Went to Gleba first -- how to deal with stompers?

[decanoic]

I am on my first playthrough of Space Age, and I went to Gleba first. I have a decent-ish starter base set up (about 1 red belt of copper and iron), and I found the spoilage mechanic to be great fun and honestly just a good time all around. However, I find dealing with the enemies on Gleba is pretty challenging and I'm not really sure what to do. Admittedly some of this is on me as I turned down pollution absorption to 40% for land and spawners -- that makes Nauvis feel a lot better in my experience but I didn't realize Gleba would be that much of a step up.

I have just crossed 30% evolution (66% time -- it took me a while to figure out Gleba production), and I'm not sure how to deal with these medium stompers. Here are a few images --my brain fruit outpost (rocket turrets only where the attacks come from):

11-15-2024, 17-56-29.png (791.9 KiB) Viewed 750 times

a typical attack group:

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the results of said attack group:

11-15-2024, 17-57-59.png (853.46 KiB) Viewed 750 times

I have not neglected upgrades that badly:

11-15-2024, 17-58-50.png (348.17 KiB) Viewed 750 times

This particular attack wasn't that bad -- a lot of the time I lose about half the turrets and most of the belts. It's only the stompers that are any threat at all. The small guys and the strafers just explode when they get near the turrets or get blown up by the mines. But I want to move on to a different planet but I don't feel like the situation on Gleba is quite handled. So what can I do?

Here are the options I have considered:

1. Just shut down Gleba and come back after I finish other planets and have better production and defenses. This seems super lame.
2. Maybe remove all the mines? The stompers seem mostly immune to them or destroy them before they can do anything and I feel like maybe they do something weird with the aggro. Certainly the bots replacing the mines cause a fair amount of attrition. I'm not sure this would really let me walk away though.
3. More upgrades?
4. More rocket turrets? I already have to import carbon from space to make enough explosives, and the friendly fire from rockets is rough
5. Switch to normal rockets? I had been doing this and I felt like the explosive rockets kill the stompers faster. Also it would seem intuitive that explosive rockets would be effective against big clumped up groups like I tend to see.
6. Clear out all nests in pollution cloud? I haven't done this because it's honestly quite challenging to get these stompers down. I guess I could remote suicide drive a tank in. The pollution cloud is pretty big:

   

   11-15-2024, 18-13-03.png (649.36 KiB) Viewed 750 times

Anyone have good ideas?

[BlueTemplar]

What worked for me to take out close / new nests (which don't have too many stompers) :
(but then I have Power Armor mk2, so it might not work for you)

2x Discharge Defense (no upgrades). Be careful to stagger them. They stun the stompers to the point where they're barely stomping any more. Eating Bioflux before and if necessary, during combat, helps a lot.

P.S.: Also, to make defense easier, I'm using a trick similar to how on Nauvis you can,

if you have trouble with Biter armour, only kill biter spawners, and leave Spitter spawners to absorb pollution instead

.
On Gleba, you would try to

leave small rafts alive, since they only produce wrigglers, which can be even stopped by walls !

Note that you have to be careful with the previous tactic, since

Discharge Defense doesn't discriminate with its targets

.

[HadesSupreme]

Options I can think of:

1. Plop down a tank, go out and shoot nests. Obviously higher tech stuff would help too but the tank alone should do well enough with some rocket fuel as long as you don't get stuck. If you have some equipment to throw on it like shields or exoskeleton that'd make it very easy.
2. Import Uranium from Nauvis to upgrade your turrets with ammo that instagibs everything.

For missile turrets I think regular missiles are best, make sure they are set to prioritize the stompers. Arguably the gun turrets should prioritize them as well.

Thankfully Gleba does unlock the Spidertron, with a few of those around you can clear out nests easily without wasting much of your own time.

[BlueTemplar]

Spidertron is late Gleba tech, and we're talking about early(ish) bases.

Have you actually tried those two ? I kind of doubt even uranium turrets and uranium tank can do damage fast enough to not get stomped on. Also, you might not have uranium ordnance yet, and this would make your defenses stop being self-sufficient.

[Yoyobuae]

Spidertron is late Gleba tech, and we're talking about early(ish) bases.

Have you actually tried those two ? I kind of doubt even uranium turrets and uranium tank can do damage fast enough to not get stomped on. Also, you might not have uranium ordnance yet, and this would make your defenses stop being self-sufficient.

Try the tank against stompers. No need for fancy uranium ammo. Just regular will do. Try the flamethrower too. You'll be in for a surprise.

Physical projectile damage and weapon shooting speed helps a lot too, but that's not required to beat small stompers.

[MEOWMI]

I have been told it's important that mines are further away, prior to when the enemies aggro to turrets, for them to be properly effective. Explosives are a great choice anyway, and as such, rocket turrets and explosive damage upgrades should most likely be high priority.

For me, running around and clearing nests was exceptionally effective, aided by the fact that I spent the effort to get rare tier exos, allowing me to outrun enemies and cover large amounts of area. Simply normal mk2 armor and normal exos would do the job too though. The machine gun was inadequate against stompers, but good enough for run-and-gunning egg rafts, and simply running away after decimating the nests means that the enemies despawn. A rocket launcher helps a lot too against nests.

Nests seem very slow to re-expand, compared to Nauvis, and in fact, this strategy was so incredibly effective, that I have yet to face major attacks from any rebuilt nests and by now spidertrons can be dispatched to easily deal with them. (It is in fact kind of hilarious how one-sided spidertrons make the fight.)

I can imagine it would be important to clear out some more space for your spore cloud to naturally dissipate and to allow you time to upgrade your defences. Personally I never had to ship in anything extra to make explosives, no doubt in large part due to the greatly reduced number of attacks after clearing so many nests. Also, you can make some "waste" nutrients from bioflux just to turn into rot and then into carbon, if you're really having explosive shortages.

Personally I have not bothered with explosive rockets very much, because their friendly fire potential is fierce when inside your own base, especially with damage upgrades, and the only real threat in my mind are stompers, which are singular enemies. Honestly if explosive rockets deal more damage to them then that's fine, I just can't tell if that's a thing or not and I never tested. Still, you best beware of friendly fire. I have accidentally destroyed a few valuables in my base just by using explosive rockets, when I clearly shouldn't have.

Lasers and guns can deal with the smaller mobs, it's just the stompers that I desperately needed to get rockets for since I had no other weapons tech. I also took it very seriously and prioritized explosive damage upgrades for a good while, just to help guarantee a kill on the enemies ASAP. The big ones have a lot of health, and it feels like it becomes a game of "kill quickly or be killed quickly."

[Nidan]

For hunting them in the field, I found

the flamethrower pretty nice. Hit them once, then kite them until they die. One shipment of ammo will last you quite a while

. PLD takes care of the rest. (I did Gleba last, and didn't bring anything but my power armor mk 2. All Nauvis tech, expect for batteries mk 3 (which are absolutely necessary if you fight stompers with PLD alone (which is a chore)).
For stationary defense I'm not sure yet. I don't think my rocket turrets can unload fast enough for medium stompers.

I don't think flamethrowers will kill fast enough. Tesla's stun is probably nice, but looks more like an AOE weapon rather than single target damage. Maybe both weapons combined.

[BlueTemplar]

I can imagine it would be important to clear out some more space for your spore cloud to naturally dissipate and to allow you time to upgrade your defences.

I just got biolabs at 0.76 evolution (DWM), and so far my tactic of

killing regular rafts while leaving small rafts alive

seems to still work well :

base

Gleba_76evo_biolabs.png (461.78 KiB) Viewed 119 times

You can see a wriggler swarm coming in.

I had to add and connect roboports, and significantly increase the number of laser turrets to deal with the big wrigglers. And especially add walls so that precious quality imported turrets are hardly ever lost. (As long as I notice new medium rafts in time.)
(I guess with lower evo, a player with less than my 4 laser damage and 4 laser shooting speed would still need something like this ?)

You can see the closest medium raft at only 2 chunks away from pollution on the top right - I'll have to deal with it before I leave.

As for taking out new expansions (still with the above tactic in mind), here's what I use :

Gleba arty

Gleba_arty.png (822.05 KiB) Viewed 119 times

(I should probably figure out how to request ammo in the blueprint for those gun turrets directly.)

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Copy blueprint

(This is of course a solution that only works if you already have those Vulcanus pre-requisites...)