Questions about spawn points and dealing with aliens.

[Bushdoctor]

Hi guys,

In the past we were able to block alien spawn points by putting down a structure, like a wall segment, at the spot where aliens could spawn.
Is there any method left to achieve the same thing? Can I somehow prevent alien buildings from spawning in a certain area?

Which leads to my next question: Do aliens actually spawn (appear out of nowhere) or do all of them have to migrate and resettle to expand ?

The problem that I'm currently having is that aliens keep destroying the power lines alongside my rail tracks. This leaves my mines and their defenses without power,
which means they get destroyed. I'm doing a non-solar-power game which means that I'm causing a LOT of pollution and all of my structures, including my rail tracks and mines
are within the area of pollution. So, it makes sense that the aliens attack everything in sight.

How do you guys prevent this from happening? I spend most of my time trying to push the aliens back to non-polluted areas, but they keep coming back SO fast,
I barely have time to work on my factories anymore. (Maybe I need to push them back even further?)

Thanks!

[DaveMcW]

They can't spawn out of nowhere, they have to run across your land. The best way to stop them is build a wall.

[Bushdoctor]

Thanks for confirming that Dave.
In that case a wall would indeed be one of my possibilities. I've already got one around my rather large base, but building one around the entire polluted area
(or at least encompassing all of my mines, oil wells and rail tracks) would be a stupendous task.. But yea.. also a great new challenge.

I assume though, that not many people do that. So how do you guys keep your power lines from being destroyed?
(Somehow this never happened as much in all of my previous games.. Not sure why it does now)

[Mr. Tact]

They leave power lines alone most of the time since they don't pollute. Occasionally, they will be attacked/destroyed when they are in the way/path -- but this doesn't happen often.

And yes, I have a large area walled off. Basically anywhere I have equipment, simply to reduce interaction. To see the entire area I have walled off in the map view, you have to zoom out to a point where not all rails plot any longer...

[Bushdoctor]

Same here Mr. Tact! It's by far the largest structure I've built in this game.. Huge undertaking.
The Chinese got nothing on my wall!

[SpeedDaemon]

Yep, build a wall!

This one is a double-thick wall with full bot & turret coverage, and a train to resupply them. I was even OCD enough to put concrete "footings" under the entire wall, and pave under the entire rail...

Great Wall of GTFO

[roothorick]

One: Efficiency modules. Efficiency modules everywhere. ESPECIALLY in your drills. They not only reduce energy consumption, but reduce the pollution produced by the building itself by the same factor (and mining drills pollute a LOT). Meanwhile, taking the load off your coal boilers not only reduces the pollution from the power plant itself, but consumes less coal, reducing demand on the coal drills which then also don't pollute as much; a big win on multiple levels. T1 modules are cheap and three of them puts you at the cap of 80%.

EMs also make electric furnaces far more useful than they first appear. You can stretch that coal -- and the resulting pollution -- a hell of a lot farther by switching to electric furnaces loaded with EM1s, or splurge for EM2s to get that cap. Refineries are a good candidate for EMs as well due to their obscene power draw.

I put EMs in quite literally everything I can.

Two: Leave a turret behind after clearing a nest; they like to resettle old nest sites. A simple bullet turret with piercing rounds will do; even at high EF migration parties are usually a handful of little guys that pose little threat to the sentry.

[Mr. Tact]

Yep, build a wall!

This one is a double-thick wall with full bot & turret coverage, and a train to resupply them. I was even OCD enough to put concrete "footings" under the entire wall, and pave under the entire rail...

Check this out -- all laser turret protected and roboport with repair packs supported:

10ft view.jpg (654.8 KiB) Viewed 3569 times

[Deadly-Bagel]

I started a huge wall but lost interest in favour of more productive things such as picking my nose.

What you'll probably find is it's the same power line(s) getting destroyed. This is because biters create a path, then other biters will stick to it. When creating a new path it will check if it can merge with any existing path. What you'll find is with large pollution clouds you'll get a TON of biters all using the same path, which happens to cross one of your power lines, they get stuck because of the number of biters so destroy the power line to get through.

After losing a power line just outside my base three times in ten minutes I moved it ~30 tiles to one side, never had a problem again. Of course their path remained the same and as it was nowhere near the new power line they never touched it.

I think there's also a debug mode you can use to view biter paths if you want to compare to that, just be aware the size of large waves can exceed 10 tiles width.

[Bushdoctor]

Great tips here guys. Thanks!

Roothorick, leaving that turret behind sounds like a good plan. That will definitely slow them down.

Deadly-Bagel, yes you are correct. They did destroy my power lines at almost the same spots each time.
I think I found my error in that a large part of my rails ran parallel with my massive polluting base. I should have gone perpendicular to my base for a larger distance before making any turns.

Good to see that you guys also go overboard with that huge wall. I blueprinted my way through the jungles and ended up with a wall that gets protected by all three types of turret, including flame throwers,
it's got 2 transport belts running alongside, all connected robo-ports AND a rail track.
It's a beaut.