Oil is usually a little further away (EDIT: Compared to the four starting resources). Keep searching. To actively look the quickest way is the car, which will also outrun any biters that pursue you. Just watch out for cliffs, rocks, and trees. Radars can passively reveal terrain over time.

I think crashing the tank (and indeed the car) into your own base is something of a rite of passage. I've been lucky, the worst I did so far was demolish the chest holding my entire stock of furnaces.

And that's why it's best to have a rule of no tanks in the base.

I agree that the way *no* assembling machines have a 1x rate is an unnecessary complication. Though if you're using assembler 3s you're probably using modules and beacons anyway - without modules I think assembler 2s make more sense. 0.5/1/1.5 or even 0.5/1/2 would be good speeds.

As far as I know no. Something to consider is that at the moment each of the three defensive turrets has its strengths and weaknesses, each one requires different logistics to supply, none of them ever get obsolete, and combinations offer advantages over just using one. Adding more turrets would mak...

Considering how potent flame turrets can be, it could be seen as a balancing factor. As far as current gameplay goes, you can try not providing repair packs at all, just provide spare walls and other machines. That way the construction bots will come out less often. This means your flame wall needs ...

https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=63965 Now, fight :) I had forgotten the issue that inserters cannot remove repair packs from roboports. Changing that behaviour would be ideal alongside the logistics bots behaviour change I'm asking for; if neither bots nor inserters can take the...

Currently (as of 0.17.69) logistics robots will remove repair packs from roboports to fulifil a logistics request. In my view they should not. Since the roboport has slots for repair packs it invites the player to supply them. I would argue that the natural and obvious way to supply them by bot is t...

The science pack recipe requiring *different* numbers of ingredients matters I think, because it adds complexity to larger setups. You can't just get optimal ratios out of have one belt of each input, you have to think a bit more. A 2:2:2 ratio would take that away.

Considering the wide range of item crafting times and the multipliers on crafting speed in the machines, I'm not sure the factorisation of the belt speed in items/s matters much. Slowing down yellow and red in order to make 1 blue = 2 red without problems with high-speed belts might be an idea thoug...

Mining productivity is also linear progression. I can only surmise it's because extreme levels in these two are less overpowered than in the others. Conversely the requirement for artillery firing speed goes up even more rapidly than most. Follower robot count is the sole infinite research required ...

Indeed I'd say the game balance is against using large numbers of personal robots for large builds. They're better suited for smaller work where your batteries can cover the use, then recharge while you're moving on to the next build or going to get more supplies. Worker robot speed makes very littl...

Don't we already have that? Nests further from the spawn point will be larger with more spawners and worms, and the worms will be more powerful. I found that noticeable in my current save. The tank was very effective up to a point, but on my long explorations I'm encountering biter bases that are ju...

If the biters aren't actually squatting the oil patch, you should be able to defend it. You could opt to rush efficiency modules and solar panels, the former to cut down the biter attacks on the outpost and the latter to save having to run power poles through dangerous territory. (But you'll still n...

Don't assume it will stay that way. I've seen some big hordes of small biters in the early game. It depends partly on the luck of the draw map wise. If you start in a grassland with forests around your pollution won't spread easily. If you start in a desert it spreads much further. Biter bases are r...

Causing pollution would make sense flavour-wise, but I think to actually make a difference it would need to be enough to make affected spawners produce more enemies. That would make it an extremely concentrated pollution-producer compared to other stuff in the game. It also indirectly nerfs the use ...

This could have happened when building the thing depending on how exactly you put it together. Agreed. If you place the belts, then one splitter, then the other, then during the interval with only one splitter present it will load both sides of the output belts. And if that's not it, there's many o...

I think the only time I specifically used a car for logistics was when I was getting my first artillery set up. I parked the car so it'd be filled with artillery shells, then later on drove it out to my turrets. But I soon switched to an artillery train instead. To reliably drive a car back and fort...

If you want to drive manually you can use the circuit network to make things more human-friendly. You can read the status of rail signals and use that to control lamps and speakers that are more visible, and set up warning lights ahead of the signal itself for when you're driving at speed (like how ...

Then to get robots you "only" need lube, which "only" needs advanced oil... :D which means robots are further back in the game than they were before the oil change. A fair point that I hadn't considered. The new oil means you can go a lot further with a setup that only makes gas...

With the exception of the roboports, all the armour equipment has similarly very small buffers. The system is designed around the use of batteries to meet night-time demand if using solars, as well as demand surges. Indeed batteries in armour are there for the same purposes as accumulators in your f...