Best way to defend

[NameLips]

I played through the game on ez mode -- very few, small biter nests. Launched rocket, had fun.

But trying to play on proper "default" difficulty I'm finding... difficult. The biters seem unpredictable. I'll try to build a few turrets where they last attacked, and the next time they'll skirt the range of the turrets and run into the base.

Am I supposed to defend the entire perimeter of the factory? Do I need to wall everything in? That would lend itself to an extremely compact design.

Or is it better to build "districts" that are themselves walled-in and defended, and don't interact with each other except to share a few resources? The districts themselves could be compact and efficient, but the factory as a whole could be extremely expansive. The districts would be well protected, but the connecting belts would be vulnerable.

How do biters determine their targets? I know they're supposed to be the most angry at pollution, but sometimes they seem to go after belts. Sometimes they seem to want to attack the first thing they see, and sometimes they run into the center of the base.

[vanatteveldt]

From what I understand, bases in range of pollution form 'attack squads' that march towards the pollution until they are attacked by turrets or stopped by walls, in which case they attack these. I've never seen them attack isolated belts, but they will attack belts near your machines, maybe after they destroy their first target they attack the nearest one?

I think that in early mid game you normally need to defend you perimeter, either by walls or just putting turrets not too far from each other. regularly clearing the bases around you ("mowing the grass", as the israeli would say). Gun turrets are pretty cheap, and if they're not attacked much they also don't need to be reloaded as much..

[Oxyd]

When biters get angry because of pollution, they select a place to attack, go there and wreck everything in that place – belts, miners, assemblers, everything.

Usually, you don't let them do that, though. When they encounter turrets on their way to attack, they'll go after the turrets and try to destroy those.

As for defence, I usually just put clusters of turrets on various points around the perimeter of my main factory. Outposts are usually completely surrounded by turrets, sometimes I even build a wall around an outpost – though I usually only use walls until I get laser turrets.

[Drury]

I place gun turrets in such a way that one turret's range touches another turret by the edge. This way there will generally be two turrets attacking a biter at a time, and since they're so spread apart you don't have to make too many turrets to protect a large area.

This works decently well even into lategame if you get all the upgrades for the gun turrets (there are quite a lot).

[TheSkiGeek]

Depends on how much you're getting attacked and from where.

Early on, when your base isn't that big, it's pretty viable to completely wall it off. Sometimes it is helpful to leave a few strategic openings with "kill zones" lined with turrets -- biters will try to go for openings if they're not too far away, so then you don't need to have turrets everywhere. Otherwise they'll start chewing through the walls wherever they run into them.

If you build some radars (or just go out and explore - this is easier with the car), you can figure out where the closest bases are and how much pollution they're getting. ALT toggles the pollution overlay for the map and minimap, if you haven't found that yet. Bases in the pollution cloud will send out groups of enemies towards the closest sources of pollution, with the size and frequency increasing as they get more pollution hitting them.

Ultimately the most effective strategy (other than trying to limit your overall pollution - solar power and efficiency modules help a lot) is to go out and kill any enemy bases close enough to be getting aggroed by your factory's pollution. For more distant mining outposts (which you may or may not need depending on your resource settings and production), you may have to wall them off and apply turrets liberally.

[Stede]

Quick note that I like to build batteries of 7 turrets each with a 1 tile gap between them with 5 in the front row and 1 on either side of the 2nd row. It gives space within the battery after walling it off to drop a radar.

Sure biters don't like pollution, but you know what they absolutely despise at the core of their blackened souls? Radars. It tends to increase the aggro range so you won't have biters skirting your turret range and invading your base.

[mooklepticon]

The biters seem unpredictable. I'll try to build a few turrets where they last attacked, and the next time they'll skirt the range of the turrets and run into the base.

This is confusing to me because the biters in my game are TOTALLY predictable. They attack the same spots every time. When they attack a group of turrets, I usually go add another turret!

[Makk]

I played through the game on ez mode -- very few, small biter nests. Launched rocket, had fun.

But trying to play on proper "default" difficulty I'm finding... difficult. The biters seem unpredictable. I'll try to build a few turrets where they last attacked, and the next time they'll skirt the range of the turrets and run into the base.

Am I supposed to defend the entire perimeter of the factory? Do I need to wall everything in? That would lend itself to an extremely compact design.

Or is it better to build "districts" that are themselves walled-in and defended, and don't interact with each other except to share a few resources? The districts themselves could be compact and efficient, but the factory as a whole could be extremely expansive. The districts would be well protected, but the connecting belts would be vulnerable.

How do biters determine their targets? I know they're supposed to be the most angry at pollution, but sometimes they seem to go after belts. Sometimes they seem to want to attack the first thing they see, and sometimes they run into the center of the base.

I usually go for natural choke points, and militarize the hell out of them with the most advanced weaponry I can afford on the interior of a double-layer stone wall. If no choke points and you're dealing with expansive and waterless land, go for a big wall on the border of your starting area - expand as necessary.

A line of about 6 starter turrets, belt fed with ammo should be able to keep you safe from any one direction until medium biters.

[Supercheese]

The new flamethrower turrets are pretty darn fun.

[Makk]

The new flamethrower turrets are pretty darn fun.

Omg, you're the guy that made the Ion cannon mod. Let us have a moment of geeky silence as we praise GDI

[taiiat]

the mention of the Pollution overlay is good to note - you can see what Bugs are likely to attack based on if it's generating Pollution. Bugs basically chase Pollution (in the simplest form), so any location that is going to generate enough Pollution to piss off some Bug Hives, will spur retalliation. however Turrets, Robits, and Players will be 'higher priority' if encountered while attempting to destroy pollution.

which also as aforementioned, knowing where the nearby Bug Hives are can be useful, to see what Hives are in range or soon to be in range of your Pollution. those will be the ones that attack you.

[R3vo]

I've just build a wall of gun turrets around my base, works very well..

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.c ... FA729755F/

[OkariDraconis]

When I start off, I usually just scatter a few turrets around my base. Later on, I wall of completely, with turrets spread around the parameter, but with extra at the corners. Any place they repeat attack, I put one more there, and continue on that way. Also, try to start in a forest. Yes its a pain to clear the trees, but I swear the desert is Sooooo much harder.

[OdinYggd]

Iron Curtains are effective. Build walls backed by turrets such that the biters cannot get near your stuff without getting shot at.

You don't even have to cover 100% of it, and it helps a lot to abuse natural choke points like lakes.

Long as the biters cannot reach anything without getting shot at, they will always turn to attack what shot at them instead of the pollution source that lured them close to your base in the first place.

Also, new bases only spawn when a group of biters walk to that location and bed down to establish new nests. So if you prevent them from walking into your containment zone, they cannot build nests there. It is possible in 0.13 to establish enormous biter-free zones for easy factory expansion by using this method.

[MrGrim]

I've just build a wall of gun turrets around my base, works very well..

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.c ... FA729755F/

Ya, when I learned 0.13 stopped victory poling (which I know can be re-enabled.. but screw it, it was cheap anyway) I decided to deploy my final solution:

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.c ... 516FEA31E/

[Whiskey11]

I generally use walls and turrets... isn't that what you guys do? <troll face>

Early on I just leave turrets out in the open and I find that time frame more critical than any as that is when you are less capable to defend stuff due to lack of damage output. Once you get to the point where things are stable and you know have turrets defending the critical stuff I tend to be pretty proactive about taking about biter bases to prevent the attacks from coming in the first place. Usually takes an attack or two before I "figure it out" and go out and destroy those bases. I also find that laser turrets are far less resource intensive, however I have contemplated setting up supply trains with smart inserters at every base to pick out what the smart chest needs from the trains... that way each base could have it's own roboports repairing damaged turrets as well as any ammo supply needed for regular turrets.When the laser turrets start getting overrun I'll start something like that I think.

[Oxyd]

I have contemplated setting up supply trains with smart inserters at every base to pick out what the smart chest needs from the trains... that way each base could have it's own roboports repairing damaged turrets as well as any ammo supply needed for regular turrets.When the laser turrets start getting overrun I'll start something like that I think.

That's what I do. Using a combination of gun and laser turrets has the advantage that your outpost is still defended even if you cut power to it. Which can easily happen by accident if you're messing with your long-range power poles. Or if you simply run out of juice in accumulators.

[Whiskey11]

I have contemplated setting up supply trains with smart inserters at every base to pick out what the smart chest needs from the trains... that way each base could have it's own roboports repairing damaged turrets as well as any ammo supply needed for regular turrets.When the laser turrets start getting overrun I'll start something like that I think.

That's what I do. Using a combination of gun and laser turrets has the advantage that your outpost is still defended even if you cut power to it. Which can easily happen by accident if you're messing with your long-range power poles. Or if you simply run out of juice in accumulators.

I use Uranium Power... no running out of power!

[NotABiter]

Iron Curtains are effective.

I've been calling them my "shields". When I start the first ammo belts (with a splitter so I am sourcing ammo from the "center" rather than one end) and the guns get set up progressively in both directions, eventually enveloping my base, that's "shields up".

Using a combination of gun and laser turrets has the advantage that your outpost is still defended even if you cut power to it. Which can easily happen by accident if you're messing with your long-range power poles.

True... but I want to be punished if I screw up. (Some people call that "gameplay".)
One could say that not having guns to back up lasers is itself a mistake, but ammo is too much of a resource sink for guns to be the long term answer - at least until the Factorio devs make the biters harder to kill so the superior DPS of (upgraded) guns is actually critical to keeping your base safe.

Or if you simply run out of juice in accumulators.

Now that 0.13 lets you measure accumulator energy and use that to control pumps/switches (i.e. makes backup power ridiculously easy to set up), there's no excuse for not having backup generators at the ready (except maybe "no coal/fuel").
I've been setting mine to kick in if accumulators run down to 20%. I just got the "Solaris" achievement today while having boilers full of fuel and hot water and accumulator-controlled pumps between the boilers and the steam engines. (I've also used the switch in 0.13 for this purpose, but this time I didn't feel like trying to separate the power networks and relying on keeping them that way since the steam engines were in the midst of my crammed-with-stuff base.)

My current game:

sedy8.jpg (266.37 KiB) Viewed 15794 times

I tend to evolve from guns to lasers. I had to defend my main base first, and that was done with guns. (You can actually see the belts and inserters feeding the guns on the map - one pixel wide each. Of note is how I handle my corners - there's no gun {or laser} in the corner as that just creates an easier target for the enemy - I haven't tried the flame thrower turret yet...) My first oil outpost ("Oil 1") also uses guns for defense. I just stuffed the guns with 100 magazines and never resupply them - I figured I would be pushing past that base long before they run out of ammo, and then it would never get attacked again. By the time I got Oil 2, I had more lasers (and accumulators) and went with a mix of guns and lasers. Oil 3 and 4 are both 100% laser. The next time I expand my main base, I'll probably switch from guns to lasers (at least for whatever wall sections move).

Note the blue blobs along the rail lines. Those are militarized big poles, mostly using lasers because they don't get major attacks (so lasers being weaker than guns wasn't an issue), resupplying guns at each of those poles wouldn't be practical by train (especially for the ones on the diagonal rail - you can't even put a stop there), and I already have enough ammo sitting on belts at my main base - I don't need to waste even more steel and copper. Big poles don't cover very much distance, so those militarized rails are basically walls that the biters can't get through, so eventually it will make sense to just cordon off a massive area that contains most or all of the rails (at which point they of course no longer need to be militarized). (Factorio has never tried to address the 4N versus N^2 problem, which leads inexorably to walling everything off together rather than keeping with separately defended bases.)

Note that base clearing is not as effective in 0.13 as it was in 0.12 because in 0.13 they move back (settle new spawners closer to your stuff), so base clearing is now a chore that must be repeated (unless you build your defenses so far out that they are outside of your pollution zone - then having bases somewhat closer shouldn't be an issue because they shouldn't bother attacking frequently, though I haven't got around to testing that in 0.13 yet).

If anyone's wondering why my oil bases have so much blue in them - once I have each oil base set up and working, I stuff all of the empty space with solar panels and accumulators. No point in wasting that space, and it means I can save space at my home base and put off having to expand it again.

(I got this map from here. HammerPiano {two posts down} said he already died 3 times playing this map, so I thought it might provide some challenge, but alas, I haven't even had a serious injury. The biters were a bit feisty though, probably because lack of oil meant I was producing a ton of pollution for a long time, plus the map is mostly desert so that pollution was spreading a long ways. After depleting the home base oil, and Oil 1, and Oil 2, I've finally got enough oil with Oil 3 and 4 that I've got my pollution under control and I've tech'd up my military, so it's basically game over for the biters at this point. I think it's kind of funny that one of the achievements in the game is "you're so dirty and bad for the environment because you've started doing oil", but you need oil in order to make 24/7 solar happen, you need oil to switch to electric furnaces, you need oil to produce efficiency modules, you need oil to switch to lasers {which don't produce pollution-per-shot whereas guns require ammo which costs pollution to create}. Oil is very eco-friendly in Factorio!)

[Qon]

Or if you simply run out of juice in accumulators.

Now that 0.13 lets you measure accumulator energy and use that to control pumps/switches (i.e. makes backup power ridiculously easy to set up), there's no excuse for not having backup generators at the ready (except maybe "no coal/fuel").
I've been setting mine to kick in if accumulators run down to 20%. I just got the "Solaris" achievement today while having boilers full of fuel and hot water and accumulator-controlled pumps between the boilers and the steam engines. (I've also used the switch in 0.13 for this purpose, but this time I didn't feel like trying to separate the power networks and relying on keeping them that way since the steam engines were in the midst of my crammed-with-stuff base.)

You guys might be interested in how to make solar reliable for laser defence.
You don't need a steam backup, although it is a good idea since steam is a very compact and reliable power source.

Together with no drain lasers solar + lasers is a very good combo if you can afford it. Steam + bullet rain has it's charm though.