Factorio Forums

it'd be good if you could increase the rate at which biters will attack any pipes/power/rail/belts/etc they run across. making them sensitive to EMF or fluid noises in pipes might be explainable and a good setting (seek out power poles and pipes from a distance)

this would be a good deathworld setting to max this out. it would also make things like barrels more useful in the game. They're not very useful as per the general discussion. viewtopic.php?f=5&t=91849

Yeah, make it a setting and hardcode it none.

Biters never intentionally target pipes and poles, and should almost never attack rail tracks. They only target poulluters from a far and player and military building on sight.

The only time they attack other things is when they are close to target and when their path is blocked.

Among other things, it means that dramatically increasing attacks on pipes and poles would be very easy without needing smarter or more perceptive biters.

I'm pretty sure this is by design, to make outposting much less frustrating. Much like the game gives you option to survive without having to full wall your base, it gives you option to survive without full walling your tracks (which can be ludicrously expensive for your first few outpost on railworldish setting).

I have no opinion as to whether such an option should make it into the base game, but you should definitely checkout:
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Rampant
if you don't know it already.

It makes biters smarter and allows them (configurable) to attack pipes, poles and rails.

Having tried the mod, if you let attack rails on, I highly recommand using it in combination with mods such as AAI to remotely control vehicle to send convoys to outpost without having to drive vehicles one at a time yourself, and without having to full wall even your first train track.

Lemme tell you a story from the long forgotten past. . .
Usually if you get quite too lazy in the death world (or waay too moded to care) you still have the defence strategy known as the rail creep.

The turrets have the range. The Worm-turrets (aka WORMZ) have a greater range with overstacked evo.
In reality it may be _way_ bigger then your comfortable worm-range You are used to. (Almost the same thing counts up for all ZOO keepers as well).

So what do you do? Allow me to introduce you to the RAILS.
Well you see, the map (the nauvis surface you dwell on) is separated into chunks. And if theres no pollution source, no movement obstruction and no hostility in place then bitters skip the chunk as a whole lone deserted wasteland it belongs to. And since rails neither bite nor stink... They would usually be ignored.
What it allows us to do? get a stripe (or checkers if visually appealing) pattern all over from the first "wasteland" chunk to the distance you are comfortable for zergs to settle at.

Simply put you can't settle on rails. But since we need the dessipation rate to be greater than 0 we place every second stripe or every second "checker" of rails leaving small 2x2 spaces (lines) that are not suitable for new roomz and homez.

So when you see a barcoded map and wonder why so many rails are here and there you should know the engineer ate too much cheese that day and is lazying around casually in his own dead world.

Be aware though that landmines-rails-arty-(nades) are all OP but each is incompatible with each other. (given from most op to least op but still op). Rails however do NOT burn with fire (same as walls). Albeit fire makes pollution which becomes a tricky land...

And as for the meta - you won't see rails since we have the cheap mines with a stun bonus. (you can even clean green nests if you have enough of exos) So belts with hundreds of thousands mines in stock outposts is quite a more common sight with nowadays cheesing.