Big Worms

[Giomancer]

What weapons/armor do I need to survive/destroy these things?

[Koub]

Poison capsules are terribly effective against worms, even big ones.
With these, and a car (if you don't mind repairing a lot), you can take them down if there are not dozens of them in a nest

[Kayanor]

I destroy everything with laser turrets.
Keep an eye on the electric pole (is it in range?), on your power station (enough power to reload fast? will accumulators survive the night?), and on the turrets themselves (can they reach the worm?).
3 to 5 laser turrets are usually enough to take a single worm at once down. If you have more worms in range, use more turrets.

[BlakeMW]

They have 8 physical resistance, so bullets need to do more than 8 damage to really hurt them. A gun turret firing AP ammo will deal 10 damage/bullet even without upgrades and takes them down pretty fast, but placing them and loading them while not getting hit yourself is a little tricky (only a little, you just need to place a turret in front of you to distract the worm). This is the first method available for killing big worms.

Laser Turrets are even more effective, as worms have no laser resistance and laser turrets have longer range.

You can ram them with the Tank. It's highly effective, but the Tank takes a lot of damage, it's fine for taking out a cluster of 2-3 big worms but more than that and the Tank will probably be destroyed. The Tank is only moderately resistant to their spits, much better than being naked, but it does go down pretty fast without repair bot support. (the car is also better than being naked when it comes to taking spits - it can take more spits than you can, and when it dies you pop out and can run away)

You can shoot them with the Tank Cannon, it outranges them. Unfortunately it takes 3 shells. Not recommended.

You can kill them with poison capsules. It takes 4 poison capsules, the damage stacks and you can out-range them by exploiting the area of effect. This is much cheaper than cannon shells! Always prefer poison capsules over cannon shells for worm elimination.

The flamethrower is extremely effective, make sure to scatter the fireballs around the big worm by "shaking" the mouse, that way it will take damage from multiple fire patches and will die in a single pass. You'll need at least modular armor and couple of energy shields to survive the spits.

If you want to take out large nests full of big worms, you can either use laser turrets or you can use Power Armor II with a lot of energy shields (I suggest 2x Fusion Reactor, 2x Battery MK II, 2x Exoskeleton, everything else Energy Shield - the basic one, not MK II), use the flamethrower or capsules to destroy the worms. This build is tough enough to basically walk right into even the largest nests without serious fear of dying (you might have to back off occasionally to let the shield regen, but you can still push in pretty fast)

[ChurchOrganist]

Personally I advocate destroyer bots coupled with Power Armour 2 but you need a follower count of at least 50 to take on more than one at a time.

Poison capsules are also good as has been mentioned before.

If there is a really big concentration of them then I tend to go for laser turret creep, as it is possible you to be taken out even with full shields in your Power armour 2 if they all hit you at once. (Been there, done that several times )

[solntcev]

Currently - flamethrower - most efficient weapon against stationary target. If you have modular/power armor with shields, you can survive couple worm hits. You only need place 1 single flame hit on structure/unit to set it on fire, it will burn taking 45 damage per second (worms/biters/spawners have no fire resistance) and it will die shortly after.

[Giomancer]

Thanks for the suggestions; they've allowed me to focus my research quite a bit. I'm running out of resources in my initial zone, and I'm afraid I've squandered quite a lot with overproduction of lower-tier goods.

This is my initial factory and it's quite a disorganized mess. I'm running out of coal, but I managed to get some bare-bones oil production going to create solid fuel. Unfortunately, I have to feed the boilers by hand because of the aforementioned mess (well, I feed a box, which feeds the conveyor). In order to power the oil production, I built a 1:14:10 array, which is causing more frequent attacks. The pressure is on.

I'm beginning to think I should tear down my pollution-generating buildings, pack up an ATV, and search for a new spot to construct a more organized manufactorium.

Sigh, decisions.

[Koub]

Honestly, I think that poison capsules are the cheapest wat to get rid of worms. That's the way I've always used until I get full MKII armor (and even then, poison caps are still extremely potent).

[BlakeMW]

Right now the flamethrower is much much cheaper although that's arguably because its damage mechanism is completely broken (in the sense that it's totally exploitable).

The flamethrower deals an indeterminate amount of damage though it is heavily dependent on how swiftly and accurately you can move the mouse to maximize the creation of fire patches. Realistically you can create about 30 fire patches per flame canister, and 3 fire patches will kill a big worm (technically fire patches can damage multiple big worms, which will improve kill efficiency against large patches). A realistic number of big worms per canister is thus about 10 (15 with upgrades), a poison capsule would be lucky to hit 10 big worms, and you need 4 to kill a big worm, so lets say 2-3 big worms per capsule.
A canister of fire costs perhaps a third as much as a poison capsule and the final result is about 12x as many dead worms for your buck. You can quadruple the poison capsule estimate and it'll still be 3x cheaper.

The poison capsule does out-range big worms and can be deployed from vehicles. OTOH it requires blue science, whereas a shielded flamethrower setup can be done with green science alone. Poison capsules are good with the Tank because it provides adequate protection against even very large nests allowing capsule deployment deep in worm clusters, and the Tank is a fraction of the cost of a Power Armor II setup that allows running that close to nests.

[ChurchOrganist]

Right now the flamethrower is much much cheaper although that's arguably because its damage mechanism is completely broken (in the sense that it's totally exploitable).

I've not really explored the possibilities of the flamethrower yet.

In my first 0.13 map which I played vanilla, oil was in very short supply, so I was concentrating on the manufacturing of plastic, sulphur and solid fuel/rocket fuel.

Things are looking very similar for the RSO map I'm currently playing, but maybe I will find a significant oilfield further out.

One thing I did find in 0.12 was that explosive rockets were quite effective, and you were able to just about outrange them this way, but you needed all the rocket upgrade research for them to be useful.

[timothy_johnson]

The flamethrower. It costs just a little bit of heavy and light oil and a few iron plates per flame fuel, and I can usually take down a medium sized base, sans biters, using less than one capsule. Just run in, click once on all the worms and bases, then run away. It's laughably cheap for how effective it is. Obviously, you need shields, but since the 0.13 update, this is the only method I've used. Well, this and the tank, at least until I get shields.

[Tricorius]

I've not really explored the possibilities of the flamethrower yet.

In my first 0.13 map which I played vanilla, oil was in very short supply, so I was concentrating on the manufacturing of plastic, sulphur and solid fuel/rocket fuel.

I've started dumping any initial oil I would have put into solid fuel into flamethrower packs instead. It keeps a drain on heavy and light oil to keep petroleum going *and* provides you ammo. (I add a couple green wires and limit the chest to like 10 ammo packs so I don't end up with a ton of unused flamethrower ammo in end-game.)

Of course, I guess if you're unlucky with coal you might need the solid fuel...

Regardless, modular armor (decked with portable solar, batteries, and shields) and a flamethrower are enough for small alien bases. You have to run away to let the shields recharge but I've been able to take out bases with big biters / spitters and a few big worms. It's *very* iffy when the bases get much larger than five or so nests. But a big worm was standing between me and 14 oil deposits (I only initially had four, of an average 40% yield, so I was very grumpy).

(Seriously, folks, anyone who says combat in Factorio can't be fun should just leave the turrets at the base and faceplant into some aliens.)

[vanatteveldt]

The flamethrower is nice for clearing out nests but the essential problem with worms is that they kill you in one spit until you get power armor.

If you time it right, however, you can move into posion capsule range, throw a capsule, and move out again. Since it takes the worm half a second or so to come out of his hole you have some time. Repeat this 3 or 4 times and the worm is dead, no armor needed.

[Giomancer]

Unfortunately, I'm still using the Steam release version, which is 12.35.

Even more unfortunately, I was forced to abandon this factory after several attempts to break out and claim new ground. I'm fairly certain I could have uploaded the save here and someone more experienced could have cut through the blockade for me, but I figured it'd be more fruitful if I took what I learned this time and started over on a new planet. Thanks for the help, everyone! I'm sure I'll be back around.

[timothy_johnson]

If you've got steam, you can update it to 0.13.15. Right click on the game in your library, go down to properties, go to the "betas" tab on the far right, and on the first drop down menu you can select which version you want. If you select "the latest experimental build" it should automatically update whenever an update is released.

[siggboy]

What weapons/armor do I need to survive/destroy these things?

You only need the flamethrower and 1-2 Energy Shield Mk II. Run up to them, flame them, and if there are too many then run away so they won't gimp you (the energy shields will protect you for quite a while though).

Without energy shields they do too much damage and you should not attempt to clear them. You'll also burn yourself with the flamer, so the shields are rather mandatory.

Currently the flamethrower is OP and with the new empowered batteries for the armor it's even possible to run several energy shield II before you get the portable fusion reactor.

Fighting biters has never been easier.

(BTW forget all the 0.12 advice. Don't use shotgun, poison capsules, destroyer capsules, tanks; it's all shit compared to flamethrower combined with body protection.)

[Frightning]

Unfortunately, I'm still using the Steam release version, which is 12.35.

Even more unfortunately, I was forced to abandon this factory after several attempts to break out and claim new ground. I'm fairly certain I could have uploaded the save here and someone more experienced could have cut through the blockade for me, but I figured it'd be more fruitful if I took what I learned this time and started over on a new planet. Thanks for the help, everyone! I'm sure I'll be back around.

Poison capsules would be worth rushing if you need to clear bases with Big worms in them (they outrange the Rocket launcher, unfortunately) (Military 3 isn't all that expensive to research, and can handcraft the Science pack 3s needed if setting up automated blue science is too expensive in your situation. 4 Poison capsules is enough to kill Big worms and they have a sizable AoE, so you can clear a LOT of them w/ just 4 capsules (not to mention any other worms around them will die too), with the biter base dewormed, it's then pretty easy to turret creep in and wipe it out, or else hit and run if you have a turret cluster nearby (soloing larger bases is, unfortunately impractical until late game, hence the popularity of turret creep as a means to biter base clearing). You can survive a single spit from a single big worm, 2 spits with Heavy armor, 3 with Modular armor and at least 1 Shield mk1, so get yourself the best armor you can practically afford before going after the problem biter base.

[Giomancer]

If you've got steam, you can update it to 0.13.15. Right click on the game in your library, go down to properties, go to the "betas" tab on the far right, and on the first drop down menu you can select which version you want. If you select "the latest experimental build" it should automatically update whenever an update is released.

Huh, handy to know. I knew I could get the 13.x releases outside of Steam (which is pretty sweet of the devs), but the cloud is nice for when I move computers. ^^

EDIT: ooh, and now I can use mods too. o.o

EDIT 2: And this has to be the first game I've got on Steam that even uses that feature.

[timothy_johnson]

Glad to help! You can also downgrade to a previous version using that list, in case a new update has a game-breaking bug.

Good luck with the worms!