Centipede

Centipede

Centipede

"Heavy combat mechanoids that glide on dozens of tiny legs. Their heavy armor and firepower makes them very effective against bunched-up static defenders. They are somewhat vulnerable to mobile hit-and-run tactics."

Base Stats

Type

Mechanoid – Characters

Apparel

Armor - Sharp

70%

Armor - Blunt

20%

Pawn Stats

Move Speed

1.9 c/s

Health Scale

1.2

Production

Melee Combat

Attack

Head
20 dmg (Blunt)
30 % AP
120 second cooldown

Average DPS

0.1

Centipedes are mechanoids which do not eat, cannot be tamed or trained, and are always hostile to the colony. They can be found sealed in ancient ruins in all biomes, spawn inside mountains or outside on the landscape. They may also raid the player's base through events and can also be found in most poison ships and psychic ships. They will target doors, walls, base production tables and furniture.

Centipedes are often supported by scythers, though they usually outpace the centipedes by a great margin and won't stop to wait for them.

Downed centipedes can either be manually killed or shut down by adding a medical bill. Dead centipedes may be disassembled at the machining table for 80, 50, and 2, though these values are affected by mechanoid disassembly efficiency as well as missing parts on the centipede.

Combat

Centipedes are slow-moving and extremely resistant to sharp damage, which includes bullets, so they require many shots to take down with guns. Centipedes may spawn equipped with the minigun, heavy charge blaster, inferno cannon, or with no weapon at all. They also have strong resistance against deadfall traps but still vulnerable to have their head cut off or their sight sensors destroyed.

Engaging it in melee may also be viable despite its armor and high health. A centipede hits quite hard, but not hard enough to be a serious problem, as they usually only inflict bruises and break ribs.
Melee swarms are possible with little risk of long-term injuries, provided pawns can safely close the distance. Shield belts, drawing their fire from a different direction, or simply using walls and terrain to block projectiles are all good ways to move in. Centipedes with the minigun or heavy charge blaster must be simultaneously engaged in melee to make sure none of them can use their weapons, otherwise they can eviscerate your colonist at point-blank before you can get the victim to escape.
Micromanagement should make sure that weaker fighters are targeted first, so that better ones can fight for longer before passing out from bruise pain.

Centipedes are good at crowd control, but cannot take down single or widely scattered targets, especially when equipped with miniguns or heavy charge blasters, both of which has forced miss radii. One effective way of distracting fire from them (if they are not equipped with the inferno cannon or supported by scythers) is to simply let a colonist with a shield belt stand in front of other colonists; the centipedes will focus fire on the shielded colonist while being completely unable to hit it, allowing your other colonists to fire at the centipedes without getting hurt.

If you can spare the resources, uranium slug turrets can be an extremely effective hard counter to Centipedes, as they outrange them greatly and their shots are powerful enough to pierce their thick armor.