Factorio Forums

Hi Everybody,
I've seen a number of comments in this sub recently pooh-poohing flamethrower turrets as "endgame only" or "good only vs. swarms" or "useless without other turrets for backup." These are lies spread by the Gun Guild or the Laser Lobby! Embrace your inner pyromaniac and become a devotee today!
Thanks so much!

I use flamethrower turrets as early as possible.
Since biters lack fire resistance they are pretty strong.
Gun turrets already struggle with blue biters.
Two gun turrets and one flamethrower are good for a long time, long enough to research lasers on deathworld.

But yes, they are not failsafe without gun/laser support.
Sometimes a biter gets to the wall and gets to chew on it.
Flamethrowers have a minimum distance and a limited turn radius.

Yellow ammo is trash.
Red ammo is barely acceptable.
Rocket launchers are meh.
Flame tank is iffy.
Tank machine gun is decent.
Hand held flamethrowers are good.
Flame turrets are very good.
Cannon shells are great.
Laser turrets are superb.
Land mines are GOAT.

But most importantly:

Real men kill biters with trains.

I never used flamethrowers. They are pre 1 rocket and I just rush past that stage so quickly. Since lasers are enough for late game defense I don't think flamethrowers are worth the extra effort.

Recently I have been following a twitch streamer who is new to the game and he spends a lot of time in that halfway to rocket stage of the game and flamethrowers have been working great for him. They are very much recommended for any new player or any player who chooses to take it slow and not just brute force it with lasers.

Flamethrower turrets have a minimum firing distance. So some enemies can still come close the walls. That's why you need some regular turrets as support. Their firing arc also makes them a bit iffy in corners.

Uranium ammo is also very good. But most people just go for lasers

Uranium ammo is also very good. But most people just go for lasers

Uranium ammo is endgame tech, and lasers are mid game tech. It's pretty difficult to secure a viable supply of uranium ammo until all the worst has already happened.

Flame turrets are a great early game option if you have lots of oil. Don't ever ever EVER burn crude oil! That precious black gold has petroleum inside, and you need every drop of petroleum possible.

Flamethrowers are Early to Lategame.
I still use them in Lategame, theyre strong, but not without Lasersupport. (Or Uranium-filled Guntowers - theyre stronger than Lasers but lack a bit of Range and require pretty much a Bot Network to refill (yes, you CAN do it with belts, but who does that at the Uranium Ammo stage?)).
The Hand-Flamethrower is only seconded by the Nuke when it comes to clean up Nests without Turret Creep.
The Tank-mounted Flamethrower was pretty useless last time i tried it.

I never tried flame turrets.
They seem super tedious gold deluxe to setup by hand early on. I'd sooner build a long belt with red ammo for gun turrets.

Setting up a small network of pipes is no more tedious than setting up belts, power poles and inserters to feed turrets. It's pretty simple and quick and the payoff is definitely worth it. My only real complaint is that flame turrets expect to be fed across their length, rather than from the edge. It creates a default turret layout where if any one turret along the line breaks, you lose feed to all the turrets.

What I generally do for defense is something like

Flame - Laser/Gun - Wall - Space - Maze

With the maze positioned just inside the range of the flamethrower, but outside the range of the gun/laser turrets. Against a big attack this does wonders: the biters take a lot of time to path through the maze, which gives the flame time to kill almost all of them. The turrets are there to kill the couple biters that get through. Since there is a valid path through, the biters generally don't attack the wall. I dislike repair bots since they get killed all the time, especially with flame towers, but this setup generally lasts a very long time without needing repairs.

With laser turrets you can place them inline with the flame turrets as they have longer range. You can also drop the inner wall or replace it by a double wall with gaps so they will try to path through instead of attacking the wall or turrets:

vanatteveldt wrote:[...]

The maze technique should be called "bitercueing".

It is so ridiculously effective that it renders biters almost non-existent.

so note, you CAN use pure flame turrets, but you have to make your wall thick enough to cover the min range. Then just set them about 1 or 2 spaces apart, and watch the burning glowing fun

Otherwise, ya Gun - Flame - Gun works wonders.

bobucles wrote:Yellow ammo is trash.
Real men kill biters with trains.

... train launcher mod?

But yea, handheld flamethrower is handy - effective to weaken a lot of biters, effective to roast their bases and also useful to start a forestfire if you need to clear a dense forest for future construction. Once burned a lot of the wood will be gone.

ChoMar wrote:(yes, you CAN do it with belts, but who does that at the Uranium Ammo stage?))

This guy :: holds up hands, two thumbs pointed toward his chest ::

Filling up one side of a belt all around the walls of the primary rocket base. And I’m working on putting artillery rounds on the second lane.

Tricorius wrote:

ChoMar wrote:(yes, you CAN do it with belts, but who does that at the Uranium Ammo stage?))

This guy :: holds up hands, two thumbs pointed toward his chest ::

Filling up one side of a belt all around the walls of the primary rocket base. And I’m working on putting artillery rounds on the second lane.

Make a second belt full of light oil barrels for flame turrets.

dood wrote:

Tricorius wrote:

ChoMar wrote:(yes, you CAN do it with belts, but who does that at the Uranium Ammo stage?))

This guy :: holds up hands, two thumbs pointed toward his chest ::

Filling up one side of a belt all around the walls of the primary rocket base. And I’m working on putting artillery rounds on the second lane.

Make a second belt full of light oil barrels for flame turrets.

I actually think that is probably going to happen before the shells.

Tricorius wrote:

dood wrote:

Tricorius wrote:

ChoMar wrote:(yes, you CAN do it with belts, but who does that at the Uranium Ammo stage?))

This guy :: holds up hands, two thumbs pointed toward his chest ::

Filling up one side of a belt all around the walls of the primary rocket base. And I’m working on putting artillery rounds on the second lane.

Make a second belt full of light oil barrels for flame turrets.

I actually think that is probably going to happen before the shells.

It's tricky to handle the empty barrels correctly though. You'd need to make sure there's always room for them on the belt, so probably something like a circular belt with a conditional input of full barrels to make sure there's enough gaps, or unloading them to a short belt with a priority splitter into the main belt to prioritize the empty barrels. And of course you need to make sure that there is enough room to store the empties after taking them from the belt, but here again a priority splitter to prefer recycled barrels over fresh barrels might be enough.

vanatteveldt wrote:

Tricorius wrote:

dood wrote:

Tricorius wrote:

ChoMar wrote:(yes, you CAN do it with belts, but who does that at the Uranium Ammo stage?))

This guy :: holds up hands, two thumbs pointed toward his chest ::

Filling up one side of a belt all around the walls of the primary rocket base. And I’m working on putting artillery rounds on the second lane.

Make a second belt full of light oil barrels for flame turrets.

I actually think that is probably going to happen before the shells.

It's tricky to handle the empty barrels correctly though. You'd need to make sure there's always room for them on the belt, so probably something like a circular belt with a conditional input of full barrels to make sure there's enough gaps, or unloading them to a short belt with a priority splitter into the main belt to prioritize the empty barrels. And of course you need to make sure that there is enough room to store the empties after taking them from the belt, but here again a priority splitter to prefer recycled barrels over fresh barrels might be enough.

Empty Barrels on one side, full ones on the other?

Why even use barrels at all?

The effort is not worth it.

Pipes are like 100 times easier.

Real men fuel their flame turrets with barrels on giant sushi belts as long as the eye can see.