Hey all, As I'm about to attack a Level 6 shielded Zirax Drone Base, I thought I'd ask how people generally go about this. For me, any unshielded POI generally goes as follows: I use a Tank. In essence that means a shielded HV with an Artillery Turret fitted and I manually fire this weapon while trying to stay outside of the POI's turret range. The Tank will usually also have a Minigun Turret or two to ward off Drones, but equally it will be quite nimble to retreat if needed. When it comes to a shielded POI of course, that Artillery Turret is useless, I need something to take down the shields first. As a result, with the previously mentioned HV being pretty nimble, I'll add some fixed lasers too it and burn through the shield while dodging like a crazy person. This works reasonably well but it quite slow and it's easy to get caught out - usually by getting randomly snagged on terrain, due to an HV's poor terrain-hugging ability. In the past I've use SV's armed with Lasers, performing strafing runs against the POI's shields, then switching to rockets to take out the turret. Fun and quite exciting. The final way I've taken out shielded POI's is with an armoured (in case shields drop) CV built for the purpose. This is often the least effective way - especially if you calculate the build cost vs. time taken variable - but can be fun in a lazy way. Note: I generally play the Reforged Eden scenario, so things can be a little more tricky than in vanilla. Anyway, interested to hear how others approach shielded POI's... As an aside, I've always found it a shame that every single block is protected if a shield is up. So, doors and internal sentries are effectively immune to small arms fire. So, no daring raid to take out the shield generator in most cases. Shame. I did propose, back in the very early days of shields, that perhaps doors and Sentries should not gain the benefits of a shield, to allow an on-foot raid to be an option. Note: I have in the past taken out a shielded POI on foot, by using Explosive charges that were, at the time, rather effective vs. a shield.
I just don't, or I use modded weapons. I don't like the way POIs are done in some cases, and the Drone Bases are the perfect examples. To take out the main "enemy base" on any planet should - in my view - require major firepower, or some story-related alternative way to disable/ destroy it. When you mention that it's "a shame that every single block is protected if a shield is up" I agree 100% and many suggestions have been made on how the shields should work, or how POIs could be made so this doesn't always require a brute power frontal assault.
For shielded POIs, usually I look for a way to use the terrain to my advantage in an SV equipped with either Plasma Cannons or Laser Cannons depending on whether it's vanilla or in Reforged Eden. I've generally found that attempting to take on a shielded POI without such an advantage just becomes a long slog of either trying to circle around it without getting hit or trying to rush in and dive below the gun depression and fire on it from the ground right in front of the building. The latter tactic doesn't prove effective if there's any significant ground troops present with RFE. To me there just isn't an in between where you can do much else. I also find trying to use an HV tank to be far less effective because they get stuck on every little thing. Even when the trees and shrubs can be knocked down by the force of you ramming into them. Plus with RFE I've found it's nearly impossible to construct one with sufficient firepower to do any real damage before you run out of CPU.
That's pretty much what I do. In vanilla I have a T4 SV with 8 pulse lasers (block limits are off, cpu and weight is on), 4 unguided rocket launchers, and a shield. The SV is nimble enough to dodge the plasma turrets which seem to be the ones that do the most shield damage. I have never been able to successfully dodge their other turrets, but if it's only one they can be face tanked for a bit. With the SVs shield regeneration being so high I can usually just fly into range and open up with the pulse lasers while dodging, back off when shields get low then fly up a second time and finish off the shields. Then it's just a matter of shooting rockets into the Zirax turrets. If the terrain is favorable, I just nose up until I can see a part of the Zirax base that is showing but has no turret facing that direction to take out the shields. I gave up on HVs over a year ago. Last time I used a HV the shields were down before I could even get into range, then the explosion radius from the Zirax turrets would damage stuff behind two layers of combat steel causing internal explosions even though the armor was not breached. And any shots to the armored cockpit would cause character damage. I think those things have been fixed, but other than cutting trees for early fuel it seems as though HVs are now obsolete. I haven't tried yet in RFE, just started playing RFE and am still learning about it. I do know my T4 SV I use in vanilla would get slaughtered by a base though .
Thanks for the replies all, much appreciated. I did play around for a bit last night but, as expected, HV physics is a little too broken to allow any degree of reliable manoeuvring around the target. Even things the HV easily knocks over causes weird excessive physics to happen. Funny how my giant multi mega-tonne CV gets bounced around in the same way too when it dares land on a tree - I got insta-flipped last night, landing not far from the POI. It looks like a vessel suddenly loses ALL mass when the "oh, you hit a tree and it broke" event occurs. Even if I avoid trees etc. - the HV really is rather nimble, it's not hard - it still doesn't adjust to the terrain so will regularly snag. That combined with the fast shot speed of this POI's laser turrets - it has lots of them - makes it not fun. In the end, I thought "outside the box" so to speak, sorta had to as the box is somewhat broken lol. So, what I did was as follows... My CV was parked just out of range of the Drone Base's turrets, next to a crashed CV I wanted to salvage, but it was in range so would have to wait. The Drone Base, along with spawning a new Troop Transport every couple of minutes, seemed to also be generating various Drones regularly too. My CV's guns were near constantly occupied shooting these down. I had to pop away from the game a couple of times, so saved and exited to desktop rather than pause. Upon reloading each time, around eight or nine drones instantly respawned in a big clump...that was fun, CV could handle it though. With my immediate location being safe - CV providing excellent air cover - I set about gauging the precise range of the Drone Base's turrets while on foot. I then carefully used the T2 Drill to lay down some terrain cover so I could work without worrying about taking fire. I then placed one of my own stock Blueprints for a small turret base. Basically I have a set of dead basic, single turret Bases I can set down. I chose the unarmed one as I didn't have one for RE Laser Turrets, which I planned to use. I placed the base down and it didn't immediately come under fire as it was powered off. This gave me time to place a turret, configure it and fuel the new BA ready to go. I checked LoS of the Laser Turret, it could easily see all of the Drone Base's Turrets that were a threat - though I couldn't turn it with the power off of course. Standing outside this mini Base, T2 Multi-tool in hand in repair mode, I turn on the power... Immediately, and I mean immediately - no turret delay - the Drone Base opens fire on the mini base. However, my Laser Turret doesn't fire. It's configured correctly, Bases + Turrets, but it's not shooting. I power down the mini-base and wait until the Drone Base stops shooting, repairing the Turret as needed. After some testing, and nearly losing the turret, I've fallen foul of classic Empyrion collision detection. Despite my turret having clear LoS any shots I fire manually from the Laser turret hit, well, nothing in front of it. However, that "nothing" doesn't block the fire from the Drone Base *sigh* I make some very slight adjustment to my terrain wall, lowering it by like a foot or so. After more testing this allows my Turret to fire. With things ready...again, I set things going once more. My Turret is attacking the Drone Base, targetting Turrets but currently just lowering the shield of course. I'm standing there, behind the terrain wall, repairing the turret as needed. Had a couple of hairy moments when I had to pause my repairs to first (remotely) snag some more Multi-tool charges and again to queue up, then later transfer, more Laser Turret ammo. I kept on top of the repairs though. After a surprisingly long time and while the shields were down, my Laser Turret had yet to destroy any of the Drone Base's Turrets. I'd confirmed the shots were hitting, so I wasn't sure what was wrong. Perhaps another collision mesh issue? I powered down the mini base, waited for the Drone Base to stop firing and investigated. A cunning plan forming... Could I perhaps exploit the collision mesh issue to my own advantage? Would it be possible to tweak that terrain cover a little bit more so that while the Turret could not fire autonomously, I could manually fire it and hit the Drone Base's Turrets? The answer was YES, so that's exactly what I did. I raised the terrain cover ever so slightly and powered on the mini base. Sure enough while my turret didn't fire - even though it visually had LoS like before - nor did the Drone Base's Turrets. I took control of the Laser Turret directly and, while I couldn't shoot the Drone Base anywhere I wanted, I could just shoot the top of each turret. I proceeded to do exactly that. The first, closest, Turret fell quite quickly, so it evidently was almost dead and would have been if I'd left the turret firing autonomously for another thirty second or so. Each other turret took about two and a half clips to destroy, but destroy them I did. Main Turrets on the Drone Base - at least those that pointed in my direction (all but one it turned out) were taken care of. Sitting in the Laser Turret, zoomed right in, I could not see any Sentry Turrets, though I fully expected there to be some. Exiting the Turret, I switched to my T2 Sniper Rifle to zoom in on the target. Sure enough, as I zoom in, several Sentry Turrets pop in to existence, darn you short render range. I cannot get close enough to actually use the Sniper Rifle to take them out so, I simply remember where they are and pop back into the Laser Turret and fire at the appropriate areas. A couple of minutes later and I've been witness to four separate explosions which the Sniper Rifle's scope confirms were the sentries. I had been concerned that perhaps the Drone Base's shields would begin to recharge once I stopped firing, my plan being to set the turret to target Generators - perhaps shaving a little more off the Terrain wall if LoS was an issue - the side-effect of that being to keep the shields down of course. However, that wasn't needed, surprisingly as the shields were not recharging as I've seen with some other POI's. This is a pretty high-end Level 6 Drone Base, of a design I'd never seen before. Time to assault the Drone Base on foot! I equip my best gear, advanced Heavy Armour, lots of boosts. Zirax version of the AR, Grenade Launcher and set off. This POI has a large opening in the roof, so I can just drop down into it. That would have been suicide though as the place is swarming with lots of Zirax Troops, Robots and one of those giant Mechs, as well as Sentry Turrets. I lob some grenades in there to take out some clustered troops and proceed to snipe the Sentry Turrets from cover. I dodge, and duck (yay!) to avoid fire and, eventually clear the area, including the giant Mech. Time to proceed deeper into the POI, after some lever flipping to open some shutter doors... Delving deeper into the POI, well, this place was nuts. I was assaulted by LOADS of units, but they were clumped together so the grenade launcher did it's thing. Well, that was several grenade launchers as they kept wearing out! Used the Zirax AR to take out some sentries, thought the gun was broken for a moment as it appeared to be dealing zero damage. However, it turned out to be another "perfect LoS doesn't mean you can hit it, even if it can hit you" thing. Used up a few more bandages than I should have on that one. Delving even deeper into the POI I hit a block. I simply could not kill units fast enough, the respawn rate was crazy. I'd scouted ahead and could see where I needed to take out three spawn pads that were churning out those laser Robots. However, not a moment after I killed the latest batch of these guys and approached the spawners, another batch spawned in. Crazy high rate. Add to that random Zirax Troops appearing from other doors, plus some invisible spawners dropping guys right behind me when I walked in a certain spot, things were tough. After wearing out three Grenade Launchers, one Zirax AR (it vanished, cannot be repaired) and a tonne of meds, it was time to rethink. I knew this room I was trying to secure was at the (I assume) bottom of the Drone Base and up against the south wall. So, I stepped outside the box again... I built a little SV with four Gatlings and two Rocket Launchers. I then took my mining SV and dug a hole to the desired location, assuring that the other SV would have room to manoeuvre. I then took the new SV down and punched a hole in the wall, in exactly the right spot. I almost came unstuck when a load of those laser robots burst from the hole I'd made, but switching to rockets took care of them. I proceeded to widen the hole a bit and ensure that all visible spawners were down in the immediate area. I then exited the cockpit and sent the Drone in to scout around. The area appeared secure but there was a close shutter door blocking my path. Back into the SV, shutter door destroyed....then the troops that flooded out lol. Scouting again using the Drone, I spotted the Core just before the drone got destroyed. I decided to go in on foot. Entering the area I had some Sentry Turrets to take out - again falling foul of the "I can hit you, you can't hit me" collision issues, which was a pain. However, it was then I noticed two things. Firstly, the core was behind both the heavy glass blocks and blast door blocks, I assume a release lever was somewhere. Secondly, and more important, there was another of those giant Mechs here, no way can I face that on foot with my current equipment. Out of the box I pop once more. Now, I know where the Core is, but it behind several layers of Combat Steel before I even get to the heavy glass and blast doors. I queue up some more Gatling Ammo, transfer it to the SV and get on with the job. I shoot through those Combat Steel blocks, take out the glass and blow the Core. Yes! I then manage to get LoS on the giant Mech and shoot it until it explodes. Satisfaction achieved. Armed with a fresh Core, I head back inside. Being careful as there are still a LOT of enemies around. I clear out a couple of remaining Zirax troops that were hugging the walls and place my core. Immediately, I hear laser sentries firing taking out most of the remaining enemies. Nice. All that was left was to loot and salvage, which I did. Fun POI. It would have been a LOT easier with two players doing this, alone it was a little tricky, meaning I couldn't take it in what I imagine was the way the designer intended. Still, POI is dead, I win, you suck Zirax lol. So, that's what I did to tackle this tough, shielded POI. It worked pretty well.
That all sounds pretty complicated. I haven't attacked a drone base in a while, but my standard procedure is pretty simple. I have a powerful T4 SV with maximum multiplayer armament and very powerful front engines. The basis of the entire tactic is the fact that POI turrets cannot shoot vertically upwards and none of the clever builders have come up with the idea of building a few turrets vertically on a wall. I approach from above vertically exactli in the middel above the POi and am thus in the blind spot of the turrets. there are always some who stand far enough out to still have a field of fire. The amount of these turrets defines how long the whole thing lasts. I get in firing range from above and fire my 6 plasma cannons until my shield is critical and climb out of weapon range again. Meanwhile, my 6 minigun turrets on the SV take care of drones and infantry. After 2-4 attempts, the shield of the POi is down. Then the turrets come on one after the other. As a rule, the base is ready for further use after a quarter of an hour. Depending on the mood of the day, I shoot myself a big hole to the core or go say hello in person. I've only played vanilla like this so far, but if not fundamentally something has changed in the design of the turrets and the performance of the POI shields, it should still work well.
I've done the same @Jorgodan, it's quite effective. Not sure it would have worked quite so well on this POI due to the turret spread, but would have been quicker as all I'd need to do is dodge a bit more. I did enjoy doing things a little differently, even if not the most efficient way. Actually taking the POI from inside was more time consuming though. Would I take this approach again? Maybe, I did quite like it.
I just use this bad boy to tunnel underneath the enemy bases and shred my way to their cores . Used to use rockets on my SV to destroy turrets then ground assault on foot. But this is way more fun than fighting a boring battle of same two aerial maneuvers over and over again... for each enemy POI on the planet.
I've built very similar vessels to do the same thing, and likely will again. How do you get through the POI's shield with that build though? In RE a shield would be immune to the damage from Gatlings. I've built little (well, not always so little) HV's that have drills to burrow under the target along with anti-shield (Lasers) and anti-block (Gatlings) weapons. As a solo player, assaulting many of the tougher POI's (especially in Reforged Eden) is too much for me, and becomes frustrating. So, getting to the heart of the problem is often the best option - taking out the Core. I do like to try different ways of doing things though, so it's interesting to read how others tackle the problem.
Seems like it wouldn't be overly difficult to make a small HV digger and stick 4 laser turrets on it. The small round ones. Park it below the POI and let it eat the shield while you go get an SV or CV to take out the turrets once the shield is down. Cheesy? Sure, but this is war and the Zirax already fight dirty.
Indeed, I've actually done something similar using an HV. Of course this is sorta what I planned with the laser-equipped mini-base, having it keep the shield down to prevent recharge, but that was for after it'd destroyed the turrets. Didn't need to in the end as, unlike another POI I attacked, this one's shields didn't appear to recharge. In theory, I could have parked a CV with Laser Turrets over the POI, assuming being right above I could exploit the POI's turret's lack of near-vertical firing arc. However, the turrets were fairly spread out horizontally. It would be very interesting to design a tall, thin CV (or SV) with turrets that point down... I did make something similar a while back to crack shielded POI's...I'd forgotten about that lol. Don't think I made a BP of it. With a CV, one can fit Teleporter Pads to easily transfer between them... hmm, more fun designs. Might have a play later.
@Jorgodan 'a approach is more useful to me lately. lots of plasma, and after shields are down rail guns to take out turrets and pierce through hull to blow the core. Then loot.
It's certainly an effective technique, I really must try it again sometime. Just faffing around building a fortress currently, all to protect a single Auto Miner over a large Promethium deposit lol. Planet description said it was "Hard" so I thought I'd get fun base attacks...I think that while the description says it's hard, it's actually categorised as an easy *sigh* Will expanding the base ramp up the attack level from the current zero?
Yeah, I don't play RE, but swapping some gatlings for lasers should work, I think. Glad to see I'm not the only one getting this impression.
Been a while since I played, but this was made for this purpose: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1994820221 Tunnel under, park it, go AFK while it does it thing, comes back and find huge hole and lots of bodies... I have also tunnels under in a small early game miner with a large stack of det packs. Slapping some turrets on the sides also helps (so they can fire up). For overland out in the open assault there is this thing I use more recently: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2309393546 Its a T4 Assault HV that as you can see has alot of thrusters on the sides so is quite agile despite its size. Needs open ground to be effective though. I have a bunch of SVs that seem able to do the job quite easily as well. As mentioned above, if it can hover on this nose and shoot down, that helps. Others popping out from behind an obstacle works as does just flying right up to a blind spot on the wall works well (where the turrets cant shoot you).
Unless they have messed with limits again, they are all CPU and limits compliant. With limits off, switching all over the plasma turrets/pulse weapons helps of course
@Khazul - very nice indeed. I actually built a new HV the other night designed to tackle shielded POI's. It's not overly expensive with just Minigun, Missile and Laser Turrets - two of each - which are stacked one behind the other in pairs so all can fire at once. It works really well once it actually starts firing. Unfortunately the on-going turret-lag issue really hurts its performance. Testing it, I could get into range of a POI - I picked a fairly tough rocket defence thing, it didn't just have rockets, but beams also which hurt my shields - the POI would start shooting very quickly, but it could be up to 20+ seconds before my HV's turrets would engage. This, and this alone, makes the HV less effective than it should be. I really hope Eleon can address this issue as it's always been what breaks turreted builds. With this problem put to one side for the moment - it cannot be built / designed around if you want to still use turrets - the HV could take a few hits and was nimble enough to more out of range if needed. Those anti-shield beams being insta-hit though, and the fact that the POI's turrets were far more responsive than mine, made things tricker. Still happy with the HV's performance though, all things considered. Those two laser turrets, once they actually start shooting, are pretty decent vs. shields. I'll then turn on the two Missile turrets once the shields are down and they're pretty good vs. the POI's turrets. I haven't thus far, as I was playing around with different ideas, but this HV could readily take a couple of Drills to go underneath a POI then target Generators to largely kill it without much danger.
I'm a sapper and a mole. I burrow under POI's, use explosive charges, and blast my way in - doesn't matter to me if it's shielded or unshielded. All the surface turrets in the galaxy can't hit you underground. Aerial drones and Zirax forces marching around also mean nothing. I've managed to crack a few of these where the base core also happens to be in the lowest level and on a few occasions, the hole I made to get it happened to take out the core as well - double-bonus, as now all the interior defenses are also offline - or if I'm feeling particularly malicious, I'll re-core these, turning the defenses against the defenders. If it happens to be one of those types of POI's surrounded by defensive towers, my other favorite tactic is to burrow a little side chamber, with enough ceiling to launch my drone, poke a hole into the surface from outside the side chamber, and send up my drone - which draws the fire of defensive turrets - which can, and will both hit the POI, damage the shield, and given enough time, even decimate the structure. Why risk myself or my equipment, when I can make my enemies do it for me?
