Slapping the Sappers

[Listy]

Anyone found a good way to defeat sappers?

My usual tactic was to stockpile psychic lance and take out the sappers, and then deal with the normal bods in the usual way. However the latest patch has meant they just keep on coming (more or less rendering the psychic lance/insanity lance useless?).

How do you deal with these types? If you can't prepare the ground then you'll be fighting on an even footing and that means a disadvantage agaisnt some of the larger raids. So how do we prepare the ground to take these types out?

[Sola]

Sappers treat turret range the same way normal raiders treat walls.  If you want to lure them into your sandbag/wall area, place turret effective firing ranges where the sappers are coming from.  They will path away from the turrets into your fighting area.

[Dashthechinchilla]

I have internal defense positions in my base. It helps with sappers, and when drop pods or ships drop right on your base. They are just wall segments under roofs my colonists can take cover behind.

Plus sappers get to eat mortars while they work, which helps. I make sure to run out the cool down after I used them last.

[Spocklw]

When you can get them, mortars seem to be the answer now, at least on large maps.
Raiders usually start going towards your base in a long string, when you manage to land one hit on anyone there, every one of them will return to the person wounded and start wandering around him for a while. When you make sure you are aiming in the middle of the group, you usually kill several of them and subsequently, the rest of them "will start assaulting the colony" in normal way.

Basically on Cass extreme no non-mechanoid raid has gotten past defences so far (and I dont' use killboxes per se, just funnels with few deadfalls and few sandboxes for shooters behind them).

[TheMeInTeam]

Sappers treat turret range the same way normal raiders treat walls.  If you want to lure them into your sandbag/wall area, place turret effective firing ranges where the sappers are coming from.  They will path away from the turrets into your fighting area.

This is the go-to once you have turrets.  Us them as pseudo walls and push the sappers somewhere convenient.

If you're tribe tech turrets are a bit far to rely on this for first 2-3 sapper raids on high difficulties, especially if you start < 5 members.  In that case you're better off using animals or going for picks depending on the weapons you + enemies have.

Mortars have been pretty bad in my experience.  Maybe on huge maps where you have ample time to lead them, but otherwise they're up on your base quickly and mortars are too inaccurate to avoid hitting your own walls or missing a ton, giving raiders ages to break through walls.

"Just funnels" might as well be a kill box depending on the weapons you use.  Any cover-less corridor with a few miniguns firing down it can mulch stuff.

[erdrik]

I build outer walls in such a way that the sappers "think" that cutting through them will lead to the inside of my base. But they just end up inside my killbox.

Basically I bubble the walls out much farther than they need to be, then leave the area inside the walls open with things they might flag as valuable targets. Like small growing fields or tables. The bait is usually just outside the range of my turrets so once they wreck up the bait they just charge forward into the turrets like normal.

[Dashthechinchilla]

Mortars work best for the situations where the attackers sit in one place. For sappers, this happens when they are working on your wall. I target the force that hangs back behind the sappers to avoid collateral damage. Usually the sappers themselves don't last long once they get through, due to them becoming a primary target for every waiting colonists first volley.

[Listy]

Sappers treat turret range the same way normal raiders treat walls.  If you want to lure them into your sandbag/wall area, place turret effective firing ranges where the sappers are coming from.  They will path away from the turrets into your fighting area.

Does this work with powered down turrets? Or just powered ones?

Basically I bubble the walls out much farther than they need to be, then leave the area inside the walls open with things they might flag as valuable targets.

Yeah I have an outer and inner wall set up. But I'm on a soft stone map.

When you can get them, mortars seem to be the answer now, at least on large maps.

Not gotten to the point where I'm able to provide ammo for mortars, and mortars always have been a luxury item that has been to weak. I know they got improved, although I've not seen how they got improved. But seeing as Mortar shells got made more expensive I still think they're a luxury item.

[igwb]

I never have problems with them, they just seems rather stupid.
Normaly one of them starts blowing up my wall, while the others walk thru my sandbags where I kill them.
Sometimes they just stand around outside doing nothing for half a day.
And when they've finaly managed to come thru the wall, they die in a devestating hailstorm of assaultrifle gunfire.

[grinch]

mortars. if you dont have a sniper squad its very effective

[Wanderer_joins]

Try to attack the sappers while they are attacking your walls. Raids with sappers are generally easier if you're used to directly attack raiders in general. Raiders are more passive when they hang around their sappers, you can shoot at them and they'll take more time to take cover and shoot back.

[Nainara]

I have internal defense positions in my base. It helps with sappers, and when drop pods or ships drop right on your base. They are just wall segments under roofs my colonists can take cover behind.

Plus sappers get to eat mortars while they work, which helps. I make sure to run out the cool down after I used them last.

This is a good way to go. I've found that having 100% outdoor turret coverage inside the base perimeter saves lives. Also keep in mind that your colonists can pack up and move turrets anywhere that you have power available much faster than sappers can tunnel.

[Shurp]

There's a clever idea.  Keep all your turrets in a stockpile, then when the sappers show up park them right behind whatever wall they're digging at.

[TheMeInTeam]

I've had some success by combining pill boxes on exterior with just limiting shot corridors.



The damage taken is just bruising from when I rushed out on stragglers in different "segments" to melee them.  The rest of the work was done by simply having 2 guys who can shoot target "wandering" enemies and hiding on new angles against anybody who reacts.

I prefer not relying on turret steering since turrets are many thousands of research points away for tribe tech starts, and raids of this strength or more show up before they're realistic to have on extreme.  I'm about to complete research for batteries here, would still need microelectronics --> turrets to get there.  Sometimes you get great researchers early but not always.

[Shurp]

For a non-tribal start, it's not hard to lure sappers into a killbox.  Put all your turrets somewhere else.  Wait for sappers to show up and decide to path through the (apparently safe) killbox.  Then plant your turrets there.  Laugh as killing commences.

I'm going to repost this in the "exploits" thread since it seems too easy.  Sappers should rethink where they're attacking when turrets show up.