Still flustered by inferno cannons

[Shurp]

I'm not looking for "Click - you win", but I'm also looking to avoid "your colonist is running around screaming in circles... oh dear and now he's dead."

An inferno cannon equipped centipede can walk over to snipers before they can kill him, and the scythers will happily shoot the colonists when they run away.

The frag grenade / wall  idea (thanks kasnadava) sounds like it could work.  If the grenades take down the inferno cannon equipped centipede quickly, then the grenadiers can run off (wall providing cover) and the rest of my crew can then provide endless plinking until the others die.

Will the scythers sit there and shoot at range 10, or is there a danger they will charge and start slicing and dicing?

[eadras]

Personally, I think it's crazy to go toe-to-toe with mechs.  The scythers can instant kill any character at any time, and have ridiculous accuracy.  I learned this the hard way in my first successful playthrough.  One of my original 3 colonists was an amazing shot and all around badass, so I made her a brand new set of power armor (exceptional) and power helmet (legendary), and sent her out with a charge rifle against a psychic ship that landed in my base.  The turrets and my snipers engage the mechs but were taking damage from the scythers, so I had her pop out of a door in the opposite direction to try to take out one of the scythers.  It snap turned and shot her in the head, legendary power armor helmet nearly destroyed.  I don't even fuck with anything other than artillery and sniper teams firing from out of their weapon range now.

The inferno cannons are very deadly if you sit there and exchange fire with them, but are so easy to deal with in the open with hit and run tactics.  The only time I've used the emp/frag grenade combo is when they drop down right in the middle of my base, and there's no room to run.

[kasnavada]

I'm not looking for "Click - you win", but I'm also looking to avoid "your colonist is running around screaming in circles... oh dear and now he's dead."

An inferno cannon equipped centipede can walk over to snipers before they can kill him, and the scythers will happily shoot the colonists when they run away.

The frag grenade / wall  idea (thanks kasnadava) sounds like it could work.  If the grenades take down the inferno cannon equipped centipede quickly, then the grenadiers can run off (wall providing cover) and the rest of my crew can then provide endless plinking until the others die.

Will the scythers sit there and shoot at range 10, or is there a danger they will charge and start slicing and dicing?

Thanks =).

No, the scythers don't run "melee" toward you at that range. They try to shoot your guys behind the walls. And succeed a bit often for my taste, probably due to the low range... so I found it safer to priorize them with the grenades, rather than the centipede with the inferno cannon.

Another good point with this setup, when you have more colonists, is that the wall blocks sight. So you can have 2 or 3 colonists behind the wall for firefighting / rescue duty (keep a firefighter "on duty" and release him when the rocket passes through). In in the case one of your colonist get hit but can still move, he can flee rather safely. Last, when the rocket do get behind the walls, most of the time the hit colonists run around... behind the wall.

I'll try to do a video so show how it works.

[giannikampa]

EMP mortar are my friends in crashlanded ships. We wait for a lucky hit just around a corner, then swarm with everything we have: fire, frags, melee, ranged wepons properly micromanaged.

In general I use these hiding ways:
-single tile walls.
-single square rooms carved in mountins here and there closed by a wood door. I do plenty of these alla around the map. They are good for random safe but mostly enemy IA waste time to go to destroy these doors whit no loss by my side except a useless door.

[kasnavada]

I'm not looking for "Click - you win", but I'm also looking to avoid "your colonist is running around screaming in circles... oh dear and now he's dead."

An inferno cannon equipped centipede can walk over to snipers before they can kill him, and the scythers will happily shoot the colonists when they run away.

The frag grenade / wall  idea (thanks kasnadava) sounds like it could work.  If the grenades take down the inferno cannon equipped centipede quickly, then the grenadiers can run off (wall providing cover) and the rest of my crew can then provide endless plinking until the others die.

Will the scythers sit there and shoot at range 10, or is there a danger they will charge and start slicing and dicing?

Here, behold.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDI3QcHBB48&feature=youtu.be

This setup I did really fast, and I didn't place the walls on the right far enough, so they're shooting there. Also like an idiot I forgot that mortis is incapable of violence, and to restrict her. And, finally, I also forgot to un-home the area so my non-drafted pawns don't go extinguishing fire (like mortis did). I was also unlucky because most of the mechs spawned on the other side - usually it's more "even".

Still. You can see how effective my set-up is - I easily won despite litterally not following everything that I proposed. More so if they hit the right walls. It's possible to make it even better with a few tricks from this thread (like setting up the closest pawns with a shield behind a wall).

On other conditions: I do have 2 mods, EPOE and petfollow - which apparently are causing errors. I set-up dev mode to create the downed ship event & to give grenades. That's it. No other modifications.

[Shurp]

So I watched the video.  You're right that the frag grenades help a lot in taking down the mechs quickly.  That firefight lasted all of 30 seconds   But the key thing seems to be the walls.  The inferno cannon did get a shot behind the walls but your pawns then went screaming in circles behind it which is definitely safer than out in the open.  Walls definitely work better than sandbags.  Would it help to drop a sandbag in the opening between the walls?

[Shurp]

OK, just a followup; the walls worked beautifully.  My guys with charge rifles peppered the inferno cannon equipped centipedes and incapacitated them before they could get more than two shots off.  And those shots hit the walls and torched some grass, that's it.  After that it was the usual slugfest.  My guys took a few shots but then all the centipedes were incapacitated.  The injured walked home and the healthy punched the centipedes to death

Frag grenades are nice but any weapon with a high fire rate will do the job as long as you have a wall to stop incoming inferno cannon blasts.  And I think the sandbags I built in the space opening helped.  At least I didn't get hit too often anyway.

[keylocke]

walls or mountains. just use whatever is available since not all combat can be planned before hand.

i think the notion of "cover" has already been mentioned several times before. as in : put your shield-bait behind cover.

shield-baits provide the greatest survivability with little to no injuries (especially when you got a bunch of brawlers which really doesn't contribute that much in a mech fight).

i just find it weird that someone actually has to spell out that don't put your shield bait/troops right in front of the mech and put it behind cover. (ie : full cover. ie : walls or mountains. whatever is available)

that's like the very basic of rimworld combat.

[kasnavada]

So I watched the video.  You're right that the frag grenades help a lot in taking down the mechs quickly.  That firefight lasted all of 30 seconds   But the key thing seems to be the walls.  The inferno cannon did get a shot behind the walls but your pawns then went screaming in circles behind it which is definitely safer than out in the open.  Walls definitely work better than sandbags.  Would it help to drop a sandbag in the opening between the walls?

OK, just a followup; the walls worked beautifully.  My guys with charge rifles peppered the inferno cannon equipped centipedes and incapacitated them before they could get more than two shots off.  And those shots hit the walls and torched some grass, that's it.  After that it was the usual slugfest.  My guys took a few shots but then all the centipedes were incapacitated.  The injured walked home and the healthy punched the centipedes to death

Frag grenades are nice but any weapon with a high fire rate will do the job as long as you have a wall to stop incoming inferno cannon blasts.  And I think the sandbags I built in the space opening helped.  At least I didn't get hit too often anyway.

Thanks =)

True, that set-up works with any high damage / ROF weapons. Frags are just here for efficiency.

I've not found the sandbags helping a lot, because, as far as I've been able to tell:
- the cover provided by sandbags does not stack when behind a wall,
- it does not prevent the rockets from moving,
- cover is too low to prevent being hit by scythers

That said, sandbags are very short to build. They do stop fire, in case you still have grass & trees around.

[BlueWinds]

i just find it weird that someone actually has to spell out that don't put your shield bait/troops right in front of the mech and put it behind cover. (ie : full cover. ie : walls or mountains. whatever is available)

that's like the very basic of rimworld combat.

It's obvious to put your pawns behind cover. The new A15 tutorial even shows you how!

...how to use sandbags. Which are in the "security" tab. It's obvious to use those - it's not obvious that walls are a far superior solution, especially against inferno cannons.

Also, https://www.xkcd.com/1053/. Both I and Shurp are some of today's lucky 10,000.

[Shurp]

In the past I have relied on sandbags for cover. Against scythers, miniguns, and heavy blast cannons this is all you need. The key difference is that walls stop blast radius effects, and I had not thought to build walls in the middle of an empty field before.  Which is why inferno cannons were a prob.

Trees and rubble are helpful in normal firefights but won't help you vs inferno cannons either.

[Bigby]

I just placed a firefoam popper in my kill box to deal with any incoming inferno cannons. Good luck setting anything on fire now slugs!!!!

The foam can be cleaned up after the fight is over. Then I just build a new popper :-)

[Aatxe360]

No mention of IEDs?  They do a lot of damage(destroy ship, kill scythers, and heavily damage the centipedes)  if all are activated at once when a ship is attacked.

[kasnavada]

Tried those IED, honestly... feels like a waste of resources to me.

Traps don't always explode to boot. Apart when using the semi exploit where you "seed" via using the build button, and your builder get all ammos, then cancel and there is a neat 1 ammo stack on the ground that explodes too.

That said, it could be a set-up problem on my part.

[Aatxe360]

Tried those IED, honestly... feels like a waste of resources to me.

Traps don't always explode to boot...That said, it could be a set-up problem on my part.

IEDs are a total of 10 steel and one component, iirc.

Set them with no more than two spaces in-between each with all of them right up next to the ship.  You don't have to cover it 100%, but less than 75% isn't worth it.  By setting them close to each other like that, they all go off at the same time just by one activating even if the mechanoids spawn on the empty squares.

You do get a small portion of the materials post-explosion and they haven't damaged what the ship drops in my playthroughs yet.

The downside is that once the ship is destroyed, the surviving mechs can't guard a ship that no longer exists.  They will advance towards your base slowly so hit-and-run tactics on the surviving centipedes is your best option.  Throw in some emps/frags for the more tenacious of them.

I guess another downside is that scythers aren't just incapacitated so you can't disassemble their blades for your own use.