How do you deal with these monster encounters?
Popped one earlier, in year 5, and 20-odd mechs streamed out, including 5-6 centipedes. Total nightmare. Have to admit I save-scummed because I'm tired of people dying. Especially when Gillespie died, who was recently "resurrected" from brain damage.
On the third try everybody survived, but only very marginally. Had to fix 3-4 people in the field, during combat, by putting out sleeping spots (and banning the door to the hospital to prevent the idiots trying to carry them across the entire map back there). Several people fainted on the way back, and one was 0.8 hours from dying. The first back to base I had to stuff in cryptosleep because he only had 2 hours left and no doctor was in sight. Looking at it now, 2 legs were lost, 2 arms, and one eye, plus a handful of fingers (heh).
I set up like this, which has worked well enough previously.
(https://i.imgur.com/MwyyeRE.png)
(It's raining in the picture, and the first attempt was indeed during rain (thought the roof would help, but I guess not since we couldn't hit anything), but it was clear during the actual onslaught.)
Two brawlers with shield belts trying to divert some attention and taking them on face-to-face. But with so many machines firing at them, the shield goes out instantly, so I had to try to be careful. I had a few people by a wall closer to the action too, including one with a chain shotgun.
Ugly as hell, though, and a lot of luck is needed to survive. The worst enemies are the scythers and the inferno cannon centipedes. Both create total havoc.
There must be much better ways to deal with such big-ass encounters than this though. I tried EMP earlier, but it doesn't last very long before they're adapted, and ofc you need somebody to get close enough to throw it, and get back to cover without dying. Not easy against such a force.
This time I even used a triple rocket launcher. It did decent damage and killed a few lancers, and injured some of the centipedes. Simply too many mechs to really make much of an impression, though.
instead of wall wall bags wall wall bags, alternate with wall bags wall bags etc. The reasoning is that bullets that miss can hit an adjacent pawn, so putting a pawn behind each wall piece means opportunities for miss-injuries. The front row of all sandbags does nothing at all for cover for your pawns (game only checks tiles immediately adjacent) except maybe to slow down rushing lancers...very slightly...unless they go for the edges.
Next, I highly recommend making excessive use of grenades. 2 EMP grenades and 3-6 frag grenadiers can really demolish a ship....The frag grenades make very quick work of the non-centipedes, and do really brutal damage to the centipedes too...significantly faster, pawn for pawn, than nearly any other weapon at taking down mechanoids. Have your pawns manually target the grenades, and the trick is to go to normal speed, have one guy thrown a grenade, and a split second after he starts "aiming" pause, and have everyone else target their grenades. The first grenade will trigger the mechs, who will instantly pop out of the ship, and be hit a split second later by ALL the rest of the explosions.
The EMP grenades will freeze the mechs for a few tosses, maybe around 3-4 before the mechs are immune, but that is enough time to get some truly fearsome damage in.
Other notable tips for mechs:
- if the ship part is destroyed, the mechs stop guarding it and rush the base. You CAN use this to your advantage by controlling when the mechs rush you, but it can be tricky to kill the part unscathed without mortars
- If ANY mech is damaged, it resets the "lose interest" timer on the mechs and they start chasing again. Be aware of this when trying to snipe and sneak shots when lancers are still up. But it can also be used to lure them to a better fortified field, or pull the faster scythers into focused fire from rapid fire weapons without getting in centipede range.
- sniping centipedes is a nearly risk-free way to kill them, by moving snipers to the edge of their range and firing 2-3 times then retreating. It is, however, extremely time intensive, "mood" intensive for involved pawns, and doesn't work if lancers are still up. Sniping lancers can be done,but it is far riskier, and requires even more careful management at the very very edge of extreme range...and often a door to duck through after firing.
- mortars are an expensive, but fairly risk-free way to turn a nasty ship part event into a weakened normal mech raid. It tends to deal a lot of damage to many of the centipedes, and kill some of the lancers/scythers before they finally path all the way to the base. Timing the mortars to all fire at once a single time, then holding fire can act like expensive and inefficient, but even safer sniping, dealing damage to the mechs and then letting them lose interest - so long as you don't kill the ship part or CONTINUE to injure the mechs, they'll keep retreating back to their ship.
- fire and manhunter animals are virtually completely ineffective against mechs
- calling allied factions for help can allow you to bring your pawns out and try to snipe out the lancers and scythers to make it easier to mop them up later. Just remember that while the lancers and scythers won't choose to CHASE you until the allies are dead, they will TARGET you if you step into their range.
- Melee is a risky, but brutally effective tactic for lancers and centipedes - IF you can lock the centipedes in melee, they will still deal dangerous damage to their melee target, but it is far less than if they were firing a heavy charge blaster into a crowd, and if you be sure to move the melee combatants to the opposite side that the incoming friendly fire is coming from, you can unload crazy amounts of bullets into a centipede while it melee punches one guy slowly. Just be sure you've got all the centipedes in range locked down, because your melee distractions getting set on fire or downed suddenly can spell disaster for your gunners, who were probably just quickly moved forwards in a clump to get them firing ASAP.
- Heavy charge blasters have a miss radius of 3. Whenever possible, when facing Charge Blaster centipedes, especially more than one, keep 3 empty tiles in all directions between each pawn, to reduce the splash damage (so the wall/sandbag advice I put first in this thread applies only to lancers, but still, any way to reduce hit chance is a positive, especially for such deadly bullets)
- be aware that while machine pistols and shotguns are highly effective weapons against early and mid raiders, centipedes have naturally high sharp armor, so you want to focus on armor piercing rather than multiple weak hits
Thank you for the detailed answer, this is fantastic stuff :)
Have tried some of this before, like the sniping and triggering the ship and then hoping to take them on in smaller groups. It's hard, though, and they don't really chase all that far before turning back. And with lancers out, it's very hard to do anything somewhat safely.
Wall-sandbag-wall sounds like a good idea. I'll try that next time. But even if the front row of sandbags doesn't do anything directly in terms of cover, bullets still hit there and it means the damage will be spread more out, so less chance of the crucial sandbag-between-walls to get blown to smithereens.
How do you set up your grenadiers though? Behind separate walls or something? Range is only 13 tiles, which is nothing against such a brutal crowd. And with so many popping out, some will often be behind the ship, so it will be hard to impossible to hit everybody in that first salvo, meaning pawns in the open are very vulnerable to non-stunned mechs. That said, I should probably try it out next time and see how it goes.
Once mechs get the "Adapted" text, EMP grenades do nothing, right? Or is it still worth tossing them in?
Frag grenades is a good tip too. Hadn't thought about that, but it makes sense, especially when coupled with some EMP guys to freeze them in place. I can see how that might be effective.
One weapon that has certainly been effective (wish I had more), is a masterwork Charge lance we got from a quest, which does 38 damage per hit.
Have had very poor experiences with mortars previously. They miss way too much. Triple rocket launchers can be good, but they take a long time to aim, meaning it's hard to get any of the dangerous scythers.
Kinda wonder if a horde of snipers would do better. I just had a siege with 27 guys, all wielding sniper rifles (strange), so we have a few now.
I always use 3-4 EMP grenadiers to take down a ship, and we're talking ~100 mechanoids total. But then I have a lot of colonists.
I position the grenadiers just close enough to hit the 4 corners of the ship. I assign 2 shielded brawlers to each grenadier, as the scythers will be going for them first. The other colonists I deploy roughly in a circle around the ship, trying to use natural cover. I don't build anything. Then I assign the grenadiers to toss and the charge rifle / assault rifle guys to fire just in time for the mechs to pop out when the grenades pop. I leave the grenades on autofire. Yes, the mechs only take the first stun and then show 'adapted' a bunch of times, but eventually that wears off and you can stun them again.
I find plinking at them from longer range with bolt action rifles works much better. Remember that once centipedes have taken a few shots their aim goes off badly and they're just spraying bullets all over. The further away you are, the less likely any will hit. And lancers go down pretty quickly to BAR fire. Only the scythers are a real challenge, and being further away means you get more opportunities to shoot them before they get there.
Also, yes, you have to build an on-site infirmary before you pop open the mech-can. You're going to have serious injuries that need to be treated close by. Carry a pile of medicine to a pad that you can sew people up at after the battle. (beds are optional)
The inferno cannons are the real danger, and only because they'll cause your pawns to break cover and run into fire from other mechs.
The Problem with Centipedes is that they have high-armor making them impervious to many gunshots and ranged weapons, and not to mention that they soak bullets like giant sponges and can tank a lot of hits...
Schwartz said EMP Grenades are good against them, for a while. So you can make a quick escape or prevent one trying to fire a inferno cannon into your group of pawns trying to fire at it before they adapt it for a while.
And if you got some distraction like say throw away mini-turrets, tamed animals fighting for or wandering around, Scythers will instead go for them instead of your valuable shooters shooting them. And EMPs will still be effective if it's your animal fighting it instead of a mini-turret or someone with a shield since the EMP will also stun your turret or completely drain the shield belt.
Though something i learned from fighting those mechanoids with crashed ships, and if they are occupied or distracted fighting your guys or turrets and trained animals away from their ship part. I like to sneak in either a Melee Brawler or a Ranged Soldier or a Grenadier from behind and tell it or them to focus on the Crashed Ship part while all the mechanoids are focused on my front fighters while that one brawler or two fighters are smashing the ship part, or the fastest way to destroy it is with Frag grenades to prevent my soldiers from going crazy or throwing mental breaks in the middle combat if it's a psychic ship part. Sniping it with bolt-actions or sniper rifles are also a good choice as well. ;)
I actually did the wall-sandbag-wall thing earlier, I see. From what I recall we still got butchered, but hopefully not quite as badly. But from what I've seen so far, the main problem isn't really the bullet-spraying centipedes or even lancers (unless they hit something vital), but the inferno centipedes and scythers.
(https://i.imgur.com/NAAJ8SQ.png)
Not played much longer, but already a new poison ship has landed. In the meantime I've built some EMP shells and am working on more EMP and frag grenades, so will try out some of the advice here and hope it works better. Plus I'm putting up some EMP traps. Hopefully they can help deal with the super-nasty scythers that bumrush us. If we get 8-10 of those, it's impossible to kill them before they do horrible damage to lots of guys.
I've plotted down this, which I hope will help us out. Not sure about the sidewalls, but the idea is to have some grenadiers over there. Going all out on steel traps this time, because I have to expect probably 25 buggers to pop out, which is utterly brutal to deal with.
(http://i.imgur.com/xRB3U5Zl.png) (https://imgur.com/xRB3U5Z)
Volcanic winter hit shortly before the ship landed, so Cassandra really wants us dead now.
If I use EMP traps, especially this many, I have to be very careful with the melee (shield) guys. Looks like the range is pretty big.
Really don't much like this part of the game, I have to say. It's definitely a challenge allright, and you can easily lose many people. But the game just becomes mech raids and mech ships one after another, which isn't much fun. Especially these blasted ships since we have to take them on in the field without proper defense and often far away from base (read: hospital).
It was brutal. Horrendously brutal. 8 centipedes.
But we survived. All of us. Barely. Set up a field hospital with 6 bedrolls, which was nowhere near enough, so packed 3 more sleeping spots in there afterwards. We lost a lung and a host of fingers and toes, and a bionic leg was very close to getting shot off, but it seemed to have gone relatively well.
Still, lots of fires, over half the colonists went down, most of the wall to the east got blown to smithereens from all the bullets. I had about 5 people over there with EMP and frag grenades, plus two brawlers nearby. The shields went out in the total chaos, think it was from one of the two EMP traps that went off. Very big blast radius. But all in all it could definitely have gone worse. As long as at least one EMP trap goes off, that will help for a while. Even so, you can just forget about stunning everybody and enjoying free and safe shots. Not going to happen with so many mechs. Unless you have a ton of pawns and can toss EMPs at them from all angles I suppose.
Almost tempting to say the worst bit this time was after the battle, when they flip out. Not small stuff either, but murderous rage, killing animals, and such. Thankfully it worked to arrest the girl who was going to murder one of my other pawns.
I always find this stuff so silly after tough battles. They are hurting because they are injured, maybe aren't properly fed. The colony has barely survived after all. And then they start flipping out, one after the other. Honestly think it would be better to disable that stuff while people are in hospital, at least when they are so badly hurt. They can barely move for crying out loud, but are upset, and will start crawling around the place with evil thoughts.
And of course, the instant they are able to walk, they'll start crawling across half the map to play hoopstone or pick up a meal. It's so utterly blockheaded, and frustrates me to no end that we can't turn this off somehow by using the priorities. You'd think surviving and then healing up is rather more important than playing game-of-ur or picking up a backup meal.
So then I have to use workarounds like tossing pemmican on the hospital floor and banning doors to equipment. Otherwise they WILL crawl towards shield belts the instant they are no longer blacked out, because they lost the weapon when they got downed during combat.
But all this chaos (and gameplay frustrations) aside, I think it was better to use EMP and frag grenades. It's just so darn hard to do any of that somewhat safely. Basically have to hope nobody gets killed, because they are going to get inside bullet hell one way or another.
1. grenades - yes. you do want to throw them from all, or at least 2 angles. use the split second explosion trick to maximize the EMP coverage so that FIRST placement of mechs gets basically frozen in place...That's why you use more than one EMP grenadier, because if you COULD get them all in one blast radius, one would be all you'd need. Also, yes, EMP 'nades kill shields.
2. infernos can be dealt with by spreading your troops out even wider (2-3 empty tiles in between instead of 1)...it's more time and resource intensive to build all that infrastructure, but you seem not to mind spending time prepping for the ships. You can also use nonviolent pawns behind some walls ready to jump out and put out fires. Even without nonviolent pawns, I always pause as soon as an inferno cannon hits, select the nearest non-weapon-cooldown pawn and have him walk over and extinguish people, then run back to cover.
3. Shield belt/hospital solution. Presumably you have specific pawns who use melee weapons and don't swap to ranged. Make a custom outfit for them, then set them to it, then remove shield belt from the list of allowed things on everyone else's outfit. Putting a TV in your hospital facing the beds also allows the recovering pawns to gain some recreation, though some might still get up to leave, it should at least help.
4. mech attacks seem well designed in that the effective strategies for centipedes are countered by lancers and scythers, and the effective strategies for those are countered by centipedes. If you can focus one group or the other in the initial grenade barrage (remember an EMP grenade thrown at both the top and bottom center of the ship part will cover the vast majority of the exiting mechs...with 3 EMP grenadiers, you can cover the entire perimeter with no holes), probably the lancers and scythers, it allows you to swap tactics and kill the centipedes more effectively....you could focus grenade fire on one group of them and engage single, further away centipedes with brawlers.
5. The LEAST risky strategy is still mortars. Set up a mortar room in your base with 4-8 mortars, and shell the ship part, with all mortars firing at once, then holding fire. Once you hit the ship part the first time and the mechs exit (you could do that part with a sniper if you really wanted), use the hold fire function on the mortars to let all the cooldowns of the mortars sync up, then pause and turn off hold fire, but do NOT assign a target....the miss radius is smaller on auto-targeted shots than forced target. Pause, hold fire, wait for mechs to lose interest, then repeat. You've already posted that you're going all out with steel traps already....sure, most mortar shots will be wasted, but since you're already spending the steel, why not use it in the SAFEST mech-engage strategy there is? If the mortars eventually kill the ship part, the surviving and crippled mechs will rush your base, straight into your prepared, presumably MUCH stronger than makeshift-ship-part-defense, defenses.
Quote from: Limdood on August 22, 2019, 02:18:03 PM
3. Shield belt/hospital solution. Presumably you have specific pawns who use melee weapons and don't swap to ranged. Make a custom outfit for them, then set them to it, then remove shield belt from the list of allowed things on everyone else's outfit. Putting a TV in your hospital facing the beds also allows the recovering pawns to gain some recreation, though some might still get up to leave, it should at least help.
5. ....but do NOT assign a target....the miss radius is smaller on auto-targeted shots than forced target. Pause, hold fire, wait for mechs to lose interest, then repeat.
I do try to put out fires, at least on downed pawns, but not by leaving cover. That is way too risky with bullets raining down on us. I pause a lot and try to keep a watch on the most damaged people and the already downed pawns.
Thanks for the tip about outfits. Have set up a Brawler outfit now, which I hope will help, by disallowing belts for the Anything outfit. Already have a TV in the hospital, plus lots of other stuff, and the mentioned food on the floor. But they still get up to do all kinds of silly stuff, which is very, very frustrating when they are bandaged from head to toe and can barely walk. Spending half a day to grab a meal, then breaking due to hunger or whatever (doctors are supposed to feed them after all) is annoying. I just want them to stay in bed and heal up, and that's why I have set it to 1 (with fire and basic set to 2, to try to prevent dumb stuff).
On mortars... that actually works?! I didn't think they would fire unless I set a target for them. Certainly had no idea it was more precise without that. I don't use them much in fairness. Haven't even researched it, but do have 3 mortars from previous sieges (I try to snipe them, which sometimes triggers the whole lot to rush us instead of bombarding the base).
I did finally tech biofuel, so can try the mortars approach next time if we get enough shells by then. I've just had very poor experiences with them before, so haven't seriously considered trying it again. Seemed like a waste of resources with most shells going into mountains 10 tiles away, or with luck hitting one mechanoid.
Thankfully the poison ships aren't too bad, so it's possible to prepare (and I can re-use the un-triggered traps). It's the psychic ship that is truly brutal, and needs to be dealt with ASAP (within 2.5 days), or else there is a very real danger of people flipping out before you're able to take it on. Animals can turn manhunter too, which happened when my guys were on route to the built up defences. Wasn't pretty... Horrible timing.
Would a doomsday rocket work well against mechanoids? Believe it starts fires, which does nothing, but if the blast radius is large enough, it should be possible to hit a whole heap. And since I'm using Pick up and haul, it's possible to bring another weapon with them and change in the field.
doomsday has the same issues as triple launchers....REALLLLY long aim time. I THINK they have secondary explosions though, so those might damage mechs if it's used as the opening salvo...Or really precise timing by aiming a doomsday launcher and timing a sniper shot to hit the ship right before the rocket arrives.
Mortars are very effective against sieges, "prepare and attack" raids, and ship parts - but do almost nothing against sappers and "attack immediately" raids. Mortars will be fired by drafted pawns manning them the same as any other weapon, automatically targeting and firing, unless the mortar is set to hold fire. My tips for mortars are:
- numbers matter. One mortar will do almost nothing...ever. 12 mortars will devastate most prep & attack or siege raids without taking a single shot from any enemies, and will cripple mechs around a ship part (with careful management, to prevent sequential firings chain-damaging mechs so they rush all the way to your base). I don't usually consider having less than 4 mortars....imo (which others are free to disagree with), 1-3 mortars might as well be no mortars.
- shells deteriorate when left unroofed....I tend to make 2 4x5 or 6x5 rooms, with a 1x5 (or maybe 3x5 if you use vanilla item stack sizes) room in between them....put the mortars in the 2 rooms, with the "operator" place in a line down the middle (remember mortars have to be unroofed...no under-mountain mortars), The center room is roofed, and contains your mortar shell stockpile. That way the shells are right between all the mortars, and the doors can be set to "hold open."
- coordination is important with mortars. Mortar hits can trigger all sorts of things...most notably, pirate raids can decide to attack, and mechs can be re-aggro'd or triggered. You want all your mortars being fired simultaneously so all the shells are firing into the same region...snaked-out lines of enemies take a lot less damage than big clumps. I tend to draft enough pawns for each mortar, move them into the operator positions for the mortars (just move them there, don't actually order them to man the mortar yet), THEN i pause it and assign each pawn to an adjacent mortar, then unpause....All the pawns will acquire a target, aim, and fire at once, then go grab a new shell together. Usually I pause again here and click hold fire, but for humanoid raids, you can just let them keep firing...all the following salvos will be fairly coordinated as well.
- mortars have a cooldown time before they can fire again (i think it's 40-50 seconds). You don't have to have a target to run the cooldown. After the raid is over, you can have one pawn go and manually reload and run down the cooldown on all the mortars, one by one (or use several pawns) so that all mortars are loaded and primed for an immediate shot the next time they're needed.
- most raids will be handled in 2-4 salvos. ship parts might take significantly more, but I think you'd be highly unlikely to need more than 10 salvos for any single event. This can help you plan how many shells to keep on hand. I personally exclusively use high-explosive shells....even on mechs. Admittedly i've never really used the other ones...but i've also never really felt the need for them. One exception - antigrain warheads are UNBELIEVABLY devastating. Even with the miss radius, you're nearly certain to kill whatever you aimed at...and EVERYTHING else on the side of it that the warhead landed on - raiders, mechs, wildlife, trees, buildings, a good chunk of mountain...
Before reading this post I actually happened to try out mortars against a siege. They landed in a really awkward place protected by mountains far away from the base, and we were still a bit messed up from previous fights. Most didn't even have weapons equipped, and were asleep. Had 3 mortars with shells gotten from previous sieges, and it worked really well. Many misses of course, but the first one killed one person, and a while later another explosive shell (some incendiary were used too) landed right in the pack and killed 3 people outright and damaged several others quite badly. They attacked the base. By the time they got around the mountain and through the traps we were in position and could deal with them fine.
(http://i.imgur.com/7T4Z5IHl.png) (https://imgur.com/7T4Z5IH)
Ships is of course much, much harder, but think I'll try out this approach next time and see how we fare. Need more shells, so I'm building more of them now. It's pretty expensive in steel, but the damage potential is higher than traps as well, which can only hit one pawn/mechanoid.
If we manage to take out the ship and they attack us, it will be much easier to deal with them, not least because it won't be everybody at once since lancers and scythers are much faster movers.
Didn't wind up with the same setup as you explained, but have four mortars now (no tech yet) which might be sufficient based on your post above.
(http://i.imgur.com/vmO0KBol.png) (https://imgur.com/vmO0KBo)
Quote from: Limdood on August 22, 2019, 08:26:04 PM
One exception - antigrain warheads are UNBELIEVABLY devastating. Even with the miss radius, you're nearly certain to kill whatever you aimed at...and EVERYTHING else on the side of it that the warhead landed on - raiders, mechs, wildlife, trees, buildings, a good chunk of mountain...
On this... if the antigrain warhead lands in the mountain (but somewhat near enemies), will it still deal devastating damage, and not be "wasted" like normal shells?
Interesting. I was going to test out the mortal approach. A psychic ship landed.
(http://i.imgur.com/XHzqaZTl.jpg) (https://imgur.com/XHzqaZT)
Had four guys by the mortars waiting for the mechs to turn back -- but they never did. So we scrambled into defensive positions and awaited the "guests". 28 mechanoids (!), including 8 centipedes. Holy smokes!
Nice of the visiting bowmen to join in, although some of them lost their lives. Took some heat off my dudes though, since they are standing in front of the firing line.
(http://i.imgur.com/nTDv8HKl.jpg) (https://imgur.com/nTDv8HK)
It's hard to see it being possible to beat such a colossal force with a conventional approach, ie taking them on in the open. Fortunate that they attacked the base here, otherwise I would have had no option but to pummel them with mortars and hope we hit them enough. Each centipede is a bullet-sponge fortress, and 8? Crikey!
(https://i.imgur.com/xZxsNeS.jpg)
So errr, I'm still to try this approach properly then. But I will next time a ship lands far enough away that they won't directly attack the base. Really surprised me that they did here, because as you see from the first picture, the ship landed pretty far away. Before this one another one touched down south of the wooden bridge in the bottom centre of the image, so I expected them to attack through the trap maze. That was 6 or 7 centipedes.
This most recent force had 10 scythers and 10 lancers. Those scythers could have single-handedly destroyed us. Just too many, and it takes too much time to kill them all off, even if I were to be fortunate with EMPs.
QuoteHad four guys by the mortars waiting for the mechs to turn back -- but they never did.
Once the ship part got below x percent (i think 50%) the guarding mechanoids start to invade your base.
But that split the attacking forces and if you got a second exit, you maybe can kite the centipedes around, and when you defeate the scythers you can go out and snipe the centipedes.
Quote from: Canute on August 24, 2019, 04:11:22 PM
Once the ship part got below x percent (i think 50%) the guarding mechanoids start to invade your base.
But that split the attacking forces and if you got a second exit, you maybe can kite the centipedes around, and when you defeate the scythers you can go out and snipe the centipedes.
Only used one shell to trigger the ship, and got a direct hit with it. The ship went to 790 HP I think, so well above 50%. Once I looked over the corpses post-combat, I noticed a few had mortar injuries, so that one mortar must have somehow hit a few as they popped out of the ship, which caused them to attack. But given the distance I was quite surprised they kept going. Expected them to turn back any moment, which they never did. Total carnage, but it's so much better to fight from a defensive position. Even so, 8 centipedes and a horde of lancers and scythers, most which made it through the maze (and ofc all centipedes were unhurt, coming last) was still no easy task.
If the centipedes had turned back, I could have tried the kiting thing. Or pummelled them with mortars if they all went back to the ship.
Given the enormous forces they bring now, probably 30+ units next time, I'm definitely going to try the mortars next time a ship lands, especially if it's far away.
Very glad I posted about this and got some excellent advice, because these encounters were getting increasingly suicidal. Wealth is actually over 400k now, and keeps increasing. Probably mostly due to better equipment (marine helmets and some marine armour), plus loads of bionics because parts keep getting blown off. One pawn has two bionic legs, two bionic arms, and a bionic eye. All parts were shot off or cut out.
yes, that's the trouble with bionics -- they increase pawn wealth much faster than they increase pawn usefulness. So your pawn becomes a magnet for trouble. You might want to consider selling off the bionics and replacing them with prostheses that are reasonably adequate (especially legs) and much cheaper. The net value of the pawn will actually increase that way.
Same goes for marine armor and such... a simple flak vest provides nearly as much protection for the chest at least, and you can replace most of the rest that gets blown off. Except eyes and brains :)
Total havoc :o
20 centipedes and 9 lancers.
(http://i.imgur.com/kW8cubyl.jpg) (https://imgur.com/kW8cuby)
This wasn't a ship encounter, but two groups of mechs dropped in pods and attacked. Definitely getting way out of hand. Glad I put that fire popper there as it helped a bit. Sorry I didn't install a EMP trap. Had some other traps by the entrance from the killzone so figured it would go too far in. They've never ventured this far in before. But then I haven't seen 20 buggers attack us either.
Actually had 4 guys man the mortars and keep pounding them. Looking at the injuries not many hit them, but it was worth a try.
Recently upgraded those 3 vulnerable mini-turrest to plasteel. Had two guys repairing them, but one of them blew up. Surprised me that both walls got taken out. Granite is sturdy stuff. But without those walls all three would be wiped. Autocannons actually ran out of juice and I tried to rearm them with a shielded guy, but then the electricity went out as well. The two uranium slugs almost ran out too. Nuts.
Horrible attack, but we got out of it without too horrendous injuries (no deaths!). Lost a lung and another eye, the lung ironically to a missed autocannon shot (on fire, running around). The guy is probably alive thanks to the marine armour that reduced the damage to 20.
Any survived raid without death's was a good defence !! :-)
Lung and eye you can harvest for prisoners or get bionic ones !.
True. Although we basically don't get any prisoners any more. Glad I harvested a few about 5-6 years ago in-game.
Next up: 60(!) sapper raiders. They went for the freezer, the nasty so-and-sos. Used the insanity gadget we had on the first guy (it's usually a miner), and one second later the other 59 killed him. No use. They march onwards towards the freezer. But first they had to hack through another mountain, because a deep water lake stopped them (I hadn't even noticed that before). Pummelled them with mortars, but barely anything hit.
I frantically try to make some turrets inside the freezer, but quickly realise it's no use. Not enough time. So I try to flank them instead, after opening a door to lure them through did nothing of note. Managed to kill a few, but the horde went through, into the freezer, and started assaulting various animals inside the base. Lost for ideas at this point, I ordered everybody into the freezer (from the hole they created). A big lump of guns.
It sort of worked. There were enough guys in the freezer or nearby to attack, and then the rest wanted to flee that way. Killed a few more on the way out. Almost 40 corpses. 4 of my panthers died, and a cougar. Heaps more got hit, but thankfully I managed to save them.
So once again it went better than feared, but I just hate attacks like this that throw all nice plans out the window. That said, it IS more fun to fight humans.
Oh, and one unfortunate person survived, got imprisoned, lost a lung, and was then released. I just can't take the hits from harvesting them until death. Everybody flip out for the next week.
Such colossal attacks are getting overly dangerous though. I'd like to build a ship in this save, but 15 days of attacks like this?? Can't see us surviving that in all honesty. Takes a week to fix up everything afterwards.
I have to seriously consider taking the vast bulk of textiles, and dancing around a very large bonfire. Perhaps that will make the attacks more manageable. :-\
Aaah yes. The 16 year old sow* that has been with us from the very start, and has survived two heart attacks, is still alive. She lost an eye to the nasty invaders, but otherwise healed up fine. Definitely living on borrowed time! :) 8)
* Pigs have a life expectancy of 12 years.
If you want to make the ship with a non-cheese strategy, calculate the resources you'll need for the ship, and make sure you've got that. Convert EVERYTHING else in your base to steel, components, and plasteel (through trading whatever you can), as well as new guns, new armor, traps by the truckload, mortars, shells, firefoam, etc. and like 20 days food. Basically, your entire base becomes nothing but a military fortress with no purpose but surviving 15 days....no more tailoring, no growing zones, no mining, construction only for repairs and replacement, etc. Then give it a shot. Biggest tip I have in that case would be ringing your base in as many layers of walls as you can, and abuse the hell out of mortars, since each group needs to slow down and group up at any wall entry.
If you don't mind cheesing it some, then yeah, destroying everything you don't need that's boosting your value will help.
But after all, the ship startup is kinda like the end boss of the game anyways...it would be somewhat anticlimactic to go into that KNOWING you're going to win or lose....I kind of envy your current situation, as you have a legit "lets see if I'll make it!" situation going on.
Yes, that is definitely a fair comment. And don't think I could stomach to burn up all the strictly non-needed stuff anyway. I'm not that kind of game-the-system gamer. Always trying to play as honest as possible -- though in this game a killzone is unfortunately needed. Taking on 20 centipedes or 60 raiders in the open is a highly viable suicide plan, but that's not really what I want to achieve here.
(Thankfully I had the sense to turn down the 130+ melee only chased refugee event recently...)
Instead I'm trying to plan for the maybe inevitable base destruction. Had forgot how expensive the ship is in terms of especially advanced components (cryptosleep gadgets, and we need at least 20 of them), so that will take a good while. Trying to make some more marine armour too. But I'm honestly not sure (any more) if it's better than flaks vests, pants and devilstrand shirt. Perhaps it's grossly inaccurate, but looking at the percentages under Gear, it's sometimes worse when they change into marine armour and shirt+pants.
Should build even more walls as well. Three layers isn't enough, and I need much better protection north of the freezer. The sappers certainly taught me that expensive lesson. Scary how fast they hammer through granite mountain when they first arrived. And despite trying to smash them with 4 mortars, it's so inaccurate that when they're close to a mountain, you're going to miss with 90%+ of shells. Siege bases is much easier, because typically they're in the open and your impact zone is therefore much bigger.
The ship needing so many advanced components was a bit of a shocker, because I had thoughts about starting to rip off reasonably healthy limbs and replace them with bionics -- especially arms, because manipulation should helps with shooting (iirc). Have also built 4 mortars of my own, so we have 8 now. And 100 explosive shells. That should suffice for a while. Also have that antigrain warhead, which should probably be used for something destructive at some point..... :-X
But once I flip the button and the 15-day hellish assault starts, we need to be much better prepared than currently. 30 mechs every day or two will eventually kill us off - no doubt about it. Need more traps, more walls, more turrets, more everything.
Steel is always the biggest issue. And so far I've fetched 3-4 steel locations with the long-range scanner. 5000 went to 100 in no time at all. It's crazy. Heck, even the 150+ (normal) components went out the window in a whiff once I started on the ship.
Should be fun one way or another once I trigger the assaults. I'll let you know how I get on. It's definitely not a given how it turns out, due to the colossally big attack forces.
Oh jeez. Thank you ever so much, Cassandra. Both in the same second.
(https://i.imgur.com/h0vJSL1.png)
Very late in the day too, so we have to withstand until morning somehow. Then it's mortar time, and hope the maybe 40 mechs don't kill us all when they attack. Or that all females flip out. These events are usually always female, which I suspect is because I have several female "Too smart" pawns. Cassandra knows where to twist the knife.
Edit: Actually, on further inspection, it looks like both events don't double up. The worst is taken instead. Males get the low effect from the ship, and females get the massive -30 hit from the high-pitched spacevoice. Time to equip some hats...
You can wait with the psychic shop until some non-mechanoid raid comes.
So the mech's fight against the raider.
A few days you should be able to withstand the ship psychic drone effect.
I forgot....also gamey...you could set up a second base a couple tiles away. Purely defensive....no kitchens, fields, workshops, etc. Then start caravaning your ship supplies and food over, and build the ship there. It doesn't DESTROY the old, useless gear, but it still removes the wealth from the assault calculations. You also get to make a MUCH more compact, defensible base, by focusing solely on sleeping quarters, dining/rec room, mortars, and a large area for the ship. You'll also, quite amusingly, suddenly get reduced "expectations" mood boost since the new map will have drastically reduced wealth.
It might feel more "story acceptable" as well, since thematically you're abandoning a "home" to build a military installation which will be used for one specific purpose. When you're ready to start the launch sequence, you could also think of the supplies you left behind as "well, we don't need these anymore, I hope someone can make use of them when we're gone."
Quote from: Canute on August 28, 2019, 02:45:16 PM
You can wait with the psychic shop until some non-mechanoid raid comes.
So the mech's fight against the raider.
A few days you should be able to withstand the ship psychic drone effect.
Didn't dare to wait that long, so when I had time to play again today I went ahead with the assault. Thankfully the high psychic drone ended during the battle, but I took on the ship on the 2nd day. Can't afford it going to medium (after 2.5 days). It's too stressful on people. Equipped some of my worst afflicted with the 7 tinfoil hats I have purchased when available. To reduce risk I let them (+1) man the mortars.
Essentially I tried to carry out the fight in stages.
First trigger the ship. Oh dear. 43 mechs this time, though "only" 15 centipedes. Salvo from all 8 mortars. Some animals got a rude awakening.
(https://i.imgur.com/Oh1SASQ.png)
I then let them reload and hold fire. The ship landed quite close to base, and the mobile mechs are essentially into the trap maze before I can fire again. A few lancers die, but all others are only injured. When the centipedes get into a semi-open position I try to hit them again. Not much landed, but a few got hit. Tried to attack them again while they were into the maze. No idea if it was useful or mostly just injured the walls, but it was worth a try. They are mighty strong bastards.
No idea how the below came to be, but for some reason the scythers got stuck or blocked behind the centipedes. So they ended up attacking us after the centipedes were dead, which made it rather a lot easier. Not one of them made it to my melees or the plasteel mini turrets.
(http://i.imgur.com/eQvjloWl.jpg) (https://imgur.com/eQvjloW)
This time I used two EMP traps, although they had to be placed uncomfortably deep into the killzone. Took a while to trigger, but really glad it finally did. Looked like everybody had the stun tag, but heaps kept firing at us. Two firefoams in place too, and both triggered, meaning we mostly didn't have to worry about on-fire guys running about like headless chickens. Much less need to repair turrets mid-battle too.
Post-combat, and the area looks like this.
(http://i.imgur.com/VQvv1xql.jpg) (https://imgur.com/VQvv1xq)
Lots of dead mechs, but oddly enough 5 fewer than attacked. Looks like 4 centipedes and one other got evaporated from mortars. About mortars, after the attempted salvo in the maze, I held off and tried to attack them after they had come through and some were in the open. A few landed and injured some of them, but as you can see from above, many walls and some doors got taken out as well. I was worried about taking out the walls south so the scythers got through and flanked us, so towards the end of battle I sent the helmet-less pawns to join the battle.
This time it went spectacularly well. Only two people got hit at all. One quite badly, but he'll live.
Much to rebuild, including walls and bridge+trap placements this time, but given time that can be done. Fair to say I'm convinced about the power of mortars in these late game assaults. So far the mechs have been close enough to instantly attack the base, so haven't been able to check out combat when they turn back to the ship. But I would think that is easier to deal with, as you can injure more of them from a safe distance, even if most of the mortar shells won't hit anything.
Very briefly, what I did here was:
1. Trigger the ship with a full salvo of mortars. Hopefully some will injure or even kill a few mechs
2. Put non-mortars into defensive positions and wait. If possible, hit the centipedes with another salvo or two on the way to your base.
3. Put uranium slugs on hold fire until the centipedes arrive. 40 shells isn't much against so many centipedes, and we can't afford to "waste" them on lancers or scythers. Hopefully your guys and normal turrets can deal with them okay.
4. Once the centipedes are in gun-range, let the mortars rip again, and turn on the uranium slugs. Try to force fire on the inferno cannons, as they can deal total havoc if your people catch fire and start running around. Then hope your firefoam protectors trigger at a fitting time, and that the mechs trigger one of the EMP traps. That will give you some respite.
5. Fire, fire, fire and fire some more.
6. If feasible, let the mortar guys join the attack too. Hold off on shield melee guys and don't send them into the middle of the bullet rain. Shields will go out in no time, and they'll get downed, possibly from friendly fire. Let them take some fire in turns instead, and use them to repair vulnerable turrets. If the combat is mighty long, they can be used to refill autocannons.
Naturally, this whole thing is easier when they attack the base, like in these latest write-ups. Taking on such a colossal force in the open, even if I'm able to make better use of EMP grenades, seems like a total suicide mission based on my previous experience. And without turret backup, it's extremely hard to take down so many centipedes before half your army is downed and bleeding out.
As a little aside, are you aware that you can smooth granite mountain blocks, and this enables you to repair them?
Discovered it by coincidence after the freezer invasion earlier. Those walls were smoothed and I expected them to look shot up and a bit ugly for all eternity. Then I suddenly see some pawns repairing them :)
It's worth noting that mortars are more effective against larger raids than smaller ones (more targets milling about in a larger area). So if you're ever in a situation where the ship part is a good distance from your base and the mechs are hanging out there, you can probably hit them effectively with several volleys.
Firefoam poppers against inferno cannons is a clever idea, I like that, I'll try to remember it when I get to that stage in my current game.
Quote from: Shurp on August 28, 2019, 07:45:08 PM
Firefoam poppers against inferno cannons is a clever idea, I like that, I'll try to remember it when I get to that stage in my current game.
Agreed. When I read that earlier in the thread, i just thought "that's brilliant! I've NEVER thought of that!"
That's pretty cool that the firefoam popper is a new idea. Glad to be able to help you guys a little too :) You've helped me with various advice in this thread and others.
As for the game; good grief. How are we supposed to survive a 15-day non-stop attack when regular mech raids almost finish us off?
They suddenly invade from the south, which is very close to the base, so no time to prepare anything. I did take out two firefoam poppers, but no time for EMP traps, and no use in mortars. Not enough time. They're over us before we can say "Damn". Didn't help that some dumbass had put a rock chunk IN a door in the maze, meaning many traps were dormant. I don't understand why this keeps happening, when the dumping zone doesn't include the doors or traps.
Bi-directional bullethell from the 19 centipedes, 10 lancers and 15 scythers.
(http://i.imgur.com/9wDVNoSl.jpg) (https://imgur.com/9wDVNoS)
Three people went down, walls and sandbags shot up, though I'm glad we managed to save the plasteel mini-turrets by repairing them throughout. Autocannons ran out, and I had to re-arm them mid-battle. It looked ugly with all those machines firing at us, but thankfully none of us died.
(Okay, I admit: I save-scummed because the first time Gillespie the ex-braindead one, got murdered. Brain messed up again, though I'm not sure why it should kill her as injuries overall weren't too bad, brain down to 20% capacity aside.)
Thankfully one doctor was healthy, so he had to work a double-shift through the night. Entire hospital full of damaged bodies, and I have 12-13 beds in there. Some more permanent injuries and lost limbs, so bionic operations coming up over the next days. Hope Cassandra gives us a lull again, so we can repair and heal up. Her on-off cycle is getting more and more vicious :(
i think consciousness being reduced to 0 can kill a pawn, so a 20% brain, plus 20% more consciousness damage from other sources could kill a pawn...I'm not 100% confident though.
For the rock chunks, they can't be dropped on traps, so if a chunk is generated somewhere (as can happen from metal objects being destroyed into slag, or a pawn who was hauling a rock chunk being drafted, or the fertile fields mod changing rough stone to gravel) the rock chunk will be placed at the nearest open tile, and doors count as open tiles, and items in doors block them open. So it isn't a hauling issue, it's more a LACK of hauling, since chunks aren't automatically hauled, so your pawns won't clear them out without being specifically told to.
I do believe there is a mod that prevents items from being dropped in doorways though, so if that is an ongoing annoyance, it might be worth looking into.
Cheers. Might have been other injuries that killed her off then. Don't recall exactly what it was, just that I was surprised.
I have a horde of panthers, like 30-40, and several places for stone chunks, so I'm not sure why they keep ending up in doorways. Usually I catch it, but sometimes not, and when raids hit it's tough.
Goddamnit though. Feels like things are starting to spiral out of control, and I'm still only dealing with normal raids. They're simply too darn big to deal with. Need luck to get out of it alive and without too much damage to people or the base. And then it takes a week to heal up + rebuild afterwards. Or near enough anyway.
Double-whammy now. First a horde of pirates, once again during the evening/night, so people need to fight tired and upset, and the next day is a mess. People still in hospital and infrastructure not up to par yet, and 45 mechs drop down and attack, including 20 centipedes. This time there even was a visiting caravan that took a little of the heat initially. Sadly they got torched, including an Archotech arm, heart, TV and various other good pieces :(
Post-battle, and so much to fix up. Most of the walls are almost torn down as well, so either need to tear it down first and rebuild, or spend a long time to repair. I'm less and less confident we can weather the storm from "normal" (yet big-ass) raids, never mind once the ship is started up.
A more zoomed out view, in case you see something awefully dim I've done that can help me survive these onslaughts better.
(http://i.imgur.com/YIa25qel.jpg) (https://imgur.com/YIa25qe)
If only the mortars were more precise... They're going every which way, and can easily do more damage to the base than to the mechs.
Wealth is over 600,000 now, and keeps rising despite the fact I'm not crafting much. Some infrastructure and the odd bionic to replace lost parts.
Old sow Iskra sadly suicided on a trap. Maybe she was tired of life in the colony and saw which way things are heading. RIP, old girl. It was a good ride. 17 years :(
You should be getting a lot of plasteel and components from those mechanoids you're disassembling, right? Maybe you need to build a field of plasteel simple turrets in your killbox to slow them down (and give them targets other than your colonists)
Added bonus: next time there's a ship part landing, you can pick up all the turrets, relocate them with a few batteries to power them, and splatter the mechs as they come out.
Put a few turrets in your freezer / anywhere else sappers like to hit you... only thing turrets aren't effective against is siegers.
Did you try to call for help at least once? I had a game when friendly faction raid suddenly showed up during mecanoid raid I tryed to repel and they steamrolled mechs like babies!!! I think it's nice feature that solves all wealth-danger problems, as you in fact just hire mercenries to fight for you if you can't or don't want to fight yourself.
QuoteIf only the mortars were more precise...
IED traps, sure they need componets too (i think) but you can made a pretty nice minefield before your maze entrance. Just don't place them to close to each other.
Tried to call for help (hadn't before), but they couldn't get there in time -- just a tribe.
Quote from: Canute on August 30, 2019, 05:34:27 AM
QuoteIf only the mortars were more precise...
IED traps, sure they need componets too (i think) but you can made a pretty nice minefield before your maze entrance. Just don't place them to close to each other.
Tried out this as well, and it looked like a decent plan. Maybe it will be. Later.
A ship landed in a horrible location, in between my walls, and with the path north blocked off due to a deep water lake (I opened the doors, but it was no use).
(http://i.imgur.com/wIcjXPZl.jpg) (https://imgur.com/wIcjXPZ)
It's truly amazing how quickly 45 mechs can smash up 10 turrets. We're talking seconds here. Kept pounding them with mortars (but of course the vast majority missed by impressive margins), and kept building walls to prevent them from breaking into the ship location. We had 100 shells. Found out that when you run out, people will stop manning the stations. We did kill off a few lancers and scythers, but not one of the 14 centipedes -- none were even close to anything dangerous.
(http://i.imgur.com/43Xd1ewl.jpg) (https://imgur.com/43Xd1ew)
Despite my best efforts they broke through and started smashing up the engines. Had little choice by then but to open up the doors and cross my fingers. We had prepared further south, but yeah...
(http://i.imgur.com/PHwrEULl.jpg) (https://imgur.com/PHwrEUL)
For the first time ever I tried to unleash the panthers. But it went pretty much as expected: a total suicide. At least 16 panthers and two muffalos perished, and probably mostly to friendly fire from what I have seen in the death log.
The hospital wasn't big enough this time either, with 17 of 20 people injured. Thankfully I have a spare kidney and enough bionics, but this was horribly ugly. Sure hope this doesn't happen again, because there probably isn't a good defence against this.
Right now everything in that general area is messed up, and it was a big area with many thick walls separating the base. At least all those walls meant we got enough time to build some plasteel turrets, a few traps (including a few IEDs) and a protective wall.
This stage of the game is unquestionably very brutal :( :'(
If you use animals, assign them all to one pawn, and have that pawn stand on the opposite side of the enemy from your other pawns, or at least to the side...that way the animals will hit a side that bullets aren't incoming from, which will cut down greatly on casualties.
From a metagame perspective, it is actually better to have all the tribal factions as enemies, and the outlanders as allies.
1) outlanders will respond and help in combat.
2) outlanders have more useful goods for trade
3) tribal raids are generally easier than outlander raids, especially with mortars
4) having more enemies, of easier types, will increase the pool of prospective factions when a raid is generated, making it more likely to get the easier factions (tribals) and less likely to get the hard factions (mechs)
I'd agree with that, but in depends on game events how this turns out. And at some point it's too risky to do quests, so at that point the factions are kinda set. Unless I ship most resources over to them I suppose. Trade is a slow way to increase points.
Using animals in combat appears tricky/suicidal, at least in the late game with so big forces up against us. I lost almost all haulers before, so I've turned off that option now. Trying to build up a force again as haulers, because it's needed.
Speaking of that, big forces... this was probably not the wisest move...
(https://i.imgur.com/tkO8A65.png)
As usual the refugee was beyond useless (I hoped for another cook). Moved him a bit closer to base (so they wouldn't just kidnap and leave, if such big forces are content with that), and hoped he would die.
Total chaos of course. For once I'm glad to have a handful of melees, because they bumrushed us something fierce. Tried to hit them with mortars as they moved in, but it was useless of course. Think 2-3 people got hit.
(http://i.imgur.com/IA1uH0Ul.jpg) (https://imgur.com/IA1uH0U)
I'm counting 70 dead and 60 fleeing or downed. Give or take a few I may have missed when zooming out. Massacre? Kinda! ;D
I'm seriously starting to hate the sapper attacks though. Several times they've arrived from the south and started to dig along the very south border deep into the mountain. Which means I can't fix it later either, because we're not allowed to build there. Opened up a cavern there too, so I kinda wonder if they knew about that beforehand.
(http://i.imgur.com/krLWnqVl.jpg) (https://imgur.com/krLWnqV)
By the way, I did make some IED traps before the maze. It hasn't worked as well as hoped though. Usually you get a few people on heavy drugs that run ahead of the pack, and either get blown up or run through injured. So instead of the IEDs blowing up a fairly big group, they take out a few people at best. It may work better against mechs, however, as the different types tend to bunch up more.
A more literal meaning of the thread title soon?
(https://i.imgur.com/1ekxuZG.png)
Would prefer some more food first, and wood for that matter. Toxic fallout really hurt. Most food got wiped out, and pretty much all the flora. Trees still haven't grown back. But unless something drastic happens, I'm thinking about triggering the final assault soon.
Don't know how severe it will get with 700,000 wealth on Savage, I've only done this once before, and it was probably on Medium, with presumably less wealth. But we do have 21 guys, 22 if I get a recruitment inspiration and can get the 99% prisoner. Even if we lose some people, hopefully we won't get wiped out.
Have also finally managed to get the 'good' outlanders as allies, so should be able to get them to help at least once.
Around 1000 uranium, 1000 plasteel and a whopping 10,000 steel, so I'm feeling good about that. Wood is basically zilch, since it's expensive to make chemfuel for mortar shells and IEDs. But given the amount of steel, I could easily replace all wood traps with steel at this point.
There are probably soft spots in the base that I'm not terribly aware of yet, and I am a little concerned about the south passage that the sappers revealed (I've put a bunch of traps where I could). But as long as we're able to soften incoming raids with mortars a bit, I do hope to be able to deal with them, even if they breach the inner walls.
Let us know how (badly) it goes when you push the button... my guess is that given the trouble you're having with regular raids, you're going to get buried.
Quote from: Shurp on September 03, 2019, 07:28:52 PM
Let us know how (badly) it goes when you push the button... my guess is that given the trouble you're having with regular raids, you're going to get buried.
Still hope we can make it, but I go from thinking "no chance" to "we can do this" every so often. Like when 8 centipedes + friends dropped right on top of us during the night recently, and kinda smashed up a lot of stuff, and killed our pet self-tamed rhino that got in the middle of the centipede pack. Not a nice way to go.
Have been close to flipping the switch a few times, but then half the colony goes down with an illness or two, we need to rebuild, toxic fallout, no wood, too little food, running out of marine armour and lacking plasteel. There is always something.
A little moment ago a horde of people attacked us again, and for the n-th time it was sappers (does the chance go up in the late game?). Thank goodness they didn't come from the south this time as they surely would have gone for the weak spot that we can't fix. But with such big forces, only one or two direct hits from mortars can take out 20+ people, and eventually they gave up and made a run for it. Amusingly a good few people decided to run around the whole mountain chain, where unfortunately for them they came across some traps and IEDs. Others fell over and bled out on the way.
This should suffice for a while (and there are about 15 more scattered around the map that we need to fetch):
(https://i.imgur.com/Io38C1z.png)
Many sisters and a wife was in that raiding party, so five of my people will most likely flip out a lot over the next two seasons. And the volcanic winter is still in effect, though it doesn't hurt as much after I made in-doors farming with sunlamps. Toxic fallout is much, much worse.
First...i think you need a mass dump stockpile a ways away from your base (zone it as "not a home zone" so you can molotov the corpses and clear them easily).
Secondly, flip the switch the moment you get another psychic or poison ship. Save triggering the ship for the first nasty non-mech raid....then just leave the ship and mechs alone as long as you can and you'll be surprised how many raids divert into those mechs....you're "what if we don't get a raid in time" concern is alleviated by the ship forcing more often raids.
Lastly, get 1 animal madness pulser. About 10 days into the ship startup, start using your animals....all of them...in base defense. Once your animals are toast, use the psychic animal pulser on the next non-mech raid and every animal on the map will go manhunter (your pets included, hence waiting for yours to die off). With that, a mech ship, and an allied faction, you have 3+ raids that you'll have help managing.
Quote from: Limdood on September 04, 2019, 02:41:30 PM
Secondly, flip the switch the moment you get another psychic or poison ship. Save triggering the ship for the first nasty non-mech raid....then just leave the ship and mechs alone as long as you can and you'll be surprised how many raids divert into those mechs....you're "what if we don't get a raid in time" concern is alleviated by the ship forcing more often raids.
I've been growing restless recently. Feels like the base is "done", and I'm getting a hankering for starting anew. We just had a wedding so people are generally happy again.
(https://i.imgur.com/YmPWNpn.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/eadDIV8.png)
Still low on plasteel - we rely on finding it abroad - but food and other resources is good, so time to sink or swim :) Means I didn't follow all your advice, but then I didn't want to kill off all my animals anyway. Wanted to take some of the pets with me, which is why I overbuilt sleeping quarters. Since then we have gotten more pawns, almost 30 now (!), which I didn't think was possible on non-Randy.
I'll come back with updates about how we fare. I do hope we can make it, but it's definitely not a sure thing with so many people and inching closer to 1 million wealth. First up is a siege, which should be okay since we have mortars. Wish it was possible to select more than 80 items in the game though, so we could tell how many raiders are in these late game attacks. Think the "normal" is around 140-150 now, which is quite brutal. They tend to bring the quite literally big guns as well. One of my pawns took a doomsday rocket to the face earlier, which wasn't too pleasant despite being behind a wall and sandbags.
Edit: Err, oh dear. Suddenly my confidence took a bit of a dive. Not even fired a mortar yet against the siegers, and 67 centipedes attack as well, from the vulnerable south. They bring 25 bleedin' centipedes. Gulp! That's a
lot more than we have ever faced.
Best I can hope for is that they end up killing each other, but the timing may be off given their distance from each other on the map. Wish me luck! :-X :-\
(https://i.imgur.com/B15GXGC.png)
...And we never hear from Pangaea again...
Haha :)
Round one is ours!
(http://i.imgur.com/YPoQNHsl.jpg) (https://imgur.com/YPoQNHs)
As expected it was very, very tough, and I'm glad the siegers eventually engaged the mechs. A few centipedes and the scythers fought them, while we struggled with 20+ centipedes in the killbox. Not losses on our side, however, which is always a great end.
So many corpses and weapons that they started spawning through the wall upon death.
I hope we get enough time to fix some of the structures and turrets, but it depends. Too much to fix to get it all sorted, that's for sure. From what I recall last time, there should be pauses here and there. It's not like a constant raid for 15 days.
Quote from: Pangaea on September 05, 2019, 09:08:40 AM
From what I recall last time, there should be pauses here and there. It's not like a constant raid for 15 days.
OMG was I wrong!! :lol:
3 days in and we've had 5 or 6 raids. Most recent was a double whammy again. A colossal horde of mechs (another 25 centipedes and 50 friends), and then sappers attack too, and of course to the vulnerable south, despite arriving from the north-east. Gah! No chance for inter-fighting this time, so I had to take on both. Mechs totally ruined our stuff, and several people, and the sappers were only one lousy tile short of breaking into the base. Phew!
Withering us down, fast :(
(http://i.imgur.com/fwysHdul.jpg) (https://imgur.com/fwysHdu)
Screenshot got that weird line through it again, but I just closed down the game. 5 plasteel miniturrets got blown up, which hurts a lot. We're short on plasteel. Either the walls got taken out as well, plus all neighbouring turrets, or the walls were already gone in some places. It's rather chaotic. In any case, two explosions took out all five. And that's with 5-6 shield belters repairing them throughout. They are simply too numerous to handle at this point.
And the normal raiders? Feck knows how many are coming, but it must be 200 each time. Selected 80 from a raid earlier, and only a small section of them got selected. Nuts! :o
There is also this... 78 dead buggers, and they made no attempt to run away. So yeah, they are rather numerous now.
It's fun in a sense, but the outcome is far from certain.
(http://i.imgur.com/vJmV0Iml.jpg) (https://imgur.com/vJmV0Im)
SO MUCH MEEEEEEEAT!!!
Goddamnit! No two ways about it, this is starting to go really badly. I did NOT expect to have to deal with not just one, but TWO raids almost non-stop, with barely a few hours of respite.
I've changed the schedule of almost everybody to Anything, because it's impossible to have a somewhat stable schedule, and that way they will at least get rest here and there.
We had 150+ explosive shells and 25+ fire shells. All empty now, and it didn't stop any of the two sapper teams assaulting us simultaneously. Eventually I had to risk some people going out to meet them, and a doomsday rocket into some of them thankfully made them flee.
Total chaos on all fronts now, and there is zero chance to rebuild. Don't even know what to do any more, and it feels like a matter of time before they break in from several directions and kill us all. If they asked nicely, we would have taken some with us. And it seems an odd idea to want to leave the planet by hearing about the ship engine -- and then trying to burn everything down. Damn them all! :(
The sapper teams are ruining everything. If we could focus on rebuilding one section of the base it would be easier to get back to a defensible situation, but with three fronts, two of them very vulnerable, it's impossible.
Feels like a tide we simply cannot stop :(
South:
(http://i.imgur.com/nYqnB4yl.jpg) (https://imgur.com/nYqnB4y)
Ship area:
(http://i.imgur.com/k9TwD19l.jpg) (https://imgur.com/k9TwD19)
Waltz in and kick our arse area, previously known as the killbox:
(http://i.imgur.com/LVFE1CUl.jpg) (https://imgur.com/LVFE1CU)
We're still alive and 7 days to go still. Wish it was 1. So many attacks... Dead and dying bodies everywhere!
The zillionth sapper crew, and very well-armed ones at that. Ran out of shells again, and not many of them hit anything (hard with so much mountain around), and I felt there was little choice but to take them on in a shitty position. But probably better than letting them break into the freezer or kitchen.
Naturally this went roughly like expected: everybody injured. But thankfully no deaths, "only" a few downed. Thank you marine armour.
(http://i.imgur.com/dBzltKbl.jpg) (https://imgur.com/dBzltKb)
Very glad we've had the marriage ceremony to rely on so far for mood, but it expires in a few hours, so I fear everybody will take turns flipping out -- which is the last thing we need when all defenses need to be rebuilt twice a day (ofc not possible, but we try). And right now we can't, because everybody are in the hospital (which was too small).
An issue I didn't expect is that there our pawns suddenly have truckloads of sisters, brothers, uncles, fathers, kin, you name it - and they all want to kill us. So you then have situations like this, which won't be pretty with wedding and party goes away *gulp* And I have a lot of pawns like this, although hopefully not quite this bad.
I know it looks messy and spread out, but we had to try to dodge frag grenades (not very successfully), and it was mighty chaotic. Wish we could zoom in even more.
(https://i.imgur.com/yUJaoAz.png)
\o/
(https://i.imgur.com/TYMoC3d.png)
Seemed like the chance for evil sapper raids was about 97%. So horrible to defend, especially when several hit at the same time. Oh, and you're out of mortar shells, and Cassandra is her sweet, sweet self.
(https://i.imgur.com/zRyWym0.png)
How the hell did we manage to survive that with the batteries already empty? It was a close call, and I had to sacrifice some panthers on the south front, because I didn't have shells nor the manpower. Set up in the north instead with most of my people. When they broke through into the ship area, I let it rip with one triple rocket launcher and two doomsday rockets. That convinced them it was wise to leave.
The horror...
The horror...
(https://i.imgur.com/oqKWcrS.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/ilEFU53l.jpg) (https://imgur.com/ilEFU53)
So many corpses everywhere. Utterly impossible to clean it up, even with 50+ panthers (I must have had around 100, but many children couldn't haul). At some point I did dare to send somebody over to torch the big cemetery during a clear day, and it actually burnt the whole lot evetually, plus most of the forest. They were littered everywhere else though, especially to the south and north-west, and outside our gates every which way you looked. With all the ones that burnt, either by us or 'naturally', I wouldn't be surprised if the bodycount was 1000. Totally ridiculous. Hadn't expected anything on this scale.
Actually a little sad to leave the place, after spending so much time building the base and then defending it from such merciless attacks. It was a good home to us, and it was fun to finally try a mountain base. Third time's the charm. An earlier one got burnt to the ground from several year one sieges, and everybody died (the last few to hunger while passed out).
(http://i.imgur.com/tI0jAqtl.jpg) (https://imgur.com/tI0jAqt)
This is what the base looked like towards the end.
(http://i.imgur.com/aySMEwWl.jpg) (https://imgur.com/aySMEwW)
Gratz on your success !!!!
But i even ask why did you even bother about these corpses ? You leave that planet anyway ! :-)
Ofcouse you could keep playing, a lonely wanderer will find your abandon base and you can start with him :-)
Thank you! It was quite a ride and really difficult with so many raids, especially two attacks simultaneously so often. Reckon we had about 25 raids during the 15 days.
In the beginning I did try to haul the corpses away, mainly with panthers, but pretty soon that was a hopeless task and they were lying everywhere. Pawns are ofc not happy with that because we had to rebuilt defenses constantly, and they see corpses everywhere. But thankfully the stacking stops at 3, though that is still pretty brutal with 3 corpses + 3 rotting corpses. Add all the family members attacking and dying, and most were either on the verge of breaking or outright breaking with regularity. So it was good to finally get them into the ship caskets and leave.
The rest is now an Animal Farm :P Took with us the 7 named panthers, as we happened to have 35 caskets and 28 colonists, so it fit well.
I'm now looking over some more mods for a next playthrough. Mainly more QoL, as I don't want to unbalance the game too much, and these various bionics and suchlike mods look terribly OP.
Amazing how tough these last 15 days were though. We started out with 7-8000 steel, and halfway in all of that was gone. Despite ordering the panthers to haul back all the steel slags that were on the map (at least that is one positive from massive drop pod attacks).
It cannot be overstated: You need to prepare exceedingly well before triggering this onslaught, and have mountains of excess resources, food and medicine. Ideally also fully equipped with marine armour. I think that is why we lost so few (big) limbs throughout (and some of those were actually to our own autocannons). And on that note, keep some backup bionics for when this happens.
I learnt a lot from playing this out, and from the advice of all you helpful people :)
Tactically it was very challenging because at least in my case the vast majority of raids were human raids, and almost all of those were the now hated sapper raids. Only 2-3 were mechs actually, which in a sense is actually easier to defend, because they are predictable as long as they don't drop into the middle of your base. Few attacks came the normal way through the maze and into the killbox. Therefore I think it's imperative to have layered defenses with thick walls and mountain, so at least you get a time buffer to move forces, or flank them. And change work priorities so (almost) everybody reasonable capable of construction will be doing that. You're looking at constant rebuilds for 15 straight days -- day and night.
Relying on mortars against sappers is highly unreliable. If you happen to land one or two direct hits, that is great, and can be enough, but the vast majority of shells will land off-map or in the mountain -- and shells are not cheap. It's probably a big reason why so much steel evaporated. That and traps.
They never did break through from the south, but that is only because they started digging parallel one tile from the inner base. Not sure what room they were targeting, but it could have been another storeroom, or even the sunlamp farming area. Hard to know.
I called for help twice, but it was almost hilariously underwhelming. With 200-ish raiders up against us, they send 8 and 9 people in drop pods (one of them scattered all over the map). Needless to say, this was not very helpful and didn't exactly turn the tide of combat.
Though I have to hand it to Priscilla. That is one hell of a brave woman!
(https://i.imgur.com/P5ydDzO.jpg)
So... did you finally push the launch button? And is there finally a launch graphic instead of the screen just whiting out as the engines fire and incinerate all life on the Rimworld you're leaving?
(Wait, they didn't tell you that? The engines are so hot that it ignites atmospheric oxygen fusion and burns off the entire planet's atmosphere? Well why do you think everyone was so determined to stop you from launching?)
QuoteIn the beginning I did try to haul the corpses away, mainly with panthers, but pretty soon that was a hopeless task and they were lying everywhere. Pawns are ofc not happy with that because we had to rebuilt defenses constantly, and they see corpses everywhere. But thankfully the stacking stops at 3, though that is still pretty brutal with 3 corpses + 3 rotting corpses. Add all the family members attacking and dying, and most were either on the verge of breaking or outright breaking with regularity. So it was good to finally get them into the ship caskets and leave.
Maybe for the next time, made all fireproofed, then throw in some molotov coctails to get right of these corpses.
Ofcouse these fire made it hard for raider's to pass too except mechanoids ! :-)
Can you add parts to the ship _after_ engine is on?
Quote from: Canute on September 07, 2019, 04:47:17 AM
Maybe for the next time, made all fireproofed, then throw in some molotov coctails to get right of these corpses.
Ofcouse these fire made it hard for raider's to pass too except mechanoids ! :-)
Gourmand (x10) + Cannibal maybe? ;D
It's not something I considered, because there were many traps and a fair few IEDs (while we had decent amount of shells) in the area. Didn't want those to burn and explode. Did try to set fire to the huge cemetery earlier, but it rained away. For some reason there was a lot of rain during this whole onslaught.
If it was a semi-serious question: No, the ship is still a white-out or black-out screen, then the music and credits comes on. It's simple but well-done, and it was interesting to see some of the names that I now recognise, either from the forum or the wiki. And after that the map comes back, and the entire ship has left orbit. How these things can fly is a separate mystery, but let's not dwell on that :P
Pogo stick to the stars!
A couple games later, and finally got a map/base that I like again. Some of the others felt flat for one reason or another.
Anywho.... why did you have to land exactly there?!
(https://i.imgur.com/BMtZuHt.png)
It's tuned down to Rough now, so if an attack on Savage yielded 15 centipedes, it should be 10-12 on rough I think.
Recently built two uranium slugs and have 4 autocannons. Everything is unusable here, and actually hurts me as they block range. And of course everything will probably be destroyed by mechs directly or by crossfire. Very expensive.
Since I have no idea how much death will come out of the ship, I'm trying to spam some traps to partially deal with it. No marine armour yet, not even helmets, so this is likely going to hurt no matter what. It's not very late game yet, we have around 300-350k wealth, but it's never comfortable taking on hordes of mechs without turrets support. Thankfully I am able to build EMP traps, so after quickly building some shells, I'm building a few of those and hope the bulk of mechs get busted by one of them. The mini-turrets will probably all blow up within 10 seconds, but as long as they get out one or two bursts it will at least help a little. And will be a distraction for a brief while.
A trade caravan just happened to drop by, but will probably leave before I can trigger combat. I need to get up some of those traps first.
You can uninstall the mini-turrets and re-install them somewhere safer. Don't know if you can do the same for the big turrets. but you could deconstruct them to save most of the resources.
Or enwall them, so the mechanoids don't aggro on them.
But careful, building to close to the ship will trigger the spawn.
Quote from: Shurp on September 23, 2019, 12:28:37 AM
You can uninstall the mini-turrets and re-install them somewhere safer. Don't know if you can do the same for the big turrets. but you could deconstruct them to save most of the resources.
The mini-turrets were already moved over to where they are in that picture actually, to help me against the mechs. Previously they were more directly in the killbox. I alwasy try to employ the environment in its design, and here I decided we had to hack out most of the mountain to sort-of make it work. With so many people, it's always iffy in terms of logistics or placement though. Not enough room when you need some (big) turrets, and then trying to place 15+ people somewhere around it. For now it has been fine, but we'll see later.
Sadly we can't move the big turrets. Only deconstruct.
However, the combat went much better than feared.
(http://i.imgur.com/aSwslTQ.jpg) (https://imgur.com/aSwslTQ)
We were able to engage before the caravan left. Most of them got torn to bits, but a few made it out alive, including the main trader with the question mark. I also rescued one that was bleeding out, so that helped a little with the inevitable friendly fire/death penalties.
Somehow all turrets survived, even the mini-turrets. One person was downed (but it's a wimp) and a few others were severely injured, but no deaths :)
Always amazed me how the pack animals in cases like this manage to escape with their life and goods. One was cut open here, but in other cases were raiders have attacked them they have all escaped. Maybe the code is lenient with them or something, to prevent possible abuse. Had already traded with them here, but we got back a few statues and some clothes. Nothing majour.
OMG! OMFG!!! :o :o :o :o :o
(http://i.imgur.com/5AP0K8Vl.png) (https://imgur.com/5AP0K8V)
Thought it was a good thing they landed almost ideally in the killbox, but holy hell. Total massacre. Forgot to check how many of the 35 centipedes had inferno cannons, but it felt like most of them. I managed to put two doomsday rockets in their faces. The first one didn't kill a single centipede. Still 35 standing and firing. Second one must have done some real damage, but at that point it was complete chaos so I don't know exactly what happened.
(http://i.imgur.com/aSUC0aVl.png) (https://imgur.com/aSUC0aV)
Unfortunately one person died. 9 others downed, and basically the rest of the colony injured rather badly. Two people kept firing EMP shells at them, so they are fine at least. Aftermath does not look nice :'(
(http://i.imgur.com/1KUcOxZl.png) (https://imgur.com/1KUcOxZ)
By far the worst encounter I've faced in this game. Had to pause a *lot* to micro pawns, try to put our fires both on pawns and autocannons. Pretty much everything destroyed now, but thankfully I have heaps of spare resources to rebuild with.
Now to try to heal up everybody, and watch them take turns having mental breaks. Almost the worst part about serious attacks like this :(
Okay, this is downright scary. I really can't say anything else ???
(https://i.imgur.com/Q8gMN7p.png)
Ok, normaly i ignore mortas, but i think at such big colonies with that much enemies they could be handy.
If you would setup 4-6 mortars, in this case with EMP, as first strike to stun them until your doomsdays got out.
And if you still got a safegame from that ship at the killbox, just for the fun test out how it would be, when you build enough mortars for all pawn, and let them rain bombs (not EMP) on the ship as big alpha strike ! :-)
May not have room on the map for a mortar for every pawn :D Okay, that's an exaggeration. Would only be for a test, because with the inaccuracy of mortars, they'd take down everything else around, like walls, cannons, you name it. Could be a fun test though.
I used to be of the opinion that killboxes and trap mazes were cheesy tactics, but I'm not so sure any more to be honest. Taking on forces like this without some way to force fire on them with cannon support is total suicide. Early in this very thread are good examples, where I took them on in the open -- before being advised to use mortars. Heck, even mortars only tickles centipedes, and at best slows down a few of them. Make no mistake, however, mortars can totally wreck human raiders (especially tribals), but against mechs it only slows them down (but can kill the odd lancer and even scyther).
In this game I've got a battery of 8 mortars now (used to have 4). It certainly helps, especially against sappers where 80-90% will miss, but usually it's only to soften up the raiders/mechs for the real combat.
I honestly don't understand how people can take on huge forces like this without solid defensive fortifications and live to tell the tale (or lose heaps of pawns).
How I fight 37 centipedes with just colonists.
Building a big base with 3 wide hallways between all buildings, buildings get a triple thick wall.
I build in such a way that I have small kill boxes throughout the base, blocking line of sight with other centipedes.
Now wait until the centipedes spread out, they will attack random walls, but that is why you build 3 wide.
Now have small teams of 4 men, 1x plasteel longsword, 1x emp grenadier, 2x chain shotguns.
Lock the centipede in melee followed by an emp and then move in with the other gunners.
It is important to time it, kill the target and move back in again. Make sure no other centipede can shoot at your teams.
Besides that every building gets it's own hospital, food, drugs and rec. Swap your teams in and out because you still have to account for their needs. Fights can sometimes take me 2 days
Sniper rifles, completly safe, but take to long.
Getting rid of ships, well you can haul single shells around the ship, pop the ship with a sniper, mechs are now standing in a minefield, mortar it.
I believe a uranium mace is going to be more effective than a plasteel sword at melee with a mechanoid, as they are more susceptible to blunt damage.
I've heard that a lot, but my own testing suggests that plasteel longswords are better.
Gear:
https://imgur.com/QqaM77s (https://imgur.com/QqaM77s)
https://imgur.com/zoPIfMr (https://imgur.com/zoPIfMr)
Fight:
https://imgur.com/toYUF0R (https://imgur.com/toYUF0R)
Results:
https://imgur.com/5xU0JkW (https://imgur.com/5xU0JkW)
https://imgur.com/WvlpQ77 (https://imgur.com/WvlpQ77)
Dev mode level 10 melee skill and removed all health isssues. Repeated it several times and got similar results.
At the beginning at the new combat system, someone did a testing with different weapons against different enemies too.
The thread should be still somewhere here at general discussion.
The result i think was, that plasteel spears was very good against centipedes and hvy armored raiders even when centipedes got a weakness vs blunt.
The spear got the better armor piercing ability.
Quote from: Gadfly on November 14, 2019, 03:16:05 PM
How I fight 37 centipedes with just colonists.
Building a big base with 3 wide hallways between all buildings, buildings get a triple thick wall.
I build in such a way that I have small kill boxes throughout the base, blocking line of sight with other centipedes.
Now wait until the centipedes spread out, they will attack random walls, but that is why you build 3 wide.
Now have small teams of 4 men, 1x plasteel longsword, 1x emp grenadier, 2x chain shotguns.
Lock the centipede in melee followed by an emp and then move in with the other gunners.
It is important to time it, kill the target and move back in again. Make sure no other centipede can shoot at your teams.
Besides that every building gets it's own hospital, food, drugs and rec. Swap your teams in and out because you still have to account for their needs. Fights can sometimes take me 2 days
Sniper rifles, completly safe, but take to long.
Getting rid of ships, well you can haul single shells around the ship, pop the ship with a sniper, mechs are now standing in a minefield, mortar it.
Fighting like this sounds like a nightmare to be honest, and it sounds like things can easily go wrong. And against such forces, I doubt it's terribly common to be able to fight only one centipede at a time.
Not that the ship fight with 80+ mechs was quick. Judging by timing on the screenshots I took, the fight took an hour of real playtime. Loads and loads of pausing to re-evaluate, put out fires on pawns, repair stuff, try to rescue downed pawns (especially if on fire), put them back behind cover after running about like madhatters, and so on. It's very chaotic.
Anyway; pick your poison I suppose.
I guess I make a video this weekend, it will make things clear.
Going to test spears, could very well be better against mechs.
But the basic idea, are not to fight them all at once.
He let the centipedes split out and let them attack different object at different areas. Then you don't need the whole horde at once, and since they attacking mosttimes cheap wall's then high value turrets/pawn you can afford it.
But in your case with that hugh colony, it wouldn't be an easy task.
When the enemies got attacked they whole crowd chase it, and when the ship crash at your inner base/kill box with all the turrets around, there is no chance anyway that the mech's will spread out.
Ship startup defence and technically two different raids (virtually on top of each other), but still... :o
(http://i.imgur.com/94DDyNch.png) (https://imgur.com/94DDyNc)
PS: Alternative tactics like walking up to pet them does, shockingly, not work so well.