Flying insects are so broken in insane difficulty

[Tuco]

You have nowhere to hide really, your whole crew is insta dead in a wave of flying insects. You literally need to literally only prepare for their attacks, others are fine to handle

[HAZ]

the only approach is to rush a mech core... build your first attack mech, and then barrage them when they spawn.

above a few hundred is tough to fend off.

There are strategies to shoot through windows and other covered buildings... but I've never had success doing so.

I've also noticed in Insane mode that they often spawn INSIDE your base... so you have no real recourse other than to die.

[Demolition Man]

Depending on rng they can be a royal pain even on hard, especially on trade scenario etc where getting mech cores are additional rng. IMO they should consider nerfing atleast their speed a bit because iirc they move like 10-15 tiles a second (correct me if wrong).

I like a challenge but eventually the whole build/layout is about not getting wrecked by fliers. Also they killed my Ulfen so I will never forgive!

[grrantu]

I just won my first Desertum Insane Crash landing Scenario today. My strategy for the flying bugs was to go out out and attack them as soon as they spawned with 2-4 rail sniper pawns at max range. You peel off small groups and pick them off. Just before the remaining swarm of them would go into attack mode I would retreat back to the guns. I used mostly machine gun turrets. I had about 6 turrets at each corner and addition 4 on 2 sides. I wouldn't run into my house initially, but would instead run along the outside of my inner wall. The fliers would try to get to me and as a result spread out all over the base. This allowed all 32 machine gun turrets to be working on them at the same time. As soon as my sniper team started taking damage I would run them into the base. Wait a few seconds, then run them back out to start firing again. If I got the drag right and spread them out over the whole base it would be over pretty quickly. With minimal damage. But it doesn't always go smoothly and some times they would pile up a bit on one side and it would take more damage. What ever you do though don't wait for the swarm to attack. If that happened huge swaths of guns would be destroyed. Swarm sizes were up to about 400 flies. There would be additional other things in the mob as well, but they were almost inconsequential. Large groups of Juno's could be an issue. But nothing else really got close. I wasn't able to find mech cores until after most of my colonists had been evacuated so I wasn't able to use those. My last colonist evacuated on year 6 day 22 I think.

[Smotus]

Best strategy for me is to have a few machine gun turrets spread across the base. The flying insects will fly around in circle over the base (if the colonists are inside). with 5 turrets i destroyed an entire group of 90 flying insects without drafting a single colonist weapon.
The flying bugs have a predefined behavior. If there are no colonists in plain sight, they will fly around the base and some of them will try to attack the defenses, like turrets. An advantage is that the flying insects have the lowest hitpoints from all the living creatures. with one burst a machine gun turret will kill 1-2 flying bugs.

[Demolition Man]

Originally posted by Smotus:

Best strategy for me is to have a few machine gun turrets spread across the base. The flying insects will fly around in circle over the base (if the colonists are inside). with 5 turrets i destroyed an entire group of 90 flying insects without drafting a single colonist weapon.
The flying bugs have a predefined behavior. If there are no colonists in plain sight, they will fly around the base and some of them will try to attack the defenses, like turrets. An advantage is that the flying insects have the lowest hitpoints from all the living creatures. with one burst a machine gun turret will kill 1-2 flying bugs.

The issue with that strategy - especially on harder difficulties - is that repair costs will be massive/unsustainable. Not to mention tames being massacred.

[Sch4bern4ck]

I need some advice for them too, i made it to year 3 on insane/chaos and now i face a wave of over 100 of them. I did run a flamethrower defence up until now. I have 3 machingun turrets and didn´t focus on combat gear for my guys at all. So i am doomed probably.
So what are the options against them ?
-Tower spam.
-Building Sirens to buy some time for the turrets, basically a hp boost against them.
-Building a house with windows to shoot out ( that didn´t work too well for me, shooting out wasn´t that reliable and they did destroy the roof, probably helps, but won´t solve the problem alone. ) Any good designs here ?
-Getting some good gear for your survivors and engage them before they attack to soften the wave.
Am i missing something ?

[Demolition Man]

Originally posted by Sch4bern4ck:

I need some advice for them too,...

If you're missing something its the heavy mech; it's by far the most effective tool. It's missile barrage will thin them out. It can be a pain to get depending on scenario/rng so start working towards it asap.

Other than that you seem to be doing what you can. I get the impression the waves are the "doomtimer" - by design; especially if you are on year 3+ on insane, you're not supposed to be there. With that in mind, the mech barrage is like getting godmode for atleast a few years.

I would prefer a middleroad option such as flak cannons or whatever but it is what it is :)

[jagged]

hid inside building with small windows open
with a survivor baiting the insects

not pretty but worked until better defences

[Demolition Man]

Originally posted by tiamats4esgares:

Mechs are not that great, you have to go chase them down before they fight you and it only does so much. It's bad in close combat once they start swarming you because it takes too long to aim to each new one after you kill one.

Eh, that is just not true; you must be using them wrong. The heavy mech has a missile barrage that is multitudes better than the missile turrets, is mobile, AND has longer range so you hardly even have to move. You can solo waves of hundreds with one - add more for humiliation.

There's a reason mech cores are late tech and the most rare scavenge-find.

[Demolition Man]

Well I just had 150 fliers spawn; took a mech and massacred them. Let some fly in to get meat delivered to my doorstep. Do with that info what you will :)

[Demolition Man]

Originally posted by tiamats4esgares:

See but you also said "took a mech and massacred them". Light mechs can do that too, as it only triggers a few to attack at once. They just aren't good when they're all attacking.

One missile barrage can kill 50 enemies plus wound just as many. The cooldown is such you can get in 3-4 barrages before actual attack. This is not news. There's a cheat mode so you can try this very easily. They are not just good, they are completely OP since once you get 1-2 you might as well deconstruct your other defenses. Hell, they don't even require power or fuel.

You do you, but I will call out someone spreading misinformation.

[bmnoble981]

Very early on before I get turrets I take my people into the forest to make a stand it forces to the flyers to come in low or waste time attacking the trees to get to your people, doesn't work as well if its a mixed wave with ground bugs, but it got me through the first few waves of 70 till I had some turrets built.

Gradually adding a hell of a lot of turrets to your base with plenty of metal stockpiled for repairs, keeping them where possible in range of one another so that they can cover the other turrets, with about 8 - 10 sirens to draw aggro off your turrets.

Use a double walled safe house, with one entrance using a double doorway for the bugs to attack from, keep your people about 7 tiles from the entrance right up against the back inner wall and let the turrets handle the bugs keeps injuries to a minimum.

In my insane trade run think I had 20 laser and 35 machine gun turrets, was getting waves of flyers up to 7 - 8 hundred, I was getting hit by an attack every 36 hrs or so, sometimes back to back flyer waves nearly wiped my metal stockpiles out at times.

Till I got the combat mechs in year 16, after that I switched to 6 combat mechs demolished every other defence put up a force field around my base, whenever the bugs spawned I went out and nuked them with missiles by getting rid of the turrets and other defences I got the wave numbers to drop to 3- 5 hundred.

Stopped the save bit after year 20 or so, performance was just getting bad whenever the bugs spawned in especially the pests, had the game go back to the equivalent of real time speed despite being set to triple speed and the waves had started to jump back up, from me building more stuff, hiring more people and stockpiling a lot more stuff.


Though that is only really viable on the trade or military scenario. Even with the trade it comes down to a lot of luck to get combat mechs same in crash landing but in trade you have a chance to make more, in crash landing you will be lucky if you can get more than 1 to work with.


Especially in insane crash landing your goal should be to get off the planet ASAP, if you want a make a permanent crash landing base the lower difficulties are your best bet.

With flyers it boils down to a battle of attrition, if your metal supplies run out and you can't fix your turrets your screwed. If you get combat mechs you can overcome that.

One thing to be aware of with the big flyer waves is keep your defence position away from your other buildings, noticed the flyers attacks bypassing roofs in rooms with no windows and had concrete roofs to damage my craft tables, submitted a save with it happening in a bug report.

[Demolition Man]

Originally posted by tiamats4esgares:

I'm spreading misinformation? LOL, chill, dude. Like I said, I never got heavy mechs, because THERE'S NO REASON TO GET THEM

You said "mechs arent that great" and "go with sirens", when
1) It is by far the best offense/defense in the game especially against crowds/birds which this topic is about. Plus it has virtually no upkeep, removes need for repairs; towerdefense; most energy needs; armor; human weapons; and even combat skill (mech requires 3).
2) You admit you havent even used the one mentioned.

That is misinformation. If someone wants to meta and just leave the planet asap there's alot of things not needed, another discussion.

[Demolition Man]

Originally posted by tiamats4esgares:

You never said heavy mechs initially.

Well then you need to go back and read it again. As I said, you do you, but some people came asking for advice and I have a pet peeve about getting wrong info when looking for it online myself. You take care.

[Sch4bern4ck]

I only had the small mech and it was awesome, it is a mobile machingun turret that gives your pilot protection. Jump is a super fun ability too, you can trick the ai with it. Performance against Flyers isn´t that outstanding and gets outperformed by a laser pistol probably, still it doesn´t suck.