- A jargogle
- Feb 22, 2011
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How in god's name are you supposed to deal with lategame mechs on merciless? It feels like once you get to 6+ centipedes, colonists cease being able to win any fight against them so you have to find some flavour of cheese
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May 22, 2020 18:19
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May 1, 2024 16:16
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- A jargogle
- Feb 22, 2011
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What's your killbox look like? (a killbox for high-level mech raids is extremely important)
If you're going to play on merciless, lategame centipedes unfortunately need to be prepared for well in advance.
There's basically five weapons worth talking about vs. centipedes. Charge rifles, chain shotguns, miniguns, emp grenades, and zeushammers.
Centipedes have 70% armor vs. sharp damage, which means charge rifles (35% armor penetration) have a 65% chance of doing full damage, a 17.5% chance of half damage, and a 17.5% chance of no damage. A charge rifle with its 15 damage per shot will have an expected damage of ~11 per shot, and can fire every 3 seconds. With its 3 shot burst that's a DPS of about 11.
Chain shotguns have less armor penetration (13%) but much more damage (18!) and fires faster, its DPS is about 12.1.
Both weapons are accurate enough that given the enormous body size of centipedes, you don't need to worry about your hit chances. If you're firing into a lot of centipedes, you'll hit somebody. Normally I love the chain shotgun for its extremely affordable build cost, absolutely massive damage output, and peak killbox performance vs. humans, manhunter swarms, insects, and any mechanoid EXCEPT centipedes, but as you have found out, centipedes are so tanky and so lethal and come in big enough numbers in the lategame that if you want to play Merciless you have to build against them specifically.
Miniguns are a real outlier of a weapon. Even with their mediocre damage per shot, anemic armor penetration, atrocious accuracy, and glacial aiming times, they just put so much lead in the air they have a theoretical maximum DPS of 30.6 vs. a centipede's 70% armor. Against most other enemy types I think miniguns aren't a great choice because they'll miss so many shots and when they do kill something it'll likely be in the first half of the volley which means you get to watch the back half of the volley go into the dirt, and then wait another 5 seconds before the next volley is ready to go. Centipedes however are so big and easy to hit that even though miniguns will miss a noticable amount of shots, they still win the DPS Vs. Centipedes competition by a country mile. The centipedes' huge hit point totals mean you'll waste a lot fewer volleys on overkill than you will vs. most other things. There's a reason these things cost 20 components and their own 2600 research point tech to unlock.
So while you keep the charge rifles and chain shotguns for every other raid type, keep miniguns in accessible storage so you can swap to them in case of centipedes. That's your damage source.
You will also need an emp grenadier to keep the centipedes locked down. Don't aim at any specific centipede aim at the ground in a spot where the centipedes will come in so you can be sure you hit the maximum number of them. Mechanoids who are emp'd over and over in a row will eventually "adapt" and become immune to EMP long enough to get off some shots, so EMP isn't a perfect solution, but the adaptation isn't permanent either and they will become vulnerable again after they fire a couple times.
I also recommend a couple guys in cataphract (or Marine, if you don't have the tech) armor with shield belts and melee weapons near the front of your formation to suck up attacks. Hopefully between the grenades keeping the centipedes locked down and the miniguns killing the centipedes as fast as they can, you won't suffer too many attacks.
You MUST have firefoam poppers in your defensive line in case an inferno cannon shot slips through.
If your EMP grenadier goes down you MUST task another colonist to grab the grenades and take over EMP duty.
Do NOT try to use the emp launcher instead of the grenades. It is slow, inaccurate, and has a tiny lovely AoE.
Try to focus one centipede down at a time, prioritizing the ones with inferno launchers. If the centipedes are bunched up, aim at the one in the back of the formation, the ones in front will bodyblock the shots and take all the damage, but if they go down the rest of the volley will continue through to hit more centipedes, instead of going into the dirt.
If a colonist is taking aim at a suboptimal centipede and is almost ready to fire, let him take the shot instead of retargeting him. It takes 2.5 seconds to wind up a minigun volley, better to let him get it off then to redirect him and make him start the windup again.
Play on the slowest speed, pause constantly.
Once you've killed enough centipedes that you have as many centipedes remaining as you have melee-capable guys, get out there and point one melee guy at each centipede so that they get tied down in melee. Ideally you have zeushammers on your melee guys, but failing that, maces are a (distant) second best choice. Centipedes are not helpless in melee, but they are MUCH less lethal than they are with their guns, and a centipede who is engaged in melee cannot shoot their guns at all. Once all the remaining centipedes are locked down, then you can move all your ranged colonists out of cover, 2 tiles away from the centipedes and focus them down. You won't friendly fire your melee guys if you're that close to them, friendly fire has a minimum distance. If a minigun shot goes super stray and hits a different melee guy fighting with a different centipede, well that's what the shield belts are for.
good luck!
That's actually really helpful - I had tried using an EMP launcher (and frustrated at how bad it was), was too short on advanced components to really deck out with charge weapons and never even considered miniguns. Shield belt melees + picking them down very slowly with ARs were how I was dealing with them with less than 6 but around that time it just became impossible to get them into melee because they just gunned my guys down before they could engage.
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May 22, 2020 22:27
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- A jargogle
- Feb 22, 2011
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Access to the stockpile zone with the meat in it?
No forbidden zones or forbidden doors?
Is there a range limit for the ingredients set on the recipe for the meat?
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Mar 14, 2021 22:22
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- A jargogle
- Feb 22, 2011
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I decided to try a cannibal ice sheet tribe with prepare carefully. Randy proceeded to spawn no events whatsoever - no raids, no merchants, not even a quest to help out the aristocrat and get psy powers. Everybody starved to death. Is this a bug or something?
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Jun 12, 2021 19:28
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- A jargogle
- Feb 22, 2011
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I'm in the middle of the archotech run tynaaaaaan
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Oct 5, 2022 10:47
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- A jargogle
- Feb 22, 2011
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See I quite like designing a base around the idea that insects could spawn literally anywhere in it. Never too much wealth in any single room, every room is a module designed to be set on fire and sealed at any given time, etc. It's an interesting challenge.
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Oct 5, 2022 12:14
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- A jargogle
- Feb 22, 2011
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Is there a mod that enables you to create your own xenotypes and then have them spawn as part of the regular raids etc? Oh and, if there is, would it work with multiplayer?
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Mar 14, 2023 16:58
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- A jargogle
- Feb 22, 2011
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that's base biotech functionality.
you need to make or load a custom xenotype from the embark screen (save it if you want to play it across multiple Rims), and ensure you either a) start with one of the customs, or b) have an ideologion for any of the factions that either loves or hates that xenotype
Oh, interesting! I hadn't seen any of them but I suppose I never embarked with any
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Mar 14, 2023 18:28
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- A jargogle
- Feb 22, 2011
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Range doesn't matter as much if turrets can't see you. You can unilaterally stomp an unlimited number of turrets, at the cost of micromanagement tedium of manually targeting the smoke launchers and moving your dudes into the smoke clouds.
you can disable auto-homezone, it's one of the buttons in the bottom right
only then you forgot to add a zone for the grow zone and and the devilstrand has been on fire but you didn't notice and now it's ruined
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Feb 15, 2024 18:55
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- A jargogle
- Feb 22, 2011
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Infections are totally fine - It's an additional risk for getting shot and rewards fast treatment. And personally I think random diseases that have a real chance of killing people is also fine since it causes you to truly value your good doctor colonists - but I can see YMMV on that point.
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Feb 23, 2024 12:32
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- A jargogle
- Feb 22, 2011
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If it's getting into mid/late game I always try to set up my warehouses/fridges so that no single fire can destroy everything of value. Sacrifice a bit of efficiency for redundancy
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Feb 24, 2024 01:47
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- A jargogle
- Feb 22, 2011
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and that sucks, yeah - but my attitude would be that this is exactly why doctors are valued. Without the diseases, you can get by easily with a single pawn on medical 4-5 and herbal meds. I must admit that mod mentioned above that gives more logical mechanics to disease transmission does sound tempting though. But I wouldn't want it to be possible to nullify it completely.
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Feb 24, 2024 14:06
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- A jargogle
- Feb 22, 2011
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Genuinely a little vexed by the timing as I just started a multiplayer game and that mod usually breaks for a couple of months after a release...
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Mar 11, 2024 18:47
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- A jargogle
- Feb 22, 2011
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Lobotomy world.
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Mar 13, 2024 19:38
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- A jargogle
- Feb 22, 2011
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I didn't realize when I did the archonexus quest that you permanently had a bad vibes monolith in the center of your map, that was kinda pants
It did have some unique places in a defense wall/killbox though!
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Apr 4, 2024 10:54
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May 1, 2024 16:16
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- A jargogle
- Feb 22, 2011
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My duplicate and the original person both developed "duplicate sickness" which the game said would be debilitating but not fatal. "Debilitating" means 10% consciousness for both pawns so long as both were alive. Farewell Pawn #2.
Just curious what would happen if you shoved one or other into a crypto sleep or took them off the map?
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Apr 17, 2024 23:26
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May 22, 2020 18:19
