Late game ship encounters

[Shurp]

yes, that's the trouble with bionics -- they increase pawn wealth much faster than they increase pawn usefulness.  So your pawn becomes a magnet for trouble.  You might want to consider selling off the bionics and replacing them with prostheses that are reasonably adequate (especially legs) and much cheaper.  The net value of the pawn will actually increase that way.

Same goes for marine armor and such... a simple flak vest provides nearly as much protection for the chest at least, and you can replace most of the rest that gets blown off.  Except eyes and brains

[Pangaea]

Total havoc 

20 centipedes and 9 lancers.



This wasn't a ship encounter, but two groups of mechs dropped in pods and attacked. Definitely getting way out of hand. Glad I put that fire popper there as it helped a bit. Sorry I didn't install a EMP trap. Had some other traps by the entrance from the killzone so figured it would go too far in. They've never ventured this far in before. But then I haven't seen 20 buggers attack us either.

Actually had 4 guys man the mortars and keep pounding them. Looking at the injuries not many hit them, but it was worth a try.

Recently upgraded those 3 vulnerable mini-turrest to plasteel. Had two guys repairing them, but one of them blew up. Surprised me that both walls got taken out. Granite is sturdy stuff. But without those walls all three would be wiped. Autocannons actually ran out of juice and I tried to rearm them with a shielded guy, but then the electricity went out as well. The two uranium slugs almost ran out too. Nuts.

Horrible attack, but we got out of it without too horrendous injuries (no deaths!). Lost a lung and another eye, the lung ironically to a missed autocannon shot (on fire, running around). The guy is probably alive thanks to the marine armour that reduced the damage to 20.

[Canute]

Any survived raid without death's was a good defence !! :-)
Lung and eye you can harvest for prisoners or get bionic ones !.

[Pangaea]

True. Although we basically don't get any prisoners any more. Glad I harvested a few about 5-6 years ago in-game.

Next up: 60(!) sapper raiders. They went for the freezer, the nasty so-and-sos. Used the insanity gadget we had on the first guy (it's usually a miner), and one second later the other 59 killed him. No use. They march onwards towards the freezer. But first they had to hack through another mountain, because a deep water lake stopped them (I hadn't even noticed that before). Pummelled them with mortars, but barely anything hit.

I frantically try to make some turrets inside the freezer, but quickly realise it's no use. Not enough time. So I try to flank them instead, after opening a door to lure them through did nothing of note. Managed to kill a few, but the horde went through, into the freezer, and started assaulting various animals inside the base. Lost for ideas at this point, I ordered everybody into the freezer (from the hole they created). A big lump of guns.

It sort of worked. There were enough guys in the freezer or nearby to attack, and then the rest wanted to flee that way. Killed a few more on the way out. Almost 40 corpses. 4 of my panthers died, and a cougar. Heaps more got hit, but thankfully I managed to save them.

So once again it went better than feared, but I just hate attacks like this that throw all nice plans out the window. That said, it IS more fun to fight humans.

Oh, and one unfortunate person survived, got imprisoned, lost a lung, and was then released. I just can't take the hits from harvesting them until death. Everybody flip out for the next week.


Such colossal attacks are getting overly dangerous though. I'd like to build a ship in this save, but 15 days of attacks like this?? Can't see us surviving that in all honesty. Takes a week to fix up everything afterwards.

I have to seriously consider taking the vast bulk of textiles, and dancing around a very large bonfire. Perhaps that will make the attacks more manageable. 

[Pangaea]

Aaah yes. The 16 year old sow* that has been with us from the very start, and has survived two heart attacks, is still alive. She lost an eye to the nasty invaders, but otherwise healed up fine. Definitely living on borrowed time!  


* Pigs have a life expectancy of 12 years.

[Limdood]

If you want to make the ship with a non-cheese strategy, calculate the resources you'll need for the ship, and make sure you've got that.  Convert EVERYTHING else in your base to steel, components, and plasteel (through trading whatever you can), as well as new guns, new armor, traps by the truckload, mortars, shells, firefoam, etc.  and like 20 days food.  Basically, your entire base becomes nothing but a military fortress with no purpose but surviving 15 days....no more tailoring, no growing zones, no mining, construction only for repairs and replacement, etc.  Then give it a shot.  Biggest tip I have in that case would be ringing your base in as many layers of walls as you can, and abuse the hell out of mortars, since each group needs to slow down and group up at any wall entry.

If you don't mind cheesing it some, then yeah, destroying everything you don't need that's boosting your value will help.

But after all, the ship startup is kinda like the end boss of the game anyways...it would be somewhat anticlimactic to go into that KNOWING you're going to win or lose....I kind of envy your current situation, as you have a legit "lets see if I'll make it!" situation going on.

[Pangaea]

Yes, that is definitely a fair comment. And don't think I could stomach to burn up all the strictly non-needed stuff anyway. I'm not that kind of game-the-system gamer. Always trying to play as honest as possible -- though in this game a killzone is unfortunately needed. Taking on 20 centipedes or 60 raiders in the open is a highly viable suicide plan, but that's not really what I want to achieve here.

(Thankfully I had the sense to turn down the 130+ melee only chased refugee event recently...)

Instead I'm trying to plan for the maybe inevitable base destruction. Had forgot how expensive the ship is in terms of especially advanced components (cryptosleep gadgets, and we need at least 20 of them), so that will take a good while. Trying to make some more marine armour too. But I'm honestly not sure (any more) if it's better than flaks vests, pants and devilstrand shirt. Perhaps it's grossly inaccurate, but looking at the percentages under Gear, it's sometimes worse when they change into marine armour and shirt+pants.

Should build even more walls as well. Three layers isn't enough, and I need much better protection north of the freezer. The sappers certainly taught me that expensive lesson. Scary how fast they hammer through granite mountain when they first arrived. And despite trying to smash them with 4 mortars, it's so inaccurate that when they're close to a mountain, you're going to miss with 90%+ of shells. Siege bases is much easier, because typically they're in the open and your impact zone is therefore much bigger.

The ship needing so many advanced components was a bit of a shocker, because I had thoughts about starting to rip off reasonably healthy limbs and replace them with bionics -- especially arms, because manipulation should helps with shooting (iirc). Have also built 4 mortars of my own, so we have 8 now. And 100 explosive shells. That should suffice for a while. Also have that antigrain warhead, which should probably be used for something destructive at some point..... 

But once I flip the button and the 15-day hellish assault starts, we need to be much better prepared than currently. 30 mechs every day or two will eventually kill us off - no doubt about it. Need more traps, more walls, more turrets, more everything.

Steel is always the biggest issue. And so far I've fetched 3-4 steel locations with the long-range scanner. 5000 went to 100 in no time at all. It's crazy. Heck, even the 150+ (normal) components went out the window in a whiff once I started on the ship.

Should be fun one way or another once I trigger the assaults. I'll let you know how I get on. It's definitely not a given how it turns out, due to the colossally big attack forces.

[Pangaea]

Oh jeez. Thank you ever so much, Cassandra. Both in the same second.



Very late in the day too, so we have to withstand until morning somehow. Then it's mortar time, and hope the maybe 40 mechs don't kill us all when they attack. Or that all females flip out. These events are usually always female, which I suspect is because I have several female "Too smart" pawns. Cassandra knows where to twist the knife.

Edit: Actually, on further inspection, it looks like both events don't double up. The worst is taken instead. Males get the low effect from the ship, and females get the massive -30 hit from the high-pitched spacevoice. Time to equip some hats...

[Canute]

You can wait with the psychic shop until some non-mechanoid raid comes.
So the mech's fight against the raider.
A few days you should be able to withstand the ship psychic drone effect.

[Limdood]

I forgot....also gamey...you could set up a second base a couple tiles away.  Purely defensive....no kitchens, fields, workshops, etc.  Then start caravaning your ship supplies and food over, and build the ship there.  It doesn't DESTROY the old, useless gear, but it still removes the wealth from the assault calculations.  You also get to make a MUCH more compact, defensible base, by focusing solely on sleeping quarters, dining/rec room, mortars, and a large area for the ship.  You'll also, quite amusingly, suddenly get reduced "expectations" mood boost since the new map will have drastically reduced wealth.

It might feel more "story acceptable" as well, since thematically you're abandoning a "home" to build a military installation which will be used for one specific purpose.  When you're ready to start the launch sequence, you could also think of the supplies you left behind as "well, we don't need these anymore, I hope someone can make use of them when we're gone."

[Pangaea]

You can wait with the psychic shop until some non-mechanoid raid comes.
So the mech's fight against the raider.
A few days you should be able to withstand the ship psychic drone effect.

Didn't dare to wait that long, so when I had time to play again today I went ahead with the assault. Thankfully the high psychic drone ended during the battle, but I took on the ship on the 2nd day. Can't afford it going to medium (after 2.5 days). It's too stressful on people. Equipped some of my worst afflicted with the 7 tinfoil hats I have purchased when available. To reduce risk I let them (+1) man the mortars.

Essentially I tried to carry out the fight in stages.

First trigger the ship. Oh dear. 43 mechs this time, though "only" 15 centipedes. Salvo from all 8 mortars. Some animals got a rude awakening.


I then let them reload and hold fire. The ship landed quite close to base, and the mobile mechs are essentially into the trap maze before I can fire again. A few lancers die, but all others are only injured. When the centipedes get into a semi-open position I try to hit them again. Not much landed, but a few got hit. Tried to attack them again while they were into the maze. No idea if it was useful or mostly just injured the walls, but it was worth a try. They are mighty strong bastards.

No idea how the below came to be, but for some reason the scythers got stuck or blocked behind the centipedes. So they ended up attacking us after the centipedes were dead, which made it rather a lot easier. Not one of them made it to my melees or the plasteel mini turrets.



This time I used two EMP traps, although they had to be placed uncomfortably deep into the killzone. Took a while to trigger, but really glad it finally did. Looked like everybody had the stun tag, but heaps kept firing at us. Two firefoams in place too, and both triggered, meaning we mostly didn't have to worry about on-fire guys running about like headless chickens. Much less need to repair turrets mid-battle too.

Post-combat, and the area looks like this.



Lots of dead mechs, but oddly enough 5 fewer than attacked. Looks like 4 centipedes and one other got evaporated from mortars. About mortars, after the attempted salvo in the maze, I held off and tried to attack them after they had come through and some were in the open. A few landed and injured some of them, but as you can see from above, many walls and some doors got taken out as well. I was worried about taking out the walls south so the scythers got through and flanked us, so towards the end of battle I sent the helmet-less pawns to join the battle.

This time it went spectacularly well. Only two people got hit at all. One quite badly, but he'll live.

Much to rebuild, including walls and bridge+trap placements this time, but given time that can be done. Fair to say I'm convinced about the power of mortars in these late game assaults. So far the mechs have been close enough to instantly attack the base, so haven't been able to check out combat when they turn back to the ship. But I would think that is easier to deal with, as you can injure more of them from a safe distance, even if most of the mortar shells won't hit anything.

Very briefly, what I did here was:

1. Trigger the ship with a full salvo of mortars. Hopefully some will injure or even kill a few mechs
2. Put non-mortars into defensive positions and wait. If possible, hit the centipedes with another salvo or two on the way to your base.
3. Put uranium slugs on hold fire until the centipedes arrive. 40 shells isn't much against so many centipedes, and we can't afford to "waste" them on lancers or scythers. Hopefully your guys and normal turrets can deal with them okay.
4. Once the centipedes are in gun-range, let the mortars rip again, and turn on the uranium slugs. Try to force fire on the inferno cannons, as they can deal total havoc if your people catch fire and start running around. Then hope your firefoam protectors trigger at a fitting time, and that the mechs trigger one of the EMP traps. That will give you some respite.
5. Fire, fire, fire and fire some more.
6. If feasible, let the mortar guys join the attack too. Hold off on shield melee guys and don't send them into the middle of the bullet rain. Shields will go out in no time, and they'll get downed, possibly from friendly fire. Let them take some fire in turns instead, and use them to repair vulnerable turrets. If the combat is mighty long, they can be used to refill autocannons.

Naturally, this whole thing is easier when they attack the base, like in these latest write-ups. Taking on such a colossal force in the open, even if I'm able to make better use of EMP grenades, seems like a total suicide mission based on my previous experience. And without turret backup, it's extremely hard to take down so many centipedes before half your army is downed and bleeding out.

[Pangaea]

As a little aside, are you aware that you can smooth granite mountain blocks, and this enables you to repair them?

Discovered it by coincidence after the freezer invasion earlier. Those walls were smoothed and I expected them to look shot up and a bit ugly for all eternity. Then I suddenly see some pawns repairing them

[Shurp]

It's worth noting that mortars are more effective against larger raids than smaller ones (more targets milling about in a larger area).  So if you're ever in a situation where the ship part is a good distance from your base and the mechs are hanging out there, you can probably hit them effectively with several volleys.

Firefoam poppers against inferno cannons is a clever idea, I like that, I'll try to remember it when I get to that stage in my current game.

[Limdood]

Firefoam poppers against inferno cannons is a clever idea, I like that, I'll try to remember it when I get to that stage in my current game.

Agreed.  When I read that earlier in the thread, i just thought "that's brilliant!  I've NEVER thought of that!"

[Pangaea]

That's pretty cool that the firefoam popper is a new idea. Glad to be able to help you guys a little too You've helped me with various advice in this thread and others.

As for the game; good grief. How are we supposed to survive a 15-day non-stop attack when regular mech raids almost finish us off?

They suddenly invade from the south, which is very close to the base, so no time to prepare anything. I did take out two firefoam poppers, but no time for EMP traps, and no use in mortars. Not enough time. They're over us before we can say "Damn". Didn't help that some dumbass had put a rock chunk IN a door in the maze, meaning many traps were dormant. I don't understand why this keeps happening, when the dumping zone doesn't include the doors or traps.

Bi-directional bullethell from the 19 centipedes, 10 lancers and 15 scythers.



Three people went down, walls and sandbags shot up, though I'm glad we managed to save the plasteel mini-turrets by repairing them throughout. Autocannons ran out, and I had to re-arm them mid-battle. It looked ugly with all those machines firing at us, but thankfully none of us died.

(Okay, I admit: I save-scummed because the first time Gillespie the ex-braindead one, got murdered. Brain messed up again, though I'm not sure why it should kill her as injuries overall weren't too bad, brain down to 20% capacity aside.)

Thankfully one doctor was healthy, so he had to work a double-shift through the night. Entire hospital full of damaged bodies, and I have 12-13 beds in there. Some more permanent injuries and lost limbs, so bionic operations coming up over the next days. Hope Cassandra gives us a lull again, so we can repair and heal up. Her on-off cycle is getting more and more vicious