Mech Cluster help D:

[Lil Bunny]

Sooooooooooooo the situation is like this:

Myself:
11 Peeps
At least 7 are injured but functional (1 breach raid finished like a day ago)
Most have Heavy SMGs, 2 miniguns, with decent protection (Flak stuff + devilstrand duster)
3 peeps have royalty rank for free stuns on most other fights
4 Mortars

Problem:
Totally forgot to read the description but I don't see a timer on the cluster. HOWEVER, there's a mortar like building included in the cluster. More details:
1 Mortar Turret
3 Cannon like turrets
2 Mini turrets
1 High shield
1 low shield (both shields on the mortar)
Around 5 centipedes
About 4 lancers
About 3-5 scythers

I'm getting bombarded every 90 seconds or so. What's the best option to get rid of the cluster or at least the mortar?

[Khan Boyzitbig of Mercia]

If there is no prox sensor you may be able to sneak in an build a roof over the mortar so it becomes harmless.

[HunterSilver]

Without seeing the layout of the cluster it's hard to give specific advice.

Putting your colonists in Smokepop will disable all of the turrets, so the cannon and mini turrets are irrelevant for the most part. If you have any sniper rifles, you can invalidate the centipedes as they move too slow to ever catch up to snipers. Lancers and Scythers lose in a fight against standard weaponry but excel at dealing an annoying amount of damage before they go down.

I'd recommend starting the fight by hammering anything that you can with sniper rounds to pull the small units out. Have your colonists ready to kill the lancers and scythers asap once they're sufficiently out of range of the mech cluster, then use sniper fire to keep pulling the centipedes away. While your snipers work on that, move your other colonists closer and hide your gunners in smokepop clouds to stop the turrets from hitting you, then take out all of the targets at range.

If you have a couple of low shield packs, you can also use those to completely invalidate everything there but the scythers. Get your colonists within the enemy low shield, have them kill the scythers and then drop a low shield the second everything wakes up and opens fire on you. Once the scythers are dead, destroy the turrets, use another low shield as necessary, and then get out of there once it's safe to.

If you have the psycasts skip and skipshield, you can just waltz into the base, skip enemies into your melee units, drop a skipshield on top of your group, and just have your gunners kill everyone you teleport in. Repeat as necessary until the entire cluster is empty, then smokepop and destroy the turrets at your leisure.

Edit: If you don't have any of the above, then get ready for a Really, Really bloody fight. I'd recommend building a small defensive kill box within the low shield, ideally something that shields all of your colonists from the turrets and gives you walls/sandbags to use as cover. Have someone brave getting out of the killbox to shoot the mechs to piss them off, then get back into the killbox asap. Chances are, to be safe from the turrets, your killbox will have to be facing backwards away from the mech cluster, which is fine, enemies will walk around and start combat with you.

There is also the chance that the enemies will wake up, de-aggro, and start making their way towards your base to destroy it. If they do, they do. Use the opportunity to destroy all of the turrets and the mortar, then go back home and get ready for a nasty fight in the streets.

[Lil Bunny]

Originally posted by Khan Boyzitbig of Mercia:

If there is no prox sensor you may be able to sneak in an build a roof over the mortar so it becomes harmless.

This is actually genius!

Originally posted by HunterSilver:

Without seeing the layout of the cluster it's hard to give specific advice.

Putting your colonists in Smokepop will disable all of the turrets, so the cannon and mini turrets are irrelevant for the most part. If you have any sniper rifles, you can invalidate the centipedes as they move too slow to ever catch up to snipers. Lancers and Scythers lose in a fight against standard weaponry but excel at dealing an annoying amount of damage before they go down.

I'd recommend starting the fight by hammering anything that you can with sniper rounds to pull the small units out. Have your colonists ready to kill the lancers and scythers asap once they're sufficiently out of range of the mech cluster, then use sniper fire to keep pulling the centipedes away. While your snipers work on that, move your other colonists closer and hide your gunners in smokepop clouds to stop the turrets from hitting you, then take out all of the targets at range.

If you have a couple of low shield packs, you can also use those to completely invalidate everything there but the scythers. Get your colonists within the enemy low shield, have them kill the scythers and then drop a low shield the second everything wakes up and opens fire on you. Once the scythers are dead, destroy the turrets, use another low shield as necessary, and then get out of there once it's safe to.

If you have the psycasts skip and skipshield, you can just waltz into the base, skip enemies into your melee units, drop a skipshield on top of your group, and just have your gunners kill everyone you teleport in. Repeat as necessary until the entire cluster is empty, then smokepop and destroy the turrets at your leisure.

Edit: If you don't have any of the above, then get ready for a Really, Really bloody fight. I'd recommend building a small defensive kill box within the low shield, ideally something that shields all of your colonists from the turrets and gives you walls/sandbags to use as cover. Have someone brave getting out of the killbox to shoot the mechs to piss them off, then get back into the killbox asap. Chances are, to be safe from the turrets, your killbox will have to be facing backwards away from the mech cluster, which is fine, enemies will walk around and start combat with you.

There is also the chance that the enemies will wake up, de-aggro, and start making their way towards your base to destroy it. If they do, they do. Use the opportunity to destroy all of the turrets and the mortar, then go back home and get ready for a nasty fight in the streets.

Thanks for the input I will try doing something that will incorporate some of these things. I never considered or used a smokepop before. Will try these :D

[jscjml]

Just use your mortars to bomb them. All of the mechs should just charge into your killbox after you destroy the auto mortar. Fire an EMP shell to get rid of the high shield.

Alternatively, you can use jump packs, and the invisibilty psycast. Cast invisibilty on a pawn, and destroy the auto mortar (frag grenades are best for this). After that, just use the jump pack to get back to your base. Done correctly, you can get rid of any mech cluster with 0 injuries.

After you destroy the mortar and deal with the mechs, you can use a smoke launcher which will disable all of the turrets. Use that to get rid of everything else in the cluster.

Personally I do not progress my colony at all until I have these options available. If you dont, you always run the risk of a bad mech cluster that you cannot deal with.

[Wantoomany]

Use a single EMP shell to disable the shields. Then shell the cluster to death.

[Ninefinger]

You can shoot an emp shell just a little sooner than a explosive shell and high shields are uselss, just an emp shell cost sink. Once you get rid of the mechs you can also just approach the turrets completely safe using smoke launcher, I usually just take two pawns one with nades and one with smoke launcher and just smoke cloud hop till im close enough to nade, you can use guns or nades it all works.

[Lil Bunny]

Thanks for the help everyone. Learned a few new things in Rimworld. I killed the mechs quite fine but threw myself into a new hole on a quest with 2 huge mech clusters landing in my base. Too big for me and they have a sun blocker thing -mood building. Time to restart xd

[brian_va]

Originally posted by Lil Bunny:

Thanks for the help everyone. Learned a few new things in Rimworld. I killed the mechs quite fine but threw myself into a new hole on a quest with 2 huge mech clusters landing in my base. Too big for me and they have a sun blocker thing -mood building. Time to restart xd

You can leave the sun blocker and go darkness meme if you have fluid ideology and take the bonus to combat.

[Veylox]

You don't even need to change memes, just wait until another raid kills the mech cluster, provided you have enough food to survive without sun

Unless the cluster is actively endangering your colony (which it isn't doing when there's no mortars and only a sun blocker), it's basically free turrets and mechanoids to defend your base against the next (or next few) major threat

When turning events to your advantage, you have to understand the zoning system, and you really only ever need two zones ; one that encompasses only your base, every single square inside your walls if you do have walls, and another zone that encompasses the whole map MINUS the current threat. And you switch your entire colony between these two as needed. The idea of the second zone is to litterally allow the entire map, and clear the dangerous zone as needed. For example, mechanoid cluster ; you clear the section of the map where the mechs are, up to their max firing range. Now you can litterally ignore them, your pawns won't mess with them, and the mechs will never attack you either, unless angered by a third party, at which point they'll either be dead or weakened by said third party.

Manhunter pack comes in ? Switch your colony to the "inside walls" zone, and now you can ignore the event and even use it as protection against the next one. Mechanoid cluster that doesn't mess too much with your map comes in ? Wastepack infestation ? Switch your colony to "whole map minus threat" and now you just have free defenses working for you