Tone down centipedes?

Started by muffins, July 26, 2014, 06:08:41 AM

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muffins

Essentially, centipedes are tanks. They have huge amounts of health and heavy weapons that turn colonists into nutrient paste. Dealing with a few is not usually a major problem, but when a raid brings 10-12 or more there's not much you can do about it. Turrets are useless against them, colonists have inferior health and weapons, and snipers take forever to chip away at their huge health pool. I usually just use the debuging tools to kill them all off when they come because fighting a big mechanoid raid is just too devastating to the colony. Currently I'd rather fight 100 pirates than 10 centipedes.

I was thinking that perhaps they would be better in the role of tanks, ie far fewer in number (1-5 in a raid) and are there to support many, many more of the little guys (scythers). That way there is no "AND NOW YOUR COLONY DIES BY MECHANOID" raids and a colony has a fighting chance to survive.

Halinder

It's actually stupidly easy to kill centipedes. Scythers are a bigger problem against colonists as you can't catch up to them and they do a lot of damage, although admittedly a single shot does them in sometimes. For centipedes, continuous melee attacks ensure they can't fire at you, the only issue then being colonist fatigue. If you can pin them via melee in an area with turret/gunman support, it should be decently easy to bring them down.

Bog

The best way to deal with centipedes is to equip your best shooters with weapons that have longer range than the centipede's weapons (M-24s>Lee Enfields>M16s etc) then go take the fight to them by slowly plinking them to death. Centipedes walk slowly, so you can go to a point where you can shoot them but they can't shoot you and often get 5-10 shots off even with your starting Lee Enfield before needing to take a handful of steps back to get out of range again.

I've pretty easily taken out 4 centipedes with 3 Lee enfields and an M16 while not getting hurt at all.

*Note: To do the above you have to kill the scythers first. They have better range then the centipedes and also move faster and will harass your snipers.
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muffins

How do you get close enough to melee them? 10-12 Centipedes with miniguns, plasma weapons and fire weapons just obliterate any colonists within range.

Halinder

Wait for them to come into your colony. If you only have one entrance and they have to break down a door, you can ambush them very easily.

Kaiso

This isn't remotely realistic vs armies of them.  Vs one, fine, but when 6+ show up at your door, you aren't going to win by meleeing, even if you could teleport on top of them.

BetaSpectre

They do 60 melee damage last I checked. Melee used to be an effective tactic as they would go docile when an enemy gets close enough.

Its better to do hit and run make use of walls and hide behind them as the pede's are charging up.

Sythers are a bigger problem since they are accurate and fast. If they hit while you're divided expect losses. Treat them in firefights as snipers if you make use of cover (micro hit and run) and fast firing say assualt rifles then you can suffer no casualties in 99/100 fights

Centepedes take a long time to charge up so take advantage of this.

Turrets are worthless as anything but indoor landmines. Mind as well keep the blasting charges around and make use of them.

Numbers hardly matter if its not above 30-40. When their numbers are too high only keep 10% of your colonists in the fight at a time and cycle everyone out so no one goes bonkers. Fights can last a few days.

Of course you could just go maze of mine on them as with everything else.
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Fruit loops

this is a really cheaty, but I planed for a situation like I had I have a colony with about 20 people its is a very normal colony but there was escape route from every room in the base so first ill tell you how I made the bedrooms I hollowed out a 42x14 area here is the layout right to left
hallway 42x3
bedrooms 4x4 and ten of them
42x3 rock area between the bedrooms
bedrooms 4x4 and ten of them
hallway 42x3

they key to this design was the 42x3 area between the bedrooms the point of it was there was a hollowed out passage way no way in to it other than mining in that passage way had many paths leading to every room at the end of the hallway was a large room with a nutrient paste dispenser a stock pile with some metal, wood and at least enough food for everyone for 2 weeks in rimworld for 20 people as know that is A TON OF FOOD the rest of the room consisted of a few lamps a bed for everybody and a few pots and smaller things how I powered it you ask my main power comes from a bunch of solar generators and a geo but the safe room is powered by a sole geo I found really deep in the mountain there is no way to it and it transmits power threw a long metal wall it does not power any thing other than the safe room so there you have it because centipedes don't eat the will starve to death In less than to weeks but its safe to have a little extra food this system may be costly and very time consuming but I can tell you it worked for me in so many different times
key tips: keep more food than you think you will need (better be safe than sorry) wall off the entrance with at least 5 blocks they don't sense you if they have no way to you or at least if they have to break more than 4 blocks to get to you say you have every body except 1 or 2 in the safe room but centipedes are near you got to save the majority jack: sorry guys, but we already sealed it off Joe: I can see you im right here
jack: sorry but the centipedes are closing in
Joe: they are 7 miles away

lol but it really works if you care that much about your colony at suck at defending centipedes this is your answer
The guy who suggested the mood debuff for harvesting prisoner organs.

ApexPredator

Today I had a group of about 10 peeds and 6 scythers drop in the middle of my base. It was one of the most intense fights I have experienced. I lost all of my turrets, 6 mortars, my prison was gutted that had 3 prisoners in it but I was able to keep every colonist alive (two were incaped) with some crazy micromanaging and a base with a lot of corners to hide behind. Mechs are quite a challenge in this type of situation and even in the open can take a lot of time to take down. Worst part is they never give up and you have to clear them out.

Fruit loops

you can wait them out you're right they don't leave or go insane but they don't eat to if you want to wait that long for them all to starve you can
The guy who suggested the mood debuff for harvesting prisoner organs.

BetaSpectre

Quote from: Fruit loops on July 26, 2014, 11:12:15 PM
you can wait them out you're right they don't leave or go insane but they don't eat to if you want to wait that long for them all to starve you can

Second part is FALSE mechanoids DO go insane its just that its not based off of mood. I've had dozens of Mechanoids go insane on my maps. They act as insane animals do and are actually fun to keep as pets...prisoners...Mortar bait...
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                           TO WAR WE GO

Somz

No need to tone down centipedes imo. Changing the strength of raids would be better.
Sure, you can kite and kill centis, one-hit scythers, but when there's a 100 (or more...) of them, they'll one-hit you instead. I'm even using mods like jaxxa shields, colonists have +50 hp (+all in power armor), + the 'you can build walls you can shoot through' mod (don't know its name, sorry) but even then, scythers literally eat themselves through all defence and kill off my colonists, long before the centis could cause any damage.

But that doesn't mean they have to be nerfed, neither of them, but instead make them use some sort of tactic, a wider variety of weapons or something. Out of my league, don't know if or when will these take place but simply sending more and more isn't fun imo. (I was taken over by 270something cave-dwellers the other day. Rain of arrows. Not fun...)

Anyway, as long as these mechanoids come from the edge of the map instead of dropping right into your base, they're relatively easy to kill with minor losses, as long as there's 10-20 of them and no more, that is...

Also, you can use fast firing weapons in close range from behind a wall, requires some micromanagement:
tell one of your minions to fire at a centi, (send to the edge of the wall) then before the centi could shoot back (you can select the centi to see it) you send the minion behind a wall (centi can't aim at the pawn anymore, it won't shoot) while you send another minion in its place. Centi will target that pawn now, switch again. Repeat a hundred times/centi...
Can kill them with a pistol without taking any damage. :3
To beer or not to beer.
That is a laughable question.

Rahjital

IMHO the entire mechanoid raids should be changed. Right now, you get scythers who are deadly accurate and fast but fall really quickly and the slow but tanky centipedes. Pretty much every time the scythers charge forward and die, and then the centipedes are kited around the map for days and days. If the scythers actually followed the centipedes, they would be able to pick off the snipers while the centipedes would advance closer and into the range of their weapons.

Speaking of which, centis have a ton of health but rather laughable firepower. Minigun and the charge cannon barely ever hit anyone in cover, and the only saving grace of the inferno cannon is that it sets colonists on fire and drives them out of cover, but otherwise it's almost just as weak as the other two weapons. If they had something that hits hard, like a rocket launcher or a big cannon, people would finally have to be afraid of them. Right now, they are just meat shields...

Of course, those changes would make mechanoid raids much more deadly, so their numbers would have to be toned down a bit... but at least it wouldn't be the "shoot the harmless centipede a million times" anymore.

Somz

Quote from: Rahjital on July 27, 2014, 01:51:25 PM
...centis have a ton of health but rather laughable firepower. Minigun and the charge cannon barely ever hit anyone in cover, and the only saving grace of the inferno cannon is that it sets colonists on fire and drives them out of cover, but otherwise it's almost just as weak as the other two weapons. If they had something that hits hard, like a rocket launcher or a big cannon, people would finally have to be afraid of them. Right now, they are just meat shields...

Say that after you encountered so many no firepower was enough to stop them "meat shields". ^^
To beer or not to beer.
That is a laughable question.

Fruit loops

the melee trick doesn't work sometimes for a few reasons
1: if there is a distance of land between you and them your basicly dead the minigun one will shoot you before you get to them the inferno one will set everybody on fire so they will run around at random I forgot the last one but it does the same as minigun if there is any space between you and them your screwed
2: yes it works sometimes but other times they can 2 shot you
3: if there is one of them it works sometimes but if there is more than 1 and you are only meleeing one of them the others can shoot you and kill you and 99% of the time if there is a centipede being melee tricked and another centipede comes anywhere near the one being meleed the one being meleed is gonna start meleeing you strength in numbers?

personally the sythers are the easy one there is no reasoning for it they just seem easier to me
The guy who suggested the mood debuff for harvesting prisoner organs.