Mechanoid suggestions

[Nasikabatrachus]

Although I like the idea of mechanoids, especially the centipedes, I've found them pretty underwhelming opponents overall. It takes very little ingenuity or risk to kill them, unless perhaps they come in numbers. Here are three suggestions to make them something fearsome in the relatively near term. The first is to remedy the weakness of individual centipedes, while the second and third are more speculative.

1. AI change: I've noticed that centipedes, especially centipedes armed with rapid fire weapons, have a hard time even scratching the paint on turrets. This is because they start shooting at turrets as soon as they get into range; they're attacking at the very edge of their ability to fire accurately. Meanwhile, the settler with the lee-enfield the colony started with is chipping away at the centipede steadily. Since centipedes are basically tanks, they should take advantage of their superior health and move in much closer before they fire automatic weapons. (That's the reason tanks were developed: to breach enemy lines and cause havoc in the rear.) It would also make them more difficult to deal with if their aggression priority were structures rather than colonists, so that if the player tried to delay or distract the centipede by using the much faster colonists to outmaneuver the centipede, the centipede's threat to the colony itself would not be diminished. 

2. Let them consume items on the field. If a centipede is low on health, it would be more interesting, and force the player to be more proactive, if it could retreat and consume metal, food, or even human corpses in order to regain health.

3. Let centipedes create smaller melee fighting units. Wouldn't it be delightfully grim to watch a centipede consume dead muffalo, squirrels, and humans, only to produce a group of weird beetles dedicated to your destruction? This could be a primary feature of mechanoid sieges. Instead of a few centipedes to worry about, the player would also have to consider facing down an indefinite number of secondary enemies, necessitating decisive moves to take out centipedes and rendering long-term wall-offs a doomed strategy when faced with this unique threat.

Thanks for reading!

[mrofa]

Omg mate im not sure who is a bigger sadist now you or tynan Oo
I love the ideas thrugh, would make all manner of defensives more vaiable.

[Coenmcj]

Well aren't you the diabolical one. They are ONE kind of mechanoid however, wouldn't it be interesting to have a fully fledged hive attacking you? 3 or 4 centipedes and a 'Carrier' that does as you've described.
Turning it into a proper siege.

[Pulaskimask]

I agree with the AI change, and would like to add that maybe they could hook up to your conduits and start sucking up your electricity and using it for themselves? Or have dedicated repair bots which repair just like your colonists do, but they repair mechanoids who are damaged, or even rebuild mechanoid corpses. In fact, you could add medics in general to raider groups and it would force more strategy as you try to take the medics down early, and would force being more aggressive and not just sitting back trying to snipe people slowly to death with your slightly better weapons.

Additionally, I would really like it if they had their own battle music. I liked the dramatic music added in this version during stressful situations, if the mechanoids had an eerie sci-fy chiptune-esque theme that played when they attacked I think it could add a lot to the atmosphere.