This looks absolutely horrifying, I almost want to pause my odyssey run to TRY to survive on a planet pre-dominantly occupied by these monsters. I'm not super experienced so it has to be a good challenge

Just wanted to thank you so, so much for this mod. Love the difficulty and changes actually giving a proper use for armor-piercing weapons, etc. And making Mechanoids a threat rather than slightly threatening bullet sponges. Love the image previews too!

Mech bosses in this mod are utterly horrific, fighting two diaboli at once had me pausing the game to put my hands on my head.

Excited to see what you do for the Odyssey cyclops, its already dangerous even with its relatively thin armor.

@Fidel Castro It doesn't change the threat point calculation. I wanted to make them harder, not just more condensed.

Does this change the threat point calculations of said mechs or just makes them harder?

@Farbott It's meant to be a walking apocalypse, to live up the name, so this is kind of intended. Its armour isn't technically any tougher than the diabolus or war queen (except for slightly more blunt protection), it's just a lot harder to lock down in melee because its AI likes to leap away when hostile pawns get too close.

hoooooly shit the apocatron might be a bit overtuned, short of rocket complexes from vanilla turrets nothing hurts this thing and it just 2 shot someone in excellent grenadier armor

Update:
- Fixed errors on load when running in 1.6 with Alpha Mechs.

Balance changes to Alpha Mechs:
- Buffed the Legate's shield massively, from 650 hp up to 1600 hp to reflect its role as a higher tech and more expensive version of the centurion.
- Also buffed the recharge rate of its shield to 4 hp/sec, matching that of the centurion.
- Buffed the mech gestation cooldown of the War Empress to 15 sec down to 9.3 sec., slightly longer than that of the War Queen.
- Increased the amount of plasteel the War Empress carries from 500 to 800.
- Decreased cooldown of the Empress's sniper turret from 4.5 sec to 2 sec to match the higher lethality of other mech commander turrets.

@short 5357 Yep, it's been patched c:

Does this work with [AV] Mechtech mechs?

Updated for 1.6!
Patches for more mods will be coming soon, along with patches for the new Odyssey mechs when it drops.

@Special Lizard celetech arsenal mkiii has spacer/ultratech type weapons with adjustable damage and armor penetration.

also if you don't mind xenotype/har mods, cinders of the embergarden has some good explosive weapons and abilities too.

@queenelise
I can tell you right now mechanoid upgrades terrifyingly works, the mech armor upgrade from that mod makes already great enhanced durability mechs feel absolutely unkillable.

On a side note, does anyone have any neat mods to recommend for penetrating 200% (sometimes more) armored centipedes?

Is this compatible with the mods "Gestatable Apocriton balanced version" and "Mechanoid Upgrades"? Both make some changes to mech functions, the former making Apocriton abilities usable by the player(but costing a special thing made from subcores to refuel, and the ressurrection becomes temporary) and the latter adding a whole new system where depending on body size you can install upgrades onto mechs, which can also be used by enemies.

Thanks for the mod!! Been using it for a while and want share some feedback .
Will keeping the weapon status unchanged and adjusting skill level of pikeman(10 to 18 for instance) be a nice idea? So that pikeman can be a true sniping platform while lancer can dedicate more on heavy punch at medium range.
Besides will it be possible to raise the threat points of single mech? So that early stage game can go more smoothply with less mehcs in a raid but late game raids remain challenging.

I got an introduction to this mod from someone while chatting.
@许DEKO：这个是我目前最喜欢的mod了，谢谢你的引荐

I've loved and hated Vanilla Mechs ever since I first started playing Biotech." The design of the Tynan Mechanoid definitely fascinated me, but they had to be used carefully in the face of attackers, which made me tired. So this mod surprised me very much, I like it.

Thanks to the author for his efforts.

@Fear4TheUnknown Yeah, I hear you. I've had reservations about the values myself. Feel free to add me if you wanna discuss further about what values would make more sense.

Hey there, been using this mod for my new Steampunk Mech Play-through, and I have some feedback, I think many of these armor values specifically are too overtuned, especially for a Vanilla + setting, some of them are waaaay too tanky,taking from instance the carpenter that even with blunt weaponry it's 5 minute standout with my tunneler lmao, I've been working on a "moderate buff version" that's more vanilla friendly nerfing mostly the armor values. I do like a lot the philosophy behind this, making mechanoids way scarier and tough, I loved the offensive and abilities buffs, just the base armor values need to be nerfed moderately.

@第五星渊 I can do, yeah

Reinforced Mechanoid 2 has been updated. Do you have any plans to make this MOD compatible?

@Sedrido I'm sorry my friend

@Amethyst the otter Hey, sorry for the late response. Can you confirm whether this was happening with no other mods loaded? I didn't actually program the mech commanders to behave this way - I merely enabled them to spawn in mech clusters and it just so happened that the game seems to function this way by default when they're enabled to spawn.

I thought it was a good balance against the possibility of having extremely powerful commanders spawn randomly, because it meant you had the option to choose when to take on that risk for your play through voluntarily, so I therefore viewed that function as a feature of the mod. In all my testing this was how it worked, but if there's circumstances in which that doesn't apply it would be good to know so I can update the mod's information or fix it.

gg double apocriton mech cluster just wiped my colony im not very good at this game

Лучьшее что я видел, этот мод вдохнул новую жизнь в игру после тысячи часов в ней

Hey, just suggesting thaf scythers get a buff. I feel they easily get overwhelmed by simple raids or insect raids from experience in my run.

encountered bug: bosses spawning in clusters even without beating them for the first time

been loving how this makes mechanoids terrifying

could you add support for lost factory mechanoids?
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3386146460

Infinite burst would be horrifying, good point about it being balanced for modded too.

These are the kind of guerilla tactics I had in mind when envisioning how you should fight something like a centipede

3) psycasts (especially skip) probably still body them lol

I'm not bringing this up as reasons to not change the balance, more just to give you insight into the design philosophy that went into my decisions.

I like some of your ideas though. The minimum range and higher spool up times sound like interesting mechanics. It reminds me of the mod "simple minigun rework". I could implement something similar with the vanilla expanded framework; ie., a longer warmup time, but a burst that is basically infinite once it starts shooting. This would increase its bunker busting capability while still having a counter

@Karkinos I hear your points. I do have some things of note that I would say in regard to the balance:

1) This mod is *kind* of balanced for a modded playthrough, or at least a playthrough with DLC active. So the idea is that you'll probably be working towards something a bit better than say a sniper rifle or charge lance, though both of those should on paper be capable of taking down the pede.

2) Bear in mind also that hit and run doesn't necessarily only mean sniping from max range then kiting backwards. It could also mean something like hitting it with emp, dpsing it while it's stunned, then breaking line of sight until its emp resistance wears off. Or even using someone with a short warmup weapon to get its attention then dart behind a wall just before it fires while a sniper warms up their shot on it. Or draw it into traps. Things players often don't think to do because the good old "stand behind wall and shoot" is too effective.

Actually simplest solution I can think of is to just only somewhat buff their armor, but also buff their gun. It's still possible to deal with them using vanilla strategies like that, but means you can't use the strategy of killing all fragile mechs, then meatballing the centipede and beating it to death

@Nishe For centipedes, it's extremely hard to balance them for "hit and run" at their current armor level. Their warmup time is going to be comparable to, or shorter than any weapon capable of actually punching through their armor unless you have something distracting them. Making it more difficult to melee lock them will just exacerbate that issue by forcing you to fight John Fortification Mulcher from a fortification which it will promptly mulch.

The only way I can think of to make centipedes more difficult to fight without the current degree of armor would either be:
1) A longer spool time for their gun so high AP weapons can hit them and fall back. Notably increased armor from vanilla.
2) Set their gun's minimum effective range to 2, but allow them to shoot while in melee (if even possible in Rimcode). Slightly increased armor from vanilla.

Overall rimworld's "can't shoot in melee" thing and the AI's unwillingness to retreat from melee is very over-powered so it's hard to devise counters for that in a mod but I'll think about what can be done. It might be worth it for you to play with CAI-5000 though if you aren't already as that makes non-melee enemies try to avoid melee.

Regarding Diaboli, in my testing they never spawned in mech clusters before you had fought and killed one, but raiding doesn't adhere to the same logic as clusters. I didn't alter anything as far as their appearance or lackthereof in raids, but I'd think they will most likely only appear in late-game high point calculation raids anyway which I don't really see a problem with design-wise. In what stage of your game did they appear?

@Karkinos Hey, thanks a lot for all the feedback! Very appreciated.

I might give termites a bit of a buff with their bunker busting abilities if they're coming across as weak by comparison. I'll look into what I can do with tesserons too.

As for centipedes, I'll have a think about that. I wanted to keep the general combat roles of the mechs intact rather than buffing all of them in every way so that all of them are "good at everything". For that reason I didn't buff the centi's melee attack. However the game does describe them as requiring "hit and run tactics", not as something that needs to be swarmed in melee. So maybe it would make sense for them to have a powerful melee attack to dissuade melee.

- Centipedes are still terrifying but all the armor value change really did was change them from "get a pawn in melee and kill them" to "get a pawn in melee and kill them after spending ~5 irl minutes meatballing them after all other mechanoids are dead." They're extremely tanky but nothing actually changes about fighting them except that it takes a ridiculously long amount of time. I think it might be interesting to lower their armor values significantly but give them a tool that disperses melee attackers, similarly to the Diabolus' fire AOE.

- Diaboli will spawn even if not yet encountered. Unfortunately did not think to grab hugslib logs for you, had two of them spawn in an edge-of-the-map raid. I was so utterly terrified of them that I can't comment on balance as I used a psychic shock lance to avoid having to deal with them.

Really cool mod, will be becoming a mainstay in my modlist.

- Pikemen are piss-your-pants terrifying. If you get in range they are easy enough to kill but outside of that they'll shred everything, very interesting enemy to plan around and fight.

- Lancers are less terrifying but still opponents I really have to think about how I'm going to suppress. Also strategically interesting.

- Scorchers are proper mean bastards, and were the main mechanoid I had to plan around due to being melee-focused. They're in a good place and aren't too oppressive.

- I absolutely hard countered scythers due to my super soldier setup and can't really comment on them as they were literally incapable of damaging my super soldiers. Proper nasty if they made it into the backline though.

- Most of the gimmick enemies like tesserons, termites, and the shield fellows were quite forgettable in comparison to their scarier comrades, especially termites.

@nishe I don't think the buff was too much, it served as a lower shooting skill sidegrade to Vanilla Weapons Expanded's AMR in my playthrough. Speaking of:

I just finished a nasty punishing playthrough, ran Han Helldiver from VFE Insectoids on Strive to Survive. The planet had no human settlements, and the other threats were Anomalies as well as VFE Mechanoids beefed up by this mod, as well as the rare manhunter pack with Scaria Contamination.

Overall you've cooked up a good mod, mechanoids are terrifying (and due to no human factions I fought an onslaught of exclusively mechs watered down with some VFE insectoids during ship launch) so I've had a fair bit of experience with them and some feedback:

- Tunneler being added to hostile mechanoids was great, and Militors are still fragile but require some AP to down quickly so they felt good.

@Karkinos Yeah, I figured it wasn't necessarily a bad thing because the charge lance was underpowered imo. I know I never found myself using/building them. Do you think this buff is too much?

Unsure if intended, makes pawn-utilized charge lances ALSO benefit from the double shot

tbh, apocriton buff was necessary

I never thought that a single Pikeman's sniping ruin entire playthorugh when first War Queen fight and satisfied that I can use those mechs to actual fight, say hello to fresh new Lancers and Scythers!

Patched: [AV] Mechtech

@[Auto/Doll]-RGNT Thanks for your kind words! I love hearing stories about how it made people's play throughs more interesting.

just wanted to leave a comment and say how much I like this mod

I enjoy using powerful gear for my own colonists from other mods, and it's nice to have enemies that are on par with it. The Exosuit Framework mod pairs well with this, IMO.

Early game mechs are SCARY and getting your first mechanitor with a fresh crash landed crew can be game ending without a little setup. I had to reload a save because of a single scyther, I totally underestimated it. And my first Diabolus fight cut my colony population in half, but it felt worth it for the upgrade that my own mechanitor was about to receive. It honestly feels like a breath of fresh air for Mechanoid gameplay. 10/10

Patched: Mechanite Plague

Patched: More Vanilla Mechanoid

Updated adding support for the following mods:

phynilla Expanded Mechs Scyther
Excavator Mechanoid
Machines of War

@femoral2 I might.

Can you do the same thing for insectoids (balanced for an unmoded game)?

@Hermann It changes both.

Does that changes enemy mechs too, or player created only?