The main reason is that with the existing number of opportunities to defend, it is easy to overlook, miss, overestimate or underestimate something. And considering that the vast majority of defense methods do not make it possible to beat the game on difficult difficulties, purely technically, it is absolutely natural to think that this can be said about all available options. There are hundreds of arguments convincing that the game cannot be completed by being as honest as possible, but there are only two arguments that prove that this is not so, here they are: traps (traps and mines); and turrets.

Now you might think that I will talk about an obvious superficial truth, but no. I’ll just briefly describe the real numbers, which will show how everything really is, and not how the brain, which makes mistakes in its assessments, thinks. One look at these numbers is enough to make you go nuts about how everything is on the surface, but manages to go unnoticed!

What follows are rough numbers, don't look at them as instructions!Their goal is to show +- the real picture. In reality, it is always better to play it safe and do more than the norm.

To guarantee a kill of one enemy with one turret shot, you will need 8 sniper/heavy turrets. That is,if the player is attacked by the most difficult pirate raid, this number of turrets will kill the following number of enemies in 1 game hour: 18 or 15 enemies (heavy turrets are slower). Then you will need to place 48 turrets, preferably sniper turrets, in each of the 8 cardinal directions in order to defeat the most difficult pirate raid. But this does not take into account the fact that the enemy will begin to retreat earlier, when losses, specifically in his group, reach 40-70%, depending on the randomness. That is, even fewer turrets are needed, 32 on each side.
What are 32 sniper turrets? This is 9600 steel; 1920 uranium; 960 plasteel; 192 components and 4800W of energy. Just one underground deposit is enough to dig up the required amount and even more! And to extract such a quantity of components, it will be enough to detect the components only twice using a long-range mineral scanner. This is all a completely doable task even in the first year of the game, and even more so for the year when the player reaches 10k difficulty points. In fact, I remind you that the player will need much fewer turrets in each direction of the world, because he will not have to defend against 10k point raids.

If you use heavy turrets instead of sniper ones, then only at the very edges of the map, so that the radius of the turret reaches the edge of the map. Otherwise, just one enemy with a sniper rifle will be enough to shoot such turrets from a safe distance. + enemies, appearing on the edges of the map, appear in a dense heap, which will allow all three bullets from the turret to hit someone.

It would also not be amiss to mention what a level 20 builder is capable of, wearing a belt-shield, without health problems, not in the dark and under bodrin.
If such a builder repairs an actively attacked sniper or heavy turret, then before it reaches the risky 20% HP, the builder's contribution will be as follows:

• The turret will survive 11 grenade explosions, instead of 4;
  
• The turret will survive 58 volleys from an automatic shotgun, at 100% accuracy (all 3 bullets per shot count as 1 volley), instead of 8.

Any other weapon will have noticeably lower DPS. Rocket launchers were not taken into account at all.

To kill the toughest possible enemy, namely an imperial soldier in cataphract armor, with an anesthesia chip, under Go-sok, and with stone skin gland, you will need on average: 4.5 plasteel traps; 4.9 steel traps; 21.8 wooden traps.
That is, if a raid of 100 people went strictly in a straight line, stepping on all the traps, it would be necessary to place plasteel traps 405 cells in a straight line in order to repel such a raid, forcing it to retreat. And so hundreds of times. These numbers indicate that traps are one of those methods of defense that does not allow you to complete the game with its help.

But here's another conversation! Although they are not mandatory like turrets. But it's better with them than without them.
Having placed a total of ~688 explosive mines, like this, in two rows,https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/2457349553661877627/161BD6E32DF13F00672B1D1177519F2C90038A67/on the edges of the map, you can effectively hit the largest number of enemies with mines.
What are 688 explosive mines? This is 6 days of continuous work by a craftsman under Bodrin; 10320 steel and chemical fuels. Mines need to be placed only once, and then, after each raid, only ~27 mines will need to be replaced.

The balance of the game allows you to get everything you need almost at the beginning of the game in order to fight off even the most difficult raids with only turrets.
You just need to ignore this opportunity and gradually build turrets around the settlement, in even numbers on each side. 48, preferably a little more, on each side will be enough.

As for all other existing methods of defense, they can only be self-sufficient on low difficulties, and on difficult ones they will simply be useful as support for turrets.

This section and the one below do not directly address the topic of the guide, except that unexpected points, such as the fact that a plasteel knife is one of the top melee weapons, can somehow indirectly help understand the balance of the game better. I just felt sorry to delete these calculations, and other manuals are not suitable for such information...

There are 9 melee attacks in total, here they are: Blunt/smash (crushing blow); Cut/slash (cutting blow); Stab (stab); Poke (poke); Demolish (demolition); Scratch (Strike. Actually means a scratching blow); ScratchToxic (poisonous blow); Bite (bite); Toxic bite (poisonous bite)
All of these attacks operate with significant differences from each other, and these differences are worth understanding.
Crushing blows are characterized by the fact that they hit in an arc, and therefore can simultaneously hit not only the part of the body that was hit, but also those located below it. However, the lower the damage, the fewer additional parts of the body will be hit, and those that are hit take less damage than the uppermost part of the body, by about a factor of ~2. Consequently, weak crushing blows hit 2 parts of the body, and strong ones - 3, very rarely 4 (so I won’t take this into account), but due to damage mitigation, the final damage will not be 2-3 times higher, but ~1.5-2 times higher.
Crushing blows also ignore internal parts of the body, which, in the game, can only be hit with blows that cause bleeding. These parts of the body include organs.
In fact, the damage of crushing attacks = 175%.
These blows, by the way, are found only in weapons and artificial body parts.
These blows are similar to crushing blows, but with the difference that they can hit organs and do not mitigate damage when they hit multiple parts of the body.
In fact, damage of slashing attacks = 250%.
These attacks are characterized by the fact that they hit in a straight trajectory, and therefore cannot hit 3 parts of the body at the same time, as arc attacks do. Of all the creatures, only the trumbo, elephant, boar, agrodrone and reaper have this attack.
This attack has an increased chance of causing damage to several parts of the body located on the same line, and therefore it can be said that they always hit 2 parts of the body, if possible. However, damage to an additional body part is mitigated.
In fact, the damage done will be = 150%.
These blows are similar to a piercing blow, with the difference that the chance of hitting additional body parts located on a straight line is lower, and these blows do not test penetrating armor protection, but crushing one.
Handles include not only the handles of melee weapons, but also ranged weapons. Also, due to the fact that the handle is the weakest part of the weapon, it causes little damage and even the quality of a better weapon does not really solve this problem, and therefore the handle will hit additional parts of the body less often than piercing blows... But considering the handle as a weapon in itself itself - absurd.
This attack refers to scratching attacks, don't let the name "strike" be confusing. Most animals are endowed with this attack, and it is also provided by claw implants.
These blows are characterized by the fact that they strike with a short arc, and therefore only hit two parts of the body, and they cannot hit the organs. The damage is not mitigated when two parts of the body are hit.
In fact, the damage done by claws will be = 200%.
Completely similar to scratch/strike, with the exception that for every 0.1 damage it applies 0.015% poison.
The poison is useful against opponents with low sensitivity to pain or its complete absence (mechanoids do not count). Otherwise, the poison has almost no effect on the outcome of the fight.
This attack is simple, it simply damages one part of the body. Organs cannot be bitten.
This attack is similar to a bite, with the only difference being that for every 0.1 damage it inflicts 0.015% poison.

It is possible to calculate the strength of a weapon more accurately than the DPS specified in the game. Following this formula:
(Damage of the weapon's strongest attack/speed of the same attack*bonus damage from this type of attack) + (if there are more strong attacks, do the same for all of them) / X number of operations with brackets that were done before = damage in weapons per second.
The formula does not take into account the chance of a hit, as well as the probability of other attacks, but if they are taken into account, the actual damage per second will be ~1.2-2.7 times less, depending on the chance of a hit in melee.

This formula gives this meaning to all these melee weapons, and more:
All weapons were of normal quality and made from the best suitable material, so plasteel was used for sharp weapons, and uranium for crushing weapons.
Leader 3.5
Medical drone, transport drone, production drone, cleaning drone 4.03
Bee Drone, Combat Drone 4.75
Apocryton 5.19
Centurion 6
Construction drone 6.03
Agrodrone 8
Tesseron, Ashbringer, Dragoon, Legionnaire, Lancer 10.5
Termite and any centipeda 11.44
Tunnelman 13.27
Reaper 20

How much DPS changes due to quality is easy to calculate, although the values will be rough. You just need to multiply the weapon value from the table by the lower values, but do not make a mistake with the type of weapon, crushing or sharp:

• Terrible 0.8
  
• Poor 0.9
  
• Good 1.1
  
• Excellent 1.2
  
• Masterpiece 1.45
  
• Legend 1.65

And also this value, if the weapon is sharp and the material is not plasteel (the values take into account not only the difference in damage, but also the effect on the speed of attacks):

• Uranium 0.77
  
• Steel 0.8
  
• Gold 0.6
  
• Silver 0.4
  
• Wood 0.32

Or by this value, if the weapon is a crushing weapon and the material is not uranium (the values take into account not only the difference in damage, but also the effect on the speed of attacks):

• Gold 0.84
  
• Jade 0.8
  
• Plasteel 0.78
  
• Steel and silver 0.73
  
• Wood 0.66
  
• Any stone 0.53