That technique was certainly a main-stay of mine vs. harder POI's @IndigoWyrd. Quite fun too. I used a slightly different technique just now, but it's still another old one. Attacking a small, but well-armed and shielded POI just now, I realised that my fairly low-profile HV could just sneak under the turret's firing arc's if I got really close. This particular POI was in a dip in the landscape and surrounded by very steep cliffs, so there was no way to manoeuvre around as I had before. So, I got really close, set the Minigun turrets to attack the generator - after the lasers brought the shields down - and killed the POI that way. Bonus is I have four turrets to recover! Just finished looting and gained a shield generator and two boosters as a bonus! I've tackled this POI before, but in a different form, sans three of the turrets and certainly no shield and boosters.
After this interesting discussion, I tested my strategy again and found that the Defs felt a little sorry for the Zirax. The new drone bases have significantly more fast laser cannons and they are more spread out. Also, the shield reloads much faster than my SV's. As a result, I can place a maximum of 2 salvs of plasma before I have to retreat and that the shield of the base is already recharged before my shield is fully charged and I can attack again. So I had to resort to the "hide behind a rock" strategy and only fire one salvo at a time to conserve my shield and not give the base's shield time to reload. So my old strategy will no longer work well on a new drone base in the open countryside. Good times for the moles @Escarli your best friend is surely the "legacy infactor POi" on the homeworld. So far I haven't been able to crack this POI as a lone fighter. The nice thing about Empy is that everyone can have fun in their own way.
I've actually taken another approach to this in my last few sessions. I'd found a wrecked CV in orbit ages ago, and towed it back to my original base... I then forgot about it after leaving that base and travelling to a new system. While setting up a Teleporter network between my various bases, I went back to that starting Planet (Pandora, no enemies other than critters) and saw the giant, gutting CV hull parked there still. As on my current barren planet there were loads of those "Anti-air" POI's with beam lasers, missiles and shields, I decided to retrofit this claimed CV specifically for cracking this POI. So, I first updated the CV to be flight worthy - my "Mother ship" mobile base CV had all my supplies and was how I arrived back here. Then I started adding weapons. Six downward-facing Cannon Turrets in the rear and four downward-facing Laser Turrets on the sides near the front. I then added about 20k of shields. I then towed the CV (no Warp capability) back to the barren planet. Engaging the shielded Anti-air POI's in this vessel is quite straight-forward. Fly above it and nose down - these POI's can shoot things directly above them if they're CV-sides, even though I was presenting a very narrow profile. Plus its beam lasers can far outrange me - over 2x the range. I edge forwards until just over 200 metres away, then the Laser Turrets start firing, targetting turrets, but really just to bring down the shield. I tank the hits my my own shield during this phase. Once the POI's shields drop, I turn off the Laser Turrets, and turn on the Cannon Turrets. I then level out so the Cannons can now pound the unshielded POI targetting Generators, continuing to tank damage on my own shields. After a minute or so, the Cannon rounds break through the final armoured blocks protecting the Generator and it and the surrounding blocks go BOOM. I lose the Generator and some fuel, but the turrets are intact and able to be claimed, as well as a small shield and two recharge boosters. Nice. I've farmed several of these POI's now and there are more to go, though I might tackle some of the other POI's on the planet next. Might be a bit more tricky as they're clumped together - not isolated like the anti-air ones - so I need to take care on my approach. Doing this in a CV is the lazy way for sure, but it's been fun building up this wrecked CV into something useful.
Planetside: I use HVs with artillery guns, they will soon or late disable the shields or the generators by destroying blocks in their way making a wreckage of the POI if you are patient enough . In space that's more problematic: You need to kill the generators of a POI with your CV turrets else you cannot destroy any block when invading the POI with your avatar, the shields will be up powered by the generators and explosives won't work. So you need to kill these devices, for that plasma/laser guns and artillery guns on your CV will do the job , canons or miniguns don't, too weak, the shields will go up again, you can see this in the waypoint label. Some POIs, lev3 or more will take a long time for doing this but it's the only way, at least I haven't found any other method. And of course you need a shielded CV with lots of turret mountings and nothing else. And it will consume tons and tons of ammo, be sure you are filled-up...
Yes, what really is a shame is that almost all space poi are well made, there are enemy spawners and all... But the only way to board a station and be able to destroy sentry guns is to take out the shield or generators... If the generators are taken out most spawners stop working, as well as the sentrys, it is now trivial to just take everything, and it is more of a bother. (and the poi is a wreck by the time all generators are down) If the shield is destroyed one can still invade the poi, it mostly is good fun. But you need to know or guess where the shieldgen is and take it out maunally. So I would like to see the target options to include shield, either aditionally or instead of generators.
Strangely enough, some strong-looking POIs have shields inside but not active, that's your lucky day, still your primary concern will be to disable the generators which should shut-down all sentry guns. But the good news here is: you can do it in 1st person invading the POI.
I honestly find it hilariously wastefull when I see people taking POI's head on. I swear digging under them was the standard when this game launched. There are some drawbacks, but the turrets are often some of the best loot on a poi. Why destroy them? Why waste ammo? A buddy and I have been perfecting our miner duo through many years and many servers. We prefer RE with CPU/V/W on, so it works everywhere. Miner one is a tunnel digger with one or two turrets. The focus here to create a smooth tunnel at a decent pace, so I have implemented the single hover "digging mode" made popular on the "Major Miner" and 6 drills in a wide oval that allow me to tunnel with turrets deployed. I also include a spawner and lots of fuel storage. Starting a decent distance away, I dig down a bit, then hold my auto level key while I dig to the POI. When I get close, I dig up and try to connect with the side of the POI's lowest level. Then I clear out an area, turn of my thrusters and leave the turret/s running. Miner 2 is built slightly narrower then 1. It still includes 4 drills so it can follow me along and help if I get stuck; however, the majority of its CPU goes in to powering plasma guns and rail guns. Once we are under the base, this vehicle can quickly deatroy the POIs shields and open a one block rout in to the base. I spot the location, to make sure we don't hit a generator, while my friend blows a way through. At this point we often get hit by some enemies; hence the turret/s. If any mechs drop in on us, Miner two can take care of them, but the turret is usualy enough. Once we get inside, we look around for the core. If its in a tough spot, we take note of its location and destroy it from below with Miner 2. Thats it. Proffit. Every sinlge turret or security measure is now ours. If the server allows we pop in our own core and dismantal everything. With spawners down, we make quick work of whatever enemies are left. Our duo can carry quite a bit together, but wr often fly a CV in at this point. TIPs: If you get shot when you are in a tunnel, gtfo. If an enemy spawns underground, you will never be able to dig to them, and they will wreck you while you try. This is why we always have shields on our HV's We often use an SV in place of miner one, once we can afford it. This way we can lift miner two, and fly it to each location. Try to avoid blowing a hole in the bottom of the base, to start. Its much easier to peak around a left hand courner then to jetpack straigh up in to enemy fire. If you can put a core on the base (server rule dependant) then throw a box on the base near your HVs. You can pull every bit of loot in to that box before you knock the structure down. No wandering around looking for secrets.... unless you want to of course.
Nice work everyone digging under the planet-side POIs. As one of the POI designers I am glad to see such things; I will not encourage it, but I will not discourage it either. The only time Admin cores should be in the game is with story or related POI's, other than that, the players can attempt any given task as they please. Way to be inventive and resourceful; have fun with a game the way you want. Specific to @Scoob As far as attacking a shielded planet-side POI head-on, it is not as double right now. With the diversity of weapons and effects found in Reforged Eden a player can *kind of* make the attempt against less dangerous shielded planet-side POI's once they reach higher levels and acquire the best resources and equipment, but we just lack balance of damage vs weapons effects vs defensive aspects. With the current limited array of options the attenuating factor is the HV weapons. They need to do about 3x more damage(maybe even 5x or 8x.) That will still be a stretch - it will still be less than accessible, but that will make things more palatable.
That's not cheese. This is cheese. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2765367494 It is not a elegant or clever solution. It is the application of the hard sole of attrition against the sneering face of an entrenched enemy. It is the end of patience. It is the cessation of asking. In fairness, though, a ship like this takes a not inconsiderable amount of resources and will take every hit on the chin to be repaired later. You'll have to pay more than the cost of some small arms ammo and personal equipment repairs to bash down a POI with such a weapon. So I would advise that anyone considering such a strategy should think long and hard on how likely the benefits are to sufficiently outweigh the costs. Salvaging has a pretty thin profit margin as it is.
This is where we disagree, yes to the above of course but I believe they should also be used in those poi's where the need arises. Not in every poi of course, but the more complicated ones...let's not forget that Eleon have bug reports in the past for some poi's where they destroyed part of the signal logic making it impossible to progress without cheating. And then there's the fact POI builder's can go to a greater effort of building something cool on the insides with an admin core, I would never build something like my cryogenic facility without an admin core, it simply wouldn't be worth my effort. In regards to tunneling, I believe I can summarise my view with another short sentence, why don't we simply put the core on the outside of the build in full view, it amounts to the same thing.
It's a different form of cheese. At least this way your build has a chance of taking some damage. There's not a poi out there that can withstand a CV, hence the cheese. The only poi's that can are admin core's, which is probably why some folks don't like them. The simple fact is that some poi's are intended to be more difficult than others, people may or may not like it but that's simply the way it is. When it comes to tunneling, there's very little a poi builder can do about it. I was watching something the other day and they hundreds of explosives on their toolbar, a significant amount. It doesn't matter how many layers we put down they'll still take the time to blast through. Where is the risk v reward when tunnling? There isn't any. Some poi's can take a significant time to build, and whilst that is not a valid reasoning to say why tunneling under poi's is pure cheese and shouldn't be a legit strategy, it does provide an indication as to how complicated and and intentionally difficult it's meant to be. I am in very strong favour of having a dedicated poi version of the land claim block that prevents digging whether poi respawn is switched on or not.
I figure everyone is responsible for finding their own fun in a sandbox game. If you're optimizing enjoyment out of your methodology, you're doing it wrong. Nobody else knows exactly what you enjoy doing. So if you're to get any sort of value from your entertainment, you've got to take responsibility and think about what you're doing. It's not the easiest thing to do. Billions of monies worth of mobile gaming publishers are depending you failing at it. But you'll be better off for practicing this self-awareness. Unfortunately, I seem to be rather alone in this option. Consensus usually is that optimization is king, and you should always be following the most optimal strategy for the greatest reward, or else you're a noob/casual/tryhard who is too dumb/stubborn/bad at video games to do things correctly. What, you don't know how to do this dungeon? Have you not studied all the guides? What's your gear score? WTF, everybody votekick this cretin! With POIs specifically, the only real reason to do them is for fun. They're crap for resources. The return on the time it takes to clear, salvage, and loot one is nothing compared what you'd get mining or trading with almost no risk. But they're pretty good for a fight, whatever kind of fight you're looking for. You can use a CV like the one up there to clear the turrets before heading in on foot. You can blast it to pieces with artillery and enjoy the explosions. You can take your favorite H/SV and dodge, duck, dip, dive, and dodge at close range while snapping off railgun volleys. But if you're just scything through ruins and bases for every scrap piece, knickknack, and dingdong to get the dopamine bellyfeel of your stockpile numbers going up, you're missing the point.
When shields were first implemented, I was hoping for a slightly different dynamic when it came to engaging POI's equipped with them. Before shields, I could take the most basic Gatling-equipped SV and neuter the external defences with ease. I could even shoot through to the Core, if I knew the POI layout well. Rarely did that though. I'd then bring in a CV - assuming I had one by that stage - to help with looting as I went through the POI on foot. Weapon projectiles speeds got a little faster before shields were introduced, so neutering a POI became a little more tricky, but still doable in a fairly basic craft. Then we got shields. A welcome addition to the game, no doubt, but it changed the dynamic quite significantly - no more easy POI neutering, which is a good thing. High end POI's shouldn't fall to a starter SV lol. Anyway, how I'd hoped shields would be implemented was that they'd cover just the blocks and perhaps Large Turrets. This would mean, with a shielded POI, the player could still engage on foot, shoot through a doorway - which would not be a shielded block - and be able to readily take out unshielded Sentries and Spawners, as well as other Devices such as Power Generators, Fuel Tanks etc. etc. I know some POI designers have actually built their POI's around this as much as possible, with external doors "open to the public" so to speak, and switches to be pulled to disable internal Sentry Turrets and, ultimately, the Shield Generator its self - nice design guys. Undoubtedly GREAT for gameplay, but it's deliberately introducing a weakness for the player to exploit, to work around the overly-restrictive shield mechanic. What sentient race would design their defences with such a flaw? There's a hint of cheese here lol. Another point of discussion around this was as above, but with exterior devices such as turrets able to have a "shield module" placed adjacent to them, providing local shielding to that device alone. So, you could shield your turrets (or POI designers could) but there's an additional cost. This is what provides balance. Two guns or one shielded gun for the same CPU cost... So, moving on, a shielded POI would be a direct counter for Vessel vs. POI engagement, but a Player - or group of players - on foot would still be able to engage the old way...if they can get close enough. Sadly, and I get it's likely far far easier to implement, Eleon went with the "shield applies to EVERYTHING" approach, which I think left some fun gameplay on the table. Of course, as mentioned above, this is where the POI designers have granted additional on-foot opportunities by introducing deliberate "flaws" into their POI designs. Additionally, once upon a time, CV weapons got heavily nerfed to not work within a planetary playfield. This was a balance choice at the time, but things have moved forwards a long way since then. I think our heavily armed CV's should be able to use their full range of weapons on a planetary playfield. Atmospheric density would apply of course, limiting range, and Base Turrets should remain superior in both range, damage and CPU cost - this makes sense due to their solid base - to tip the balance in their favour. It's often the absence of this ability that will either i) lead me to go a potentially cheesy-flavoured route, or ii) make me become somewhat less enthused about playing, due to all my tech advancements counting for naught as my CV still cannot use its best weapons. There are so many other balance elements now to consider when outfitting a new vessel, so I think the planetary playfield limitation for CV weapons needs to go. That said, in Reforged Eden, I have had reasonable success with a CV equipped with nothing but Cannon Turrets. Sure, they're rubbish vs. shields, but if you have lots of them, it works. Needs to be well shielded of course, with armour for when the shields drop. I think I mentioned that earlier in this now ageing thread lol. This does lead to another cheesy flavoured snack though. The POI's shields are down, I've killed the turrets, why not just let my Cannon-equipped CV keep on going... Good that we cannot directly target the Core anymore at least, just wish the AI got the memo on that lol. I think people may be going down cheesy-flavoured paths engaging POI's largely because they cannot fully-utilise their best assets. CPU and Mass present MAJOR limitations to vessel and POI design, so artificial limitations are no longer needed in my view. Sorta surprised Reforged hasn't allowed planetary use of more currently restricted CV weapons. They have some of course, which is great, but more would be welcome. However, I think Eleon should be the ones to lead the way on this, as their base balance very much sets the tone for overall balance. Currently playing Vanilla casually at the moment, started with the v1.9 Experimental. Fun game, but I do miss some of the extra features the talented scenario creators have added. I'd bloody love to see a Claim Core in Vanilla, but that is one of many things. Mechanical Drill FTW!
The combination of heavy turrets and shielding makes a frontal attack on most POIs a grind, not only in how much time you need to invest in getting past them but in the repairs you may need to make to whatever you used to take them both down. Taking out the turrets means losing the exotic resources you can salvage or deconstruct from them- getting these is, in resource poor scenarios, pretty much the real value of taking the POI. Intentionally putting yourself in front of a turret doesn't seem like it should be the #1 goto tactic for either a soldier or a civilian in most situations. Normally I sap but some servers consider this poor sportsmanship (or maybe the Swiss cheese terrain change lists cause problems- not sure which) ... in those cases my cheese of preference is the filler material a drill produces and the drone to blind them; drill filler is like Kraft cheddar in a can. In an MP game having a friend occupy turrets with their drone while you cross open terrain is another way to skin the cat. Likewise, not a fan of admin cores. They exist to force the player to engage with content in a linear fashion and in a predefined way. Finding ways to create POIs that funnel players without resorting to a magic core is hard work but I appreciate it.
Heh, I used to use the Drill's Filler mode to create walls blocking incoming fire, it was quite fun, but I generally don't do it any more. As an aside, I fell foul of a "feature" of this some time back. I was in a humble SV in hostile territory. So, I built a filler structure around my SV to protect it from the frequent roaming drones, so it was safe while I raided a POI. However, I left the POI only to find my SV near destroyed! I could see it in the distance, being blown apart. Wait, I could see it, yet it was completely enclosed in filler material... except, at the distance I was at, said filler materials was NOT rendered in by the game, but the SV was, as were the Drones actively attacking it. I move closer and POP, my SV is safely enclosed in rock once again. Damage done though lol. A more successful engagement using Drill cheese, was me exploiting the game's LoS targetting weakness. I was able to build a filler wall, place a small, single turret BA from a BP behind that wall and have it engage a POI with impunity. Basically, I removed sufficient filler materials that my mini-BA's turret could fire at the Target POI - taking out its turrets - yet my own mini-BA's Turret (the highest point) could not be targetted in return. It appeared that it was the base of the Turret that gets targetted, mine was obscured. Taking manual control of the turret enabled me to shoot at some parts of the POI the AI wouldn't do so automatically. This was more a fun experiment than a new tactic I planned to use going forwards, not done it since. If we ever get "proper" artillery turrets whose projectiles follow a high, ballistic trajectory, things will get interesting regarding base assaults. Add some "EMP" ammo to that to take down shields and we're having fun.
I usually seal the mouth of a impromptu garage- didn't know it evaporated when I wasn't there to observe it! It' also great for making a ramp up to the small alien POI (the barrel, core, fuel, gen, (2) abominations, (3) scorpions one) if you don't have an SV. Dead useful goo.
