Simple and effective POI raiding techniques

[Dead Schism]

I've been through the forums and read countless ways to raid POI's/alien bases and while most of them work, all of them seem to require a rather costly SV build and more rare rescources than I'd prefer to spend on the task. My way of doing it is similar in some ways but I've also come up with a distinctly different way of achieving the same goal. I've come up with the traditional "kill the turrets and work your way in" along with something I can't name here but for the sake of keeping it G-rated, we'll call it the "Mad Dash".


1: Traditional POI raid

Fisrt off you can do this with the tier 1 prefab SV in your blueprint library just fine although I would recommend some modifying to the thrusters to increase the agility a little more. This method will require some piloting skills so practice with strafing both side-to-side and up-down. In most cases you will be udsing the side-to-side method but if there is a POI within your firing rage and terrain between you and your target, I would go with the up-down technique because you can quickly duck behind a mountain in the event things go horribly wrong.

Your basic strategy will be sitting at close to your weapons max effective range and strafing the incoming fire while laying down some gatling gun fire on the turrets untill one by one, you destroy them all. If you are good enough at dodging the incoming fire you should take minimal damage to your SV and at those ranges it shouldn't be too hard to do so. There is one thing you will NEED to remember at these ranges though, make a change in strafing direction about every second or so. Any slower and your likely to get hit by the round aimed at your current trajectory and any faster you could very possibly end up flying into the path of the round aimed at your previous trajectory.

Gatling guns will suffice throughout the whole process for both the turrets and one or two drones usually present at every POI.


2: Mad Dash

This technique will require a little less piloting skill but alot more CQB. I would recommend going in with as much ammo as you think it will take to elimiate all enemies inside then add 50% more just incase.

As with the first method this can be done with the tier 1 prefab SV and will not require any modifications to it at all. It is far less likely to work on a POI in an open field with no cover for your approach so it's best to use this when you have terrain to cover you no more than 300m away from your target. You will want to get as close as possible before breaking cover and quite litterally making a mad dash for the base of the POI. I would highly reccomend some evasive maneuvers and a little strafing while going full power forward untill you get under the guns max depression. Here you can safely park your SV and proceed on foot to take out a turret or two to get inside and go strait for the core. If you can manage to get in without needing to destroy any turrets I would recomend using this strategy so you can break down the turrets afterwards for more loot. This technique does however require alot more handheld weapons ammo and I would recomend doing this with no less than an assault rifle or tier 2 projectile pistol. You should get all of your pistol ammo back, if not a little extra, and a decent amount of assualt rifle ammo back as well. This method is a little more risky due to the fact that if you should die on foot, you will have to deal with the turrets once again but this time on foot and with no inventory to help you. Should this method succeed, you will have spent very little rescources in taking the POI and should gain the max amount of loot from the POI as possible.



As far as "End Game" assault SV's are concerned, I've seen several setups and everyone has their prefferences so I'll share mine as well.

The SV doesn't have to be armored but it is good to have the little bit of extra protection. My weapons are set up in one of 2 ways and are as follows:

1: 3x Rail guns used for destroying POI turrets
2x Homing missile/rocket launchers for dealing with stray donres.


2: 2-3x plasma cannons for destroying POI turrets
2x Homing missile/rocket launchers for dealing with stray drones.

In either case the performance seems to be roughly the same as far as firepower is concerned. It really comes down to cost for the ammo and what weapon you really prefer.

[Dead Schism]

I forgot to include that the materials for these techniques were meant for very early stages of the game (level 7+)

[Zuleica]

For an end-game SV I use either, or both;
My own design
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=783846652
Or a modified Ice-Storm-Light
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=804873340

My first survival SV at about day 3 of a new game is the Ice-Storm-Light with four additional gatling guns. Those six gatlings can easily down space drones in a one second burst and with some care can take out POI turrets easily. Just to ensure air superiority though I add four rocket launchers as soon as I have that tech.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=766923951&searchtext=Ice-storm

Getting to know each POI results in very efficient pacification. For example I use rockets to dig a 30 degree 'canyon' into the lower level of the Abandoned Factory on Omicron. Then blast through the alien block and in to the room with the core. I stand back far enough that no aliens spawn. Once I can see the core I take it out with plasma guns (to get through the combat steel protecting it). I keep track of the lights on the top and when they go out i know I'm done.

Land and walk through looting at my liesure, then start dismantling the entire structure from the top down...thousands and thousands of hardened steel plates :)

For the Akua Abandoned Mine the technique is easy but begs a description that is long;
1. the first door inside the hanger is the key. Fly in, blast a hole down one level at the location of that door.
2. Stand above and destroy spawners and anything they spawned with a sniper rifle.
3. Drop down, go partway down the stairs, blast the gratings on either side with a shotgun to give you better line of sight,
4. Sniper rifle the spawners and the uglies they spawned.
5. Down the stairs, U turn to the left, blast the grating walk around behind the decoration to find a purple crate and an elite weapon.
6. Loot all the crates in the big room.
7. Go to the end and left, more crates to loot.
8. End of room, jump up, blast through grate, another purple container, another elite weapon.
9, back up just a bit and blow a hole through the wall with either rocket launcher or explosives. Destroy spawner and anything it spawned with sniper rifle.
10. Jump down, go down the stairs, kill the core.
11. back up to top and start dismantling the entire structure killing any previously spawned mobs from above as you take layer after layer of combat steel blocks off :)

For normal POIs I just kill the turrets and leave them alive so i can fly up to spawners forcing three Zirax to spawn, shoot them with my SV, land and loot them of their medical supplies and canned veggies. They become my end-game 'farm' :) I have more canned vegies spread out across bases on all the planets on an old save game than I could ever consume! The drone base I take my time carefully coring and killing spawns from my SV, when the lights go out I double check for spawns then land and loot.

Can't wait for upcoming new POIs that I don't know yet :)

[threefinger]

You left off the most fun method of assaulting POIs, for me anyways;)

Make weapons of choice, I generally use explosives and an assault rifle, upgrading to their advanced or epic versions as they become available. Then hop on your trusty motorbike and smash up to the POI as fast as you can, zig-zigging to avoid turret fire until you get close enough for the turrets to not be able to hit you. Then proceed to break in and clear it, ignoring the outer turrets until the core is dead and you can dismantle them.

I found out that the turrets and any random troops/drones don't fire at the motorbike after you get off of it, so you can take your time clearing it out, and once you get the core destroyed you can bring back an SV or HV to store stuff in as you finish dismantling/looting everything.

You can do this starting as early as level 2-3 or so, you just need an assault rifle and a pistol for most POIs as they dont have armored doors and walls, explosives just make it easier to get through doors and walls, as well as giving you the ability to break through armored sections.

[hound]

Two other ways
1. My favorite although it is a little tougher now with different armor on turrets. Find a POI near a mountain that you can land on the backside of..move around until you get in range of the turrets with the sniper rifle. Take out turrets one by one. You are usually within range and may have to dig out a shooting position BUT you can always withdraw if you need and it is easier to respawn if you get toasted
2. Tunelling - somedays you just dont want to get shot at and you feel like spending an hour digging a hole. Works well on POIs on wide flat areas and very well if it is on an island..get to the water quick and start digging. Use th bike if you can, a SV will sometimes pop above the surface if you die....Dont die

[Zuleica]

Originally posted by hound:

Two other ways
1. My favorite although it is a little tougher now with different armor on turrets. Find a POI near a mountain that you can land on the backside of..move around until you get in range of the turrets with the sniper rifle. Take out turrets one by one. You are usually within range and may have to dig out a shooting position BUT you can always withdraw if you need and it is easier to respawn if you get toasted
2. Tunelling - somedays you just dont want to get shot at and you feel like spending an hour digging a hole. Works well on POIs on wide flat areas and very well if it is on an island..get to the water quick and start digging. Use th bike if you can, a SV will sometimes pop above the surface if you die....Dont die

SVs always float now :(
I started off by tunneling but discovered i could have an SV capable of owning any POI by in-game day 3 or so.

[piddlefoot]

I like crispy Zirax troops for afternoon lunch, this game really needs a flame thrower !

[Dead Schism]

My personal favorite first SV is the ZeroG Copperhead-SE and SE2 after doing one small modification to the weapons. It's really just replacing the pulse lasers with gatling guns to get rid of any rare rescource cost and lower the level requirement to 10 rather than 15. Are there cheaper options out there? Sure. But none of them look as good and the Copperhead has some really good functionality to it haha. Another one I like to use is the ZeroG Mamba SE. Same modifications done to the weapons. Both are pretty cheap to build, look good, and function well for light combat and general survival use.

[moonracer]

If you are lucky/skilled you can take out a floor block at a hall corner near a spawner and pick off NPCs within looting range on foot with hardly any risk (since they can't navigate to you). I did this by accident on my first raid.

Also,
I haven't tested this, but I'm guessing it is the case and was going to mention it as far as balancing goes...

Do turrets track players/NPCs wqually as good as ships/drones? And if so would it make sense to make certain turrets better at tracking and hitting certain targets?

This would encourage different assault methods (going in on foot for some POIs would make more or less sense per POI). It would also mean you couldn't defend player bases with just one type of turret.

[Dead Schism]

As far as I can tell the turret AI is the same regardless of what type of turret is used. The only difference in effectiveness is the speed at which the ammo flies which is why its typically better to use miniguns and pulse lasers against fast movong SV's and typically something with a little more punch against CV's. Since the player character has very little health and is upgradeable in no way at all at the moment, minigun turrets would be your best option for fending off any infantry type assault. Since the addition of homing missiles, it does make them a little more practical to use in most situations but the rate of fire is considerably slower. Different turrets have different levels of effectiveness vs different targets depending on what you have them on. Personally I don't see any reason to put a flak gun on a base as it has a very high miss rate but on a CV it's a much different story against ground targets like bases and characters. Minigun, cannon, and laser turrets are great at tracking fast moving targets but do very little damage so unless you have alot of them, I would pair them up with something with a little more punch like homing missiles or even a suite of flak and plasma. Artillery turrets are absolutely horrible unless you manage to use them at max range and get the first hit in by total surprise. Otherwise with their rate of fire and very slow projectile speed it's a huge waste of ammo in the long run.

[Dead Schism]

And another thing. I know this doesn't belong here but I would really like it if they added an arc to the artillery gun making it the true, indirect fire weapon the name suggests.

[starbolins]

If I can't move in on foot in defolade and snipe the turrets out I'm not that interested in raiding that particular POI. Then I go back to my SV and poke a peek hole for my drone. Scope the layout and decide where to breach for a death-hole to farm the soldiers.