Tipps for surviving in 7.x ?

[Pioneer]

I hadn't played factorio since they changed the aliens from "zombies" to "zerglings" (had no time) and i'm having quite a hard time to adjust to the new aliens. (they look great, btw)

Right now I find myself rushed down before i can research (automatically) Tech 2 technologies. It seems to me that you desperately need T2 technology to properly defend against medium Biters (i guess piercing bullets will actually hurt them?).

Before i just needed a few turrets here and there and i was just fine, maybe adding a wall to feel even more secure. Didn't worked at all with the new patches.

Even a complete Wall with Turrets each 3 squares can't resist for long enough and i quickly get short with ammunition (can't keep up with ammu once there are multiple medium biters each wave). So, i guess i do something wrong.

Thats why i'm here to ask for tipps and ask some questions before i start my next approach.

First Question:

How is the strength of an alien wave determined? Is it only by pollution, or do the waves get stronger over time / each time? Like, if i had a proper defense and wouldn't increase pollution, can i assume that this defense will work forever? (assuming there won't be any ammunition or energy problems?).

Second:

Is it smart to move away from your starting location to seek bigger mineral fields + trees? It seems that i have way less problems if stay exactly where i spawned. I know that aliens get stronger the farther away you are from your spawn point, but it seems that even 4-5 "screen sizes" away makes a huuuuge difference, and i usually have to travel this far to find a good spot.

Third:

Whats better, keeping your factory as small as possible and slowly teching or rushing tech and mass production of turrets, bullets and walls?

[kovarex]

I hadn't played factorio since they changed the aliens from "zombies" to "zerglings" (had no time) and i'm having quite a hard time to adjust to the new aliens. (they look great, btw)

There have been several balancing changes throughout the 0.7 releases, so some things might have changed I recommend playing 0.7.5.

Right now I find myself rushed down before i can research (automatically) Tech 2 technologies. It seems to me that you desperately need T2 technology to properly defend against medium Biters (i guess piercing bullets will actually hurt them?).

I usually go for green science packs early from the start, you don't need much more than for the red ones.
There are two boundaries of the attack, 4 (the armor of medium biter) and 8 (the armor of big biter), it is important to keep the damage above the boundary or use lasers.
When you combine the cheap tiers of bullet damage and gun turret damage upgrades with piercing bullets, you will get easily above the armor you need to kill higher tier biters, but you have to keep upgrading.
With max upgrade, the turret has damage 19.5 (or something like that), and it is quite powerful.

Before i just needed a few turrets here and there and i was just fine, maybe adding a wall to feel even more secure. Didn't worked at all with the new patches.

Using walls is almost a must. One or two layers.
It is also good trick to use transport belts in the direction away from the wall to slow down their attack rate

Even a complete Wall with Turrets each 3 squares can't resist for long enough and i quickly get short with ammunition (can't keep up with ammu once there are multiple medium biters each wave). So, i guess i do something wrong.

In the mid/late game it is usually good to switch to laser turrets so you don't need to waste iron for ammo anymore.

First Question:
How is the strength of an alien wave determined? Is it only by pollution, or do the waves get stronger over time / each time? Like, if i had a proper defense and wouldn't increase pollution, can i assume that this defense will work forever? (assuming there won't be any ammunition or energy problems?).

The enemies wait for set amount of time, the pollution accumulated in this time specifies the size of the wave (so smaller pollution will make smaller waves).
!BUT!
There is something called enemy evolution, and it determines what are the tiers of spawned biters, the evolution very slowly goes up and is determined by the amount of pollution you make, time and count of destroyed enemy spawners. So if you don't change anything, and your base can defend against small biters, after some time (many hours), stronger biters will come.

Is it smart to move away from your starting location to seek bigger mineral fields + trees? It seems that i have way less problems if stay exactly where i spawned. I know that aliens get stronger the farther
away you are from your spawn point, but it seems that even 4-5 "screen sizes" away makes a huuuuge difference, and i usually have to travel this far to find a good spot.

It depends on the map, in the start it is possible to kill very small nests and move somewhere, but it is usually better to start near the starting area and build it up from that place.

Whats better, keeping your factory as small as possible and slowly teching or rushing tech and mass production of turrets, bullets and walls?

I don't think there is one universal strategy (I believe it is a good thing).
When I played the game, I was testing to finish it as fast as possible, so I was going mass production and trying to defend whatever could come to me, it was working quite well for me, but I had to keep balance of my defense upgrades with the type of creepers comming.

[rk84]

I go for laser turrets as early as possible and place sets of 8 laser turret in key locations. I guess compared to ammo turrets they consume more power->coal(pollution?), but save some iron/copper.I think it is a good trade.

[Psycho0124]

I go for laser turrets as early as possible

Same here. The last couple games I've started, I didn't even build a single gun turret. Since Lasers are not too hard to research, and gun turrets are an expensive dead-end technology, rushing to laser turrets makes things so much easier in the short and long run.

Whats better, keeping your factory as small as possible and slowly teching or rushing tech and mass production of turrets, bullets and walls?

I like to expand like crazy in the beginning; setting up (small-scale) automated Red and Green production, as well as Laser Turret and Wall production asap. I try and sprawl out and get a single-layer wall around whatever area I think I'll need in the long run and reinforce it with turrets and more wall blocks wherever the biters show up. It seems like the biters will move in pretty close to your base if you don't stake out a big area early on. Nothing worse than being squeezed to death in too small an area with encroaching biters and an under-sized factory.

[ssilk]

The problem with the gun turrets is their extreme need of ammo when fill automatic until filled.
On one side I won't automate that, because when building a full defense line, this eats the whole production. On the other hand I won't do that by hand, because it soon takes too much time to run to your defense-points and check, if every gun has enough ammo left.

Even when the automatic filled it only up to 10, there is this enormous afford: you need to build a belt (with some splitters), need power, need inserters and in the end you have so many bullets left and cannot just exchange/use them for piercing bullets. No fun, in that time I built a whole defense line with lasers. But I already wrote that many times.

And to be not so negative:
- gun turrets should be needed for some special use, something which can be killed at very best only by guns.
Otherwise removed from game! Because they doesn't bring the game forward and lead the player into wrong directions.
- they should have their own inserter included, which has a micro-solar-cell and works at day even if not powered.
- if piercing bullets available, the inserter exchanges automatically. Dunno how, but like that.
- normal bullets can be reused (recycled).
- they can work as a requester chest, if turned on.

[Arakasi]

The problem with the gun turrets is their extreme need of ammo when fill automatic until filled.
On one side I won't automate that, because when building a full defense line, this eats the whole production. On the other hand I won't do that by hand, because it soon takes too much time to run to your defense-points and check, if every gun has enough ammo left.

Even when the automatic filled it only up to 10, there is this enormous afford: you need to build a belt (with some splitters), need power, need inserters and in the end you have so many bullets left and cannot just exchange/use them for piercing bullets. No fun, in that time I built a whole defense line with lasers. But I already wrote that many times.

And to be not so negative:
- gun turrets should be needed for some special use, something which can be killed at very best only by guns.
Otherwise removed from game! Because they doesn't bring the game forward and lead the player into wrong directions.
- they should have their own inserter included, which has a micro-solar-cell and works at day even if not powered.
- if piercing bullets available, the inserter exchanges automatically. Dunno how, but like that.
- normal bullets can be reused (recycled).
- they can work as a requester chest, if turned on.

I totally agree.

The most annoying thing which forces me to get rid of standard gun turrets was initial filling them to full capacity...
The second one was same situation while switching to piercing bullets.
Imagine wall with 20 turrets which defending some open strategic point. 20 turrets x 100 clips x 2 iron plates = 4000 iron plates plus some magazines on belts. The number of items might be enormous. And the time which is spend by producing it.

Let mi show one example: Imagine that those 20 turrets are on single belt line. If you don't have enough fast production second turret doesn't receive any magazine until first turret is fully loaded. If this filling process take e.g. 1 minute (in a game time it is more) it take 20 minutes until the last one is fully loaded or 19 minutes till first clip. If you have placed turret in line and every second tile, the first turret covers area which includes also turrets 2-4. And the rest is defenceless. After 15 minutes of playing the last one becomes finally defended.

Solution might be that player may set the buffer size for turret. Or turret might behave similar to smart chest. The best would be combination of both.

If somebody says, that smaller turret capacity may lead in some situation to lack of bullets while in the rest situation whole production line stops due to full belts and turrets, it might be solved by some buffers with chest somewhere on the line. This solution is used quite often and is nothing difficult.

I would also prefer some piercing bullets creation refactoring. New process should reuse basic magazines. It means that it will use 3 resources but single item might be little bit cheaper.

This reusing idea I would appreciate in each build process. E.g. splitter, undeground belts at higher levels don't use the basic ones. As my factory evolving, I collect plenty of old stuff and it is literally useless (burning inserters, coal miners, yellow and red splitters and underground belts, pistol, regular magazines, maybe more).

There should be definitely highlighted recycling idea and more advanced stuff should be created from basic ones or basic one should be reused in completely different process or product.