Destroying every alien base

[Def]

Has anyone done this? Bases provide biomass which is converted into giants and such. If you destroyed every alien base could you theoretically starve the aliens to death?

[POPDOG3]

You can actually stop the aliens from producing giants pretty early on if you are able to kill the 2 starting giants before they spread infected area to too many bases, and nuke the bases inside the infected area, since only enemy base tiles inside an infected areas seem to be able to produce giants.
Its basically mandatory to do so too if you want to get the fully repaired city achievement without fighting 4 giants every day for at least 60 days straight.
The point i realized just how annoying it would be to get that achievement:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3259332985
The same amount of days after clearing the giants and infected hive squares:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3259333282
Once the aliens cant spawn any more giants you can clear every single alien base if you really want to take the time to do so.

[Def]

Originally posted by POPDOG3:

snip

Very informative post, thanks. I have a 100-day playthrough that is doomed to die. I'd make a final last stand but I don't really feel like it, so I'm on another playthrough utilizing everything I know about the game.

[Some goofi dummi]

Originally posted by POPDOG3:

You can actually stop the aliens from producing giants pretty early on.

tell me more about your methodology please, do you rush the giants down immediately? how do you deal with the lack of temp controls early on and lack of water tech? how do you deal with the buffed small guys having 13 armor on them and a lack of things to effectively clear them?

[POPDOG3]

Originally posted by Some goofi dummi:

Originally posted by POPDOG3:

You can actually stop the aliens from producing giants pretty early on.

tell me more about your methodology please, do you rush the giants down immediately? how do you deal with the lack of temp controls early on and lack of water tech? how do you deal with the buffed small guys having 13 armor on them and a lack of things to effectively clear them?

Short answer: you dont do anything in water so early that water tech is an issue and ideally never enter infected territory anyways so you dont face the buffed ver of small guys, external resist is better than internal on starting reactor.
Build order production district 2x immediately and make components, then research district and its prerequisite districts max then production district + prerequisites max, research nuke+ whatever else want when research district done, then play minesweeper with infected territory bases and hunt down giants.

Long answer:
The best starting locations are in range of a city with a land path to get to more citys quickly 17,6(horizontal coordinate/vertical coordinate counted from top left zero square) has access to 4 quick citys for a fast start but the infected zone will be in a bad location a lot, or 27,11 for a higher chance of a good infected zone spawn, ideally the infected zone would be in the ocean to the south-west of the location so you can go around to the other side of it without needing to touch water tiles at all.
Start by editing all the starting mech reactors to be external resist instead of internal resist, rip out their self destruct and melee, replace the rockets with shotgun machinegun (max firerate 3 in damage 2 in accuracy and multi shot mod) for the 2 hybrid mech and refit the rocket one with rockets that have no mod but have their accuracy stat at 1 and damage stat just high enough to reach 12 armor pen and rest in weight reduction, remove 1 armor plate to make it even with the rest of the mechs and add red wires to motors and it will fit (will cost 16 engineers each in total for the mechs that had a machinegun+rocket and 24 engineers on the one that has 2 rockets) and create 1 extra mech with 2 of the previous shotgun machinegun, 1 armor plate and max out the red wires on motors and you will hit 184/184 weight(should cost 112 engineers to make) then upgrade city district 56 twice, and produce components immediately with the leftover engineers there should be exactly 2 engineers left over once you are done, also set the research to unlock cannons but save the other scientists for next turn.
There are 2 pilots in the starting roster that can immediately get a perk have one take reactor cooldown perk and put it in the missile mech and other reload leadership.
On turn 2 create another dual shotgun mech with the engineers that will refresh and take the city (if its got weak basic enemys just take the 2 shotgunner mechs and use the rest to advance in another easy square towards another city, if its not just basic enemys bring as many as you feel necessary or just bring everyone, worst case would be bullet enemys that you will need to assist the squad with artillery to safely take down) with the extra 20 scientists you can start reinforced frame research.
On turn 3 start the needle bullets research and make a duplicate of the double rocket mech, replace the machinegun that has the default penetration mod of one of your starting mechs with the free cannon set its accuracy to 5,attack rate 2, fill weight with rest of points and toss penetration mod on it, it will fit in with the same 9 weight the machinegun had, make another cannon and do the same with the other mech when you have the spare engineers this will give you 2 well rounded groups of 3 for the early game with a rocket mech to kill loot worms, good crowd controll from the shotguns, and a decent long range weapon that pierces in a line that you can combine together into a team of 6 for harder missions when needed.

Start clearing towards citys to gain the extra rewards those give(easy tiles with only the basic enemys can be cleared with 2-3 mechs each, engineers+scientists are the big rewards they give but they can also give other useful stuff like motors.
The 4 colored areas are also worth aiming for if they are close enough some of them are pretty tough to clear early on but the rewards can really boost you ahead especially the crater and reactor rewards because they give reactors which take way too much production to build quickly.
Once the first batch of components is done upgrade the prerequisite districts necessary to rush max out district 12 (you can see what a district requires by selecting it and the prerequisite will be flashing yellow at the end of the blue line select that and repeat till you reach the final prerequisite district) you will be able to finish district 12 by day 8 (7 days since turning on) try to get railguns and heatsinks done before then if possible with the amount of citys near you but make sure that you dont start any researches that pass that day since you will want to have as many scientists as possible on hand when it is complete as possible to start researching all the important stuff, specifically start the research for the best reactor, nukes, processor, and electric engine 3 immediately (total cost 150 scientists) with any extra start going for the max combustion engine and max level cabins then repair drones, nuclear reactor, and cyborgs. unlocking the castle and plate mech to fill your final 2 squad slots can wait untill your closer to having a reactor and motor +weapons to put in them.

Keep making enough components to keep upgrading a district every turn and work on maxing district 56 after district 12 (production time is absolutely the most important thing besides research) Once the nuke research is done you will want to be producing 2 nukes per week (the amount you are given in firing charges each weekdisplayed as the number on right side of nuke ui) which will eat up 4 days of production on an entire row with your other row you should make the 75 protection cabins for all your mechs (pilots are the main weakpoint of mechs and repair drones wont be able to fix them up like they can the hull so getting those cabins will help a lot against bullet enemys) and make a few of the max level combustion engines they are good for putting in the non castle mechs which dont need insane weight capacity at most they might end up using 1 electric motor depending on what you choose to load them up with for your final build. Always have the production full with stuff you will need later or components to keep up and work towards fielding your full team of 8 with the free castle and plate from researches+the starting mechs.
The build i like to use for my castle is 2 railguns,2 or 4 shotgun machineguns, and the rest of the slots as cannons but thats just what i do choose whatever you want to outfit it with.
If you are able to clear crater mission you will be able to deploy the castle much sooner because it contains the best reactor as a reward but otherwise you may have to wait till the research is done at day 28(27 since turning on) if you started it on time (or make due with a nuclear reactor).

For the more general strategy of how to actually manage to stop the production of enemy giants after getting your initial team up you will want to have at least some territorys on the edge of the infected zone cleared to get information on where to nuke by the time you finish the nuke research, ideally you would want to immediately nuke the starting red sword boss when the research is done, you nuke where its going to be next turn not the icon (have to guess which tile its going to go to its not a particularly reliable way to kill one but if its too far away to intercept it might be the only way to get rid of it quickly), so you only have to fight 1 yellow sword boss but if your luck is bad it may have allready been eaten by yellow sword boss and turned into a second one. If you manually engage the red sword boss make sure to fill active armor up and maybe have some c-ram to defend against its missiles.
With every other nuke you produce you will want to nuke a base inside in infected territory (you will want to minesweeper it with information from the edges rather than trying to actually enter the infected area, and work towards the inner bases with the information you will get from each nuke)measure twice nuke once the less you miss the better since you only get 2 more charges to fire nukes each week even if you produced more than that.
The time you wana start heading towards the yellow sword boss to kill it is around when your completing your 8th mech and you will want to have 2 of your pilots with the repair drone perk in mechs with around 5 repair drones them to keep the team repaired and your leader will want to have the repair drone faster team repair perk (if you can somehow have the third leader perk for movespeed up even better) along with every mech having 75% protect cabins (also whatever armor you can slap on them without producing though when you do start wanting to produce armor make sure you max district 11 before so you get the most possible plates per production) and a decent amount of firepower in the team from cannons/railguns/large missiles(dangerous option)/decent crowd controll from shotgun machineguns (for the spawned enemys), and the movespeed chip option toggled on all mechs along with whatever you want for other chip options.

The worm will spawn tons of enemys if your mechs get too close to it so ideally you want to keep distance and manually target the head (only spot it takes any decent amount of damage), also try to avoid letting it wrap its self around your mechs they are unlikely to all survive if that happens even with repairs.
If any more giants spawn before your able to nuke every base inside the infected territory lure them out of the infected territory before engaging them.
With a bit of luck you should be able to clean up the giants and infected bases before they become a problem.

[Some goofi dummi]

Originally posted by POPDOG3:

Long answer:
The best starting locations are

thank you for posting this, its really good information, you should make it as a steam guide or something for doing full clear runs.

I started a run with the idea of rushing the bosses down bit before i saw this and its going fairly well, both a red and yellow sword guy from start are both downed on day 13 and the infection has not spread that much beyond its initial borders, i'm on researching nukes currently, i did'nt think to upgrade the research to max that out to get them earlier though as you suggested, hopefully i'll be fine. I did spawn in middle of europe next to the two close cities and cleared both of them on the first day using solo mechs on the city defense and to do the clear for early scientists boost.

hopefully i can get enough of the bases nuked before day 30 something when it starts to churn them out from infected tiles


do you know how long it takes a non infected base to create a giant? i know infected ones are around day 39 typically, I don't know about non infected due to the map always being covered by then lol


I did have to kill the centipede and crab with only coffinmechs, one plate, and like 5 units of the 120mm cannon lol it was horrible.


almost all the infected terrain i got is in the north Atlantic and a bit of the coast around there, I plan to try scouting some the bases that where in the epicenter that had infection the longest and get those as fast as i can

hopefully it goes ok lol

[POPDOG3]

Originally posted by Some goofi dummi:

I did spawn in middle of europe next to the two close cities and cleared both of them on the first day using solo mechs on the city defense and to do the clear for early scientists boost.

hopefully i can get enough of the bases nuked before day 30 something when it starts to churn them out from infected tiles


do you know how long it takes a non infected base to create a giant? i know infected ones are around day 39 typically, I don't know about non infected due to the map always being covered by then lol

I didint even think of clearing the first defence with just 1 mech to get stuff done turn 1 thats a great idea.

The non infected bases never spawn giants from what i can tell (tried passing 100 turns after clearing infected bases out and never saw one spawn from them) only the ones inside infected territory do, once you get the infected territory spread stopped and kill the bases inside it you have won since no more giants can spawn to spread infected territory.

[Some goofi dummi]

yeah i always do first defense with a single mech typically with the high pen mod on two gatlings, you can usually get away with only one arty strike as long as the pilot has high cbs

I've almost cleared out the infected zones bases as of turn 23 I think, its going fairly well, I'm going for a map clear lol

[Some goofi dummi]

DAY 29, progress on trying to do a full clean earth run, so far so good, most the original infected area is cleansed out. just need get the north area the red sword traveled to but i'd guess itd take longer for that spot to pop off compared to the turn 1 bases

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3260803166

[POPDOG3]

Finally done clearing the entire map.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3265392761
Guess its time to nuke the city.

[Def]

Damn that's crazy

[Some goofi dummi]

base

[Lantantan]

Impressive!

[Virsia]

so how to fight the stupid red arrow spider quickly is there any way to force attack it. I can kill one but the fight take 30 mins due to my heavy hitter mech always try to waste shot on small fry.

it's frustratingly long because of this plase help

[POPDOG3]

Originally posted by Virsia:

so how to fight the stupid red arrow spider quickly is there any way to force attack it. I can kill one but the fight take 30 mins due to my heavy hitter mech always try to waste shot on small fry.

it's frustratingly long because of this plase help

Pressing the middle mouse button can force your selected mechs to focus fire on the target your mouse cursor is hovering over for a short time.