When's the best time to start destroying nests?

[xamoel]

Hi everyone!

Recently bought Factorio, having a blast!

Got a full factory with nearly everything researched, early on I victory poled most places around my base so no enemy spawners can, well, spawn.

A few bases are in range of my pollution though, as it increased. For now I only get medium biters and spiters.

Now with my tank I could easily tackle and take down those bases, but when is it suggested to do so?

If I kill of a spawner, will it increase the evolution for all other enemy bases as well? Or is it best to take them down ASAP, victory pole the area and that's it?

Thank you!

[Koub]

My opinion is "start destroying nests when you need alien artifacts for something"
Evolution is shared for all alien life. So if you're not ready to cope with angrier biters, try not to destroy too many nests.
Deo realize however, that time itsels raises evolution factor, as does pollution. So you won't be able to stick forever with low tier biters.

[DaveMcW]

If you pollute a nest for 8 hours, it will increase evolution as much as killing it. So it is usually better to kill nests in your pollution cloud right away.

The exception is if you are close to a new military tech. Then you should focus on finishing it and upgrading your weapons before you increase evolution further.

[xamoel]

Thank you, so I'll get my tank rolling.

What do you think of victory poling? Seems pretty handy to me?

[starholme]

Thank you, so I'll get my tank rolling.

What do you think of victory poling? Seems pretty handy to me?

It's very much a player preference thing. Many players find the combat 'too easy', me included. So I've been playing nearly the opposite. I never destroy a base that I don't need to. So there are bases sitting just out of laser range, pouring enemies into my defenses all the time.

When I first started I did the victory poles thing a bit. It's definitely effective.

[xamoel]

I guess once you've advaced far enough, with Power armor and destroyer capsules, it get's easy. But right now those biters keep annoying me and making impossible to setup my solar panels in an efficient way, I guess they'll need to go

[Xterminator]

Yeah as Dave said, probably best to kill any spawners within your pollution pretty fast.
As for victory poles, I think it is just up to the player. Personally I don't do it because I enjoy the combat in the game and find it a little cheary myself, but I don't judge anyone who does do it because it is quite effective.

[vanatteveldt]

I'm now playing an island+landfill game, which I guess is a form of victory poling since clearing out an island means its cleared forever.

Problem is, I reached 85% evolution while harvesting <20 artifacts. So, I am encountering large biters without purple science or a personal fusion reactor. I've found it hard to kill biter nests without resorting to turret creep (which feels cheesy). There are a couple small inhabited isolated islands near my factories which are probably absorbing pollution, and since I am going extremely slow they have a lot of time to evolve...

In other words: although victory poling can feel cheesy, you also need to harvest enough artifacts before the evolution gets out of control. (I don't think you will get very far with turret creep against behemoths).

[nobodx]

Usually, I start to clear out biternests in my pollution range when they start to seriously damage my defenses (or annoy me too much )

[BlakeMW]

I've got a pretty regular strategy, mostly it revolves around the fact that they're going to evolve anyway so you may well kill them asap, but there are some subtleties.

Early Game:

First I research Turrets and Automation (desert map) or Automation and Turrets (forest map) and get about 4 assemblers making regular ammo and craft 6-8 turrets. Once I have about 300 magazines I "clear the neighborhood" of spawners, turrets have a +100% damage bonus which lets them easily destroy spawners and makes them very economical on ammo. There is not much you can research which makes it easier.

Basically turrets and automation gives you a lot of kill power, and there is very little improvement to that for a long time (especially when you consider cost effectiveness), so the way I see it I may as well immediately exterminate all threats within pollution range then build in peace. If it is max biters I'll set up a defensive perimeter instead since killing all spawners is non-viable and will quickly lead to spitter evolution. But either way no tech beyond automation and turrets is required. Once I'm secure (enough) from attack I set up red science automation.

Early-mid Game:

It is important to not kill so many spawners that small spitters evolve too soon, there are a couple of reasons for this.

I try to get the tank while there are only small biters so I normally beeline it (small biters are unable to do significant damage to the tank, you can even get out and repair if you are wearing heavy armor). Once I have the tank I drive around biter world and build "daydar outputs" (5 solar panels + 1 radar around a power pole, only scans during the day but significantly more cost-effective per sector scanned than ones with accumulators), if you build these in clearings biters nearly always leave them alone (even on max biters where the clearings are pretty small), you can place a single turret with a little ammo to help guarantee this (once you are a little distance away the sector goes inactive and biters freeze anyway).

When you get far enough away from home you'll start to encounter Big Worms and larger denser nests even on standard biters, eventually you wont be able to go much further with the tank. Normally I go as far as the Big Worms and lay down daydar outposts in a broad ring, they will slowly map out a huge area of the map and reveal all resources (especially oil). I perform this scouting effort early when it's easy to do thanks to the Tank and weak enemies, it is by far the least effort intensive way to scout. Once the spitters and larger biters start to evolve scouting becomes more tedious and far far more bloody.

Another reason I want to delay the evolution of small spitters is so I can prepare my defenses. It's not hard to get gun turrets up to 10 damage/bullet, which 1-shot small spitters. If you research all the bullet and turret upgrades which don't require alien science packs you'll reach this damage level. Gun turrets at 10 damage/bullet are an incredibly economic and effective way to destroy small spitters, far better than laser turrets (considering the gun turret shoots 20 times/s and deals instant damage, while the laser shoots only about 4.5 times/s and fires slow bolts). It's not a big deal on standard biters because you can do anything you like (including just exterminating everything within pollution radius), but is important on higher biters. Those bullet upgrades will also make defender capsules incredibly potent and pretty cost-effective.

Mid game:

Once small spitters have evolved it doesn't matter so much if your raise the evolution factor further because the larger ones aren't much more dangerous than small spitters - as long as you have turret upgrades they'll be cut to shreds no problem.

So at this point I usually start carving a bloody swathe of destruction to any resources I want: Normally this will be what I call "rich oil fields", you get the normal oil fields, and then you get the ones with 2-3x as many oil patches, and 2-3 times as much oil per patch. They produce LOTS of oil, easily enough to run 3-4 refineries full-bore for several hours. The daydar outposts should have revealed half a dozen rich oil patches (on standard settings). So I pick an oil patch or two and build a pipeline out to it. Normally these wells get eff1 or eff2 modules so the biters leave them alone (once the oil starts running low, I just hook up a couple more rich oil fields).

At this point Tank + Defender Capsules are a very potent way to destroy nests and if the biter settings aren't too high I'll use that potent combination to swiftly destroy all spawners anywhere near the factory. Nests near the starting area don't have worms, but if I need to kill further away nests poison capsules will do the trick. Big Biters are a problem for defender capsules, you tend to need full bullet upgrades and a robot follower count of 15-19 to deal with them with defender capsules (also you can use poison capsules, drop 3-4 and drive in a tight circle and watch all the big biters die)

Late Game:

Pretty much open season on spawners regardless of biter settings. Anything which annoys me or gets in my way gets erased, even on max biters I'll start clearing out everything within pollution radius. Once behemoths evolve there is no longer reason for any restraint whatsoever.


Note that my playstyle, particularly playing on high biter settings and/or the aggressive acquisition of far-away resources mean I normally have far more alien artifacts than I can ever use, even on standard biters I often end up leaving them on the ground. Alien Artifacts are basically the most limitless resource in the game (unless you play on a finite world), the further from the starting area you go the larger and richer the "alien artifact" patches are.

[Koub]

while the laser shoots only about 4.5 times/s and fires slow bolts

Very interesting and complete analysis. There is only one thing I'd like to correct : the damage laser turrets do is immediate, as for gun turrets. The "slow bolt" is only the animation of the laser flying. The biter is already dead, it just doesn't know it yet.

Proof

Just joking. You can get the proof by seing the laser rays trajectory get curved as biters run perpendicularly compared to the initial ray trajectory.

[xamoel]

Thank you, interesting to know!

Btw I'm just getting around to Power Armor MKII, what do you guys suggest to fill it with? 2x fusion, 4-5 shields, a few exos? What else do I need in it? Are batteries even needed?

[BlakeMW]

while the laser shoots only about 4.5 times/s and fires slow bolts

Very interesting and complete analysis. There is only one thing I'd like to correct : the damage laser turrets do is immediate, as for gun turrets. The "slow bolt" is only the animation of the laser flying. The biter is already dead, it just doesn't know it yet.

I know it's "tagged for extinction" and that prevents anything else trying to shoot it, but it doesn't seem to stop it spitting until the bolt actually clobbers it, which is the problem. This seems to make a combination of gun turrets with laser turrets behind them particularly bad, the laser fires first because of its much longer range and the bolt acts as a kind of shield for the spitter so the spitter can waltz up to the gun turrets and spit once before the bolt reaches and kills it, without the "bolt of protection" the gun turrets would instantly obliterate it the moment it steps into range.

I'd rather spitters die instantly dealing no damage at all and thus *quietly* with no "whoop whoop" alert. For me a "whoop whoop" probably means the gun turrets have run out of ammo. Of course once behemoths evolve they're probably going to spit no matter what you do but by then you have bots out the walzo for repair and replacement so it's no big deal.

On the "tagged for extinction" thing I'm pretty sure it can be evaded too, there was a guy who made a bulldozer mod which "ate" projectiles (representing the armored blade) but due to a bug it would also eat friendly laser turret bolts, this led to biters and spitters which had been tagged for extinction but the bolt never arrived, so the biter or spitter could then run around destroying stuff and nothing could shoot it because it was "already dead".

[xamoel]

True that, even though the laser bolts keep coming after the spitters, they are getting closer to my walls and start attacking it, even if it's only for a second, causing the alarm to go off. The bolts should be instant.