Advice needed : Trains, biters & lasers

[dognosh]

I have a huge main base doing alright for itself. I am now venturing in to rail for the first time on 0.17.
The biters are plentiful and very aggressive !!! I can only see laying rail down with laser spam protecting it.
Is there another way ? Can I leave rail, lights, poles and signals to their own accord in 0.17 or do they need protecting ?

[dognosh]

Just setup an Artillery coverage for my base to alleviate pressure on lasers, and that could work for rail. It will take time but would stop biters building close to tracks.

[zOldBulldog]

I think biters will leave "just rail" alone. So one option is to leave rail without power poles and lights.

The other approach you just started on and will support having power poles and lights:

- Use artillery and lasers from the base to clear nests well past the pollution zone. That way they won't attack due to pollution and get cleared.

- Push out with your rail line, placing laser/artillery outposts every so often. They will keep biters away. Of course, send artillery trains to automatically patrol through the outposts until inactivity.

- If you have Expansion = OFF you can just place one outpost at the end of the line and dismantle/move it when you extend the line.

- I am not sure how nasty the enemies will get late in game, you might need to add flamethrower fluid to your rail line and flamethrower turrets to your outposts.

[Nosferatu]

Biters will leave rails and signals alone.
Biters will leave power poles alone - with one exeption: Large attack groups will kill poles if they block their navigation.
End game biters will kill your trains if they walk on the rails and the trains trys to smash through them.

So use zOldBulldog's adivives above plus the following:

- Clear the area around your tracks and power poles. If you build through a forrest that's a road the biters will use --> High risk of biters killing trains or poles.
- Place forts near choke points and near junctions
- Don't build your artillery points next to your main train line. Shots attract biters --> High risk biters will path towards your artillery near or on your rail.

Inside the pollution cloud your defenses usually will need automated repairs endgame.
Outside the pollution cloud small unmaintened forts with laser turrets are usually enough.
So wall your base off or use artillery to clear the area.

[zOldBulldog]

One thing I forgot: Big trains should be able to squash all bugs. I think even the intro video for Factorio shows that activity in progress.

I don't remember how big or whether this is still valid in 0.17. So you might want to google it.

[BlakeMW]

Alright, this depends on evolution, distances involved, and how much repairs you're willing to do.

Almost any train can plow through big biters with utmost ease, but Behemoth Biters will easily halt any smaller train, which generally results in the destruction of the train, so once Behemoths have evolved you can't let short trains go out in the wilderness. The two possible solutions for this are to either keep the tracks clear of biters, or to build large enough trains to plow through the biters. In order to slay Behemoth Biters, a train needs to be at least 2-7 (2 locos, 7 wagons) and using Rocket or Nuclear fuel, and going at nearly top speed. It doesn't hurt to upsize the train even a little more to 3-8 or something, that would reduce the speed requirements to get reliable kills. Happily trains don't slow down when they (successfully) run over a biter so they can plow through basically unlimited Behemoth Biters - though the biters CAN bite the train so you want to have repair facilities.

So if using large trains is acceptable to you, then it's not strictly necessary to keep the tracks clear, as long as trains can build up sufficient speed before encountering biters.

The main thing which is at risk from destruction is Power Poles because biters get angry about them being in the way. Track and signals don't block pathing and except under very rare circumstances wont be targeted by biters or spitters. However they can take collaterial damage from spitballs aimed at trains. Tracks have 100 hp and 80% acid resist so can survive quite a few hits from spitballs. In theory they would eventually get melted by spitters spitting at trains and hitting the tracks, it would take a very, very long time though. Biters and spitters get pretty mad when a train containing a player comes by, but AFAIK they ignore unoccupied trains unless that train commits murder, so if a train comes by and murders a poor helpless biter/spitter, then the spitters might spit at the train if they can react in time (they probably wont given the train is going at nearly 300 km/h) and then a track might take a little damage from a spitball. Repeat this unlikely event enough times and a track could get destroyed but it could probably take dozens of hours even with a train going through biter infested territory.

So basically, if you go with unprotected rail it's mainly just the power poles you have to worry about. Either be prepared to repair the power lines (using redundant poles helps reduce the frequency of repairs required) or build auxiliary power generation at outposts. And if you're willing to run around and do repairs with the personal roboport every few hours, unprotected track can work pretty well.

[dognosh]

Thank you all !!
Superb ideas from all of you

[runswithsizzors]

The main thing which is at risk from destruction is Power Poles because biters get angry about them being in the way. Track and signals don't block pathing and except under very rare circumstances wont be targeted by biters or spitters. However they can take collaterial damage from spitballs aimed at trains. Tracks have 100 hp and 80% acid resist so can survive quite a few hits from spitballs. In theory they would eventually get melted by spitters spitting at trains and hitting the tracks, it would take a very, very long time though. Biters and spitters get pretty mad when a train containing a player comes by, but AFAIK they ignore unoccupied trains unless that train commits murder, so if a train comes by and murders a poor helpless biter/spitter, then the spitters might spit at the train if they can react in time (they probably wont given the train is going at nearly 300 km/h) and then a track might take a little damage from a spitball. Repeat this unlikely event enough times and a track could get destroyed but it could probably take dozens of hours even with a train going through biter infested territory.

Is this new, where biters go after Power Poles and Lights. I have played quite a few hundred hours of this game, and only in 0.17 am I having major issues where biters will not leave my power poles alone. So building a large Railworld / Deathworld combo, I am having to run back and do power pole maintenance almost every 30 minutes, because biters attack them often. And they aren't even marching to a base or anything.

Any other tips on what to do. I am not wanting to setup local power in every "outpost" but cant be spending hours to drive around fixing the poles and lights. Its making expanding slow and frustrating. At this point, if I could have a wagon running a loop and fixing things, I would take it, since everything is lined across the tracks.

[mrvn]

It's been always that way or at least for years. There are mods that make aliens actively attack power poles though.

Maybe you have placed you poles right where the aliens will migrate so they just keep bumping into them. They attack things in their way if they can't go around, e.g. because there is another alien to their right and left. Try placing your power poles somewhere else when they get attacked.

Or simply backtrack the aliens to their nest and kill the nest.

[zOldBulldog]

One thing I only recently discovered:

- In 0.16 a nice bank of lasers would stop just about anything, while receiving no damage. Even when there are big waves of assault in response to artillery bombing.

- In 0.17, even in the mid-game, lasers are no longer enough as they are in reach of spitters. You have to add at least flamethrowers and bots to repair.

I am curious if there is any kind of weapon (short of nuclear bombs) that can take out spitters before they get into range to cause damage. I am not a fan of nukes, even if in-game there is no pollution from the explosions.

[rcp27]

My 0.17 base has only used basic gun turrets for wall defense, with turrets spaced 1 medium power pole apart. I have upgraded through yellow to red and green ammo, and researched relevant upgrades to damage and speed. From start to >120 rocket launches I have found this has been generally adequate to hold the biters at bay, and I can lay down an artillery barrage against a large biter infestation now with that turret installation holding the line even when the attackers are mostly greenies.

I think he lack of logistics and manufacturing constraints on laser turrets has the potential to make them overpowered, and I feel nerfing them compared with other types of static defense is reasonable. If you want to avoid the need for an ammunition supply, then you have to accept other drawbacks.

[BlakeMW]

am curious if there is any kind of weapon (short of nuclear bombs) that can take out spitters before they get into range to cause damage. I am not a fan of nukes, even if in-game there is no pollution from the explosions.

(Assuming all military techs before Space Science)

Mix a few Gun Turrets firing Uranium Ammo in with the Laser Turrets. The Guns will obliterate Behemoth Biters in milliseconds (they deal 4600 dps compared with only 768 dps for Laser Turrets, even with resists that's a huge difference in damage) and that prevents the Laser Turrets wasting time on them and they'll be able to kill the Spitters before they can Spit. A 1:3 ratio of gun to laser seems adequate. Of course pure Gun Turrets is also immune to taking damage, but consumes a lot of ammo.

If you want to save (even more) ammo mix in some Flame Turrets too - separated by 1 or 2 underground pipe lengths is fine - the Flame Turrets will do the bulk of the damaging and killing (getting probably 80-90% of the kills) by establishing brutally intense fire patches that melt Behemoth Spitters before they can even walk into spitting range (even a Tank will lose half its hitpoints driving through the firepatch, and the Tank has solid fire resists). The guns and lasers are only really for finishing off Behemoth Biters and for killing the initial attackers before the fire patches are setup.

Flamethrowers + Lasers (like triple row of lasers with Flamethrowers mixed in spaced about 1 underground length apart) also seems to be completely immune to being counter-attacked, because the Flamethrowers prevent the Lasers being overwhelmed by sheer numbers, altough it's a weaker immunity than that provided by Gun Turrets because it relies more on the enemies being consistently too dumb to spread out when attacking rather than a hard wall of bullets.

[JimBarracus]

I am curious if there is any kind of weapon (short of nuclear bombs) that can take out spitters before they get into range to cause damage. I am not a fan of nukes, even if in-game there is no pollution from the explosions.

behemoth spitters have a range of 16
gun turrets have a range of 18
laser turrets have a range of 24
flame thrower turrets have a range of 30

with 1.7 it is super easy to dodge the acid balls
I have armor with 3 personal laser turrets and I often just walk through the biter base and the lasers do all the work.
I dont even use the machine gun.
To snipe the large worms I use the normal rocket launcher.
The behemoth worms are nasty since they have a range of 48!
The big worm has a range of 38, the rocket launcher has a range of 36.

There are no regular weapons to outrange the big worm and the behemoth worm.
Only atomic bombs have a range of 66.
You can also use artillery to get rid of them safely.

[zOldBulldog]

I tried using flamethrower spaced at max underground pipe distance, lasers in between, and two additional rows of lasers behind that.

At 95% evolution they seem to stop them quickly and with minimal damage to defenses, even without dragon teeth. My consumption of repair packs is negligible now, even when my end-of-line Artillery outpost is demolishing massive nests and causes massive retaliation waves.