Militors

[P O P]

Are they even worth having? The only real use they seem to have imo is just distracting things, and even then they kinda suck at it. They got such low armor that any hit practically cripples them. They also miss nearly every shot. I just fought the Diabolous (first mech boss I don't know how to spell the name) and won. Should I just scrap these guys and make some of the new mechs?

[XelNigma]

You nailed it. They are like a knife. you throw them away as soon as you get access to a sword or pistol.

[MadArtillery]

It's worse than you think, 2 militors is more wealth than a centipede making them absurdly inefficient for fighting raids vs how many raiders they generate. Replace as soon as possible.

Originally posted by XelNigma:

You nailed it. They are like a knife. you throw them away as soon as you get access to a sword or pistol.

Club or gladius/axe would probably be more apt, knives, especially plasteel are unironically on the higher end of dps and actually so viable they invalidate quite a few higher tech level weapons. It's a bit silly how good they are, not top top tier but way higher than is reasonable.

[CloudSeeker]

If you play a mechanitor and is the only colonist in the colony (due to them being reclusive). Or at least have a few colonists. The militors are great before you can upgrade to better mechs.

Since you only have access to Basic Mechtech. The militors is the only combat mech you have access to until you have defeated the Diablous threat which grants access to Standard Mechtech. Without the militors defeating the Diablous can be tricky.

Do what you want. You can make something like Pikeman, Scythers and whatever else instead. The militors are not exactly meant to be the end all be all type of mech.

[P O P]

Wait, can I resurect the diabolus corpse? This is my first time using mechs.

[MadArtillery]

Originally posted by P O P:

Wait, can I resurect the diabolus corpse? This is my first time using mechs.

You can only resurrect allied mechs. You can make your own diabolus though and then ressurect it if it dies.

[CloudSeeker]

Originally posted by P O P:

Wait, can I resurect the diabolus corpse? This is my first time using mechs.

No. But you can make your own eventually.

[Red Bat]

Guess I'm one of the few people on this forum who think Militors are still worth using once you have better mechs. Albeit I'll concede you should slowly replace them if you start to run out of bandwidth and have multiple large mech gestators. Although you usually can get plenty of bandwidth, especially if you can get multiple mechanators or can rush mechlord armor.

The advantages militors have over "better" mechanoids are largely in between fights. They use a less important gestator so you can replace a militor and something like a pikeman without either interfering with the other one. They produce fewer wastepacks than most mechs, and they only cost 1 bandwidth which only a scorcher and the labor mechs share as an advantage. The fact that they can be replaced from a regular mech gestator means that losing 4 militors in one fight is usually less of a big deal than losing something like a tunneler which would be competing with your other large mechs for replacement. If you are raided while down a militor or two it's not usually a big deal, but if you are raided when your diabolus or something is still being gestated that could be a problem. For that reason militors are effectively cannon fodder to protect your other mechs in the same way other mechs are cannon fodder to protect your colonists.

[MadArtillery]

Originally posted by Red Bat:

Guess I'm one of the few people on this forum who think Militors are still worth using once you have better mechs. Albeit I'll concede you should slowly replace them if you start to run out of bandwidth and have multiple large mech gestators. Although you usually can get plenty of bandwidth, especially if you can get multiple mechanators or can rush mechlord armor.

The advantages militors have over "better" mechanoids are largely in between fights. They use a less important gestator so you can replace a militor and something like a pikeman without either interfering with the other one. They produce fewer wastepacks than most mechs, and they only cost 1 bandwidth which only a scorcher and the labor mechs share as an advantage. The fact that they can be replaced from a regular mech gestator means that losing 4 militors in one fight is usually less of a big deal than losing something like a tunneler which would be competing with your other large mechs for replacement. If you are raided while down a militor or two it's not usually a big deal, but if you are raided when your diabolus or something is still being gestated that could be a problem. For that reason militors are effectively cannon fodder to protect your other mechs in the same way other mechs are cannon fodder to protect your colonists.

Just run multiple large gestators and one single small gestator. Small gestator is just for your non combatants and quick, only need one. $800 per militor when a centipede is $1200 is just absurd. The balance for mechanitor was seemingly just forgotten entirely by the devs when it comes to wealth.

[Astasia]

Originally posted by MadArtillery:

Just run multiple large gestators and one single small gestator. Small gestator is just for your non combatants and quick, only need one. $800 per militor when a centipede is $1200 is just absurd. The balance for mechanitor was seemingly just forgotten entirely by the devs when it comes to wealth.

That's not how it works. Those wealth numbers are really completely inconsequential. 800 wealth on a militor is about 4 threat points, while a naked human enemy costs like 40 threat points to spawn on 100% scaling. The primary way friendly mechs scale difficulty is based on their combat power, a centipede is 400 combat power, a militor is 45 combat power, the game looks at 20-40% (depending on game stage) of friendly mech combat power and adds that to your threat points, so a centipede is adding nearly 10 times as many threat points as a militor is.

45*0.4 = 18 threat per militor.
400*0.4 = 160 threat per centipede.

Adding their base wealth values to that is like 4-5 each which as you can see really doesn't make a difference.

I've done a couple mechinator runs and having like 10 militors permanently camped in my killbox is pretty useful as disposable decoy targets and a small amount of extra damage.

[marcusaddamsson]

Originally posted by Astasia:

{smart stuff snipped}

A while back, I dusted off my Rimworld and took another several runs at the new DLC.

I gotta say, Astasia... I really missed having you around to tell everyone how wrong they are. I mean that very seriously: your posts are logical and informed as hell (like borderline annoying/pedantic, but totally in a good way).

I'm happy to see you're still haunting/informing 'round these parts. Truly.

Good luck to you, always.

[Veylox]

Mechanitors are completely busted because all the best mechs are available at tier 1, and that's the workers.

If you need someone to shoot stuff, put a shotgun in your colonist's hand and have mechs do the hauling/cleaning/planting/constructing etc. You'll be much better off than doing the opposite.

Worker mechs can fight in a pinch, and they're not worse at it than militors since the only reason you'd ever want to use a basic mech in combat is to soak damage up front

[delayman2]

They're great early on. You can use them to deal with mad animals and as a distraction for melee fighters so you can get your shots in. I'd hesitate to have more than two and they generally work as base security. I don't like automated turrets since they tend to shoot everything.

[Red Bat]

Originally posted by MadArtillery:

Originally posted by Red Bat:

Guess I'm one of the few people on this forum who think Militors are still worth using once you have better mechs. Albeit I'll concede you should slowly replace them if you start to run out of bandwidth and have multiple large mech gestators. Although you usually can get plenty of bandwidth, especially if you can get multiple mechanators or can rush mechlord armor.

The advantages militors have over "better" mechanoids are largely in between fights. They use a less important gestator so you can replace a militor and something like a pikeman without either interfering with the other one. They produce fewer wastepacks than most mechs, and they only cost 1 bandwidth which only a scorcher and the labor mechs share as an advantage. The fact that they can be replaced from a regular mech gestator means that losing 4 militors in one fight is usually less of a big deal than losing something like a tunneler which would be competing with your other large mechs for replacement. If you are raided while down a militor or two it's not usually a big deal, but if you are raided when your diabolus or something is still being gestated that could be a problem. For that reason militors are effectively cannon fodder to protect your other mechs in the same way other mechs are cannon fodder to protect your colonists.

Just run multiple large gestators and one single small gestator. Small gestator is just for your non combatants and quick, only need one. $800 per militor when a centipede is $1200 is just absurd. The balance for mechanitor was seemingly just forgotten entirely by the devs when it comes to wealth.

You are overestimating how much wealth impacts raid points. A lot of the wealth value comes from stuff that helps you precisely 0% in dealing with a raid such as resources in stockpiles. A 400 market value difference that's still on something that can fight a raid is nowhere near a top priority for wealth management.

Besides, if you are really leaning into a mechanator playstyle then chances are there really isn't much of a difference if even 10 raiders are added to a raid, much less the maybe 1 added if you have 10 militors. Especially if you pair mechs with a killbox or something else BS like a high level psycaster. The cheaper (and smaller) gestator has a lot of utility, especially if you aren't rushing through mechanator content and already had time to build a second mech gestator before you researched standard mechtech.