Rough weekend

[Nich]

So this has been an interesting weekend. I finally got a blue science pod factory set up to my liking. Took about 5 ties to get everything the way I wanted it and while doing so I saw some ways to improve my green pod factory.

I attempted to clear out the creatures in my pollution cloud so that I would stop getting attacked. By the time I did the circle they were already re-spawning. Oh well collected about 400 alien artifacts and unlocked the Missile silo. I also created a personal Robot port but I can not for the life of me figure out how to use this. I cant equip it as armor or a weapon, I cant drop it on the ground, and if I leave it in my inventory and deploy robots they do not do anything. I also created a personal shield but it appears to do nothing.

Life also taught me a lesson the other day. It may be a good idea to have multiple sources for your power plant. In addition having backup power for your coal production facilities may not be a bad idea either. So here is the story and be warned it is long and painful.

I finally unlocked the Missile silo and noticed my local Iron and oil reserves were pretty depleted. I check out the map and Find a nice location between iron, copper, and oil. On the way up I clear a pretty good swath of land leaving turrets on the edges so I can retain my land as creatures never seem to spawn in my base. I set up my mining/smelting operation and dump those into steal chests. Three quarters the way through setting up my drilling operation I get a warning from my power plant that the turrets are firing. Ok that fine. I finish setting up my drilling operation and the power plant is still saying it is taking damage. Well fine I should probably head down there. Sure enough when I get down there a mob of creatures had devastated my defenses and are eating their way through my boilers and steam engines. It was probably for the best that the power planted tanked while I killed I doubt I would have survived. So I start rebuild but while I am in the middle of that I get a damage notification from my production district. I hurry up and finish the power plant and head down to my production area picking up some turrets on the way. Sure enough they had managed to sneak through a tiny gap between 2 very well protected turret camps. The destruction was just short of devastation. 8 out of my 12 level 3 assemblers destroyed, 3 electric furnaces with 2 , level 2 efficiency modules and a couple research labs plus all the extras. So at this point I am crying a little on the inside. While in the middle of repairing I get a notification that my new base is under attack. That is fine I spared no expense and it had a boat load of laser turrets all around it..............

And then it happens...... Flicker, Flicker.... I get momentary blackouts as the lasers fire. Whew.... power came back on. But then again flicker, flicker, flicker, flicker.............DEAD. OH HELL NO!!!!! WHAT HAPPENED!?!?!?!?!?! Remember the second base only has laser turrets. I run up to the power plant and sure enough all the boilers are out of fuel. The belt to the boilers..... EMPTY..... I run back to the coal production and.... YEP!!!!!! The devastating second attack had taken out the power to the coal production area. YOU HAVE GOT TO BE F***ING kidding me!!!!!!! SO I sprint through my base grabbing every machine gun turret I can find and head back to my new base. Running from base to base I almost ran into the biggest nest I have ever seen. It had at least 7 spawners if not 8. Now I had just cleared this area an hour ago and there was a ton of turrets surrounding the entire area but this is an entirely different frustration. How I managed not to agro the nest is beyond me. I run around and finally make it up to my new base to find the biggest creature I have ever seen chewing on my electric furnaces. SURE could not have picked a better time to evolve GGGHHHHHAAA!!!!!!! So all said and done 90% of my new base was destroyed. At this point I am nearing a mental brake down. I zone out for 2-3 minutes and ask my self am I even enjoying playing this game. And then I see it...............7 steal chests full of copper, iron, and steal. I look off screen and YEP oil storage all there and fine I set the turrets around my chests and head back to main base. Brake out the coal powered mining drills I happened to have on me. Mine 1 coal by hand and jump start the coal processing. Farm up 200 coal and manually truck it over to the power plant.

I at this point the adrenaline was starting to wear off. I can believe I survived that.

[Nubm2]

Sounds pretty rough indeed. Just build some walls around your base and your turrets. :p
Oh, and 8 Spawners is nothing. Give 'em some time and you run into nests that fill out the entire screen, max zoom out.

Btw, you can insert the personal roboport into a modular armor, or the power armor (right click on it to open the armor inventory). Also its good to use accumulators if you wanna fire yo laz0r turrets. Solar plants are nice to help with the recharge (which consumes a lot of energy, but only if you have it - otherwise they won't recharge).

Hope your base gets well soon!

[Deadly-Bagel]

For a first game while you come to grips with all the science, weapons, armour and armour modules, recipes, buildings, etc I recommend setting resources to high, at least two out of three settings (Size, Richness, Frequency) for Iron, Copper and Oil. This will let you focus on your base itself rather than having to worry about defending remote outposts and the logistics of transporting their goods to your base, and you won't have to deal with biters so much.

Once you're more confident in setting up defences and you have your little tricks for the likes of reserve power and backup defences, also you've worked out Power Armour and which weapons are good (Combat Shotgun, Flamethrower) and which aren't (everything else), then you'll have an easier time trying to get into the more spread out bases.

Unless you like being thrown in the deep end, in which case carry on =P

[Nich]

Thanks for the tip on the armor. I played around with 1 fusion reactor, 3 laser defenses, 2 MK2 shields, a battery, and a personal robot port(stocked with plenty of repair kits). Holy hell I feel like I have just discovered GOD MODE. I got my rocket parts up and running yesterday. It went pretty uneventful. Tonight I want to get turret and wall factories up and running and really secure my boarders

[Nubm2]

The personal lazer defense is not very useful later on. You can try 2 fusion reactors, 2 robo ports, 4 Exoskeleton (which let you outrun critters while firing and moving backwards) and moar shields. Combat shotgun with upgrades, cluster grenades are awesome for huge nests and clusters of big worms (I use 2 cluster grenade assembling machines and 7 grenade machines to feed them). Get enough fishies and you will need combat robotics sooner or later, therefore researching robot follower count is important (at least 40 if you want to deal with big stuff later on).

Here is a simple build for producing destroyer capsules that works kinda well for me. Its at the end of my raw resource chain, so it will only produce stuff after everything else is saturated. If you wanna feed the steel from the iron i recommend 7 electric furnaces (as a note, i run everything with energy reduction, you can reduce buildings by putting in different modules of course).



Good luck out there, don't get eaten! o/

[Deadly-Bagel]

Personally I use three Fusion Reactors, two Exoskeletons, five Roboports and four Shields in the MK2 armour. All the offensive stuff is just nonsense, though this is more a utility set as I find two Exos is fine for running around, but any more and it becomes difficult to navigate pipes or pick up from one side of a belt. I don't have trouble with biters as long as I'm not too reckless and a few Destroyer capsules just obliterate everything anyway.

[Nich]

Ya Beat the game. I cant wait for the second attempt. Hopefully try for the 8 hour accomplishment. Unfortunately Imgur is down so I can post pics

Important stats
51 hours 23 minutes
Killed 10k smalles
Killed 7k medium
Killed 3k Big

I must not have triggered behemioths :/ I can only Imagine how bad they are.

How was that for a first attempt? I hope to get the next one down to 15-20 hours (fingers crossed)