That might work - at least unless you get unlucky and Daemonica stomps your clinic.
It might sound like a step back - but with all these new systems, maybe re-enabling rebuilding wouldn't be such a bad idea? It's not like you can simply kite Daemonica around the map by rebuilding structures anymore, or you could just make building take several turns. An example would be having to use a special Purifier job or whatever to revert the stomped building to its base (but destroyed) state, enabling building on the next turn.
The current "scorched earth" strategy is a bit frustrating since there's very little you can actually do to reverse the consequences of one bad turn.
Aye, this. Though, the rebuilding before really did lead to Demonaica just bouncing back and forth; there'd have to be a pretty big limitation on it to keep that from happening, but make it TOO big and it becomes pointless.
I have a quick screenshot here that illustrates some of my points:
That there, is the sort of situation I'm thinking about. I need to get at that facility.... but trying to do so is likely to be quite futile. Most of those tiles that I'd need to be working with are 80% danger for survivors, with a couple of them being 60-ish. This includes the only 3 tiles there that I can build those shelters on. Those 3 tiles are literally the only option here.... notice, northwest of there, there's a forest.... and that close to the wall, it's going to be just as dangerous (and the wall is thicker there, which makes it a terrible spot to attack). And no useable tiles are going to be up there, so approaching from that direction is futile. Same when looking northeast, I have zero options up THERE either (and am unlikely to even get my guys IN there safely).
Now, lets say that I did manage to get a couple of shelters up, right? Maybe I do that, and then after that.... the guys there get wounded, because of the still high danger level. Demonaica stomps his way over there during the time when I'm trying to fix this, and either kills the guys there, or arrives after they die on their own, but the important thing is that he would then stomp those shelters.... and that's it, the only options I had are gone, because I cant rebuild on those tiles once he punts them into oblivion. Again though, it's much more likely that I'd never get the shelters up in the first place; the wound chance is far too high for that. I COULD of course just keep throwing guys at the two tiles that are blocking me there, waiting for the 80% chance to let them live long enough to attack the wall, but that sort of thing is a REALLY terrible strategy, and if the game is forcing me to use such a strategy at all, then something is definitely wrong.
Now, again, I dont think having the danger level in such an area be very high is a bad idea at all; it makes perfect sense. That SHOULD be difficult to get at and require some thinking, when the game generates a setup like that. It's a GOOD thing, and the way that the game generates the danger levels honestly seems fine to me. The bad part is the way the current system handles the danger, and the effects that the danger has, AKA, the wound system. Wouldnt it make more sense to have it so that failing the danger roll or whatever you call it, instead of outright wounding the survivor, just hurts them a bit, knocking their HP or whatever those points are called down a bit. You could even have it so that when they do get injured, the HP regen effect on them stops for a couple of turns, which could maybe be lessened by having friends around, or whatever. Have them get wounded when their HP actually hits bottom, and have them be at 1HP when recovered. You could have a higher chance of death during the actual wound status to balance this out. This would also have the effect of enforcing the "roles" of each class there; the scouts, I would never send into such an area because they havent the health to survive, I'd pretty much HAVE to be making good use of the really heavy guys here to handle such a risky mission. This alone would start to create more options for the player.
Though I do think that more options on more tiles are needed. Dont de-emphasize the importance of the towns.... as was said up above, having those be very important/useful compared to other area types really does make sense. More areas along the lines of the Ocean Shallows areas are what I'm thinking of here; you have options there, but it's DEFINITELY not as good as an abandoned town, which has the very big advantage of starting with tons of useful structures already built, wheras in the Shallows and similar areas like Ice Age towns, NONE of the tiles are built up, and instead you have to do it yourself. Maybe have some areas that are kind of in between, where you have alot of "can build here" tiles, with maybe a couple of already done structures here and there, but nowhere near as many as an abandoned town.
And heck, more building TYPES might not be a bad idea either; considering the way the gameplay works, there's all sorts of interesting ideas that might work for those, and this might help alot if the player cannot rebuild "special" buildings.
EDIT: Perhaps make it so that you CAN build on wrecked tiles..... but at an inflated cost. This would mean that having the tiles in an area like that stomped would not be an instant game breaker.... but it'd still hurt quite a bit, so you'd have lots of incentive to do everything you could to get it right the first time. It would also mean that while you COULD re-use already wrecked towns and such, it would be very hard to do, and you'd indeed have great difficulty surviving that way.... finding new areas would be still necessary to really move forward, yet you'd have SOME options there if you needed them. I think one of the reasons why the rubberbanding worked in earlier versions was because the cost of rebuilding really wasnt all that bad, compared to normal building. If you had alot of factories, it was easy to just keep rebuilding special tiles and keep Demonaica focused on certain areas. Not sure wether or not allowing the rebuilding of special tiles again should be done.... I'm mostly meaning normal tiles here, with all of this. But if rebuilding special ones like the amp towers was allowed, but Nanashi's idea of making building them take multiple turns (in addition to being more costly), as opposed to normal buildings which always take exactly one, might help here. If the rebuilding CAN be balanced out right so it doesnt make things super easy like before, it'd probably be a great thing to put back in.