Tips for dealing with Shambler Assaults

[Rucka_Inc.]

So I'm having a difficult time dealing with shamblers. The biggest issue is that they just break through walls so it's difficult to set up choke points or kill boxes. Does anyone have any tips to deal with them?

[MadArtillery]

They can be troublesome but just going out and killing them has generally been my solution. If they are spread out beating on walls generally that makes them vulnerable to being picked off a few at a time. Can drag them towards doors as they agro, all any melee enemy needs is a door to be beaten. I had a lot of practice with this thanks to Zombieland already atleast, those were a lot more dangerous too.

[HunterSilver]

Shamblers are a great time to call in allies. It's not a perfect solution, but having as many people as possible helping to clear them out as quickly as possible before they can break through your walls is good.

[Gal Kraft]

🔥

[Hammerlord]

Incinerators make for a great crowd control tool, as long as the shamblers don't break your ranks and get too close. Keep some melee pawns standing just at the edge of the minimum range of your incinerator pawns and they should be able to keep firing, hopefully without friendly fire. If the shamblers are already beating on your walls, hopefully you'll have plasteel walls that won't ignite. They will take some small amounts of direct damage from the flame bursts however.

[XelNigma]

I have 3 ghouls and 2 melee pawns that form a wall, 1 incenerator (Such an OP weapon) and the rest gunners and they gun them down. Ghouls up front, swords man as support.
At this point I should add a grenader to the team as well, tho the flamer is kinda filling that role.

But yah, ♥♥♥♥ city walls and kill boxes, My town has 3 wide roads and thats where I make my stand. I can funnel them while at the same time beable to open fire.

Edit: oh and if you have mortars, the deadlife shell doesnt take a shard unlike the backpack. so having someone lob one at your line once the fighting has started lets any freshly dead shamblers rise and help you.

[Hykal]

I feel as if that shamblers are the one major weakness of melee dedicated pawns. Sure a few ghouls will help as a literal human wall but high ROF, flame and explosives are the way to go.

[HunterSilver]

Also worth noting that I've seen people suggest having 6-tile thick walls to wait out the 6-hour long lifespan, but I've never seen that work. They can easily break through a layer of wall in less than an hour. More layers can buy you time to sweep your entire perimeter, but there's just no way to clean out 200 shamblers coming from every direction cleanly.

[dande48]

You can go for the usual approach of "holding the door open", and going 3v1 with your melee characters taking them out one at a time. Incenerators will shoot over the melee, setting the bunched up shamblers in the rear on fire. I imagine grenades might work for this as well.

[Aranador]

If I am using mechanoids, which is most of the time, I let them line up and get clawed, while I shoot into the mess. Repairing a mech is a lot easier than patching a pawn.

[HidesHisFace]

Shamblers are relatively weak on thier own and vulnerable to kiting, unless your pawns are exceptionally slow.
The thing is - the horde is basically designed to counter killboxes and be a bane of colonies with small numbers of pawns.
So... try to get their attention before they get to the walls and shepherd the horde and slowly pick them off.

If they start banging on the walls, they tend to ignore most other things, so you should be able to pick them off.
Melee mechanoids - scythers and tunnelers - seem to be doing dencetly well against them and are easier to fix than your pawns.

Fire will also work decently well. Those new miniturret backpacks can also help in boosting your firepower in a pinch.

Since shamblers are fairly durable for what they are due to being painless, you generally want overwhelming firepower if you can afford it.

[Doc]

Unless you're dealing with multiple raid-type problems at once, shamblers have absolutely no ranged capabilities and can be mowed down from a distance. Fire works decently as well. Just set your colony to auto-rebuild broken things in home area when the raid starts so you don't accidentally leave any holes in your wall for later, and use zones to lock vulnerable pawns (small children, incapable of violence, impaired movement speed) in safe areas in the meantime. You want guns that have a good range, but also a good fire rate, since bleeding and pain aren't viable downing options.

[DemonchanSama (Lilyia)]

Originally posted by Rucka_Inc.:

So I'm having a difficult time dealing with shamblers. The biggest issue is that they just break through walls so it's difficult to set up choke points or kill boxes. Does anyone have any tips to deal with them?

If they're attacking your walls then it's good to set up two groups and do a clean sweep down depending on which side theyre more clustered on.

I usually start at my South Wall, clear it then split the group into one going to the east and the other going to the west and then they pincer the north wall to clear it.

Late game once you reach plasteel walls They are really no longer an issue.

[Lula O Honesto]

Originally posted by dande48:

You can go for the usual approach of "holding the door open", and going 3v1 with your melee characters taking them out one at a time. Incenerators will shoot over the melee, setting the bunched up shamblers in the rear on fire. I imagine grenades might work for this as well.

For some reason shamblers ARE smarter than normal raids, they ARE breachers

[DemonchanSama (Lilyia)]

Originally posted by MrDeliberto:

Originally posted by dande48:

You can go for the usual approach of "holding the door open", and going 3v1 with your melee characters taking them out one at a time. Incenerators will shoot over the melee, setting the bunched up shamblers in the rear on fire. I imagine grenades might work for this as well.

For some reason shamblers ARE smarter than normal raids, they ARE breachers

They just attack any structures that are owned by the player if in agro mode.

[Thanatos]

Tip1
If you have Biotech, summon the mech bosses to buy you some time. Only 1 mech boss can atleast wipe out around 50 shamblers or more.

Tip 2
Have a graveyard in front of your wall to raise your own shamblers and let the shambler vs shambler rumble begin. While your own friendly shamblers are the front, you can have some shooters safely assist them.