Mech clusters subvert the game

[Boboid]

Edit: Nope, changed my mind.
Not getting into this unreasonable argument.

Player turrets have a minimum range. Charge blasters don't. I'm surprised this got past beta.

The comparison isn't particularly apt. While they're both called Turrets they serve entirely different purposes so comparing them inherently doesn't make a lot of sense on a case-by-case basis.

Mechanoids also don't have to be concerned with temperature. Asymmetry is common and quite useful in game design.

[Ser Kitteh]

Except before Royalty, the enemy pirates and outlander towns used the same turrets as the players do. This allowed the player to understand their limits because they're the same. Charge blasters with their insane range and power is likely the most damaging ranged enemy in the game.

[TrashMan]

Don't even have royalty yet but already loving the turtle tears.

It might need some balancing but I look forward to having a reason to maintain a sally force instead of just pulling mortar triggers while watching megascreen behind the killbox.

Mortars are terribly inefficient/inaccurate and turrets that player gets are in general trash.
Normal/logical defenses work only with mods, without them you require cheap AI exploits (killboxes). Preemtive Strike had the right idea on how to handle raids.

Also, the fact you enjoy the irritation of people who play the game differently than you is disturbing.

[82ab53e4]

I think that they simply must be scaled down. The fact that they can easily deal with other threats actually encourages to turtle even more and relay on your new guards!
Expirirenced players can simply destroy nasty buildings and leave turrets to guard map.

[RicRider]

Player turrets have a minimum range. Charge blasters don't. I'm surprised this got past beta.

Do they keep shooting when you melee them? Why would a charge blaster have a minimum range? It doesn't when it's mounted on a centipede.

[zizard]

Player turrets have a minimum range. Charge blasters don't. I'm surprised this got past beta.

Do they keep shooting when you melee them? Why would a charge blaster have a minimum range? It doesn't when it's mounted on a centipede.

They don't have 46 range when mounted on a centipede.

[LakeWobegon]

Player turrets have a minimum range. Charge blasters don't. I'm surprised this got past beta.

On top of that their range cooldown is bugged, according to the UI they are supposed to have a cooldown of >7 seconds but instead they keep firing as if they were a centipede. The high ranged cooldown (if it worked) would open up a few more tactical options but atm it is buggeg which makes those things even more OP due to the insane range. The slug turrets ranged cooldown is also bugged.

[LakeWobegon]

Do they keep shooting when you melee them? Why would a charge blaster have a minimum range? It doesn't when it's mounted on a centipede.

They do and a single turret easily breaks an excellent shield belt at that range. I know because I tried it 3 times and 3 times the shield belt broke.

[LakeWobegon]

Edit: Nope, changed my mind.
Not getting into this unreasonable argument.

I am curious why you find it unreasonable. For example yesterday I decided to give the expansion another try and during 8 hours of play I did not have a single raid besides mech clusters. I enjoyed the defensive nature of Rimworld; I enjoyed having the "high ground" to try to win against overwhelming odds. Now the game consistently forces me to go raid or else suffer huge penalties like disabling all electrical devices (including my turrets while theirs work just fine), -30 to the mood, toxic fallout, being bombarded by insanely accurate mortars (while mine are sh*t. I once needed 49 shells to hit a ship while in sharp contrast the mech mortairs landed 2 hits in a row on my pawns). What is wrong with saying that I dont like it and would therefore like to see changes to increase the strategic options?

Edit: Oh and the mech assemblers, if for some reason I cant tackle the cluster but it has assemblers... I am punished with a mech per assembler every single day for not playing the way they want me to play. Its so bloody tedious, repetitive and not fun. This is not the RimWorld that I know and love that is for sure.

[Bozobub]

Since I don't have and probably will not get the DLC, I cannot be completely sure, but these sound like completely valid criticisms, if even half-true.

[lt_halle]

Strong agree. Early game the clusters are relatively manageable, but late game they are just completely insane. On year six I have around 20 colonists with an average of recon/advanced flak armor and plasteel flak helmets, and all armed with charge rifles or snipers. Mech clusters spawn with literally dozens of turrets and mortars at this point in the game. There is no real winning strategy. Smoke either works in some weird way I don't understand, or does not work as advertised at all; I had a group of 8 colonists approach a dormant cluster, popped a smoke psionic power, and then opened fire. Surprise surprise - all the turrets immediately locked on despite all my visible colonists being inside smoke, tearing them to shreds.

I modded the turrets down to 30 range and even then, while it still feels much more reasonable (sniping turrets can actually work once in awhile) there's still a lot of problems. You can't really kite the clusters because when there's 10+ mortars letting them get even one volley off means that half your base is getting leveled. You can't fight inside the clusters because smoke doesnt work on the turrets, and even if it did then it's not gonna be enough to save you from fighting 10+ centipedes and dozens of pikemen/lancers/scythers homing in on you in the open. There's really no strategy that at all feels "well played" or effective. Any loss against them feels cheap and unavoidable.

I think one good change would be scaling the threat of the cluster inversely with the threat of its building. As it stands now a climate adjuster of most of the time sun blocker is pretty much completely impotent as a threat, while a high psychic drone building or consciousness reducer is a crippling catastrophe. The problem here is that the accompanying mech cluster is the exact same size. Why? It's much harder to fight off a cluster when you have -30 mood (mental breaks in the middle of fighting) or constant toxic fallout than it is when there's slightly less light or colder temperature.

In summary:
-Less turrets and weaker turrets (range is insane, damage is enough to down even power armored colonists in a few volleys, smoke seems ineffective)
-Scale raid to threat of central building. Higher threat building means lower threat cluster.
-Nerf mortars somehow. Maybe remove them entirely? Replace them with a different mechanic that there's a reasonable way to defend against when there's 10+ of them?

[Boboid]

Smoke either works in some weird way I don't understand, or does not work as advertised at all; I had a group of 8 colonists approach a dormant cluster, popped a smoke psionic power, and then opened fire. Surprise surprise - all the turrets immediately locked on despite all my visible colonists being inside smoke, tearing them to shreds.

Smoke actually does work in some weird way. It's unintuitive IMO, and I just recently posted it in the bug forums since either the descriptions or the mechanic need to be changed to accurately resemble one another.

Smoke only stops turrets locking on if there are 2 tiles of smoke between the turret and the target.

So as an example:
[Pawn][Smoke][Smoke][Turret] = Safe
[Pawn][Smoke]-any amount of distance- [Smoke][Turret] = Safe
[Pawn][Smoke][Turret] = Not safe
[Pawn][Smoke]-any amount of distance- [Turret] = Not safe

The smoke that a pawn is standing on doesn't seem to count so:
[Pawn+Smoke][Smoke][Turret] = Not safe

So in general you want smoke between turrets and your pawns, ideally directly on the turrets.
Though do remember that 2 tiles of smoke is required and smoke physically ON the turrets doesn't contribute.
Hope that helps.

Edit: Also you can never safely melee a turret because there will never be enough smoke between the turret and your pawns.

[zizard]

There's really no strategy that at all feels "well played" or effective. Any loss against them feels cheap and unavoidable.

That's obviously the whole point. Forcing pawn damage = story telling.

[RicRider]

So I still haven't bought Royalty because I'm content exploring 1.1 mechanic changes for now without getting into the whole 'whining noble' aspect of RimWorld (and psi powers), but I have to concur, there's too many 'mech things' going on.

I like to play Phoebe merciless (laugh it up fuzzballs) because I like base building and usually I'll get 2-3 raids back to back in the spring from the various enemy tribes and factions. Two years in a row now I've just got ship drops and mechanoids podding in on my map. Not a single human raid for two years! Before I even had decent weaponry I was plinking scythers with short bows.

I mean I get that RimWorld is pushing us to get off the planet faster but you know what's gonna happen for people who like base building right? I'm just gonna add mechanoid drops to the list of things that are annoying as hell to deal with all the time that I disable at scenario startup like toxic fallout. I presume there's also going to be mods coming out that lower the frequency of mechanoids or something. It feels dumb to do this but since I'm base building who cares right?

What I'd like to see is some kind of a sliding scale option at scenario startup that lets me tailor the interaction with factions in a way. I don't want all my conflicts to be with robots... seriously it just gets tedious after a while. I could have been unlucky so maybe my observation is all wrong and I should play a few more games, but literally while I'm fighting mechs from one ship drop another one lands on my farms in the middle of the base. Seems excessive!

Also if you don't like the idea of sliding scales then at least give us a way to go to mechanoid bases on the world maps and remove them from existence, like the way we do with other factions.

[82ab53e4]

My main problem with mech clusters is that they are overrepresented. I learned to deal with them, but i hate that i they are regular threat. I just miss having raids at this point.