(COMBAT EXTENDED) How to Fight Mechanoids [1.1]

Overview

This guide will teach you how to effectively deal with mechanoids using Combat Extended.

Intro

Combat Extended (https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=1631756268) can vary in difficulty. It will give you easy tribal raids, then you’ll get destroyed by a mechanoid drop pod raid a couple days later. This walkthrough will outline how to deal with centipedes and how to not lose your entire colony to a centipede.

Fighting Non-Centipedes

Scythers, lancers, and Pikemen are singnificantly easier than Centipedes. Machine guns and armor piercing ammo or small arms such as assault rifles with armor piercing ammo can easily take down lightly armored mechanoids. Charged weapons and concentrated ammo are very powerful and can take down a lancer with 1 burst. EMP weapons such as EMP slugs, mortar shells, and grenades can stun all mechanoids and deal EMP burn damage. However, mechanoids will adapt to EMP attacks, disabling the stun. Explosives such as frag grenades, anti-tank launchers such as M72 LAW’s or a RPG will swiftly destroy smaller mechanoids. If you have the Royalty DLC, Plasmaswords have a ton of armor piercing and Zeushammers provide stuns. Equip your soliders with powered armor to make to allow them to carry more and resist most attacks.

Scythers can hack off your colonists limbs and severely injure or destroy your colonists vital organs. If they survive the first attacks, they’ll bleed out if you don’t give care right away. Kill them from afar using rifles, machine guns, and snipers.

Lancers will probably not kill you and are more annoying than anything with their long range. Either melee them or take them out from range.

Pikemen in the Royalty DLC are armed with 60mm cannons instead of a projectile launcher. They either come with HE, Incendiary or EMP. They are easy to take out with a machine gun or rifle and have limited ammo. Spread out your colonists to make them a harder target to hit and move your colonists out of the way when a shell is coming at them. Use guns to take them out fast or melee them, where they can’t shoot you.

Fighting Centipedes

Time to get on with the only part of this guide you were looking for. Centipedes are the single most dangerous thing in the entire mod. Their machine guns with tear through cataphract armor like a knife through butter. Inferno cannons will burn down half of your base with a shot. They have over 3500 12×64 charged rounds so you can’t just wait them out until they shoot every shot. They’ll decapitate several colonists with one burst.

There are many ways to deal with centipedes, some more effective than others. Using anti-material rifles and heavy machine guns with AP-I, HE, or Sabot rounds can penetrate centipede armor, which is as strong as power armor. Charged rifles still remain effective with concentrated rounds. Make sure to bring plenty of ammo with bulk and weight capacity allow it. Tactical vests, backpacks, and power armor increase bulk capacity. Powered armor and the movement stat affect your weight capacity.

High explosives and general anti-tank weapons are effective against centipedes. Use M72 LAW’s and mortars with HE shells if you have the range. If a colonists carries multiple M72’s, they will automatically pull out another one and fire it. However, they are quite bulky.

EMP weapons such as shotguns, mortars, and Zeushammers are still effective at stunning centipedes. They’ll also do burn damage and give you a chance to move or attack.

As outlined above, EMP will give you a chance to move/attack. Using armor isn’t very effective. One time, I had a guy wearing legendary quality cataphract armor and nearly died fighting a centipede. You can’t really out range it since it has a longer range than most weapons. There a couple methods to kill it before it kills you.

1. Don’t – If it’s a psychic/poison ship, you don’t need to deal with it right away. Arm your colonists with weapons that I’ve talked about above. Prepare defenses such as sandbags, heavy machine gun turrets, and some walls to hide behind.

2. Hide – Before it fires, hide behind a wall and turn off fire at will so the centipede will focus on something else. Then repeat. Colonists can’t move while firing a burst, so be cautious!

3. Bait – Use things for bait, such as turrets, animals, animals, and animals. Shoot the centipede while its focused on something else.

Conclusion

In conclusion, use armor piercing ammo and explosives. This was my first guide, so sorry if its kinda bad.