Main thesis: mechanoids are freaking imbalanced
So, I get Scythers: tons of damage output, but a weak defense. But centipedes? They swallow bullets like candy and the occasional melee fighter coming with military aids is quickly knocked out (or, more likely: shot in the back by their own comrades). Depending on how advanced my colony is, I waste tons of goodwill and thousands of silver on NPC help whenever I get attacked by robots.
The plasma cannon / minigun is okay, I guess, but gods help you if a centipede carries an inferno gun. They don't have to hit you directly, but the explosion sets half your base on fire and the burn effectively stuns multiple pawns for several seconds. Oh, and did I mention that they themselves are absolutely invulnerable to fire? And that they do not bleed or break down over time? EMPs stun them for a few seconds only until they adapt. There's no way to hide from them because they have no needs. They just keep going and destroy your entire base. They have no goal to achieve and never leave the map, decreasing the replay value of a base with all colonists killed to zero.
So why can't they be dependable on sunlight or need to recharge on connected power lines? Or even have an arbitrary goal like digging out all the jade on the map or destroying all sources of power? Just anything besides that mindless "kill/destroy everything that belongs to the player" attitude. I mean if there was a super-aggressive robot hive like that out there in the universe, wouldn't the two possible solutions be
a) they wipe out all humankind or
b) humankind completely wipes them out? With these mechanoids there is no middle way and I find their simplicity bothersome.
What do you think? Should the mechanoids be changed or do you like their level of difficulty?
P.S. The only working solution I found for mechanoids is - you guessed it - killboxes.
Mechanoids need a better introduction for players. As it is, they just kind of show up either by crashed ship or through a standard raid. New players are left wondering what they are, and don't understand their abilities (such as the ability to gain immunity to EMP bursts). Players need a more gradual introduction to this enemy type, and I think a few things could help accomplish that.
The way I see it, mechanoids need to be fleshed out a bit further.
As they currently stand, they're just a really annoying enemy with a lack of any real diversity.
I think we need at least 3 types of mechanoids for them to be even mildly interesting. A rock-paper-scissors of sorts.
1) Centipede (Rock) - Rare
- Slow
- Heavily armoured
- Siege unit
- Weak against melee units
2) Scyther (Paper) - Uncommon
- Fast
- Lightly armoured
- Melee unit
- Weak against mid-range units
3) Unkown (Scissors) - Common
- Normal Speed
- Moderately armoured
- Mid-range unit (Charge Rifle)
- Weak against siege units
To take it further, it might be useful to pay some attention so some of the more advanced weapons (charge rifle) available to the player.
For example;
- Charge weapons do bonus damage against mechanoids
- Repurpose the charge lance and charge blaster as advanced forms of automated colony defence
+ Available through either killing mechanoids, research, or quests
- A tamable creature with an EMP death-action (ie. EMP Boomrat)
The Inferno Centipede is both the most dangerous enemy you could ever face in the game... And also the most pathetic one, too. Your observation about them is correct; they basically have a ~52% chance to hit their target no matter what, due to the huge size of the AoE explosion compared to the forced miss radius. It's disgustingly overpowering, it basically ignores all non-wall cover and doesn't simply damages but disables and weakens the target by making them run out from cover and unable to fight back while they are burning.
So why are they also the most pathetic ones? Easy answer: they are the only enemy type that gets hard-countered by technology. One single firefoam popper, manually activated to spread the foam all around the defense line and it's over. A pawn, standing on a tile that has some foam on it, literally can't be set on fire. Sure the Cannon will deal its base damage of 10 or so but that's it. It has a long, long cooldown; without the burning effect the Inferno Cannon's DPS and utility gets thrown right out of the window.
Your base should still be fine; after all, if you're not building with stone you're doing it wrong. Now go and rush firefoam tech.
Don't forget the portable killbox option: before popping open the tincan with mechs inside, build a wall with firepoints for your colonists to stand behind like so:
@ @ @ <---- pawns
#=##=##=# <---- wall with sandbag holes between 2-block units
Most inferno canon shots will hit the wall and explode harmlessly.
But yes, without walls, ff-poppers, or other pre-installed protection, your pawns will die horribly.
Centipedes are arguably the most *annoying* opponent in the game -- they're either devastating or trivial depending on your setup, with little in-between. And this goes for the minigun and charge blaster guys too. If anyone is standing too close to the guy he's shooting at they'll get ruined while the target does just fine.
I like the "Rock, Paper, Scissors" format, but I prefer all being able to attack melee and ranged tho. We need a third unit there is balanced, more mech weapons and more itens/resources to get from mechs.
The ability to craft mech weapons, or reprogram/create or own mechs would be so cool. Harvest artificial brains to fix brain damaged pawns, and other stuff like that.
Quote from: Granitecosmos on April 27, 2018, 06:36:21 PM
A pawn, standing on a tile that has some foam on it, literally can't be set on fire.
The pawns will still catch on fire, but will be extinguished if you were to use the popper after the fact. You're right though that the popper eliminates most of that threat. I'm actually surprised more players have issues with the inferno cannon than the charged lance. Hell, the main threat with inferno to me is that it makes your pawn panic into the scythers sight. It's no big deal if you've eliminated the scythers. IMO, the inferno woudln't be much of a threat if the accuracy was decreased since the weather will prevent massive fires.
I usually grab the first emp I can find. Usually you get grenades before the first mechanoids show up. Beyond that it isn't too hard. Engage the scythers at medium range to eliminate their range advantage and avoid the blades. Separate them from the centipedes, which is easy with their speed difference. The centipedes are easy while stunned. If your guns struggle beat them with blunt melee while stunned. Mechs are very resistant to sharp like swords and bullets.
Yeah, mechanoids can be rough for new players. There should be one or two easy, blindingly-obvious tactical improvements for new players to latch on to, just so they get their gears turning. For crashed ships, building walls and sandbags for cover seemed obvious to me. But for unprompted raids, the easiest I found as a new player was to let the fast scythers separate from the slow centipedes. Still not great.
Experienced players know the invincibility of the alpaca swarm. Colonists don't have to lift a finger until every enemy is hoofed into the ground, and every lunch for the next week is alpaca burgers.
Damn it is Xmas again ?
Some topic's allways appear each year again over and over.
Yeah i know, new player just got overwhelmed by something he couldn't handle.
Do you know the rock,paper,scissior concept ?
One tactic that work's well again pirates don't need to be succesful again other threads.
If you await an incomming army of mech's like you await pirates you are doomed, like when some pirates got doomsday launcher and you didn't notice it.
If you want real threat's install Chicken plucker's faction mods and get overrun by War mongrel's.
Centipedes are okay, I cant even count how many times did I defeated a centipede on day 1 of starting a new colony, with just the starting equipment. Made for some fun fights :D.
The real issue are scythers if you dont have any personal shields! ???
Quote from: O Negative on April 27, 2018, 05:45:07 PM
For example;
- Charge weapons do bonus damage against mechanoids
- Repurpose the charge lance and charge blaster as advanced forms of automated colony defence
+ Available through either killing mechanoids, research, or quests
- A tamable creature with an EMP death-action (ie. EMP Boomrat)
I love these ideas! Putting more emphasis on charge weapons would definitely diversify the guns of RimWorld, as well.
As for a third type of mechanoid, I dream of an intelligent leader type: if it spawns all enemies act smarter (take cover, attack in group, aim for power lines); with it dead the enemies scatter around and attack random walls like they do now. Also the
tactician could have weak armor and weak damage output, but give all colonists approaching (30-tile-radius maybe) a mood debuff.
I want more guns for the mechs we already have. Imagine a Scyther with a Inferno Cannon :D
Also:
- A Melee unit, medium speed and defense, high damage, with a droppable weapon.
- The Mech Leader idea is very nice. Imagine if it dropped an "AI Enhancing Emanator" tha you could put close to turrets and they get faster.
- A Psychic Unit, slow, low/no damage and medium defense. Gives the mood debuff and during extended periods can cause brain damage.
- The "Kidnapper" a slow and defensive mech with a sole purpose of taking one of your colonists. For what ? Who knows.
And to make mech raids more interesting, rarely they come with "Mechanized Humans" pawns with bionics and using mech gear. You can capture it, if you survive.
There is a mod who add more Mechanoid types to the game.
Too Bad but only HCSK modpack add Mechanoid Boss Zeon, and the Mechanoid Terraformer to game lately, they realy was some nice and challenging events.
The best strategy is to wall in the whole ship area and set the room on fire...You only need one person with a Molotov or incendiary launcher to do this.
Failing that, massive artillery bombardment kills them from an extremely safe distance.
Quote from: vampiresoap on April 29, 2018, 04:57:13 PM
The best strategy is to wall in the whole ship area and set the room on fire...You only need one person with a Molotov or incendiary launcher to do this.
Tried walling in a psychic ship right after you made this post. The mechanoids popped out and obliterated the builder!
I guess if you begin a construction within a certain radius of a ship, it triggers them to emerge. Not sure what the radius is, though. I was building just one tile from the ship.
You might've gotten unlucky. They'll either wait for the ship to be damaged or a hard-coded amount of time, whichever comes first. I know nothing of a mechanic, or lack thereof, where mechanoids will pop out because you're building around the ship.
I've had no issue surround a psychic ship with IED traps, directly adjacent to the ship.
They'll spawn when you build around the ship. Maybe within 3-4 tiles?
Quote from: vampiresoap on April 29, 2018, 04:57:13 PM
The best strategy is to wall in the whole ship area and set the room on fire...You only need one person with a Molotov or incendiary launcher to do this.
Why? The ship isn't flammable and neither are the mechs.
They died out of high temperature. Its boring tho, I like to kill them normaly.
Quote from: fritzgryphon on April 29, 2018, 07:09:19 PM
Tried walling in a psychic ship right after you made this post. The mechanoids popped out and obliterated the builder!
Yeah, don't build right next to the ship. You won't need an extremely small room. You just need to stack a lot of fuel inside the room. Fuel like wood, grass and oh yeah, corpses...
Quote from: Jibbles on April 29, 2018, 10:52:04 PM
Why? The ship isn't flammable and neither are the mechs.
They still melt when the room reaches ridiculous level of heat.
Quote from: vampiresoap on April 29, 2018, 11:57:36 PM
They still melt when the room reaches ridiculous level of heat.
Jesus, aren't they resilient to high temps though? lol Well, props to you guys. I don't think I could get my pawns to repair the walls fast enough.
Quote from: Jibbles on April 30, 2018, 12:11:51 AM
Quote from: vampiresoap on April 29, 2018, 11:57:36 PM
They still melt when the room reaches ridiculous level of heat.
Jesus, aren't they resilient to high temps though? lol Well, props to you guys. I don't think I could get my pawns to repair the walls fast enough.
Surround the ship with three layers of stone walls. Takes awhile to build but totally worth it.
I think you should be able to take their special charge weapons when you kill them, like with normal raiders. Even if you couldn't use them (maybe you would have to have it installed as an appendage, like a scyther blade?), or if they are too damaged to use, you could still sell them for a pretty penny.
Quote from: O Negative on April 29, 2018, 08:53:47 PMI know nothing of a mechanic, or lack thereof, where mechanoids will pop out because you're building around the ship.
There totally is one, it was added in A17 or B18. If your colonists start work on a construction frame within 3 tiles, it will set off the mechs.
Grenades. Not EMP grenades standard frag grenades. Two pawns armed with frag grenades will take care of centipedes very quickly.
My method for dealing with downed ships requires 2 to 3 mortars and the same number of frag grenade armed pawns. pop the ship with your longest ranged gun, sniper rifle is best. Pull back with your pawn that popped the ship and get all your mortars ready to fire at the same time using the hold fire button, make sure they are loaded with EMP rounds. Get everyone who you want to attack moved out into position just outside of the activation range of the mechs. Fire mortars, once the EMP rounds land away you go any melee troops deal with the scythers and the grenades to the caterpillars. This method will deal with ships popping upto 15+ Mech out.
Simple sidearms makes this method easier as you can equip grenades as sidearms saves equipping grenades each time you want to take care of a downed ship.
I have problems with Scythers mostly since they all use Charge lances that can one shot or destroy a limb of a colonist.
It's suicide if theres no shield belts that serve or trained animals as bait or turrets and even traps.
That's why i think there should be another weapon for the scyther that could be a weapon that's not a noob canon that can kill or break poor stanley's spine.
Let's a variant of the charge blaster used by centipedes that's used by scythers only or a weaker inferno cannon or even no weapons and just rush in, in melee with their scythes.
I can deal with centipedes with curtain tactics but scythers are the ones that can give me problems >:(
armor vests will prevent pawns from losing spines/stomachs/lungs when scythers hit them.
Devilstrand dusters will keep their legs and arms attached too.
But nothing stops an inferno cannon from making your colonists run around in circles screaming "SHOOT ME! SHOOT ME! SHOOT ME!"
Pawn's with active shield belt are pretty safe from inferno cannon's.
Quote from: Canute on May 03, 2018, 02:33:55 AM
Pawn's with active shield belt are pretty safe from inferno cannon's.
You can't make those things yourself though...
Quote from: vampiresoap on May 03, 2018, 12:14:46 PM
Quote from: Canute on May 03, 2018, 02:33:55 AM
Pawn's with active shield belt are pretty safe from inferno cannon's.
You can't make those things yourself though...
In A17 and up you can craft belts.
Upon impact, it also blocks all damage from a single projectile even if it can completely destroy the shield with more to spare. WikiNormal shield belt blocks 30 damage, and normal charge lance deals 27. So if can get the scythers to target your shield pawn, you can take two hits with no consequences.
I think the problem with Mechs is that they are entirely predictable and you end up, in the late game, getting only Mechs. Once you have a strategy for dealing with them they just become a grind.
Personally I would favour removing or seriously weakening mortars and having more varied humanoid raids composed of various sub activities (oh and I would make the humanoid raiders much more cautious and death averse, being willing to fall back or change tactics):
Sieges that actually aim to prevent you leaving the area of your base
Resource grabbing via mining (e.g. component) raids
Resource stealing (animals, accessible stockpiles)
Wall destruction (rather than full on attack)
Actively finding and targetting tamed animals
Setting up defensive settlements on your map
Pillaging - burn any outside fields
Power killing - destroy power lines & geothermals even if walled in, burn barrels of oil to create smoke to knock out solar etc.
Disease spreading - lob rotting carcasses which spread plague into your base
Building and manning sniping positions
Sapper raids which disarm traps and EMP turrets rather than just grenading walls
Then I'd mix and match these into a single raid so that the 20 man raid group is simultaneously burning your fields, stealing your last mineable components, actively working on disarming your killbox while setting up sniping positions to make it harder for you to counter.
Guess that amount of AI would be extremely hard to do but it would sure be fun.
Mechs are among the most micro intensive fights so I hate fighting them.
Centipedes w/ bad shooting are the worst. I often just bait scythers into trap maze or really anything that kills them, then grab 3-4 pawns with snipers and kite centipedes. It sucks. They often "armor absorb" the shots, the shots miss, and they can sponge even the sniper rounds decently.
That said, centipedes have absolutely zero answer to "pelt it with sniper fire and consistently stay out of their firing range". They go down eventually. Doing this with 4+ centipedes is annoying. Once you start seeing 8+, it's disheartening. As a tribe stuff like mortars can't come fast enough, the sponging is real otherwise.
I don't mind scythers too much, except for the fact that they have an annoying habit of staying just out of range of your turrets and sniping them.
When they're paired with centipedes though, that's where the problem begins. Together, they are the toughest enemies in the game, barring rocket-launcher wielding raiders (which is mosly just bullshit, shooting through walls and stuff). If scythers were capable of escorting the centipedes instead of rushing ahead, they would be unbeatable. The only saving grace is that when they attack your base, you get to pick off the scythers first so you actually have a chance to engage the centipedes.
A crashed ship with the right combination of bad terrain, scythers and centipedes can be almost impossible to approach because they form such an effective defense.
So yeah, it's not so much the individual mechanoids, it's that they complement each other a bit too well when they stay near each other.
Quote from: mebe on May 05, 2018, 06:10:03 AM
[...]
* Sieges that actually aim to prevent you leaving the area of your base
* Resource grabbing via mining (e.g. component) raids
* Resource stealing (animals, accessible stockpiles)
* Wall destruction (rather than full on attack)
* Actively finding and targetting tamed animals
* Setting up defensive settlements on your map
* Pillaging - burn any outside fields
* Power killing - destroy power lines & geothermals even if walled in, burn barrels of oil to create smoke to knock out solar etc.
* Disease spreading - lob rotting carcasses which spread plague into your base
* Building and manning sniping positions
* Sapper raids which disarm traps and EMP turrets rather than just grenading walls
Then I'd mix and match these into a single raid so that the 20 man raid group is simultaneously burning your fields, stealing your last mineable components, actively working on disarming your killbox while setting up sniping positions to make it harder for you to counter.
Guess that amount of AI would be extremely hard to do but it would sure be fun.
+1 to this!Instead of making enemies easier, we actually need to make them harder.
Mechanoids may seem annoying at first, but once you get a hand to it, its nothing.
When crash-landed ship parts: Don't build anything in a 3-tiles radius. If you don't have fire foam poppers yet, use melee fighters as "fire-fighters" to extinguish the fire on your comrades.
For average mechanoid raids, you should have by the time they show up, a few stone block made deadfall traps. You don't need a whole grid system of traps or a funneling corridor, place them where you see enemies path the most, if a Centepide gets injured from a deadfall trap, the rest is a total laughter.
The Inferno cannon wilders, when selected, you can see their weapon charging/aiming time, so you hide when the "cone" is about to disappear and shoot at them when the cone is wide.
For my last 50+ games, except maybe in some hard biomes, I don't build anything from wood anymore, rush stone cutting while using old, ancient buildings scattered around your map as starter rooms. If fire is your problem, you can build 3 tiles corridors to "control" fire spree. But don't do a 3 tile corridor in front of a wooden wall, just upgrade it to stone wall directly.
And no extrime temperature does not kill them heck the centipede was walking in a pure ball of flame room(taped him in there) and he did not die or burn I mean what the **** was that logic. I had to put deadfall traps in order for it to by moderately successful.
I think they are pretty easy with prep time. Build some simple shooting barricades at max gun distance. 2-3 blocks of wall with a roof on the shooter's side, have the shooter stand at the edge and he'll lean around. Make one per shooter and spread them around the ship part. If two pawns stand next to each other you will have problems from Inferno Cannon and Minigun. It's even easier if they raid the base, because Centipedes are so slow you will be able to engage the Scythers first. Mass fire on Scythers and spread out to deal with the Centipedes. EMP can help but I don't bother with it, they adapt too quickly.
And above all else, make Devilstrand gear for everyone, it provides serious protection and you can grow a huge quantity of it with a decent growing season.
Quote from: sadpickle on May 22, 2018, 12:33:28 AM
I think they are pretty easy with prep time. Build some simple shooting barricades at max gun distance. 2-3 blocks of wall with a roof on the shooter's side, have the shooter stand at the edge and he'll lean around. Make one per shooter and spread them around the ship part. If two pawns stand next to each other you will have problems from Inferno Cannon and Minigun. It's even easier if they raid the base, because Centipedes are so slow you will be able to engage the Scythers first. Mass fire on Scythers and spread out to deal with the Centipedes. EMP can help but I don't bother with it, they adapt too quickly.
And above all else, make Devilstrand gear for everyone, it provides serious protection and you can grow a huge quantity of it with a decent growing season.
Pulling scythers away + killing them with whatever (deadfall traps, door micro) and then simply sniper kiting centipedes is significantly safer. Centipedes will never hit you this way. Not "low chance behind cover", never.
EMP is best if you can get one isolated, because you can EMP it then really lay into it while it's stunned. But mid-late game there's like 6-10+ centipedes (much more with high base wealth) and at this point the only response that doesn't take ages of annoying micro is mortars. Fortunately, they're so slow that you have time to get mileage out of mortars against them.
I've tried using mortars before, maybe I'm just doing it wrong but my guys are almost always way off the mark. I've gotten a pinpoint strike maybe once every 10 launches. Might be worth it in a siege.
Quote from: sadpickle on May 22, 2018, 12:41:42 PM
I've tried using mortars before, maybe I'm just doing it wrong but my guys are almost always way off the mark. I've gotten a pinpoint strike maybe once every 10 launches. Might be worth it in a siege.
Build like 4 mortars at least, I can sometimes just do with 2 but, the more the better. Then click on "Hold Fire"...wait until all 4 are loaded, not the first time but after each re-load, so that all mortars countdown from 30 seconds completes, then select a specific target location...preferably at the very center of them all, unless they are behind a mountain that shields them...once all timers are zeroed...re-click the "Hold fire" so they all shoot simultaneously. Rinse and repeat.
Quote from: sadpickle on May 22, 2018, 12:41:42 PM
I've tried using mortars before, maybe I'm just doing it wrong but my guys are almost always way off the mark. I've gotten a pinpoint strike maybe once every 10 launches. Might be worth it in a siege.
Your odds of hitting a few centipedes are much better when you have 8 mortars and there are 20 centipedes than if you have only a couple mortars and are fighting 4 or less.
With smaller numbers just grab a few snipers and kite them to death.
correction I looked back at my gameplay against those mecs and found that every second or so they receive burn damage by being in the room so yea I guess its helpful somewhat. I found that out only because I remember trying to get a mec corpse and my pawns kept on taking damage from the heat (burns) since the fire didn't damage the outside walls in time for the room to turn into outside which distributes the heat.
Here is my rant: year 5537, 93 cetipedes and 55 scythers appeared, my base has 0 turrets, 0 walls, 2 mortars. I wanted to rise the difficulty to the second-last of phoebe, so to have as many challenges as i could handle. But this is just game endign.
No more than 20 mechs are needed to put any late game in proper danger IMHO
[attachment deleted due to age]
Fook that's a lot! not sure I've ever had more than about 40 total but I do try to keep wealth down usually. Did you survive ;D
Honestly, I tryied twice to reload this gamesave, but it was beyond my ability to survive, maybe in another moment i would try over and over to face these many mechs.
But it went:
Dev->destroy->shame->rant
Yep, these mass of mechanoid's are like a steel-tsunami.
It is impossible to stop it with a fixed defence line.
If you could manage it to eliminate the scyther at first. Much firepower like rocket launchers.
Then you can manage it to kill the centipede's too.
Kite them around with sniper/bolt-action rifle, with shifting pawn so they can sleep/eat.
And a deathfall trap area which other can rearm.
But that's alot of micromanagment. And realy only work's if you can get ride of the scyther.
By the way, guys, I don't know if you know this, but when the alien crash ship reaches 49% health, the mechanoids will start assaulting your base.
This means that you can either:
1. Play hide and seek with them and snipe their ship to 49% health
2. Bombard the ship with mortars (this is the best option, in my opinion)
And after the ship goes to half health, they will just start running into your killbox like a normal raid.
PS: It just goes to show that having like 5 mortars and 200 explosive shells solves so many of the problems that the game throws at you...Sappers, sieges, crash alien ships...all get basically trivialized.
Most of the recipes in this thread won't work when there are about 100 and more mechs. Against ships a salvo of 12-14 mortars with emp with target points scattered round the ship works. Agains normal raids there's no defence at all.
Quote from: vampiresoap on April 29, 2018, 04:57:13 PM
The best strategy is to wall in the whole ship area and set the room on fire...You only need one person with a Molotov or incendiary launcher to do this.
Failing that, massive artillery bombardment kills them from an extremely safe distance.
But to do this you need a roof, and won't building the roof release the mechs now?
Kind of funny reading this now that inferno is the less dangerous centipede variant by a long shot
Wealth management + long range weapons make it reasonably easy. And inferno centipedes for sure are the most dangerous by far.
Quote from: BLACK_FR on October 23, 2018, 05:02:17 PM
And inferno centipedes for sure are the most dangerous by far.
Now you tell me. I was doing ok until my turrets ran out of durability and my guys lit on fire. There were 10 colonists but most of them incinerated. Was 5 days from ship launch on my first
Extreme Savage attempt :'(
(https://i.imgur.com/a7tQakP.png)
Always kite Centipedes. The Scythers were easy but the Centipedes have way too much health to fight directly.
Depends on how you fight them. If you let them get into your base, you're screwed. But if you fight them outside behind a properly built barricade they're not too difficult.
Key element: make sure there's nothing *behind* the barricade, so shots which miss sail harmlessly off behind you instead of hitting a wall and roasting your pawns.
I"m worried. I'm on a map with a huge river that goes diagonal across the screen. Water and massive marshes take up both sides. I don't see any way I can make a proper square fortress of walls.
send seed and location please
The biggest problem with mechanoids I see now is that they are completely not fun to deal with. Sure, first raids with few of each are fine, but as the game progresses it becomes huge nuisance. I don't enjoy purposeful wealth reduction, so I don't do it, and when I get yet another mechanoid raid with 30 or now even more centipedes, which are incredibly hard to kill and I would have to micro for like an hour just to deal with this, I'm just like... oh, okay... f.. this game then.
Quote from: Spocklw on October 24, 2018, 06:28:38 AM
The biggest problem with mechanoids I see now is that they are completely not fun to deal with. Sure, first raids with few of each are fine, but as the game progresses it becomes huge nuisance. I don't enjoy purposeful wealth reduction, so I don't do it, and when I get yet another mechanoid raid with 30 or now even more centipedes, which are incredibly hard to kill and I would have to micro for like an hour just to deal with this, I'm just like... oh, okay... f.. this game then.
Exactly that. I get difficulty aspect and all that, and it's all fine as long as those raids aren't to big, but eventually you just spend 90% of your time playing trying to micromanage and fight mechanoids & clean up and then repeat. I thought this game was mainly suppoused to be drama and social interactions between colonists and not endless mechanoid fights.
As I said until you reach the point of huge mechanoid raids, it's all played very, very differently. You can kite or build structures around them, you can micromanage your colonists and make some neat strategical plays. But all of it is out of window when there is like 30+ mechs coming at you.
Wealth management is bs. and I refuse to do it. It's so goddamn "gamey". Even Tynan said to just play the game and not worry about the wealth. Even if you have really nice killbox, (which I also consider "gamey", this game is more fun when you try to adapt and do not rely on huge killboxes and dumb AI pathing) you will only lose resources because of new turret mechanic requiring you to resupply, 10+ centipedes eat a lot of bullets.
Like.. what am I suppoused to do when there is raid of 10+ scythers, 10+ lancers and 10+ centipedes? There is no way you can fight them w/o really solid defenses like killbox full of turrets and traps. I was thinking of having team of 10+ melee fighters, but I have 15 colonists total so do I really have to make almost of them melee fighters to be able to repel single type of enemy in the game? If you want melee approach you really need at least one fighter per centipede or they just gonna shred you with bullets and fire at point-blank distance, and shield belts won't save you. And you also need to take care of scythers/lancers first before you can even think of melee approach against centipedes which further complicates things.
RimWorld is at it best early to mid game when raids are still small and your colonists matter. Once mechanoid raids appear and ratio of enemies to your colonists is becoming bigger and bigger, and you have to rely on killboxes, game can be really frustrating.
Pirate gunfights outside of killbox are still my favourite (as long as they don't carry rocket launchers). You gotta take favourable position, choose your targets carefully and so on. Too bad those are entirely replaced by bloodthirsty mechs in late game.
I would point to mechs in this game as "generally what not to do" for enemy design.
Quote from: FTR on October 24, 2018, 08:10:44 PM
Like.. what am I suppoused to do when there is raid of 10+ scythers, 10+ lancers and 10+ centipedes? There is no way you can fight them w/o really solid defenses like killbox full of turrets and traps. I was thinking of having team of 10+ melee fighters, but I have 15 colonists total so do I really have to make almost of them melee fighters to be able to repel single type of enemy in the game?
I am doing a diff serious game where I don't do killboxes. I am not at the point yet where I get size 30 mech raids but they are starting to ramp up. I am playing with the Sidearm mod where I can give every colonist two weapons a ranged one primary and a melee one secondary. They autoswitch by distance and you can also manually switch.
I am not sure if the way I play without much defense architecture so leaving my base intentionally open in all directions and not concentrating the enemy into some area by walls is really playable without that mod. The enemies always break through and I want it that way. One weapon per colonist is totally unrealistic anyway sidearms are a thing.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=927155256
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=32497.0
Just a thought on mech raids: scythers/lancers move faster than centipedes. So you shouldn't have to face both at once unless there is a ship part or drop pods involved. Just make sure to finish off the scythers before the centipedes get there.
But yeah, if there are more centipedes than colonists you're probably in trouble. Maybe hit them with mortars? They're slow enough that they should be easy to target, and if there's that many your mortars should hit something.
Quote from: Shurp on October 25, 2018, 03:18:34 AMMaybe hit them with mortars? They're slow enough that they should be easy to target, and if there's that many your mortars should hit something.
To this I would like to point out, that single centipede is able to survive 40+ direct mortar hits with HE. Tell me how viable this strategy is, when you account for forced miss radius on mortars and raid of 20+ mechanoids.
I mean not even orbial bombardment will kill all of those things (usually few of them die, but the others are not that much damaged).
The bottomline is, I'm not looking into ways how to destroy them, I am *able* to destroy them, I just don't enjoy the game anymore because every huge mechanoid raid takes ridiculously long time of extremely boring microing. And they also destroy around 20 autocannons and uranium slug cannons in the process if I have them up at the time.
If only there was a way to bring Grizzly Bears into Centipede melee range safely.
Anyone knows of a teleporter mod? :)
Or I need shield belts for them :)
Quote from: Shurp on October 25, 2018, 03:18:34 AM
Just a thought on mech raids: scythers/lancers move faster than centipedes. So you shouldn't have to face both at once unless there is a ship part or drop pods involved. Just make sure to finish off the scythers before the centipedes get there.
But yeah, if there are more centipedes than colonists you're probably in trouble. Maybe hit them with mortars? They're slow enough that they should be easy to target, and if there's that many your mortars should hit something.
What if game is like "nope" ? :D (https://i.imgur.com/4LW0Stz.jpg)
Quote from: Spocklw on October 25, 2018, 06:50:24 AM
To this I would like to point out, that single centipede is able to survive 40+ direct mortar hits with HE. Tell me how viable this strategy is, when you account for forced miss radius on mortars and raid of 20+ mechanoids.
I mean not even orbial bombardment will kill all of those things (usually few of them die, but the others are not that much damaged).
The bottomline is, I'm not looking into ways how to destroy them, I am *able* to destroy them, I just don't enjoy the game anymore because every huge mechanoid raid takes ridiculously long time of extremely boring microing. And they also destroy around 20 autocannons and uranium slug cannons in the process if I have them up at the time.
Yeah I tried spaming them with mortals but it's really not worth it. Mortal shells barerly hurt them, and that's only if you don't miss which is very likely. I think even EMP shells are better option since this way you can cause them to "stretch" a bit until they reach your killbox, so they won't enter it all at once, which helps a bit.
And yes I can definately (still) handle mech raids that appear in my game. It's just that it takes so much stress and time to fight them, and then you gotta repair seriously damaged killbox or rearm (now rebuild) traps which I use to clean up scythers and lancers before centipedes reach the killbox. Dissassembling mechs doesn't even cover up the steel I have to use to kill them and I am trying to find better methods but I scum-loaded many times just to try different strategies (for the sake of learning) and nothing reliably works so far. Cleaning scythers and lancers with traps, stretching centipedes with EMP barrage and then giving all my colonists snipers+rocket launchers in the killbox seems to work best, but in exchage of a lot resources (mainly steel).
I also tried orbital beam against one of psychic ships and most centipedes survived even that. I had to finish them off one by one with sniper rifles.
I am still trying to come with better ways to kill them that do not require shitload of resources. I have to admit I didn't use uranium turrets yet, mainly because location in my current game doesn't really allow that unless I wanna replace my entire killbox. But I suspect they would also eat a lot of sacred uranium.
Disclaimer: I play Randy Rough (2nd hardest difficulty level). I usually don't play very old colonies, just build a ship or travel to destination.
It seems to me you're complaining about the core mechanic of the game, which is constant buildup of raids. Mechanoids merely make it the most apparent. Number of colonists you have is more or less fixed, but raids keep growing. There's no cure to that.
That said, I picked up a few tricks.
Unless something has changed, centipedes arrive much later because they're slower. You have time to prepare.
EMP mortar is useful once they're in attack mode, because it lets you use divide&conquer. The downside is they disable your personal shields.
Plasteel turrets are nearly immune to inferno centipedes, because they're only 10% flammable and plasteel is common at this point. Personal shield wearing colonists are partially resistant.
When you have this many enemies, explosives scale very well because they don't have a limit on how many enemies they hit. First, try to bunch up mechanoids, for example by placing doors at your entrance.
Purchase all rocket launchers you can get.
IED traps can be remotely detonated by a skilled marksman. You can surround them with mortar shells for a nice chain reaction. You can make them put only 1 mortar shell per tile by ordering construction of IED traps but forbidding components.
It takes some guts to perform and inferno centipedes complicate this, but you can use the fact grenades are unaffected by smokepop belts. Dress your people in power armors, smokepop belts and give them grenades. Only a few EMP, the rest should be explosive ones. Combined with cover, you should be very hard to defeat.
I haven't tested it, but aren't the new uranium-powered turrets designed to deal with this?
Psychic ships are potentially ignorable if you equip everyone with a tinfoil hat helmet.
I really think you didn't understand what I'm trying to say. I'm not complaining about not being able to deal with them, I'm complaining about that they come every few days and in order to deal with them, I have to micro for at least 1 HOUR REALTIME!!! to get them killed. And few minutes after I'm done, there goes another raid full of them! It's really no fun to deal with that and basically only that late in the game. IWhy would anyone think that it's ok to put nearly indestructible thing in the game and then send dozens of them down players lane? All other enemies are ok to deal with, even fun. Not this thing late game. When this appears it literally means either spend massive time microing it or lose your base. You apparently never experienced it and don't know what I'm talking about (which is bit weird with that badge you have), otherwise you wouldn't try to advice those things you did. E.g. uranium turrets can deal with few of them, not with ▼
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Would it be more fun if it was 400 pirates instead?
Generally yes, human raids are much better, because there are ways of dealing with them. AOE works on them very well. Not at those centipede bastards though. They just shrug mortar shells...
You get to have fun with prisoners afterwards too
The M_T mods really make it alot better. No starting structures and no mech raids. YOu'd be surprised, but without the plasteel/component drip from mechs the mid/lategame is still difficult.
Quote from: b0rsuk on October 25, 2018, 02:13:36 PM
Would it be more fun if it was 400 pirates instead?
Yes. The IRL time investment to deal with 400 pirates vs that is grossly disproportionate. You could probably fight off quite a few 400 pirate raids in the same IRL time.
#1 problem with mechs is that the safest ways to fight them take ages, and this mostly applies to centipedes.
Mechanoids are meant to challenge end-game colonies. And they do. What's the problem?
Speaking of Centipedes, they could take the Hell Knight treatment. Doom 1 used to have a monster called Baron of Hell. They initially appeared as a pair of minibosses. Everyone soon found out that Baron of Hell, taking 5 rockets/ssg blasts to die, was boring to fight, and not that dangerous. In DooM 2 a very similar monster was introduced - Baron of Hell, nearly identical in appearance but dying in 3 rockets. Overall DooM 2 has many Hell Knights but few Barons. Level designers could now place more "goat men" on map for increased monster firepower but without straining player ammo too much.
Quote from: b0rsuk on October 25, 2018, 04:01:19 PM
Mechanoids are meant to challenge end-game colonies. And they do. What's the problem?
The problem is that what's quoted is an intellectually dishonest response to my post and doesn't address Spocklw's complaint.
I'm not sure if you're calling for more centipedes with less hp or something else in the 2nd paragraph, but that wouldn't fix the fundamental issue of disproportional IRL time consumption on rote tasks.
So I'm trying to see what I'm missing here... ok, well I tried a test with a bunch of centipedes penned up, and the uselessness of mortars was established pretty quickly. When they hit they're very effective, but they just never hit.
Explosions are definitely the way to take them down, but yes, there's no *fun* way to accomplish this. Just endless tedium. It seems like Rimworld needs an anti-tank weapon. I suppose you could manufacture lots of rockets but that would be outrageously expensive. You need cannons vs. centipedes. Maybe someone has modded one?
Indeed there is a wide disparity between expenses and gains. A player, even without killbox like myself sees a lot of money gone after a Mechanoids raid and little economical recovery. 5 Plasteel from Scythers and Lancers, and 10 Plasteel out of Centepides. And I don't use turrets, só rebuilding damaged/destroyed ones also count more resources costs. This is why I'm missing the Scyther Blades one could sell to recover. And at the rhythm this is going I'm tempted to ask for Charge Lance drops that can be both wielded by pawns, mounted on animals or other Security devices.
Plus to make for the lack of game Immersion, at late game we should be able to turn mechanoids to our side like the T2.
Past a certain point, doubling your base size makes raids four times larger. There isn't a strategy that can scale to keep up with that. The raid point formula is simply broken past about 200k wealth. The only solution is to burn down half your base and kill half your pawns. Story told.
I would still go with mortars, especially on a map as big as that. Note you can have more than 1 mortar per colonist. It takes a few seconds to fire, but the bulk of the delay is in the reloading. More mortars will give you a better initial salvo. Centipedes are so slow they're begging for it. They're so slow you don't even have to lead the target.
When fighting, I would try to make them come from a narrow path to take advantage of excessive friendly fire.
It's a small comfort, but devilstrand has recently been buffed and it now offers around 100% fire resistance.
Quote from: Shurp on October 25, 2018, 07:41:19 PM
So I'm trying to see what I'm missing here... ok, well I tried a test with a bunch of centipedes penned up, and the uselessness of mortars was established pretty quickly. When they hit they're very effective, but they just never hit.
Explosions are definitely the way to take them down, but yes, there's no *fun* way to accomplish this. Just endless tedium. It seems like Rimworld needs an anti-tank weapon. I suppose you could manufacture lots of rockets but that would be outrageously expensive. You need cannons vs. centipedes. Maybe someone has modded one?
You can still sniper kite them freely after getting rid of non-centipedes, which is pretty easy to do safely in non-drop pod encounters. Having 4 pawns with good snipers/shooting will drop an individual centipede or two easily enough, but when you have 10+ centipedes it takes so long that you have to zone everyone inside base and let shooters rest. It quickly becomes a grind, despite that as long as you're somewhat diligent they can't hit you.
Quote from: zizard on October 26, 2018, 02:58:39 AM
Past a certain point, doubling your base size makes raids four times larger. There isn't a strategy that can scale to keep up with that. The raid point formula is simply broken past about 200k wealth. The only solution is to burn down half your base and kill half your pawns. Story told.
That depends on what kind of story you're trying to tell. We're used to thinking that the story should be, "let's build the biggest base we can and keep growing, despite all the disasters we overcome." But like you say, when threats multiply parabolically, that's going to end badly.
But what if you try a different story? How about, "how do I keep this colony full of half-blind pyromaniac drug addicts alive? Oh crap, one of them's burning down the armory again... noooo!!!"
In other words, try a different challenge that keeps you from getting to 200k wealth in the first place.
----------------------- Edit:
I think what I'm trying to say is, it's unfortunate that Rimworld doesn't automatically handicap you to make it difficult to get into ugly situations, but on the plus side, it provides you with endless ways to handicap yourself.