Endgame fighting problems

[Hannu]

I have played a game about 90 h with default settings. I have a main base, mining units, train system, rocket silo, manufacturing of everything etc. I have launched 5 rockets. I have produced averagely 900 iron plates per minute during last 10 hours. I had an idea to build a new huge base and make a long realistic like railway network to get resources from long distances (couple of thousands of units). But then behemoth class enemies evolved. I have strong self repairing defense lines (laser turrets and triple walls) and they seem to work against much heavier attacks.

However, expanding of resource gathering is now very annoying. There are huge number of enemy bases everywhere outside my area and it takes several hours to clear a singe large base with tens of nests and worms and insane swarm of enemies. I have read tutorials and tried different attack tactics with tank, capsules, MK 2 armors, laser turret hopping and combinations of them. Most of them work but none seems to be fast. Fighting is nice part of the game but I still want to use most of my playtime to planning and building things. This is not fun anymore.

So, is there some ways to clear large enemy bases fast when evolution is complete? Most tutorials do not tell how long it takes to clear a large base. Or is there some cheating options to adjust evolution back to 0.9 or enemy generation to lower level? I do not want it to be too easy but large number of bases (almost half of map seems to be red) filled with powerful behemoths shifts game focus too much to fighting for me.

I consider also that maybe I should start a new game with larger ore deposits and longer distances between them and lowest possible (non zero) number and size of enemy bases. But I would not like to play midgame phase again. I felt that hours went to just maintaining defense and frequent interrupts destroyed my concentration to building.

[DaveMcW]

143 destroyer robots are pretty good at clearing everything.

[SyncViews]

Well if you dont want to really worry about biters at all, you can reduce there spawn frequency and size, and use peaceful mode.


For games with biters though, this was one of the reasons I made this viewtopic.php?f=97&t=24143. The main current feature is rewritten base spawning, so that they spawn aggressively around your polluting bases, but do not fill up the map. Testing with current new game, not go to 1.0 evolution just yet (at about 0.9), but building new outposts only needs to generally clear a few biter camps.

(Picture is from the 1-hour point, can not get an updated one just now, but 40 hours later its basically just a big red ring around my base and outposts, and the countryside still nice and peaceful).

[Supercheese]

If you just don't have enough firepower to tackle those endgame biter bases, I recommend launching a shiny new Orbital Ion Cannon.

[Hannu]

Thanks for the answers. I made a new mass production unit for destroyer and distractor capsules and increased investigation of follower count. Now I can use 64 destroyers and they keep biters out of range of their jaws and I can cruise around their base with a tank and shoot first nests and then worms with cannon. I have to just avoid to collisions with behemoth enemies. Tank can not crash them.

Peaceful mode is not solution. Enemies evolve and defense their bases in peaceful mode too if I attack to them. Defense of my units makes interesting addition to Factorio and I think that it has good difficulty level now. I have to think and use resources but not actively fight after I can make automatized defense lines. Syncview's mod was interesting and I consider to use it in my next game but I think that mass destruction weapons do not fit to this game.

[sckuzzle]

I use a blueprint consisting of one large power pole, one substation, and about 20 laser turrets. Then I have 10 personal roboports in my power armor. Clearing a base is as easy as just continuously clicking a new blueprint a few tiles ahead every few seconds.

Overall it takes about a minute to clear each large base. Still tedious, but it doesn't take the several hours you are talking about.

[BlakeMW]

On Deathworlds when I want to clear biters fast I use a 3x Fusion Reactor 5x roboport type Power Armor 2 setup, and stock up on about 500 laser turrets, 1000 repair packs and 500 construction robots. Then I use a laser turret blueprint to just spam the hell out of laser turrets. It's murder on the power grid but if your electricity supply can cope the biters will simply melt before your laser turrets.