Artillery train nest clearing strategy

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Ace_W
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Re: Artillery train nest clearing strategy

Post by Ace_W »

I use a resupply train for outpost ammo. The last car is an artillery wagon, which at every outpost delivers a small resupply of shells. 10-20 depending on settings. These are the resupply for a small amount of static artillery points. Usually 2-6 depending on how close to the frontline they are.

Autofire keeps the land clear.
"No! This one goes there! That one goes There! Right?!"

Tricorius
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Re: Artillery train nest clearing strategy

Post by Tricorius »

I know this is about “early” when you are ammo constrained.

But my full” production is to setup static artillery turrets in my outposts (I generally play death worlds with expansion on) so they get used plenty.

I have a fairly complex outpost resuppply setup, but for the military portion I send out two trains:

- 2-4 with “standard” ammo wagons
- 2-4 with artillery wagons

I unload into the station from the artillery wagons instead of standard wagons...each one carries 100 shells instead of 40. It also, of course, fires if anything is in range while the shells are unloading up to stock levels. (Though with the static cannons on the perimeter my reload train usually doesn’t have much in firing range...so it mostly just pauses long enough to unload shells.)

At first, when ammo is limited, I generally just build a smaller train, and add additional wagons as I ramp up. In this case you can pretty easily run the train straight to your forward staging area, drop a defensive blueprint down, and fire away.

I just let the automated range do the work and brace for impact. But I’m guessing most people probably manually target too. (As you mention, manual targeting is more likely to hit multiple targets with a single shell.)

And to be a bit more specific on what I consider fun...I don’t run with laser turrets much. I prefer physical and chemical ammo. My perimeter, even for outposts, consists of belt-fed gun turrets, flamethrower turrets, and artillery turrets.

I have a standard set of blueprints to drop all of that into an outpost, along with a resupply station visited by various trains.

When I’m advancing my front, I have an offensive fortification blueprint. My assault train trades the front wagon for a standard wagon. (It’s a 2-4, two locos, same direction, one regular wagon, three artillery wagons.). The standard wagon contains gun turrets, walls, gates, ammo, and a couple other things.

When I stop, I drop the blueprint which places turrets, walls, and gates to enclose the train. It also sets up a quick ammo belt to feed the turrets from the ammo in the lead wagon. While my bots are building all of that, the artillery wagons have trained and started firing. By the time the biter waves hit, the turrets are full and tearing through bugs.

I used to set up flamethrower turrets with the blueprint too, but tearing it down was more time consuming than I liked. It takes a bit of time to reverse pumps and re-barrel the oil to load it back on the train. And nothing survives a solid row of turrets large enough to enclose a 2-4 train anyway.

In the “early” game, you may not have advanced enough bots to quickly build out this more complex defense around the train before it starts firing. So it might be worthwhile to just use laser turrets for pushing forward.

I go heavy military and push to bots early, partially because I know I need those techs to support this play style.

I’m currently playing around with adding segmented roboports to my train blueprints so that I can remotely push into biter territory. It’s tricky, but it’s going to be awesome if I can pull it off. ;)

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Re: Artillery train nest clearing strategy

Post by nosports »

Tricorius wrote:
Sun Oct 28, 2018 7:10 am
I’m currently playing around with adding segmented roboports to my train blueprints so that I can remotely push into biter territory. It’s tricky, but it’s going to be awesome if I can pull it off. ;)
I currently try this also and my conclusion is :

You need obvoiusly to include a roboport and radar line in your rail blueprint and a supply station which all needed resources (rails, poles, radars, roboports......)

Don't forget to have drop off chests for wood and stones

Make youself a set of blue print for going around the cliffs and water. Its somewhat tricky to manouver around these but in the end you can do this by placing 'master-blueprint' and afterward removing the excess parts of the 'master-blueprint'

zOldBulldog
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Re: Artillery train nest clearing strategy

Post by zOldBulldog »

I just came across a temporary but unexpected risk of increasing the Artillery range through space science... shells firing back a little and causing an assault to your rear. That can cut your power lines and leave the laser turrets defenseless.

So, at least mixing in some regular turrets with AP or uranium ammo is definitely a good idea.

In my case I luckily built my track 2-lane with built in returns. So I just got on the train and started going back and forth full speed in an oval until I run them all over :)

----

I am also considering the possibility of totally unattended expansion of the rail and clearing of nests by using the Recursive Blueprints mod (if I can figure out how to landfill in an automated fashion).

Imagine bots laying down a blueprint, building the forward fort, supply and Artillery trains arrive and clear the nests, once they go idle the bots deconstruct the fort, place more track and repeat.

If this is even possible, I could be working on my other stuff while a path is built. Once it reaches 10-20 km away... I would have access to the really big ore deposits.

Of course, this is simpler if biter expansion is off. Otherwise the blueprint would also need to build fortifications to protect the track.

Tricorius
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Re: Artillery train nest clearing strategy

Post by Tricorius »

zOldBulldog wrote:
Sun Oct 28, 2018 9:14 am
... That can cut your power lines and leave the laser turrets defenseless.

So, at least mixing in some regular turrets with AP or uranium ammo is definitely a good idea.
Yup. Forgot to mention that. I also have an additional blueprint I can drop down which adds a very small solar setup to help power the inserters to load the turrets.
zOldBulldog wrote:
Sun Oct 28, 2018 9:14 am
Of course, this is simpler if biter expansion is off. Otherwise the blueprint would also need to build fortifications to protect the track.
My standard rail blueprints are segmented into roboport blocks that have a small siding to resupply the block. They are fully defended and contain backup power in case the biters do somehow hit a power line and destroy it. Of course, they are also rebuilt by the robots. But having a wall go down isn’t great in a deathworld. ;)

I also have a set of blueprints I can use to reverse everything and pack it all back up, return it to the “drop-off” station, and stuff it all back on a “trash” train to send back to the base for redistribution.

Entelin
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Re: Artillery train nest clearing strategy

Post by Entelin »

One important thing that hasn't been mentioned yet. Biters aggro against what shot the shell. So scheduled trains can easily draw biters into the tracks once they have left their stop, who then get hit by other trains, aggro against those and kill them. Of course you could have the train wait at each base a really really long time, but a static arty solves this and assuming you are delivering supplies to the base bringing some ammo or resources to build ammo doesn't really add any complexity and reduces traffic and reliability overall.

So I use static placements for outposts, and trains for expansion.

zOldBulldog
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Re: Artillery train nest clearing strategy

Post by zOldBulldog »

Entelin wrote:
Mon Oct 29, 2018 11:05 pm
One important thing that hasn't been mentioned yet. Biters aggro against what shot the shell. So scheduled trains can easily draw biters into the tracks once they have left their stop, who then get hit by other trains, aggro against those and kill them. Of course you could have the train wait at each base a really really long time, but a static arty solves this and assuming you are delivering supplies to the base bringing some ammo or resources to build ammo doesn't really add any complexity and reduces traffic and reliability overall.

So I use static placements for outposts, and trains for expansion.
Excellent point. And since static outposts (not expansion) don't have to deal with too many nests at a time, regular wagon delivery will be enough.

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