Turret creeping - I feel SOOOO stupid.

[Xecutor]

Most of you probably know this method, and the only thing that calms me down a little is the fact that Fish will (probably) feel the same as me after reading this post
At least he was trying to solve the same problem and failed.
To the point.
I'm playing hard mode. And I realized that my iron will run out soon.
And nearest iron field is under huge biters base.
I just researched logistics and weapon 3 and my resources are quite low.
So I decided to try tower creeping.
How I normally do this?
1. Place medium pole close enough to the next spawner.
2. Put a walls around coverage area of the pole.
3. Put turrets inside.
4. If low on turrets, deconstruct earliest of bunkers.
5. goto 1.

What went wrong this time? At some point I wasn't able to complete 1.
Constant stream of biters was around forward bunker.
At some point, after many failed attempts, I had to hide inside of the bunker.
And I suddenly realized, that I can build from the inside, instead of outside!
1. Expand wall toward spawner by 3 tiles.
2. Place pole inside new area.
3. Put turrets near pole.
4. Repair and remove inner wall.
5. Remove some turrets from back if need.
6. Shorten back wall if need.
7. goto 1.
100% safe and easy! Probably 2 and 3 can be skipped every other cycle.
Why I haven't thought about this before?


However, I made two mistakes this time. I moved too deep into the nest, and got attacked from 3 sides.
And I forgot that my mostly solar energy network can't keep up so much shooting at night
It was quite interesting to observe biters after I retreated.
First of all they destroyed turrets that I failed to dismantle while retreating.
Then huge crowd was just standing there for a few minutes.
And then they started demolition of remaining walls. But in a very strange manner.
It looked like they were assigning a few wall blocks to be 'primary targets' and
almost whole swarm was attacking them (or at least trying to attack). After destruction
of these walls they were roaming for a few seconds before repeating.

Here is screenshot made in the process:


p.s. car kiting was impossible. I couldn't even move close enough to fire.
p.p.s. Now I look at patch of iron ore on my own screenshot and feel even more stupid

[FishSandwich]

We can feel stupid together.

[SHiRKiT]

Hahahaha ^^ But that Iron over there is not even enough to start with things going.

[Xterminator]

Don't feel too bad. I attempted to turret creep last night in my hard mode game and failed pretty hard myself. It somehow slipped my mind that my big power poles might not be connected, so after placing my whole outpost and having it surrounded by biters I had to go replace the pole myself. O.o hopefully next time I will remember to connect the poles before hand haha

[ColonelFailure]

I've not tried it on hard mode yet, but I only ever turret creep when attacking. The secret to success is to move slowly and don't try to extend too far too fast. That way your previous bunker will keep you covered if things go pearshaped.

As long as you expand toward a front line, rather than getting yourself surrounded you can push forward a few spaces at a time, and don't necessarily need to entirely enclose your turrets in the process. The hard part comes when you're within trigger range of the spawners and are just out of range of the spawns themselves - that can make further progress tricky.

Slow and steady is the way. Along with overkill.

This recording may illustrate what I mean.

[Phillip_Lynx]

On the other Hand ...

I am a poor fighter and relay on turret creep (first time I play with biters) and in my series I came across an idea, wich I have not seen on any YT video.
For those, who want not to be spoiled here, watch my episodes 33 to 35 (up in ca 2 hours) at my playlist (inclusive 2 death of mine).

BEWARE : the LP is in german, but as -root says, factorio itself is an universal language

For those who want to be spoilered, here you come

I also have logistic robots resarched and took 5 roboports, 50 construction robots an halfway through the episode 34 an blueprint with an laserfortification with me and let the robots do the creep

[Boogieman14]

I also have logistic robots resarched and took 5 roboports, 50 construction robots an halfway through the episode 34 an blueprint with an laserfortification with me and let the robots do the creep

That's something I've been doing as well, works well,

although sometimes when you get too close, biters do tend to take bites out of bots. Oh well, call it occupational hazard for them

. Last few games, I tend to just take a handful of distractors and lots of poison caps and smoke them out. At least until I get to decent numbers of destroyers, when I get to that point it's just walk in and collect artifacts...

[Phillip_Lynx]

...

although sometimes when you get too close, biters do tend to take bites out of bots. Oh well, call it occupational hazard for them

...

Not only bots

[Xecutor]

I've not tried it on hard mode yet

I had no problems with TC before hard mode too
As I noted - there was constant and huge stream of biters. I was simply standing behind forward bunker without any chance to move forward.
Anyway - building from inside is safer and not as slow as you might think.
Best part - you don't need to build things in a hurry.

I know about roboport TC. But I seriously doubt that construction bots (especially unupgraded) are of any help in case of hard mode biters.
I think biters will break them long before they can actually place anything.

[ColonelFailure]

I had no problems with TC before hard mode too

Oh dear. I have that to look forward to then.

[Lee_newsum]

I know about roboport TC. But I seriously doubt that construction bots (especially unupgraded) are of any help in case of hard mode biters.
I think biters will break them long before they can actually place anything.

that is not the case, the are Biters are going for the turret to get to the the walls. the oner time i see biters hit the construction bots if thay flay over one biters that is not atting some think.
my biger lots on construction bots is do to Worms deal damage to units other than the target nor can be dodged

[sbroadbent]

I know about roboport TC. But I seriously doubt that construction bots (especially unupgraded) are of any help in case of hard mode biters.
I think biters will break them long before they can actually place anything.

I would wait until you have several upgrades of robot speed before trying roboport creep.

With that said, Construction bots are very effective, the deconstruction planner makes cleanup quick, and having plenty of repair packs keeps you from having to manually repair everything that got damaged in the attack.

How I do it is rather simple.

1. Setup your initial laser defenses, roboport and walls as a defensive position.
2. Extend walls out.
3. Have Construction Bots place Substations (or power pole of choice) within protected area.
4. Have Construction Bots place laser turrets within powered area.
5. Start back at #2. Put down next roboport to extend Construction Zone if required.

Once new perimeter has been established, use deconstruction planner to remove walls that are no longer required. The best part about robot creep is that your build range is not limited. Also, if you time it right (between waves of attacks), the robots can place things down without getting intercepted and damaged or destroyed. I use Substations because of the larger individual coverage area, but medium power poles could be used, you just need to put more of them down to get the same coverage. Eventually, I got bored of this tactic, so I started using it as a fall back position when I went out with the Combat Shotgun and power armor to rip through spawners.

The key to turret creeping though is to be smart about it and plan in advance your angle of attack so you don't find yourself completely surrounded by biters. From my experience, only a fraction of the biters in even a large cluster engage, but they eventually will the further you push.