Large Demolishers

[Auron]

Best way to deal with these?

Seems like they have too much hp and regen for a normal "Turret Array" strategy to kill. I build some artillery, but it seems that the damage values of the artillery shells aren't nearly high enough to actually do anything to large demolishers. (I havent actually shot artillery at them yet, I'm just judging this off the written damage values)

Do I just need to nuke the hell out of them?

[Glyph]

Railgun

[Das Trojanische Pferd]

the big guys basiclly need railguns because you cant pump enough dmg with normal weapons.....

[Defektiv]

Same way you deal with big stompers, the railgun. It's pretty dumb that the railgun is locked behind research you can only do long after you are done with both of those planets.

[Auron]

Originally posted by Das Trojanische Pferd:

the big guys basiclly need railguns because you cant pump enough dmg with normal weapons.....

They even out heal nukes?

Originally posted by Defektiv:

Same way you deal with big stompers, the railgun. It's pretty dumb that the railgun is locked behind research you can only do long after you are done with both of those planets.

Kinda puts you on a bit of a time crunch after completing your first planet huh? Gotta get the railgun before you run out of resources on the other planets?

[Glyph]

Overlapping missile turrets will take out big stompers. And Vulcanus has plenty of space outside of big demolisher territory. You will not run out of resources.

[Defektiv]

Originally posted by Auron:

Originally posted by Defektiv:

Same way you deal with big stompers, the railgun. It's pretty dumb that the railgun is locked behind research you can only do long after you are done with both of those planets.

Kinda puts you on a bit of a time crunch after completing your first planet huh? Gotta get the railgun before you run out of resources on the other planets?

The problem I encountered was more specific with Gleba. On Vulcanus I was able to clear enough room using poison on the small demolishers to get that base up and running, and secure a couple of each deposit to keep me running for a bit. But once I engaged with Gleba it became a full time effort of babysitting the base from attacks and repairing, which is currently keeping me from going forward with Aquila and making the building of the resource raft to get there a slow process because I keep having to come back to Gleba to rebuild or clear enemies.

[kremlin]

Originally posted by Defektiv:

Originally posted by Auron:

Kinda puts you on a bit of a time crunch after completing your first planet huh? Gotta get the railgun before you run out of resources on the other planets?

The problem I encountered was more specific with Gleba. On Vulcanus I was able to clear enough room using poison on the small demolishers to get that base up and running, and secure a couple of each deposit to keep me running for a bit. But once I engaged with Gleba it became a full time effort of babysitting the base from attacks and repairing, which is currently keeping me from going forward with Aquila and making the building of the resource raft to get there a slow process because I keep having to come back to Gleba to rebuild or clear enemies.

Are you letting pentapod eggs spoil? They hatch instead of spoiling, attacks that seemingly come out of nowhere.

[Defektiv]

Originally posted by kremlin:

Originally posted by Defektiv:

The problem I encountered was more specific with Gleba. On Vulcanus I was able to clear enough room using poison on the small demolishers to get that base up and running, and secure a couple of each deposit to keep me running for a bit. But once I engaged with Gleba it became a full time effort of babysitting the base from attacks and repairing, which is currently keeping me from going forward with Aquila and making the building of the resource raft to get there a slow process because I keep having to come back to Gleba to rebuild or clear enemies.

Are you letting pentapod eggs spoil? They hatch instead of spoiling, attacks that seemingly come out of nowhere.

No, science total is monitored and if egg and science production stops because of too much stored science, their outputs are sent to a burner. And in the off chance eggs in the biochambers hatch, there are turrets and spidertrons standing there to delete them before they can do damage. And if they happen to hatch and happen to do damage before they are deleted, there are construction bots with repair packs standing by to repair and replace.

The problem I have is very specific to stompers, particularly the big ones. I have so many turrets set up but they just walk through everything and hit the power poles and take the defenses offline, or take out turrets and construction bots with their aoe so fast its not recoverable with all the redundancies I have in place. Tesla turrets are great for slowing them down but that doesn't matter when they have a health pool that lets them tank everything long enough to take out a pole or two and instantly compromise the entire thing. I'm currently using Teslas, laser turrets and gun turrets researched to tier 14 and walls, all with roboport support. I can't use rocket turrets outside of space ships because they do aoe damage as well and because the big stompers can tank everything long enough to get close, that means friendly fire damage. And railguns are locked behind Aquilo research.

[soulfreezer]

Originally posted by Defektiv:

I can't use rocket turrets outside of space ships because they do aoe damage as well and because the big stompers can tank everything long enough to get close, that means friendly fire damage. And railguns are locked behind Aquilo research.

I might be wrong here, I haven't tried rocket turret myself yet, but I was under the impression that rocket turrets will only do aoe damage if you load them with explosive rockets, regular rockets should be safe.

[Glyph]

Normal rockets have no aoe that I know of. Completely safe to use in most applications. Rocket turrets cannot do point-blank fire anyway and need normal turret coverage for things that get close.

[Defektiv]

Originally posted by soulfreezer:

Originally posted by Defektiv:

I can't use rocket turrets outside of space ships because they do aoe damage as well and because the big stompers can tank everything long enough to get close, that means friendly fire damage. And railguns are locked behind Aquilo research.

I might be wrong here, I haven't tried rocket turret myself yet, but I was under the impression that rocket turrets will only do aoe damage if you load them with explosive rockets, regular rockets should be safe.

That might be the case and I'll give them a try. But the one time I tried to sprinkle a few into my defensive lines it did not seem to make much of a difference, the big stompers got through no matter what. Admittedly I do not have much research into explosive technologies and maybe that would tip the scales a bit. But considering a single big stomper was able to walk straight through everything I have on the first attack, I didn't feel like it would make much of a difference. I'm already throwing so much at them. This is what one big stomper was able to walk through at 60% evolution.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3368838667

[Hurkyl]

And I think Artillery is unusually effective at dealing with the stomper threat.

You might think "Sure, I kill the base, but then I provoke an attack and get stomped all over".

When I watched one of these retaliatory attacks... the stompers did not just blitz my defenses. They got close, started inching their way towards the rocket turrets, and only started charging in after they got hit with the first volley.

So, my rocket turrets were getting a massive first strike advantage against them.

(and the artillery outposts are placed a ways away from the base, so even if they got run over, the attack would stop there, and they'd eventually go away)

I suspect there's a massive AI difference between "go after the source of spores" and "respond to an unprovoked attack" that makes the latter much easier to deal with.

(although, admittedly, I don't think I've caught a spore-provoked attack in action, so maybe they always behave that way)

[Das Trojanische Pferd]

Originally posted by Defektiv:

Same way you deal with big stompers, the railgun. It's pretty dumb that the railgun is locked behind research you can only do long after you are done with both of those planets.

well big stompers die easy to tesla you dont need railguns on gleba.....
also artillery that clears the pollen area is esential so you dont get the massiv attacks that just straight up stomp your defences....
this is what i have and its enough around my base on gleba and 1 artillery base close to the planting zones. https://imgur.com/a/defence-on-gleba-kObbN9D

[Defektiv]

Originally posted by Das Trojanische Pferd:

Originally posted by Defektiv:

Same way you deal with big stompers, the railgun. It's pretty dumb that the railgun is locked behind research you can only do long after you are done with both of those planets.

well big stompers die easy to tesla you dont need railguns on gleba.....
also artillery that clears the pollen area is esential so you dont get the massiv attacks that just straight up stomp your defences....
this is what i have and its enough around my base on gleba and 1 artillery base close to the planting zones. https://imgur.com/a/defence-on-gleba-kObbN9D

I experimented with them quite a bit after I get owned the first time. Tesla's are great at slowing big stompers but not at all at doing damage to them, even though it hits it multiple times in the legs. They certainly do not do enough damage to kill them before they close the short range distance on the normal quality turrets and destroy them. Railguns although the best damage I found, still take 2-3 hits from one gun to take down a single big stomper. Their large health pool combined with large aoe and ability to walk over anything creates a situation where they can overcome just about anything except large scale dps spam. And even then you get multiple big ones and its a roll of the dice.

[GAMING_Alligator]

Ship a few stacks of U-235 to Vulcanus and nuke 'em?