Rockets and landmines... Why?

[Maxwell Sinclair]

I'm genuinely curious as to why you should bother with these items or even any explosives based weapons at all. I ask because as the aliens evolve they seem to gain a natural resistance to explosives, and while you can hit a group, explosive weapons barely scratch them.

In my world I have the big creatures coming out, I don't think I've seen a Behemoth yet (Unless the blue ones are behemoths but I think they're just big biters.) But I set up landmines for the coolness factor rather than the actual damage, and despite running past at least 10 landmines most of them are hardly scratched and the turrets have to finish them off.

Likewise with the hives, the one reason I would use the rocket is to outrange the worms and blow them up, but they have explosives resistance too, especially the big worms that have something like 80% resistance.

So I ask again. Why bother with explosive based weapons?

[!?!]

Weapon balance is whack now, will be fixed in the coming patch. Hopefully.

[Maxwell Sinclair]

Originally posted by chris:

Weapon balance is whack now, will be fixed in the coming patch. Hopefully.

Considering how powerful the flamethrower is. I'm not surprised.

[Horoai]

^Both these answers are spot on.

The only explosive weapon worth a damn are cluster grenades. Those can actually kill stuff and you can throw them while firing a weapon so all of it is bonus DPS.

[Ultra]

Originally posted by Maxwell Sinclair:

I'm genuinely curious as to why you should bother with these items or even any explosives based weapons at all. I ask because as the aliens evolve they seem to gain a natural resistance to explosives, and while you can hit a group, explosive weapons barely scratch them.

In my world I have the big creatures coming out, I don't think I've seen a Behemoth yet (Unless the blue ones are behemoths but I think they're just big biters.) But I set up landmines for the coolness factor rather than the actual damage, and despite running past at least 10 landmines most of them are hardly scratched and the turrets have to finish them off.

Likewise with the hives, the one reason I would use the rocket is to outrange the worms and blow them up, but they have explosives resistance too, especially the big worms that have something like 80% resistance.

So I ask again. Why bother with explosive based weapons?

I dont think that they gain a resistance to explovsives as they evolve. Sure harder enemies might have higher resistance to explosives, I dont know. But they also have higher resistance to evrything else as well. The problem is how upgrades scale in comparison to biter evolution. The bonus from research is tiny compared to the biter evolution. For that reason the SMG becomes useless as well later on. I dont know if you have destroyer capsules yet but I highly recomend those. As well as flamethrower. If this still is not enough you can allways turretcreep.

[Horoai]

Originally posted by Ultra:

I dont think that they gain a resistance to explovsives as they evolve. Sure harder enemies might have higher resistance to explosives, I dont know. But they also have higher resistance to evrything else as well.

No they don't. There is no laser or fire resistance.

[Ultra]

Originally posted by Yggdrasil:

Originally posted by Ultra:

I dont think that they gain a resistance to explovsives as they evolve. Sure harder enemies might have higher resistance to explosives, I dont know. But they also have higher resistance to evrything else as well.

No they don't. There is no laser or fire resistance.

Oh okay my misstake

[Maxwell Sinclair]

Biter Evolution doesn't grow their resistances to everything. I'd actually like a mechanic where "The more I murder them with a flamethrower, the more they grow a natural resistance to fire." but such an evolution would take generations and require a hive mind like mentality among the creatures so they'd know when nests were being burned.

This would also make protracted games quite difficult as the aliens would develop a resistance to everything. However, when bites evolve their resistances do change, usually increasing.

For example. Medium biters have a -50% resistance to fire, making them incredibly weak to fire, the Big biters do not have this resistance, however they can actually be set on fire, which seems to slow them down and deal damage over time even when they're not standing directly in fire.

Big biters also have a higher resistance to explosives and physical damage than smaller ones, as do bigger worms compared to smaller ones, with Big Worms having an 80% resistance to explosive damage. Meaning they block or ignore roughly 80% of explosive damage.

Considering the rocket deals something like 60+12 explosive damage, they end up dealing around 20 damage or less to big worms, which have somewhere over 500 health in my experience.


Compare this to the flamethrower, which does low initial damage, but the fire it leaves on the ground for about 6 seconds, deals something like 60 damage per second, and they have no resistance to it.

[AlexMBrennan]

such an evolution would [...] require a hive mind like mentality among the creatures so they'd know when nests were being burned.

I think Darwin would disagree with you on that...

[Maxwell Sinclair]

Originally posted by AlexMBrennan:

such an evolution would [...] require a hive mind like mentality among the creatures so they'd know when nests were being burned.

I think Darwin would disagree with you on that...

Evolution doesn't typically happen at a rapid rate. It requires generations upon generations and thousands of years. The reason I say it would require a hive mind mentality is because the evolution would need to happen over a course of mere hours or days and it would need to affect creatures who hadn't yet experienced burning in fire.

It wouldn't be an evolution so much as an adaptation. Otherwise the creatures would not develop resistances to fire because every single one that experienced the fire would end up dead. Thereby halting the process of evolution.

As I said, more of an adaptation really, but the game calls their changes evolution so. Evolution is what I called it.

[Horoai]

Originally posted by Maxwell Sinclair:

It wouldn't be an evolution so much as an adaptation. Otherwise the creatures would not develop resistances to fire because every single one that experienced the fire would end up dead. Thereby halting the process of evolution.

That's not how evolution works.

But enemies gradually growing immune to all your weapon systems sounds like a terrible idea gameplay wise.

[Mr. Iron]

Ok so im more of a noob in this game i never have finished the game nor have i even managed to stabalize energy production now that i am using lots of robots... but anyways, the only way landmines coudl be slightly effective is too take off any smaller biters that are weaker to it, so your turrets can focus more on the heavies. I honestly think rockets are just stupid but i got mods out the wazoo adding in rocket turrets, cannon turrets, howzriterz (i cant spell it) and mods that add in new rocket types! These are difficult to make but they in some ways can balance you out better with those over sized mutated ♥♥♥♥♥.


I got like 3 mods adding in indecary rockets, acid rockets (super hard to make) behemoth rockets, and a bunch of scatter rockets too lol.

[AlexMBrennan]

the only way landmines coudl be slightly effective is too take of any smaller biters that are weaker to it, so your turrets can focus more on the heavies

That might make sense if high damage, low rate of fire defences were ever added (e.g. sniper turrets) where wasting an attack on weak enemies would matter more.

[Mr. Iron]

Originally posted by AlexMBrennan:

the only way landmines coudl be slightly effective is too take of any smaller biters that are weaker to it, so your turrets can focus more on the heavies

That might make sense if high damage, low rate of fire defences were ever added (e.g. sniper turrets) where wasting an attack on weak enemies would matter more.

Or a logistics setting to turrets

Ex: engage farthest enemy, strongest, weakest...

[Maxwell Sinclair]

So far I think I have worked out a single use for landmines. Based on my current setup.

The mines are laid out so that the biters have to run over them well before they enter turret range. While the damage is minor, they run past 10+ mines at a time, so the chip damage stacks up. Ultimately all the mines really equate to however, is each turret spending less time shooting at each enemy.

The landmines are by no means an effective defense on their own. But when used to chip away health before turrets, they seem to help with ammo conservation or power draw limitations.

Originally posted by Mantis Shrimp:

Ok so im more of a noob in this game i never have finished the game nor have i even managed to stabalize energy production

Lots of accumulators to store a charge in case of brownouts.
Either. Huge solar farms, laid out in an efficient manner. Or a LOT of steam engines.

The solar farms require a lot of space and are very material heavy. the layout I have is a perfect little blueprint that makes a massive square. It features one roboport right at the center, 151 accumulators, 16 substations and 150 solar panels. Each one takes up one tile less than the size of the orange logistics square provided by robots. The blueprints are designed to be slotted together.

Currently I run 4 of these and some miscellaneous solar panels at my outposts, with everything plugged into one main grid.

Overall I can satisfy something along the lines of... You know I'm genuinely unsure what the total is. But something like 60kw x 600. The accumulators also number so many that they can hold a charge that runs the entire factory through an entire night cycle for about half of the total stored energy.

[Horoai]

Originally posted by Maxwell Sinclair:

The landmines are by no means an effective defense on their own. But when used to chip away health before turrets, they seem to help with ammo conservation or power draw limitations.

That's what I tried at first as well. Before the flamethrower turret they were the only static defense with area damage so something along those lines as probably their intended purpose.
However, I kinda doubt that the math behind constantly replacing all those expensive mines adds up to actual savings. Might be wrong but I doubt it.