Killing Spiders?

[Cellar_Cat]

So on my second attempt at playing this game, one of my early miners opened some sort of building/cave thing with pods in it and megaspiders, with hives that keep multiplying and creating more spiders (and various miscellania).

I set up a zone around them, inverted it, and just told everyone not to go there. But the problem now is that they magically know where my base is, and every time anything happens to them, literally anything, they just come and annihilate it. Even if a lightning strike starts a fire that hurts them they immediately run to my base from the far side of the map.

When I look for advice on killing these it assumes I've built inside a mountain and have them contained initially, and can try to burn or freeze them all, but these are just running free on the surface. I'm slowly converting my base to stone but I don't have that much of it.

So at this point I'm looking further up the tech tree and wondering a) at what point do I deal enough damage to kill these before they tear through everything, and b) is it even worth trying or should I just move one tile over in the world and start again, hoping not to find any more until I have something better than bolt action rifles?

Would turrets and thick stone walls do it, or are turrets not that strong? I considered building a mortar inside a block of stone and lobbing shells at the nests to at least slow their reproduction but I haven't researched mortars yet so whether that would even do anything I've no idea.

[MortVent]

One trick is moltovs and wooden supports on the mountain... toss in fire and let the supports burn away dropping the ceiling on them. You do lose a lot of stuff from them

[Klokinator]

Use a shoe.

[Cellar_Cat]

Originally posted by MortVent:

One trick is moltovs and wooden supports on the mountain... toss in fire and let the supports burn away dropping the ceiling on them. You do lose a lot of stuff from them

It was just a small room though, not a mountain. They roam through all of it now and have already caved it in with random digging. It's like... when you start in totally flat land, and get a small hill. That's about the size of what they appeared in.

At this point I think I just have to fight them on the surface somehow.

[Terripan]

If you're going to use mortars, make several, since they take 30 seconds IRL to load and are pretty inaccurate. I would say make at least 3, though 6 would be preferred. Mortars do cost 150 steel and 3 components per mortar, and each shell costs 20 steel and 10 chemfuel. However, the ancient dangers are almost always partly under a mountain, and shells can't go through mountains.

[Cellar_Cat]

Originally posted by Terripan:

If you're going to use mortars, make several, since they take 30 seconds IRL to load and are pretty inaccurate. I would say make at least 3, though 6 would be preferred. Mortars do cost 150 steel and 3 components per mortar, and each shell costs 20 steel and 10 chemfuel. However, the ancient dangers are almost always partly under a mountain, and shells can't go through mountains.

Fortunately they took it on themselves to destroy most of the small roof they spawned under, so I think I can probably hit many of the nests now. Maybe I'll wait until I have turrets as well and see if some combination of those and mortars will deal enough damage to them, but they do seem very durable.

[Mr.M]

Usually (if not always) the game will warn you about those areas by giving a message.

The rooms are usually also completely walled off

[Myslee]

also another tip for the future, If it is in one of the walled off rooms ( made out of anything) you can open it, close it again and then start throwing molitovs onto the walls. This makes superheted air inside and they will most likely die. Be carful though, because when you start your attack they will start to destroy walls. at that point just have some pawns repairing the walls so they dont break.

[Cellar_Cat]

Originally posted by MrMonokel2000:

Usually (if not always) the game will warn you about those areas by giving a message.

The rooms are usually also completely walled off

I think it did but I wasn't expecting it because it just looked like a hill at first glance, and after those things started wandering around I couldn't get close enough to seal it again.

But new information! If something upsets them at night, they only run half way to the base before falling asleep, and in the morning they forget why they were out there and go home. I'm thinking some kind of night assault might be best, and if it doesn't work they'll give up before getting revenge.

[Cellar_Cat]

Okay, no, I guess it's just not possible. First cold snap killed the nests and sent all the bugs wandering around the map, so they invariably end up attacking. I'll just get them to make a caravan and abandon that zone to be scorched off the map or whatever that does.

[Wolfguarde]

Originally posted by Cellar_Cat:

I set up a zone around them, inverted it, and just told everyone not to go there. But the problem now is that they magically know where my base is, and every time anything happens to them, literally anything, they just come and annihilate it. Even if a lightning strike starts a fire that hurts them they immediately run to my base from the far side of the map.

Basically the Third World's relationship with America.

Anyhow, to answer the question. Part of my solution is IEDs, part of it's a killbox, and part of it is having someone on hand outside of said measures to take advantage of the absence of insects in the nest. You want to build walls around your base (it doesn't matter what they're made of initially) with an opening on the side the insects are on. Make this opening 1 block wide, make a tunnel about 50 blocks long - doesn't matter if it twists and turns, you just need it to have enough distance to take a while to get through. If you're on the surface, an optional step is to plant something fast-growing in your makeshift tunnel that you can set on fire, but ideally you won't be letting the insects get close enough to set one on fire. At the base-side of the tunnel, you want a 10 block long, preferably around 3 block wide corridor. Make it as wide as you need to in order to fit all of your gunners into it. If you have a melee with a set of power armour handy, you can also put a door in the side of your killbox and have them sit outside it in wait. You also want a 3x1 corridor next to the base-side exit of your tunnel leading out of the base, with a door at each end, for your nest breaker to hide in. Ideally, your nest breaker will have tovs, a melee weapon, or something hard-hitting to destroy the nests as quickly as possible.

At the insect side of the tunnel, you want to place down a decent number of IEDs along the route your insects generally take to get into the tunnel, along with the inside of the tunnel itself (just not too close to your base walls). Explosives and fire will both be useful to you; creating a screen of fire across their run path will damage a good number of them quite a bit, while the explosive ones thin their numbers considerably as they move through the tunnel. After you aggro the insects (or something else does), get your gunners set up, along with your nest destroyer, and wait for them to enter the tunnel. Once the nest is empty and there's enough distance to give your nest breaker a good lead, send him in to start breaking hives. The IEDs and the length of the tunnel should work to spread the insects out enough to deal with them once they enter the killbox. Breaking the hives will destroy their ability to respawn.

It's been a while since I've had to do this in vanilla. I usually dive on them early when they appear, knowing they can be a royal pain in the ass to root out later - especially without mods. Generally, any issue with superior fighters/shooters can be resolved with enough traps and general preparation to funnel them into a small space, split them up, and subject them to a lot of firepower. There's probably easier ways to do it, but this is the best solution I can think of without the use of heat or cold.

[Cellar_Cat]

Originally posted by Wolfguarde:

Originally posted by Cellar_Cat:

I set up a zone around them, inverted it, and just told everyone not to go there. But the problem now is that they magically know where my base is, and every time anything happens to them, literally anything, they just come and annihilate it. Even if a lightning strike starts a fire that hurts them they immediately run to my base from the far side of the map.

Basically the Third World's relationship with America.

Anyhow, to answer the question. Part of my solution is IEDs, part of it's a killbox, and part of it is having someone on hand outside of said measures to take advantage of the absence of insects in the nest. You want to build walls around your base (it doesn't matter what they're made of initially) with an opening on the side the insects are on. Make this opening 1 block wide, make a tunnel about 50 blocks long - doesn't matter if it twists and turns, you just need it to have enough distance to take a while to get through. If you're on the surface, an optional step is to plant something fast-growing in your makeshift tunnel that you can set on fire, but ideally you won't be letting the insects get close enough to set one on fire. At the base-side of the tunnel, you want a 10 block long, preferably around 3 block wide corridor. Make it as wide as you need to in order to fit all of your gunners into it. If you have a melee with a set of power armour handy, you can also put a door in the side of your killbox and have them sit outside it in wait. You also want a 3x1 corridor next to the base-side exit of your tunnel leading out of the base, with a door at each end, for your nest breaker to hide in. Ideally, your nest breaker will have tovs, a melee weapon, or something hard-hitting to destroy the nests as quickly as possible.

At the insect side of the tunnel, you want to place down a decent number of IEDs along the route your insects generally take to get into the tunnel, along with the inside of the tunnel itself (just not too close to your base walls). Explosives and fire will both be useful to you; creating a screen of fire across their run path will damage a good number of them quite a bit, while the explosive ones thin their numbers considerably as they move through the tunnel. After you aggro the insects (or something else does), get your gunners set up, along with your nest destroyer, and wait for them to enter the tunnel. Once the nest is empty and there's enough distance to give your nest breaker a good lead, send him in to start breaking hives. The IEDs and the length of the tunnel should work to spread the insects out enough to deal with them once they enter the killbox. Breaking the hives will destroy their ability to respawn.

It's been a while since I've had to do this in vanilla. I usually dive on them early when they appear, knowing they can be a royal pain in the ass to root out later - especially without mods. Generally, any issue with superior fighters/shooters can be resolved with enough traps and general preparation to funnel them into a small space, split them up, and subject them to a lot of firepower. There's probably easier ways to do it, but this is the best solution I can think of without the use of heat or cold.

I'll keep it in mind... hadn't the tech yet to try it before, was hoping to get there before they occupied the whole map but then their nests froze and they spread out all over the place.

On the plus side, I moved my colony a single tile to the right and there are none here. I opened this map's sealed room to check but it's just pods that I'll probably open with someone I don't like much, and slaughter the contents with turrets.