Factorio Forums

Hi,

How to build a proper perimeter defense against the pentapods and their speedy friends? Only viable option: Rocketturrets? Its locked behind gleba science. Whats the best option before they are available?

Just for reference about their might:
YT: Factorio and why you should respect the pentapods

Initially, I build a wall with piecing ammo turrets behind it, one turret every 4 tiles. That can keep the small ones reasonably at bay. They will however, take out parts of the line from time to time.

I upgraded to a full line of laser turrets behind that. Those laser turrets did wonders. Small ones no longer stood a chance. Did have to import a 1000 from Fulgora, as I don't see how I could have produced enough of these in time on Gleba. I am producing them now on Gleba, but that's mainly to restore the destroyed ones. Yes, you will keep losing parts of the defense, you need a robot network to repair and rebuild things. Yes the enemies have pretty decent resistances against them. But, they are easy to maintain, as power isn't a huge issue on Gleba. You do need to ensure that taking out a single powerpole won't cripple your laser defenses.
Compared to gunturrets, they also have more range, so more will attack, and will take out the small enemies before the gunturrets will even react, concentrating the fire of the gunturrets on the bigger guys.


But, as evolution keeps going, I'm now facing medium stompers, and those... stomp. So I now have rocket turrets behind the lasers every 12 tiles. But with a laser turret defense you should have ample of time to research those. So far they haven't made much of a dent into that defense yet.


While they only target your harvesting area, they do walk through everything else to get there. So I just surrounded my whole base with this turret line.

(note that the video shows the biggest stompers)

Still a little anxious to turn the breeding on ....

I'm considering just defending my harvest areas as far as the spores reach. So that no new nests settle there to get spore crazy, and I only need to take out the nest settlement groups instead of actual attacks. They won't settle too close to the production hub and in any case don't care about it.

Does this have a chance of working, or is it a stupid idea that I will regret?

Turret-wise you really need either the Tesla turrets from Fulgora (best option) or missile turrets to defend against stompers. If you are stuck long enough on Gleba trying to figure out production and stompers come before you get missile turrets then... RIP.

Build a tank and take out all the nests in the spore cloud. That is way more effective than trying to build a traditional wall around your base using gun and laser turrets.

territrades wrote: ↑Fri Nov 15, 2024 8:59 am Build a tank and take out all the nests in the spore cloud. That is way more effective than trying to build a traditional wall around your base using gun and laser turrets.

That's what I did, but of course they will soon try to build new nests there. So you need to stop the expansion parties, or eradicate the nests they make (which accelerates evolution). Hence trying to fortify around the spore cloud to stop that, still wondering if it will work properly.

The advantage is, I'm thinking, that expansion parties always have a relatively similar group size whereas spore attacks can get very large.