Mechanoid Rant

Started by Greenbear, April 27, 2018, 04:54:00 PM

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TheMeInTeam

Mechs are among the most micro intensive fights so I hate fighting them.

Centipedes w/ bad shooting are the worst.  I often just bait scythers into trap maze or really anything that kills them, then grab 3-4 pawns with snipers and kite centipedes.  It sucks.  They often "armor absorb" the shots, the shots miss, and they can sponge even the sniper rounds decently. 

That said, centipedes have absolutely zero answer to "pelt it with sniper fire and consistently stay out of their firing range".  They go down eventually.  Doing this with 4+ centipedes is annoying.  Once you start seeing 8+, it's disheartening.  As a tribe stuff like mortars can't come fast enough, the sponging is real otherwise.

cultist

I don't mind scythers too much, except for the fact that they have an annoying habit of staying just out of range of your turrets and sniping them.

When they're paired with centipedes though, that's where the problem begins. Together, they are the toughest enemies in the game, barring rocket-launcher wielding raiders (which is mosly just bullshit, shooting through walls and stuff). If scythers were capable of escorting the centipedes instead of rushing ahead, they would be unbeatable. The only saving grace is that when they attack your base, you get to pick off the scythers first so you actually have a chance to engage the centipedes.
A crashed ship with the right combination of bad terrain, scythers and centipedes can be almost impossible to approach because they form such an effective defense.

So yeah, it's not so much the individual mechanoids, it's that they complement each other a bit too well when they stay near each other.

Yoshida Keiji

Quote from: mebe on May 05, 2018, 06:10:03 AM
[...]

* Sieges that actually aim to prevent you leaving the area of your base
* Resource grabbing via mining (e.g. component) raids
* Resource stealing (animals, accessible stockpiles)
* Wall destruction (rather than full on attack)
* Actively finding and targetting tamed animals
* Setting up defensive settlements on your map
* Pillaging - burn any outside fields
* Power killing - destroy power lines & geothermals even if walled in, burn barrels of oil to create smoke to knock out solar etc.
* Disease spreading - lob rotting carcasses which spread plague into your base
* Building and manning sniping positions
* Sapper raids which disarm traps and EMP turrets rather than just grenading walls

Then I'd mix and match these into a single raid so that the 20 man raid group is simultaneously burning your fields, stealing your last mineable components, actively working on disarming your killbox while setting up sniping positions to make it harder for you to counter.

Guess that amount of AI would be extremely hard to do but it would sure be fun.


+1 to this!

Instead of making enemies easier, we actually need to make them harder.

Mechanoids may seem annoying at first, but once you get a hand to it, its nothing.

When crash-landed ship parts: Don't build anything in a 3-tiles radius. If you don't have fire foam poppers yet, use melee fighters as "fire-fighters" to extinguish the fire on your comrades.

For average mechanoid raids, you should have by the time they show up, a few stone block made deadfall traps. You don't need a whole grid system of traps or a funneling corridor, place them where you see enemies path the most, if a Centepide gets injured from a deadfall trap, the rest is a total laughter.

The Inferno cannon wilders, when selected, you can see their weapon charging/aiming time, so you hide when the "cone" is about to disappear and shoot at them when the cone is wide.

For my last 50+ games, except maybe in some hard biomes, I don't build anything from wood anymore, rush stone cutting while using old, ancient buildings scattered around your map as starter rooms. If fire is your problem, you can build 3 tiles corridors to "control" fire spree. But don't do a 3 tile corridor in front of a wooden wall, just upgrade it to stone wall directly.

Tober6fire

And no extrime temperature does not kill them heck the centipede was walking in a pure ball of flame room(taped him in there) and he did not die or burn I mean what the **** was that logic. I had to put deadfall traps in order for it to by moderately successful.
I love stories and I hope that everyone try's to contribute in telling their stories as it is interesting and intriguing to see people connect through the tales they create.

sadpickle

I think they are pretty easy with prep time. Build some simple shooting barricades at max gun distance. 2-3 blocks of wall with a roof on the shooter's side, have the shooter stand at the edge and he'll lean around. Make one per shooter and spread them around the ship part. If two pawns stand next to each other you will have problems from Inferno Cannon and Minigun. It's even easier if they raid the base, because Centipedes are so slow you will be able to engage the Scythers first. Mass fire on Scythers and spread out to deal with the Centipedes. EMP can help but I don't bother with it, they adapt too quickly.

And above all else, make Devilstrand gear for everyone, it provides serious protection and you can grow a huge quantity of it with a decent growing season.

TheMeInTeam

Quote from: sadpickle on May 22, 2018, 12:33:28 AM
I think they are pretty easy with prep time. Build some simple shooting barricades at max gun distance. 2-3 blocks of wall with a roof on the shooter's side, have the shooter stand at the edge and he'll lean around. Make one per shooter and spread them around the ship part. If two pawns stand next to each other you will have problems from Inferno Cannon and Minigun. It's even easier if they raid the base, because Centipedes are so slow you will be able to engage the Scythers first. Mass fire on Scythers and spread out to deal with the Centipedes. EMP can help but I don't bother with it, they adapt too quickly.

And above all else, make Devilstrand gear for everyone, it provides serious protection and you can grow a huge quantity of it with a decent growing season.

Pulling scythers away + killing them with whatever (deadfall traps, door micro) and then simply sniper kiting centipedes is significantly safer.  Centipedes will never hit you this way.  Not "low chance behind cover", never.

EMP is best if you can get one isolated, because you can EMP it then really lay into it while it's stunned. But mid-late game there's like 6-10+ centipedes (much more with high base wealth) and at this point the only response that doesn't take ages of annoying micro is mortars.  Fortunately, they're so slow that you have time to get mileage out of mortars against them.

sadpickle

I've tried using mortars before, maybe I'm just doing it wrong but my guys are almost always way off the mark. I've gotten a pinpoint strike maybe once every 10 launches. Might be worth it in a siege.

Yoshida Keiji

Quote from: sadpickle on May 22, 2018, 12:41:42 PM
I've tried using mortars before, maybe I'm just doing it wrong but my guys are almost always way off the mark. I've gotten a pinpoint strike maybe once every 10 launches. Might be worth it in a siege.


Build like 4 mortars at least, I can sometimes just do with 2 but, the more the better. Then click on "Hold Fire"...wait until all 4 are loaded, not the first time but after each re-load, so that all mortars countdown from 30 seconds completes, then select a specific target location...preferably at the very center of them all, unless they are behind a mountain that shields them...once all timers are zeroed...re-click the "Hold fire" so they all shoot simultaneously. Rinse and repeat.

TheMeInTeam

Quote from: sadpickle on May 22, 2018, 12:41:42 PM
I've tried using mortars before, maybe I'm just doing it wrong but my guys are almost always way off the mark. I've gotten a pinpoint strike maybe once every 10 launches. Might be worth it in a siege.

Your odds of hitting a few centipedes are much better when you have 8 mortars and there are 20 centipedes than if you have only a couple mortars and are fighting 4 or less.

With smaller numbers just grab a few snipers and kite them to death.

Tober6fire

correction I looked back at my gameplay against those mecs and found that every second or so they receive burn damage by being in the room so yea I guess its helpful somewhat. I found that out only because I remember trying to get a mec corpse and my pawns kept on taking damage from the heat (burns) since the fire didn't damage the outside walls in time for the room to turn into outside which distributes the heat.
I love stories and I hope that everyone try's to contribute in telling their stories as it is interesting and intriguing to see people connect through the tales they create.

giannikampa

Here is my rant: year 5537, 93 cetipedes and 55 scythers appeared, my base has 0 turrets, 0 walls, 2 mortars. I wanted to rise the difficulty to the second-last of phoebe, so to have as many challenges as i could handle. But this is just game endign.
No more than 20 mechs are needed to put any late game in proper danger IMHO

[attachment deleted due to age]
And as always.. sorry for my bad english

mebe

Fook that's a lot! not sure I've ever had more than about 40 total but I do try to keep wealth down usually. Did you survive   ;D

giannikampa

Honestly, I tryied twice to reload this gamesave, but it was beyond my ability to survive, maybe in another moment i would try over and over to face these many mechs.
But it went:
Dev->destroy->shame->rant
And as always.. sorry for my bad english

Canute

Yep, these mass of mechanoid's are like a steel-tsunami.
It is impossible to stop it with a fixed defence line.

If you could manage it to eliminate the scyther at first. Much firepower like rocket launchers.
Then you can manage it to kill the centipede's too.
Kite them around with sniper/bolt-action rifle, with shifting pawn so they can sleep/eat.
And a deathfall trap area which other can rearm.
But that's alot of micromanagment. And realy only work's if you can get ride of the scyther.

vampiresoap

By the way, guys, I don't know if you know this, but when the alien crash ship reaches 49% health, the mechanoids will start assaulting your base.

This means that you can either:
1. Play hide and seek with them and snipe their ship to 49% health
2. Bombard the ship with mortars (this is the best option, in my opinion)

And after the ship goes to half health, they will just start running into your killbox like a normal raid.

PS: It just goes to show that having like 5 mortars and 200 explosive shells solves so many of the problems that the game throws at you...Sappers, sieges, crash alien ships...all get basically trivialized.