How to handle Mech Clusters?

[Mojito000]

Hey all

I really do not want to start a new discussion about the DLC. Please!

I got 600+ hours in the game. As in: "not quite a Novice any more", i am sure you are much better player than me. No reason to prove that. I am here to learn.

Here is my Situation.
Mech Clusters took all (well most) of the fun out of the game,for me.

I can not handle them. They just wipe my base regularly. Until mid to late game when i am finally strong enough. As in usually i shell them with mortars...
How do you beat a mech cluster with, like 5 guys with 1 revolver, 1 rifle and a couple old bows ...
They just seem waaay to strong and way to early. The reach they have is insane. I loose several pawns even just walking towards them...

-I was writing this topic to ask if there is a way to turn the bloody mech clusters off completely?
-While writing i figured maybe you guys know a better way to handle them? I am open to suggestions.

Thanks

[Canute]

You shouldn't try a long range fire figh with the cluster, the turrets outrange you.
You can kite the centipedes if you got sniper/boltaction rifles.

Try to get a smoke grenade launcher or a royal with smoke ability.
Smoke block the line of sight of turrets, they don't shoot at you. But other mechs still do.

So wake up the mechs, kill them, then with smoke the turrets are a piece of cake.

[Alenerel]

pretty much the only way is mortars... as you noticed, if you try to fight them in their field you will get massively outgunend with shitton of turrets, shitton of mechs and on top of that inferno cannons. i try to have prepared 100 shells and 4 mortars, and when get more money, 200 shells and 8 mortars.

so mortar them, soften them up and when 70% of them are gone then you can try to assault them carefully... i usually aim for the inferno turrets first with the mortars.

to add to this shit, tynan nerfed the blast radius of the mortars even more... but hopefully you can sometimes try to aim for the main building (toxic spewer, sun blocker, etc) and they will come to your killbox. tho i think sometimes they will just sit there and never come

and well, an additional strategy is just leaving them there... and wait for the eventual raid... i once got 5 clusters cluttering the map around me and i just couldnt get out... so i had to be inside the walls for some time until raids started to clean the shit and be cleaned at the same time.

[fritzgryphon]

strategy is just leaving them there... and wait for the eventual raid...

Yeah, cheese up a way to take out any problem-causers that you can't deal with and ignore the rest.  Which is really just mech mortars,  psychic droner if you can't handle the mood hit, or sunblocker/defoliator if you have no hydroponics or meat.  Mech assemblers are a pain but despite the nuisance, it's basically free metal and components.

Then micro the pathfinding of all your guys for the next few weeks until a raid or caravan takes out the clusters.  One time I got a whole caravan worth of goods for free because they stumbled on a cluster.

Annoying as heck but you can make a profit off them, unless you get really unlucky with the cluster building types and placements.  Then there's always the option of resettling on the next tile.  This isn't super painful in early game when you're weakest.

[carbon]

If you make and edit a custom scenario, one of the aspects you can change is disabling certain event types. That includes mech clusters as an option to disable. But this requires you start a new game using that newly created scenario.

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If you want to actually fight the mech clusters, what I typically do is lure out the mechs from behind a wall; dispatch the mechs, then carve small holes in the walls such that there's only line-of-sight to one or two turrets at a time, then keep doing that until they're all gone. If the cluster doesn't start off with any good walls, you'll want to make some yourself before waking up the mechs.

I can give more in-depth advice if you'd like to provide a screenshot of a troublesome cluster and the pawns/gear you have to work with.

[Liwet]

I use smoke launchers.  Smoke your own colonists if you're up against multiple turrets and use the planning tool to map out their range.  Your advantage is you've got numbers; you get multiple off-aim shots while each turret only gets one.  I've also noticed that even after activation, the turrets won't shoot you in smoke.  As to pikemen and such, just get them out of range of the turrets.  1 EMP launcher and 1 smoke launcher is really all you need to take down a mech cluster.  Anything beyond that only speeds up the process.

[Mojito000]

1 EMP launcher and 1 smoke launcher is really all you need

Great. I tell that to my pawn with the bow and arrow.

Guess i try to edit the custom scenario. That was what i was looking for anyway.
Or can i just disable the new dlc? Will the Mech clusters still be around in Vanilla too now?

[Canute]

You can change/adjust your scenario.
Try out
Scenario Amender
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=50696.0

Or next time don't accapt that kind of quests in that early stage of your colony ! :-)

[Mojito000]

You do not need to accept any quests. They show up all the time anyway.. Feels like it is about 50/50 to regular raids.
But i will glady try your mod !

[DuckBoy]

Uranium or Jade clubs work just fine, especially if you can support with psionic abilities for smoke or teleportation. 

Even 1-2 scythers are pretty garbage against 5 untrained dudes with jade clubs.  Grab up any emp grenades or smoke launchers whenever you see them in caravans.  You don't have to worry about yolo charging clusters until they start dropping the larger turrets, at which point you hopefully have mortars, high level psionics, armies of boars etc. 

The thing is, all the mechs have mad resistance to sharp - Bows, guns, etc.  If you close the distance and hit them with clubs, all their resistances disappear, and their charge lances turn into weak push attacks

[East]

In many situations, weapons are difficult to achieve in perfect combat. It would be nice to prepare a smoke launcher, but it will be difficult to get it at an early point.

First, check the situation when the enemy is awakening. Mecha clusters in the early game often wake up very quickly.
If you have enough time and they don't have a factory or mortar, construct around the wall with enough distance. You may process it later.

If not, do not allow pawns to enter the turret radius into the allowed area setting. Perhaps after enough time, the NPCs will take care of the turret.

If you have to do it quickly, you will have to build a wall nearby and have enough defenses.

The walls you build while your enemies are asleep will constrain your turret's view and give you an angle to fight one at a time. If you fight one with enough cover, you will be able to fight better.

Grenades are particularly good at breaking turrets. If you have a grenade, it's okay against turret.

Big turrets don't see us when the walls are in between, but we have an angle to attack the enemy. Turn on developer mode and study for that angle. It would be very helpful if you could intentionally create that angle.

[tsmt1001]

You can change/adjust your scenario.
Try out
Scenario Amender
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=50696.0

Or next time don't accapt that kind of quests in that early stage of your colony ! :-)

Unfortunately they don't come just through quests. They come as a negative event: instead of a raid I get a mech cluster.

[Whifflepits]

If you have Mechanoids showing up while you have 5 guys and a couple rifles you're doing something strange. Either your style of play is really skewed to having low defenses and focusing on everything else which is deliberately making your game harder by your choice (the more your colony is worth, the more the game ramps up the difficulty) or you have a mod which is throwing things out of whack in a very big way.

[Canute]

He got the Mech cluster from a quest threat, they didn't show up as regular raid.
And he prolly got warned at the quest description that he will get Mech clusters.

[Lexa]

3 guys with smoke grenade launchers and slowly inching close enough so you can fire a doomsday at the problem causer OR absolutely insane amount of shelling (expect to spend 200+ shells because of the nerfs) OR a invisible psycaster with some grenades

Thats it. If you dont have these things then just leave the map or wait for a caravans and raids to whittle them down instead of you doing the same and suffering the casualities. Remember boy, this is storytelling.