Combat in DeathWorld - Flame Turrets

[brockmasters]

Hello,

I was wondering if anyone had any good blueprints for expanding using flameturrets? I'm playing with a masochist in a low resource seed.

I guess ideally the direction of the turrets would be in like a pine tree format with connecting pipes but just curious what is out there since we're already running low on oil. And yes we're trying to get to the next oil patch.

maybe it makes more sense for barreling oil?

thank you!! love this fanbase!

[Aeternus]

You'd typically want to use Light oil for those turrets. Lowers the consumption rate. Barelling and chain-feeding them is an option. If your defenses are permanent, consider a storage tank, 'though on your settings that's a hefty resource investment in terms of oil.

[JimBarracus]

Crude oil is the better option for the beginning since you have more of it.
Production has to step back for the sake of defense.

I place flamethrower turrets between one almost full length of underground pipes. 8 tiles of gap between the underground pipes (9 are max).
For the beginning I leave out every second turret untill I have enough to put one on every connection.
I add one gun turret to every flame thrower.

[bobucles]

Crude oil is a very dangerous thing to burn. Black gold contains precious petrol, and you need every ounce of petrol to reach laser tech. The risk level goes down dramatically once the lasers can pewpew to victory.

One thing to be careful of is that biters have an invisible super aggro range. They will mercilessly attack anything close to their nests and will only pull back after the territory is cleared. You have to get a feel for this territory range as it is not shown in game but you will definitely FEEL it when it happens. Defending against territory aggro will wipe out your resources when normal biter attacks only scale in response to pollution. Mastering this mechanic is critical to surviving a death world.

Most people in multiplayer will not know about biter territory range (and why should they? It's not shown) so they'll typically build lasers half a screen away from biter nests and nuke your energy supply in the process.

[Zavian]

Crude oil is a very dangerous thing to burn. Black gold contains precious petrol, and you need every ounce of petrol to reach laser tech. The risk level goes down dramatically once the lasers can pewpew to victory.

Surely that depends on how many oil wells you have, and how much they are producing. If they are producing faster than you are consuming oil, then you might as well send the excess crude to the flame turrets.

One thing to be careful of is that biters have an invisible super aggro range.

When that is happening it is pretty obvious, at least to any player who has attacked biter nests before.

[BlakeMW]

I've used offensive flame turrets a bit.

I feed flame turrets with light oil, and use the circuit network to limit the amount of oil in the distribution pipes (to about 10% full). When pipes are only partially full, removing a pipe or anything with a fluid box (i.e. a flame turret) will actually push the liquid into nearby pipes rather than wasting it, so if you're careful about which order you remove things in you can actually pull up turrets and pipes without losing any oil.

I haven't used flame turrets for killing nests much, because if oil is available, the Tank and Poison Capsules are available, and that's my preference for wiping out nests, poison for worms, machine gun and crushing for spawners, personal flamethrower for burning large mobs of pissed off biters chasing the tank (the trick is to just do a tiny spurt to set them all on fire). The Tank also generally makes more effective use of ammo than turrets, because it has a better damage bonus until you've invested significantly into turret damage upgrades, so there's no need to feel bad about machine gunning biters and spitters.

The flame turret is a poor offensive weapon against nests because of the super pissed off biters that keep spawning and the flame turret is just generally bad at killing a steady stream of units, it excels at destroying a large mob of units. But if you have to use it, just place it in range of buildings and it will gradually torch them. The real problem is what to use to kill the swarming biters. If you're fast you can feed fuel into a flamethrower then take the pipes away before they burn, the 200 fuel in the flamethrower will last for quite a while, so flamethrowers can technically defend each other, but it's tedious and very micro-intensive. The alternative is spamming down walls and using a combination of gun turrets and your personal weapons to keep the biters busy.

[bobucles]

Surely that depends on how many oil wells you have, and how much they are producing. If they are producing faster than you are consuming oil, then you might as well send the excess crude to the flame turrets.

That is a very unusual situation. Crude oil is 60% turret fuel and 40% precious gas. If that isn't enough turret ammo then you're probably already trapped in a death spiral. The only way out is to keep using the petrol to tech up.

Burning crude is easy, but if you have excess crude to burn you aren't playing a death world. It is best to always process it first.