[1.0] Combat Extended - 1.8.2 CE Melee released (17.11.2019)

Started by NoImageAvailable, June 09, 2017, 04:13:13 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Zxy44

Hello
Is there any patch that reduces the mortality of this mod (I mean something between the vanilla version and this mod), because the game is very difficult when 2-3 hits and you have a maximum of one hour to die. On the other hand, I know a little bit about modding, which file in mod can reduce bleeding settings? Thank you for help. ;)

mvargus

Is there a mod that makes boomalopes give chemfuel rather than FSX (or makes them give both?)  I love this mod, but I like having my boomalopes usable as a fuel supply for my generators.

Morbo513

I'm wanting to start a new playthrough with CE again, but it's the goddamn centipedes that led to me quitting last time. That raid basically ended that game, and trying to savescum my way through that fight didn't seem like a very attractive prospect.
Have the centipede weapons been nerfed (not counting inferno min range)? If not, can someone direct me to where I can do it myself? I remember taking a look through the files but couldn't figure it out at the time.

I want to reiterate that I like that they're tanky. I hate that any attempt to fight them without end-game weapons carries such a high risk of instant-death.

Ed: Gave it a go, doesn't seem like it. They have immense firepower, accuracy and are tough to kill almost to the point of ridiculousness. When they have all three, even following the "Meta" of fighting them - hit & run with AT, opening engagements with EMP etc - they're simply not fun or even reasonable to fight, and they're really quite a common enemy. Again I strongly suggest reducing their overall lethality, while leaving their tankiness as-is.

I'd also suggest a change to the mechanics of EMP weapons - they're only good for one hit on a target, then they're immune. Instead I think it'd be more interesting for the chance of EMP damage to be nullified on each hit, as the target takes more hits - So sustained fire with EMP weapons will essentially have the same effect as suppression, just with more pre-requisites and the fact they need to hit the target.

JT

Quote from: mvargus on July 11, 2019, 05:49:46 PM
Is there a mod that makes boomalopes give chemfuel rather than FSX (or makes them give both?)  I love this mod, but I like having my boomalopes usable as a fuel supply for my generators.

I've always used Chemicals & Neutroamine for the neutroglycerin, which is then refined at the Core biofuel refinery into chemfuel.  The Steam thread seems to suggest it conflicts, but I had the opposite problem when SparklingWorlds and Chemicals & Neutroamine would produce both neutroglycerin types from the same animal.  I tend not to bother with high-level spacer play (tribals are way more fun for me, and don't tend to attract mechanoids either) so I can't actually confirm, but I'll test it out now and see.

I'm a hopeless self-interested utilitarian when it comes to helping others, but since this problem will (eventually) affect me too, I'll throw a patch up when/if I confirm it's a problem. ;-)

[edit] Actually, I think you're already covered, come to think of it.  Try using Chemicals & Neutroamine together with N7Huntman's Combat Extended: Distilling.

[edit2] And now double-checked, both neutroglycerin and FSX produce naturally from the boomalope.  Both are labelled as "chemical fullness", which is probably why the other fellow on the C&N thread was confused.

Crossbowman

Quote from: Morbo513 on July 12, 2019, 02:16:36 AM<snip>
They're really tough, but personally, I find the PTRS to be indispensable when fighting centipedes (and, to some extent, scythers and lancers too, but they go down to regular rifle fire so it's not necessary). Consider that centipedes are basically just the WWI tank equivalent but have incredible range, so be sure to lay down minefields, 90mm AT batteries, KPV machine gun positions, and other prepared AT defences, e.g. small PTRS, RPG, or Carl Gustaf bunkers. Hit and run with AT weapons is risky because they typically can react to such moves, but if you go against them head on, you can one-shot them from great distance with a 90mm and mow down any survivors with KPVs while picking off stragglers with PTRS. I cannot overemphasise just how important PTRS are to any AT defence line-up in Rimworld. I'd forget EMP entirely; I only use EMP if I have it laying around (i.e. stolen from some siege) since it works like crappy incendiary rounds.

If you're in the early game, just PTRS squads should be enough. Every shot (prefer AP-HE to AP-I, though FMJ works if you have no FSX or prometheum) will slow down each centipede, allowing your men to spread the centipedes out. Be sure to put lone PTRS infantry behind some kind of bunker structure (you only need a few dozen granite to build a bunker). Once you have the technology to build KPV machine guns, do that ASAP; you don't want to delay those machine guns, and they share ammunition with the PTRS. Both types of weapons use 14.5x114mm. Prepare kill areas that you anticipate enemies to wander into. A side benefit is that any specialised defences against centipedes you prepare will be doubly effective against regular raids as well, though I'd avoid spending precious AP-HE against regular infantry unless you're fighting power armour.

A typical bunker could even just be a wall with embrasures in it; just be sure to leave enough open space behind the wall such that explosives can safely pass through the bunker walls and not detonate on anything behind. Explosives that detonate on the exterior wall will probably take down a bunker in 2-3 shots, so have many bunkers. Think more Albania:



than Maginot:


Retry_02Hide

@Crossbowman
I have a question aboout bunkers. The damage of inferno cannon is too damn high, it can one shot everything, even your embrasure, which makes it so hard to build up a defense able to hold the centipes. Even the shot doesn't land on the bunkers, it may randomly destroy part of your base.
One another question is that the inferno cannon is too accurate. The cover system in CE made every shots mostly hit the cover, but cannon shell doesn't care what cover you are using at all, it just blow up everything around. Everytime it finish aiming means I need to load the save again cause it would certainly kill someone.
As for PTRS, most of threads talk about CE weapons said it's necessary, and works pretty well against centipes. But after I tried some AMR in other mods using .50BMG Ap-i, I doubt that only AMR is not quite enough. (maybe 14.5x114mm ammo do much more damage than .50BMG? I need to do some test later)

Crossbowman

Quote from: Retry_02Hide on July 14, 2019, 10:39:27 AM<snip>

The inferno cannon can certainly destroy embrasures and also ignite everything inside, which is why I recommend only half-bunkers (i.e. bunkers with, say, 3 walls facing forwards, but no rear wall) to prevent detonations against the back of the bunker. Recall that embrasures have a very high cover height, so any shots that actually do penetrate your embrasure will not detonate against low-lying objects like tables, shrubs, or chunks. Bunkers should be built into the surrounding terrain, not built into your base (unless you actually do want misses to blow up your perimeter walls and stuff). Bunkers should be expendable, i.e. cheap. If they cost loads to build, then they're not cost-efficient.

The 14.5x114mm round in real life is a much more powerful round than any of the .50 calibre or equivalent rounds. In real life, the 14.5x114mm has double the energy of the 12.7x108mm (round used by the DShK machine gun) and close to double the energy of the .50 BMG. I'll need to check the game files later to find the exact penetration values but the PTRS can penetrate a lot more than the M2 Browning HMG in the game, for example. They definitely are nowhere near equivalent.

EDIT: The difference is less than I expected; with 14.5x114mm FMJ, the PTRS does 59 damage with armour penetration of 1.03. AP-HE does 35 bullet and 24 bomb (59 damage) with armour penetration of 1.18, and AP-I does 35 bullet and 12 burn (47 damage) with armour penetration of 1.18. For comparison, the .50 BMG FMJ does 46 damage with armour penetration of 0.91. Sabot rounds do 19 bullet damage with armour penetration of 1.11, AP-HE does 28 bullet and 18 bomb (46 damage) with armour penetration of 1.06, and AP-I does 28 bullet and 9 burn (37 damage) with 1.06 armour penetration. What this does mean that against a centipede, which has a sharp armour rating of 1.00, almost any shot fired by any 14.5x114mm will penetrate, while any shot fired by a .50 BMG calibre weapon that is using FMJ will fail to penetrate.

.50 BMG Sabot, AP-HE, and AP-I will penetrate, but will do less damage than 14.5x114mm. Basically, get a PTRS or KPV, and you're golden.

BladeOfSharpness


Canute

BladeOfSharpness,
i would suggest to use the mod HelpTab (the B19 version works for 1.0).
That mod show you items and recipes, and the nessesary researches or workbenches.

BladeOfSharpness

It does? That's awesome, I regretted the lack of update, thanks!

Morbo513

Quote from: Crossbowman on July 14, 2019, 09:42:11 AM
Snip
This is a very good guide to dealing with them in their current state, thanks. I'll have to see if I can crank out a few PTRS before the psychic ship I just had drop drives everyone mad.

That said, this highlights most of what I don't enjoy about fighting them now. Such weapons are a pre-requisite to fighting them - If you're hit with a mechanoid raid before acquiring them in sufficient numbers, you pretty much lose the game right then and there unless you've found a way to safely co-habitate with mechanoids. There's no room for you to learn any of this the hard way and carry on within the same playthrough (At least without save-scumming, which is its own kind of tedium). There's no "making do", even with a handful of charge rifles and LAWs, unless you're fine with the majority of colonists you send at them being instantly killed.
And so far as I've ever been able to tell, the only purpose of EMP weapons is fighting mechanoids, yet they're completely inadequate for the task. Even if you do successfuly stun all the immediate threats simultaneously, the window of opportunity it creates is very narrow and still practically impossible to exploit without weapons that nullify the utility of stunning them in the first place. 

I've already started a new game after sandwiching the occupants of a poison ship between a 20+ pawn pirate raid and my own colonists (Armed with M16s, PKMs, an M32, LAWs and an RPG-7), and watching the 2 centipedes and 2 lancers cut down everyone before there was an opportunity to use those weapons to any effect.

Again, there's very little you can do to mitigate the extreme range, accuracy, speed and almost-guaranteed lethality of their weapons unless you're 100% prepared with automated defences to draw their attention, enough of the weapons that give you any advantage in those respects, and fortifications and traps that are actually in their path.

Every other threat you face has some elasticity to it, some way of coming back or even coming out on top with less-than ideal preparation. Countering centipedes necessitates progressing and planning in a very specific way to avoid losing a severe amount of resources, colonists and progress, which I feel goes against what the game, even with CE, is about in the first place.

BladeOfSharpness

Agreed.

Although with mechanoid extraordinaire, you'll face more diverse mechanoids, and so less perfect accuracy / long range / AOE weapons.

Still that's an issue and not a fun one.

Crossbowman

Quote from: Morbo513 on July 15, 2019, 10:41:16 PM<snip>
That's a fair point, actually. The prevalence of mechanoid raids coupled with their difficulty does mean that a new player would require some meta knowledge to be able to actually take down centipedes without suffering extraordinary casualties. Not sure how one could mitigate that, though; maybe have a little popup in the bottom right corner (near map status effects and stuff) that warn a new player? I recall seeing a similar message at some point or another but I can't remember.

The problem I have with rocket-based weapons is that 1) they take forever to aim 2) have a decent chance of missing 3) have only a chance to downing a centipede (though they shred lancers and scythers if they hit). The advantage of using RPGs etc. to attack centipedes is that I've noticed successive hits can actually destroy the centipede's weapon, which make them sitting ducks, but it's offset by their extreme difficulty of use. I've had some success using those tribal tech stick bombs though, but naturally the problem is that then you'd basically be almost on top of the mechanoids and that is a highly risky proposition as you might imagine. You actually don't need that many stick bombs; around 10 is sufficient for each centipede. It's just the distance that causes problems. A hilarious side-effect of using stick bombs is that against inferno cannon centipedes, the last stick bomb to detonate and kill the centipede will eradicate the entire centipede (corpse and all) since the centipede drops its ammo.

Retry_02Hide

Quote from: Crossbowman on July 16, 2019, 05:19:15 AM
Quote from: Morbo513 on July 15, 2019, 10:41:16 PM<snip>
A hilarious side-effect of using stick bombs is that against inferno cannon centipedes, the last stick bomb to detonate and kill the centipede will eradicate the entire centipede (corpse and all) since the centipede drops its ammo.
This is why I had a hard time to build up my mechanoid army. If u want to defeat them, u must use something that explode, but the explosion always makes the ammo cook off and destroy everything lying around :-\

BladeOfSharpness

So wait, I did not knew. Stick bombs can kill a centipede?