[2021] Defences misunderstood?

I see a lot of comments about people percieving killboxes as "cheesy" or "too strong" or "boring".
What is the issue with that? Have you seen fortification in real life? Heard of entire medieval armies just sadly sitting around and waiting until defenders run out of food, because any direct assault will leave them with debilitating losses, even if they have dozens times more man?
I dont event want to talk about such things as modern warfare defences, such as minefields, machinegun crossfire, and miles of barbedwire. Poor tribals.
Currently concrete fortification fell out of use only due to exessive amount of explosives industry can produce, and they inability to cover large enough area, warfare became too mobile.
But on a Rim? Without mass produced armored vehicles and artillery? For the sake of protecting single outpost itself, and not a nation border? Hell yeah, these killboxes are exactly what would any semi-competent governer construct.

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Originally posted by hatschi_gesundheit

Devs making a game for people to have fun with, allowing for a plethora for different playstyles (which is great, don't get me wrong!), then strongly discouraging one certain style (hiding behind thick walls and strong defences) because it's "not fun enough" or "not how its supposed to be played" or whatever.

It's not about discouraging that approach, it's about adding a variety of other approaches in addition.

As many have identified on this thread, killboxes still work great for a broad variety of threats. But, they don't work for every threat. Back when they did, the game really did get dull over time. Players would get raided and they barely even had to interact. Enemies would just file into the box and die. It was nothing but a resource delivery. And while this is rewarding in a way, it was boring to have this happen every time.

I didn't want to just make enemies stronger. It's not a tower defense game. So I made them smarter and have a wider variety of tools and strategies. So now you still get the killbox thing because it's cool, but you also get other threats to chew on for variation. And the enemies seem less idiotic.

Enemies have actually gotten weaker (and less numerous) over the years, since they no longer need the absurd strength they used to need back when they were so dumb. For example, breach raiders arrive at a significant numbers handicap versus if they were normal raiders. Same with drop-in raiders, siegers, etc.

In conclusion, I've never "strongly discouraged" a killbox strategy - in fact it is a deliberately designed part of the game. I have designed the game so that this isn't the only viable path, and so that this path isn't required, and so that this one tactic does not solve every threat in a totally zero-risk, zero-emotion, hands-off way.

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