Factorio Forums

Hey y’all, I come begging for assistance with a dilemma I am faced with. I am a relatively inexperienced player with about 35 hours logged, with a crappy, disorganized base that doesn’t work right half the time. All while I am trying to get my base semi-functional, I am getting harassed by biters constantly. I have a wall around my base with turrets, but I have begun to get attacked by those annoying poison ball shooting things, and they take out my walls while being out of range of my turrets. I need a good method for eliminating the biters around me, so I can research some better weaponry to properly defend myself. Thank you so much.

I personally would recommend playing your first game on railworld, as this reduces the enemy attacks a lot, but they are still a challenge.
In general, what weapons you should use really depends on what weapons you have (what research/production you have done).

If you are getting spitters, then place your turrets closer to the wall, and group them up. The enemy tend to attack in a few places a lot, so put a row of turrets down one space away from the wall, with a belt feeding them from a chest.
If you are getting a lot of enemies, then it might be worth clearing out some of the nests. This is a good use for grenades early game, and either the car, or the tank if you have it. (The car takes a lot of getting used to in order to fight effectively - lots of driving into rocks).
If you don't have a vehicle, then ensure you have a machine gun, and heavy armour (or light armour if you can't get heavy), and collect a fair number of fish (just mine them from some water), as these act as health packs. Then just go to the enemy base, and shoot them all, including the nests.

Make sure you are using piercing round magazines (red ammo), and try doing the 'weapon shooting speed' researches if you can (the shooting speed is better early game, as killing small enemies ~15 health, takes only two or three shots, so doing enough extra damage to increase the rate they die at is hard).
If ammunition is too expensive, then the shotgun's ammo is cheaper, but this is rarely that relevant, as yellow ammo is pretty cheap.

In the long run, laser turrets are the best, although they need some upgrades to use effectively, as they have a longer range and more health than gun turrets, but flamethrower turrets work extremely well, you need oil to run them, but they are devastating against swarms (they work best in combination with other turrets though, so use gun turrets along-side).

The car is pretty squishy, but has enough firepower against small bases.

Otherwise what works very well is turret creep. Place down a few turrets and then put ammo into them. They deal with the biters rushing towards you. Then you move forward and place a second row of turrets and get in range of the spawners. Deal with the worms while the turrets cover you from biters.
Poison capsules are also very effective at this stage

leniejame48 wrote: ↑

Mon Jan 11, 2021 3:17 pm

I have a wall around my base with turrets, but I have begun to get attacked by those annoying poison ball shooting things, and they take out my walls while being out of range of my turrets.

Place turrets near to the wall (just one space), and if available place some laser turrets here and there.

Serenity wrote: ↑

Mon Jan 11, 2021 6:26 pm

The car is pretty squishy, but has enough firepower against small bases.

Yeah, it is squishy, but that can be combatted by its speed, I did get really good at using it at one point, and took out some late-game bases (like behemoths), using uranium ammo.
Early game it can be really good, as you can outrun all the enemies - although only if you don't mind reloading saves when you run into a rock and die.