Biters to hard regular difficulty

[NapsterAT]

1st
In my opinion biters are too hard even with munition 1 upgrade and a car i tryed to get rid of nest that spawned near me. ( it had one worm ) i was not able to kill it cause the biters spawn in so riddicolous rate that i was not able to focus on the worm even then the worm do so much damage and had so much hp, its just crazy. and i died

2nd
maybe iam just need more info.

How should i ever get a greater space? ( without the need to do the full tech tree )
How can i prevent biter nests from spawning? ( is there a way to keep an area around the base "secure" without the need of placing turrets everywhere? )
How to hell can i clear biter nests? ( without research the full tech tree )

[Koub]

1) Biters seem to be hard, but once you get used to them, they are not so much hard.

2) a. Don't quite get your question
2) b. You can't really prevent them from spawning, they just don't spawn too close from your base. You have an option at map creation for the size of starting area, which is the place where there are no biter nests when the game starts. One important note, the more you pollute, the more the time passes, and the more you get to kill spawners, the more your evolution factor raises. This makes biters spawn more, and colonize more, creating more spawners.
2) c. Tank alone, car with poison capsules (for worms) + shotgun (for nests), preferably with a few speed / damage upgrades. These are relatively low-mid techs.There is also the turret creep, which I personnally dont like, and is basically plop a handful of laser turrets and wreck the havoc on the biter base.

[ssilk]

For me this is not a balancing suggestion but more something which should be moved to gameplay-help.
But I leave it linked to Balancing, cause you can find also the quite opposite opinion, that everything is too easy etc.

Factorio isn't an easy game, you need some experience to be able to fight them. Until then try to produce with less pollution BEFORE their evolution level goes over your abilities.

With other words: Try a new factory and come back later, when you think you can manage it now.

[NapsterAT]

if i go for low pollution biter nests spawn directly near my base, after some hours, pretty much the same is happening if i dont give a fuck about pollution and just build, but it seems the spawners try to surrounding the "main base" pretty nasty.

i placed it in balanceing cause i thought i would be able to take out some nests on foot with some nades and some dmg upgrades, i thought biters get harder the longer the game goes and i would need later tanks or something similar to get rid of the nests, maybe a miss interpretation on my side.

[Gouvi]

I start destroying near nests very early after researching the red ammunition... i push fast forward to an automatic ammunition production and take 15-20 towers with me and than i build up tower lines near the enemy base. So i can pull the first wave to my towers and after that i build and unbuild towers step by step until my towers destroy the nests.... this helped me destroy many nests in the first hours of game to have some space for my pollution

[BlakeMW]

You can easily destroy spawners with 6 turrets and 300 rounds of regular magazine (for certain definitions of easy anyway - it takes some technique to load the turrets quickly, but once you have the hotkeys worked out it is very quick and easy).

Without turret support it is much harder, you can deal with very small nests (1 or 2 spawners) with a shotgun (upgrades help) or if you wear heavy armor you become nearly immune to small biters and can use the SMG with AP ammo and grenades to kill somewhat larger nests (grenades are worthless against spawners - they are for crowd control). But the Tank is your first truly good option especially against worms which you will have a hard time killing without half a dozen bullet (or shotgun) upgrades and they pack a punch too.

You have to hit nests hard, you can't "wear them down" through attrition because their numbers are limitless, you have to go in hard and kill everything with overwhelming firepower. Turrets are the first thing which provide enough firepower to destroy sizable nests. Then comes the tank (a superb bulldozer but the cannon also packs a punch) defender capsules and poison capsules (for worms).

I usually play on maximum biters. Biters are easy because ammo is cheap and gun turrets powerful, you can produce far more bullets than spawners can ever produce biters.

[Xterminator]

It may seem hard at first, but once you get a good strategy for taking them out it becomes quite easy actually. The best way to do it early on is a method called turret creep. Essentially just love some gun turrets down with ammo right outside their agrro range, then move forward and place some more and keep inching forward until the turrets can shoot the spawners. Turrets are very powerful and will make quick work of spawners and bites and even small or medium worms.
Just make sure you wear some armor in case you get hit a few times.

You can keep new spawners from being created by placing down a structure (box, power pole, etc) where you destroyed a spawner. They can't make new bases within a certain distance of your stuff so it will prevent new ones from popping up there again.

Later on, a tank or laser turret creep works well to take them out.

[Ghoulish]

Early on the turret creep is your friend as mentioned

Get a turret in your hand, and move your cursor about until you find the spot furthest from your player that you can place it (the turret is transparent when unplaceable, and turns green when in a suitable spot). Then you can walk forward dropping turrets as far from the player as possible.

The idea is to drop the turret in front of you - closer to the biter nest. This way as you walk forward, any worm will target the turret before it targets the player - just always have turret(s) Down closer to the biter nest than the player is.

Doing this though is a little trickier without a mod called autofill, which simply adds fuel and ammo to a vehicle when you enter it, and adds a few rounds of ammo when you place a turret. You don't need autofill but it will make things simpler for you, and I would recommend this simple helper mod (even to new players) If combat is tricky to them. viewtopic.php?f=92&t=1612

Destroyer capsules (and distractors) Are the way to go when a little further down the tech tree (at least I find this way quickest / best).

I was idling a twitch channel other day, and someone mentioned that turret creeping was going to be nerfed in some way? Can anyone confirm?

[omega_haxors]

Biters, as far as their health and damage output, are perfectly balanced.

The issue comes from the fact that their explosive resistance is WAY too high
explosive weapons hardly do any damage at all, meaning that you have no mid-game viable weapons to deal with them once the bullet resistance goes up. But lasers? Nah they don't need resistance to those. Just spam more lasers.

Don't get me wrong, I love lasers, but let the other weapons be viable for a chance. I swear my flamethrower gets more use trolling team-mates and I have never once used a grenade outside of a very short and disappointing gangbang. Having overpowered weapons with limited ammo means you will likely run out eventually in your over-confidence and force you into a REALLY bad situation. Having nothing but lasers just encourages you to put all your assets into a safe, renewable, and reliable defence grid which usually stagnates the game experience.

EDIT: Explosive resistance was toned down a LOT since last time I've played, but explosive weapons are still very bad and need to be brought up to a level between shotgun and laser, making them an expensive short-term solution when things get dire. Flamethrower is complete trash and should be dramatically buffed to the point of insanity. It already self-balances due to higher speeds obtained by late game armor causing the flames to hit yourself, and its expensive and limited fuel. Having it as a dangerous but powerful tool would both give it a really good purpose and also be a lot of fun to use, without causing balance issues.

[BlakeMW]

explosive weapons hardly do any damage at all, meaning that you have no mid-game viable weapons to deal with them once the bullet resistance goes up. But lasers? Nah they don't need resistance to those. Just spam more lasers.

Hmm, I find the mid game the most interesting point in terms of viable options. In the early game gun turrets are the dominant choice, you can do some minor damage with the shotgun, and grenades are incredibly effective for personal defense, but gun turrets are really where it's at both for defense and offense.

In the late game the Behemoth Physical Resistence and vast hitpoint pool makes laser turrets the only viable option, gun turrets are perfectly capable of killing them; technically even regular ammo deals plenty of damage - when fired from a gun turret it caps at 19.4 which still leaves 7.5 damage after PR, and AP ammo deals plenty of damage - about twice as much as laser turret. But it costs about 80 iron and 80 copper to destroy a Behemoth with Gun Turrets firing AP Ammo, and a laser turret only costs about 200 iron-plate equivalents, so you're almost firing a laser turret's worth of material out of a gun turret to kill a Behemoth Biter. It quickly makes sense to just use laser turrets. (Also, technically Destroyer Capsules can destroy Behemoths, but the costs of doing so are simply staggering)

But in the early-mid game, getting the bullet damage and shooting speed upgrades makes gun turrets incredibly lethal - far more lethal than laser turrets in that era (that's because of overkill - no point in dealing 25 damage to a Small Spitter with only 10 hitpoints), it also makes Defender Capsules unholy terrors. In fact except on true Death World settings I prefer Tank + Defender Capsules for wiping out biters because it's much quicker than laser turret walking and Defenders are dirt cheap, Defender Capsules are amazing things, per robot they have higher DPS than destroyer robots (only against lightly armored targets) and equal hitpoints but cost only 1/5th as much with a far simpler production chain. Per hitpoint they're actually cheaper than distractor capsules, also because they only cost 10 AP bullets (1 magazine) but can fire up to about 250 bullets they are a way to stretch AP ammo magazines (i.e. prefer not to use your SMG or Mounted Machine Gun, when a Defender can fire hundreds of bullets for the cost of 1 magazine)

Poison Capsules are also wonderful things when used in conjunction with the Tank, they have some very interesting properties - the DPS from multiple clouds stack, nothing resists poison except things which are completely immune (spawners and mechanical things), they out-range big worms when thrown, along with being almost instantly lethal to small biters and small spitters the damage stacking can be used to easily destroy Big Biters and Big Spitters (they only take 2 capsules worth of damage to destroy if you can convince them to stand inside the cloud). While Defenders eventually become useless due to Behemoth PR, Poison Capsules are always useful even in the end game on Death Worlds because they deal guaranteed damage even in very hot situations (robots can be instantly destroyed, poison always deals its damage), the only thing they can't viably kill is Behemoth Biters.
Another early-mid game option is the Tank as a bulldozer. The ability to bulldoze goes away with the evolution of Big Biters because they inflict a lot of damage on the Tank when crushed but the Tank is useful even in the end game as "super heavy armor", just don't try to bulldoze. It's offensive ability admittedly sucks beyond the early-mid game, pathetically its best weapon is the machine gun once you have the bullet upgrades, although during the era when Defender Capsules are incredibly lethal you do not lack for firepower at all.

An on the topic of offensive firepower, during the big biter era piercing shotgun builds can be incredibly effective in erasing biters. The upfront costs of the power armor setup are staggering compared with Tank/Defender or laser turret walk, but once you have the armor modules the shotgun ammo is cheap as water. Unfortunately piercing shotgun is worthless against Behemoth Biters due to PR and high hitpoint pool but it's fun before behemoths evolve.

I have a preference for Defender+Poison Capsules, but I know some players like to make extensive use of distractor capsules so the above are by no means the only viable options in the period between early and end game.