Good solution for biters attacking power poles along railway?

[mike6811]

i have a very annoying problem with the biters always eating my big power poles along the railway.
This happens very regularly when they start an attack in bulk, then 1 biter get stuck by a power pole, he starts attacking it until its gone - and it doesn't matter if the way is free 1-2 seconds later, when he starts attacking it he will stay and attack it until the end.

This is very annoying because no power pole leads to => no power in outpost => Laser guns not firing => outpost get's overrun by aliens.

Even when i immediately hop into a train to fix the pole problem, most of the time it's already too late then... (i'm playing railworld and my outposts can be very far away - and i'm also not here to manually fix pole problems all the time...)

How do you guys handle this problem?

Sure, there are always solutions like independent power supply for all outposts or massive guns & walls along the railway but all of this sounds very impractical for me. Isn't there a good solution for this problem?

[Hannu]

Real defense is often impractical and most trivial solutions, like building simple power lines through enemy territory, does on work. In my opinion it is problem of the game and lazy programming that masses of biters run straight to nearest turret and do no have any intention to hit weak points.

There are few solutions, form which you mentioned two. I clear large area and try to enclose whole area with defense lines and I use natural barriers (especially lakes) when possible. At midgame, when border guarding is not complete, I use gun turrets at outposts (and also at late game, lasers are too simple to be interesting). It is annoying to be distracted but on the other hand it keeps the game interesting. It forces player to make decisions, to play safe and use much resources to good defenses or to take a risk and save work. If I make independent outposts I use solar cells without accumulators as a power source. Accumulators increase costs significantly but give quite small percentage extra production because day cycle is asymmetric.

[BlueTemplar]

Redundant power poles. So several would have to be destroyed for the grid to go down.
(Increase according to biter presence and/or previous attacks => power issues.)

[dood]

I'll never understand why people feel the need to run trains through unguarded territory.
In the new 1.7 game I made, I set the resource frequency to lowest and it's more brutally far apart than it has ever been yet I still had more than enough to box everything I need in with gun turrets and a hugely long belt full of ammunition supplying them, then mass produce laser turrets and at that point expanding your defenses is trivial.

[BlueTemplar]

You seem to be assuming that we're talking about vanilla & default biter settings only ?

In my (only RSO !) 0.16 DeathWorld game, I'm already at artillery, but still have a few chunks of undefended rail.
(Slightly older screenshot, and I did a tank pass there to clean it up a bit since then, but that middle rail is still undefended : )

map2.png (462.72 KiB) Viewed 4705 times

(Also, priorities...)

[BlueTemplar]

Also, I've noticed that I *really* only had issues with power going down in the situations where :
- I take the train.
- Biters follow the train I'm in (some power poles might get killed.)
- After I left, some biters might be standing on tracks, and when *those* get squished by automatic trains, some power poles might get killed again.

Otherwise it's generally not an issue !
(YMMV according to how your rail line / outpost / defenses are placed of course...)

[Dragonmaster0283]

Could also do what I tend to do in problem areas. I transport steam via train to my outposts and/or separate the outpost power from the main line.

[Mr. Tact]

If you are playing a rail world map shouldn't expansion be turned off? Or did you turn it on?

In 0.16 my big map I cleared and surrounded with walls and lasers an area almost as big as the area you can see from map mode fully zoomed out. That's how I avoided this problem. Obviously that took serious time and I did it in sections not all at once. But that is really the only permanent solution.

[Serenity]

If you are playing a rail world map shouldn't expansion be turned off? Or did you turn it on?

With the vastly improved terrain generation in 0.17 you can again create maps with large lakes/oceans and choke points. So you can wall off larger areas without having a gigantic perimeter wall

[mike6811]

OK, thanks for all the suggestions.
Clear and box all of the territory where my trains go would be a huge undertaking. i will need thousands and thousands of turrets and walls - just to protect my power poles...
the good thing is that it will be safe inside the borders.

to produce independent power on the outpost would be more "economic" and i could delete the power poles along the railways. maybe a small mini-reactor with 40MW in each outpost(?).
the disadvantage here is that the train still travel through enemy territory and if things go wrong and the train stops somewhere the chances are high that this train will get destroyed.

so, this are the options: first option: VERY expensive and huge undertaking for clear and box everything but it will be safe then. second option: a lot cheaper and less work but not 100% safe.
i tend to option one, but i will think a little bit more about it....

[mike6811]

If you are playing a rail world map shouldn't expansion be turned off? Or did you turn it on?

yes, i have turned that on.
i have no problem with the alien expansion - my outposts are prepared - just the railways to the outposts are a problem.

[Mr. Tact]

With the vastly improved terrain generation in 0.17 you can again create maps with large lakes/oceans and choke points. So you can wall off larger areas without having a gigantic perimeter wall

Actually, the map was originally generated in 0.15 -- and bodies of water played a significant part of planning my expansions. Even now I'd guess around 15-20% of my border is water...

[BlakeMW]

You really do have to just wall out the biters.

I've played A LOT of Deathworld, and am playing a 0.16 Deathworld. In the early game there aren't enough resources to wall out the biters and more importantly committing genocide will cause the evolution factor to blow out bringing Big Biters knocking much too early. So my usual solution is to just replace the power poles (from map power view it's easy to see where the breaks are). It can help to place some remote solar power, and to not rely overly much on laser turrets for remote outposts: Flame turrets are good, or use gun turrets.

From a "repair it" strategy, I later transition to defending the power poles with laser turrets: usually biter attacks are focused on particular poles so the defenses can be focused at those locations.

Once I no longer care about evolution factor - meaning I'm mass producing laser turrets - I start purging the lands of biters and walling them out.

Other tricks including not building power poles alongside rails: biters can get pissed off when a train runs a biter over and get more destructive, not placing the power poles near provocateurs can help to reduce the chance of them being destroyed (but it's not guaranteed, because even rocks fall victim to random biter aggression). The ultimate passive security for power poles is to use landfill to build them on small islands along a coast.

[sunnyskies]

Could also do what I tend to do in problem areas. I transport steam via train to my outposts and/or separate the outpost power from the main line.

Training over steam is an absolutely fascinating idea! I really want to try this now

[hitzu]

If you're not against mods then try Rampant. It will change biters behavior (harder than vanilla) and has options to make some objects like rails and large power poles indestructible and therefore not targetable by the AI.