New Hope level 2 gives me quite some trouble

[Chruschtschow]

Hey,

I started the New Hope campaign right after the tutorial, since I considered this to be some "tutorial plus". I might be a little wrong. Right now New Hope 2 is giving me some nasty troubles. This text might have a few spoilers, since that's pretty much the gist of this thread, so be cautious if you haven't played the campaign yet. I won't put the whole thread in spoiler tags, cause that would be quite ridiculous...

Ok, first things were resources. Iron was a little tight, after I had automatised red and blue bottles, standard ammo and steel. But I got the train ready and running though not yet running automatically. That was my next goal, but then came the aliens. There was a sudden increase in alien activity, after I started mining in the northwest station. While there were only a few attacks prior to that, they are coming now wave after wave after wave. I already doubled my energy production thanks to sudden brownouts (yay, eight laser turrets in the mining station...), but that's not suffice, so maybe another set of ten steam engines. And far more defense towers. And more ammo production. Or I have to switch from laser to gun turrets. But then I hopefully can get the train automatised, since it will have to go back and forth all the time to carry around ammo and iron.

Is this mission intended to give new players such troubles? I did I do some terrible mistake? Is there some magic area effect weapon to punish those nasty bugs, burn their houses and eat their infants? (Mental note: have to try grenades.)

Cheers.

[EDIT]
Some suggestion about the mission text. On my first try, I started to produce all the stuff for the car trunk before I built the train and repaired the power lines and tracks. Not so good. Maybe it's just me not being a native speaker, but I thought I'd take the car for some prospector's work to set up a mining station. It was a nasty surprise, when iron was finally gone. Not enough stuff left...

[EDIT II]
Ok, lots of gun turrets, automatised ammo feed. NO LAZORS policy. That did the trick. And I found one nest without worms. One flank less.

[webkilla]

Looks like you solved a lot of your issues yourself

ya - gotta be careful with lasers: They can absolutely tank your power economy - and that can and will screw with your coal mining, which can kill your power production... and then no lasers

[Chruschtschow]

Indeed. The game rewards trial and error.

My issue were the lasers. They do a lot of damage on long range, but their rate of fire in those small numbers cannot compete with the gun turrets which fire faster and don't devastate my own economy.

Train automatisation worked out, too. I just needed a few big loops.

[BlakeMW]

This mission is funny playing with the knowledge and strategies gained from freeplay:

1) Repair the powerplant and collect the 3 laser turrets around it, laser turret rush the nearby nests, do this before starting mining.
2) Setup local iron mines and iron production and a basic belt assembler, build about 500 basic belts.
3) Bring power to remote copper mine (using simple power pole), laser nearby nests. Use basic belt to bring copper ore back to main factory and set up copper smelting.
4) Bring power to remote iron mine, laser nearby nests, use basic belt to bring iron ore back.

Using basic freeplay strategies it takes about 15 minutes to be where you would be after about two hours following the script

[Klydon]

I assume this is the third scenario? Sounds like it from the description with trains involved. The second scenario was fairly easy as it is in the corner of the map with few issues with bugs.

I have played most of one run through on a factory on the base game before discovering the campaign, so I am very much a noob at this game, even after watching some of the excellent videos, etc. My solution to map 3 was probably a bit unique.

After figuring out there was not even close to enough iron ore in the main camp, I did figure out where the other ore camp was. (Get in the car and follow the tracks). As others have noted, there is a large colony nearby.

I didn't attempt to get a train running, figuring the resource diversion would be rather intense and time consuming. What I did was scavenge poles going to the copper camp enough to get power going back up at the iron ore camp and also brought along new stone to repair the defensive walls. Basically, I got everything there running and filling up chests and the car. I would move stacks of ore to the car from other chests and take back a car full of ore along with my own inventory full of ore. Once back at my base camp, I used three actuators to clear the car out (much like a train car). I moved the ore in my inventory to the car to continue to unload. It took two trips to the iron camp and one trip to the copper plant.

The copper plant was a little different in that I didn't bother to run poles to get power back out there, but took solar panels, built up a good size wall, put in about 4 gun turrets just in case and then loaded the car up with copper ore.