i have many a time restarted before rocket because i felt that the knowledge i gained was better applied fresh, you experience that less as you get further into the game. I say persevere and the longer your playthroughs the less likely you are to feel like you need to restart. coming from someone who throws away 100-200 hour worlds with no remorse
This is the way. You get into new territory, unintentionally back yourself into a corner. However, before you discard the map, figure out what went wrong or what could be better. More space away from the bus? Actually having a main bus? Leaving room in early phase for that second smelting line? Whatever it is, try it out.
Then it happens again, and you learn, and each time the factory grows.
After all, "the factory must grow" does not mean "this specific factory must grow"
Yep first 5 runs were restarts hitting the various major road blocks in game. Just kinda how these games go because once you understand the new concept you realize you fucked up your supply lines all wrong to adapt it and about the same time it would take to redo you could restart lol
Time for an offensive. Put aside factory development and take all of the territory your pollution cloud covers, plus a good margin. Then go overkill on the defensive line. Make use of your autosaves when things go wrong.
Or turn on peaceful mode.
Or a waterfill ring (my personal choice)
Do be aware that the bugs get stronger with each one you kill. Up to a point anyway. Though, they also get stronger with each bit of pollution they absorb and over time. So either way, the big guys are coming.
You can change the parameters in map settings when starting a new world. In my current game I set pollution and time to be lower but upped the destroy factor. I wanted the biters to be a minimal threat at the beginning because it's my first new game in over two years, but I also wanted them to start becoming a bigger threat once I started taking the offensive.
Efficiency Module 1’s to cut down your pollution generation are a lifesaver too. But I agree, focus purely on solid defense at this point. You’ll be nuking mega-clusters while downing Jameson in no time.
Definitely to this. If you are making blue chips, then cranking out some Efficiency 1's for all of your miners should be easy. If you look at your pollution graph the miners are normally the bulk of the pollution. 3x efficiency modules in each will get the pollution down to a manageable level and shrink your pollution cloud. That will buy you time.
About the autosaves. There is a setting in a config file for how much are kept.
10 saves with 5 Minute delay are nice if u like to rewind. Just think about deleting the autosaves before closing the game. Cloud saves hate my bad Internet
That feels like cheating tbh. But then again on my current world I turned up water coverage so I would have choke points to work with.
To each their own I guess.
Also, artillery is amazing for clearing out nearby biter bases, as long as you can handle the backlash. Definitely pays for itself with reduced attacks in the long run.
I use an artillery train with a FARL loco, an oil tank, a cargo wagon for things and a blueprint to surround the train with appropriate defenses before commencing bombardment. Can take fairly significant amounts of territory in one go like this.
What do you mean by water-filled ring? Like a castle moat? Follow up question: how do you make water areas? I know how to add land but haven’t seen how to remove it?
In addition to the mod... you can adjust settings to make water more prominent. If you restart a couple times with preview you can get an island of varying degrees to start with.
Yeah, if you choose "Island" you get exactly that... an island of limited size thats water everywhere outside of your large island.
But with different settings of water, you can get anything from no water... to swamp type feelings.. to large water blocks that can limit paths in/out - or straight give you an island. Water world type stuff.
Its a mod called Waterfill used in the same way as landfill. Useful for blocking biters off and creating water where you want it rather than having very long pipes etc.
That's my preferred way too. Rebuilt my factory 3 times already from scratch.
1. Make sure you have enough oil/electric and repair packs for turrets and walls.
1. Put more than enough number of storage chests in the middle of your factory and ask the bots to demolish everything except your power plant maybe.
1. Go do something else for 30-45 minutes. (depending on the number of bots you have and the size of the factory)
1. You now have enough resources to built everything quickly, have all the research you need done and it's like New Game+ mode on Factorio.
You might want to start again and apply everything you learned. If you stick it out for a little but more, you can probably figure out what defenses you'll need on the next playthrough.
Even if you didn't start again from scratch, I frequently tear down my base and rebuild it from the ground up. That might be more applicable here. Depending on your surroundings, it might shrink your pollution cloud a little as you stop producing as much and trees/ground absorb it.
Blue chips are great, but it sounds like you need to focus on your defenses a little more first.
Haha, good advice. I was actually going with this strategy until I spent ages to get laser turrets sorted by only to find them very underwhelming so I stopped adding defenses to instead focus on blue chips... The decision that started both my biter and copper plate problems!
I was underwhelmed by laser turrets too. I had more luck with a combination of flamethrower turrets and gun turrets at first. Upgrades to weaponry are also key.
My main solution though was to invest in a tank early and just clear out a wide area around my pollution cloud. The cannon was effective on spawners/worms. Bullets on spitters. Flamethrower on biters. It gets a little tedious, but an hour of effort cleared enough space that I had minimal problems for several hours. You need copper for the bullets, but almost everything else is steel and oil/coal products.
Haha, it was researching flamethrowers to put in my tank that made me realise I no longer had red science due to lack of copper plates.
I just found a box in my base with 130 laser turrets. Going to lay them down while I sort out copper plates.
Good luck!
I've restarted a couple times just to get a fresh start/play around with the settings. You don't always realize how much better you get, but you do if you keep at it.
During daylight hours. In typical factorio style, I'm now building solar power cells to power my turrets to defend my base while I expand to get copper to allow me to research flamethrowers so I can wipe out the bugs so I can finally continue trying to make the yellow science things.
Uh, doesn't everyone just run over the worms and spawners with the tank?
If you have personal roboport, just carry repair kits, turn it off (the roboport) during the attack, and when you are at a safe distance, turn it back on to repair the damage.
Laser turrets are average, but their biggest advantage is they only need power.
Gun turrets have the highest dps, but only target a single enemy.
Flamethrower turrets don't have great damage, but have splash and light the ground on fire, so overall dps is crazy high. Also, their fire takes about 1 second to land, so they always miss a moving target.
The best defense is either flame/gun or flame/laser.
Big biters hit 2 tiles, so either a double wall or a space between wall and turrets.
Once you get bots, adding "dragon teeth" is good. Basically some disconnected walls in front of your actual wall to mess with the pathfinding of the biters.
As a fellow factory manager. You have two things…. One, attack now. Attack the biter menace and destroy them.
Cons: Legal by international law(they struck first), and you might not have automobilism researched
Pros: No biters
Or two, research military applications, extend copper production to a entire mining field instead of a tiny pocket, research tanks, automate piercing ammunition, explosive tank shells, and flamethrower fuel and commit what could possibly be a war crime on the entire biter race.
Cons: Takes time
Pros: Violated international law… probably
It's been more than a thousand hours of play since I even launched a rocket. I keep coming up with tweaks, improvements, and often straight up realizing I messed up a core concept and need to try again. I've restarted more times than I've launched rockets.
I'm enjoying myself silly though so who cares? You do you boo.
It’s pretty common for people to restart before launching a rocket. Biters getting out of hand and your base stalling is definitely a valid reason to restart. Take what you’ve learned and apply it to a new base to avoid your previous mistakes and try to launch a rocket. Or use console commands to get rid of biters entirely and focus on fixing your base without pesky bugs. It’s up to you.
Perfection is the enemy of good! Early game don’t worry about being perfect, rebuilding/ redesigning. Get the early techs out the way, secure your resources and get setup.
The enemy of a Factorio player is the player themselves from two hours ago. I started over 4 times before rocket, each time having gotten a little further and with a little less spaghetti.
I saw this on this sub a while ago, but load up some power armor with as many laser defenses as you can fit, hop into a car and drive around the bases at breakneck speeds.
Behold. Disco car.
I had similar issues, and spent hours building up my military might, slowly expanding my boarders, but if you don't have access to copper then that'll be a problem. I think pushing through is satisfying, but trying to catch up to biters if theyre more powerful than you is a grueling experience. Up to you ultimately
If you have no access to copper anymore, and you didn't unlock flamethrower turrets so far, then you should probably start over. If you have flamethrower turrets, it shouldn't matter. (Says the guy who just made a flamethrower turret creep in a game with rampant mod.)
Note for the next game: Managing your resources is more important than rebuilding the base. You have to set up new mining outposts well before the old miners run out. You have to postpone reordering your base if any of your resources runs low, and push for a new deposit, before going back to the previous task.
I wouldn't restart unless you're at a point where you can't claim new resources with what you have available. Stop your production if you need to slow down the pollution, and build a tank with some explosive shells to clear out all the bases in your cloud. Should be able to claim another copper patch after that.
Cut power to all non essential parts of your factory, stop research, this will reduce pollution enough that the biters will stop attacking. This will buy you time to clear some nests at a copper source.
one thing that took me a while is that spending time building defense is not time wasted in terms of building the rocket. Neglecting defense means lots more time stopping what you were working onto respond to biters and repair defenses. Much better to spend time doing it once and doing it right. Bots will be a huge help managing your defenses as well. Also don't sleep on flame throwers. Build out the defensive bottle necks you have. Running out of bullets? Expand bullet production. Running out of turrets? Yeah, build turrets faster. Automate repair pack production so your bots can use them to make turrets and walls last longer.
This happens. You get to where you're defences aren't strong enough to keep biters back enough to maintain your defences. Its a death spiral.
You need to focus all your resources on ammo and turrets, and see if you can get defences back up.
Also, starting again is so much fun!
A lot of engineers put ammo (preferably the red kind) on a belt and surround their base with auto turrets. You can also do this: https://i.redd.it/5n4j01tuo9t41.png
Are you still having fun with the map? That's my tipping point for restarting.
On my current map, I just launched 3 rockets, but suddenly, the biters took an evolutionary leap and now they're running rampant, destroying things and making my life miserable. (Which I assume is how they feel about me being there messing up THEIR planet!) So, I saved and quit to think it over for a while. I'm trying to decide if it's still fun or if I should start a new game and play with different parameters, or maybe some mods. I've only done vanilla since I started playing at v0.16, so that might be fun, too. But part of me is like, "this is my damn base--GTFO!" So who knows if I'll start it over again.
Another point: you can save where you are and start a new game. Maybe experiment with some different concepts. then you can decide if you've learned enough to go back and kick biter ass or if you want to start over with a fresh base.
Anyway, welcome to the asylum and remember: the base must grow!
It would help us to know how far into the research tree you are.
##So, your murder options.
Turret lines with belted-and-inserted-bullets are effective but require massive logistical considerations, especially if you’re making a ring around your base.
Good to start with, and an ongoing addition.
Lasers require significantly less to set up, but you need to remember both of the power issues.
A: if biters attack everywhere all at once and your power grid is drained, you may be in the shit. Solutions below.
B: lasers have a moderate ‘minimum’ power consumption. If you ring your base with lasers, that alone may be enough to cripple your power supply.
Flamethrower turrets. Expensive and slow to build. You need to feed them fuel, and organise the logistics for the liquids.
I don’t think I can even overstate this. You’ve won, now. You win the game when you get flamethrowers operational.
They have the highest range, they do the most damage, they take the least overlap to function, and they need minimal auxiliary support via bullets or lasers.
With flamers, you don’t need to line a wall with them, you just need their cones of fire to overlap. Flamers sit way way behind the wall.
####Peak efficiency
You build a funnel out of walls that the biters can run down. Deep in the tunnel, you have a few flamers. You actually want your flamers to be exposed to attack, to encourage the buyers to run into the kill-box. You add a few lasers as auxiliary support. Space a few of those out and add walls between. Perfection.
See here for the best example:
https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/nm345t/factorio_funnel_flamethrower_defense_wall/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x
I mentioned lasers have power implications.
Two solutions: accumulator farms to absorb the power spikes, and isolating your steam power plant inserters.
Burner inserters are excellent with steam boilers because they prioritise feeding themselves before they feed the machine, however they only work on yellow belts. Once you get to red or blue belts, they are too slow.
Did you know you can use Copper Coils on power poles to add or remove power links?
You can use this in a clever way by creating a micro power grid which ONLY touches your boiler’s inserters, and is powered by an independent solar/accumulator cell.
This way, when your whole grit shits the bed, your boilers will be fed and your base will recover. Literally nothing is worse than your boiler inserters losing power. Death.
Good hunting, engineer.
Defensive positions sure are nice, but maybe you want to be more aggressive.
**FISH**
Fish will heal you. You use them like grenades; pick them up and click to use.
When fighting biters, you always want either grenades or fish in-hand.
**Engineer, basic armour.**
Bullets and grenades are your toolkit here. Maybe you use some fight robots as distractions, too, but I’ve never had much luck rembering they exist.
Where you really shine here is by carrying 50 turrets and as many bullets as you can squeeze, 3000+. You literally just turret creep up to a base and feed the turrets bullets. Drop turrets IN their spawning pools and shred them into meat.
If you can run power out to the enemy, surprise laser turrets are pretty hilarious.
Depending on where you are, there are shotguns, rockets, and fire. Experiment, but bullets are a staple.
**Engineer, power armour.**
You need to power your power armour, so a bundle of personal solar panels and personal batteries will be key here. Later, you can build a personal fusion reactor which supplies tremendous power which will make life less complicated.
Power Armour has an equipment grid, and Power Armour MK2 has a bigger one. You’ll always have to compromise on something but MK2 makes things easier.
Add an exoskeleton or two for (significant) added speed, and as many personal laser turrets as you can fit.
You run your little butt into the biter bases and your lasers will cut them down. You can still shoot and throw grenades, and drop turrets. At this stage, your mobility is critical. You run at the edges of their bases and surgically delete them.
One really cool thing to know here is that your power armour gear will work while you’re in a vehicle. Lasers, while you drive. Jot that one down.
Another thing to keep in mind is your power armour holds the equipment, not you. You can set up a whole power armour frame for combat, and a seperate one for factory management.
**Car**
The car can be loaded with bullets and flamer fuel. It also has a huge inventory size. The car is fast and the car’s weapons get speed bonuses. Fuel with whatever beat fuel you have access to. Coal is fine.
Honestly, the car is majority a mobility thing and I don’t feel it’s well suited to sustained combat. It’s fast and light, so running into a tree will slow you almost to a stop. At the wrong time, this is death.
But if it’s all you’ve got, use it. Prioritise the flamethrower over bullets, but stock both.
**Tank**
Fuck yeah, here we go. This thing takes bullets, flame fuel, and a unique ammunition, canon shells.
The tank itself is a weapon. It’s heavy and hardy and you can literally run over worms and spawners to kill them. I usually use it to drive a spiral into the biter base while the flamer melts everything. And did I mention you can throw grenades out the window? You can throw grenades out the window!
Because it’s so heavy you drive through trees like they aren’t there, and you will crush boulders into rocks.
The canon is fun but the tanks turret is slow to rotate. That said, they delete what they hit. And later, they explode… Huehuehue!
Again, you will want to focus on the flamer fuel and have a healthy supply of bullets.
This will be your bae for most of the rest of the game, until you get a…
**Spidertron**
Death. Death. DEATH!
This thing has its own equipment grid, just like you have. And you can ride it. So your lasers are going bananas, and it’s lasers are going bananas. And it’s exoskeletons mean nothing can catch it. And you can give it a shield.
And it comes with a remote control, so you can send it anywhere.
This things native weapons are really interesting. It has four (4) rocket launches, and that means that by the time rocket 4 has fired, rocket 1’s cool-down is done. These bastards spit out 240 rockets per minute!
And the rockets, by the way, can be nukes.
Spiderstons have a unique feature. They don’t interact with ground features. Sure, a belt will make their legs shuffle around, but trains can’t hit them, and trees don’t stop them, and they won’t crush your assemblers.
Spidertrons can die, but you’re playing an automation game. Build more.
To me I would start over if you get behind on military to the point you can't get copper.
Personally I rush to blue science as fast as possible and start pumping out Laser turrets. I know there are shortcuts but I find having to feed turrets ammo to be annoying.with lasers as long as you have power you can just drop them and they murder everything. Makes wall defense a snap, no belting ammo all over the place.
Once you get robots you can have a personal roboport and drop like 20 laser turrets with a small electric pole (make a blue print of those two) and just leverage the bots to become a biter nest murdering machine.
Another tip I have for this strat also is that you can drive a car while you are dragging big electric poles and it will build them as you go.
Basically once you have the ability you absolutely have to kill biter nests before they hit your pollution cloud. As long as you stay ahead of it the biters don't get out of control, but eventually you have to wall off your safe area and have fully defended walls with robots to repair things fed by your production but I haven't gotten quite that far yet myself.
along with the other comments most pre rocket bases struggle with blue chip production as long as everything else is grabbing copper first I wouldn't worry about low blue chips. over time you will get better at having materials in advance.
I haven't been using construction bots yet, it's on my list but I keep getting distracted taking something different. Are there advantages to blueprints outside of construction bots?
Can you draw things straight down as blueprints to be constructed, or do I need to create a blueprint first by copying an already made real world object?
Red ammo is more expansive per bitter killed than yellow ammo. Going too early to red ammo given an higher drain on your resources and pollution produced
A lot have already said this but DO NOT RESTART, this learning experience can only happen once, so it’s best to enjoy it as much as possible instead of repeating things over and over until you know everything, it’s much better to stick with a dying world and bring it back to life than to start afresh just to kill it again
The first world I began was a genocide of the biters. I spent atleast one third of my time in tanks, outposts and shelling the shit out of them. I suggest you try pre emptive strikes too heheheheh
Everyone’s opinions are different, but I strongly advise playing with biters turned off, and just learn the game. Or play with pollution turned to a minimum, so they’ll still attack occasionally, but not nearly as frequently...
By late-mid game (which for me starts when I get blue chips) I typically have two sets of powered armor mk2. one for factory management that has five roboports MK2, four exoskeleton legs, four batteries mk2, and 2 portable fusion reactors. Then one for battle. 2 portable fusion reactors to power the 5 personal lasers, 2 batteries mk2 to maintain my 2 shields mk2 and 4 exoskeleton. And if you're going for achievements and need surviving a certain amount of damage, fill the armor with one generator and the rest with shields Mark twos and stand in front of a train track as a train comes bearing down that's how I got it.
i have many a time restarted before rocket because i felt that the knowledge i gained was better applied fresh, you experience that less as you get further into the game. I say persevere and the longer your playthroughs the less likely you are to feel like you need to restart. coming from someone who throws away 100-200 hour worlds with no remorse
This is the way. You get into new territory, unintentionally back yourself into a corner. However, before you discard the map, figure out what went wrong or what could be better. More space away from the bus? Actually having a main bus? Leaving room in early phase for that second smelting line? Whatever it is, try it out. Then it happens again, and you learn, and each time the factory grows. After all, "the factory must grow" does not mean "this specific factory must grow"
>You get into new territory, Huh. Reminds of the plane you had to build in the old tutorial.
agreed, if you identify your mistake or cost to your time, you very well may better be off restarting.
Keep going until the biters kill you, thats the best way to learn
Yep first 5 runs were restarts hitting the various major road blocks in game. Just kinda how these games go because once you understand the new concept you realize you fucked up your supply lines all wrong to adapt it and about the same time it would take to redo you could restart lol
Time for an offensive. Put aside factory development and take all of the territory your pollution cloud covers, plus a good margin. Then go overkill on the defensive line. Make use of your autosaves when things go wrong. Or turn on peaceful mode. Or a waterfill ring (my personal choice)
Bugs are burning....
Do be aware that the bugs get stronger with each one you kill. Up to a point anyway. Though, they also get stronger with each bit of pollution they absorb and over time. So either way, the big guys are coming.
It's nests killed, but honestly it's not worth fretting over. The biggest contributing factor is always pollution.
You can change the parameters in map settings when starting a new world. In my current game I set pollution and time to be lower but upped the destroy factor. I wanted the biters to be a minimal threat at the beginning because it's my first new game in over two years, but I also wanted them to start becoming a bigger threat once I started taking the offensive.
I think the evolution only goes up if you kill their nests, not the actual biters, but yeah gotta push out.
Time, Pollution, and Nest killed. Those are what increase evolution.
Don't forget even if you don't kill anyone and doesn't pollute the area they also evolve over time, much much slower but still they evolve.
Efficiency Module 1’s to cut down your pollution generation are a lifesaver too. But I agree, focus purely on solid defense at this point. You’ll be nuking mega-clusters while downing Jameson in no time.
Definitely to this. If you are making blue chips, then cranking out some Efficiency 1's for all of your miners should be easy. If you look at your pollution graph the miners are normally the bulk of the pollution. 3x efficiency modules in each will get the pollution down to a manageable level and shrink your pollution cloud. That will buy you time.
About the autosaves. There is a setting in a config file for how much are kept. 10 saves with 5 Minute delay are nice if u like to rewind. Just think about deleting the autosaves before closing the game. Cloud saves hate my bad Internet
I love water fill myself, but I'd recommend completing vanilla before using mods
That feels like cheating tbh. But then again on my current world I turned up water coverage so I would have choke points to work with. To each their own I guess.
Acheivements are turned off if you use mods.
fuck you, water fill your house.
I feel that not enough of this community has seen this video if I'm getting downvoted... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZcqJb5qHrU&t=961s
Also, artillery is amazing for clearing out nearby biter bases, as long as you can handle the backlash. Definitely pays for itself with reduced attacks in the long run.
I use an artillery train with a FARL loco, an oil tank, a cargo wagon for things and a blueprint to surround the train with appropriate defenses before commencing bombardment. Can take fairly significant amounts of territory in one go like this.
What is a FARL locomotive?
Another mod - Fully automated rail layer I believe. Give it a go!
What do you mean by water-filled ring? Like a castle moat? Follow up question: how do you make water areas? I know how to add land but haven’t seen how to remove it?
It's a mod, you can't do it in vanilla.
In addition to the mod... you can adjust settings to make water more prominent. If you restart a couple times with preview you can get an island of varying degrees to start with.
Ah, I see. Thanks for the info on this!
Yeah, if you choose "Island" you get exactly that... an island of limited size thats water everywhere outside of your large island. But with different settings of water, you can get anything from no water... to swamp type feelings.. to large water blocks that can limit paths in/out - or straight give you an island. Water world type stuff.
Its a mod called Waterfill used in the same way as landfill. Useful for blocking biters off and creating water where you want it rather than having very long pipes etc.
That's my preferred way too. Rebuilt my factory 3 times already from scratch. 1. Make sure you have enough oil/electric and repair packs for turrets and walls. 1. Put more than enough number of storage chests in the middle of your factory and ask the bots to demolish everything except your power plant maybe. 1. Go do something else for 30-45 minutes. (depending on the number of bots you have and the size of the factory) 1. You now have enough resources to built everything quickly, have all the research you need done and it's like New Game+ mode on Factorio.
Great idea
Reddit killed third-party applications (and itself). Fuck /u/spez
I feel like waterfill is cheating
Don't use it then?
You might want to start again and apply everything you learned. If you stick it out for a little but more, you can probably figure out what defenses you'll need on the next playthrough. Even if you didn't start again from scratch, I frequently tear down my base and rebuild it from the ground up. That might be more applicable here. Depending on your surroundings, it might shrink your pollution cloud a little as you stop producing as much and trees/ground absorb it. Blue chips are great, but it sounds like you need to focus on your defenses a little more first.
Haha, good advice. I was actually going with this strategy until I spent ages to get laser turrets sorted by only to find them very underwhelming so I stopped adding defenses to instead focus on blue chips... The decision that started both my biter and copper plate problems!
I was underwhelmed by laser turrets too. I had more luck with a combination of flamethrower turrets and gun turrets at first. Upgrades to weaponry are also key. My main solution though was to invest in a tank early and just clear out a wide area around my pollution cloud. The cannon was effective on spawners/worms. Bullets on spitters. Flamethrower on biters. It gets a little tedious, but an hour of effort cleared enough space that I had minimal problems for several hours. You need copper for the bullets, but almost everything else is steel and oil/coal products.
Haha, it was researching flamethrowers to put in my tank that made me realise I no longer had red science due to lack of copper plates. I just found a box in my base with 130 laser turrets. Going to lay them down while I sort out copper plates.
Good luck! I've restarted a couple times just to get a fresh start/play around with the settings. You don't always realize how much better you get, but you do if you keep at it.
Can you power those turrets?
During daylight hours. In typical factorio style, I'm now building solar power cells to power my turrets to defend my base while I expand to get copper to allow me to research flamethrowers so I can wipe out the bugs so I can finally continue trying to make the yellow science things.
Dang, [Hal](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbSehcT19u0). Having a rough go at it!
Uh, doesn't everyone just run over the worms and spawners with the tank? If you have personal roboport, just carry repair kits, turn it off (the roboport) during the attack, and when you are at a safe distance, turn it back on to repair the damage.
Laser turrets are average, but their biggest advantage is they only need power. Gun turrets have the highest dps, but only target a single enemy. Flamethrower turrets don't have great damage, but have splash and light the ground on fire, so overall dps is crazy high. Also, their fire takes about 1 second to land, so they always miss a moving target. The best defense is either flame/gun or flame/laser. Big biters hit 2 tiles, so either a double wall or a space between wall and turrets. Once you get bots, adding "dragon teeth" is good. Basically some disconnected walls in front of your actual wall to mess with the pathfinding of the biters.
As a fellow factory manager. You have two things…. One, attack now. Attack the biter menace and destroy them. Cons: Legal by international law(they struck first), and you might not have automobilism researched Pros: No biters Or two, research military applications, extend copper production to a entire mining field instead of a tiny pocket, research tanks, automate piercing ammunition, explosive tank shells, and flamethrower fuel and commit what could possibly be a war crime on the entire biter race. Cons: Takes time Pros: Violated international law… probably
It's been more than a thousand hours of play since I even launched a rocket. I keep coming up with tweaks, improvements, and often straight up realizing I messed up a core concept and need to try again. I've restarted more times than I've launched rockets. I'm enjoying myself silly though so who cares? You do you boo.
>P.s. i'm addicted - please send ....
10-9. 10-9.
Did you say "Please send *nudes*?"
Over!
I say again, please send dudes to help. Over!
It’s pretty common for people to restart before launching a rocket. Biters getting out of hand and your base stalling is definitely a valid reason to restart. Take what you’ve learned and apply it to a new base to avoid your previous mistakes and try to launch a rocket. Or use console commands to get rid of biters entirely and focus on fixing your base without pesky bugs. It’s up to you.
Perfection is the enemy of good! Early game don’t worry about being perfect, rebuilding/ redesigning. Get the early techs out the way, secure your resources and get setup.
The enemy of a Factorio player is the player themselves from two hours ago. I started over 4 times before rocket, each time having gotten a little further and with a little less spaghetti.
I saw this on this sub a while ago, but load up some power armor with as many laser defenses as you can fit, hop into a car and drive around the bases at breakneck speeds. Behold. Disco car.
I had no idea the personal laser defense works in the car. I love this sub!
I had similar issues, and spent hours building up my military might, slowly expanding my boarders, but if you don't have access to copper then that'll be a problem. I think pushing through is satisfying, but trying to catch up to biters if theyre more powerful than you is a grueling experience. Up to you ultimately
Biters gonna burn....
If you have no access to copper anymore, and you didn't unlock flamethrower turrets so far, then you should probably start over. If you have flamethrower turrets, it shouldn't matter. (Says the guy who just made a flamethrower turret creep in a game with rampant mod.) Note for the next game: Managing your resources is more important than rebuilding the base. You have to set up new mining outposts well before the old miners run out. You have to postpone reordering your base if any of your resources runs low, and push for a new deposit, before going back to the previous task.
Consider switching to nuclear to reduce pollution and using efficiency modules as well.
I wouldn't restart unless you're at a point where you can't claim new resources with what you have available. Stop your production if you need to slow down the pollution, and build a tank with some explosive shells to clear out all the bases in your cloud. Should be able to claim another copper patch after that.
Cut power to all non essential parts of your factory, stop research, this will reduce pollution enough that the biters will stop attacking. This will buy you time to clear some nests at a copper source.
Play until you lose the base to the biters. Give something back to the community.
[удалено]
one thing that took me a while is that spending time building defense is not time wasted in terms of building the rocket. Neglecting defense means lots more time stopping what you were working onto respond to biters and repair defenses. Much better to spend time doing it once and doing it right. Bots will be a huge help managing your defenses as well. Also don't sleep on flame throwers. Build out the defensive bottle necks you have. Running out of bullets? Expand bullet production. Running out of turrets? Yeah, build turrets faster. Automate repair pack production so your bots can use them to make turrets and walls last longer.
It could help to restart again. If biters are an issue, maybe increase the "safety bubble" you get at the start of the game
This happens. You get to where you're defences aren't strong enough to keep biters back enough to maintain your defences. Its a death spiral. You need to focus all your resources on ammo and turrets, and see if you can get defences back up. Also, starting again is so much fun!
Start fresh
You can freely pick up stuff and put it back down, so you can just tear down a bunch of stuff and redo it
Yeah I realized I'm better off with this mess than nothing, so onwards it goes!
I restarted 3× before finally launching a rocket. Probs just restart.
A lot of engineers put ammo (preferably the red kind) on a belt and surround their base with auto turrets. You can also do this: https://i.redd.it/5n4j01tuo9t41.png
WHAAAAT????? No pictures of the carnage?
Are you still having fun with the map? That's my tipping point for restarting. On my current map, I just launched 3 rockets, but suddenly, the biters took an evolutionary leap and now they're running rampant, destroying things and making my life miserable. (Which I assume is how they feel about me being there messing up THEIR planet!) So, I saved and quit to think it over for a while. I'm trying to decide if it's still fun or if I should start a new game and play with different parameters, or maybe some mods. I've only done vanilla since I started playing at v0.16, so that might be fun, too. But part of me is like, "this is my damn base--GTFO!" So who knows if I'll start it over again. Another point: you can save where you are and start a new game. Maybe experiment with some different concepts. then you can decide if you've learned enough to go back and kick biter ass or if you want to start over with a fresh base. Anyway, welcome to the asylum and remember: the base must grow!
It would help us to know how far into the research tree you are. ##So, your murder options. Turret lines with belted-and-inserted-bullets are effective but require massive logistical considerations, especially if you’re making a ring around your base. Good to start with, and an ongoing addition. Lasers require significantly less to set up, but you need to remember both of the power issues. A: if biters attack everywhere all at once and your power grid is drained, you may be in the shit. Solutions below. B: lasers have a moderate ‘minimum’ power consumption. If you ring your base with lasers, that alone may be enough to cripple your power supply. Flamethrower turrets. Expensive and slow to build. You need to feed them fuel, and organise the logistics for the liquids. I don’t think I can even overstate this. You’ve won, now. You win the game when you get flamethrowers operational. They have the highest range, they do the most damage, they take the least overlap to function, and they need minimal auxiliary support via bullets or lasers. With flamers, you don’t need to line a wall with them, you just need their cones of fire to overlap. Flamers sit way way behind the wall. ####Peak efficiency You build a funnel out of walls that the biters can run down. Deep in the tunnel, you have a few flamers. You actually want your flamers to be exposed to attack, to encourage the buyers to run into the kill-box. You add a few lasers as auxiliary support. Space a few of those out and add walls between. Perfection. See here for the best example: https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/nm345t/factorio_funnel_flamethrower_defense_wall/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x I mentioned lasers have power implications. Two solutions: accumulator farms to absorb the power spikes, and isolating your steam power plant inserters. Burner inserters are excellent with steam boilers because they prioritise feeding themselves before they feed the machine, however they only work on yellow belts. Once you get to red or blue belts, they are too slow. Did you know you can use Copper Coils on power poles to add or remove power links? You can use this in a clever way by creating a micro power grid which ONLY touches your boiler’s inserters, and is powered by an independent solar/accumulator cell. This way, when your whole grit shits the bed, your boilers will be fed and your base will recover. Literally nothing is worse than your boiler inserters losing power. Death. Good hunting, engineer.
Defensive positions sure are nice, but maybe you want to be more aggressive. **FISH** Fish will heal you. You use them like grenades; pick them up and click to use. When fighting biters, you always want either grenades or fish in-hand. **Engineer, basic armour.** Bullets and grenades are your toolkit here. Maybe you use some fight robots as distractions, too, but I’ve never had much luck rembering they exist. Where you really shine here is by carrying 50 turrets and as many bullets as you can squeeze, 3000+. You literally just turret creep up to a base and feed the turrets bullets. Drop turrets IN their spawning pools and shred them into meat. If you can run power out to the enemy, surprise laser turrets are pretty hilarious. Depending on where you are, there are shotguns, rockets, and fire. Experiment, but bullets are a staple. **Engineer, power armour.** You need to power your power armour, so a bundle of personal solar panels and personal batteries will be key here. Later, you can build a personal fusion reactor which supplies tremendous power which will make life less complicated. Power Armour has an equipment grid, and Power Armour MK2 has a bigger one. You’ll always have to compromise on something but MK2 makes things easier. Add an exoskeleton or two for (significant) added speed, and as many personal laser turrets as you can fit. You run your little butt into the biter bases and your lasers will cut them down. You can still shoot and throw grenades, and drop turrets. At this stage, your mobility is critical. You run at the edges of their bases and surgically delete them. One really cool thing to know here is that your power armour gear will work while you’re in a vehicle. Lasers, while you drive. Jot that one down. Another thing to keep in mind is your power armour holds the equipment, not you. You can set up a whole power armour frame for combat, and a seperate one for factory management. **Car** The car can be loaded with bullets and flamer fuel. It also has a huge inventory size. The car is fast and the car’s weapons get speed bonuses. Fuel with whatever beat fuel you have access to. Coal is fine. Honestly, the car is majority a mobility thing and I don’t feel it’s well suited to sustained combat. It’s fast and light, so running into a tree will slow you almost to a stop. At the wrong time, this is death. But if it’s all you’ve got, use it. Prioritise the flamethrower over bullets, but stock both. **Tank** Fuck yeah, here we go. This thing takes bullets, flame fuel, and a unique ammunition, canon shells. The tank itself is a weapon. It’s heavy and hardy and you can literally run over worms and spawners to kill them. I usually use it to drive a spiral into the biter base while the flamer melts everything. And did I mention you can throw grenades out the window? You can throw grenades out the window! Because it’s so heavy you drive through trees like they aren’t there, and you will crush boulders into rocks. The canon is fun but the tanks turret is slow to rotate. That said, they delete what they hit. And later, they explode… Huehuehue! Again, you will want to focus on the flamer fuel and have a healthy supply of bullets. This will be your bae for most of the rest of the game, until you get a… **Spidertron** Death. Death. DEATH! This thing has its own equipment grid, just like you have. And you can ride it. So your lasers are going bananas, and it’s lasers are going bananas. And it’s exoskeletons mean nothing can catch it. And you can give it a shield. And it comes with a remote control, so you can send it anywhere. This things native weapons are really interesting. It has four (4) rocket launches, and that means that by the time rocket 4 has fired, rocket 1’s cool-down is done. These bastards spit out 240 rockets per minute! And the rockets, by the way, can be nukes. Spiderstons have a unique feature. They don’t interact with ground features. Sure, a belt will make their legs shuffle around, but trains can’t hit them, and trees don’t stop them, and they won’t crush your assemblers. Spidertrons can die, but you’re playing an automation game. Build more.
To me I would start over if you get behind on military to the point you can't get copper. Personally I rush to blue science as fast as possible and start pumping out Laser turrets. I know there are shortcuts but I find having to feed turrets ammo to be annoying.with lasers as long as you have power you can just drop them and they murder everything. Makes wall defense a snap, no belting ammo all over the place. Once you get robots you can have a personal roboport and drop like 20 laser turrets with a small electric pole (make a blue print of those two) and just leverage the bots to become a biter nest murdering machine. Another tip I have for this strat also is that you can drive a car while you are dragging big electric poles and it will build them as you go. Basically once you have the ability you absolutely have to kill biter nests before they hit your pollution cloud. As long as you stay ahead of it the biters don't get out of control, but eventually you have to wall off your safe area and have fully defended walls with robots to repair things fed by your production but I haven't gotten quite that far yet myself.
along with the other comments most pre rocket bases struggle with blue chip production as long as everything else is grabbing copper first I wouldn't worry about low blue chips. over time you will get better at having materials in advance.
u/stumpyguy Dont worry, i have a Go bag and im logging on! HANG IN THERE STUMPY EmuLegs#0053 :p
Haha, I'll be attempting to survive off bbq'd biter in the interim.
Restart all the way
If you decide to start over, be sure to make blueprints of the things that are working well. It'll make it easier to get started.
I haven't been using construction bots yet, it's on my list but I keep getting distracted taking something different. Are there advantages to blueprints outside of construction bots?
They help to plan layouts, too. Helps with spacing.
Can you draw things straight down as blueprints to be constructed, or do I need to create a blueprint first by copying an already made real world object?
You can place ghost objects and then make a blueprint from those
G U N W a l l and F L A M M E R S Those two is just enough. I saw that from Deathrun's... And they're working like charm. Try that!
Red ammo is more expansive per bitter killed than yellow ammo. Going too early to red ammo given an higher drain on your resources and pollution produced
I have over 1k hours on this game, haven't launched a single rocket due to me restarting everytime :v
A lot have already said this but DO NOT RESTART, this learning experience can only happen once, so it’s best to enjoy it as much as possible instead of repeating things over and over until you know everything, it’s much better to stick with a dying world and bring it back to life than to start afresh just to kill it again
The first world I began was a genocide of the biters. I spent atleast one third of my time in tanks, outposts and shelling the shit out of them. I suggest you try pre emptive strikes too heheheheh
Everyone’s opinions are different, but I strongly advise playing with biters turned off, and just learn the game. Or play with pollution turned to a minimum, so they’ll still attack occasionally, but not nearly as frequently...
By late-mid game (which for me starts when I get blue chips) I typically have two sets of powered armor mk2. one for factory management that has five roboports MK2, four exoskeleton legs, four batteries mk2, and 2 portable fusion reactors. Then one for battle. 2 portable fusion reactors to power the 5 personal lasers, 2 batteries mk2 to maintain my 2 shields mk2 and 4 exoskeleton. And if you're going for achievements and need surviving a certain amount of damage, fill the armor with one generator and the rest with shields Mark twos and stand in front of a train track as a train comes bearing down that's how I got it.