The shield is very strong in RE but can be put down (I don't remember wich different types of guns I used, I sure did it with hand explosive charges, it needs a lot to put the shield down) . In early game, digging a tunnel is a funny and effective way to get it, but once i can build one, I prefer to use a strong HV tank to put the shield down and take outside control of the base. Once done, you can bring your CV near it, let your HV tank continue to destroy spawning drones, dig along the wall with a small SV and perforate the bottom level, it's also a lot of fun ;-)
Decayed planets on RE : I'm actually starting to collect ores on the decayed planets to craft ammo. I only find nuggets on the ore spots, no voxel spots. Is that normal ?
I think things have changed quite dramatically. I used a lot of charges, maybe 30, but within 5 secs the shields were back up to 100%, meaning effect was minimal, and recharge time was extremely fast. I also tried a plasma cannon which works quite well in vanilla and Project Eden. After about 40 hits the shields were unchanged. I parked in a hollow and attacked the top of the base with the sv. Took 9 rockets (3x3) to get shields down 1% ie would have taken 900 rockets. I went thru 400 rockets and the shield wasn't even down to 50%. This was Level 1 on starter planet. I doubt it is now worth the resources to take it down with better weapons, or even possible. Also, assuming I gained access, by the time I got to the core I would have had to start all over again on the shield. After this realization I rage quit, lol. Sorta sucks after I spent a lot of resources taking down every other Zirax base on the planet, for relatively low level resources (swamp planet - there was a couple of very small abandoned bases), that it was impractical, and perhaps impossible to take down the drone base. I really enjoy the starts in Empyrion, so I am really enjoying RE. I think most of the changes have been well considered, but this is a game-breaker. Also for unshielded bases, the resource cost now seems overly excessive compared to the resources gained on the swamp starter. No bridges etc and no tier 2 or elite weapons.
It's no wonder your SV didn't harm the shields. Rockets deal very little damage to shields. Use pulse laser or plasma. Energy vs Energy. 4 pulse lasers will take down the drone base's shield in under a minute. Plasma cannons will do it even faster. 9 rocket launchers on the other hand, will take 3.25 minutes to crack the drone base's shield. It's a case of the right tool for the right job. Explosive charges won't crack the shield due to a bug in damage calculation in vanilla that's been incorrectly applying shield damage of 9,000-27,000 shield damage per charge instead of the intended 1,000 damage. In fact, cracking a drone base shield by hand is almost impossible solo without laser weapons. 167 shots with the plasma cannon or 2.5 minutes of firing with the laser minigun on full power. Quite simply, don't challenge the Drone Base without a way to fight it. Consider it a "You must be this tall to ride this roller coaster"
Ah, so Explosive Charges being exceptionally effective vs. base shields was a vanilla bug then? I guess RE fixed it since I last tackled a Drone base. My other method was to tunnel underneath as before, using a relatively cheap HV Miner, but have a Turret / or Fixed weapons on it to take down the shield and punch a hole through the blocks. On another note, those Rocket Siege Drones - the really fast ones - are they resistant to Cannon Fire or can Cannon Turrets miss now? I have six Cannon Turrets all blazing away at a single Rocket Siege Drone and while the tracer doesn't always hit, I assumed the bullet actually did. I thought at first that said Drones were simply bullet sponges, however, one crashed into the terrain and was partially stuck, so I exploited this and killed it easily with a basic Assault Rifle. Cannon Turrets are one of several hit-scan (aka insta-hit) weapons, and their tracer fire would often not be representative of where the actual bullet went. I.e. the tracer had real travel time and the actual bullet was insta-hit. It would be great if Cannons and the like actually reflected the tracer fire and had to travel to the target...though having the tracer pass through the target should be fixed ideally. Anyway, just wondering why these faster Drones are near immune to six Cannon Turret (two BA, two CV) that look too be pretty darn accurate judging by the tracer fire. Edit: I let this play out for about ten minutes or so and, somewhat amusingly, the Drone ended up killing its self. It flies fast and sometimes it appears to catch up with the rockets it's just fired and hits its self. I was watching this one return for another attack run - still out of range of the Turrets - targetting ME out in the open, which was the plan. It fired and BOOM it was dead, both rockets appeared to hit it. Edit 2: My Cannon Turrets definitely aren't hitting things that are moving. I'm landed on the Moon and an Aerodrone (the slow ones with large turbines) was flying perpendicular to my ship - not heading for me. All four of the CV's Cannon Turrets were firing on the target for a good 35-40 seconds while it was in range, yet no shots landed. These drones are pretty squishy at my current settings (I turned OFF bullet-sponge enemies, so it's on Medium for that setting) and can easily be taken out with the basic AR if close enough, yet those four Cannons did nothing. Have I missed some major change in either Vanilla or RE that stops Cannons being hit scan? They've been pretty hopeless at hitting Drones - even when they fly at a constant speed in a straight line. Only when a Drone is flying in a straight line directly towards my CV, do the Cannons actually hit it. Scoob.
I just used Explosive Charges to breach a Zirax Support Base. It took 6-7 charges to get through the shield. I'd tunnelled underneath - this base had four very long-range rocket turrets - as the safer option an planet charges. Purely through luck, the spot I chose to breach underneath must have been right next to the Core. After the shields were down, my next three charges - planted to destroy the Hardened Steel Blocks I still had to get through - set off a chain reaction explosion inside, that took out the core. The Hardened Steel blocks were still intact, but I can MT through them now Note: This POI only has the Compact Shield, which has just 5,000 hit points. So, I expect that's the reason this one was so easy to get through with Explosive Charges. Scoob.
I'm assuming the HV method will not work either. I used sv gatlings on the base and saw no damage. I now use mini gun/cannon turret combination which does appear to work more effectively. Several posters have said miniguns are more effective. I have observed numerous bombers (not sure if it's bombers or the drones) blowing themselves up, but thought it was premature detonation. What you say sounds correct. I have also observed some drones taking excessive damage - seemingly up to four or five times more. Seems to be one drone per base attack. Another curiosity, a seige rocket drone usually gets off one rocket to a turret before being destroyed 2 cannons and 2 miniguns actually fire. So it's getting within range on completely flat terrain before turrets are firing. Not being able to bring down drone base shields on foot is a bummer imo, but it is what it is. I would still like to go in thru the front door rather than take out a block near the core, but I'm not sure how this would work. If I take out the shields with sv plasma cannons then snipe down turrets and fight to front door, how long does the shield stay down? What about internal doors? Are they lever operated? If I clear base levels down to core would I have to go back out and take down the shield again? And internal turrets would be shielded as well.
Shields on POIs once brought down stay down and never regenerate. There are some exceptions to endgame POIs on the legacy planet though, which have the shield generator accessible once inside. Cannon Turrets currently have 100% accuracy since they're missing a bulletspread setting... which I just noticed. Likely after I reverted their firing modes from explosive rounds as main to hitscan. So they shouldn't be missing at present. Damage per cannon hit vs drones is 270 for a body shot and 378 for a heatshot. So you're looking at 27-28 shots from a Cannon turret to kill a light bomber and 13 for a siege rocket drone. Minigun Turrets are better for base defense. They have a higher damage modifier against troops and drones (314 vs 270 body, 378 vs 510 head) and if you take manual control you can fire much faster. Certainly better than firing your assault rifle fruitlessly into the air. They're somewhat less accurate with slightly shorter range though. And yes, siege drones will occasionally shoot themselves. In order for them to not be 100% accurate, they fire a scatter of rockets, including upwards into themselves if they're on the wrong angle. I suppose you could consider it a self-destruct device in the event that you can't beat them and are stuck in a death loop, they'll kill themselves.
So I'm playing around in creative with this scenario and making a new CV. However I can't seem to find the new slope block that's added. What's the name of this particular block? I'm making it out of xeno-steel if that helps, just in case if it only works with combat steel.
How much health does the Rocket Siege Drone have when on Medium settings for enemies? I mean, those six Cannon Turrets were firing hundreds of of shots between them - likely 30-50 per pass of the Drone based on my estimate - yet it simply did not die. If all those shots were hitting due to Hitscan, why was the Drone not dying? I've only noticed this type of Drone not dying to Cannon Turrets in my recent restart with v1.3 and updated PE/RE. In previously starts (v1.2 most recently) I've been attacked by four+ of these Drones in one Base Attack, and the Cannon Turrets have taken them out quite quickly. Sure, the base takes a little damage, but the engagement didn't last long. However now, with just one of these Drones, the Cannon Turrets have yet to be successful killing a single one on my Base. It does seem like something isn't working quite right to me, and the Fire from those Cannons is not hurting the target. On a potentially related issue, I have noticed something odd with how these Drone initially approach my bases. They're flying REALLY high, so high that their rockets expire before getting near the ground, plus they behave like they're stuck on something, juddering forwards then sticking, before shooting forwards a few feet again. They eventually start working properly, and begin doing the usual attack runs. They're almost behaving like they do when they're struggling to clear high terrain, but they're no where near it. Scoob.
Drone health is also modified by the level of the planet. If you're on a level 10 planet they will have 2.5x health.
Just to confirm it: Are the Cannon Turrets hitscan? At least from the type of weapon it would not fit; if anny, Lasers should be hitscan.
Cannons are hitscan, lasers are not. Cannons weren't hitscan in the previous version and they were useless. They couldn't hit anything while mounted on a moving CV. Lasers would be hitscan if they were that fast. But they're obviously not.
I'm on one of the Starting planet - the Snow Dwarf to be precise - currently, though I've been touring the Starting system. Plus, I can easily take these Drones out with just the basic Assault Rifle when they get stuck, yet four (or more) Cannons simply cannot when the Drone is moving quickly like those Siege Drones, or moving slowly but perpendicular to my CV / Base. Cannon Turrets in my game are acting as if they're not hit scan, they simply are not hitting moving targets very well at all. Exactly how you describe them in the previous version. I started this current game in version 1.3 with the updated PE/RE mod - to be exact I started playing on the evening of the 31st of December - so I should be fully up to date, yet Cannon Turrets are pretty hopeless in my game. I can't explain why this is happening, but it is, and they're simply not hitting the targets they're firing at reliably at all. Is it at all possible that a file didn't update correctly from Steam when the Mod was updated? Something is definitely wrong. I do have another weird quirk I noticed; Every time I load my save while in my CV parked on a planet, I will fall through the CV and onto the ground. Every. Single. Time. Scoob.
Turrets will miss if the target is moving quickly, even hitscan ones. Code: Class: Ranged It's definitely set to hitscan, but like I said if they are moving fast your turrets can still miss.
Thanks. I thought hit-scan couldn't miss as there's no bullet travel time? I guess it's a bit more complicated than that though. However, why do my Cannon Turrets not appear to damage very slow moving targets either? I mean, I've had Drones travelling perpendicular to where my CV is parked and my turrets have opened up on them. Yet, despite a good 20-30 seconds of constant fire from 3/4 Turrets (some didn't have LoS the whole time) the Drone is unharmed. Also, usually when being hit a Drone will get knocked about a bit - well, it'll rotate, not be knocked off it's path - yet that isn't happening in this instance. I'm a bit confused as I cannot tally what I'm actually seeing in-game with what should be happening. Regardless, Cannon Turrets for me are really struggling to hit targets period. Fast moving targets they have no chance, even slow targets they struggle with - unless said target is heading directly at them. Oddly, they seemed to be more effective in the prior version (for v1.2) as they actually managed to shoot down the super-fast Siege Drones, though they weren't very good at it. Scoob.
AI is given an accuracy penalty when firing on a moving target, depending on the range and the target's speed. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to avoid any incoming fire from hitscan weapons and that would be pretty bad for game balance. It even affects NPCs too.
Ah! This is the missing piece of the puzzle! Built-in range-biased inaccuracy explains what I'm seeing. Glad it's not a bug, but an actual feature. I did experiment last night using Minigun Turrets rather than the usual Cannon Turrets and they are significantly better, so I guess their built-in inaccuracy is far less then that of the Minigun Turret. Thanks for clarifying what I was missing Scoob.
