Defending Train Lines and Biter Expansion

[ChickenMacNugget]

Hi All,

I'm getting to the point now where I'm comfortable to start playing the game in a NON-peaceful world. I'm just curious to the game mechanics and how they are currently after all the updates. I saw that there was changes to expansion in .13 and it has changed "victory poles", though I have seen that there is a mod that replicates it.

I'm just curious to if it is recommended to defend train lines. I intend to have a pretty large spread out base design by using the RSO mod (and many others). So I will be using very large rail systems, and they will be fully connected using large power poles along the rail line so that I can have a central power generation facility... I've heard that biters can sometimes roam out and attack rails and power poles "by mistake" due to getting stuck... So is it worth having some turrets? I kind of want to put up walls all around the rail (more for aesthetics than defence), but I can see adding laser or turret defences as being insanely expensive and terribly difficult to keep stocked (like by having many connected roboports in order to keep things repaired and stocked with ammo).

I'm also wondering if having a wall around the rails will just cause me problems, as the biters will likely path right into the wall and attack it blindly.

Thanks for any help

[MalcolmCooks]

imo it's not worth defending all your train lines. If you try to align them so that everything on the line is in the same chunk then you can reduce the chance that biters will try to set up a nest on your rail line. Or, route your railways through areas where biters won't set up nests.
In the event that a biter nest does get set up close enough to your railway that it will cause problems, then it may be better to just re-route the railway.
If a roaming biter group attacks one of your railway lines, then you need to determine: was it a group that was travelling to attack my base? Or was it a group travelling to set up a new nest?
If it is the latter, you can just rebuild and not worry about it. If it is the former, then they will probably cross the line at the same point during the next attack. Biters always follow approximately the same path when attacking (unless the pollution source they are trying to find has changed) so you will have to defend the line at that point.
Basically: it's not worth defending railway lines except in areas where they get repeatedly attacked. But you can expect to have to replace some destroyed items over the course of the game.

[NorwegianBlue]

By max evolution, you end up having to wall and turret your entire rail infrastructure.

When you outposts are 2 minutes away by train, it's super-annoying to have to go and repair a train killed by a behemoth biter.

[Hannu]

First outposts are typically quite close to my main base and there are not yet behemoth enemies. Then I defend rails only at points in which aliens attack to them. When I begin to get ores from more distant outposts or behemoths appear I enclose the whole operating area with bot maintained turret walls. It takes less or equal resources to encapsulate square area than encapsulating only tracks. By using lakes as natural barriers it takes practically maybe about half of the resources (depends strongly on map, of course). At first phase I conquer typically about 4 square kilometers and at late game 10-20. I get bored before I can use all resources in such area.

[MalcolmCooks]

It takes less or equal resources to encapsulate square area than encapsulating only tracks.

yeah this is a point
when it becomes neccessary to defend your rail lines, if you try to line all your tracks with walls and turrets you will go crazy
instead like Hannu says you should seek to claim large areas and wall them off. early on you should try to avoid destroying nests if possible because it will raise your evolution factor A LOT. but once behemoths start appearing it doesn't matter since your evolution factor is already maxed.