Orbital lasers and MIRVs are inside the wall in a ring around my barracks (actually in a ring around mine shafts and mine drills that are in a ring around the base of my barracks). As far as mods, both howitzers and MIRVs get Power, Salvage, Detector, ROF x5, and Damage x2. Some people like to skip power and salvage mods in place of more damage because power blocks are cheap. I simply don't like using power blocks because its something else to defend and take up space.
I do prefer skipping power and salvage on late-game turrets for extra damage, but I can see both sides. What happened to your mortars, vortex, and freeze? Also, How vertically are your MIRV's/Mortars? I was thinking of trying to do a Tidal Cliffs map, except build my barracks at the very bottom of a hole, and just use all indirect fire+flamethrowers for the mobs that climb down. EDIT: No cigar, you aren't allowed to put your barracks in water, so the best you can really do is make your barracks level with the ground.
Mortars have been temporarily removed but will go back in another wave or two on top of the drills. Vortex guns and freeze guns are still in the same place. Inside of the wall everything is at water level vertically.
Seems to range from 70 to 80 or so depending on how many shafts and drills I have but I haven't checked to be sure.
What equipment loadouts do people use? I buy a plasma rifle (1x energy core, 6x AOE, 1x armour piercing, 6x damage, 3x ROF) at level 2, followed by a stimpack (5x movement, 1x regeneration) for movement speed so that I can collect coins and defend my mines more easily, then a spotter (all the detection mods, 3x range) so that I can find the one guy that makes it past me and keeps hacking away at something somewhere, and to help me prioritise enemies that are attacking things, and I solo until about level 10 while I put all my resources into building mines, upgrading my barracks and encasing the barracks and mines in techmetal (3x hp, 1x salvage). I get a heavy plasma (1x armour piercing, 5x damage) at around level 20 to help with shadows, and then I swap the plasma rifle for a minigun (5x damage) at level 50 or something when the shadow leaders start requiring a direct heavy plasma hit + 5 seconds or more of the plasma rifle, and when the large AOE of the plasma rifle becomes less useful. Early on the AOE is great since it means I can kill enemies that I don't have a line of sight to, just by spraying plasma at whatever they're attacking or hiding behind. It's really hard to justify swapping out the spotter and stimpack for anything, since that would mean being nearly blind and immobile. Does anyone use armour or the cryogun or something else?
I don't use the cryogenic but I would be interested in hearing if some people do. Seems like it would require lots of range and AOE mods to be useful and better than just killing the enemy.
I don't use the stimpack any more. I use the Plasma Rifle (energy core, AP x2, ROF x5, Damage x12) for general threats, the Heavy Plasma Gun (Damage x20) for tough elites, and the Plasma Pistol (Energy Core, ROF x5, Range x4, Slow x5, Stun x5) to stun/slow tough elites while waiting for the HPG to reload. Spotter fills out the last slot. I don't use the stimpack because I don't typically chase coins and health is not an issue at the moment.
Hmm... looking at your MIRV's, I'm pretty sure that they're not really going very far. I tried putting MIRVs down and covering them with walls 3 high, and the missles crashed into the walls. Also, with your "tower" having walls sandwiched directly in between turrets, doesn't that cut down on vertical angle, to shoot up mountains? And is it really a good idea to put a ring of turrets down? If they were farther apart, wouldn't they get a much larger firing angle, and be able to target more enemies?
You could be right about the MIRVs, I may need to elevate them with some tech blocks. As far as my tower guns being sandwiched, there are a few reasons I did this. In previous games I experimented with having 6 turrets facing out from any one side of of my barracks. 3 would be mounted on the top of the barracks and 3 would hang upside down. This would ensure every angle was covered around the barracks. However the problem with this is that when long range enemy's damage the support blocks you lose not just the turret it was on, but the one below it too. You also only get so many turrets facing any specific direction. By building a wide, squat tower that has all it's blocks facings armored you minimize splash damage between level and if any one block gets destroyed you don't loose as much as having other blocks and turrets fall. Also with my current set up I have 20 howitzers and 20 Hplas covering and direct facing, and from the angles it's more like 39 and 39. Not all turrets will be able to fire from every direction, but this is by design. Lets say a big mob of melee enemies just spawn on the NW side of the map with one of those elites that forces all turrets to target it. That leaves all the other turrets that don't have the angle to fire free to take care of other stuff from other angles. Edit: You were right about the MIRVs, I elevated them to just below the wall level and it did wonders. Also you can put block armor on light blocks.
I found a somewhat effective way to use flamers, which relies on putting a ring of them around the base of the fortress, 2 blocks above the ground, with side-block placement so that they can fire downward and 5 stun mods so that enemies get frozen in place when the flamers hit them and stay that way until they die. A melee enemy can end up with 12 flamers firing on it while it's stunned, which ensures they stay stunned and takes them down pretty quickly. The design has some major weaknesses; shadows will crawl all over it and are difficult to dislodge, and since medium-long range turrets can't be set to prefer ranged enemies, they tend to either waste their DPS on melee enemies that are stunned and not a threat in the flamethrower killzone while ranged enemies are free to fire on the fort, or if positioned where they don't have a line of fire to the flamethrower killzone, medics/tinkerers can slip past and stand in blind spots where neither the flamethrowers or the medium/long range turrets can reach them while they shoot things with their pistol/electrocannon. Long range turrets also waste most of their DPS on the melee units marching across the map, which otherwise could be dealt with efficiently by the flamethrowers, so there still need to be enough lasers/howitzers etc to kill all but the most tanky enemies to ensure that they get all the ranged ones. The pics show a fortress I built in sandbox mode to simulate a late-game survival fortress where the mineral deposits have been depleted and there's a ring of mines around the base of the barracks. I'd normally have a lot more long-range turrets than that, but I'd also normally not have any melee units except shadows getting within spitting distance of my fortress, and I wanted to see the flamers in action.
Shadows and shadow elites continue to be serious pains to deal with. You can come up with a strategy to deal with any other kind of enemy besides them because ultimately they can only be killed by player weapons when they spawn in groups of themselves. Post wave 100 it's a very real possibility that 3-5 groups of shadows can rush you and all you can do is hope they get distracted by enough shiny stuff while you pump 20 seconds of plasma into each one.
So that's where Plasma Pistol comes into play huh? I should put in the time to make my Plasma Pistol at least close or even half as good DPS as my PR along with the stun and slow mods.
DPS for the plasma pistol will never be enough to take down anything major, it's a stun gun and that's it. The 67% slow and 60% stun are the only thing it's good for past wave 50.
Pretty much, I have thought of two other potential strategies for shadows though. The first involve mines and depth charges so that will have to wait until they are fixed. The second one I want to wait and test before I say anything because it might be considered "exploitative".
One of my better builds is rather "exploitive" of shadows... I'm trying your strategy, but it is VERY vulnerable to shadows...with my towers, the shadows just cluster around the lights I stuck on top of my barracks, but in your base style, they crawl into the row of mortars and MIRV's... super annoying and hard to dislodge. I was thinking of simply putting x5 slow on my laser rifle and being done with it....
To combat shadows at my walls I have built two rings of armored light blocks, these are working so far to keep them distracted from my base while I deal with them. The picture below will clarify.
