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Stronger Vanilla Mechs

Vanilla mechs are pretty weak these days. They have been for a long time. Even more so now with the ever increasing power creep that players have at their disposal with Anomaly and Biotech, and 5 billion mods giving pawns infinite speed/manipulation/skills. It's time to right the imbalance.

I also feel that the vanilla armor system is criminally under-utilised. Most of the time, it ends up being immersion-breakingly "player-centric", with the player pawns being (for the most part) the only ones that really end up making use of extremely high armour values with excellent to legendary quality cataphract armour. Furthermore, player-made mechs get absolutely overshadowed in combat by super soldier pawns with power armor and high quality weapons, and are generally more annoying to maintain.

I wanted to restore mechs to their former glory. Gone are the days of fragile robots made of glass that shatter after two shots from a pistol. Gone are the days of needing to install CE to make mechs even slightly challenging. This is the return of the great blood machines sent by the gods, as the tribal start refers to them. You will know fear.

• Increases both the offensive and defensive capabilities of all combat oriented mechs in the base game and Biotech very significantly, along with those in many popular mechanoid mods. They are not a V.O.I.D. level threat, but they are still incredibly strong compared to their vanilla balance.
  
• Makes armor penetration matter a lot more in combat with mechanoids.
  
• Allows player-made mechs to compete with super-soldier programs in terms of defensive capability.
  
• Only mechs that are strictly combat-focused or combat-adjacent (like the paramedic and tunneler) have been buffed. Mechs that are purely utility have not been touched. Mechs are all about efficiency after all, and those not intended for combat would not waste resources on extra armor plating unless they're doing a job that requires it.
  
• The stat increases are not simply equal buffs that have been applied across the board. Careful attention was paid to buff them in ways that accentuate the unique characteristics and combat roles of each mechanoid, while also increasing the threat posed by all of them.

• Introduce new mechs into the game
  
• Introduce any particularly different or new mechanics to mechanoid enemies or bosses. That's not the aim of this mod, the purpose was to use vanilla mechanics to simply make them stonger and more formiddable than they are, using the systems that are already in place.

• Don't underestimate blunt weaponry, it's still somewhat stronger against mechanoids if you're lacking high penetration sharp damage weapons.
  
• Mechs that were vulnerable to melee before are still vulnerable to melee. Use it.
  
• Craft high AP weapons of high quality.
  
• Make your own. Yours get the buffs too.
  
• Use EMP. Use guerrilla tactics. Think outside the square. Don't expect to just stand in your fortified positions and shoot with nothing going wrong.
  
• Don't attempt to fight mech commanders if you aren't sufficiently prepared. These are now in a league of their own, and are incredibly powerful foes. Do not underestimate them.
  
• Run away!

• *Not* currently CE compatible.
  
• Biotech: fully patched, but not required.
  
• Vanilla Factions Expanded - Mechanoids: fully patched! The advanced versions of mechanoids have been buffed even more than their regular counterparts! Only the "true mechanoids" were patched. Lower tier buildable combat robots have unchanged stats to reflect the significant difference in their level of technological advancement. You are here to suffer after all, and we can't make things too easy.
  
• Alpha Mechs: fully patched! Beware, the higher tier mechs from this are now incredibly powerful. An Apoptosis may potentially wipe a late game colony.
  
• Diverse Mechanoid War Procedure: fully patched!
  
• Advanced Mechanoids: patched!
  
• Scrambler Mechanoid: patched!
  
• Hunter Mechanoid: patched!
  
• Recon Mechanoid: patched!
  
• Patched mods have had custom textures added where necessary.
  
• AT CHARACTER LIMIT. SEE COMPATIBILITY DISCUSSION FOR FULL LIST OF PATCHED MODS

• Progression: Robotics
  
• Mechanitor Balance Tweaks
  
• Vanilla Weapons Expanded series, or something else that gives you access to more powerful (but balanced) weapons.
  
• Ignorance Is Bliss if you don't want to get raided by nigh-unkillable death machines when you're in the tribal era.
  
• CAI 5000
  
• More Durable Mechs - even more challenge
  
• My Mechanoid Commanders Retextured mod if you want something that gives a different look to the Diabolus and War Queen.

Q: How many mechs were patched?
A: Yes

Q: CE?
A; Not right now, though I will look into making a patch in future.

Q: Performance impact?
A: These are all XML changes as of right now, so there should be none at all.

Q: Doesn't this make player-made mechs OP?
A: Yes and no. The process of obtaining your own mechs will be harder due to having your progression locked behind bosses that are now significantly harder to kill, and which are far more likely to spell doom for your colony if you call them before you're adequately prepared.

Q: Is x mod patched?
A: Yes

Q: No seriously it's not, can you patch it?
A: Drop it in the comments and if it contains mechs it would make sense to patch, I'll patch them.

Q: X mech is too overpowered/underpowered.
A: This project is balanced to my personal taste and what I think the game needs, what I think is cool, and what I think an ultratech mech faction should be like. In my opinion, a ramshackle colony of disparate humans should not necessarily expect to be capable of standing toe to toe with a global pandemic of hyper-advanced robot armies. You should feel like humans in Terminator, fighting a guerrilla war against savage machines that are stronger than you and have no concept of mercy.
That being said, I'm open to suggestions. If there's something you think could do with a tweak, let me know.


Oskar Potocki - Vanilla Textures Expanded and some of the art I used in the thumbnails.
AOBA - Fortifications Industrial series, featured in the screenshots.
People on the Rimworld discord for helping me.

All custom artwork and XML for this mod was done by me.