Disable Mechanoids -> enable fun mode

[Falmingkitter]

I have a little over 400 hours right now, but I held off on biotech/ ideology for a while until I was bored with vanilla(+ royalty). Naturally the first play through was a high tech faction of archotech worshippers that was wiped out far too soon by an unlucky defoliator/ mech drop combo. My second and current playthrough is a rancher/ human supremacy cowboy ranch with both bugs and mechs disabled (and replaced with more pirate factions) for a "more authetic" cowboy experience.

I cannot describe how much more fun the game is with mechs disabled. I've always hated them, they have way too much HP and armor, continue to function too well while damaged, shred through my pawns like they don't have armor on, destroy buildings too much, and generally they feel much harsher compared to human raids at the same game stage

The problem is, I think disabling mechs breaks the raid system. Cassandra is my storyteller, but she's acting like Randy. While you usually get a raid regularly ever couple days with cassandra, I'm getting irregular raid intervals with longer pauses than usual. I went up to the max allowed factions adding in more pirate factions, would that be messing with the raid schedule?

[DTD_Hiro]

There is a mod called Easy Mechanoids that keeps them in the game but makes them much weaker and, as implied, easier to kill.
Disabling Mechanoids as a faction does not mess with raids as far as i know however.

[Falmingkitter]

Originally posted by DTD_Hiro:

There is a mod called Easy Mechanoids that keeps them in the game but makes them much weaker and, as implied, easier to kill.
Disabling Mechanoids as a faction does not mess with raids as far as i know however.

I want mechs in the game, but how the game throws them at your feel poorly paced. I'm not expecting to decisively win every raid but they're too hard to damage, don't react to being damaged, and rip through my firing lines like butter. is this mod a slight nerf or a big one?

[DemonchanSama (Lilyia)]

Originally posted by Falmingkitter:

I cannot describe how much more fun the game is with mechs disabled. I've always hated them, they have way too much HP and armor, continue to function too well while damaged, shred through my pawns like they don't have armor on, destroy buildings too much, and generally they feel much harsher compared to human raids at the same game stage

Mechanoids have their own strengths and weaknesses just like any other raider type or group.

The reason why so many players dislike mechs is because they're trying to deal with them the same way most deal with humanoid raids.

There are some strategies that can make dealing with them a lot easier.

Shotgun killboxes trivialize mech raiders, and you can almost snipe/mortar any defoliator or psychic ship in order to force them towards said killbox.

If you're forced into ranged vs ranged combat ((In my case a ship piece fell, ignited an area, set a boom rat on fire, it exploded and woke them up before I could do anything, lmao ) I recommend creating walled cover supplemented by barricades (( stone works fine)), pelt them with EMP blasts from afar, while covering your snipers with someone throwing smoke grenades or using a smoke launcher on your own snipers to give them additional cover.

You'll still take hits occasionally, but if you have enough snipers you should be able to take down their lancers before the slower pedes are able to mobilize into place.

Initiate and then fall back till they leash, it might also be necessary to have a walled off small bunker to run and hide into to make them reset.

Take advantage of the fact that they start asleep.

Insanity lances also work on most of the mechs.

EMP mortar support is immensely helpful as well.

[MadArtillery]

Mechs have one glaring supreme weakness and it's melee. Just beat them with a stick and pretty much all mech related issues are resolved. Scythers are all they have for melee strength and are easy to seperate from the main group because of that. All scyther waves is just the usual door beatdown. Truly the stick is mightier then the mech.

[tim.]

"supreme weakness" meanwhile i've been slamming a centipede with 3 high melee skill dudes with maces + multiple chain shotgunners and an EMP tosser on the side and it tanks until the other 5+ centipedes wipe out my guys. Melee doesn't mean ♥♥♥♥ when you're up against a dozen megatanks with one hit kill potential needleguns, charge lances, and fire spewing ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ along side them.

Nah, mechanoids are tedious, badly balanced, and frankly just annoying. I don't care how long of a BradyGames strategy guide you write, it's not going to change that.

[Hykal]

Just play on a lower difficulty. Nothing wrong with that

[DemonchanSama (Lilyia)]

Originally posted by tim.:

"supreme weakness" meanwhile i've been slamming a centipede with 3 high melee skill dudes with maces + multiple chain shotgunners and an EMP tosser on the side and it tanks until the other 5+ centipedes wipe out my guys. Melee doesn't mean ♥♥♥♥ when you're up against a dozen megatanks with one hit kill potential needleguns, charge lances, and fire spewing ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ along side them.

Nah, mechanoids are tedious, badly balanced, and frankly just annoying. I don't care how long of a BradyGames strategy guide you write, it's not going to change that.

Yes Pede's are super tanky, but they generally suck at melee combat and forcing them into melee combat means they aren't shredding your pawns with a hail of blaster fire.

For all intents and purposes Centipedes _ARE_ the Mech tank unit. Their weaknesses is you can outrange snipe them.

Pikeman aren't very tanky. Their needle guns are high accuracy but moderate damage. If you get them in melee range, you can generally take them down unless your pawn has 0 armor at all.

Plasteel and Uranium maces are far better than regular steel ones and provide more AP. I personally like the Tonfa's more. They deal more damage, but have a higher chance to kill instead of maim.

Lancers are weaker than humans in melee, scythes are glass canons themselves, they're best shotgunned down while one of your own tanky pawns body block them at an embrasure or killbox tunnel.

[MadArtillery]

Originally posted by tim.:

"supreme weakness" meanwhile i've been slamming a centipede with 3 high melee skill dudes with maces + multiple chain shotgunners and an EMP tosser on the side and it tanks until the other 5+ centipedes wipe out my guys. Melee doesn't mean ♥♥♥♥ when you're up against a dozen megatanks with one hit kill potential needleguns, charge lances, and fire spewing ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ along side them.

Nah, mechanoids are tedious, badly balanced, and frankly just annoying. I don't care how long of a BradyGames strategy guide you write, it's not going to change that.

Honestly not a fan of maces. Spears or warhammers are really the way to go. You really should be diversifying your combat portfolio by the point you have literal armies of centipedes anyway. If you haven't started actively acquiring at least pure zero dlc insanity lances by then your kinda paying the price. You can't just bring up lategame exclusive issues and not use lategame problem solvers. Unless you just have zero wealth management at all I suppose, things can't really come as a surprise in this game based on how the raid mechanics work, you generally have an idea of how big raids will be before they happen.

Also hitting one centipede with all your melee is the opposite of what you should be doing with melee anyway. Don't group up and focus fire with melee, melee is all about spreading out and tieing up as many enemy units as possible outside of the specific anti melee door scenerio. Minimize the enemy mechs that are capable of firing back is litterally the whole point of melee beatdown. Even a ranged pawn can punch a tesseron or lancer to prevent their deadly payloads from getting unleashed and still kill them in melee. Absolutetly 100% worth it to stop a Tesseron of all things from firing. Even better if you start giving ranged pawns melee implants to help vs mechs.

[The Blind One]

EMP is a thing

If you can EMP the mech you can reduce their uptime by about >60% which is huge!

[DemonchanSama (Lilyia)]

Originally posted by MadArtillery:

Originally posted by tim.:

"supreme weakness" meanwhile i've been slamming a centipede with 3 high melee skill dudes with maces + multiple chain shotgunners and an EMP tosser on the side and it tanks until the other 5+ centipedes wipe out my guys. Melee doesn't mean ♥♥♥♥ when you're up against a dozen megatanks with one hit kill potential needleguns, charge lances, and fire spewing ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ along side them.

Nah, mechanoids are tedious, badly balanced, and frankly just annoying. I don't care how long of a BradyGames strategy guide you write, it's not going to change that.

Honestly not a fan of maces. Spears or warhammers are really the way to go. You really should be diversifying your combat portfolio by the point you have literal armies of centipedes anyway. If you haven't started actively acquiring at least pure zero dlc insanity lances by then your kinda paying the price. You can't just bring up lategame exclusive issues and not use lategame problem solvers. Unless you just have zero wealth management at all I suppose, things can't really come as a surprise in this game based on how the raid mechanics work, you generally have an idea of how big raids will be before they happen.

Also hitting one centipede with all your melee is the opposite of what you should be doing with melee anyway. Don't group up and focus fire with melee, melee is all about spreading out and tieing up as many enemy units as possible outside of the specific anti melee door scenerio. Minimaize the enemy mechs that are capable of firing back is litterally the whole point of melee beatdown. Even a ranged pawn can punch a tesseron or lancer to prevent their deadly payloads from getting unleashed and still kill them in melee. Even better if you start giving ranged pawns melee implants to help vs mechs.

I will say I do hate the Aprocriton AOE ress.

Not because instant re-killing mechs isn't hard to do, but the ressing can force-tile bloat and push you off.

Amusingly enough, melee locks them out of ressing lol.

Though I did have one that stayed safely in the back line and ressed whenever, and my only counter was to haul off dead mechs quickly and drop them for my hauler bots to grab and carry to a stock pile to prevent ressing from taking place,

Was frustrating, but still fun.

[MadArtillery]

Originally posted by DemonchanSama (Lilyia):

I will say I do hate the Aprocriton AOE ress.

Not because instant re-killing mechs isn't hard to do, but the ressing can force-tile bloat and push you off.

Amusingly enough, melee locks them out of ressing lol.

Though I did have one that stayed safely in the back line and ressed whenever, and my only counter was to haul off dead mechs quickly and drop them for my hauler bots to grab and carry to a stock pile to prevent ressing from taking place,

Was frustrating, but still fun.

Oh ya apocratons are meant to be the ultimate raid boss and do live up to it. I will say if you have Royalty jump packs really can turn them into fight winning entities for you with their death stun as you can really keep on them wherever they go. Jump packs and skip teleport are probably the strongest thing they've ever added.

[Hykal]

You gotta have at least a couple insanity shock lances on hand. They're easier to use than a Berserk psycast and a single one could turn the tide of battle.

[Falmingkitter]

The trouble with meele locking centipedes is that they are usually protected by scythers and protecting lancers

Originally posted by Hykal:

You gotta have at least a couple insanity shock lances on hand. They're easier to use than a Berserk psycast and a single one could turn the tide of battle.

It's easy to forget the stinky robots are even affected by lances

[MadArtillery]

They are honestly the primary reason to even own insanity lances. Centipedes to make them tank for you, and launcher pirates for the friendly fire. Both insanity and shock lances are even craftable now with anomoly.

Generally it's best to try and string out the mechs a bit. Scythers have a bad habit of charging to their deaths after all. Centipedes are pretty slow and both lancers are scythers are conviently pretty squishy.

Surprisingly a large number of mechs are quite vulnerable to bolt action and assault rifles as pikemen and minigun centipedes are all that can actually fight back at those ranges, not sure about all the new mech variants in biotech though as my playstyle has become incredibly melee centric since. Especially with a shooting specialist or bandoleers it's surprisingly easy to simple pick mechs off on the open field without return fire. Heck I've actually cheesed out a mech cluster once with my own pikemen as they could pick off the entire force defending it without return fire once they killed the enemy pikemen as the rest of the mechs had an ai tether to the cluster preventing normal chasing. So, so many dead centipedes without a shot fired.

[Astasia]

Originally posted by Falmingkitter:

The problem is, I think disabling mechs breaks the raid system. Cassandra is my storyteller, but she's acting like Randy. While you usually get a raid regularly ever couple days with cassandra, I'm getting irregular raid intervals with longer pauses than usual. I went up to the max allowed factions adding in more pirate factions, would that be messing with the raid schedule?

Number of factions, including mechs, doesn't matter, as long as there is 1 hostile faction in the world the raid system mostly continues to function as normal. Casandra doesn't say "Ok, do a raid of mechs now," she just triggers a "major threat" and then the game looks through valid major threats and picks one based on some weights, if it picks a raid it looks through valid factions that can raid your map and picks one based on some weights.

"Valid factions that can raid your map" is likely the issue here. Humans can't raid if it's below -40C or above 45C, in such cases the game always picks mechs to raid you. If mechs are disabled and the temperature is unsafe, I don't remember what happens. It may send nothing, or it may send humans and ignore the temperature. If your map has very hot summers or very cold winters, and those align with the periods where you are getting no raids, then that is probably the issue. If this isn't the issue, I don't have any other ideas other than mod errors. I have played several tribal runs with mechs disabled and a large number of extra factions without any issue.