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Combat & Defense

By ScotPublished Updated Sources checked

Tactical Quick Answer

The storyteller scales raids to your colony wealth, so defense means controlling where the enemy attacks instead of defending everywhere. Enclose the colony in a double-thick granite wall with only one or two openings, then funnel raiders down a barricaded tunnel into a killbox courtyard covered by a firing line and flanking turrets. Keep internal choke points as well, because killboxes do nothing against drop-pod raids that land inside your base or sappers who mine through walls.

Peace is a temporary state in RimWorld. The storyteller calculates your colony's wealth and throws increasingly difficult raids, mechanoid clusters, and insect infestations at you. If your defenses fail, the colony dies.

Defensive Structures​

You cannot defend a sprawling, open base in the mid-to-late game. You need to control where the enemy attacks.

The Perimeter Wall​

Enclose your entire colony in a stone wall. Granite is the strongest of the planetside stones at 510 wall hit points, though plasteel at 840 and uranium at 750 both beat it if you can spare the material. Double-thickness helps only against the handful of threats that attack walls directly, and only if the two layers touch with no gap between them.

Leave one or two openings in the wall. Ordinary raiders do not merely prefer an open door, they cannot path through a wall at all, so a gap is the only route they will plan through. The exception is that if you seal the base completely and leave no path to anything, they stop looking for a door and start breaking whatever is nearest.

The Killbox​

The killbox is a structured entryway designed to strip the enemy of their numbers advantage.

  1. The Funnel: Create a winding tunnel leading into your base. Fill it with sandbags or barricades spaced one tile apart, because only entering a cover tile costs extra movement, so a continuous line slows nobody and the gaps are the entire trick. Bear in mind the cover works both ways and hands raiders 55% protection while they stand on it. Do not overdo the length either, since raiders who decide the trip is not worth it will go and attack something else instead.
  2. The Firing Line: At the end of the tunnel, open into a wide courtyard. Build a line of barricades for your pawns to stand behind.
  3. Turret Placement: Place automated turrets on the flanks with clear lines of sight, and wall them apart from each other and from your firing line, because a destroyed turret explodes. Solar flares and EMP shut every turret down at once, so never let them be your only answer.

When a raid triggers, draft your pawns, place them on the firing line, and let the enemy file into the killbox one by one.

warning

Killboxes do not work against drop-pod raids or sappers. Center-drop raiders really do land inside your base, punching through roofs to touch down near a random colonist, though tribals cannot use drop pods and mechanoids lost the ability in version 1.4. Sappers mine or blast a route of their own choosing and have been doing so since Alpha 11, long before killboxes were a settled idea. Breach raiders, added later in 1.3, target your built walls directly. Always keep internal choke points inside your base corridors to fight off all three.

Weapon Loadouts​

Equip your pawns based on their shooting and melee skills.

  • Low Shooting Skill (1-5): Give them chain shotguns, heavy SMGs, or miniguns, though not for the reason usually given. RimWorld has no suppression mechanic of any kind, and the minigun's forced miss radius was removed back in Beta 19. What actually carries a poor shooter is close-range accuracy: a heavy SMG hits 85% at touch range and 65% at short. Its burst of 3 is no bigger than an assault rifle's. The minigun earns its slot through a 25-shot burst whose strays can catch other enemies nearby.
  • High Shooting Skill (10+): Give them sniper rifles, assault rifles, or charge lances. Be careful with the plan of outranging rocket carriers, though. A rocket launcher reaches 36 tiles and only the sniper rifle, at 44.9, beats it. A charge lance at 32.9 and an assault rifle at 30.9 both have to work inside rocket range. The enemies carrying those launchers are Heavy mercenaries.
  • Melee Pawns: Arm them with plasteel longswords or uranium maces and use them to block doorways and intercept anyone who breaches the firing line. Shield belts do block bullets and explosions, but read the fine print before handing them out: a pawn wearing one cannot fire any ranged weapon at all, thrown grenades included, and the belt does nothing against melee or fire. A single EMP hit drops it instantly, and it takes roughly a minute to restart at a fraction of its charge.

Managing Threats​

Different enemies require different tactics.

Human Raiders​

Each raid group rolls its own break point somewhere between 40% and 70% casualties, so two identical-looking raids give up at different moments. They have three other exits as well: a timeout after ten to fifteen hours on your map, a threshold of damage dealt to your colony, and simply grabbing what they came for and leaving. Focus fire on enemies carrying doomsday rocket launchers or triple rocket launchers immediately. A single rocket can wipe your entire firing line.

Mechanoids​

Mechanoids do not feel pain, do not flee, and are vulnerable to EMP in a way nothing organic is. Heavy armor is true of the big ones and not all of them: a centipede carries 72% sharp, while a Biotech militor carries 20%.

  • Scythers: Deadly in melee, with four cutting attacks on a fast cooldown. The armor you want is marine armor, or cataphract armor if you own Royalty. There is no item called "heavy marine armor". A dedicated melee fighter in good armor is the right answer to a scyther, because the alternative is letting it reach your gunners.
  • Centipedes: Massive tanks carrying 72% sharp armor against only 22% blunt, and that gap is the whole fight. Hit them with blunt weapons, and that is why a uranium mace beats a plasteel longsword here. It is not that maces pierce armor, since a mace head actually has lower armor penetration than a sword blade. It is that almost nothing in the game armors well against blunt. EMP stuns them for around 25 seconds, but only once in a row: a stunned mechanoid becomes adapted and shrugs off further EMP for a while afterward.

Insect Infestations​

Insects spawn under overhead mountain roof, and not at random. The spot has to be thick-roofed, bigger than a single tile, within about 30 tiles of something you built, and warmer than roughly -17°C, with the game favoring dark cells far from open sky. Two variants skip the roof requirement entirely: the ones you trigger by deep drilling, and the wastepack infestations Biotech adds. They multiply quickly and destroy base infrastructure.

  • Choke Points: Do not fight them in the open. Fall back to a single-tile doorway. Put three heavily armored melee pawns immediately behind the door, and stack your shotgunners behind them. The insects have to fight your three melee pawns one at a time.

Frequently Asked Questions​

How do I build a killbox in RimWorld?

Dig a long winding tunnel into your base and fill it with sandbags or barricades spaced one tile apart to slow enemies down. Open the far end into a wide courtyard with a barricade firing line for your drafted pawns and automated turrets on the flanks with clear lines of sight.

Do killboxes work against every raid?

No. Drop-pod raids land directly inside your base and sappers mine through your walls, so both skip the killbox entirely. Keep internal choke points in your base corridors to handle them.

What weapons should low shooting skill pawns use?

Chain shotguns and heavy SMGs, for their close-range accuracy and not for burst size. A heavy SMG hits 85 percent at touch range and its burst of 3 matches an assault rifle's. RimWorld has no suppression mechanic, and the minigun lost its forced miss radius before 1.0, so its value is the 25-shot burst catching nearby enemies.

How do you kill a centipede in RimWorld?

Hit it with blunt weapons. A centipede carries 72 percent sharp armor against only 22 percent blunt, so a uranium mace beats a plasteel longsword despite the mace having lower armor penetration. EMP stuns it for about 25 seconds, but only once, because a stunned mechanoid adapts and resists further EMP for a while.

What is the best way to fight an insect infestation?

Never fight them in the open. Fall back to a single-tile doorway, put three heavily armored melee pawns right behind it, and stack shotgunners behind them so the insects can only engage one at a time. Keep the tiles behind that doorway clear of furniture, or there is no room to form the block.