Factorio Forums

I made this thread to post my defense against the spitters and for you wonderful people to show your ways to deal with the enemies.

*NOTE: I buffed the enemies on the world gen. to stress test my set up, and to play dangerously

Initially I started my research by finding the range of Spitters, because they always overwhelm my turret set ups.
Each circle represents were spitter bodies were found in an attempt to map out range.
The last circle is where I found the range of the spitters.
Purpose of experiment: To find a place where turrets out-range spitters.
The success!

A circle with a radius of 15 does the trick.
This is the final and refined result of my research.

Each side has a bait turret to draw the attention towards the deadly cookie. (They may not be necessary depending on where you have the defense cookie)
With a roboport nearby to repair the walls or replace any overwhelmed bait turrets after each attack.
Ready to fight any overwhelming attack.

The idea of such name "defense cookie" makes me smile great job! )))))) i think we gotta come up with a defensive glass of milk next to it.

Regarding ways of defending - i find no challenge to defend the base in vanilla game. With just turrets+walls+belts there simply should be enough turrets and a roboport to repair walls. But i never played much on high biter settings.

What if, instead of walls, you placed transport belts at the spitters' max range?
My thinking is that the spitter stops to attack and if the transport belt moves it out of range before it can finish its attack, it never gets to attack.
Has anyone tried this?

i think the tick(time) that the spitters' attack the attack is goning to hits.
i have kill all the spitters my Laser turret packing-down a spitters is spiting/attack.

This is a good strategy actually. I have used this in a Dytech play through and it works quite well because laser turrets barely out range spitters. So if you put a secondary wall at the edge of the turret's range, it can shoot the spitter and the only thing the spitter can hit is the wall.
Another option could be to have transport builts actually pulling the spitters in to make sure the turrets can hit them. I like the wall idea better though. :p

So with a range of 15, the spitter will need to occupy a wall space in the left side schematic in order to attack the turret.

My Hypothesis is that, based on how the spitters attack the player, the spitter will stop at the max range and initiate an attack animation. If the spitter's target is out of range by the end of it's animation, the spitter will not complete the attack, but will move to reenter its range. The right side schematic shows a test layout using transport belts at the spitters' max range that should move the spitter out of range before it can complete its' attack animation. I will update once I've had a chance to implement this.

DerivePi wrote: My Hypothesis is that, based on how the spitters attack the player, the spitter will stop at the max range and initiate an attack animation. If the spitter's target is out of range by the end of it's animation, the spitter will not complete the attack, but will move to reenter its range.

They initiate attack as soon as they are in range, and the attack always completes and always hits. Even if they get pushed out of range, the attack still hits. Projectiles in this game have a 100% accuracy and never time out, and will literally chase you infinitely if you can outrun it.

This video at about 10:30 in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiSKlsQ7SVo

Spitters try to engage but the tank moves out of range and spitters do not get an attack off.

Point taken. I've tested the belt thing and it didn't work. It has been a while since I've tested it, before the update where they nerfed spitter range. Would you mind testing it to to see if it works? It may be coded differently when the target moves vs the attacker moving.

i run this setup with conveyors pointed back. I place around 3 to 4 conveyors in a row depending on the angle that they attack my wall. The start of them is around 12 spaces to the wall out...

So the wall cross section looks like this

LWW>>123456789>>>>

L = laser
W = wall
# = empty space (1-0)
> = conveyor pointed away from wall

I almost never take any damage to my wall or lasers with this setup.

Just started to do my own set ups and so far I am still on the process on defining my strategies to be able to achieve the good results and might probably encounter less problems.