best defense?

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Pascali
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best defense?

Post by Pascali »

hello, what is the best defense?

2 walls
1 empty
2 lasertower
1 firetower

behind some attilery?

-no normal turrets?
-belts or wall spikes in front of the wall? or both?

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NotRexButCaesar
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Re: best defense?

Post by NotRexButCaesar »

Pascali wrote:
Wed Dec 22, 2021 12:51 am
hello, what is the best defense?
It depends on what you want to optimise:

At high enough laser damage and shooting speed research, all you need is a single line of laser turrets.
Flamethrower turrets are probably the most efficient in damage per turret and cost of firing.
Normal turrets are the easiest to get a very high DPS for each turret, but spitters outrange them. (spez: Apparently gun turrets outrange spitters, but only by a very small amount: the spitter will end up shooting the turrets before it dies.)

The best way to lay out walls is probably to funnel biters into a line like this for flamethrowers: Image

Artillery is not really part of defence in my opinion: it is mostly for offence.
Last edited by NotRexButCaesar on Thu Dec 23, 2021 8:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: best defense?

Post by Koub »

Also don't forget mines. They're said to be dreadful.
Koub - Please consider English is not my native language.

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Re: best defense?

Post by gGeorg »

Also don't forget MG turret with green ammo. They're said to be dreadful.

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ptx0
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Re: best defense?

Post by ptx0 »

the best defense is a good offense, there's artillery to prevent nest creep from advancing on your walls

destroyers and defender bots make good tools for clearing out the areas on the other side of your wall

dragon teeth walls are a good way to slow enemies down before they reach your guns. they're little bits of wall that spread out, not connected to each other. think the beaches of Normandy in world war 2 with anti-tank devices everywhere.

making sure that you expand far enough to reach a choke point - you can make smaller sections of wall that are flanked by oceans on either side, at least for certain maps.

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Re: best defense?

Post by Tertius »

NotRexButCaesar wrote:
Wed Dec 22, 2021 5:23 am
Artillery is not really part of defence in my opinion: it is mostly for offence.
I disagree. Artillery is essential in a proper defense line in the long term. No turret will ever attack nests. The only automated weapon that will destroy nests automatically is artillery. If you want a completely unattended defense line, you need artillery. Otherwise nests will come near.

Sooner or later nests will be created near your defense line, and the (endlessly) spawned enemies will immediately engage in a fight and drain your defense in the long term, if the nests are not destroyed by - artillery. A nest will never stop spawning enemies.
Even worse, it's possible worms are created right outside your turret range but inside their own spitting range, so they will destroy your defense while not being attacked themselves. Also worms can only be destroyed automatically by - artillery.

In my opinion, artillery plus laser turrets plus walls is the most easy defense. Artillery is essential as well as some kind of turret. Since the laser turret doesn't require any supply, only electricity, it's my choice for a fortified unattended defense line. However, for ad hoc defense, I always carry a stack of gun turrets plus ammo. I set them on the spot, destroy any nearby nests manually, then remove again (and build a proper defense line behind).

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Re: best defense?

Post by NotRexButCaesar »

Tertius wrote:
Wed Dec 22, 2021 10:48 pm
Sooner or later nests will be created near your defense line … Even worse, it's possible worms are created right outside your turret range but inside their own spitting range, so they will destroy your defense while not being attacked themselves.
That is not true if you play on the railworld preset or disable expansion: both popular decisions. It is also only true if you leave your wall alone for a long time: I usually expand my walls before the biters have filled in the space near them. For those reasons I said that artillery is "mostly" for offence, even if it has some uses in defence; in a similar way I would say that turrets were mostly for defence, even if they have some use in offence during turret creep.
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Re: best defense?

Post by gGeorg »

Tertius wrote:
Wed Dec 22, 2021 10:48 pm
Since the laser turret doesn't require any supply, only electricity, it's my choice for a fortified unattended defense line.
That is how half true leads into a full lie. :oops: Any "untended" wall need to be supported by roboports, fixing and replacing damage. When you set supply line of repair packs, walls, laser towers for "untended" wall. You could also add any other supply like power poles, oil and mines. One more supply product ( any consumable ammo ) means no difference for "unattended" wall.

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Re: best defense?

Post by asheiduk »

gGeorg wrote:
Wed Dec 22, 2021 11:43 pm
Tertius wrote:
Wed Dec 22, 2021 10:48 pm
Since the laser turret doesn't require any supply, only electricity, it's my choice for a fortified unattended defense line.
That is how half true leads into a full lie. :oops: Any "untended" wall need to be supported by roboports, fixing and replacing damage. When you set supply line of repair packs, walls, laser towers for "untended" wall. You could also add any other supply like power poles, oil and mines. One more supply product ( any consumable ammo ) means no difference for "unattended" wall.
I'm also in the laser turret camp but call that "simple and low maintenance defence line". "Simple" because no roboports, no ammo just power and shells. "Low maintenance" because I might send a spidertron with some repair kits for some walls and some laser turrets to the outposts -- once a year or so.

Gun turrets have range 18, spitters have range 16. So technically a gun turret can reach any spitter but the spitter might hit the turret once or more times needing repair. Because the range of a gun turret is nearly the same as the spitter's only a few other nearby gun turrets can support the one being attacked.

On the other hand laser turrets have range 24. So considerably more laser turrets can help to eliminate the spitter before it can spit.

That's usually enough to defend the artillery outposts from the little groups of biters and spitters coming to complain about bombing their new settlements -- doing zero damage.

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Re: best defense?

Post by ptx0 »

asheiduk wrote:
Thu Dec 23, 2021 11:16 am
I'm also in the laser turret camp but call that "simple and low maintenance defence line". "Simple" because no roboports, no ammo just power and shells. "Low maintenance" because I might send a spidertron with some repair kits for some walls and some laser turrets to the outposts -- once a year or so.

Gun turrets have range 18, spitters have range 16. So technically a gun turret can reach any spitter but the spitter might hit the turret once or more times needing repair. Because the range of a gun turret is nearly the same as the spitter's only a few other nearby gun turrets can support the one being attacked.

On the other hand laser turrets have range 24. So considerably more laser turrets can help to eliminate the spitter before it can spit.

That's usually enough to defend the artillery outposts from the little groups of biters and spitters coming to complain about bombing their new settlements -- doing zero damage.
yeah right, behemoths can overwhelm a simple gun line even at Utility science. you need artillery.

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Re: best defense?

Post by quyxkh »

This is probably too elliptical, but I stopped playing with biters when they started spitting acid-feces contact cement in 0.17? 0.18? somewhere in there and I did just reconstitute some old blueprints to test whether the idea still works. It does.

Emplacements built from one arty, four flamethrower and eight gun turrets serviced by a roboport in protected territory is all you need to extend your territory and keep it clean. Feed ammo with a belt-and-pipeline loop you extend as you go, keeping clean territory clean costs like one or two oil and shells per minute per arty turret, even less green ammo, and basically no repair packs or replacement parts even at max evo..

The blueprints I tested with: and , if you're using rail supply replace the infinity chests with rail stops, otherwise a sushi belt or just drop inventory when you build them, the consumption over ten hours is down in single digits.

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Re: best defense?

Post by Pascali »

dragon teeth? Is there the best dragon theeth-way?

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