Lots of biters - Enemy base - very high size and richness

[profano]

My first game was only with a few biters on very low richness in peacful mode, so I decided to start a new more challanging game with very high richness and size of enemy base and non-peaceful mode. I think starting the area was big oder medium size, not quick sure after almost 40 hours of gameplay. Had some realy hard time, with some hours of no iron production and the consideration to start a new game. But finally I managed it, and now it's more oder less safe.

This was when I almost run out of iron, I barely survived the incoming


For some reasons the biters sometimes don't seems to be interested in attacking and killing me...


And now, some hours later it looks like that...


That's my base, I couldn't expand it, due to the long war, and it's a bit messy... I realy have to clean up and optimize a bit. I try to use only solar power... have to expand the capacitors a bit more.


Thats the energy usage of the last hours, you care clearly see, when I had the fight... several hours with alomost no break, it was very exhausting.


Next plans are optimization of the mainbase and the expansion to south, I already made some preparations.


Or maybe I go east and look what's behind the desert... if you're interested write your comments and suggestion for further plans or tips. Any tips are welcome.

[GewaltSam]

I just noticed that I got trainstations called Henry T Woods and MorpheusXAUT on my last map too

Nice work so far btw! That picture with the gazillion biters looks scary

Edit: I can tell you what's beyond the desert btw. A LOT MORE BITERS! I don't know why humans would EVER consider moving there. "Hey, that planet over there covered in teeth and claws looks pretty nice! Let's settle there... Best thing would be to send just that one engineer guy in, what do you think?"
Either you really made yourself some pretty big enemies back home on Earth, or you really ARE the Master chief

[Magikaas]

I would love to know how you got that all set up before they overran you O_o I barely set up a small 'base' before I get overrun by the damn things and my games are on default.

I guess I am just too slow at building defenses, too focused on building production lines (and slow at that)

I have the same with RTS and TBS games xD I always forget to build an actual army until it's too late!

[Darthlawsuit]

That is pure insanity! I'm surrounded but nothing like that, how you managed to survive is amazing.

[roman566]

What did you use to clean that infestation?

[ChewyRedstone]

This actually looks like fun. I'm going to try something like this

[Artman40]

Nice job. It must have been tense to plan a timing push and then taking control of choke points. What opening did you use?

In my opinion, a good option is to grab the large copper expansion in the northwest. You seem to be close to getting it under control.

[profano]

Here is a picture at 17 h of gameplay.. you can still see the first defence wall and the second. At this time I tried to expand my area by adding these blocks, which you can see in the south and southwest and kill the biter nests, but it really takes to much time to build and later demolish the walls, so i changed my strategy when i had more energy. I will show this strategy in the next post, maybe I make a little video.

d6f77161204d1d088ade81d0899acccc.jpg (359.37 KiB) Viewed 12929 times

The game is now at about 50 h of gameplay. Now I kill these nests without these wall tactics, I only build electric poles and lots of laser turrets to kill the biters, then go in and kill the biter nests with a combat shotgun.
I also expand my energy source to 1.3k solar panels and 1.6k accumulators with total 8.2GJ energy capacity.

Factorio 2014-05-29 23-07-35-59.jpg (388 KiB) Viewed 12929 times

[Artman40]

Wow! You've indeed cleared a lot and there are resources for hours for you to take! How many resources are you currently getting per minute?

[profano]

Here is, the announced short video of my latest tactic for killing the biter nests. I don't use any laser turrets, only some poison capsules and destroyer capsule for the biters and a combat shotgun to kill the nests. It's important that you are faster than the biters, so you need the basic exoskeleton equipment. I use 3 of them with 2 fusion reactors and 4 energy shields mk4 in my power armor mk2.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyGS9rCVaiw

I also rebuild my base a bit.. i extend my train station and the smelting factory. I use fast inserter and active provider chests to unload the train and storage chest to store temporily and requester to bring the stuff into the factory network.

Factorio 2014-06-04 23-14-34-34-small.jpg (279.73 KiB) Viewed 12477 times

I'm using a 2 line train system for the expansion.

Factorio 2014-06-04 22-55-50-92.jpg (366.74 KiB) Viewed 12477 times

[Artman40]

You're doing great! Is your long-term plan to get to the other side of the coast of where your main factory is located?

[OBAMA MCLAMA]

can i see your research facility?

[ysor123]

I had a normal game with everything researched and MK2 Power armor and you could barely destroy one of those big spots. One of those spots spawned tons of large biters.

There is some sort of a bug, when the amount of biters reach a certain level: they stop follow or move.

Maybe:

1. this setup is way to luck based. If any of materials are out of your spawn point, which sometimes happen - your dead
2. Maybe the bug with biters not being able to attack anymore makes it possible to clear them. Otherwise I can't imagine how to clear them, before getting far in research. I can imagine you experienced this bug more often at this scale of spawn rate, which helped you to survive and clear some hives. I'm not sure.

[profano]

can i see your research facility?

I use 8 Labs with no upgrades, two labs for red science pack, one lab for green with +300%, and two for blue. I'm researching follower robot count 19. Now i can have up to 114 robots.

Factorio 2014-06-07 13-44-34-45.jpg (632.73 KiB) Viewed 9927 times

I had a normal game with everything researched and MK2 Power armor and you could barely destroy one of those big spots. One of those spots spawned tons of large biters.

There is some sort of a bug, when the amount of biters reach a certain level: they stop follow or move.

Maybe:

1. this setup is way to luck based. If any of materials are out of your spawn point, which sometimes happen - your dead
2. Maybe the bug with biters not being able to attack anymore makes it possible to clear them. Otherwise I can't imagine how to clear them, before getting far in research. I can imagine you experienced this bug more often at this scale of spawn rate, which helped you to survive and clear some hives. I'm not sure.

I observed the same thing. With my settings I also found no biter nests with wurms, I only had spawners and biters. At the beginning, before getting far in research I had to use a different tactic... I extent my base only with turrents and could kill these nests (see previous posts). I used about 50 turrets or more to get not killed, some times they overrun me, some times not. But I also think that this is some kind of bug.

Here are some stats, so you can see no wurms, which is very strange.

Factorio 2014-06-07 13-58-44-92.jpg (51.18 KiB) Viewed 9927 times

[ysor123]

Worms tend to only spawn in small hives. I think this is the reason. I'v never seen a large hive having worms. And when you pick "amount: very height" this means how many spawners per base are generated. If you always have many, then worms can never spawn. Just an assumption.

[profano]

Now with patch 0.10.0, worms also spawn in extra big hives.

Factorio 2014-06-10 17-40-45-70.jpg (565.51 KiB) Viewed 9843 times

But in my opinion it's now much easier to grin and kill these hives. The biters are now much stupid, and can't find the way. I cleared in the last few hours almost as much as in the 50 hours before. I also made a little trip in the east and south. Killing the hives takes much less time, then building the infrastructure to prevent hives spawn again. If someone is interested in multiplayer games, when the patch is out, i would like to play together.

I also notice some lack of iron, got over 220k copper ore, and 200k copper plate, but only 210k iron plates and 12k iron ore. Maybe I should start with one level more on iron than copper the next time.

Factorio 2014-06-10 19-25-13-70.jpg (293.84 KiB) Viewed 9843 times

[Artman40]

Great job! Have you also further optimized the factory?

[Hivesicle]

Damn, my pc couldnt handle that amount of entities xD you should try this with out using solar panels

[Xterminator]

Jesus mother of god... I would survive about 10 minutes on a setup like this.. O.o I might try it just for fun though! So wait, did they like mess up or nerf biter pathing in the 0.10 update?

[CreeperDaReeper]

Hey profono, I got a challenge for ya!

Hole In The Wall - Fight Through A Squall