Acquiring Alien Artifacts automatically?

[SuperDrops]

Hey everyone. So, I bought the game on Wednesday last week and have sunk somewhere around 80 hours into it since then, really enjoying myself. I haven't even scratched the surface on many aspects of the game yet, like logic networks and robotics, working mainly with belts and inserters and having fun doing builds that turn increasingly messy over time. I have, however, hit a wall in freeplay now, and that's the acquisition of alien eggs. I'm getting the feeling I'm doing it wrong, that there must be a better, more automatic way. I just built myself a tank and I do passes through a big hive, flattening 3-5 spawners in every pass by simply running them over, then spend a good 5-10 minutes driving away from the train of biter and spitters, shooting explosive shells behind me before I repair my tank to full health for the next pass. This is getting really tedious really quickly, and if that's the only way to get those damned pink orbs it's going to bore me to tears. Are there any ways with which I can automate this process or at least speed it up? Am I overlooking some mechanic of the game?

[Phillip_Lynx]

In vanilla the only way to get them is to kill them and get the debris .

But there are some aproches to do this. The one is yours. A second one involves the powerarmor, some exoskeletons in it and capsules to kill em all . And a third one ist to do a tower creep with lasertowers (effectiv with personal robots and blueprints and A LOT of energy).

If some of the terms above do not make sense to you, then you are maybe not deep enough into the research .

But also there are mods out there in wich you can get the artifacts in a non violent way (but I am not up to date, wich ones are up to date and good).

[ratchetfreak]

The tank is not thé late game tool.

Instead invest in power armor and combat robots.

Add a personal roboport and you can automate collection of the artifacts using the deconstruction planner.

turret creep is also an option though that requires power or quickly being able to fill them with ammo. Though setting a fallback base where you can retreat to for a breather is handy when you are getting overrun.

[mophydeen]

In my mod I added the chance that a bitter/spitter drop alien artifacts. [the ones you run away from ]
At first they don't give much, but the bigger ones give a little more.

There is also a pollution creation entity. Which has 2 recipes, use coal or wood give artifact.
This slow conversion creates alot of pollution which attracts bitters/spitters. Protection that structure with towers gives alot of artifacts.

Tip don't place this in your main base, they might kill it if you lack the proper defenses.

p0.txt

Blueprint-string: pollution factory

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[SuperDrops]

Thanks folks. I'm already using combat drones, so that's not the hang-up. I thought about Tower Creep, maybe I'll try that. Thanks again for your tips. What's everyone's opinion though? Do you find Artifact collection as tedious as I? Personally my idea for changing this would be making big biters and big spitters drop artifacts, combined perhaps with introducing a new Incubator building that lets you breed the mobs artificially to set up an automatic system for producing the eggs.

[Koub]

I personnally hate the very beginning of artifacts collection : I always wait until I have only purple science accessible ... and find myself in front of the necessity to take down big hives, with big biters, big worms, ... with not on-par equipment.
Then, once I struggle to get to MK2 armor, with fusion reactor, everything gets easier : poison capsules for worms, piercing shotgun shells for the nests, and run back to my base to kill the biters, then get back to harvest the artifacts. Remains tedious, but a lot less.

[SuperDrops]

It just seems weird to me how, in a game that's all about automation and factories, there's an aspect that is so inextricably player-dependent. Another idea that just struck was the construction of automated hunter drones that go out and search for hives by themselves to destroy them. Would that be hard to accomplish, programming wise?

[Xterminator]

It just seems weird to me how, in a game that's all about automation and factories, there's an aspect that is so inextricably player-dependent. Another idea that just struck was the construction of automated hunter drones that go out and search for hives by themselves to destroy them. Would that be hard to accomplish, programming wise?

You bring up some interesting points here and I'm fairly inclined to agree with you. I think some sort of automated system to collect the Artifacts would be pretty awesome. For example the hunter type drones you suggested, which sounds awesome by the way.
I think that combat is part of the game that the devs still plan to do quite a bit of work on. They have said previously I believe that parts of it need to be revamped at least to some degree.
Would be awesome if someone could make a Mod that would allow for some type of stone to go out and destroy the bases and collect artifacts in the meantime.

[omnipact]

My solution was this:

https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... 97&t=19411

Use your robots to collect that stuff...

[RoddyVR]

There isnt a 100% automatic way in vanilla, but i think if you just adjust your approach a little, it'll be much faster, and much less tedious. Atleast to get the eggs you need. To clear away all bitters within your polution range will still be very tedious.

from what you described, the part that annoys you most is the 5 minutes running away from the bitter wave from the next you just raided.
before you go in there, at a distance of about a screen (or less once you get a feel for when bitters agro) away from the nest put down a few (say 5-10 depending on the biggest bitters you get now) turrets (upgraded bullets with AP ammo work just as well if not better then lasers unless you're already fighting mostly large and behemoth bitters).

after you raid the nest for eggs like youve been doing, lead teh bitter wave toward the turrets and drive your tank around them a couple times, most of the bitters will chase you while getting pummeled by the turrets.
circling can be dangerous if there are a lot of spitters and the turrets are busy with biters, so if there's a heavy mix of bitters and spitters, i suggest running past your turrets a distance away, so that the faster biters follow you outside turret range, and the spitters behind them get quickly slaughtered by the turrets, then lead the biters back to circle the turrets.

after a few tries of this you'll get used to it enough that you'll know how close you can set the turrets without agroing a wave of bitters too early (before you load ammo), and how to balance the "circling the turrents too long" vs "putting up too many turrets".

at the end, you dont really NEED too many of those eggs (even to do ALL the reasearch), and eventualy you'll have stacks of 1000s of them with almost nothing to use them on.

For collecting the eggs themselves faster after you've cleared the whole nest (there's no more danger in the area, but runnign around collecting stray eggs is annoying). use a personal roboport with construction bots. marking the whole area for deconstruction will get them to bring you all the eggs (and all the trees too, so works better in non forested areas)

[Ohlmann]

Normally, when you just got the tank, killing base is very easy and not tedious. It allow for some limited alien pack research, whic hI generally use for productivity 3 and power armor. Some time later, the tank take too much time and that's the moment for a switch.

[nobodx]

Once I get the mk2 power armor, all I do ist spawning the max amount of destroyer capsules/drones, and walk into a hive.
The drones usually keep the aliens at bay while I blast the hives / worms with my shotgun. And afterwards, I use my drones to "deconstruct" the alien artifacts I missed

[BlakeMW]

harvesting artifacts with the tank is very easy if you beeline it (at least moderately) and then once you have the tank you should still only be facing small biters (unless you went absolutely ballistic producing pollution), then just drive around squishing nests to your heart's content: and here's the cool part, while you're wearing heavy armor small biters basically can't hurt you. If only small biters are attacking you, then you can step out the tank, repair it to full, then get back in - the small biters might be able to reduce your hitpoints to half or one-third before the tank is fully repaired, but then you can resume squishing nests, and by the time the tank needs repairs again your health should be fully regenerated. So during the small biter era you have total freedom in the tank as long as you're wearing heavy armor. The fun only stops when small spitters and medium biters start being spawned in numbers, but before then you should be able to clear out several dozen spawners at least (as every spawner killed increases evolution factor - but you can game this a little by first squishing only the spitter spawners, then once spitters start to appear, go back and squish all the biter spawners, but as medium biters appear shortly after small spitters has only limited utility).

Also much more useful than the tank weapons are hand grenades, they're dirt cheap and super-effective at clearing out small stuff and you can spam them to take out medium stuff, the damage is low enough to barely damage the tank at all. Unfortunately the tank's explosive cannon, as well as being much more expensive, also deals far more friendly-fire damage to the tank. Grenades are just a superior weapon.

How I know this:

I played a couple of games with maximum biters settings plus RSO mod. When exploring in the tank I'd be chased by literally thousands of small biters and it was sometimes impossible to find an open space to kill the pursuing biters and repair: So in desperation I just stepped outside the tank and repaired it while being mobbed by biters, and lo and behold it worked perfectly! I'd then grenade the biter mob and move on (technically the tank can extract itself from even the largest mob, but it takes ages).

Ironically because I normally play on biter heavy settings and usually need to carve a swathe of death and destruction to any resource patch I want to exploit I find myself wishing there was a way to recycle excess artifacts into something useful, perhaps toilet paper.

[nobodx]

Unfortunately, that works only in the early - mid game.
I'm at the point, where countless behemoth biters / spitters guard the nests (I play vanilla). And a tank gets destroyed in seconds when 10-20 behemoths chew on it, while the same amount of spitters bombard me.

A power armor with exo-legs + shields supported by a batch of drones works betters (faster / safer) for me.

[Supercheese]

Unfortunately, that works only in the early - mid game.
I'm at the point, where countless behemoth biters / spitters guard the nests (I play vanilla). And a tank gets destroyed in seconds when 10-20 behemoths chew on it, while the same amount of spitters bombard me.

A power armor with exo-legs + shields supported by a batch of drones works betters (faster / safer) for me.

Nuke 'em from orbit.