how the hell do you stop the endless mechanoids?

[Lord Quinton]

just lost my base, been playing for about 7 years ingame. from about year 2 its been near nonstop mechanoid raids, if its not psychic ships then its hordes of them dropping out of the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sky. this last raid landed right on my doorstep in the middle of the night giving me no time whatsoever to respond before they were inside everything. and it didn't really matter, 9 centipedes with inferno cannons, 11 scythers, and a pair of lancers and pikemen is game over no matter what you do, especially when they practically start inside your base.

so i'm asking, what the actual ♥♥♥♥? i'm playing with pheobe chillax on strive to survive. this playthrough has been so far beyond retarded that i'm seriously considering just quitting the game altogether, it'd been awhile since i last played but mechanoids where never this constant a threat nor nearly impossible to kill.

before anyone says EMP, yes i hosed them down with EMPs and everything else but the kitchen sink. when a centipede can take nearly 1000 pts of damage and keep on flinging ♥♥♥♥ like its nothing, an EMP doesn't help, just slows down the inevitable.

is there any way to stop this ♥♥♥♥? this has probably been the most unfun playthrough i've ever had, not just absurd numbers of mechanoids but so many ridiculous rolls, i lost 11 colonists over the years to insanely improbably rolls (pawn has 150% armor on their head, enemy raider with 2 in shooting misses another pawn, ricochets, hits armored pawn in the head instantly killing them, with a poor bolt action rifle)

I know bad things happen, this is rimworld and all that, but a nonstop parade of everything ♥♥♥♥ and then to top it off after all my pawns are down and half of my base is on fire, the game sends me a man in black who will not do medical or firefight.

Tynan really should've just replaced the entire rimworld folder with an image file that says ♥♥♥♥ YOU, it would have felt more fitting.

and yes i'm ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ pissed. its one thing to lose a game because i screwed up and made a mistake, its another to have a random roll decide you dont get to play anymore.

[Vermillion Cardinal]

Someone else will probably come along with advice on melee pawns, building your base for internal defense, giving up sections of your base to buy time to properly organize a defense, or just plain abandoning your base while there's still time instead of trying to defend to the last man (which is usually a mistake unless you want to roleplay). Another will probably recommend Combat Extended.

On my part, I'll just say that you can either play at a lower difficulty, or disable the mechanoid faction altogether.

[glass zebra]

Charge rifles helps a a lot with their high dps + high armour penetration. This is especially noticeable against centipedes. Mechs require some other tactics than human raiders, but are not specifically harder. They have that special weakness against EMP, they do not take cover, and apart from the centipede they are very specialised and all have weaknesses you can exploit. This is also true for the centipedes, but they are still rather strong even if you e.g. melee them. They do use more raid points than the others though and mechs use more raid points than human raiders too, so you will have to fight less of them. The difference in movement speed also helps in splitting them into their types and exploiting their weaknesses.

There is really a lot to say about mechs if you ask more specific questions. Answers are usually along the lines of melee (except for scythers) and EMP. You could check out any of the threads about how to deal with mechs, but if you just don't like the mechs, you can also disable the faction on game start. Stating what weapons and armour you are currently using, how many melees and range you have, if you are using combat animals or psy or which mech causes you the biggest problem can help giving you a better answer.

Originally posted by Vermillion Cardinal:

Another will probably recommend Combat Extended.

Not when it's about mechs. An answer from combat extended fans for mechs is often "I disable them". They just oneshot everybody no matter the armour.

[ACS36]

It's dumb and one of the reasons I typically stop playing the game. The only thing you can really do to prevent it from happening is play on lower difficulties or disable them all together with custom options. Otherwise, as your colony grows all you're going to get is 90-95% mech raids.

OR just don't grow your colony. Minimize your wealth gain. But then are you really playing the game? There is a reason people end up relying on kill boxes and unrealistic strategies for higher difficulties.

There isn't much middle ground for difficulty in the game. It's either too easy, or you're overwhelmed by threats.

[Tam]

1. If you play outside of mountain, plan base for inner fights, i usually make square rooms with halls to figh inbetween, rooms rarely connected.
2. iam using vanilla expanded weapons, and this addon has some good heavy weapons against mechanoids particular, not very op, but noticably btter than default ones
3. mods with grenade belts, so you pawn has 5 grenades of particular type, also helps against mechanoids in close combat. Five grenades and the belt must be reloaded, don't find it unfair since i do not use killboxes or cheese mechanics

[Raelic]

Lower your wealth

[AmesNFire]

Originally posted by ACS36:

It's dumb and one of the reasons I typically stop playing the game. The only thing you can really do to prevent it from happening is play on lower difficulties or disable them all together with custom options. Otherwise, as your colony grows all you're going to get is 90-95% mech raids.

OR just don't grow your colony. Minimize your wealth gain. But then are you really playing the game? There is a reason people end up relying on kill boxes and unrealistic strategies for higher difficulties.

There isn't much middle ground for difficulty in the game. It's either too easy, or you're overwhelmed by threats.

The vanilla game is balanced around the normal difficulty, hence "normal".

If you're wanting more end-game type stuff while also being on a difficulty like Losing Is Fun then yes you'll have to utilize killboxes and other similar things to survive. That's normal for pretty much any game that I can think of, where the highest difficulties force changes in strategy due to the obvious bias towards punishing the player/benefiting the AI.

Also mechanoids are the only hostile faction that can't be destroyed, so if you've eliminated every other faction or allied them then your colony will only ever get mech raids.

[glass zebra]

The reason for people using killboxes or weird strategies is because they are easy to understand, copy paste and exploit and kill boxes basically automate battles and allow easy clean up. You do not have to use them losing is fun and can still get away with little to no wounds on end game raids, but just putting the pawns behind sand bags and waiting for the enemy to get into range, then lean back for 5 minutes will likely not end well. Mech raids bring strength and weaknesses. If you are treating them like flesh people in metal costumes, you will have a hard time, but the same would be true for manhunters or other non-pirate threats.

[Monty]

I blame the lessons that games have taught players. Mainly that there are only two end states, winning and losing. Either the player succeeds in a challenge or they are punished with a game over or a sub-optimal ending to the game.

Consider most boss fights, there is no option of retreat given in the overwhelming majority of games. Boss rooms are traps with doors that lock behind you or some other mechanism to prevent the player from leaving until someone is defeated. Even games that have an escape mechanic will disable it for "The Big Showdown".

Most players do not even consider fleeing a doomed colony in Rimworld because they have been taught that if they do not defeat the enemy they have failed, forcing them to play out fights to the death then get frustrated and vent on forums or quit the game completely. The player mentality of win or reload forced on us by game design.

Rimworld is inherently unfair towards the player not to punish them, but to give them a story to tell. OPs story is familiar to us all and we can relate in our own ways.

I had a colony that lasted less than a year, but is the most memorable i have ever played. Started with three pawns in a desert and doing the normal start up colony things when 5 raiders showed up. Two colonists were dropped and my doctor heavily injured. One colonist died from infection and the remaining starving. The doctor went out hunting with their shooting skill of 1. The other pawn expired due to malnutrition and their wounds which caused their bonded pet to go bezerk and downed the last pawn. That is when Derikus Blaze showed up, shot the sheep and got to the downed pawn just in time to watch them die. Derikus survived for some months against increasing numbers of raiders and was ultimately gunned down by the last raider from a 12 man squad.

There is a lot more to the story but this post is already too long. But that colony and Derikus in particular taught me that despite my mistake of not eating that sheep when i had the chance, i have a story to share. Derikus remains as my profile picture to remind me of what he stood for, not winning or losing but part of a story.

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by Monty:

Most players do not even consider fleeing a doomed colony in Rimworld because they have been taught that if they do not defeat the enemy they have failed, forcing them to play out fights to the death then get frustrated and vent on forums or quit the game completely. The player mentality of win or reload forced on us by game design.

Another factor of this is that minmaxing your defenses generally leaves you backed into a corner with little opportunity for retreat, because you want them to attack you from only a certain direction. So once they do attack you from that direction, how are you going to leave?

[Riepah]

Originally posted by gimmethegepgun:

Another factor of this is that minmaxing your defenses generally leaves you backed into a corner with little opportunity for retreat, because you want them to attack you from only a certain direction. So once they do attack you from that direction, how are you going to leave?

Add to that the fact that your pawns aren't exactly particularly efficient at fleeing fast, unless you send each of them as a single-person caravan without any items. Even then, they may try to go sleep or eat first, even if the enemy is already knocking on the door.

To make fleeing a more valid option, it would be nice if we could directly tell drafted colonists to exit the map at the edge point we send them to.

[Lord Quinton]

Originally posted by Monty:

i didn't get a chance to flee. yes my rooms/crafting/kitchen etc all came to a single entrance but i had 5 defensive positions in front of that, all of which i could leave the map from. the speed of the scythers meant by the time i got my pawns out of bed i was already bottled up. I would have been more than willing to flee except for the advancing wall of flame from the 9 inferno cannons. all my defenses were predicated on the idea that at least some of my pawns would be at one of the defensive points before the enemy got there. I never thought the game would drop an overwhelmingly massive enemy force literally at the entrance to my base. especially since i had just researched the hi-tech research bench, I started as a bunch of primitives so most of my guys were in plate armor using stolen/traded/looted rifles. the scythers werent really the problem, they just held me up long enough for the centipedes to block any escape.

Originally posted by glass zebra:

what is the best solution to centipedes and inferno cannons in particular? i've stunned a cent with EMP and had 8 pawns with melee over 10 beating on it with warhammers from the medieval times unofficial mod (30+ dmg and 40% armor pen) and the cent just sucked it up, reactivated, then slowly bashed every single one till down and kept on going. When i look at the HP of these things its absolutely ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ crazy. everything has 80+ hp. one of the rings had nearly 250 hp! what makes it worse is it seems like any of the body rings are equally likely to be struck on an attack, so instead of perhaps trying to drop it by doing 250 hp dmg, now you either have to hope for rng, which always favors the centipedes, or deal 1000+ damage to stop even one.

if the centipedes had no weapons and just slowly advanced until they bashed you to death with their tiny legs they would still be a massive threat due to the armor and hp, the charge blasters really arent that big a threat as decent armor and cover can mitigate it, but inferno cannons ignore all that.

pawns on fire overwhelmingly prefer to path towards the attacker that set them on fire rather than away from it or towards something that can put them out. I could understand animals doing this, or even a pawn when first encountering it, but after 7 years ingame and countless fights with these things, my guys should not all be vying for biggest idiot of the year, and yet here we are. at the same time there is no check for willpower or anything if a pawn catches on fire, they have no choice but to panic and start wandering around aimlessly not even trying to put themselves out, i had one decide the best solution was to go back to bed, WHILE ON FIRE.

Considering how much thought went into overall pathing and pawn mental states, it feels like fire was specifically designed to ♥♥♥♥ over anyone with well prepared defenses. since the game has been out for years i can't imagine that there hasn't been a ton of people asking for better rules regarding pawns on fire and so far nothing has happened so this must be intentional.

and of course mechanoids are immune to fire so they can just crawl right through their own inferno while continually blasting your own uncontrollabe pawns. i though i'd see a centipede die when it bashed a chemfuel stockpile and 10k exploded in its face but it didn't even get singed.

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by Lord Quinton:

what is the best solution to centipedes and inferno cannons in particular? i've stunned a cent with EMP and had 8 pawns with melee over 10 beating on it with warhammers from the medieval times unofficial mod (30+ dmg and 40% armor pen) and the cent just sucked it up, reactivated, then slowly bashed every single one till down and kept on going. When i look at the HP of these things its absolutely ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ crazy. everything has 80+ hp. one of the rings had nearly 250 hp! what makes it worse is it seems like any of the body rings are equally likely to be struck on an attack, so instead of perhaps trying to drop it by doing 250 hp dmg, now you either have to hope for rng, which always favors the centipedes, or deal 1000+ damage to stop even one.

Melee DPS (except monosword) really isn't that high. They can kill humans instantly because of the focused damage they deal, or deal a lot of overall damage to them to inflict pain shock quickly by having attacks hit multiple body parts, but centipedes just need massive amounts of damage to be dealt to them.
What you want to do is you want to limit their ability to shoot at you and use melee attacks simply to stop it from shooting, not to actually destroy it. To destroy it, use guns. Particularly ones that deal tons of damage, like miniguns and chain shotguns (remembering that their large body size means that the miniguns will hit them a lot more than usual), or have a lot of armor penetration, like charge rifles.

Even with the armor and the poor accuracy of the minigun, a Normal quality minigun still averages out to 9.47 DPS, which is a little higher than a Normal uranium warhammer, and higher quality increases the disparity because of the extra accuracy and the extra AP at Masterwork or Legendary being meaningful. Also, those missed shots can sometimes hit another enemy anyway. The key difference, however, is how many you can have shooting at it at once compared to the difficulty in using melees to attack it.

[Vermillion Cardinal]

Originally posted by glass zebra:

Originally posted by Vermillion Cardinal:

Another will probably recommend Combat Extended.

Not when it's about mechs. An answer from combat extended fans for mechs is often "I disable them". They just oneshot everybody no matter the armour.

My bad for omitting to say that that part was intended for the part where it was complained about ridiculous rolls. Only partly serious because it seems like almost everyone hates vanilla combat one way or the other and CE gets presented as the solution.

My curiosity at the moment is about OP's base layout, the terrain it was located on, and the initial positions of the two sides. If it was on one of those mountain maps with only one map exit, I can understand why just knocking down a wall and going another direction while doing a fighting retreat wasn't an option; otherwise, even 1-2 escaping would've been something of a minor victory. Of course, even in the best case scenario the question then becomes whether the escape caravan will be smart enough not to path into the assault instead.

[Lord Quinton]

Originally posted by Vermillion Cardinal:

Originally posted by glass zebra:

Not when it's about mechs. An answer from combat extended fans for mechs is often "I disable them". They just oneshot everybody no matter the armour.

My bad for omitting to say that that part was intended for the part where it was complained about ridiculous rolls. Only partly serious because it seems like almost everyone hates vanilla combat one way or the other and CE gets presented as the solution.

My curiosity at the moment is about OP's base layout, the terrain it was located on, and the initial positions of the two sides. If it was on one of those mountain maps with only one map exit, I can understand why just knocking down a wall and going another direction while doing a fighting retreat wasn't an option; otherwise, even 1-2 escaping would've been something of a minor victory. Of course, even in the best case scenario the question then becomes whether the escape caravan will be smart enough not to path into the assault instead.

my base was in a mountainous area, it had a river and a road running through it as well as a canyon and some caves, quite the combo. canyon and caves on the left half of the map, river started top left, ran to right center. i burrowed into the eastern wall of the canyon and through it to access the other half of the map, made my initial base there while i hollowed out the area on the west side for the longterm base. my defenses and fallback points were in the eastern canyon wall, kept my farm and animals in the canyon itself.

when the mechanoids hit they landed on the right half of the map, about 30 cells outside my main defensive barrier and were in the initial base i now used for guests (hospitality mod) by the time i had a few pawns at the exit to the base i currently used. I had assumed i could order guests and caravans to flee and then found out that i can't tell guests/caravans to leave without incurring a huge diplomatic penalty. the scythers went through the guests/caravan like they were so much wheat.

I'll admit at the start of the fight i couldve abandoned the base through a series of walls i had at the northern end that went to the river but i hadnt even started fighting yet. by the time the scythers were down the centipedes had pretty much covered the entire canyon in flames and i couldnt get out unless i went through them.

I'd show you a screenshot of it but i was playing around in development mode after everyone died and kind of screwed the whole thing up accidentally. somehow managed to create a caravan with only animals in it and abandoned the tile the base was on.

[Monty]

Originally posted by Lord Quinton:

i didn't get a chance to flee.

I was commenting more on the mindset we can fall into as gamers over what you could or could not do. Not saying retreat was your only option.

Sounds like you put up a spirited defence but 9 Centipedes is a difficult fight for just around anyone.

[Redacted] I don't play Pheobe as the long gap between major events can cause issues when you have not been focused on gear upgrades for your defenders.

Too bad the save got messed up. Auto saves are no good?

Edited to remove incorrect info.