Factorio Forums

TL;DR: Although the range of spitters is less than the range of turrets, it is basically impossible to kill a spitter before it damages your turrets. Not only does this make the "your turret is being damaged" alert noise go off constantly, it also contradicts the purpose of having laser turrets in the first place.

Laser turrets exist to be the renewable-resource-using alternative to gun turrets; Energy is a renewable resource while ammunition is not. Spitters being able to shoot past walls takes the renewability away from laser turrets, replacing ammo with repair packs.

A common defense against spitters is to place walls in a way that keeps the turret out of the spitters' range but still has the spitter in the turrets' range. The problem with that design is that the turrets wouldn't be able to kill a swarm of biters before the biters damaged the walls.

I don't have any idea how this issue could be addressed, but here are some ideas:
Walls that block spitter acid.
Laser turrets that shoot spitter acid out of the air.

belt to move the spitter out of range as it is aiming

The old rocketdefence/min map did that

Yeah using transport belts is a common solution to this problem. As the spitters step on the belts, they begin to move, and when they try to spit, the belt pushes them out of range, forcing them to move again before they can get their acid off. The lasers then kill them before they have a chance to spit.

ratchetfreak wrote:belt to move the spitter out of range as it is aiming

The old rocketdefence/min map did that

Wouldn't the biters/spitters just destroy the belts?

Edit: the wiki doesn't say the range of spitters... what is it?

HarryNews wrote: Edit: the wiki doesn't say the range of spitters... what is it?

15 tiles for all spitters according to enemies.lua

HarryNews wrote:

ratchetfreak wrote:belt to move the spitter out of range as it is aiming

The old rocketdefence/min map did that

Wouldn't the biters/spitters just destroy the belts?

nope they focus on the turrets first

Land mines work for this. They do cost quite a bit to maintain, though, if you have large fields of them.

I'm doing this in my latest map. I use only gun turrets and mines to defend my walls, and I only rarely got red alerts up until Behemoth evolution... they kinda don't care that much about your defenses, and pretty much always will get a hit or two in

HarryNews wrote:Laser turrets exist to be the renewable-resource-using alternative to gun turrets; Energy is a renewable resource while ammunition is not. Spitters being able to shoot past walls takes the renewability away from laser turrets, replacing ammo with repair packs.

Nope, the braindead total defenses were never part of design. The idea behind repair packs is exactly that: add some upkeep cost.
Gun turrets placed one step behind the laser one seem to drastically reduce the lifetime of biters and allow laser turrets to fire at spitters sooner.
However if you want free impenetrable defenses, you'd indeed have to circle your bases with conveyor belts. Attacking biters will ignore docile structures as long as they don't block their way.

edit: Oh it's suggestion board. Then indeed more diverse combat might be interesting. Shooting down projectiles for example, might be interesting.

Necropost but this is still a problem years later. Or it might be a new problem.

I setup an open wall defense, several layers of wall with openings so that the walls act as dragon teeth, slowing down but not stopping the attackers. Many videos and discussions indicate that they ignore the wall but the extra time bought by the slowdown lets you kill them with only minor damage to the walls.

It worked fine for a while... until I got a wave of large biters that just parked itself at max range from the wall (and out of range of all of my weapons) and started attacking the wall. I had to get in my tank and kill them by hand... annoying.

I scoured the internet but I can find no explanation or solution to this new spitter problem.

Any hints?

zOldBulldog wrote: ↑

Sun Mar 12, 2023 1:46 pm

parked itself at max range from the wall (and out of range of all of my weapons) and started attacking the wall. I had to get in my tank and kill them by hand

Flamethrower turrets have 14 tiles further range than the biggest spitter, so if you place the turret within the 14 tiles behind the beginning of your wall the spitters cannot attack anything without getting killed.