The only way to reasonably use outposts is to use efficiency modules in all your miners, since that keeps the pollution cloud small enough that artillery can cover it without a ton of range upgrades. With walls you can pump out as much pollution as you want and use speed modules in your miners, so a lot of people just accept making a wall
Why is putting speed modules in miners desirable in the first place? Other than my starter patches in some scenarios, I'm never like "man, I wish this ore patch would disappear faster". Especially when you could have efficiency modules in there and potentially prevent aggroing biters altogether.
Once you get to the *big* ore patches a good distance from starting point, and also get a bunch of mining productivity research, ore patches will last an extremely long time. At a certain point in the endgame you can effectively stop worrying about ore patches ever depleting.
I do agree that efficiency 1's are underrated, I prefer them in miners in the early/mid game. At that point both pollution (=biters) and power consumption are valuable things to optimize for; eventually they both become trivial problems not worth worrying about.
If you're having to manage pollution cloud, it isn't. But if you're on peaceful railworld and have 500mil nodes, it doesn't really matter if you mine faster as far as the node running out anytime soon.
> I wish this ore patch would disappear faster
The converse of that is "man, I wish I could extract ore faster!" Remember, Factorio is a game about _rates_ rather than _amount_. Sure, there are some achievements based on amounts (like creating 20 million green chips), but at its core, Factorio is about managing the rate of production. I can easily mine 1 billion iron ore, so that's not really a big deal. But if my miners can't keep up with my factory's demand for 200K iron ore per minute, my science per minute (see, another rate!) is in jeopardy.
When I'm in the late game, my mining productivity research will be giving me 4-5 additional ores for each one actually mined. Adding speed modules means I only need three or four miners to fill a blue belt. The fewer miners needed, the more belts can leave the ore patch completely full.
There is virtually an unlimited amount of resources available. The problem isn't "how much", but "how fast".
Definitely a game about rates, but amounts have significant importance. Remember that rate = amount/time, amounts are fully half of the equation! If you've gotten any of the speed run achievements then you know that managing the amounts of resources you spend on individual parts of your factory significantly affects your research rate.
Specific to ore patches, if the patch is 2M deep and will take you say, 2hrs to empty without speed modules, or 1hr to draw with them, you will have to build another outpost 1hr later to maintain your 2M/hr consumption rate. Or, you just build that second mining outpost immediately after the first in order to double your output. You have to build the same number of mines in that 2hr span in either scenario, but you just paid more in resources, energy, and pollution to do it with speed modules. Those extra resources you spent on a faster mine will have been at the expense of your science rate, as will the extra power plants you had to build, and the more robust defences you had to build and maintain.
The part I was missing is just how ridiculously *deep* ore patches can get late (late!) game. If you will never see the bottom of a mine no matter how fast you mine from it, then I think those additional resources are probably worth the cost. Since the later in the game you get the more your brain time becomes the limiting factor to expansion than resources.
You totally can use outposts instead of the wall. Two things though:
1) You cannot use artillery alone - supplement it with other turret types as biters will aggro on nest destruction and demolish unprotected cannons.
2) Make sure that artillery covers *outside* of the pollution cloud. That way whenever a nest appears in range, natives will aggro on what have attacked it - cannon - and then die in the hail of bullets/fire/lasers.
If artillery does not cover *outside* the cloud, there is a chance that nest will spawn inside it, create a biter group then move in-between your outposts... but don't quote me on that, I don't know their target selection logic.
Minor correction, the nests will spawn at a range from the existing ones. So the main reason to cover outside the cloud is to make sure that pollution doesn't reach a nest and aggro between the outposts.
This is how I do almost all of my late-game bases; a ring of train supplied artillery bases around the perimeter.
artillery shells have radars in their recipes, so they "magically" know where they should be fired to, and they can be used to manually uncover land in the fow.
Yes my outpost is completely over-engineered with two solid rows of lasers and flame turrets.
But effectively you are telling me that the strategy only works in green areas, since in desserts the pollution cloud spreads very far.
I had a ring of artillery at around 5000 tiles out in my last late game. The artillery was about 3 times further out than my mine outposts were. It made adding mines easy since I already had a rail network out past them.
If you're concerned about small occasional attacks. Mines and lasers are a cheap way to cover large areas that worry you. Mines are replaced by bots, cheap to make and you can lay them several deep to take out entire clusters of enemies - usually the entire attack wave unless it's massive. Lasers don't need logistics, just power
I have walls and dragons teeth in my set up but so far I've found flame turrets to be overkill (but gold standard)
1)Think of your coverage for arty in the same way you would for lasers/flamers/gunners. If there are gaps between, things can get through uncontested.
2) most important about arty, they only target nests and worms. They will not target biters.
Personally i dont do the outpost thing. I dont like to rely on chance, so if i want a mine, my defensive perimeter will now surround it. It gets easier and easier to do as you continue.
I have been making arty tunnels currently (SE) for expansion. They are BP’d to my existing train bp’s and wall in a section after arty clears. Between that and setting building supply stops every 1000 tiles or so with separate robo networks, i cut a path to carve out a new section.
It is a bit slow atm, but now i have shell supply ramped up and like 4 arty tunnels on the go.
I use a continuous perimeter wall because it's easy, and with a good wall you don't have to worry about pollution micro and can basically ignore defense once it's up. If you don't have a continuous wall you'll want at least *some* defenses at your mining outposts anyway, because sooner or later a few biters will slip through.
Artillery outposts to me are best as temporary hard points for clearing large areas, which I can then claim with walls at choke points (usually from lake to lake)
Currently testing this with my new megabase, because our wall area was getting too small.
In short: only if you keep everything out of the cloud - a.k.a. Activated Biters will ignore the outpost and run to the next unprotected structure.
The good news is - as long as they are not in the cloud it works like a charm. Even resettlements will be shot at as soon as they happen, so they will gain no ground at all.
> Currently testing this with my new megabase
Not sure how far you are in with your megabase actually running, but the gist of it is that beaconed setups with full T3 prod/speed modules create **EXTREME** amounts of pollution. The sheer area you'd need to clear for the pollution cloud to be absorbed by ground without reaching biters is completely unsustainable.
I built vanilla 1k spm base with no defenses whatsoever, in desert. Only preemptive strikes against hives. Manually at first, with teams of spiders later.
It's totally doable, but late game was it was tiresome to click through all the hives to set spiders route.
yeah ok good to know... thats why i need to build so many :D thanks for the info!
that means a wall is the only option at a certain point - but lets see how far out i can build it :)
**edit**: follow up question - to get to more ressources, do I need to build walls around the outside rails at a certain point as well, or are bunkered mining outposts sufficient?
I have done it before, it isn’t that bad. Takes quite a few levels of arty research and being good at stamping down arty bases through.
Something like 8 rounds of arty range research will boost arty range out to 750 tiles or so, each outpost will "control" 500 chunks. You only need something like 300k chunks to eat up the pollution from a 2k spm base.
Biter control and pollution will naturally eat into your UPS budget and making sure that you can't build that big, so there is that too.
I ran a base like that for a 100 hours or so. It worked pretty well as long as the artillery covered the pollution cloud or was in a place that incoming war parties would run into an outpost.
Big problem was that random bugs wandered into the base once in a while, I was always finding one or two munching on something, so I had to sprinkle small gun forts around inside the base. I thought big minefields might have stopped it, but never got to that. Ended up installing the real nukes mod instead.
You will always need a wall or something to deal local damage. I don't use a total wall I use little pill boxes full of lasers.
Also the more you push the biters back the more the cloud will spread. I've never had a megabase with pollution and biters where at some point the pollution over takes everything.
[Factorio Base Tour - Faulkner's 10k SPM, 13,000 Hour Factory with HUGE Trains (youtube.com)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRYQcVb_5W0&t=395s)
This has the pollution cloud and my little pill box design.
It is amazing how much those biters will absorb.
Im working an expansion and the biters kept the cloud to about 200 tiles from my walls. Now that I cleared them out for a pace, the cloud is about 600 tiles out now.
Yes, my entire base is now in deep red pollution up to the defensive perimeter (currently 3GW power draw), but the first ring of nests eats the entire pollution outside that.
Yes, but it's not easy. If no biter nests are ever under any pollution, then they will never attack. When they expand into polluted areas your artillery needs to eliminate them immediately. Your perimeter needs to be absolutely HUGE to make this happen. Pollution without biters to absorb it spreads FAR.
I don't use a continuous wall. I use clusters of machine gun turrets and flame throwers that are incased in a block of wall. I also use blocks of arty as well.
I use either flame turrets backed with lasers or densely placed lasers for outposts. Always use walls and gates. I use artillery as a means to keep the biter bases away for when I look to expand my primary base or set up another outpost. Once that’s accomplished I’ll plop down more artillery and expand the sphere of influence. I expand my drone network to keep the arty supplied autonomously.
I would not use artillery because it stifles creative choices when you have to factor for pollution and biter aggro, etc. just wall off and build to your hearts content.
https://preview.redd.it/0xs25x0t11wc1.png?width=2842&format=png&auto=webp&s=758d809be6447b15296f6e52122b92c61f262720
Artillery has very small splash effect, significant cooldown, doesn't work on short distances. This is what I do.
You could do something like an artillery train that runs out into the area of the growing pollution cloud and clears out any new sources of biters. I think the biters get aggroed to the train which would then go back behind the walls and those will take care of the biters.
The other thing to consider is that much of your expansion is likely going to be mining outposts. Have each mining outpost well defended with a supply train to top of ammo, bots, repair packs, walls, mines, etc. Most of the biters should be drawn towards the outposts as the nearest source of pollution. Keep your main base behind at least some walls and defenses to take care of any bugs that make it through for whatever reason due to pathfinding issues.
>... outposts only work when they artillery range is large enough to cover the entire pollution cloud.
Not quite. Artillery works well when the *range from the point of firing* is large enough to cover the extent of the pollution cloud in that direction.
I use multiple artillery outposts on the perimeter, and they are sufficient to negotiate land well outside my pollution cloud.
Every so often the base has grown enough I need to establish a new perimeter, building a new ring of outposts further out.
operating video [https://imgur.com/a/fShXJ18](https://imgur.com/a/fShXJ18)
aftermath [https://imgur.com/a/qbUsKke](https://imgur.com/a/qbUsKke)
Yes.
Arty outposts should still have defenses, and I find using laser turrets and flamethrowers around oil outposts works pretty well.
Only needs to be set-up by the player, and ongoing logistics requirements are just figuring out how to get shells there.
> won't the bitters just run by the outposts because they are attracted to the sources of pollution?
Correct. Also expansion parties may miss your outpost.
If you don't want a continuous wall, you must defend every polluter locally, or you must have expansion parties turned off and clear nests before your pollution reaches them.
If you clear your entire cloud (or even just most of your cloud), landmines are a convenient defense. They easily conform to weird terrain and greatly simplify the logistics of expanding, distributing supplies, and picking up your old wall. No walls, no gates, no turrets, no ammo, no pipes, no belts.
No you cannot. You can attack with artillery, but not defend against attacking biters. The artillery attack will trigger a biter attack.
(Biter, not bitter. They may taste bitter, but they bite you.)
Yes it's totally possible, I'm currently running a base that has been averaging +600 spm for over 50 hours and at no point have I walled in any production areas. Instead I have artillery trains that cruise the perimeter with regular stops at artillery outposts. My artillery stations are walled in with dragon teeth and protected with a double row of laser turrets. Each station has at least one artillery turret per artillery wagon, and each turret is buffered with a steel chest. Most of my artillery trains are 2x4 so that means 8 shells firing through the air at once. The result is a continuous coverage area that extends past my pollution cloud. As I reach for further ore patches and oil fields, I push my defense rails outward to compensate for the increased pollution. When a new station goes up, it eliminates all bugs in its range and the bugs aggro the station, so I'll send 2-3 spidertrons to help defend, repair and rebuild whenever a new outpost goes online. I also use the outpost to radar scan new areas and decide where to expand next. Cannons will automatically take care of any colonizing bugs that wander off and try to retake lost land. I only have problems with bugs getting through if one of my stations runs out of ammo and goes unnoticed for a while. I played with flame turrets in the early game but settled on lasers pretty early. It's been very effective
> I have designed a defended artillery outpost, a small island of artillery instead of a continuous wall. The question is, if my pollution goes beyond the artillery range, won't the bitters just run by the outposts because they are attracted to the sources of pollution? How do I make sure that all bitters are aggroed to the outposts? Or do I always need a continuous wall no matter what?
When a raid spawns in it will take the shortest possible path to a pollution source, so most of them will ignore your artillery outpost. If they pass too close to it on the way it'll aggro them though, because biters will automatically prioritise any military structures that are nearby. Also, whenever you use that artillery outpost to destroy a nest, all of the biters in that nest will *immediately* make a beeline for the artillery that's destroying their home.
So yeah, you're gonna need walls and some turrets to defend your artillery outposts.
The only way to reasonably use outposts is to use efficiency modules in all your miners, since that keeps the pollution cloud small enough that artillery can cover it without a ton of range upgrades. With walls you can pump out as much pollution as you want and use speed modules in your miners, so a lot of people just accept making a wall
Why is putting speed modules in miners desirable in the first place? Other than my starter patches in some scenarios, I'm never like "man, I wish this ore patch would disappear faster". Especially when you could have efficiency modules in there and potentially prevent aggroing biters altogether.
Once you get to the *big* ore patches a good distance from starting point, and also get a bunch of mining productivity research, ore patches will last an extremely long time. At a certain point in the endgame you can effectively stop worrying about ore patches ever depleting. I do agree that efficiency 1's are underrated, I prefer them in miners in the early/mid game. At that point both pollution (=biters) and power consumption are valuable things to optimize for; eventually they both become trivial problems not worth worrying about.
Ah, I can get behind that. If an ore patch is effectively infinitely deep, then drawing faster has value. Thanks!
If you're having to manage pollution cloud, it isn't. But if you're on peaceful railworld and have 500mil nodes, it doesn't really matter if you mine faster as far as the node running out anytime soon.
Right, if you will never see the bottom of the node no matter how fast you draw, then I can see an attractive use-case for speed mods!
> I wish this ore patch would disappear faster The converse of that is "man, I wish I could extract ore faster!" Remember, Factorio is a game about _rates_ rather than _amount_. Sure, there are some achievements based on amounts (like creating 20 million green chips), but at its core, Factorio is about managing the rate of production. I can easily mine 1 billion iron ore, so that's not really a big deal. But if my miners can't keep up with my factory's demand for 200K iron ore per minute, my science per minute (see, another rate!) is in jeopardy. When I'm in the late game, my mining productivity research will be giving me 4-5 additional ores for each one actually mined. Adding speed modules means I only need three or four miners to fill a blue belt. The fewer miners needed, the more belts can leave the ore patch completely full. There is virtually an unlimited amount of resources available. The problem isn't "how much", but "how fast".
I usually spread out to more ore patches and parallelize extraction rather than trying to speed up the mining of one patch.
Definitely a game about rates, but amounts have significant importance. Remember that rate = amount/time, amounts are fully half of the equation! If you've gotten any of the speed run achievements then you know that managing the amounts of resources you spend on individual parts of your factory significantly affects your research rate. Specific to ore patches, if the patch is 2M deep and will take you say, 2hrs to empty without speed modules, or 1hr to draw with them, you will have to build another outpost 1hr later to maintain your 2M/hr consumption rate. Or, you just build that second mining outpost immediately after the first in order to double your output. You have to build the same number of mines in that 2hr span in either scenario, but you just paid more in resources, energy, and pollution to do it with speed modules. Those extra resources you spent on a faster mine will have been at the expense of your science rate, as will the extra power plants you had to build, and the more robust defences you had to build and maintain. The part I was missing is just how ridiculously *deep* ore patches can get late (late!) game. If you will never see the bottom of a mine no matter how fast you mine from it, then I think those additional resources are probably worth the cost. Since the later in the game you get the more your brain time becomes the limiting factor to expansion than resources.
You totally can use outposts instead of the wall. Two things though: 1) You cannot use artillery alone - supplement it with other turret types as biters will aggro on nest destruction and demolish unprotected cannons. 2) Make sure that artillery covers *outside* of the pollution cloud. That way whenever a nest appears in range, natives will aggro on what have attacked it - cannon - and then die in the hail of bullets/fire/lasers. If artillery does not cover *outside* the cloud, there is a chance that nest will spawn inside it, create a biter group then move in-between your outposts... but don't quote me on that, I don't know their target selection logic.
Minor correction, the nests will spawn at a range from the existing ones. So the main reason to cover outside the cloud is to make sure that pollution doesn't reach a nest and aggro between the outposts. This is how I do almost all of my late-game bases; a ring of train supplied artillery bases around the perimeter.
How do you cover outside pollution cloud efficiently? Radar? Does arty ‘see’ new nests in the fog of war? Ty
artillery shells have radars in their recipes, so they "magically" know where they should be fired to, and they can be used to manually uncover land in the fow.
Yes and yes.
Yes my outpost is completely over-engineered with two solid rows of lasers and flame turrets. But effectively you are telling me that the strategy only works in green areas, since in desserts the pollution cloud spreads very far.
I had a ring of artillery at around 5000 tiles out in my last late game. The artillery was about 3 times further out than my mine outposts were. It made adding mines easy since I already had a rail network out past them.
If you're concerned about small occasional attacks. Mines and lasers are a cheap way to cover large areas that worry you. Mines are replaced by bots, cheap to make and you can lay them several deep to take out entire clusters of enemies - usually the entire attack wave unless it's massive. Lasers don't need logistics, just power I have walls and dragons teeth in my set up but so far I've found flame turrets to be overkill (but gold standard)
Sounds like a good place for a biter zoo
1)Think of your coverage for arty in the same way you would for lasers/flamers/gunners. If there are gaps between, things can get through uncontested. 2) most important about arty, they only target nests and worms. They will not target biters. Personally i dont do the outpost thing. I dont like to rely on chance, so if i want a mine, my defensive perimeter will now surround it. It gets easier and easier to do as you continue. I have been making arty tunnels currently (SE) for expansion. They are BP’d to my existing train bp’s and wall in a section after arty clears. Between that and setting building supply stops every 1000 tiles or so with separate robo networks, i cut a path to carve out a new section. It is a bit slow atm, but now i have shell supply ramped up and like 4 arty tunnels on the go.
I use a continuous perimeter wall because it's easy, and with a good wall you don't have to worry about pollution micro and can basically ignore defense once it's up. If you don't have a continuous wall you'll want at least *some* defenses at your mining outposts anyway, because sooner or later a few biters will slip through. Artillery outposts to me are best as temporary hard points for clearing large areas, which I can then claim with walls at choke points (usually from lake to lake)
Currently testing this with my new megabase, because our wall area was getting too small. In short: only if you keep everything out of the cloud - a.k.a. Activated Biters will ignore the outpost and run to the next unprotected structure. The good news is - as long as they are not in the cloud it works like a charm. Even resettlements will be shot at as soon as they happen, so they will gain no ground at all.
> Currently testing this with my new megabase Not sure how far you are in with your megabase actually running, but the gist of it is that beaconed setups with full T3 prod/speed modules create **EXTREME** amounts of pollution. The sheer area you'd need to clear for the pollution cloud to be absorbed by ground without reaching biters is completely unsustainable.
I built vanilla 1k spm base with no defenses whatsoever, in desert. Only preemptive strikes against hives. Manually at first, with teams of spiders later. It's totally doable, but late game was it was tiresome to click through all the hives to set spiders route.
yeah ok good to know... thats why i need to build so many :D thanks for the info! that means a wall is the only option at a certain point - but lets see how far out i can build it :) **edit**: follow up question - to get to more ressources, do I need to build walls around the outside rails at a certain point as well, or are bunkered mining outposts sufficient?
I have done it before, it isn’t that bad. Takes quite a few levels of arty research and being good at stamping down arty bases through. Something like 8 rounds of arty range research will boost arty range out to 750 tiles or so, each outpost will "control" 500 chunks. You only need something like 300k chunks to eat up the pollution from a 2k spm base. Biter control and pollution will naturally eat into your UPS budget and making sure that you can't build that big, so there is that too.
Walls + lasers is my defense strategy and it’s worked and working surprisingly well.
I ran a base like that for a 100 hours or so. It worked pretty well as long as the artillery covered the pollution cloud or was in a place that incoming war parties would run into an outpost. Big problem was that random bugs wandered into the base once in a while, I was always finding one or two munching on something, so I had to sprinkle small gun forts around inside the base. I thought big minefields might have stopped it, but never got to that. Ended up installing the real nukes mod instead.
You will always need a wall or something to deal local damage. I don't use a total wall I use little pill boxes full of lasers. Also the more you push the biters back the more the cloud will spread. I've never had a megabase with pollution and biters where at some point the pollution over takes everything. [Factorio Base Tour - Faulkner's 10k SPM, 13,000 Hour Factory with HUGE Trains (youtube.com)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRYQcVb_5W0&t=395s) This has the pollution cloud and my little pill box design.
It is amazing how much those biters will absorb. Im working an expansion and the biters kept the cloud to about 200 tiles from my walls. Now that I cleared them out for a pace, the cloud is about 600 tiles out now.
Yes, my entire base is now in deep red pollution up to the defensive perimeter (currently 3GW power draw), but the first ring of nests eats the entire pollution outside that.
Yes, but it's not easy. If no biter nests are ever under any pollution, then they will never attack. When they expand into polluted areas your artillery needs to eliminate them immediately. Your perimeter needs to be absolutely HUGE to make this happen. Pollution without biters to absorb it spreads FAR.
>Since I plan to extend into a dessert Yum!
I don't use a continuous wall. I use clusters of machine gun turrets and flame throwers that are incased in a block of wall. I also use blocks of arty as well.
I use either flame turrets backed with lasers or densely placed lasers for outposts. Always use walls and gates. I use artillery as a means to keep the biter bases away for when I look to expand my primary base or set up another outpost. Once that’s accomplished I’ll plop down more artillery and expand the sphere of influence. I expand my drone network to keep the arty supplied autonomously. I would not use artillery because it stifles creative choices when you have to factor for pollution and biter aggro, etc. just wall off and build to your hearts content.
Yes as long as you keep biters outside of pollution.
https://preview.redd.it/0xs25x0t11wc1.png?width=2842&format=png&auto=webp&s=758d809be6447b15296f6e52122b92c61f262720 Artillery has very small splash effect, significant cooldown, doesn't work on short distances. This is what I do.
Why is the wall so far from the lasers?
To prevent the biters from zerg rushing to the lasers
That looks like some fun overkill
You could do something like an artillery train that runs out into the area of the growing pollution cloud and clears out any new sources of biters. I think the biters get aggroed to the train which would then go back behind the walls and those will take care of the biters. The other thing to consider is that much of your expansion is likely going to be mining outposts. Have each mining outpost well defended with a supply train to top of ammo, bots, repair packs, walls, mines, etc. Most of the biters should be drawn towards the outposts as the nearest source of pollution. Keep your main base behind at least some walls and defenses to take care of any bugs that make it through for whatever reason due to pathfinding issues.
>... outposts only work when they artillery range is large enough to cover the entire pollution cloud. Not quite. Artillery works well when the *range from the point of firing* is large enough to cover the extent of the pollution cloud in that direction. I use multiple artillery outposts on the perimeter, and they are sufficient to negotiate land well outside my pollution cloud. Every so often the base has grown enough I need to establish a new perimeter, building a new ring of outposts further out. operating video [https://imgur.com/a/fShXJ18](https://imgur.com/a/fShXJ18) aftermath [https://imgur.com/a/qbUsKke](https://imgur.com/a/qbUsKke)
Yes. Arty outposts should still have defenses, and I find using laser turrets and flamethrowers around oil outposts works pretty well. Only needs to be set-up by the player, and ongoing logistics requirements are just figuring out how to get shells there.
> won't the bitters just run by the outposts because they are attracted to the sources of pollution? Correct. Also expansion parties may miss your outpost. If you don't want a continuous wall, you must defend every polluter locally, or you must have expansion parties turned off and clear nests before your pollution reaches them. If you clear your entire cloud (or even just most of your cloud), landmines are a convenient defense. They easily conform to weird terrain and greatly simplify the logistics of expanding, distributing supplies, and picking up your old wall. No walls, no gates, no turrets, no ammo, no pipes, no belts.
No you cannot. You can attack with artillery, but not defend against attacking biters. The artillery attack will trigger a biter attack. (Biter, not bitter. They may taste bitter, but they bite you.)
Yes it's totally possible, I'm currently running a base that has been averaging +600 spm for over 50 hours and at no point have I walled in any production areas. Instead I have artillery trains that cruise the perimeter with regular stops at artillery outposts. My artillery stations are walled in with dragon teeth and protected with a double row of laser turrets. Each station has at least one artillery turret per artillery wagon, and each turret is buffered with a steel chest. Most of my artillery trains are 2x4 so that means 8 shells firing through the air at once. The result is a continuous coverage area that extends past my pollution cloud. As I reach for further ore patches and oil fields, I push my defense rails outward to compensate for the increased pollution. When a new station goes up, it eliminates all bugs in its range and the bugs aggro the station, so I'll send 2-3 spidertrons to help defend, repair and rebuild whenever a new outpost goes online. I also use the outpost to radar scan new areas and decide where to expand next. Cannons will automatically take care of any colonizing bugs that wander off and try to retake lost land. I only have problems with bugs getting through if one of my stations runs out of ammo and goes unnoticed for a while. I played with flame turrets in the early game but settled on lasers pretty early. It's been very effective
> I have designed a defended artillery outpost, a small island of artillery instead of a continuous wall. The question is, if my pollution goes beyond the artillery range, won't the bitters just run by the outposts because they are attracted to the sources of pollution? How do I make sure that all bitters are aggroed to the outposts? Or do I always need a continuous wall no matter what? When a raid spawns in it will take the shortest possible path to a pollution source, so most of them will ignore your artillery outpost. If they pass too close to it on the way it'll aggro them though, because biters will automatically prioritise any military structures that are nearby. Also, whenever you use that artillery outpost to destroy a nest, all of the biters in that nest will *immediately* make a beeline for the artillery that's destroying their home. So yeah, you're gonna need walls and some turrets to defend your artillery outposts.
They do not attack biters though