Tactics for fighting those freaking ancient robots?

[ISUX]

I love this game, but hate having to deal with them. Somehow explosives do not work but I can hit it with a hammer and kill it.

What tactics do you employ to deal with them in vanilla.

I have all the expansions as well.

[Half Phased]

EMP. Stops them right in their tracks for a short while, so you can get a bunch for free hits.

Alternatively, there’s a few mechanoids that do not appreciate being caught in melee, like the lancer, pikeman, militor to name a few. A pawn with a shield belt and zeushammer will be a big thorn in such mechanoids side. Just be careful about going up against a scythe rat or centipede. Or the big bosses.

Otherwise, high AP weapons are good, so the charge rifle is a good pick. And as a bit of irony, I do find the mini gun to be somewhat effective, despite its low AP, as it fires so many shots that it can roll lucky. Sniper rifles can be good, particularly if you want to try and kite a centipede to death.

[Astasia]

Really they are just normal enemies and there's not anything that makes them more difficult than human enemies except that they don't retreat at ~50% losses. Most of them have a small amount of built in armor, but it's about equivalent to the clothing many raiders spawn with. Centipedes are the only one with any noticeable armor and it's less than what is provided by a normal quality flak vest, and equivalent to around a 20-30% damage reduction for most weapons, less for anything with decent AP. Their lack of fleeing certainly makes them a bit tougher, but they are also valued at much high combat points to balance it so you get fewer of them per raid, and they also refuse to use cover making them a lot easier to take down at range. Centipedes seem tough, but they are worth the same combat points as like 10 tribals and generally easier to kill than that. Overall they normally shouldn't require any special strategy to deal with, just take cover and shoot at them as usual, and make sure your melee if any has decent armor if they are trying to tank scythers.

Other than that if you need an extra edge, lancers and pikemen are terrible in melee and can be bonked pretty easily with any melee weapon, even a stone club, hide behind a corner and ambush them in melee and you can take them out with a few bruises if any. Centipedes are a bit more dangerous in melee but it's still usually safer to engage them in melee to disable their ranged attacks. Miniguns are also good against centipedes, because they are large targets which double the accuracy of ranged attacks made against them, miniguns usually having terrible accuracy get boosted a ton by that fact, same deal with heavy SMGs as a cheaper option.

If you really hate them and just don't want to fight them, you can disable their faction on world creation.

[Raymond]

man, all these fancy tactic to fight vanilla mechanoid lol. All you need is a good killbox to kill the lancer and scyther, and one fast pawn with a sniper rifle to kite the centipede. Back in the day people play losing is fun solely to farm these guys for resources.

[Vagineer1]

Mechanoids act all gangster until they get hit by a torrent of EMP grenades followed up by a barrage of high explosive missiles. They're only really a truly major threat in the combat extended mod and even then that only stays true until you get some good armor penetrating rounds and again, EMP devices.

Not that I use CE that much, not a fan of some of it's content. I just want a mod that adds ammo to the game and not much else

[fatburner]

Get a firing squad, with survival rifle if you play vanilla, marksman rifle if you have vanilla weapons expanded. it has enough range to shoot centipedes without them hitting you and it shoots fast enough so you can shoot, move, shoot, move. you need a firing squad of like 4-5+ pawns to down them before they get hungry and mental break. But yea use ranged weapons and stay outside their range, shoot, move back a bit, shoot, move back a bit. Until they are all dead. If you select the centipede or any enemy with a weapon for that matter and hover over the weapon icon at the bottom, you can see their range

I built my base in the middle of the map so i can just kite around it. And i have a decent amount of bears if any mechanoids decide to drop pod on the base because they can really inflict some pain in that case. But emp would be really good in this case too.

[Veylox]

The mechs ? EMP and melee

You're probably gonna lose ranged fights against most of them, and scythers will chop you up when close, so deal with the scythers however you can and melee the rest, they deal next to no damage.

Once they're caught by someone throwing EMPs they're stunlocked for a while, so you can also have someone EMP them and the rest raining down with ranged weapons

[darion-neclador]

Firefoam Poppacks are also a big help and cheap too.

[gigamelon1981]

Which scenario is this?
1. You're defending from them, they coming fast to your base.
2. They camp outside your perimeter complete with a wall and turrets.
3. You're attacking them since they have a settlement near to yours, using a device affecting your settlement.

1. Killbox and EMP grenade. Singularity killbox especially.
2. No.1 and you'll need mortar to engage them from safety.
3. Bring mortar to your caravan if you can, be ready to set up some form of barricade, or you can use tree or chunk as cover. It is not the best tho.

Not related to the scenario :
4. Build your own Mechanoid. Eventually you'll be toe to toe with them.
5. Use a mod. There are OP mods out there, practically you can make a pawn that can handle let's say a Queen or Diabolus all by him/herself. Or an OP defense system. Table turned, they're the prey now. You clearly said playing vanilla but having all the DLC isn't vanilla enough to me, so why not set the bar higher.
Play the game with DLC disabled and without mod, it is vanilla. No mechanoid, cataphract, or psy to help you out. Actually it is the Centipedes you should really care about, and they've been there at the base game. Depends on difficulty and your settlement worth, they can arrive in number, unlike new mechanoid bosses from Biotech.
6. Play around IED to set a collapsing roof or mountain. Build a pillar beneath a natural or artificial roof, then build an IED next to it.

[Laurie]

Pity you dont use CE. Of all weapons in the game, mechanoids are most vulnerable to HEAT weapons.

[Hykal]

CE sucks.

[The Seraph of Tomorrow]

Vanilla? What kind of masochist are you to want to play the base game without mods?

[Re𝕯isia]

Originally posted by Hykal:

CE sucks.

Behold the most best explained opinion in the world

[Security Cam #7]

Originally posted by Hykal:

CE sucks.

Agreed

[Raymond]

Originally posted by Laurie:

Pity you dont use CE. Of all weapons in the game, mechanoids are most vulnerable to HEAT weapons.

shhhh, don't mention CE here. These vanilla mobs won't survive a single mech raid in CE. They barely struggle with the vanilla mech with their killboxes as it is.

[DasaKamov]

Originally posted by Re𝕯isia:

Behold the most best explained opinion in the world

Second only to the extremely vague statement of "Just use CE, ho ho ho".