Factorio Forums

So, after researching most of the tree and implementing all the fancy stuff except trains and logistic robots in my current game, I am facing the dire prospect of running out of iron ore to mine in an hour or two. There is a nice, glitzy deposit with est. 100k ore to the north of my base. Problem is, there's a biter nest less than 100 squares away. It has five(?) spawners (big red squares on the map?) and I have tried for a few hours now to take that thing out.

First, I tried to lure them out with the car, speeding away into some open space, and then I would drive ovals around the horde and pepper them with the submachine gun every drive-by. Not ineffective, but by the time I return to the nest, it seems like the whole crawling mess has already respawned... so, I'm too slow.

Second, I set off with the SMG plus a rocket launcher and some 20 explosive rockets (had to set up an entire new oil production for that...), as well as 30 defender bots and a handful of distractor bots, and ...

... I don't even last 20 seconds. I can't get the bots off quick enough, and the rockets deal negligible damage to the spawners, and I never get off more than two rockets anyway.

Has anybody had success just racing past with the car and hammering the spawners with rockets? Not that it would be feasible, woods are covering about 225° of the nest's circumference...

The only thing I haven't tried so far is poison, but that won't necessarily kill them on it's own, right? And I really, really, really aren't thrilled by the amount of work that would be necessary to encroach them with turrets. Plus, that just sounds unmanly.

Rambo took down entire armies, why can't Daniel squash some lowly beatles?

What armour are you using? If you're running in with either nothing or a basic armour set you'll never last long enough to hit them. Make the best armour you possibly can, and then make modules for it. solar panels (fusion reactor is possible), batteries, shields and exoskeletons. That way you'll be able to take some hits while the bots and your guns do the work. And a car adds an extra layer or armour of course. You can also use cars to blow up the bases directly by ramming them.

Would you be capable of outrunning the biters on foot? If so, set up some turrets out of range of the biter spawner, ram the spawner with your vehicle, and run straight to the turrets. This may require power armor or an exoskeleton. Also, a few drive by's with conventional rockets is enough for me to bring down a biter spawner, though it requires a pretty good aim while you drive. Also, were the explosive rockets hitting the spawner directly?

SMG is too weak, use the shotgun with as many upgrades as you can afford.

If you can land a distractor capsule on top of a spawner, it will be immune to biters until it takes out the spawner.

Power Armour mk2 with plenty of lv2 shields and some exoskeletons. You want a combat shotgun with a full compliment of the purple shells. Slowndown capsules are fantastic: they have an area of effect, slow biters down significantly, and any affected biter will be permanently slowed. So much so that you can run around and just ignore them for a short while, as they catch up.

Lay down a few distractor capsules on each nest and that should give you time to shoot the nests - or try the other way around. I found that rockets are so ineffective I don't even bother with them any more. Shotty + capsules.

I do use poison capsules but only for heavy concentrations of worms, as they work whilst you're running away :-D

Finally: if you haven't done any logistics yet then you are severely under-powered. After I've been on the first wave of a nest run, I run back to my base. Robots fill me up with ammo and capsules, I dump the artifacts in a chest for delivery, then I run back out again. Like a boss.

Even just spamming 20 grenades on the nests works pretty well, given their splash damage lets you destroy more than one nest at a time. Tricky to do while fending off biters if you're not real good at multitasking while driving though.

My strategies -
Early game strategy - SMG with upgraded ammo against small biters in up to 4 nests only - good for declaring an early game development area and for gathering a few artifacts - do not take on worms.

Mid game strategy - Car with poison and distractors - requires a local outpost of turrets (I use lasers) - If the nest has worms, get close enough to dump 3 to 4 poison on them and then run away to the turret nest to await worm death (also works for clearing trees). Then, approach close enough to dump distractors directly on each nest (3 to 4 nests) then retreat to the turret nest again.

End game strategy - Mk 2 armor with 2 fusion gens, 2 shields and 3+ exoskeletons - you should be faster than the biters - remove worms with poison as before - otherwise, dive into nests with 20+ destroyers with mild impunity. Most players use upgraded shotguns for quickly dispatching nests (I don't).

I always lay a row of turrets and after they clear the first wave lay another row of turrets then dismantle the the ones I deployed before. Keep doing this until they"re in range of the nest and then let them do their work. This always worked for me and laser turrets work for this method as well.


(Are their worms in your nests? if yes only laser turrets would work for this method. laser turrets have more range than the worms but the normal turrets have less)

Yeah, I don't have any power armor, which may be the main problem here. And that I really, really suck at multitasking.

Elsewhere I read that they get stronger (bigger) as the game progresses. I am 18 hours into that game, can that be a reason why they are so tough? Other than that I am a massive fail at this game?

You'll get the hang of it. There's an awful lot to understand, remember, and finally master, playing this game. Combat is one of those things that comes with practise.

Increased pollution increases the "evolution" rate of the biters - which makes them spawn larger biters - and the first time you attack one of their nests they get a big evolution boost, too.

Yeah, like basic rules: leave yourself enough f-ing room when building your base, even early in the game.

I started a new game to see whether they are easier to take down very early, and ... SWELL NEWS!! I took down my first biter colony!



Well, it was a single spawner and only small biters, but it counts! The shotgun takes the spawner down quickly enough even without any upgrades. Yielded seven artifacts (is that a lot? or not?), so only two kazillion minus seven more to finish the game.

Actually that game will fail because I misjudged my initial iron ore deposit's size, and I probably won't be able to get enough off the ground production wise to build a second base and the big deposit some 200 - 250 squares away.

Ugh, Daniel, you're such a noob... go away and be ashamed of yourself!

It sounds like you're being to hard on yourself with map generation. The first time I played I turned all the spawner stuff right down so I had a chance to get the hang of things before I had to start dealing with biters. I didn't kill a biter nest for 20 hours in that first game, and I had a big starting area so I could be as ready as I wanted for the fight. And when the time finally came I was terrible at it and just threw cars at them till they died. I didn't even realise you could shoot from the car!

_aD wrote:Increased pollution increases the "evolution" rate of the biters - which makes them spawn larger biters - and the first time you attack one of their nests they get a big evolution boost, too.

If you don't pollute they will still evolve into medium biters after 10.5 hours and big biters after 21 hours.

The first spawner kill and the 100th spawner kill and everything in between has exactly the same penalty - the progress towards the next level of biters increases by ten minutes.

Feel free to pollute and kill as many nests as you need if it helps you get better weapons faster.

Well, I have everything on "normal" except for biter nest frequency and size, which is "low". That usually gives you quite some room. I just didn't discover enough of the area early on so I didn't find out that my new start was - because of the very sparse iron ore - doomed regardless...