Will mechanoids always destroy/kill your entire colony?

[mndfreeze]

I've never actually sat long enough in the few times mechanoids overran me or my defenses.  Was wondering if they are setup in a way that if I was to put a colonist in a panic room setup, they would literally never leave and destroy every single base tile until all my pawns are dead?  Or will they eventually leave like pirates/tribals do with the steal/kidnap kinda thing?

[Canute]

Since they don't have hunger/rest they won't leave the map of these reasons.
But at previous version i rarely notice they leave, but i wouldn't count on this.
Any humanoid lifeforms are the nemesis for the mechanoid hive, they won't stop until the last one is destroyed from this universe.

So when you can't deal with the mechanoids, you better leave the map so fast you can.

[mndfreeze]

Yeah, I get the lore behind it, was just wondering how they are actually programmed in game.  Like if they eventually will leave after a timer ticks down, or if they can't get to the last colonist they eventually wander off to kill humans elsewhere, etc.

I've ragequit a few games due to some silliness and bad RNG before because once it looks completely hopeless I don't see the point waiting around for an hour of real time for the enemy AI to burn my base all the way to the ground and destroy every single block, but with humanoid raiders they usually will stop and kidnap/steal at some point so you can outlast and rebuild.  Not always, but often.

[Canute]

Like at some other thread mention.
You can defeat mechanoids even as tribal, greatbows do a good job.
You just need to be prepared a bit, and don't store hugh amout of valueables or food.

[Hans Lemurson]

In my experience, once they down all your pawns, they wander around your base smashing everything of value.  I have never waited long enough to see if they leave, since they stay long enough for all your wounded to bleed to death on the ground.

I suspect that absent anything forcing them to leave, they will systematically destroy all man-made structures on the map that you have built or claimed.   Might be worth testing to see for sure.

[Dashthechinchilla]

They won't leave. If they can't find an oponent, they will sometimes smash stuff, but mostly they just wander around forever.

[sadpickle]

I wish there was a way to capture and reprogram incapacitated mechanoids. Like the human resistance in The Terminator movies.

I suppose you could limit it to Scythers for balance purposes.

[mndfreeze]

Thanks everyone, thats what I thought would happen but wasn't sure.

I'd like to see more stuff with the mechanoids.  Like I would like to see them have a 'stop destroying base' trigger like humans do if you are bad off enough or enough time has passed since the raid started.

I'd also like to see some additional interactions with them in some way.  More then just 'powerful group of enemies are attacking you' stuff anyway.  The reprogramming idea is good,  Maybe some advanced thing/way you could turn them into dumbed down 'pets' so they aren't to crazy.  Or some sort of event where you could meet with them and they have some nefarious task they want you to do for them against other humans, etc.. Certainly alien lifeforms that advanced would know more ways then just genocide to wipe out the human race in the galaxy.  

I know Tynan isn't adding any more major features, but I do hope eventually he adds in even more complexity to the systems in play and more options during a game.  I definitely enjoy the very beginning of the game the most, and somewhere around mid game I start to get.. bored?  I dunno. Very rarely do I take a colony to either ship, or do much raiding or anything.  There definitely feels like a threshold you cross over where the game suddenly goes from challenging to  simplisitic and no real threats even with random oh shit moments like a scyther headshotting your best crafter or whatever.

[Mday]

I try to keep my prawn count low to avoid bigger raid. Currently sitting on 6 prawns. Still I am getting bigger and bigger mechanoid raid. My latest raid has 16 Centipedes + 7 Scythers. Human raid (Pirate) on the other hand is much much weaker than the mechanoid. I know that wealth can affect raid size but there isn't much I can do to reduce wealth. I wonder if I should get more prawn to help me with defends . Will more prawns make matters worst? I mean if I do nothing about it my wealth is just gona continue to raise and if there isn't a cap on raid size then it is only a matter of time before I get over run.

[BlackSmokeDMax]

I try to keep my prawn count low to avoid bigger raid. Currently sitting on 6 prawns. Still I am getting bigger and bigger mechanoid raid. My latest raid has 16 Centipedes + 7 Scythers. Human raid (Pirate) on the other hand is much much weaker than the mechanoid. I know that wealth can affect raid size but there isn't much I can do to reduce wealth. I wonder if I should get more prawn to help me with defends . Will more prawns make matters worst? I mean if I do nothing about it my wealth is just gona continue to raise and if there isn't a cap on raid size then it is only a matter of time before I get over run.

Crustacean people mod confirmed??

To be serious, yes having more pawns can raise the amount of people raiding against you. It is totally a balancing game between regular colony wealth in buildings and items sitting around, your total pawn count, game difficulty level, time in game, etc.

[sadpickle]

It also depends on storyteller I think. Cassandra is a slow march towards death, so I play Randy. My wealth has been growing enormously lately and I recently got a huge pirate raid, about 18 dudes with one guy bringing a Doomsday and another in power armor with an assault rifle. Usually though I get Mechanoids, 3 centipedes and several scythers. I am sure that will only get worse.

No killbox yet but it's getting to the point where I may have to box in.

[Dashthechinchilla]

You have to be careful about colony animals too. After all of your colonists are gone, they will still target wandering colony animals.

[Mday]

Randy has just send me 33 cendipedes, in two waves within the same day. I guess this is just unbeatable.

[glob]

Just got raid of 34 Centipedes and about ten Skythers. It is possible to defeat them - pound their path with emp mortars, rapidly kill approaching skythers with charge rfles, then switch to the sniper rifles, move the squad outside of base and continue pounding cenipedes with emp while the squad picks off the centis which were missed by emps, and run if there are too many of them approaching. Most centipedes will try to break the walls of the base, so this tactcs is possible. But the problem is the armour of the centipedes - it takes ages to kill them. The numbers add up and synergise, it is barely possible using melee against 34 centis as even when they spread around the base there's almost always a couple of them with inferno cannons around in any given corner when there are 34 of them, and one shot from inferno is often enough to break the charge. So sniping and constantly moving is the only way to do this, and this is very slow. Or a killbox with several lines of traps, but killboxes are boring.  I think it is a bad design having so highly armored units in such numbers. It is just boring and tconsumes too much time.

[Mday]

I am in a mountainous map with little space. The mechanoids spawned from 2 different location in 2 groups. Those centipedes is just everywhere and they will corner my snipers eventually. I could not make snipers kiting works for this fight.

The biome has 3 season of snow so I only get to trade for component in summer (each emp cost 1 component). So while I have some emp rounds it is hard for me to just spam them.

Also I only have 6 prawns. This make the mortars strat hard to pull off. 

All in all I find it really hard to deal with the mechanoid in this extreme randy run. In warmer biome I can just spam boars and emp to take care of the mechanoids. Here I can hardy grow enough hay for my pack animal. Even maintaining a once per year trading caravan trip to haul in supply (steel, component and etc) has been challenging.