I can't beat it...

[HadesSupreme]

See, this is what I didn't want. Three entirely separate suggestions that will take several hours each to tech towards and get upgrades for with all resources exploited.

I've sort of tried all 3 but they end up very, very slow against the alien megabases. I think poison capsules + grenades/gun in a car is the quickest and safest method but its still pretty slow. I'm not sure how they all scale with upgrades though, it takes a lot of time to tech out all of those. I'm wondering if adding personal lasers would do better even without fusion/level 2 power armor.

[Theikkru]

Well gee, it's almost like you can't do everything at once. Although now I'm really curious how you "sort of" tried to do tanks, poison capsules, and turret creep all at the same time. My imagination can't come up with anything that doesn't end in disaster somehow.

[jodokus31]

Well gee, it's almost like you can't do everything at once. Although now I'm really curious how you "sort of" tried to do tanks, poison capsules, and turret creep all at the same time. My imagination can't come up with anything that doesn't end in disaster somehow.

I didn't see anything regarding turret creep. I assumed, the tank gun is meant. Although, the car is far too squishy for anything beyond medium biters.

Also, want to give defender robots a bump. I think, at physical damage 3 they get really usefull, when attacking a base.

[Theikkru]

I didn't see anything regarding turret creep.[...]

[...]

[jodokus31]

Well, I thought it's about this:

I think poison capsules + grenades/gun in a car is the quickest and safest method but its still pretty slow.

And now, i'm asking myself, what you mean with "tanks, poison capsules, and turret creep all at the same time".
Actually executing it at the same time? Or researching in upgrades for each method at the same time?

[Theikkru]

[...]Actually executing it at the same time? Or researching in upgrades for each method at the same time?

Any of the above, though I'll admit that the first image my mind conjured up was someone trying to throw down turrets while slaloming around said turrets in a tank, all while trying to shoot shells, throw capsules, and put ammo in the turrets all at once.

The only effective way I can think of to test and compare all 3 methods would be to fork a save into 3 different attempts, and I'm reasonably certain that's not what happened.

[jodokus31]

[...]Actually executing it at the same time? Or researching in upgrades for each method at the same time?

Any of the above, though I'll admit that the first image my mind conjured up was someone trying to throw down turrets while slaloming around said turrets in a tank, all while trying to shoot shells, throw capsules, and put ammo in the turrets all at once.

That would be indeed horrible

[JimBarracus]

I didn't see anything regarding turret creep. I assumed, the tank gun is meant. Although, the car is far too squishy for anything beyond medium biters.

You're not supposed to hit them with the car.
The car is fast enough to avoid the acid attacks. The machine gun is powerfull and has a higher shooting speed than the submachine gun the character uses.
Ammo is not affected by marathon mode.

You can also create a safe area with turrets that gives you the possibility to repair the car.

[jodokus31]

I didn't see anything regarding turret creep. I assumed, the tank gun is meant. Although, the car is far too squishy for anything beyond medium biters.

You're not supposed to hit them with the car.
The car is fast enough to avoid the acid attacks. The machine gun is powerfull and has a higher shooting speed than the submachine gun the character uses.
Ammo is not affected by marathon mode.

You can also create a safe area with turrets that gives you the possibility to repair the car.

Well, if you have the skill to avoid biters, acid, water, cliffs, stone, etc... For myself, it's not a safe way at all.

[Drakken]

Since I am trying to win without lasers and robots of any kind, I am doing a combination of turret creep, grenades, and poison capsules to clear the necessary nests. I even did flamethrower turret creep by an oil outpost which I never tried before. The flame turrets have greater range and just melt enemy bases. You have to plug in some guns to kill biters that sneak through the flames as well.

I may research for the tank but not if I have enough resources to launch the rocket before I need to expand more.

[Drakken]

Ammo is not affected by marathon mode.

The red ammo is affected because the steel uses double the amount of iron.

[HadesSupreme]

I did test all 3 individually and in combiation. The one I found best early on was car gun + poison + grenades. Tank died too fast to spawns for me. I'm not sure if I was supposed to upgrade the tank a lot more before trying it or something.

Once the bases got really big, I did runbys with the car and poison capsules to take out worms (drawing all the spawns back to my turrets), then I executed turret creep.

I also tried carrying barrels and flamethrower turret creeping. Didn't really work out that well. With enemies constantly spawning you actually use a lot more oil than normal, and creeping is messy when you end up needing to place buildings among the already lit ground in order to move forward.

Didn't really try the drones, maybe those are the key. I tested personal laser defenses and they can last pretty long even on solar power and batteries, so that's promising.

Incidentally I really wish poison capsules had some kind of damage upgrade.

I didn't see anything regarding turret creep. I assumed, the tank gun is meant. Although, the car is far too squishy for anything beyond medium biters.

If you zig-zag constantly the only thing that will hurt you with the car is running into rocks (which usually means instant death).

[Theikkru]

[...]Tank died too fast to spawns for me. I'm not sure if I was supposed to upgrade the tank a lot more before trying it or something.[...]

If you can't clear out the biters coming after you, even while racing around at top speed, (the tank isn't THAT fast at top speed,) then either you didn't use explosive shells or you didn't get enough upgrades. Just using explosive shells should make it viable, if perhaps a bit sketchy, but getting at least the chem science level upgrades for both physical projectile damage and firing speed is what makes the real difference.
Don't be afraid to tab to the machine gun or flamethrower to take out tough biters that are getting too close.
And yes, combat bots help too.
You really shouldn't be taking any substantial damage besides running over puke and crashing into rocks/trees/nests.

[HadesSupreme]

Getting even slightly hit by spit as a tank slows you down enough that biters are catching you and more spit is hitting you. AoE on the explosive shells isn't good enough to kill them faster than they come, and in any case if you are shooting biters then you aren't shooting nests which is what really matters. Maybe the shooting speed upgrades would be enough though. I'm at phys damage 5 but only phys speed 3.

Update: Yeah, never realized how strong the tank upgrades are. Phys speed 5 definitely makes the tank a heck of a lot better. Defender and Distractor Capsules seem to suck but the tank + power armor w/ 8 personal laser defenses seems to be the ticket to quickly clear huge nests. You do really need the personal laser defenses otherwise the spawns just overwhelm the tank once you've been hit by a bit of spit.

[Theikkru]

[...]You do really need the personal laser defenses otherwise the spawns just overwhelm the tank once you've been hit by a bit of spit.

I've never used PLD. Ever. They just seemed way too OP to me. Alternating between shooting nests and the paparazzi works fine for me at upgrades 5-5. Are you driving your tank like you stole it? (You should be. And give it solid fuel if you really need the speed. No wood.) I use it just like the car, doing strafing runs back and forth along 1 side of the infestation, swerving as necessary to avoid worms. If you alternate well between shooting at the nests and your entourage, (especially when you're turning around for another strafe and are out of range of the nests) you can easily keep ahead of the crawlies enough that 1 or 2 stacks of spit won't drag you down (though if you really get gooped it's time to GTFO for a bit). The spitters should generally go down in 1 hit, so aiming the odd potshot at them should be enough to keep them under control. Also don't be afraid to swerve into the odd nest to avoid incoming projectiles. It helps the clearspeed.
The turret has a turn speed, so try to shoot roughly in the same direction (usually between 90~180° from forward facing on one side) so that you don't waste time not shooting when switching targets. And don't blow yourself up. I'm pretty sure explosive shells do friendly fire if you shoot too close. Switch weapons if you have one up your tailpipe.

[SirSmuggler]

I'm no combat expert and have never even tryed any kind of deathworld. So take my advice with a healthy dose of salt.
For the tank, I actualy find peircing shells to be very good. It might just be my driving that is at fault, but with explosive shells, there is allways a biter between me and any nest resulting in the shell exploding and killing nothing but biters. Biters respawn, nests don't so obviously nests are my primary target.
With peircing shells, It doesn't mater much if som biter gets in the way, the shot still connects with the nest I'm aiming at.

[Theikkru]

[...]som biter gets in the way[...]

Yeah...that really flips around if you're fighting more enemies. "Some biter" always has "some friends" right next to him, so using up a shot to blow them all away and having the next shot zip over the smoking crater to hit the target is the way to go. Regular shells would get you nowhere because your clearspeed would just be way too low without the area damage. Especially in deathworlds, if you're worrying about wasting shells on biters, you haven't brought enough shells.

[freeafrica]

So I've figured I'll give a try for some mods to pump-up the game difficulty.

I'm running a simple death-world w/ rampant (w/ basic settings of the mod) and NoHandCrafting. It makes the scenario very challenging, until now, I couldn't beat it w/ full-forest start. Of course, I'm playing w/ only one life, if I die anytime, I restart and also no map-preview.

I don't even think now, about avoiding any kind of tech, which feels refreshing after playing limiting scenarios.

BTW, on `Default settings` I've played until reaching green-modules and evolution got to like `0.08`, there were some bigger biter aggression until that, however it seems, it's not a "real" challenge. It may be that `rampant` kicks in only after reaching higher evolution, I don't know the mods soul yet. :]

[jodokus31]

So I've figured I'll give a try for some mods to pump-up the game difficulty.

There are also vanilla ways to pump-up difficulty.
First of all, deathworld marathon is not deathworld + marathon anymore.
It's about these settings:

Pollution settings

pollution.png (19.71 KiB) Viewed 4843 times

Evolution settings

evolution.png (11 KiB) Viewed 4843 times

These can also be changed to be even more severe.
For example:

• Attack cost modifier - How much % of pollution is absorbed by spawning a biter for the attack group. Lowering this will increase number of attacking biters.
• Absorption modifier - How much % of pollution is absorbed by environment. Lowering this value makes pollution spread even further and leaves more for attack groups
• Diffusion ratio - How fast pollution spreads between chunks. Increasing this value will let pollution spread faster. Although i don't know, if it's matter that much, when pollution already hits biters. The delay between generating pollution and reacting to it will be smaller.
• Evolution values - Increasing those will impact how fast evolution increases

[freeafrica]

There are also vanilla ways to pump-up difficulty.

Ye, you're right, I've tried multiple settings, not just DW and DWM, but 've tweaked other settings as well. I posted it because it's something new and exciting for me and I've thought people visiting this thread might also enjoy it.