Not sure if the team is still making major updates to this area, so some of these posts might become inaccurate at some point.
Thought it would be interesting to see what players have learned about it. Talk about; the guns you like to use and why, armor, strategies, ai behavior, how you're dealing with raiders/mechs etc. Anything really!
Perhaps OP should add 1.0 just to be super clear?
It's pretty agreed upon that the best method to deal with centipedes nowadays is EMPs plus 3 dudes in plate with maces. I've gotten a masterwork charged lance deflect off the armour an unnecessary amount of times with my best shooter. Centipedes are tough, your melee fighters need to be tougher.
On the other side, scythers and lancers can go toe to toe with a single maceman with bruises and the odd cut. ARs and superior dakka can still down scythes and lances, but not as easily as in B18 and before.
Luckily I haven't run into centipede drop pods, but other than that I've noticed they tend to lock onto a single target and try to kill it. So for taking out singular separated centipedes I'm just having someone stand really far away so the forced miss rarely hits, and have everyone else gank it from behind with
two hex away shooting.
But centipede drop pods in your base sound really mortifying.
Mostly I'm using dead men's guns and dead men's power armor mixed with my own plate. Too expensive still to craft my own power armor and weapons when i could put it into turrets which can be spammed with the new power requirements.
Quote from: Ser Kitteh on June 30, 2018, 11:17:45 AM
Perhaps OP should add 1.0 just to be super clear?
It's pretty agreed upon that the best method to deal with centipedes nowadays is EMPs plus 3 dudes in plate with maces. I've gotten a masterwork charged lance deflect off the armour an unnecessary amount of times with my best shooter. Centipedes are tough, your melee fighters need to be tougher.
So far I've been disposing of centipedes using AR from max distance while hiding behind a block of granite wall for cover.
I absolutely love using EMPs on mechs, it's a life saver. I haven't tried to melee centipedes using maces yet, so I'll try that next time.
EMP is fun until they start resisting - then it quickly turns sour. Very sour. Ragequit type sour with extra salt.
Does anyone how EMP stuns work? Is a percentage based thing?
Quote from: Ser Kitteh on July 01, 2018, 08:27:40 AM
Does anyone how EMP stuns work? Is a percentage based thing?
Non-random. First hit stuns for a long time, then they're adapted and barely affected by subsequent hits. Adaptation wears off after a (semi)-long time. It's simple, you basically get one really good stun in a fight.
Quote from: Ser Kitteh on July 01, 2018, 08:27:40 AM
Does anyone how EMP stuns work? Is a percentage based thing?
First time using a EMP on say a
centipede. It will get stunned for minutes ingame.
Second time using a EMP on the same
centipede. It's adapted to EMP and the same said
centipede is now immune it and is not very effective.
Luckily after booting up rimworld with the new combat. With
Two Snipers and
One Shield Belt User Plus an
Grenadier With EMP-Nades. After a curtain while. The same
centipede will lost adaption for EMP if you stopped spamming on it.
Just tell the pawn with the EMP Grenades after throwing a EMP at the mechanoid. Tell her or him to hide for a while and after a few seconds. The mechanoid will loose adaption to EMP.
Quote from: Tynan on July 01, 2018, 08:33:34 AM
Non-random. First hit stuns for a long time, then they're adapted and barely affected by subsequent hits. Adaptation wears off after a (semi)-long time. It's simple, you basically get one really good stun in a fight.
:D
I should write this one down. i think i got a few tricks i could learn in combat ingame before and after the full release of rimworld.
Quote
Non-random. First hit stuns for a long time, then they're adapted and barely affected by subsequent hits. Adaptation wears off after a (semi)-long time. It's simple, you basically get one really good stun in a fight.
This is good to know! Does it matter if a mechanoid gets grenaded with either one grenade or multiple?
You can frag mechanoids all you want and its a good if somewhat risky way to take them out. They just adapt to EMP nades.
Personally I play 400x400 map, so raiding mechanoids will sometimes get stunned several times by EMP mortar ammo. Mortar stuns divide their group, and often I get to destroy them one or two at the time, instead of the whole army.
Quote from: Serina on June 30, 2018, 02:36:50 PM
I absolutely love using EMPs on mechs, it's a life saver. I haven't tried to melee centipedes using maces yet, so I'll try that next time.
Me too. I'm glad we are able to make them ourselves now! I haven't played around with melee that much, I may try out that 3 mace strategy as well. About to switch to Cass so I can experiment with raids a bit more.
Quote from: Ser Kitteh on July 01, 2018, 08:56:52 AM
Does it matter if a mechanoid gets grenaded with either one grenade or multiple?
Won't change all that much with emp's. You could have 8 pawns throwing them at one mech and you'll notice real fast that it's not effective lol. Tho it's nice to have two in my experience in case something goes wrong. I would normally spam where they're not throwing at the same time cause every second counts against that charged lance when pawns aren't geared up.
Traps and bridges. Haven't tried in a normal game so I'm not sure if it's something they'll avoid in future raids. Rather not do this in a normal game so if someone else wants to follow up then please do.
You could lay them down like this and they'll most likely walk to that spot and trigger traps. Using traps on normal bridges would work as well. Setting IED's on bridges would be effective. Not sure if it's well known, throwing it out there anyways.
(https://i.imgur.com/e2soYFs.jpg)
Quote from: Serina on June 30, 2018, 02:36:50 PM
I absolutely love using EMPs on mechs, it's a life saver. I haven't tried to melee centipedes using maces yet, so I'll try that next time.
Just managed to kill psy-ship in middle of my base without any kiting. 5 centipedes and few lancers/scythers. Lure small ones to near building, kill them inside. Then just rush into melee range of each centipede with my power armored guys with maces to block centipedes shots. Work pretty nice - power armored guys bring enough time for shooters to do their job. All leave battlefield at theit feets.
Had a mechanoid drop pod recently: EMP grenades were very effective in buying me a few seconds, I almost want to have 20% of my colony just holding these suckers just in case mechs drop in a bad place.
Anyways, I got the drop on THEM. I called some faction buddies and the first drop pods were a bit away, but I called some more down and they dropped right next to them.
Kind of sadistic, but they died for my evil drug colony a good cause.
Personally finding incendiaries more useful in this update. Very effective against pawns who are geared up. Just be careful when playing with fire.
Quote from: Tynan on July 01, 2018, 08:33:34 AM
Non-random. First hit stuns for a long time, then they're adapted and barely affected by subsequent hits. Adaptation wears off after a (semi)-long time. It's simple, you basically get one really good stun in a fight.
I'm kinda conflicted with this one honestly, its not like the grenade pawn can just pocket another proper weapon, which makes it a somewhat one useful shot only. On the other hand having mechs go perma stun wouldn't be great either.
Quote from: Jibbles on July 01, 2018, 12:49:43 PM
Personally finding incendiaries more useful in this update. Very effective against pawns who are geared up. Just be careful when playing with fire.
Molotovs and Incendiary launchers are very good at flushing out raiders out of cover!
Both Weapons have an explosive radius of a
+ and pawns on fire would ran out of cover making them easy targets since they are in the open.
I think incendiary launchers are better than molotovs for their range but molotovs i think has better DPS for throwing? But incendiary launchers have gotten an important upgrade to attack ground which was absent in the earlier alphas and B18.
Just watch out for large fires and building your colony out of wood and replacing them with un-burnble stone walls and metal or stone floors.
Need a light anyone? (http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Firebat)
I got pinned down in one of my raids cause I was honestly not prepared ( my fault btw ). They outnumbered me, had better armor and weapons than me. It was hard to compete in that situation, so that's when I broke out the molotovs and made them dance. In b18, I would normally use incendiary for fun or large raids, but I think they actually saved me there.
Is plate armor even worth the costs and research? I made some out of steel. I could be overlooking here but they don't seem to help as much as I'd hoped. Plasteel stats look decent but takes up a good amount of resources. I'm looking at flak vests and strong leathers and wondering why not just go for that instead?
Doors hp got knocked down to 140. I wonder the reasons and how it will affect my strategies if at all.
Maybe to counter repair time with pawns skilled in high construction?
I know there's some cheesy shit you could do previously with doors, but I don't think majority of players use them.
I tend to use auto-doors a lot simply for the speed. Tho the cost of building them, I might as well
wait till I got the plasteel to make sure they hold up. I know they're flammable but haven't experience many problems with that.
So the hp hit to doors probably won't affect me all that much.
The raiders don't target the doors as much as they did in b18, at least in my experience.
Manhunter packs may pose a bigger threat tho.
HP for doors.
---------------------
Wood - 56
Steel - 140
Marble - 168
Slate - 182
Lime - 215
Granite - 240
Plasteel - 390
Well, the main reason is heavy armor covers nearly everything including the neck. If someone throws a pila at you and you have a flak vest/pants/helmet, you are just dead if it hits. The stuff is expensive, though, if you need the steel for other stuff, which is why I rob every corpse with power armor regardless of the mood issue.
Quote from: Greep on July 03, 2018, 02:08:16 AM
Well, the main reason is heavy armor covers nearly everything including the neck. If someone throws a pila at you and you have a flak vest/pants/helmet, you are just dead if it hits. The stuff is expensive, though, if you need the steel for other stuff, which is why I rob every corpse with power armor regardless of the mood issue.
I never cared enough to learn how apparel layers work in this game when it comes to armor protection.
e.g. Pawn wearing a shirt, a vest, duster, how does all that interact with a shot to the torso?
Some insight for 1.0 would be nice.
I do not fully understand it. So I'm open to changing my mind about staying flak til power armor.
I question plate armor. Power armor has noticeable benefits no question about it.
If I find the time then maybe I can dig up some stats.
You should really look into stuff like devilstrand, thrumbofur etc. As well as all the apparel you can combine with flak; clothes such as dusters which covers things like torso, arms and legs. When you have some strong textiles they hold up. You bring up pila, but these can take the hit. Using these materials, I'm finding they deflect more often, at least the damage gets turned to blunt or bruises frequently compared to plate in my experience. I know plate protects most of body such as neck but ehh..
The flak vest should not be taking lightly by the way. Protects torso, and the armor rating is higher than steel plate. I'm just not seeing noticeable benefits to plate when you tack on research and materials needed. I've played with it, tested it, and it just doesn't seem like it's worth it unless you're swimming in plasteel. As of now, I'm sticking to flak apparel and would rather invest research in something else, as well as materials for things like turrets & traps if I want more protection. I might bite if I'm having a difficult time acquiring strong textiles or can't find some good loot.
The market value is pretty low on steel plate if you compare it with all the strong textiles and flak, tho low wealth is nothing I obsess about.
EDIT: Forgot to mention my other point. Shield belts.
Well devilstrand takes like forever to grow, though, even if you harvest early. And thrumbofur isn't exactly in huge supply. Rhinohide can be kickass if you get a pack to start with though.
So let me share how I'm doing combat, and the system seems to be working pretty well, responding to what you would expect from intuitive tactics. But please do correct me if I'm assuming something blatantly wrong.
This first pic was repelling a siege, this setup with walled up with sandbagged openings works kinda game equivalent of embrasures, pawns get the benefit of full cover, auto-cannon gets a pretty good range on the corner, and anything coming too close gets cut up with melee. I setup three different vestments:
- Ranger: just a regular colonist apparel + vest, what I let my fight-able pawns rest in, so they remain chill while on their day-to-day lives, but still with some protection and can dress up quicker if needed to.
- Soldier: full flak dress up, vest+pants+helmet. I don't use flak jackets pretty much out of principle. These are the geared up pawns I use on threats, either on defensive duty or while caravaning.
- Plated: full plate + shield belt, feels like a pretty good melee combo.
So right there is my first (possible wrong) assumption, that flak is better against ranged while plated is better against melee, and indeed stats would likely represent that since flak has higher piercing armor while plated has more blunt. Though considering how the armor calculation works it may not actually true, from what I understand swords and the kind also have piercing damage (same as bullets), and some deflected piercing damage may also convert into blunt. So hopefully someone can explain it better.
Another possible wrong assumption is that I always tend to use sword for my melee, though from what it looks like, a well done knife may inflict only a little less damage than a long sword, while being lighter and faster. Another point is using other melee weapons that I may have overlooked, and also whats the deal using blunt to melee bash centipedes? Whats the logic there?
Out of fun. the second picture was my first attempt at that same siege, this time I had to attack the raid full front, and well enough with some flanking I was able to beat them off. However one incendiary got into my indoor grow bed and that quickly escalated out of control, I'm not taking firefoam poppers for granted anymore.
[attachment deleted due to age]
Quote from: Gfurst on July 03, 2018, 02:55:00 PM
However one incendiary got into my indoor grow bed and that quickly escalated out of control, I'm not taking firefoam poppers for granted anymore.
Yeah, it's one of those things that's easy to get stubborn about. ha Just best to make it a habit before damage is done. I think more players will utilize them since it auto-pops now. Still like to install them throughout the base in convenient locations so I can move and trigger them myself. Also useful to trigger before mechs shoot the infernos.