https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvzZMemfSH0
The other day it came to me the wacky idea of ditching walls altogether in factorio and instead have patrolling spidertrons guarding the roads along with some other defences! I didn't use cliffs or water for protection and to make my life even more miserable i added artillery to the mix and gaps in the defences for the enemies to swarm at me! This is one of the early ingame tests i made, in the future i will try to improve it even more. Since all defences held i would call it a success, the sides need some rethinking though since i had a few losses of gun turrets occasionally. Faster spidertrons instead of defence oriented ones might work better as well. Drop your own ideas down in the comments!
Jump to 13:30 to skip the construction process.
Who needs walls anyway? This... is... Spart....Spidertron!
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linktothepast83
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NotRexButCaesar
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Re: Who needs walls anyway? This... is... Spart....Spidertron!
Interesting idea. It does seem a little to manual for me.
Ⅲ—Crevez, chiens, si vous n'étes pas contents!
Re: Who needs walls anyway? This... is... Spart....Spidertron!
Your concept is inventive but it also depends heavily on stationary defenses.
I tried to protect my base with automated tron patrols only against new biter nests. After manually clearing the defense area with trons, trons would loop fully automated on patrol routes continuously and terminate any new biter nests inside the defense area (defense area = size of larger than the pollution area). This way I would get rid of stationary defenses including walls altogether.
It turned out to be not practical.
To automate it, it needs a looping patrol mode. There is a mod which adds this to the game. It even accounts for the need to repair the trons and refill ammo.
But the problems were these:
1. I needed to set up a lot of patrol loops or one very long one.
2. With high evolution, a tron, running in a straight line and not running in short zig-zag lines, always is at risk to get destroyed by behemoth worms. As spitting enemies always lead the target, speed does not change that.
3. Fast trons might receive fewer hits, when running through a nest, but also land fewer hits. If it is a big nest, they might not be enough to destroy it. Also it might draw a biter defense squad chasing it to more populated but undefended areas.
4. If a tron gets destroyed, I would need to know/remember which patrol loop it was on and recreate that loop with a new tron.
5. When the defense area changes, the patrol routes have to be changed.
6. Once I am so rich, that I pay for trons out of my pocket money, the base including all the mining outposts is so hughe that (1), (4) and (5) are enormous, time consuming and boring tasks.
So I personally shelfed that approach.
Currently I go with fully automated artillery outposts. They can be blueprinted and plopped down everywhere, meaning that also the setup and the rebuilding in case of destruction is almost fully automated. They are visited by supply trains if necessary and arty trains periodically. The arty trains destroy all new nests within range and draw any attacks to the outpost. To automate it more, I use a mod that makes the automatic attack range of artillery equal to the manual attack range. The outposts are defended by flamethrowers and of course have walls around them. So I didn't get rid of the stationary defenses and walls, but I got rid of the one big wall around everything. Building of which always needs specific addaptions and thus is more time consuming than plopping down independent spots for defense and destruction of nests.
I tried to protect my base with automated tron patrols only against new biter nests. After manually clearing the defense area with trons, trons would loop fully automated on patrol routes continuously and terminate any new biter nests inside the defense area (defense area = size of larger than the pollution area). This way I would get rid of stationary defenses including walls altogether.
It turned out to be not practical.
To automate it, it needs a looping patrol mode. There is a mod which adds this to the game. It even accounts for the need to repair the trons and refill ammo.
But the problems were these:
1. I needed to set up a lot of patrol loops or one very long one.
2. With high evolution, a tron, running in a straight line and not running in short zig-zag lines, always is at risk to get destroyed by behemoth worms. As spitting enemies always lead the target, speed does not change that.
3. Fast trons might receive fewer hits, when running through a nest, but also land fewer hits. If it is a big nest, they might not be enough to destroy it. Also it might draw a biter defense squad chasing it to more populated but undefended areas.
4. If a tron gets destroyed, I would need to know/remember which patrol loop it was on and recreate that loop with a new tron.
5. When the defense area changes, the patrol routes have to be changed.
6. Once I am so rich, that I pay for trons out of my pocket money, the base including all the mining outposts is so hughe that (1), (4) and (5) are enormous, time consuming and boring tasks.
So I personally shelfed that approach.
Currently I go with fully automated artillery outposts. They can be blueprinted and plopped down everywhere, meaning that also the setup and the rebuilding in case of destruction is almost fully automated. They are visited by supply trains if necessary and arty trains periodically. The arty trains destroy all new nests within range and draw any attacks to the outpost. To automate it more, I use a mod that makes the automatic attack range of artillery equal to the manual attack range. The outposts are defended by flamethrowers and of course have walls around them. So I didn't get rid of the stationary defenses and walls, but I got rid of the one big wall around everything. Building of which always needs specific addaptions and thus is more time consuming than plopping down independent spots for defense and destruction of nests.
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linktothepast83
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Re: Who needs walls anyway? This... is... Spart....Spidertron!
Thanks for your input, you gave me a few good ideas for v2, that seems a lot better in every way! To be frank you even gave me ideas for a version 3 that would probably have different approach altogether! Probably later today i will post a version 2.Impatient wrote: ↑Mon Mar 15, 2021 4:43 am Your concept is inventive but it also depends heavily on stationary defenses.
I tried to protect my base with automated tron patrols only against new biter nests. After manually clearing the defense area with trons, trons would loop fully automated on patrol routes continuously and terminate any new biter nests inside the defense area (defense area = size of larger than the pollution area). This way I would get rid of stationary defenses including walls altogether.
It turned out to be not practical.
To automate it, it needs a looping patrol mode. There is a mod which adds this to the game. It even accounts for the need to repair the trons and refill ammo.
But the problems were these:
1. I needed to set up a lot of patrol loops or one very long one.
2. With high evolution, a tron, running in a straight line and not running in short zig-zag lines, always is at risk to get destroyed by behemoth worms. As spitting enemies always lead the target, speed does not change that.
3. Fast trons might receive fewer hits, when running through a nest, but also land fewer hits. If it is a big nest, they might not be enough to destroy it. Also it might draw a biter defense squad chasing it to more populated but undefended areas.
4. If a tron gets destroyed, I would need to know/remember which patrol loop it was on and recreate that loop with a new tron.
5. When the defense area changes, the patrol routes have to be changed.
6. Once I am so rich, that I pay for trons out of my pocket money, the base including all the mining outposts is so hughe that (1), (4) and (5) are enormous, time consuming and boring tasks.
So I personally shelfed that approach.
Currently I go with fully automated artillery outposts. They can be blueprinted and plopped down everywhere, meaning that also the setup and the rebuilding in case of destruction is almost fully automated. They are visited by supply trains if necessary and arty trains periodically. The arty trains destroy all new nests within range and draw any attacks to the outpost. To automate it more, I use a mod that makes the automatic attack range of artillery equal to the manual attack range. The outposts are defended by flamethrowers and of course have walls around them. So I didn't get rid of the stationary defenses and walls, but I got rid of the one big wall around everything. Building of which always needs specific addaptions and thus is more time consuming than plopping down independent spots for defense and destruction of nests.
Re: Who needs walls anyway? This... is... Spart....Spidertron!
great! I am curious about what you come up with. 
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linktothepast83
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Re: Who needs walls anyway? This... is... Spart....Spidertron!
Ok version 3 was so different that it would be a shame to not give it it's own space to shine. So "version 3" is up here, hope you like it:great! I am curious about what you come up with.
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=96988