Factorio Forums

After the evolution factor reached over 0.9, the aliens have started to frequently stop and rip appart trains. What happens, is that once a single biter is touched by a train, every nearby bug starts chasing the train which leads to them losing it's sight and stop... on the tracks. From there on, they stop every train that comes by and destroy every part of it that hurted them sometimes leaving one or more cargo wagon intact that prevents trains from going that way.
To temporarily solve this problem, I have to go there, nuke every nest near the tracks, and hope that it will stay intact for the next couple of in-game days. But it's getting tiresome. Walling in all my tracks is also not an option because then I would have to build roboports with construction bots to maintain the wall. That obviously would not work because construction bots are primary targets for alien forces.

Does anyone happen to have any long-term vanilla solution to this problem?

Turrets alongside the tracks, with mines, AND roboports, refilled with trains.

Radar pods. Set them up near the rails, fortified with Laser Turrets and a Roboport, the Radars attract the Biters, the turrets chew them up and the robot's repair them. Then you only need to supply them from a chest near the rails.

Is there a solution that does not involve any electricity?

Really long trains that can plow through biters. Artillery train? Gun turrets with burner inserters, walls, and belts.
Edit: As Koub pointed out, flame turrets would also work. Note that over extremely long distances you might have to worry about pitpe throughput - although the same would be an issue with belts for turrets.

Gergely wrote:Is there a solution that does not involve any electricity?

I don't think there is.
[Edit] maybe with flame turrets ...

The only reliable solution is a defense line for your train tracks.
Walls, turrets, laser, roboports etc.

If you build two parallel tracks, you can take the space in between and claim more land.

I would recommend to build only in one or two directions from the edges of your base.

Generally speaking there are two solutions:

• Wall in your entire territory including the tracks with double layers of laser turrets. This should need minimal to no repairs depending on whether it is outside the pollution cloud or not.
• Make trains at least 12\* units long so they can plow through Behemoth Biters without slowing down, make sure they get up to full speed before hitting wilderness track. Have repair facilities at each end because even though they won't slow down they do get damaged, it takes something like a dozen behemoth collisions to destroy a locomotive which is pretty unlikely, but if your tracks do go an astonishingly long distance through wilderness then you could add well defended repair stops along the way.

\* I don't know exactly how many locos+wagons you need to plow through a Behemoth but something like 3 locos + 9 wagons tends to work.

Recently, the 0.16 version brings artillery into the mix as well...

Artillery makes it possible to clear and keep an area clean of all nests, but it is not an enjoyable solution to the topic's problem!

Occasionally replenishing construction bots and repair packs is significantly less annoying than rebuilding a train once it gets eaten. Anyway, if you add enough laser turrets with enough damage upgrades, the biters can't even get close enough to the walls to do any damage.

An unpowered outpost would be hard to do, but a small selfpowered outpost is not. Group some 16 or so solar panels, one radar station, some accus and a few laser cannons. Optionally, a roboport with some repair packs and a construction bot or 10. And of course a double layer of walls. If you truly want to make it maintenance-free, add a train station (since it's gonna be close to tracks anyway) that will call a supply train if structures and/or consumables need refilling (use stations with the same name, deactivate the station if consumables are at an acceptable level).