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At first, you suggest that the armor mechanics in the game render threats insignificant. However, you then mention that it's common for players to utilize mods to disable centipedes, particularly because they possess the armor you previously regarded as advantageous. So, which perspective is accurate? Is CE considered easy because players disable its content and only face native threats while also claiming that natives are too easy to handle?
You also contend that mechanoids are merely a 'gear check.' How is this any different from the vanilla experience? Are you implying that the progression of combat in vanilla is so poorly designed that it scarcely matters whether you're wielding power swords or clubs against the game's most formidable adversaries? Alternatively, are you suggesting that the highest threat in vanilla, which is also mechanoids, is essentially 'just a gear check' since they become more manageable with better, higher-tier gear?
In CE, you can indeed deal with centipedes even if you lack the means to pierce their armor. Molotov cocktails are affordable and easy to produce, and flamethrowers aren't overly advanced. However, you'll need to get dangerously close to units capable of wiping out your entire squad from across the map with a single shot or burst. You'll also need to fire these weapons at very short range before they can aim and fire back; otherwise, it's a death sentence. If you believe this approach requires no tactics, then you might not be considering the full picture. EMP weapons are also an option, but most of them have similar ranges to conventional firearms.
By late game, it's worth noting that centipedes are not as insurmountable as they may seem, and regular power armor can can have over ~50% of their armor value. Are you perhaps just echoing the popular notion of 'OP centipede tanks'? Keep in mind that in CE, having more armor doesn't merely result in damage reduction but also renders a wide range of weapons ineffective.
In Vanilla the 'Tough' trait, which largely nullifies threats. However, CE employs different damage models, and 'Tough' doesn't provide significant benefits in most situations. A shot from a pistol will still penetrate skin, bones, and likely hit vital organs, downing a character regardless of their 'Tough' trait. Bleeding can prove fatal within two hours, irrespective of 'Tough.'
Regarding your point about embrasures, it appears you might not fully grasp how the mod works. An embrasure is functionally similar to a regular sandbag, and since it doesn't provide a magical dodge percentage as in vanilla RimWorld combat, it seldom offers significant advantages. When facing highly skilled enemies like Lancer mechs, who are near-perfect marksmen, staying behind an embrasure and attempting to trade shots can lead to disaster, potentially resulting in traumatic brain injuries even if pawns wear helmets. Making a fireline and trading shots works in vanilla, but it's NOT A viable strategy in CE, not without HMG nests spread out through the map accross a huge wall with multipla layers of defense, add some mounted cannons and mortars too.
Additionally, you seem to be unaware that enemies cannot shoot through each other. In CE, tactics such as using jump packs to land behind enemies and keeping an enemy between you and those attempting to shoot you down can be effective strategies. In vanilla, you'd often get hit regardless, as there's no friendly fire consideration, while in CE, friendly fire is a real concern.
When I mentioned flanking in CE and the ability to decimate a raid with a strategically positioned automatic shotgunner in a chokepoint, I wasn't referring to merely having a higher hit chance as in vanilla combat. I meant the creation of storm of shrapnel flying through the air, striking dozens of targets simultaneously and incapacitating individuals more swiftly than vanilla rocket launchers could. This isn't because shotguns are overpowered, far from it. It's because the level of tactical positioning in CE is on an entirely different plane compared to the vanilla experience. In fact, a mounted LMG with a bipod, while less mobile, could achieve similar results.
Honestly, your criticism of a mod that significantly enriches vanilla combat with features like ballistics, height, armor-piercing, and loadouts doesn't appears to come from a place of knowledge, perhaps you should try the mod, at least once.
The core game scaling is about numbers. In vanilla you can handle an enemy like a lone centipede fairly early with minimal gear. As your gear gradually gets better the fight becomes safer and you are capable of handling more enemies at once, which the game will gladly throw at you because that's how it raises difficulty, more enemies. In CE you either struggle to deal with a single enemy, or you are easily capable of dealing with a large number of them, with very little middle ground. It applies a concept to combat that could work in a game designed to use it from the ground up, but is fundamentally flawed in a game like RimWorld. Again, turning combat into what is effectively a boolean gear check.
No it's really not at all similar to a sandbag. The main point of an embrasure is it allows your colonists to shoot through it without allowing enemies to walk through it. The cover value is more or less insignificant. This seems like a pretty extreme detail to try to gloss over. Fundamentally CE does not change cover, it just changes where you get damaged while in cover, if you are behind an embrasure your chance to be hit is significantly reduced and when you do get hit it will be a headshot, but CE helmets make that not an issue. You can combine walls and embrasures for better cover. In either case, having "sandbags" that enemies can't climb over completely trivializes many threats.
You seem to be unaware that friendly fire is a vanilla mechanic and those strategies work just as well without CE. It doesn't stop the enemy from shooting, but it makes the enemy often shoot their allies. Mechanically there is not a strategic difference here, it's just CE once again making a situation "more safe" for your colonists.
I wasn't talking about just having a "higher hit chance." Flanking and suppressing enemies in vanilla tends to scatter, confuse and distract them. They stop focusing fire in one direction, stop shooting while repositioning, many leave cover and get shredded from the front or back, it's not about abusing a clearly overpowered weapon to nuke a raid from the back, it's about actual strategic positioning and enemy control. Forcing an enemy out of cover or distracting them are basic intuitive strategies, implementing positional weapons that backstab groups of enemies for stupid damage is extremely gamey and unimmersive. Both systems may encourage this level of positioning, but CE is not adding anything of value here and tries to force the situation instead of keeping it natural.
Generators do not have a weight because they can't be uninstalled, check your mods. Adult cows weigh 144kg. Just because cows and elephants are small in RimWorld doesn't mean a 180kg robot would require anti-tank weaponry to take down. It is effectively a RimWorld cow with a turret strapped to the back, with less armor than a flak vest.
Interesting, earlier, you said, "Most people claim they use CE because it's less RNG, but it's really not, and it's usually that they just don't give vanilla combat enough of a try or don't understand all the mechanics."
Now you're saying it's a boolean gear check, so it's yet another contradictory statement.
You're right, sort of. A bunny will never kill a human, and a human will never punch a centipede to death. In a way, there is a boolean stat check in the sense that if you're dropped naked on top of mechanoids, you're most certainly dead. This means your statement contradicts your previous statement that CE also relies on RNG, this was specifically their point. As the previous poster was saying, it almost removes RNG from the game. Meaning, as you said, if all you have are low-caliber automatic rifles, you just cannot pierce a mechanoid's (and several other mechs, depending on available ammo) armors. That being said, the "boolean stat check" is not, as you're saying, a gear check; it's a preparation check. You may not be able to deal with them with pistols and clubs, but there are weapons of equal tech level capable of handling them. If you did not prepare accordingly, that's your fault.
Then again, it goes to show how it makes the game harder in some ways, as you're saying.
As for friendly fire, you do know that I know very well it exists, and you do know it's mostly irrelevant unless you're really screwing up with low aim, high burst weapons, and you're abusing it to an extreme degree. So we are not talking about the same thing here. But it is indeed odd that you'd claim this is "another way CE makes you safer" when the general consensus, in this thread included, seems to be that CE "makes melee useless" by people who don't know how to use it or won't want to risk doing what I just said. Of course, you do know the strategy I mentioned requires perfect coordination, and missing a leap or going in when you shouldn't for even half a second means your pawn will die immediately, right? If you kill the target shielding you and you don't leave immediately, you're not wounded, you're dead.
As for making up mechanics that don't exist, I think we can safely ignore the idea of suppression you just gave. Let's keep it grounded in reality. Repositioning for cover against a flanking target, due to the fact that most weapons in vanilla have no range so they can safely do it, is not on the same dimension of what we're discussing here.
Besides, you didn't really make an argument for anything; you simply stated something, often incorrect about either vanilla or CE, then made a simple unproven hollow statement like "CE is not adding anything of value here," even though we're discussing the improvements over vanilla combat, and the mechanics created by CE, so I'm not sure of what you're trying to do here.
Again, you really should play the mod you're trying to talk about. It was very telling that you'd think cover was even comparable, or even viable in CE, like it is on vanilla, any person playing the mod for half an hour would imediatelly figure out that it doesn't protect your pawns, at all, and that embrasures in vanilla have absolutely no relation to the experience of using them in CE, where enemies will reliably hit your pawn regardless from 2~4 zoomed out screens away if you try to sit and trade bullets.
But hey, you also thought helmets could keep you safe, and you probably don't know how their coverage work, or how many mms of protection they ofter, or what usually happens when you get shot in the head with a decent weapon even if you're wearing a power armor helmet with full coverage. Want spoilers?
Edit: Wait, don't tell me you also think the ballistic goggles can stop bullets?! I mean, you do know there are ballistic goggles, right? They can certainly save your eyes (and skull, and brain) from grenade fragments and maybe some buckshot, but don't expect it to stop even the most common rifle rounds.
Is there a way to try the different combat mechanics without all the extra weapons, ammo and stuff, something like Combat Extended Lightly? Opening the bill tab in a machining table and having a gigantic menu pop up that is bloated with 20 different ammunition types that I could craft or different weapons that I all have to manually check for their stats makes me want to close the game immediately.
However, with the loadout system, it's pretty much something you set up once and then forget about it. They will automatically reload and refill any missing ammo, provided you have them in storage. It's quite interesting, and not having access to certain ammo types can certainly make your life a lot more challenging.
In a nutshell, you have three primary ammo types:
FMJ (Full Metal Jacket): These are the basic rounds, average in every way.
HP (Hollow Point): Meant to deform on impact, they have terrible penetration but high damage. Useful in situations where you're targeting unarmed or lightly armored foes.
AP (Armor Piercing): These rounds deal less damage but have higher penetration. If you're unsure about which ammo to use, equipping everyone with AP rounds is a reliable choice. Penetrating armor is often more important than dealing slightly less damage since it's likely to result in a deadly wound.
Additionally, there are advanced ammo types:
HE (High Explosive): These rounds deal more damage in general and are more effective against objects. They aren't as straightforward to produce as the basic types.
API (Armor Piercing Incendiary): Think of it as an upgraded version of AP ammo. It combines armor-piercing properties with fire damage. If you can afford to produce these and prefer simplicity in selecting ammo types, providing everyone with API rounds is a solid choice.
SABOT (Armor Piercing Discarding SABOT): This ammo is essentially AP ammo taken to the extreme, offering even greater armor penetration. It comes in handy for extreme situations but is not cheap. I had great success using these on automatic turrets to deal with any armored threats.
Shotguns also have specific ammo types. In brief, buckshot is effective against unarmored targets, slugs make shotguns behave like rifles, beanbags are non-lethal, and EMP rounds are both non-lethal and exceptionally effective against mechs. Two shotgunners equipped with EMP rounds can reliably take down centipedes at short range before the mid-game.
Apart from these specialized ammo types, you'll generally need to match the caliber number or name with the weapon type, such as 7.62 NATO for some rifles or 7.62 Soviet for others. If you're uncertain, just check the details of your firearm; it will indicate the compatible ammo types.
Personally, I prefer to assign a single ammo type for each role. Rather than using six different assault rifles on six different pawns, I aim to have them all use the same type, simplifying the management of ammo.
Thanks for the writeups, I really appreciate them. However, it rather cements for me that CE is not for me then, as I don't really want to learn all this weapon stuff (especially in a different language than my own), or matching caliber numbers etc. and I don't want that much more complexity in the combat with the different specialized ammo types etc. I just tried to start CE and disabled all ammo completely in the mod menu, but it still showed up in the crafting menus, even after a restart and a newly started colony. Might be a mod issue, although I have almost only QOL mods and no combat mods.
I guess I will stay at vanilla fighting, but again thanks for the writeup.
damn that sounds good.
Interesting indeed. The obvious point was vanilla isn't as RNG as people think.
Which ones? I still haven't heard of any. You keep saying "CE adds this" but so far it's all been vanilla mechanics/strategies that CE simply changes for the sake of changing.
"Oh, but you can do that in vanilla too."
"No, but in CE it's more dangerous and brutal if you are unarmored, so it's better. Look at all these better things."
"Sure."
Say what now? Also explain to me how CE allows manhunters and melee enemies to counter embrasures. Like I said, the cover of embrasures is entirely irrelevant. Nice tangent about how dangerous CE cover is.
Ironically, there are no "ballistic goggles" in the base CE mod. There's an expanded armor for CE mod that adds them. I don't know where you think you were going with that though. Plate armor and power armor helmets cover eyes in CE. In vanilla there is no eye protection until marine/recon, so yes CE adds some earlier game eye protection. Ok?
Like if your goal is to keep talking in circles while feeding me steam points, that seems to be working out for you...? So far though I haven't seen any contradiction to my statements in this thread.
Carry on then, at least I've corrected the misinformation in this thread.
Also, I'm not the one giving you steam points, and I'm not gifting myself either.
Not all of them, just the ones sticking around forums.
CE is better you don't need kill boxes, instead you have embrasures allowing you to safely mow down enemies who can't even reach you. Clearly far more taticool.
Also somehow centipedes are armored behemoths despite data and lore stating otherwise. Case in point, lore says insectoids where created as a counter to mechs. What kind of tank can get shredded by a swarm of bugs?
When the original developer of a mod aiming for realism leaves because its become a bunch of gun romansticists making them ridiculously unrealistic and the community shouts down any and all differing opinions.... You know theres a very real problem.
CE as a mod is fine if you want the micromanagement and gun-centric power fantasy that it offers (literally CE is "youre weak until youre not". You either kill them quickly or they kill you faster, and if you can kill them quickly then you can kill ALL of them quickly) but if you dont want either of those things CE is bloat and bad decisions.
You dont need kill boxes in vanilla, but also in CE you need kill boxes because without killboxes CE flails (unless youre on a massive empty map or have like five layers of collapsible defenses). ALso with CE you just need to out-gun your enemy; If theyre an industrial raider, you just need a gun with good armor pericing. A single good sniper rifle can, and will, take out an entire raid on its own because CE makes the accuracy on guns almost 100% with like a ten in shooting.