How to deal with late game raids?

[KC9]

The title of this discussion is pretty self-explanatory. I'm struggling a lot with late game raids and I don't know what else to do. Many of my runs are ended by uninterrupted attacks from enemies with twice my numbers and with more advanced weapons. I don't have time to recover between raids, my resources run out, my pawns get injured and stressed and there's no time to do anything else. As if that weren't enough, supposedly the attacks become more intense if I start building the ship to leave the planet.

[Red Bat]

That's kind of the big question of this game that most of your play-through is supposed to be building up to address.

Usually people deal with them either by funneling enemies into a killbox, simply having better gear, or doing some crazy contrived thing like activating a Psychic animal pulser when Thrumbos are on the map or activating a deadlife IED right next to about 30 corpses and then stockpiling all the raiders corpses to do it again.

You can also try befriending other factions and hoping they help you fight off a raid, stockpiling all the doomsday rocket launchers you get for the endgame, sending out some mostly useless pawns to trade for supplies in caravans in between raids, using Imperial permits to get troopers to absorb attacks for you, etc. Most of the game is supposed to be you eventually getting more and more tools to deal with this.

[Steelfleece]

It also helps to manage colony wealth. Not having huge stockpiles of junk that isn't too hard to find and that you won't need soon - like multiple years' worth of food, or 7000 steel unless you're about to do something with it. It isn't like eliminating a couple stacks of corn or burning a couple weapons dropped by raiders is going to cut raids noticably, but it's surprising how much can pile up in storage and on your map without you noticing, and it all adds up.

On that note, careful about having a ton of less-than-useful colonists. They add in toward raid values too.

[Narrowmind]

I'm not fully convinced about the colonists. Just having an extra gun when the battle starts should pay for itself, shouldn't it? It's hard to see how too many colonists could increase the raids in a meaningful way because they mostly contribute more than than provide a negative. No?

[bloodymonarch]

There is a hard limit to the raid size and strength eventually. So once you have enough colonists and resources to outcompete the largest raid sizes, the only thing the game "could" do is time a disease/psychic event with a large raid or two at the same time.

Once you have turrets, mortars, humans, animals and allies to help you in combat you should have no issues on classic cassandra. I find the vanilla psycasts can change things around very quickly just with a few well placed berserks.

[XelNigma]

Mortars are early raid thinning
Then I combat, grenades and LMGs add some decent AOE. Heavy SMGs for pawns with low skill.

I have a town style base, no city wall or kill box, but wooden traps all over the place.
I also use flanking tactics, ambush tactics.
Using grenades often means I'm rebuilding after a big raid but it's worth it.

Elbow blades, knee spikes are great to give to pawns with good Melee and shooting. Give them one (more than one does nothing for them) and a chain shotgun, good armor and put them upfront.

Bionic eyes offer way better chance to hit than bionic arms. just one bionic eye gives a massive buff, two is slightly better. So spread the love.

If you find your self in a scenario that all your people are engaged in melee and can't shoot. Manually tell them to shoot at each other's attacker. They just can't shoot targets in melee, not that thay can't shoot WHILE engaged in melee.

Have people carry go juice with them and stim up before a fight. It's a tide turner.


You might have noticed when your putting out fires pawns often don't run through fire. A wall a fire is a thing and will stop advancing enemies. I early use this tactic but it's good to know you have the option in a fight.

[Veylox]

Have several answers available. Some obvious ones, after the singularity/corner punch nerf, are ;

- a regular killbox, either the semi-circle one using assault rifles or just a chain shotgun minibox with melee blockers

- a burnbox, to instantly negate human/insect/fleshbeast raids.

- a deadlife IED box, to negate pretty much anything as long as you have enough corpses and bioferrite (I've found keeping 4 entities studied in the colony can sustain you with enough bioferrite to keep a deadlife box going plus doing most rituals on cooldown). High risk of lung rot if you don't manage your zones properly tho.

- At least one mortar (to trigger some chanter and siege raids, and also wake mech clusters up when needed) and one EMP grenade (to weaken mechs and metalhorrors, plus it's strong against revenants and shieldbets too)

And then comes the real problem ; breachers, shambler breachers, drop pods. Only thing you can do against whatever doesn't fold to a preset strategy is get stronger and store powerful items. Psychic/insanity lances, animal pulsers, low shields, bionics, genes, psycasts, orbital beams, triple rockets, call allied factions, royalty permits etc. Anything that's one-time use or limited use should be kept for cases where renewable strategies like the boxes won't work.

[MadArtillery]

This is where the importance of wealth vs wealth that can defend itself comes in. Everything you have contributes to raid size, the goal is to always be better equipped than the enemy. Superior equipment carries really really hard. Don't let your stuff get too far ahead of stuff that kills people. Just doing things like cleaning up a freezer of excess food can kill a raider before they even spawn. Sell off excess leathers, sell over abundance of food, don't go too crazy on art too soon, use that to buy something defence related

[x]

Guns, lots of guns. Generate as much power as you can so that you can have loads of guns. Granted, the base game is a little thin on defensive weapons, but I have a tone of mods and some add new and exciting turrets, cannons, missile launchers.... Have a mix of different weapons. Some work better against certain enemies. Some are awesome but dangerous to you at close range (mortars, missiles...).
Also, new power sources will help gather more energy. Better armour and better weapons.
Besides that, careful base planing helps too. Mortars can really thin out the heard like said above (plus they are the best weapon against sieges).
Now with anomaly, things can be wildly different. Last night a chunk of psychic space ship fell on my map with a bunch of strong enemies. There was not way I could beat them so I had to bunker down and try to get some more turrets and cannons (I had 1 and about 10 people and not all armed, so pretty weak).
Then darkness came. Second time it happened to I had outdoor spotlights in place. Then a bunch of ugly ass creatures can and attacked the mechs. Killed a couple of mechs before they died, but still too strong for me. Then raiders attacked and got wiped pretty quickly. Then another set of darkness creatures and still too many mechs for me. After some more darkness time, a Nociosphere dropped just outside my base. Captured it and after some study I was able to set it wild on the mechs. The mechs died alright but then the Nociosphere turned towards my base. I had all my peeps running like crazy to edge of the map and was lucky enough that the sphere died after only destroying one of my turrets.
So there is a lot you can do, but with the Anomaly DLC things are going to be a little different and many of the "old" tactics will have limited success, forcing us to try different things.
I'm loving it so far.

Цитата допису MadArtillery:

This is where the importance of wealth vs wealth that can defend itself comes in. Everything you have contributes to raid size, the goal is to always be better equipped than the enemy. Superior equipment carries really really hard. Don't let your stuff get too far ahead of stuff that kills people. Just doing things like cleaning up a freezer of excess food can kill a raider before they even spawn. Sell off excess leathers, sell over abundance of food, don't go too crazy on art too soon, use that to buy something defence related

Won't silver also count towards wealth, thus negating the "gain" of selling? I was under the impression it does, but I could be wrong.

[MadArtillery]

Цитата допису x:

Цитата допису MadArtillery:

This is where the importance of wealth vs wealth that can defend itself comes in. Everything you have contributes to raid size, the goal is to always be better equipped than the enemy. Superior equipment carries really really hard. Don't let your stuff get too far ahead of stuff that kills people. Just doing things like cleaning up a freezer of excess food can kill a raider before they even spawn. Sell off excess leathers, sell over abundance of food, don't go too crazy on art too soon, use that to buy something defence related

Won't silver also count towards wealth, thus negating the "gain" of selling? I was under the impression it does, but I could be wrong.

Read the rest of the sentance

[Red Bat]

Or go the other extreme. Hoard all the things, put fancy flooring everywhere, turn the threat level to 500% because YOLO, and then come up with a plan to prevent the Doomsday and Triple Rocket Launcher guy from firing before you down them. Stockpile your explosive arsenal for a raid you don't think you can handle, then watch your robotic army supported by psychic ultra tech colonists get obliterated by 60 illiterate barely dressed tribals with bows and sticks because of that human urge to not waste one time ace in the hole consumables.

[HunterSilver]

Minimize damage you take and maximize damage you deal.

Good armor saves lives, good weapons take lives. Make sure everyone is outfitted with the best armor you can afford to buy/craft. Everyone seems to hate spending steel on flak vests, but a little bit of defense will stop serious injuries and even death more often than you'd think. Once colonists are in marine armor your survivability will skyrocket.

Never engage enemies in fair fights. Minimize cover enemies can get, make sure you always have as much cover as possible. Enemies who excel at dealing a lot of ranged damage like Centipedes should be engaged in melee whenever possible. Check what weapons enemies are bringing to a fight and plan accordingly. If you see that they have a lot of large AoE weapons like doomsday rocket launchers, sometimes it's better to call in friendlies to eat the hit for you, or to send out trained animals instead.

A strong economy pays out. Keep things like psychite tea around to help with mood dips. Be ready and able to churn out enough weapons and armor to supply your colonists and to keep a few sets of spare armor for when your current sets are too damaged. Most importantly you need to keep yourself stocked on medicine. You don't need 300 industrial meds sitting around, but even just making sure there's enough herbal meds to keep everyone bandaged for 2 or 3 raids is critical. The difference between no medicine and herbal medicine is massive.

[x]

Цитата допису MadArtillery:

Цитата допису x:

Won't silver also count towards wealth, thus negating the "gain" of selling? I was under the impression it does, but I could be wrong.

Read the rest of the sentance

Now I get it

[ACS36]

most people are cheating in some way(they often wont' admit this part) or play on very low difficulty slider

[Narrowmind]

Why would you think this?

[WildStargazer]

When you building your colony - most important is to make fastest research in weapons and armor to be able to protect yourself. 2 tiles thick or more stone walls around your colony with killbox, 4-8 mortars with different kind of shells (high explosive and emp shells are must have). For armor you can use devilstrand clothing with flak vests and steel helmets. For weapons use assault rifles, they are universal. If you will have all this, by mid game you will be able to protect yourself from all kind of threats. With dlcs you gain even more power, some psycasts and permits from Royalty can help very much, shooting specialists from Ideology significantly boost your combat ability too, and powerfull genes from biotech add up to attack. defense capabilities also, with some genes you can even make unkillable tanks, but that is possible in a late-game, when you have big gene collection.