Refugees and ship parts

[Shurp]

I'm considering starting a new game with a 100% refugee admittance policy.  Obviously doing this will give me a lot of awful pawns, but I'm confident that a combination of mortars, traps, and turrets can defend my base even if my pawns can't shoot their way out of a paper bag.

One threat that has me concerned, though, is ship parts.  Colonists with a minimum shooting ability can stand behind freshly walls and plink at the mechanoids that come out and eventually kill them.  But this strategy won't work if they can't even pick up a gun or are so trigger happy they can't hit anything.

I know that mortars won't be useful, and I don't want to do something twinkish like surround the ship part with explosive shells and blow it up when mechanoids come out.  So what's another way of dealing with them?

I suppose I could park a dozen turrets around it but that seems pretty twinkish too...

[Jibbles]

Lure them into a secure spot. Lure with a sniper rifle.  Wished I had some pics on me to show you what I mean by a secure spot. Mainly an area surrounded by walls that doesn't trap your pawn so they can escape if the mechanoids are getting passed the EMP's.

Have pawns spam EMP grenades.  Heavy gun power.  I'm usually up in their face so I'm using chain shotguns/shotguns and stuff. Very effective. Smoke belts are useful in this situation but not necessary.

[Shurp]

Can you lure mechanoids on ship defense detail?  I know bugs will charge your base in A.17 but I thought mechanoids still would retreat back to the ship if they get too far away.

Hmmm, so trigger happy colonists can still down a mechanoid if they get close enough with heavy guns/grenades?  That could work... just gotta get enough EMPs to not get fried.

[Jibbles]

Sorry if the post gets too long.
First off. You probably shouldn't experiment this strategy in permadeath until you get familiar with it.  The more you do it, the better you get at gauging what equipments you need, and retreating/flanking strategies. Of course you could throw in a few traps to give you the leg up and sandbags are always nice.

You're right. They do retreat back to the ship.  mechanoids/scythers will have a "wander" and "searching for targets" state.  This is the most important tip if you're not aware of it. IF a scyther is looking for a target, that means their gun is loaded and can snipe you instantly.  They go back to the wander state after a few seconds, which means you can safely shoot them again as long as you either hide your pawn after the shot or get out of their range. If you keep attacking with snipers they will keep chasing. 

So secure spots are more of my late game strategy when the numbers get high. Usually place near my entrance if I have one.  They're designed for retreat but mainly opportunities to flank. Also a good area to place drop pods so you can fly back to the more secured parts of your base if you have turrets and stuff. I may sketch up something later and post a pic.

It's easier to just build near their ship early to mid game, and lure them to that spot.  you can really get by something small like this.  http://imgur.com/a/79FMw or just take advantage of mountains/structures nearby if you got some. Don't take this design to heart ha...  NOTE: Don't build the pillars near the EMP target entrance since they'll get in the way when you try to lure them in that pocket.

Trigger happy seems to do fine with grenades and shotguns.  As tempting as it may be I don't recommend mini guns for everything since they have long cool down/ warm up/ times plus highly inaccurate, and fire way too long.  So can't get out of the way when you really need to and harder to maneuver pawns around them.

[Shurp]

hmmm, looking at the image that's over 30 squares away, mechanoids will wander that far?  If so sounds like I could set up a mini-killbox (traps/turrets/etc.)

[Jibbles]

They wander near the ship, but they can chase several tiles away.  They chase towards you if you attack and retreat.  They move back to the ship after they stop chasing. When they start moving back to the ship this will give you another opportunity to safely shoot which will make them start chasing again if you land a shot.  That's how I lure them anyways. I focus on scythers first.

Some things to consider if you plan to build a mini killbox. It takes time and resources setting those up. You'll use up a lot of steel just for conduits that may just catch fire if the box is far from your base.  I suppose you could use a fueled generator or something for power, but those power sources would get destroyed in future raids if you don't protect them. This also takes away resources that could've been used at your base which is top priority IMO.

[Shurp]

Nope, you forget something important: fully charged batteries are transportable.  So are turrets, and you don't need any cables if your turrets are close (but not *TOO* close) to your batteries.

Hmmm, but traps aren't moveable, which means you'd have to rely entirely on turrets.  Slightly twinky

Or I have to master the fine art of grenading mechs... frag grenades are supposedly very effective.

[Jibbles]

haha good call! I forgot about batteries.  Yes, frag grenades are effective too. I try to have 1-2 emp nades before throwing frags into the mix.

[SpaceDorf]

Yeah, Frag and EMP have become my goto Mechkillers,
especially for clearing out Ancient Dangers.

Makes the building near the Shippart dirt cheap. All I need are a few decent walls for my
grenadiers to play hide and seek.

While the mechs try to find my grenadiers I move in with the rest of the colony all guns blazing.

[TheMeInTeam]

What I typically do is far more "twinkish" than anything you're listing .  I take full abuse of my knowledge of weapon warm-up and cooldown...both mine and theirs, to shoot at them w/o return fire.  But let's say you don't want to pull that.

First of all, I don't see why slamming down a bunch of turrets and batteries with some cover would be out of bounds, any more so than setting up basic cover before triggering it.  Since I dislike turrets from a research + construction cost:utility perspective, however, here are some other ways to approach it:

1. Build a small room near enough to the ship and shoot at it twice.  This will aggro the mechs, who will target your base for a while then go back to the ship.  If you do > 50% damage they stay aggro, so you can use whatever defense you use for everything else.  After they wander away you can safely pot shot the ship with the pawns in this small room.

2. No reason you can't just mortar the heck out of it late game actually.  Not only will you do some damage to the mechs, but once the ship goes < 50% health they'll just attack your base.  Since making mortar shells from steel/chemfeul is pretty low-cost once you have deep drilling and trade econ up, this is a perfectly fine option for mid-late game mech ships with lots of mechs popping out.

3. It's really hard to catch a lot of mechs with EMP, but you can catch a stray centipede or so with grenades or mortar then mug it with close range fire.  Deadfall traps work pretty well vs scythers but are awful vs centipedes.

4. Hit that comm console and radio for help.  This is another money --> beat the problem option, but it only costs money if you can't save enough people to push the goodwill back up.  Mortars might be less expensive.

5. I see no reason IEDs are particularly more "cheap" in the tactic sense compared to just shelling the crap out of the ship with explosive mortars until the damaged mechs attack your base.  If your killbox is solid the risk and resource costs are darned close.

[Shurp]

I imagine it would take a LOT of mortar rounds to get a half dozen to hit... But you have a point, flinging 100 would cost 500 steel and 2000 human/bug meat - expensive but not outrageous. And 100 shells is overestimating... Right?

[TheMeInTeam]

I imagine it would take a LOT of mortar rounds to get a half dozen to hit... But you have a point, flinging 100 would cost 500 steel and 2000 human/bug meat - expensive but not outrageous. And 100 shells is overestimating... Right?

100 is definitely high.  I haven't tried sustain mortar fire to that extent but you only need to knock the ship to 50% health, and when it's hit the mechs attack.  You don't need anywhere near 100 shots, I doubt you'd need 50.

[Shurp]

How many shots does it take to even hit the thing?  In my latest siege attack I fired off 12 rounds without a single one landing within 10 squares of the target.  (Fortunately I did blow up their components which put a stop to their mortar construction; my killbox finished them off shortly afterwards).

[TheMeInTeam]

They do have a forced miss radius.  I wish I knew exactly how it worked, against most raids I area target rather than target a pawn and it seems to work, but I'm not sure if on average center of target is still most likely to get hit.

[Jibbles]

How many shots does it take to even hit the thing?  In my latest siege attack I fired off 12 rounds without a single one landing within 10 squares of the target.  (Fortunately I did blow up their components which put a stop to their mortar construction; my killbox finished them off shortly afterwards).

I've used over 50 shells before and didn't destroy the ship. Only one, possibly two hit out of all those shells so I gave up on that idea. Haven't tried any time after that though, this was in A17.  Not saying it will always take that many, just be prepared if you plan to go that route.