Late game ship encounters

Started by Pangaea, August 21, 2019, 01:12:40 PM

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Pangaea

How do you deal with these monster encounters?

Popped one earlier, in year 5, and 20-odd mechs streamed out, including 5-6 centipedes. Total nightmare. Have to admit I save-scummed because I'm tired of people dying. Especially when Gillespie died, who was recently "resurrected" from brain damage.

On the third try everybody survived, but only very marginally. Had to fix 3-4 people in the field, during combat, by putting out sleeping spots (and banning the door to the hospital to prevent the idiots trying to carry them across the entire map back there). Several people fainted on the way back, and one was 0.8 hours from dying. The first back to base I had to stuff in cryptosleep because he only had 2 hours left and no doctor was in sight. Looking at it now, 2 legs were lost, 2 arms, and one eye, plus a handful of fingers (heh).

I set up like this, which has worked well enough previously.



(It's raining in the picture, and the first attempt was indeed during rain (thought the roof would help, but I guess not since we couldn't hit anything), but it was clear during the actual onslaught.)

Two brawlers with shield belts trying to divert some attention and taking them on face-to-face. But with so many machines firing at them, the shield goes out instantly, so I had to try to be careful. I had a few people by a wall closer to the action too, including one with a chain shotgun.

Ugly as hell, though, and a lot of luck is needed to survive. The worst enemies are the scythers and the inferno cannon centipedes. Both create total havoc.

There must be much better ways to deal with such big-ass encounters than this though. I tried EMP earlier, but it doesn't last very long before they're adapted, and ofc you need somebody to get close enough to throw it, and get back to cover without dying. Not easy against such a force.

This time I even used a triple rocket launcher. It did decent damage and killed a few lancers, and injured some of the centipedes. Simply too many mechs to really make much of an impression, though.

Limdood

instead of wall wall bags wall wall bags, alternate with wall bags wall bags etc.  The reasoning is that bullets that miss can hit an adjacent pawn, so putting a pawn behind each wall piece means opportunities for miss-injuries.  The front row of all sandbags does nothing at all for cover for your pawns (game only checks tiles immediately adjacent) except maybe to slow down rushing lancers...very slightly...unless they go for the edges.

Next, I highly recommend making excessive use of grenades.  2 EMP grenades and 3-6 frag grenadiers can really demolish a ship....The frag grenades make very quick work of the non-centipedes, and do really brutal damage to the centipedes too...significantly faster, pawn for pawn, than nearly any other weapon at taking down mechanoids.  Have your pawns manually target the grenades, and the trick is to go to normal speed, have one guy thrown a grenade, and a split second after he starts "aiming" pause, and have everyone else target their grenades.  The first grenade will trigger the mechs, who will instantly pop out of the ship, and be hit a split second later by ALL the rest of the explosions.

The EMP grenades will freeze the mechs for a few tosses, maybe around 3-4 before the mechs are immune, but that is enough time to get some truly fearsome damage in.

Other notable tips for mechs:
- if the ship part is destroyed, the mechs stop guarding it and rush the base.  You CAN use this to your advantage by controlling when the mechs rush you, but it can be tricky to kill the part unscathed without mortars
- If ANY mech is damaged, it resets the "lose interest" timer on the mechs and they start chasing again.  Be aware of this when trying to snipe and sneak shots when lancers are still up.  But it can also be used to lure them to a better fortified field, or pull the faster scythers into focused fire from rapid fire weapons without getting in centipede range.
- sniping centipedes is a nearly risk-free way to kill them, by moving snipers to the edge of their range and firing 2-3 times then retreating.  It is, however, extremely time intensive, "mood" intensive for involved pawns, and doesn't work if lancers are still up.  Sniping lancers can be done,but it is far riskier, and requires even more careful management at the very very edge of extreme range...and often a door to duck through after firing.
- mortars are an expensive, but fairly risk-free way to turn a nasty ship part event into a weakened normal mech raid.  It tends to deal a lot of damage to many of the centipedes, and kill some of the lancers/scythers before they finally path all the way to the base.  Timing the mortars to all fire at once a single time, then holding fire can act like expensive and inefficient, but even safer sniping, dealing damage to the mechs and then letting them lose interest - so long as you don't kill the ship part or CONTINUE to injure the mechs, they'll keep retreating back to their ship.
- fire and manhunter animals are virtually completely ineffective against mechs
- calling allied factions for help can allow you to bring your pawns out and try to snipe out the lancers and scythers to make it easier to mop them up later.  Just remember that while the lancers and scythers won't choose to CHASE you until the allies are dead, they will TARGET you if you step into their range.
- Melee is a risky, but brutally effective tactic for lancers and centipedes - IF you can lock the centipedes in melee, they will still deal dangerous damage to their melee target, but it is far less than if they were firing a heavy charge blaster into a crowd, and if you be sure to move the melee combatants to the opposite side that the incoming friendly fire is coming from, you can unload crazy amounts of bullets into a centipede while it melee punches one guy slowly.  Just be sure you've got all the centipedes in range locked down, because your melee distractions getting set on fire or downed suddenly can spell disaster for your gunners, who were probably just quickly moved forwards in a clump to get them firing ASAP.
- Heavy charge blasters have a miss radius of 3.  Whenever possible, when facing Charge Blaster centipedes, especially more than one, keep 3 empty tiles in all directions between each pawn, to reduce the splash damage (so the wall/sandbag advice I put first in this thread applies only to lancers, but still, any way to reduce hit chance is a positive, especially for such deadly bullets)
- be aware that while machine pistols and shotguns are highly effective weapons against early and mid raiders, centipedes have naturally high sharp armor, so you want to focus on armor piercing rather than multiple weak hits

Pangaea

Thank you for the detailed answer, this is fantastic stuff :)

Have tried some of this before, like the sniping and triggering the ship and then hoping to take them on in smaller groups. It's hard, though, and they don't really chase all that far before turning back. And with lancers out, it's very hard to do anything somewhat safely.

Wall-sandbag-wall sounds like a good idea. I'll try that next time. But even if the front row of sandbags doesn't do anything directly in terms of cover, bullets still hit there and it means the damage will be spread more out, so less chance of the crucial sandbag-between-walls to get blown to smithereens.

How do you set up your grenadiers though? Behind separate walls or something? Range is only 13 tiles, which is nothing against such a brutal crowd. And with so many popping out, some will often be behind the ship, so it will be hard to impossible to hit everybody in that first salvo, meaning pawns in the open are very vulnerable to non-stunned mechs. That said, I should probably try it out next time and see how it goes.

Once mechs get the "Adapted" text, EMP grenades do nothing, right? Or is it still worth tossing them in?

Frag grenades is a good tip too. Hadn't thought about that, but it makes sense, especially when coupled with some EMP guys to freeze them in place. I can see how that might be effective.

One weapon that has certainly been effective (wish I had more), is a masterwork Charge lance we got from a quest, which does 38 damage per hit.

Have had very poor experiences with mortars previously. They miss way too much. Triple rocket launchers can be good, but they take a long time to aim, meaning it's hard to get any of the dangerous scythers.

Kinda wonder if a horde of snipers would do better. I just had a siege with 27 guys, all wielding sniper rifles (strange), so we have a few now.

Schwartz

I always use 3-4 EMP grenadiers to take down a ship, and we're talking ~100 mechanoids total. But then I have a lot of colonists.

I position the grenadiers just close enough to hit the 4 corners of the ship. I assign 2 shielded brawlers to each grenadier, as the scythers will be going for them first. The other colonists I deploy roughly in a circle around the ship, trying to use natural cover. I don't build anything. Then I assign the grenadiers to toss and the charge rifle / assault rifle guys to fire just in time for the mechs to pop out when the grenades pop. I leave the grenades on autofire. Yes, the mechs only take the first stun and then show 'adapted' a bunch of times, but eventually that wears off and you can stun them again.

Shurp

I find plinking at them from longer range with bolt action rifles works much better.  Remember that once centipedes have taken a few shots their aim goes off badly and they're just spraying bullets all over.  The further away you are, the less likely any will hit.  And lancers go down pretty quickly to BAR fire.  Only the scythers are a real challenge, and being further away means you get more opportunities to shoot them before they get there.

Also, yes, you have to build an on-site infirmary before you pop open the mech-can.  You're going to have serious injuries that need to be treated close by.  Carry a pile of medicine to a pad that you can sew people up at after the battle.  (beds are optional)

The inferno cannons are the real danger, and only because they'll cause your pawns to break cover and run into fire from other mechs.
If you give an annoying colonist a parka before banishing him to the ice sheet you'll only get a -3 penalty instead of -5.

And don't forget that the pirates chasing a refugee are often better recruits than the refugee is.

Kirby23590

The Problem with Centipedes is that they have high-armor making them impervious to many gunshots and ranged weapons, and not to mention that they soak bullets like giant sponges and can tank a lot of hits...

Schwartz said EMP Grenades are good against them, for a while. So you can make a quick escape or prevent one trying to fire a inferno cannon into your group of pawns trying to fire at it before they adapt it for a while.

And if you got some distraction like say throw away mini-turrets, tamed animals fighting for or wandering around, Scythers will instead go for them instead of your valuable shooters shooting them. And EMPs will still be effective if it's your animal fighting it instead of a mini-turret or someone with a shield since the EMP will also stun your turret or completely drain the shield belt.



Though something i learned from fighting those mechanoids with crashed ships, and if they are occupied or distracted fighting your guys or turrets and trained animals away from their ship part. I like to sneak in either a Melee Brawler or a Ranged Soldier or a Grenadier from behind and tell it or them to focus on the Crashed Ship part while all the mechanoids are focused on my front fighters while that one brawler or two fighters are smashing the ship part, or the fastest way to destroy it is with Frag grenades to prevent my soldiers from going crazy or throwing mental breaks in the middle combat if it's a psychic ship part. Sniping it with bolt-actions or sniper rifles are also a good choice as well. ;)

One "happy family" in the rims...
Custom font made by Marnador.



Pangaea

I actually did the wall-sandbag-wall thing earlier, I see. From what I recall we still got butchered, but hopefully not quite as badly. But from what I've seen so far, the main problem isn't really the bullet-spraying centipedes or even lancers (unless they hit something vital), but the inferno centipedes and scythers.



Not played much longer, but already a new poison ship has landed. In the meantime I've built some EMP shells and am working on more EMP and frag grenades, so will try out some of the advice here and hope it works better. Plus I'm putting up some EMP traps. Hopefully they can help deal with the super-nasty scythers that bumrush us. If we get 8-10 of those, it's impossible to kill them before they do horrible damage to lots of guys.

I've plotted down this, which I hope will help us out. Not sure about the sidewalls, but the idea is to have some grenadiers over there. Going all out on steel traps this time, because I have to expect probably 25 buggers to pop out, which is utterly brutal to deal with.



Volcanic winter hit shortly before the ship landed, so Cassandra really wants us dead now.

If I use EMP traps, especially this many, I have to be very careful with the melee (shield) guys. Looks like the range is pretty big.

Really don't much like this part of the game, I have to say. It's definitely a challenge allright, and you can easily lose many people. But the game just becomes mech raids and mech ships one after another, which isn't much fun. Especially these blasted ships since we have to take them on in the field without proper defense and often far away from base (read: hospital).

Pangaea

#7
It was brutal. Horrendously brutal. 8 centipedes.

But we survived. All of us. Barely. Set up a field hospital with 6 bedrolls, which was nowhere near enough, so packed 3 more sleeping spots in there afterwards. We lost a lung and a host of fingers and toes, and a bionic leg was very close to getting shot off, but it seemed to have gone relatively well.

Still, lots of fires, over half the colonists went down, most of the wall to the east got blown to smithereens from all the bullets. I had about 5 people over there with EMP and frag grenades, plus two brawlers nearby. The shields went out in the total chaos, think it was from one of the two EMP traps that went off. Very big blast radius. But all in all it could definitely have gone worse. As long as at least one EMP trap goes off, that will help for a while. Even so, you can just forget about stunning everybody and enjoying free and safe shots. Not going to happen with so many mechs. Unless you have a ton of pawns and can toss EMPs at them from all angles I suppose.

Almost tempting to say the worst bit this time was after the battle, when they flip out. Not small stuff either, but murderous rage, killing animals, and such. Thankfully it worked to arrest the girl who was going to murder one of my other pawns.

I always find this stuff so silly after tough battles. They are hurting because they are injured, maybe aren't properly fed. The colony has barely survived after all. And then they start flipping out, one after the other. Honestly think it would be better to disable that stuff while people are in hospital, at least when they are so badly hurt. They can barely move for crying out loud, but are upset, and will start crawling around the place with evil thoughts.

And of course, the instant they are able to walk, they'll start crawling across half the map to play hoopstone or pick up a meal. It's so utterly blockheaded, and frustrates me to no end that we can't turn this off somehow by using the priorities. You'd think surviving and then healing up is rather more important than playing game-of-ur or picking up a backup meal.

So then I have to use workarounds like tossing pemmican on the hospital floor and banning doors to equipment. Otherwise they WILL crawl towards shield belts the instant they are no longer blacked out, because they lost the weapon when they got downed during combat.

But all this chaos (and gameplay frustrations) aside, I think it was better to use EMP and frag grenades. It's just so darn hard to do any of that somewhat safely. Basically have to hope nobody gets killed, because they are going to get inside bullet hell one way or another.

Limdood

1. grenades - yes.  you do want to throw them from all, or at least 2 angles.  use the split second explosion trick to maximize the EMP coverage so that FIRST placement of mechs gets basically frozen in place...That's why you use more than one EMP grenadier, because if you COULD get them all in one blast radius, one would be all you'd need.  Also, yes, EMP 'nades kill shields.

2. infernos can be dealt with by spreading your troops out even wider (2-3 empty tiles in between instead of 1)...it's more time and resource intensive to build all that infrastructure, but you seem not to mind spending time prepping for the ships.  You can also use nonviolent pawns behind some walls ready to jump out and put out fires.  Even without nonviolent pawns, I always pause as soon as an inferno cannon hits, select the nearest non-weapon-cooldown pawn and have him walk over and extinguish people, then run back to cover. 

3.  Shield belt/hospital solution.  Presumably you have specific pawns who use melee weapons and don't swap to ranged.  Make a custom outfit for them, then set them to it, then remove shield belt from the list of allowed things on everyone else's outfit.  Putting a TV in your hospital facing the beds also allows the recovering pawns to gain some recreation, though some might still get up to leave, it should at least help.

4.  mech attacks seem well designed in that the effective strategies for centipedes are countered by lancers and scythers, and the effective strategies for those are countered by centipedes.  If you can focus one group or the other in the initial grenade barrage (remember an EMP grenade thrown at both the top and bottom center of the ship part will cover the vast majority of the exiting mechs...with 3 EMP grenadiers, you can cover the entire perimeter with no holes), probably the lancers and scythers, it allows you to swap tactics and kill the centipedes more effectively....you could focus grenade fire on one group of them and engage single, further away centipedes with brawlers. 

5.  The LEAST risky strategy is still mortars.  Set up a mortar room in your base with 4-8 mortars, and shell the ship part, with all mortars firing at once, then holding fire.  Once you hit the ship part the first time and the mechs exit (you could do that part with a sniper if you really wanted), use the hold fire function on the mortars to let all the cooldowns of the mortars sync up, then pause and turn off hold fire, but do NOT assign a target....the miss radius is smaller on auto-targeted shots than forced target.  Pause, hold fire, wait for mechs to lose interest, then repeat.  You've already posted that you're going all out with steel traps already....sure, most mortar shots will be wasted, but since you're already spending the steel, why not use it in the SAFEST mech-engage strategy there is?  If the mortars eventually kill the ship part, the surviving and crippled mechs will rush your base, straight into your prepared, presumably MUCH stronger than makeshift-ship-part-defense, defenses.

Pangaea

Quote from: Limdood on August 22, 2019, 02:18:03 PM
3.  Shield belt/hospital solution.  Presumably you have specific pawns who use melee weapons and don't swap to ranged.  Make a custom outfit for them, then set them to it, then remove shield belt from the list of allowed things on everyone else's outfit.  Putting a TV in your hospital facing the beds also allows the recovering pawns to gain some recreation, though some might still get up to leave, it should at least help.

5.  ....but do NOT assign a target....the miss radius is smaller on auto-targeted shots than forced target.  Pause, hold fire, wait for mechs to lose interest, then repeat. 

I do try to put out fires, at least on downed pawns, but not by leaving cover. That is way too risky with bullets raining down on us. I pause a lot and try to keep a watch on the most damaged people and the already downed pawns.

Thanks for the tip about outfits. Have set up a Brawler outfit now, which I hope will help, by disallowing belts for the Anything outfit. Already have a TV in the hospital, plus lots of other stuff, and the mentioned food on the floor. But they still get up to do all kinds of silly stuff, which is very, very frustrating when they are bandaged from head to toe and can barely walk. Spending half a day to grab a meal, then breaking due to hunger or whatever (doctors are supposed to feed them after all) is annoying. I just want them to stay in bed and heal up, and that's why I have set it to 1 (with fire and basic set to 2, to try to prevent dumb stuff).

On mortars... that actually works?! I didn't think they would fire unless I set a target for them. Certainly had no idea it was more precise without that. I don't use them much in fairness. Haven't even researched it, but do have 3 mortars from previous sieges (I try to snipe them, which sometimes triggers the whole lot to rush us instead of bombarding the base).

I did finally tech biofuel, so can try the mortars approach next time if we get enough shells by then. I've just had very poor experiences with them before, so haven't seriously considered trying it again. Seemed like a waste of resources with most shells going into mountains 10 tiles away, or with luck hitting one mechanoid.

Thankfully the poison ships aren't too bad, so it's possible to prepare (and I can re-use the un-triggered traps). It's the psychic ship that is truly brutal, and needs to be dealt with ASAP (within 2.5 days), or else there is a very real danger of people flipping out before you're able to take it on. Animals can turn manhunter too, which happened when my guys were on route to the built up defences. Wasn't pretty... Horrible timing.

Would a doomsday rocket work well against mechanoids? Believe it starts fires, which does nothing, but if the blast radius is large enough, it should be possible to hit a whole heap. And since I'm using Pick up and haul, it's possible to bring another weapon with them and change in the field.

Limdood

doomsday has the same issues as triple launchers....REALLLLY long aim time.  I THINK they have secondary explosions though, so those might damage mechs if it's used as the opening salvo...Or really precise timing by aiming a doomsday launcher and timing a sniper shot to hit the ship right before the rocket arrives.

Mortars are very effective against sieges, "prepare and attack" raids, and ship parts - but do almost nothing against sappers and "attack immediately" raids.  Mortars will be fired by drafted pawns manning them the same as any other weapon, automatically targeting and firing, unless the mortar is set to hold fire.  My tips for mortars are:

- numbers matter.  One mortar will do almost nothing...ever.  12 mortars will devastate most prep & attack or siege raids without taking a single shot from any enemies, and will cripple mechs around a ship part (with careful management, to prevent sequential firings chain-damaging mechs so they rush all the way to your base).  I don't usually consider having less than 4 mortars....imo (which others are free to disagree with), 1-3 mortars might as well be no mortars.

- shells deteriorate when left unroofed....I tend to make 2 4x5 or 6x5 rooms, with a 1x5 (or maybe 3x5 if you use vanilla item stack sizes) room in between them....put the mortars in the 2 rooms, with the "operator" place in a line down the middle (remember mortars have to be unroofed...no under-mountain mortars), The center room is roofed, and contains your mortar shell stockpile.  That way the shells are right between all the mortars, and the doors can be set to "hold open."

- coordination is important with mortars.  Mortar hits can trigger all sorts of things...most notably, pirate raids can decide to attack, and mechs can be re-aggro'd or triggered.  You want all your mortars being fired simultaneously so all the shells are firing into the same region...snaked-out lines of enemies take a lot less damage than big clumps.  I tend to draft enough pawns for each mortar, move them into the operator positions for the mortars (just move them there, don't actually order them to man the mortar yet), THEN i pause it and assign each pawn to an adjacent mortar, then unpause....All the pawns will acquire a target, aim, and fire at once, then go grab a new shell together.  Usually I pause again here and click hold fire, but for humanoid raids, you can just let them keep firing...all the following salvos will be fairly coordinated as well. 

- mortars have a cooldown time before they can fire again (i think it's 40-50 seconds).  You don't have to have a target to run the cooldown.  After the raid is over, you can have one pawn go and manually reload and run down the cooldown on all the mortars, one by one (or use several pawns) so that all mortars are loaded and primed for an immediate shot the next time they're needed.

- most raids will be handled in 2-4 salvos.  ship parts might take significantly more, but I think you'd be highly unlikely to need more than 10 salvos for any single event.  This can help you plan how many shells to keep on hand.  I personally exclusively use high-explosive shells....even on mechs.  Admittedly i've never really used the other ones...but i've also never really felt the need for them.  One exception - antigrain warheads are UNBELIEVABLY devastating.  Even with the miss radius, you're nearly certain to kill whatever you aimed at...and EVERYTHING else on the side of it that the warhead landed on - raiders, mechs, wildlife, trees, buildings, a good chunk of mountain...

Pangaea

#11
Before reading this post I actually happened to try out mortars against a siege. They landed in a really awkward place protected by mountains far away from the base, and we were still a bit messed up from previous fights. Most didn't even have weapons equipped, and were asleep. Had 3 mortars with shells gotten from previous sieges, and it worked really well. Many misses of course, but the first one killed one person, and a while later another explosive shell (some incendiary were used too) landed right in the pack and killed 3 people outright and damaged several others quite badly. They attacked the base. By the time they got around the mountain and through the traps we were in position and could deal with them fine.



Ships is of course much, much harder, but think I'll try out this approach next time and see how we fare. Need more shells, so I'm building more of them now. It's pretty expensive in steel, but the damage potential is higher than traps as well, which can only hit one pawn/mechanoid.

If we manage to take out the ship and they attack us, it will be much easier to deal with them, not least because it won't be everybody at once since lancers and scythers are much faster movers.

Didn't wind up with the same setup as you explained, but have four mortars now (no tech yet) which might be sufficient based on your post above.



Quote from: Limdood on August 22, 2019, 08:26:04 PM
One exception - antigrain warheads are UNBELIEVABLY devastating.  Even with the miss radius, you're nearly certain to kill whatever you aimed at...and EVERYTHING else on the side of it that the warhead landed on - raiders, mechs, wildlife, trees, buildings, a good chunk of mountain...

On this... if the antigrain warhead lands in the mountain (but somewhat near enemies), will it still deal devastating damage, and not be "wasted" like normal shells?

Pangaea

Interesting. I was going to test out the mortal approach. A psychic ship landed.



Had four guys by the mortars waiting for the mechs to turn back -- but they never did. So we scrambled into defensive positions and awaited the "guests". 28 mechanoids (!), including 8 centipedes. Holy smokes!

Nice of the visiting bowmen to join in, although some of them lost their lives. Took some heat off my dudes though, since they are standing in front of the firing line.



It's hard to see it being possible to beat such a colossal force with a conventional approach, ie taking them on in the open. Fortunate that they attacked the base here, otherwise I would have had no option but to pummel them with mortars and hope we hit them enough. Each centipede is a bullet-sponge fortress, and 8? Crikey!




So errr, I'm still to try this approach properly then. But I will next time a ship lands far enough away that they won't directly attack the base. Really surprised me that they did here, because as you see from the first picture, the ship landed pretty far away. Before this one another one touched down south of the wooden bridge in the bottom centre of the image, so I expected them to attack through the trap maze. That was 6 or 7 centipedes.

This most recent force had 10 scythers and 10 lancers. Those scythers could have single-handedly destroyed us. Just too many, and it takes too much time to kill them all off, even if I were to be fortunate with EMPs.

Canute

QuoteHad four guys by the mortars waiting for the mechs to turn back -- but they never did.
Once the ship part got below x percent (i think 50%) the guarding mechanoids start to invade your base.

But that split the attacking forces and if you got a second exit, you maybe can kite the centipedes around, and when you defeate the scythers you can go out and snipe the centipedes.

Pangaea

Quote from: Canute on August 24, 2019, 04:11:22 PM
Once the ship part got below x percent (i think 50%) the guarding mechanoids start to invade your base.

But that split the attacking forces and if you got a second exit, you maybe can kite the centipedes around, and when you defeate the scythers you can go out and snipe the centipedes.

Only used one shell to trigger the ship, and got a direct hit with it. The ship went to 790 HP I think, so well above 50%. Once I looked over the corpses post-combat, I noticed a few had mortar injuries, so that one mortar must have somehow hit a few as they popped out of the ship, which caused them to attack. But given the distance I was quite surprised they kept going. Expected them to turn back any moment, which they never did. Total carnage, but it's so much better to fight from a defensive position. Even so, 8 centipedes and a horde of lancers and scythers, most which made it through the maze (and ofc all centipedes were unhurt, coming last) was still no easy task.

If the centipedes had turned back, I could have tried the kiting thing. Or pummelled them with mortars if they all went back to the ship.

Given the enormous forces they bring now, probably 30+ units next time, I'm definitely going to try the mortars next time a ship lands, especially if it's far away.

Very glad I posted about this and got some excellent advice, because these encounters were getting increasingly suicidal. Wealth is actually over 400k now, and keeps increasing. Probably mostly due to better equipment (marine helmets and some marine armour), plus loads of bionics because parts keep getting blown off. One pawn has two bionic legs, two bionic arms, and a bionic eye. All parts were shot off or cut out.