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one note - you can't uninstall things until you claim them.  You can't claim anything at an enemy base until it is considered "destroyed"

but honestly...if you were able to get pawns moving at 2.5x+ speed, you probably didn't really need the advice anyways, since you'll have no trouble killing any base....honestly, you could take 2 pawns and loot the whole thing probably.  The only potential problem is whether or not the loot inside respawns, or if the state of the base is saved and remembered for your next visit, which no one here has answered yet, so you'll have to find that out yourself.

The only way i see this possibly working is by luring them.

Split your raid force in 2, move one to one side of the map, and the other to the other side...move a group in and trigger the enemies, who will come out to attack you, and you might be able to get the other group to run in behind the enemies and snag the loot.

Several problems might stymie you though:
- the base might be in a location that blocks you from taking up 2 opposite positions, or a mortar might make a long setup too dangerous
- your back raiders have to be able to clear the turrets or tank their fire...QUICKLY.
- your bait group needs to kill LESS THAN HALF of the opposing force...once you kill half, the enemies flee, and the base is considered "destroyed."
- The defenders might split and attack both groups

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...

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.

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

Legit ways to remove the brain damage include healer mech serum, which is a hit or miss possibility to get from quests, who knows how long it would take, but you can stick him in a cryptosleep casket (if that is an option) and he'll have a negligible effect on your wealth...even just leaving him a vegetable, at 1/10 brain, he's worth nearly nothing...strip him, and the only cost he has to your colony is the meal and time cost of feeding him.

Otherwise luciferium.  It will impact your wealth a LOT more, as it will take quite a while before the scar is fully healed, but it doesn't require RNG to get....you just need plenty of silver to buy enough.  It will also cost you the meals of maintaining the pawn, but there is also a chance that the +15% consciousness from luciferium will turn him into a liability...by allowing him to be able to stand and move...VEEEERY slowly, so that he'll constantly starve moving around the map.

OK, so the issue with resources in a mountain beyond the reach of construction placement is that you can mine that out, but whatever happens beyond that - be it a gigantic opening that opens up that entire side of the map, a small thin-roof section, or just a new mountain area that might spawn infestations that you can't "fill in" - you're stuck with it.  Sure you can place walls at the limit of your item placement, but if you accidentally open up a new map edge that enemies can spawn in, those walls won't last long...same with a bug infestation, and a new thin roof section means more temp bleed, if that's a thing you have trouble with.

Yeah as far as heating, i tend to have an "intake room" - really a large hall with pillars and sandbags so my pawns can make their stand at the obvious entrance....everything else is connected to that large room, or connected to the rooms connected to it, etc. 

If i open up new entrances and exits to the base, they are kept usually double or triple doored, while the main entrance is double-doored but held open.  Then i go nuts with heating or air on that main intake room with heaters or AC, while ignoring other rooms (i use freezers, from a mod, rather than have a giant freezing temp room with all my food on the floor...but even when i have a frozen butcher room, i just vent it to a different room and then use vents to dilute the overly hot room)  Generally the intake room gets within about 5-8 degrees (Fahrenheit) of the target temp, and the rest of the interior rooms slowly bleed to match....when a heat wave or cold snap pushes the temp even further away from the target, the interior rooms still stay quite livable (occasionally "uncomfortable" during a weather event, but never dangerous)

yes, it is quite common.  The game rarely lets "huge" square areas of mountain exist.  Often, if you see a gigantic bulge in the mountain line, thinking "that'd be a great place to locate my base since there's so much area without having to make my base long and thin!" - you end up with at least a few large open expanses that were hidden in the mountain.

In my opinion, it is often more consistent to make a long base down the length of one of the "mountain blocked" sides of the map, digging into the mountain until about 2-3 blocks buffer towards the "no build zone" and expanding along the edges.

3 things here:

1) why on earth are you wearing a duster worth like 2x the cost of another pawn?  It seems a poor practice to wear such insanely expensive gear with low stats.  A suit of marine armor is worth a similar amount or LESS and protects far more.

2) Skipping the duster doesn't bode well for your arms/legs in a fight

3) dusters are generally an environmental choice, rather than a combat choice. 

Finally, you used the stats on a legendary vest....it seems unlikely that you are obtaining a sufficient quantity of legendary quality armor vests for this to matter.  How do the stats compare on excellent quality gear?  say an excellent quality flak vest and an excellent quality plainleather or alpaca wool duster, which are much more plausible and practical for constant wear?

There are also 3 assumptions in here that may or may not exist in the game:
1) the assumption that a mitigated damage value is checked again.  It is possible that if a given layer mitigates damage, that the resulting damage is simply applied without checking any other layers.  This would make wearing ANYTHING outside of a (quality) flak vest detrimental.

2) the assumption that the calculation changes as the bullet passes layers.  It is possible that the initial bullet is tested against each layer for nullification, and THEN tested for mitigation against each layer....in which case layers would ALWAYS be helpful, as your highest armor value layer still gets to always apply, unless a different layer did an equal or better job already.

3) the assumption that the armor piercing value stays the same as the bullet is mitigated.  The damage of the projectile is reduced to half upon being mitigated to blunt damage.  It is entirely possible that the armor piercing value is likewise halved or may even be completely removed as the damage changes states.  A lower armor pierce on the blunt damage significantly increases the likelihood of the double mitigation.  That being said, the fact that many weapons have something OTHER than the base "armor pierce = 1.5 x damage" means that the awkwardness of programming reduced damage value armor pierce on many weapons points to either of the first two assumptions alternatives being more plausible.

Had to double check that...

First time i read: Planning a new cooking game (hopefully in the style of rimworld).

I was a bit confused :p

Put them on a caravan to anywhere.  The instant you get onto the world map, go to the "items" tab of your caravan, and ditch all the stuff you don't want.  Items are deleted with no "cheating"

[in my opinion]

personally, I wouldn't like to see those traits in the game.  I feel the traits options are already cluttered by "traits" that could be attributed to other stats.  Things like gay, misandrist, misogynist, and to a lesser degree ugly, annoying voice, creepy breathing, beautiful, etc. - they affect very little other than occasionally having some effect on pawn interaction.  It would make more sense, in my opinion, to work in a social system that takes romance factors and social modifiers into account, and would even allow a variable sliding amount of each trait.

Maybe the pawn is +0.6 attracted to women, +0.1 attracted to men, socially likes and respects women -0.3, socially likes and respects men +0.75, and has 1.25 empathy....so that pawn would be more likely to try to woo women, but still rarely try men, would tend to insult women, while having positive interactions with men (might make that pawn's romantic intentions a bit awkward...) and events relating to social (such as prisoner was killed, got rejected, my opinion of my lover, was insulted, etc.) would have a 1.25x modifier on mood.

IMO, this suggestion goes in the opposite direction of what I'd personally like to see in the game, adding more social clutter to the trait possibilities, when I believe they'd be better as a separate system.

I really like the mod-ability of the game - even tho some of the mods are ...not 100% perfect, they do let you change the flavour of your game somewhat.  Like "start with nothing except parts of your crashing ship landing around you" - so what you have to start off with depends on luck, and makes each game different.  This time I got a lot of colonists.  But no food.  Last time, I got a lot of food and medicine, but almost no one survived.  Etc.

Play with it ^.^

Is this a specific mod which randomizes starts?  If so, can you link it? 

deconstructing reduces the wealth immediately.  If i have a dedicated artist, I could be sitting on quite a few normal - good quality sculptures before a trader comes along, and then I need to hope they have sufficient silver/goods to cover everything that I've accumulated.

Deconstructing immediately removes the art piece and wastes 25% of the materials (I don't make things like silver or gold or jade statues) - effectively undoing the craft and wasting your artist's time, but at the same time I won't have a dozen unused sculptures littering the stockpile.