Small Pumps + How to kill the "zergs" + Alientech

[darkminaz]

Hi
I just started the game 3 days ago and according to my save file more then 19 hours are spent on my little base. Worth it

But on the long run i found a few questions that i coudn't realy find a propper answer to.
1. Whats the point of the small pumps? i dind find some threads where some posted a nice layout where they included the pumps but as far as i can tell my water + oil tanks almost never run out.
I tried making a pipe around my base, still no problems^^ do i miss something or is that for a future patch when water pressure drops at some point?
2. why do the "builder bots" sometimes stop building my stuff? "you are missing xy .. after around 5-10minutes they just stop building it. Is that a bug or intended? works fine if i got the materials in the box already.
3. how can i kill those alien zerg whatever guys? i play on "don't attack me" mode since i hate it when someone destorys my stuff. But everytime i go out with my armor, rocket launcher and the 2 drones of death .. well i kinda instant die. i tried to build a tower wall till the base but somehow i still got killed ;/ is there a trick i'm missing? i kinda need the alientech to research the rest now.

p.s. is there a way to make a picture of my entire base? kinda to big when i scroll out for everything.
p.s.s all hail the bot network
http://i.imgur.com/qyh1eWt.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/L83mzPy.jpg

edit: oh and can i somehow destroy things that just keep filling my inventory? other then putting it in a box and pretending it's gone?

[Zequez]

1. Small pumps force the liquid into one direction. For example, if you want to transfer oil from one tank to other, you would put a small pump between the tanks. In my personal experience distance doesn't seem to be a problem when building a big oil network, no need for small pumps there.

2. Yes, AFAIK it's intended, after a while the "ghost buildings" disappear if they are not built. I'm not sure if the time can be tweaked somehow.

3. It's pretty difficult to attack a base head on, unless it's a small base. Turret creep, the maneuver to build laser turrets every time closer to their base, it's a popular one. You can use a roboport and construction robots to make the process safer.

Another technique that I discovered recently is instead of tower creeping all the way to the biters base, you build a well fortified base of turrets near many creeper nests, and then you go with a car and a shotgun. While on the car you can shot down the nests in a few shots, and the biters won't be able to catch you. If there are worms, you can kill them with a few poison capsules and then come back to shoot the nests. Then to kill the biters just fall back to your turret base.

[darkminaz]

so the pumps are rather useless to me.

2. aw .. i love to setup a perfect blueprint and just let the factories create the stuff slowly -> bots get it and build. Feels like "i'm tha bawz" rather then "i gotta do work"

3. well all the bases are quite damn big, around 40% of my base (and that takes me around 2minutes just to walk from east to west)
ill try towerwalling myself in as soon as i get 6k batteries then i guess. tried it with just a few towers and had real effect. If 20 towers don't do shit, might just try it with 1000 (worked for my bot army, with 1888 workbots it's quite relaxing)

I don't realy like the car, got me like 20meter till i crashed in my lab .. ^^

p.s. is there a way to get rid of resouces like coal? i got 34k currently and aside for plastic i don't see any real need for it

[ghosrath]

To get rid of unneeded stuff you can simply put it in a wooden chest and shoot it

[Calico]

3. how can i kill those alien zerg whatever guys? i play on "don't attack me" mode since i hate it when someone destorys my stuff. But everytime i go out with my armor, rocket launcher and the 2 drones of death .. well i kinda instant die. i tried to build a tower wall till the base but somehow i still got killed ;/ is there a trick i'm missing? i kinda need the alientech to research the rest now.

Although Tower creep is a "legit" strategy for now, you shouldn't get to comfortable to use it. It will be likely removed later game (something like 0.12 when combat is redone). A favorite other strategy is to build lots of Distractor Bots. They have a decent damage output and can be thrown from a long distance. Throw a few from max distance when you get close to the spawners, it will draw aggro from most enemies around. Keep moving in a spiral dropping more and sliglhty moving closer to the nest. Keep throwing and once you get close enough, use your combatshotgun/rocketlauncher and put even more damage onto the nests.

Depending on your research and equipment, add a power armor and AP ammo. Equip Power Armor with atleast one Exo-Skeleton and some shields in case you draw fire from bigger worms. Or use multiple Exos and just run away if you get to much aggro. You should be fast enough to outrun most biters... if some of the faster, smaller ones attack you while retreating make a few shots with your shotgun to get rid of them. OFC you can also use Defender bots as a low dmg shield against those. Or even Destroyer Bots that will likely eat through most biters before they even get in range.

[darkminaz]

the bots didn't do mutch, the only one that works is the one you get after you have alien power .. -.-

so i went with the "this is spartaa" mode, build a wall, run in the base -> shoot 1 zerg house -> run back
now with the power armor etc it's quite easy. I still need towers though, enemy bases are so damn big^^
e: the around 500 repair bots fix the rest i'm currently at the place where i got waaay to mutch of everything anyway. 100k iron and 90k chopper .. yayz


waaaiiit i can have more then 1 exo scelet? ... bye autoturrets

e2: with 4 exo scel i can simply run in the base and start killing stuff bevore they even aggro it's down .. thanks man shit thats way more fun this way^^

<3

[Calico]

yep, thats a decent loadout for the power armor. I wouldn't count out bots, Distractors or even better destroyers can add a LOAD of damage. The good thing about Distractors is: They don't count against your bot limit. you can simply take like 50 of them, run around the base while shotgunning and throwing Distractors all over the place rapidly. 50 Distractor capsules are 150 tiny stationary laser turrets. Try to aim them on top of the nests, biters won't be able to reach them. You can also add some poison and slowdown capsules if you like, making it very easy to clear out even 15 spawners+ a dozen worms in a single run.

[darkminaz]

hmm i'm quite fine with just running away from them (after 1 round -> go staight to the enemy camp and kill some houses -> run again) and in the end run in my towerwall and let the 200+ mobs die off in a single spot
got around 300+ lasers there. (5.4 GJ energy storage takes care of most of the issues)

just saw why my bots don't do dmg, kinda forgott to research them propperly.

ill try out the bots later, currently i still have to research the destoryer dude. i allways loved towers in strategy games though. (build a wall, create nukes, see your friends get pissed off )

[Calico]

Tower creeping is a common tactic, nothing wrong with it (until the tainted land comes into play preventing this tactic). We likely will have loads of more tools to deal with biters in the future (TANKS). Right now you can either Tower creep or build yourself one of those shiny powerarmours and shoot and and bot your way through any alienbase, as log you have the ammo to back it up (and some research done ofc). I just feel that the later is the better alternative, making you a bit more mobile and faster compared to towercreep. But, thats personal preference.

Glad you're seem to have overcome your problems about killing our unfriendly neighbours.

[darkminaz]

well unfriendly is the wrong word, they were nice, but i wanted to build a train .. something about driving around my 30+ hours of work just made me happy ^^
hope they add some more stuff in the next patches.
Since i basicly got everything that i need and with 130k iron bars, 120k chopper bars (not counting the almost endless iron pile) 3000 robots, 600 turrets .. i kinda miss some kind of goal.
i even put modules in everything.
Airplanes would be nice, as a form of long range base.

p.s. finally found a use for the pumps, for some reason my water ran the wrong way into the boiler setup (did go in rounds)

[Calico]

I wouldn't expect a lot in the next few updates content wise. While there is still some work done on graphics and even some new stuff, 2/3 or even 3/4 of the Devs power go into multiplayer atm.

While i agree that we could use more endgame goals (besides the Missile Defense), we have to make do with what we have. If you are bored with your current save, make a new one. Generate higher difficulty freeplay, spread out the ressources more or even go all out and try F-MoD, Dytech, Treefarm. There is a great Modding Community out there, with loads of mods to test. I still wait on multiplayer, hoping for the end of the month for the very first experimental.

[darkminaz]

hmm i don't realy like multiplayer, when i imagine a friend of mine would start building in wierd ways (not nice block groups of stuff) .. uff
guess ill check out how mods work or more percise how to code mods for this game. adding some airplanes and stuff would be cool. (smells like napalm in the morning *hint* )