Late late game biter clearing

Sicnarf · Post by **Sicnarf** » Thu Jul 13, 2017 9:33 pm

So it's late game you got all the tech and several levels of space science into weapons whats the fastest way to clear large amount of space for expansion?

I'v been going with 2 reactors, mostly legs, 3 shields, Night vision and lots of nukes. I'm still finding this a bit of a grind and rather time consuming I even nuke large chunks of trees so I don't have to waste time walking around them. I'm looking for any tips people have for clearing space quickly.
Note : Straight vanilla no mods

Jap2.0 · Post by **Jap2.0** » Thu Jul 13, 2017 10:59 pm

I'm not sure. My 0.14 base isn't up to nukes yet and neither is my 0.15 base. I'd assume that'd be a pretty good setup, although a car might be even faster (not sure with that many exos, a tank probably wouldn't). I'm excited for the artillery train (if that's still happening), although that probably won't be good enough for extensive expansion. As for weapons: nukes are probably the best, especially if you have lots of them. If you need more firepower, you could use destroyer drones too.

British_Petroleum · Post by **British_Petroleum** » Fri Jul 14, 2017 1:51 am

you can blueprint a turret creep; building a new front line, deconstructing the old one, rinse and repeat. I'm not sure if this is faster than nukes..however, with the recursive blueprint mod you can automate it

greep · Post by **greep** » Fri Jul 14, 2017 1:57 am

Honestly, after a certain point, just use the console to eliminate biters. They don't really serve a purpose once you've got double thick fully researched laser turrets. I don't think there's a faster legit way than nukes simply because if you just dive headlong into biters nests too fast behemoth spitters will tear you apart. You'd have to slow down a bit to regen shields even with 3 reactors, in which case nukes would be faster.

You could take a few stacks of con bots and repair kits and a tank with a bunch of personal roboports and dive headlong with 200 destroy bots, but you might still get killed.

Non-vanilla you might be able to use recursive blueprints to make an auto-expander, although I haven't played with those mods yet. I wouldn't be surprised if they integrated these sorts of things to vanilla before 1.0 as they really fit the theme of automation.

It'd be nice of there was like a 16k+ space science tech that simply gave a weapon to eliminate all biters. But there isn't

Supercheese · Post by **Supercheese** » Fri Jul 14, 2017 11:08 pm

Nuke them from orbit.

Post by **Koub** » Sat Jul 15, 2017 8:01 am

I wished so much this was added to vanilla

Jap2.0 · Post by **Jap2.0** » Sat Jul 15, 2017 1:27 pm

I haven't tried it myself, but if I ever get into mods I will. The idea of launching rockets actually doing something other than incrementing a little counter is nice.

Sicnarf · Post by **Sicnarf** » Sat Jul 15, 2017 7:49 pm

Ok so general consensus is use mods

My goal is to get to the edge of the map (or crash my computer) without using mods/commands on rail world default settings so mods are off the table.
Maybe if I get the damage research on bullet ammo high enough to 1 shot everything it would be a faster way of doing it. That will take a lot of research but I suppose I got time.

greep · Post by **greep** » Sat Jul 15, 2017 11:27 pm

Actually, it's been forever since I've mass cleared biters, I've forgetten some things. You actually can clear about as fast as you can run if you make a few stacks of 120+ destroyer bots and tens of thousands of distractor bots and just hold down distractor placement while running. I gues the 0.15 version of this is having a spare rocket launcher to nuke trees in your way. Much fun, so environmental.

It's extremely expensive, but a drop in the bucket if you've got enough mining productivity/prod mods.

Jap2.0 · Post by **Jap2.0** » Sun Jul 16, 2017 2:51 am

Sicnarf wrote: ...

My goal is to get to the edge of the map (or crash my computer) without using mods/commands on rail world default settings so mods are off the table

...

Do you realize how huge of a task that is? I did some research and the Factorio world extends 1 million tiles in each direction, or 7 hours by train (their calculations, not including building time), or about 7.8 hours with 10 exoskeletons (my calculation, that's the most exoskeletons you can fit in a power armor mk. 2 suit, and that isn't viable because you couldn't fit any portable fusion reactors in, and the solar panels you could put in the extra space would only produce 10% of the power you would need, and you wouldn't have any shields for biter clearing). You could also fit less than 1,000 atomic bombs in your inventory (I think, I don't know the exact numbers), which would mean you would have to use them very infrequently, so you probably couldn't use them to clear trees in your path.

Sicnarf · Post by **Sicnarf** » Sun Jul 16, 2017 4:03 am

Jap2.0 wrote: Do you realize how huge of a task that is?

Yes, but I'm only heading to the edge not edge to edge so it's only 3 hours 22 minutes by rocket fuel train from center/spawn. I'v limited the map height to..... if memory serves 1500 tiles. Ribbon world

I'm only 1% of the way there so far but I only got nukes recently and while I complain about the speed they are a hell of a lot faster than using the tank. It's always possible I get bored and give up but assuming I stick with it a map 1500*1000000 should only take up about 5.25 Gigs of RAM. (Feel free to correct that number I found it hard to get good data on that)
I use about 400 nukes an hour while actively clearing but the biters are only starting to hit maximum saturation at this distance from spawn so I won't really have a good estimate on time/resource requirements until I get to the 5% distance mark. It's always nice to have a long term goal even if it's silly.
But first I have to build a bot based base to replace my belted base, it's starting to eat into my UPS which is slowing things down. The joy of factorio, there is always something to improve upon.

British_Petroleum · Post by **British_Petroleum** » Sun Jul 16, 2017 4:55 am

would be cool if you could automate the expansion somehow so you can just leave the pc going while you sleep

good luck with your journey to the edge. You could go rick and morty style and overload the game so much that it stops loading new chunks, then the edge will be much closer

featherwinglove · Post by **featherwinglove** » Sun Jul 16, 2017 7:37 am

Sicnarf wrote:...whats the fastest way to clear large amount of space for expansion?

"Standby Ion Control..." (If that doesn't sound familiar...)

Note : Straight vanilla no mods

...wait, what?

Sicnarf wrote:I use about 400 nukes an hour...

Wait, there's something subtly wrong about that. Let's see if I can, er...

Donald Trump wrote:I use about 400 nukes an hour...

...meh, I don't think it'll ever sound right...

Supercheese wrote:Nuke them from orbit.

It's the only way to be sure. (If that doesn't sound very familiar <--- click there.)

In all seriousness though, part of the reason I like to use mods is because the bugs aren't quite nasty enough in vanilla, and dealing with them eventually becomes a chore rather than fun. That's part of the reason I like automating the process with orbital ion cannons, and before them, enhancing critter nastiness with Bob's Enemies and/or Rampant AI, along with a not-so-late game weapon mod(s), makes the biter problem loads more fun for me.

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