Factorio Forums

When it was mid game, i took tank and raided those nests for the alien artifacts no problem.

But when those aliens started to spawn big big spitters i coudn't so easily attack those nests.

My only way was to set up few laser turrets somewhere close, lure them into those and then quickly go in to get rid of nests. Because those nests spawn those bugs really fast and i dont see how my hand guns or personal lasers can take them down fast enough.


So again, how do i collect alien artifacts in a effective way lategame. Of course i assume i am alone, no multiplayer.

From what i seen , power armor , and weapons with follower robots seams like only reliable way to fight big splinters

Tho if you don't mind losing few construction robots every now and then you can have roboport on your power armor who will repair your tank as you fight

There was a good post about the tank on reddit today.

onebit wrote:There was a good post about the tank on reddit today.

That post is just about using the tank as an energy shield mk3. The core strategy is still power armor with follower robots.

The simplest way is to destroy the nests is with laser turrets - this is most easily done with a personal roboport in Power Armor I or II and a blueprint and deconstruction planner, but the personal roboport is not essential. Using laser turrets offensively is by far the easiest and cheapest way to destroy nests, the only reason to not use offensive laser turrets is if you think it's cheesy.

Capsules are expensive, especially the higher tier ones. Technically defender capsules deal with big biters quite well, but you need all the bullet damage upgrades and ideally bullet shooting speed too. With the bullet upgrades they work out cheaper than the more expensive capsules, without the bullet upgrades they can't hurt big biters so you need to use distractor capsules.

If you're using the Tank then be cautious about running over Big Biters, the tank can squish them but it takes a great deal of damage in the process, better if you have some other way of killing them such as fully upgraded defender capsules. Technically the personal laser defense can also kill big biters but it's pretty slow, it does fire from inside the Tank which is the only real merit. If you're on foot, better to invest into shields, exoskeletons, and shotgun shell upgrades. Auto shotgun with piercing shotgun shells and damage upgrades inflicts serious damage on even armored biters.

I just use power armor, flamethrower turrets, and the flamethrower gun. I guess I just want to watch the world burn. Laser turrets are fine and all, but they don't provide damage over time like the flamethrower stuff. If you build a wall around your turrets so that half the sight cone is inside the wall, the turrets will just burn through the aliens like butter. I sometimes use the laser turrets as backup, for the massive hive clusters that pop up. Usually it's something like 8 hives to 1 flamethrower turret, and the biggest hive cluster I've seen is about 40 hives on a normal game.

Only thing about the flamethrower strategy is it requires careful planning ahead with resources, so don't just go building a ft turret without first having about 9 light oil tanks full. Best thing is to put a light next to each turret that's configured to go red at some point when your tanks are low. That way, you won't go running into a massive hive with your pants down.

Before destroyer bots I run a blueprint of a big electric pole surrounded by turrets. You can stand in safety and plant them down in range of the nests. Once I have a good destroyer count I run 5 exoskeleton and 4 mk2 shields and simply run straight thru the nest.

In my opinion easiest method is to use power armor 2, 3 exoskeletons, about 5 better shields, about 100 destroyers and a flame thrower. Laser turret creeping needs much less resources, but it is more laborious even with blueprints. I prefer saved work because resources are practically free and infinite if I do not have very poor resource settings.