Aliens/Respawn and You (Or me)

[TGS]

Okay I've been playing for awhile now and I want to say that I really love the game, I love the concepts employed and I really love the 'infinite map' but something I've been noticing that has been really annoying me and I've just hit it worse than ever in my current running game of 24 hours. I've run out of viable available copper. Now early on when I had gotten a few decent weapons there was a path I wanted to take to get to some more resources that took me away from a forest as I didn't wanna cut through the forest cause driving through it is frustrating in the car.

Now as the topic suggests I am running up against a massive problem with the aliens and alien bases. They are simply too powerful and I cannot figure out a proper way to assault them. The biters actually seem to respawn within seconds of luring them away. I was going to try a hit and run tactic with my rockets to take down the spawner. Was going well except I was getting an increasing number of biters chasing me. Even setup a laser turret trap to try to wittle them down. It was working except then I realised that the spawner was actually regenerating as well. So after wasting 20 rockets I gave up.

So okay the problem is how the hell are you supposed to really progress late into the game now? I cannot get to any copper because there are spawner bases everywhere and I am unable to take them down. Any tips would be greatly appreciated. I love the change to the pollution system where they only attack based off that. I love the fact that they are all over the place, but I'm struggling to figure out how to take them down so that I can get to resources. Especially with the worms. The worms do way too much damage.

Edit: Oh and I wish to say that I don't really want to have to alter game settings to make the game more playable or enjoyable. I actually want to learn/know how to actually survive and thrive and combat them as they are. I've gotten the defense part down for the most part. But I can't seem to expand at all due to the fact that there are spawners everywhere. And you can't even scout around because as soon as you pull some they seem to chase you indefinitely until they kill you so the only way to survive it seems to be to be loaded to the brim with weapons or lead them to a gauntlet/deathtrap of turrets and try not to die.

[FreeER]

The safest way, advance towards the spawner using walls and laser turrets. I usually use 20 (but 5 can be effective) and enough walls to wrap around the turret. And make sure that you have the best armor (it stacks to 10 btw, until the modular armor) and a stack of fish
You can try a car, but if it gets destroyed you'll be standing in the middle of an enemy base lol.
You can do hit and run attack using enough turrets to kill the biters when they run after you, but by then it's easier to do 1. Once you are farther in the research you get some robots that can distract enemy fire so you can fire a bit without getting hit, but until then...armor fish and turrets.

edit: Use piercing ammo ASAP, The shotgun can deal more damage but since you have to aim I usually stick with the smg until I can get the rocket (even then it's my primary). The flamethrower is fairly effective if you can make the ammo but not as good as 5-20 laser turrets.

[TGS]

The safest way, advance towards the spawner using walls and laser turrets. I usually use 20 (but 5 can be effective) and enough walls to wrap around the turret. And make sure that you have the best armor (it stacks to 10 btw, until the modular armor) and a stack of fish
You can try a car, but if it gets destroyed you'll be standing in the middle of an enemy base lol.
You can do hit and run attack using enough turrets to kill the biters when they run after you, but by then it's easier to do 1. Once you are farther in the research you get some robots that can distract enemy fire so you can fire a bit without getting hit, but until then...armor fish and turrets.

edit: Use piercing ammo ASAP, The shotgun can deal more damage but since you have to aim I usually stick with the smg until I can get the rocket (even then it's my primary). The flamethrower is fairly effective if you can make the ammo but not as good as 5-20 laser turrets.

Ah see this is really good advice. Sadly in my current save I'm playing (~24 hours) I think I stuffed up big time in that I didn't focus at all on military and I've run out of copper. So now I am stuck without enough arms to tackle the spawners and not enough turrets either. The only copper anywhere seems to be too close to the spawners. Though I might see if I can scout around. I don't really like that the optimal 'offensive' strategy is building turrets up to the spawners lol. Makes sense though sadly.

[ssilk]

Exactly as my problems. I'm in a state of game, where they builded "cities". One is directly near copper, I need it. Their city is about 100 tiles.

I tried the laser tower strategy. They run over a battery of 70 level 3 lasers.

I tried that once more with more walls, but that time my power goes out and I had about 60% overproduction and my accus where normally only 50% empty at he end of a night.

So this two tips: upgraded lasers/walls and having enough power left or start fight at day.

BTW: I tried it really with combat robots and so on, but that's absolutely not my thing. I always mix up the keys, then I hit E and game over.


Well. Currently they reproduce faster, than I can kill them. Looks like a epic fight. But if I had a wish I would say artillery, because that's my most liked strategy.

[TGS]

Exactly as my problems. I'm in a state of game, where they builded "cities". One is directly near copper, I need it. Their city is about 100 tiles.

I tried the laser tower strategy. They run over a battery of 70 level 3 lasers.

I tried that once more with more walls, but that time my power goes out and I had about 60% overproduction and my accus where normally only 50% empty at he end of a night.

So this two tips: upgraded lasers/walls and having enough power left or start fight at day.

BTW: I tried it really with combat robots and so on, but that's absolutely not my thing. I always mix up the keys, then I hit E and game over.


Well. Currently they reproduce faster, than I can kill them. Looks like a epic fight. But if I had a wish I would say artillery, because that's my most liked strategy.

Yeah I've been trying this advice and so far I've gotta say it isn't working. Basically they start running towards you before you can get close enough and literally the pack that you pulled respawns within about 2-5 seconds of you pulling them which then pulls them again rinse & repeat until you are dead. I burned through 100kJ of reserve power just TRYING to get close to them. The robots don't really seem to survive long enough on even a small spawner to be of much use. I really think what this comes down to is a few things. 1. The creepers/spawners are simply way WAY too powerful against the player. 2. They respawn way WAY too fast. 3. There are simply too many of them and often times their nests are spawned extremely close together heavily defended by worms. 4. There really is no viable strategy for taking them down that makes sense.

And no 'building fortified towers' is not really a viable strategy. That is a TD concept not an offensive concept. There really needs to be some form of offensive option to deal with these things. I mean this save I am playing I am not 'low' tech. I'm relatively high tech. I don't have the military stuff maxed out nor do I have the ability to max it out due to lack of resources to throw into the science packs. So I'm in a stuck position. While I would understand that a long range 'artillery' might be OP and essentially an iwin button... there really does need to be something... and/or there needs to be some sort of cap or progressive cooldown on the bloody respawn. I'd say for each respawn group there needs to be like a 50%-100% increased cooldown. So say 1 second the first spawn then 2 second the second then 4 second cooldown on the third then an 8 second on the fourth so on and so fourth that way the player actually has time to wittle down their health. Keeping in mind that the bastards do seem to regenerate.

This cooldown could reset after 30-60 seconds of no trigger. That means if you are forced to retreat you will reset the cooldown sequence after awhile. I really love this game and I like the concept of the aliens even in their current OP form. What I don't like is the fact that there really seems to be no viable offensive option for dealing with them. I mean you shouldn't have to get to level 3-5 of your military to take ONE nest down. What's weird is in another game I actually was able to take a few down because they didn't have the worms. But one base with worms AND creeper spawns and I can't get close enough to do anything really.

[kovarex]

There are several hints I can give you.
The most important probably is, that if you played for 24 hours without researching any military to be able to expand, you made strategic mistake, and the game punished you for that.
Using laser turrets to beat enemy base is probably the easiest way, but to be honest we don't like it very much.

It depends on the phase of the game and size of the enemy base, in the early stage, once you get to piercing bullets with at least decent upgrades, you can easily kill small bases (1 to 3 spawneres) with just submachine gun and heavy armor, it can help in the start to get some alien artefacts for research as well as establish larger area.

In the midgame (rockets, car), I use car to circle around enemies and killing spawners with rockets, rockets have damage 60 now, and with few upgrades it can be above 100 so, few hits is enough for spawner.
In the midgame, the basic gun robots are also handy, but you have to upgrade the bullet attack to make them more usable as well as follower robot count, but this will come handy in late game anyway.
And don't forget the slow down capsules, these are quite easy to get, and are very useful.

In late game, the best weapon is destroyer robots, these are easy to use (they last for 2 minutes, one capsule makes 5 of these).
When upgraded they have 20 laser damage, and once you can have more than just a few, they become deadly force that can help you to go through enemy bases really easily.
These are quite expensive to make (especially without productivity modules), but it will help you to get much more resources for gathering to use.

[TGS]

There are several hints I can give you.
The most important probably is, that if you played for 24 hours without researching any military to be able to expand, you made strategic mistake, and the game punished you for that.
Using laser turrets to beat enemy base is probably the easiest way, but to be honest we don't like it very much.

It depends on the phase of the game and size of the enemy base, in the early stage, once you get to piercing bullets with at least decent upgrades, you can easily kill small bases (1 to 3 spawneres) with just submachine gun and heavy armor, it can help in the start to get some alien artefacts for research as well as establish larger area.

In the midgame (rockets, car), I use car to circle around enemies and killing spawners with rockets, rockets have damage 60 now, and with few upgrades it can be above 100 so, few hits is enough for spawner.
In the midgame, the basic gun robots are also handy, but you have to upgrade the bullet attack to make them more usable as well as follower robot count, but this will come handy in late game anyway.
And don't forget the slow down capsules, these are quite easy to get, and are very useful.

In late game, the best weapon is destroyer robots, these are easy to use (they last for 2 minutes, one capsule makes 5 of these).
When upgraded they have 20 laser damage, and once you can have more than just a few, they become deadly force that can help you to go through enemy bases really easily.
These are quite expensive to make (especially without productivity modules), but it will help you to get much more resources for gathering to use.

Sounds like maybe it is a combo of me being unlucky as well as my lower tech. I DO have military tech. The problem is that almost every spawner near me has at least 2-3 worms and even with my shielded basic modular armor the worms coupled with the biters make short work of me and it seems to be hard for me to even get close to the spawners before I end up dead.

I will try some different strategies but it really does seem like the issue might be with the respawns and the worms for me. I will keep trying though, it sounds like perhaps I probably shouldn't be having that much trouble but am for some reason. I'll keep trying because I really do want to get to the point where I have a viable strategy for these things.

[kovarex]

I believe that the rocket launcher should have slightly bigger range, to be able to kill medium worms without getting in their range.

[ssilk]

Using laser turrets to beat enemy base is probably the easiest way, but to be honest we don't like it very much.

I don't like it either. I mean this kind of attack should have in far, far future an alternative. But currently there are just too much ways to get into a dead end - especially with low resources this is very easy. So when you took the wrong path, you soon come to a point, where it's really difficult to do this without laser turrets.

For example the whole modular ammo is an own game in game, but it was/is quite difficult for me to find out, what it changes and what are good combinations.

So I think currently compareability of the equipment is an important TODO-point.

[Nova]

Use the combat shootgun with piercing munition. Some upgrades and this weapons tears even big worms down. But you need some modular armor for it: portable fusion generator with ca. 5 mobile mk II shields. Firstly concentrate on the spawner: Get in, a few shoots for a spawner, and retreat back to regenarate your shields. Use the exo skeleton to run a bit faster than the biters.

Using laser turrets is still better, if you have the energy.

[TGS]

Using laser turrets to beat enemy base is probably the easiest way, but to be honest we don't like it very much.

I don't like it either. I mean this kind of attack should have in far, far future an alternative. But currently there are just too much ways to get into a dead end - especially with low resources this is very easy. So when you took the wrong path, you soon come to a point, where it's really difficult to do this without laser turrets.

For example the whole modular ammo is an own game in game, but it was/is quite difficult for me to find out, what it changes and what are good combinations.

So I think currently compareability of the equipment is an important TODO-point.

Yeah the funny part is I have laser turrets but that doesn't really seem viable to me as there is a pretty 'clear' range where I am too close and biters start coming at me but placing just out of that range and the strategy is really only viable for hitting and running the biters not the worms. The biters will be on top of me before I can get to the worms and having 10 biters on me kills me pretty quick.

Use the combat shootgun with piercing munition. Some upgrades and this weapons tears even big worms down. But you need some modular armor for it: portable fusion generator with ca. 5 mobile mk II shields. Firstly concentrate on the spawner: Get in, a few shoots for a spawner, and retreat back to regenarate your shields. Use the exo skeleton to run a bit faster than the biters.

Using laser turrets is still better, if you have the energy.

I don't have a fusion generator nor do I have the resources to research this. Honestly I never thought of this game as a 'military' focused game. I enjoy progressing through the factory side first, and I do intend to get to the military side but I found myself out of copper before I was able to invest in that. I guess what I'm getting at is that it seems to require pretty high end military tech to even attempt taking down spawners. Unless you're lucky and you have a bunch of spawners around that have no worms.

I believe that the rocket launcher should have slightly bigger range, to be able to kill medium worms without getting in their range.

Please yes. This would make things so much more practical. I mean you'd still be getting attacked by biters. But then I could build myself a protective row of laser turrets to take down the biters while I myself focus on taking down the worms. I love the rockets. In one game I was able to hit and run over about 2-3 minutes to take a spawner down but in this latest game for some reason it just isn't working. It could be the fact that the worms are literally between me and the spawner. That and aiming at the spawner with rockets at high speed to avoid being ripped apart seems to be difficult for me. So yeah that would be really really good. Or perhaps have some sort of siege weapon that was designed for this purpose that had maybe +2 range of the worms. But I guess the question then would be, do all the worms have the same range?

[syneris]

Put your first grouping of turret a bit out of biter attack range. Then have the biters attack you and run/drive circles around your turrets. The biters will ignore the turrets shooting at them and focus on you. Place more turrets and repeat until you can edge your way up to where your turrets can handle the biter waves. If you start losing a lot of turrets, bring you turret wall back out of range or try to take aggro.

I'm not sure if spawners have a stock of biters in reserve or if they just spawn things with fixed conditions. It seems to me that after killing a few waves, you end up having an easier time.

[TGS]

Put your first grouping of turret a bit out of biter attack range. Then have the biters attack you and run/drive circles around your turrets. The biters will ignore the turrets shooting at them and focus on you. Place more turrets and repeat until you can edge your way up to where your turrets can handle the biter waves. If you start losing a lot of turrets, bring you turret wall back out of range or try to take aggro.

I'm not sure if spawners have a stock of biters in reserve or if they just spawn things with fixed conditions. It seems to me that after killing a few waves, you end up having an easier time.

This is great, except it isn't the biters that are the problem. I could handle just biters. It's the worms that give me trouble. When you have 3+ worms all firing on you at once it tends to drop your car pretty quick.

[slpwnd]

Put your first grouping of turret a bit out of biter attack range. Then have the biters attack you and run/drive circles around your turrets. The biters will ignore the turrets shooting at them and focus on you. Place more turrets and repeat until you can edge your way up to where your turrets can handle the biter waves. If you start losing a lot of turrets, bring you turret wall back out of range or try to take aggro.

I'm not sure if spawners have a stock of biters in reserve or if they just spawn things with fixed conditions. It seems to me that after killing a few waves, you end up having an easier time.

This is great, except it isn't the biters that are the problem. I could handle just biters. It's the worms that give me trouble. When you have 3+ worms all firing on you at once it tends to drop your car pretty quick.

I personally use the combat robots when fighting the bases. Especially in combination with other capsules (slowdown, poison) - to handle the biters. The worms shoot at my combat robots and in the meantime I can make a lot of damage with the rocket launcher.

[syneris]

Laser turrets have a longer range than small worms. For medium and big worms you can place turrets in range and then pick them up after a few shots. Picking up turrets to instantly heal them is cheesy, but you're short of resources.