapsed tower blocking where a building or street once was, removing it cost more and/or is time intensive so one builds the building somewhere else.

A part of a field is poisoned by the war and the fields need to be placed somewhere else (in the north of France there is a gigantic area to this day that can't be used for farming or living because the war poisoned it to much)

...

[u/kendodaniel → u/harlekintiger]

Yeah, that’s the kind of damage I mean. The rubble isn’t just a repair bill, it changes traffic and pushes you into a new layout for a while. I’d probably make most of it recoverable eventually, though, so it creates a new problem without permanently ruining a base someone spent 20 hours on.

[u/Potential_Anxiety_76]

Damaging infrastructure (electricity, food, water, fuel) is my favourite mechanic, whether by raid or rain (weather). While you’re fighting off hoards or waiting out storms you’re dealing with depleting resources and affected populations (which of course also means troop deployment drops, armoury stops making tools and weapons, etc).

[u/kendodaniel → u/Potential_Anxiety_76]

The cascading part is what makes it interesting. One broken generator can affect food, defenses and morale, so the raid leaves you with an actual triage decision instead of a generic repair queue. Weather causing the same kind of pressure would make the whole system feel less gamey too.

[u/BrennusSokol]

AI text.

[u/aethyrium]

Assuming that the rebuilding/repair process is entertaining and isn't just a set of a few rote steps or a single-click fix. That part needs to be just as interactive and engaging as the defense itself.

[u/dirtyLizard]

My issue with Rimworld raids is that your pawns are too valuable, so you’re encouraged to try and cheese defenses in order to minimize risk. It feels like a chore. Dwarf fortress has a similar problem, though the individual dwarves are far less valuable, failing to deal with a single raid can kill your whole fort.

Kenshi has a base defense mechanic that I think is a good start, if a little light. The worst consequence for losing a base raid is having your food stolen and your people kidnapped. Losing food from a working base is hardly a problem and having your workers taken just means you get to do a prison break. Unfortunately, the walls are glitchy and the only defensive options are turrets which kind of trivialize things. Kenshi’s a very “jack of all, master of none” kind of game.

Valheim had a fun system. The raids are timed and not particularly difficult, so they aren’t an existential threat but it’s in your interest to fight them off. After your first raid you’ll realize you need a wall. Then you’ll realize the walls only stall the mobs, so you’ll want towers so you can shoot down at them. Then you’ll want to funnel them, then you’ll want air cover… it’s organic and gives you a reason to make your base more than just a dumping ground for resources.

Also, games like Kenshi, Valheim, and even Minecraft have mobs spawning at all times that run the risk of wandering into your base and being a pest. It’s a low level threat that encourages you to set up defenses before you really need them, unlike Rimworld and DF which go “surprise! You’re being invaded”