Balance of Marathon Death world

[kitters]

I decided to try this mode after launching 1 rocket in Maraphon mode, because I wanted a war against bugs rather than building factories. I thought bitters couldn't defeat me, if I wouldn't underestimate the danger, be greedy and would invest needed amount of resourses in defence.
But I couldn't succeed. I had to use 90-100% iron as ammo for turrets, while increasing of iron productivity is making more pollutions and huger amounts of attacking bitters and increasing needing in ammo. Expansion was almost stopped, and this gameplay (increasing of iron productivity) was continuing until deposit had exhausted. I had no possibilities (or maybe not enough skill) for even destroying a single nest (which was huge) with turrets, walls submachine gun. I tried many times to destroy one single nest by loading saves.
If I was more confident about my skill, i would hypothesize badly balanced mode. But I wasn't, so I ask your advises, guys who have an experience of playing this mode. How play this shit? Or maybe balance is truly wrong.
p.s. sorry for my not native english language

[Koub]

Marathon deathworld is meant to be very difficult. Even moreso now that pollution is an issue. I'm sure there are people out there who find marathon deathworld too easy, and add some more challenge like mods to make the experience even more difficult, but they probably are a minority.

Try to build as small as possible, to prevent your pollution from attracting biters.

[BenSeidel]

Koub has it right: Build Slowly!

You need to keep your pollution from hitting the biter nests as much as possible. Once you have some damage & shooting speed upgrades under your belt then attack the nests. Don't attack them yourself as turrets do more damage. Don't let your turrets die, repair them... It's difficult but not impossible. Play with a friend or 2 and it becomes MUCH easier (and also more fun). Make sure you have all the resources turned up to max. I'm not sure it's possible to do on normal resource levels... Ensure you are surrounded by trees. This is the ONLY time trees are your friends. Don't be cutting them down if you can manage it. Go Green. Go directly for efficiency modules. Get solar power ASAP. Every solar panel you put down reduces the amount of pollution you are producing. Don't upgrade your assemblers unless you have the modules to put in them. Gray assemblers produce more for less energy and less pollution. Basically don't upgrade anything past tier 1. Upgrades cost resources. Resources cause pollution to be created. Pollution is bad. The ONLY exception to this is stone furnaces -> steel furnaces. Upgrade these ASAP. They produce half as much pollution per item. Ensure you can turn your base off and turn it off before the pollution gets too bad. GLHF.

[kitters]

Thanks for your advises, i will try this strategy... Controlling pollution can appear to be very interesting aspect of this game. It's unfortunate that any other gamemode doesn't need it.

Make sure you have all the resources turned up to max. I'm not sure it's possible to do on normal resource levels...

But it wiil be already modified gamemode. So, you meant basic Marathon Death world isn't properly balanced...

Guys, your advises seems to be logical and usefull, but I get the impression you don't have experience of playing non-modified Marathon Death world. Maybe small part of people have played this, I understand.
But i just want to see even one report from player who succeed in this mode. Because if noone have played it, it can be unreal for playing, disbalanced. And problem can stay invisible because noone even tried.

[Koub]

Maybe this might be of some help to you :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgTamEz ... s1JuOpKAlI
Spoiler : that's way too long for me to watch, so I can't guarantee you'll get the answers you seek.

[mudcrabempire]

From my experience (which is from 1.6 so it doesn't include the new pollution mechanics, but the basics should be the same):
-Everything that reduces pollution (as mentioned already, but you can't stress this enough).
--Special mention to efficiency modules. Put them in everything with a slot. Especially electric mining drills which consume huge amounts of energy and produce equally huge amounts of pollution
-Don't research anything which you don't absolutely need.
-I personally use laser turrets, as biters don't have resistance to them (which makes "out-evolving" less of a problem) and laser turrets don't drain resources.
-Flamethrower turrets ofc.
-Try to explore early. Put some towers on ore patches to prevent biters from setting up camp there. Also, try flamethrower turrets for siegeing. They outrange anything before big worms (you still need a little fortress to hold your position).

I'm not sure inhowfar this is a balance issue. The ranges for the game settings are big enough to make the game as easy or difficult as you want. You can easily make the game unbeatably hard. In that sense, the only mode that needs to be balanced is default. Anything above is just an extra challenge (and yes, I am 99.9% certain that people have beaten DM in 1.7 as well. I'd take a shot at it, but it takes so long, I just don't have the nerves. Besides, I'm not yet done with my current world).

[kitters]

I'm not sure inhowfar this is a balance issue. The ranges for the game settings are big enough to make the game as easy or difficult as you want. You can easily make the game unbeatably hard. In that sense, the only mode that needs to be balanced is default.

Yes, of course ranges are big. You can turned enemy tuning max and resourses min and this make game unreal even theoretically. Even DM has these runners not in max.
I think non-modified default modes such as DM should be balanced as well as default default. Heh. Or there is not any sense in these modes, just tune runners as you want.

Maybe this might be of some help to you :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgTamEz ... s1JuOpKAlI
Spoiler : that's way too long for me to watch, so I can't guarantee you'll get the answers you seek.

Thanks, I had a look at it. Info just for your interest: he was playing modified default mode, he tuned up bugs, but also tuned up resourses. Not expensive recipes. Briefly, not even close to DM. Except video name.

[Koub]

I might have found someone you could discuss with : viewtopic.php?p=445039#p445039

[BlueTemplar]

But i just want to see even one report from player who succeed in [Default DeathWorld Marathon] mode. Because if noone have played it, it can be unreal for playing, disbalanced. And problem can stay invisible because noone even tried.

Sure, you can.
I'm in prod science & nuclear, yellow science soon.
(And I'm even aiming for No Solar Panels, No Laser Towers, and No Logistics achievements !)

However, I started this game in 0.17.0 (and played most of it in early 0.17), quite a bit has changed since then : Pollution Rebalance, Defender Robots and tank getting buffed...

Check out my "rocket train wall" :



Honestly, the hardest part of the game was probably killing that first closest nest :
(EDIT: didn't link to the right post in the thread viewtopic.php?p=404389#p404389
(Though we'll see, at 87% evolution I'm going to hit Behemoths soon... that might be quite a challenge !)

Also yeah, BlakeMW seems to be very good at it.

[kitters]

Oh, I see. Thanks for replies.
Trains as defence seems to be a great idea.
P.S.
I checked in wiki, steel furnaces consume half as much fuel per item, but produce equal amount of pollution per item as stone furnaces. And blue and yellow assemblers produce less pollution per minute (and doubly so per item) then gray ones. https://wiki.factorio.com/Pollution

Don't upgrade your assemblers unless you have the modules to put in them. Gray assemblers produce more for less energy and less pollution. Basically don't upgrade anything past tier 1. Upgrades cost resources. Resources cause pollution to be created. Pollution is bad. The ONLY exception to this is stone furnaces -> steel furnaces. Upgrade these ASAP. They produce half as much pollution per item.

[BlueTemplar]

Well, I'm experimenting with that... but yeah, they seem worthwhile to stop expansion parties over the large distances that pollution spread from Death World Marathon implies...

Oh, and a funny thing : it would seem that biters really don't like settling near even "empty" rails - so laying some rail down in strategic spots might help to focus their settlements where you would prefer them to !

FYI, thread about assemblers here :
viewtopic.php?f=16&t=66325
and furnaces here :
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=67201

[Frightning]

Marathon deathworld is meant to be very difficult. Even moreso now that pollution is an issue. I'm sure there are people out there who find marathon deathworld too easy, and add some more challenge like mods to make the experience even more difficult, but they probably are a minority.

Try to build as small as possible, to prevent your pollution from attracting biters.

This is why it's useful to learn to build 'just what you need' with the layout thought through so that you add more easily later on. Learning this lesson, and in general the ramifications of having biters and pollution in full effect, is the reason why I don't like playing without biters (I can stomach expansion disabled if what I am doing is going to require tons of space; like a 'full towns' railworld).

As for dealing with giant nests:
At low tech levels it can be pretty hard. It helps a ton of you have some lakes near your start. Look for the little black things moving around the lake and harvest them manually. These are Raw fish, which can be used to heal yourself in combat (REALLY helpful before you have Energy shields when fighting decent sized bases). With these, and proper tactics, I can usually clear any early game base that doesn't have medium or especially big worms (the one's nearest to you shouldn't have these). Getting ahead in military tech is really important as it will drastically reduce the cost of expansion (which is your life blood in a high difficulty game).

Generally, you should at least be able to reach military 1 without having to clear nests (very small starts can sometimes require you to deal with nests almost immediately after getting a few furnaces up).

At this level, best option is to use SMG for biter killing and Shotgun for nest killing (if u are having trouble getting near nests, the SMG may be better). Worms bigger than small=no-go as your weapons won't do appreciable damage to them. Try to get Heavy Armor asap (Light Armor is better than nothing in the meantime, but Heavy armor causes Small biters to do almost no damage to you, which is REALLY helpful against larger nests; remember spawner kills are what matters, the biters will be endlessly replaced).

Military 2 gives piercing ammo and grenades, which are both worthy upgrades. The ammo makes SMG handedly better than the Shotgun for all purposes (save cost efficiency; so the Shotgun is still worth using for situations where less firepower won't cost you), and Grenades give much needed AoE damage (you can chuck nades while shooting btw) and can actually kill medium and even big worms (later does tons of damage though, so it's still difficult/requires that it is only not-small worm there and Raw fish for healing). Piercing ammo can also do decent damage to Medium making taking out small numbers of them doable.

After getting military 2, there are 3 things to go after next (order should depend on need/resource availability):
-Modular armor (and energy shields/battery mk1/portable solar panels)
-Flamethrower
-Rocket Launcher

Modular armor is pretty obvious. It's Heavy armor with twice the durability and a 5x5 equipment grid, which means personal shields and the ability to actually recover hitpoints (shields) in battle, vitally important as the game goes on when nest-clearing. Recommended equipment setup is:
-3 shields
-4 batteries
-5 PSPs (you may opt for more PSPs for less batteries if you need to be able to fight more often than recharge rate permits, but that comes at a cost of how long you can fight for before energy is exhausted)

The flamethrower does reliable damage to almost all enemies (only the big worms seem to be hard to kill with it, and Behemoths thanks to having tons of hitpoints), it's only real cons are it's short range (and somewhat limited damage to nests; it's decent but not great). This is your biter killer when the SMGs dmg starts to become lacking (usually when Medium biters become common, thanks to them have 75 hp and 4 flat armor v physical damage).

The Rocket Launcher boast a fantastic 22 range and great damage (with basic rockets). This makes it an excellent weapon for killing worms and spawners while minimizing exposure to large amounts of enemy damage (rush in, snipe a worm/spawner or 2, run away, use Flamethrower to kill your pursuers, rinse, repeat until nest is eliminated).

I recommended prioritizing base removal towards the following goals, in order:
-immediate future resource needs (running out of vital resources=game over)
-nests in pollution cloud (nests in pollution cloud spawn angry visitors that will cost you resources at the very least)
-longer-term resource needs (so you don't get behind the '8-ball' at is were)
-near pollution cloud nests (so you can up production without unwelcome guests)

[BlueTemplar]

1.) Be careful : fish are not a renewable resource !

2.) I'm not sure about having to clear nests early or not, I did it in my game, even killing one particularly close spawner before getting electricity, but it was perhaps an overreaction (due to what happened my previous vanilla death world game).

3.) Not sure how it is after shotgun rebalance, but before, Turrets were a lot more useful as first tech than Military (1) (even though it also includes SMG).

4.) Modular armor is a big boost even without any equipment (which is expensive to research, because of solar panels).
Flamethrower/turrets are also potentially available earlier, and give a much higher boost.
EDIT : offensive use of flame turret, without having modular armor yet : viewtopic.php?p=407062#p407062 and another thread )
I guess that one could go the solar/laser road instead, but I've never tried it.

5.) Land mines are more powerful and easier to research than rocket launcher, but are perhaps trickier to use (pretty much require car/train on offensive ?).

6.) Defender robots seem like they are a viable option, now that they only require military science, shoot piercing ammo, and start out with 5 (or 4?) robots at the same time. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they were OP ATM, considering the dramatic changes to them...

[bobucles]

Don't let pollution reach nests! If you can, kill the nest. Extra land space is always good. If not, tone the factory down a bit. Bullet weapons are simply awful and should not be depended upon. The cost of pollution in producing ammo is higher than the biter penalty if that pollution ever reaches a nest.

The difference in difficulty between green map and barren desert is truly monumental. If things look too harsh, try starting in a forest zone. Make friends with the trees and they'll protect you from a lot of trouble.

Military 2 gives piercing ammo and grenades, which are both worthy upgrades. The ammo makes SMG handedly better than the Shotgun for all purposes (save cost efficiency; so the Shotgun is still worth using for situations where less firepower won't cost you), and Grenades give much needed AoE damage

Gonna mention this one again. Grenades are truly fantastic early game weapons. They obliterate swarms of small biters and increase your overall lethal output. Use them as part of a push.

Poison capsules are also very strong. They do the same thing as a grenade, except more. Be careful of the self damage though.

[BlueTemplar]

The problem with poison capsules is how late they are... (just before tank - the game will be most likely "won" or "lost" at that point)
They do excel in killing vast worm fields cheaply and from a safe distance !

[BlueTemplar]

Here's another "testimony" :
viewtopic.php?p=445573#p445573

[jodokus31]

One thing I can add. I turned down evolution from time setting. This way, I don't need to rush that much. It gets a bit easier.
For compensation i've gone for lazy bastard (with a small mod that adds me some intermediates to actually achieve it with marathon settings: 10 electronic circuits, 40 gears, and 10 pipes).
No solar, no lasers, default resources, efficiency modules in miners to minimize pollution cloud.

For early base killing i learnt from my seablock. Run in, place a lot of turrets near the nests/worms, quickly add ammo with right-click, and start repairing and dodging worms Sometimes some empty turrets before running in, which distract the worms and which can die. Ammo is the real expensive thing to lose.
Early big nests spawn a lot of biters and can alone be a problem without damage upgrades. I would delay the first attack as much as possible and research as much upgrades as possible

I didn't rush it and I’m currently researching rocket silo, but my flame turret + gun turret defence with red ammo still holds pretty well against behemoths at 92%.
I could use uranium ammo, but I don't want yet

Nuclear reactor also helps to reduce pollution. Solar panels are really expensive and eat a lot of resources, which also costs pollution. They can help to reduce pollution, if used very long. I skipped them.

[BlueTemplar]

Yeah, the fast evolution from time is one of the larger aspects of death world...
(Though now in 0.17 there's also the larger pollution spread.)

One thing that I did early on to save time is to lay down my base (and the planning takes a lot of time), save the blueprint, then load to before when I was planning, and lay it down again (that was before oil, so manually).

I've stopped at Physical Projectile Damage upgrade 3, as 4 takes 1600 RGMil.
Looks like Uranium ammo might be cheaper* to research than go all the way to PPD6, and still be more powerful, especially outside of turrets ?
(It certainly won't be cheaper where oil is concerned...)

IIRC delaying the first attack until you can research the first damage upgrades is not an option... you might even have to do it before getting Heavy Armor ?
Also, Military2 seems to be a much better option : piercing rounds provide a much higher boost against red biters (and worms/spawners?), and grenades are just amazing.

Anyway, I'll probably do that since I wanted to try all nuclear techs for once - my other most advanced game, 0.16 Normal Death World low resources RSO is a bit stuck in that aspect, as I haven't found any uranium yet, and it's proving to be a bit difficult, see for yourself :

So, this time, I'll probably even get Atomic Bomb before Artillery !

Yeah, I recently upgraded my nuclear plant from 2 reactors (and 200% efficiency) to 4 reactors (and 300% efficiency). I have no idea what the payoff time on that actually is, pollution-wise... (but I'm not really compelled to do the math, as everything seems to be mostly under control)

reactors_90evo_time.png (4.31 MiB) Viewed 9778 times

I've finally seen some of the new Behemoth Worms, and while impressive, they aren't really a match to the Power Armor mk2 with Fusion Reactors and Energy Shields mk2 that I got just beforehand...

[jodokus31]

I've stopped at Physical Projectile Damage upgrade 3, as 4 takes 1600 RGMil.
Looks like Uranium ammo might be cheaper* to research than go all the way to PPD6, and still be more powerful, especially outside of turrets ?
(It certainly won't be cheaper where oil is concerned...)

IIRC delaying the first attack until you can research the first damage upgrades is not an option... you might even have to do it before getting Heavy Armor ?
Also, Military2 seems to be a much better option : piercing rounds provide a much higher boost against red biters (and worms/spawners?), and grenades are just amazing.

Yes, those PPD upgrades are expensive, but they also save some resources.
Regarding the need to attack early, i had very few miners running to reduce pollution. And some hand-feeded furnace as far away as possible in a forrest. I also avoided mass burner miners as they produce more pollution (at least since it was fixed in 0.17.14?). But also the time setting helped to not rush. I had stratetic "2 or 4 turrets with walls arround"-points to deal with attacks.

I probably need to leave the time setting alone to get the full experience

[BlueTemplar]

Yeah, my experience with the early (-mid?) game was before the big pollution rebalance (in 0.17.12-..14?).

Another reason why you might need to still somewhat rush things is that biters won't be shy settling in your pollution cloud !