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Can anyone explain why a Big Power Pole would just suddenly self-destruct on its own in version .15? I was under the impression that Biters don't attack power poles that are just sitting by themselves transmitting power, but that's what happened. In the middle of a big expansion southwest, one key pole in the middle of my rail just suddenly died on its own. I found the ghost wreckage with a full purple health bar after the fact. Tracks and lights around the pole were untouched. All nearby (defined as ever visible on-screen with the pole) hives had long since been exterminated.

Update: It happened again, and this time I caught a fleeting glimpse of two tiny red dots rushing towards my base.

Apparently biters will cross the entire map in response to pollution, in comically small numbers that can't even hope to get anywhere near your defenses, let alone through them, but will stop and chew on power poles along the way, even though normally they completely ignore power poles even if the player is using them to attack the biter bases with laser turrets.

Can anybody tell me if this is a bug or a feature? It's counter-intuitive as all hell.

Update 2: After some contemplation, it seems the devs want me to either wall off all of my train tracks and power poles with walls and turrets, or else nuke everything on the continent. There's no other way to run power from my main base to my outposts. Is this the intended gameplay experience? Seems like I'll run out of stone or nuke myself into premature evolution no matter what I do.

Actually they won't be attracted by your power poles. But they will chew whatever is between them and the source of their anger.

Well, how do you play around it? My train tracks are starting to criss-cross the map.

You can either protect your infrastructure, do not put unprotected infrastructure in enemy territory or play without biter.

Well, yeah, but I mean... long-term, how do you make that work?

The only thing I can think is to build massive solar panels at every mining site and then a turreted wall around it. And that's gonna take forever if I do it every time I move my mining drills...

I heard there's people who transport steam by rail tanker.

Madness and lies!!

Actually... that... might work? I need to look into this...

How long before the steam in the tanker cools down?

Never

You have to be VERY unfortunate if a bug attacks a power pole in the middle of no where. But bugs will attack anything if it blocks their way and they can not find a way around it - even trees.

Generally speaking the best way to protect your rail and powerlines is to simply clear all nests in a large rectangle and build a wall with continuous laser turret protection. This gets relatively cheaper as your territory gets bigger i.e. with with 10x as much wall you can enclose 100x the area because (for a square) area is proportional to perimeter squared. It's also tends to be cheaper to wall off a rectangle surrounding all your railway lines, than the individual railway lines.

With automation (i.e. personal roboport and blueprints) it's not really a big deal making a great wall. You can also cheapen it by using water features as part of the borders.

There's a mod for that

Impatient wrote:You have to be VERY unfortunate if a bug attacks a power pole in the middle of no where. But bugs will attack anything if it blocks their way and they can not find a way around it - even trees.

Not really. I've been playing a Deathworld and I had to guard one power pole, hoping it was a one-off, when the second one was destroyed I worked out that mod, as I'm already playing modded it doesn't matter.

As a halfway measure (ie will greatly extend the life of your network, but does not guarantee safety)

Put Electric poles twice as often/ so that if one is killed, its two neighbors will be in reach of eachother (i'm almost certain they will auto connect, though truthfully havent tested).

That way for the "its in my way and i will chew it" bitters will have to destroy two neighboring poles to cut power. MUCH less likely to happen then just 1

I think that power poles are ignored when path finding the source of pollution. And when the alien then happens to path through the power pole it chews it. Placing it a few tiles left, right, up or down might keep it out of the path the aliens usually find.

If you put a wall around the pole will they chew through the wall or path around it?

If you place a laser turret then it will attract aliens that wander near by. Place one every second power pole that should be enough to take care of the lonely wanderers.

It's not as unlikely as you might think to hit two next to each other, the problem is when a large wave of biters path near a pole, any that get trapped between a pole and the other biters will attack the pole to make a path. I believe they continue to attack the pole until it dies, it certainly used to work that way and I've seen two lonely biters wander away from a dead power pole but that doesn't explain the half-dead rocks I keep finding.

Therefore if you have twice as many poles yeah it's less likely they'll cut power but it's more likely that they'll hit two next to each other as the size and shape of the constant waves of biters changes and grows.

If you put laser towers around, that will attract any nearby biters including the massive waves that are likely destroying your power poles. The result is more likely that a pole will be destroyed.

Walls will only exacerbate the pathing problems, they'll help protect the pole for a time but it's not a permanent solution.

I think the best solution is to remove the collision box of Power Poles - more accurately, move it to the "Object" Layer Mask so that players and biters can just walk through them, which is what the above mod does. I should add lights to that actually so you can drive up the middle of your railway but that's just convenience.

I am glad I found this thread. I am just starting with the 2nd part of New Hope and the scenario made me wonder.

Looking at how Factorio - by running out of local resources - pushes you to run train lines to resources at far locations, I assumed that power poles and rail tracks (that by themselves don't pollute nor block migration) *should* have been safe from attacks. And yet, the scenario shows massive damage to tracks and poles.

The comments on this thread sort of explain the scenario, but it makes a valid point... is random occasional destruction of poles and tracks an intended mechanic or just a temporary side effect of some other change? I suspect that a side effect, as being forced to place so many laser turrets seems like an excessive use of resources.

I hope that the DEVs read the forum and that maybe one will reply. It would be nice to know what's the plan.

WarpZone wrote:Well, yeah, but I mean... long-term, how do you make that work?

The only thing I can think is to build massive solar panels at every mining site and then a turreted wall around it. And that's gonna take forever if I do it every time I move my mining drills...

Not really. Have one train at your home base (4 length or so) with the structures to unpack a stock "base with panels". Add a roboport and surplus bots so you can get some assistance getting it up and running. For breaking it down, simply call down a train and bot deconstruct the lot, dump it in the train and send it to a "rail graveyard" branch in your base - deadend rail that unloads the trains going there to bot storage, then waits for you to decommission those trains. Takes about 3 minutes to pack up a fully deployed base with 100 personal bots and 100 oupost bots that way.

[Edit] New hope is kinda odd. Rail tracks do not get attacked... ever. They don't pollute and don't block biters so the biters just go over them. Poles, lamps and other obstructions (including trees and rocks - which explains why you sometimes find a pile of stones on the ground) get a proper chewing. Fairly simple way to fix New Hope's rails is to decommission the Copper line, use those rails and poles to repair the Iron one, then rebuild the Copper one afterward ('though its not really needed).

Aeternus wrote:

WarpZone wrote:The only thing I can think is to build massive solar panels at every mining site and then a turreted wall around it. And that's gonna take forever if I do it every time I move my mining drills...

Not really.

Yes really. He's talking about setting up an outpost, deconstructing it is the easy bit.

Bear in mind that an Electric Mining Drill consumes 90KW of energy, while a Solar Panel only provides 42KW on average. Using nice round figures, to power 35 Mining Drills you need 75 Solar Panels and 63 Accumulators. That's 927 tiles, or almost 26.5 tiles per mining drill, and that's not even including the power poles etc or the drill itself. Theoretically, the size of each outpost must be three times larger than when using a central power plant and power poles along the rails.

So in addition to the mining drills and rails, you need to set up three times that size of solar farm and then surround the lot with walls. That's not even to mention the resources required to build the panels when you could be using nuclear power.

Either way, however, this discussion is now irrelevant.

Why would you not put efficiency modules in a base with isolated power?
18kW or even 36kW per drill is much more reasonable.

I guess. Assuming a direct 0.2x factor to tiles that's an additional 5-6 tiles per Mining Drill. More manageable, yes, but still a significant additional area to need to set up and wall off, though you would probably want to add at least double the size of the required solar farm to power laser turrets if using them. Each Solar Panel (with accumulators) is only good for 52.5 shots per day cycle and you -really- don't want to run out of power. You could use gun turrets but then we're back to more setup time.

But again, this discussion is now irrelevant as power poles now shouldn't be destroyed.

Answer in one word: Defense.

Biter pathfinding is bad, but thats intended. They notice polution, they get triggered and they run towards the source. Obstacles will be ignored in pathfinding.
When there is something in their way, they destroy it. No matter if it is a tree or a power pole.

Best solution is to fence everything in and to build some protection.
Most efficient shape is one big square.