[0.17.21] Enemies armor?

[zOldBulldog]

Is evolution much faster in 0.17, has the enemy armor been significantly buffed, and is pollution spreading much more?

Wanting to do some redesign of my early blueprints I did what I always do for such maps and I set it with maximum starting area and no expansion. Then I built my pre-bus/pre-rail base (run by one full size coal plant) 3x3 base. It came out nicely (after about 40 hours of work), but this is where I got a nasty surprise.

- I looked at pollution and noticed that it almost reached the enemies. So, before building anything more I made a tank, loaded it with Piercing Rounds and rocket fuel and went to clear nearby nests.

- And yikes! I expected the biters to be more aggressive (which is why I loaded with rocket fuel so that I could outrun them), but that was the least of it. They soaked up Piercing Rounds as if it was weaker than rubber bullets. I expended easily 400 rounds on the first nest.

Questions:

1) Are they are expected to be this hard-shelled in 0.17? Or is it a bug?

2) If they are expected to be this hard and Piercing Rounds are now worthless for the purpose, what kind of rounds should I load into the tank?

Thanks in advance for the answers.

[Koub]

Remember the tank machine gun lost its +100% damage buff ? so Tank mounted SMG has same damage as hand SMG.

[Edit] :
Source : https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-275
Balancing discussion : viewtopic.php?t=64174

[BlakeMW]

2) If they are expected to be this hard and Piercing Rounds are now worthless for the purpose, what kind of rounds should I load into the tank?

Explosive Cannon Shells tends to be best. Machine Gun is still pretty decent at mowing down spitters and destroying spawners. Against the biters it tends to be best to use Personal Laser Defense and/or Discharge Defense, you can also Flamethrower them but mostly you want to hit and run the nests while letting the biters chase you, getting whittled down by PLD and knocked back by Discharge Defense.

Damage upgrades are pretty important, the damage multipliers from upgrades get very high.

[Serenity]

The rocket launcher is also very good now with the range upgrade. You need something to kill the biters though and for that laser turrets are very nice.

With the tank I like using the cannon mostly on the worms and drive over the spawners. At least in smaller bases. In the large ones this won't really work

[zOldBulldog]

Remember the tank machine gun lost its +100% damage buff ? so Tank mounted SMG has same damage as hand SMG.

[Edit] :
Source : https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-275
Balancing discussion : viewtopic.php?t=64174

Thank you, but no I don't "remember"... as I had no idea that was the case

So, I guess that tank + Piercing ammo is no longer viable as a way for early clearing.

And since I got to build an ammo plant anyway for explosive ammo and it is only a small step further to go for the artillery... I might as well forget the tank and go straight to the rail-based outpost with lasers and artillery that I used to use in late game.

Bummer. I really used to enjoy that early clearing foray in the tank. But it is too much trouble to do it now.

[xfir01]

Explosive shells still work well, and as a intermediate product for artillery shells, it's not out of the way to make a plant for them.

[BlueTemplar]

Artillery a "small step" after Tank ?!?

[zOldBulldog]

Artillery a "small step" after Tank ?!?

After explosive ammo. Does not take much more to build it.

And yes, if you now need explosive ammo to take out those biters and nests... it is also a small step after tank

[BlueTemplar]

Explosive Cannon Shells have been unlocked by the Tank tech since at least 0.16.
It's almost the same recipe as regular cannon shells, just half the explosives (which is a pre-requisite tech for Tank).

You can get the Tank in mid game if you desire so, fairly shortly after automating Blue Science (350).
Artillery is an end-game tech, you need to climb the Blue Science tree, and then spend 2150 Yellow Science on it !!
(And also set up the artillery shell production line, which IIRC takes a whopping blue belt of iron ore for a single continuously firing turret...)

[zOldBulldog]

Explosive Cannon Shells have been unlocked by the Tank tech since at least 0.16.
It's almost the same recipe as regular cannon shells, just half the explosives (which is a pre-requisite tech for Tank).

You can get the Tank in mid game if you desire so, fairly shortly after automating Blue Science (350).
Artillery is an end-game tech, you need to climb the Blue Science tree, and then spend 2150 Yellow Science on it !!
(And also set up the artillery shell production line, which IIRC takes a whopping blue belt of iron ore for a single continuously firing turret...)

Meh, the way I play I have yellow science by the time I finish my 3x3 chunk early base. All just a few chunks from the starting deposits.

I don't even have a bus, rail or even a volume smelter at that point.

If I am lucky (and I did in my first 0.17 map) I might even have a uranium deposit and a lake to supply my nuclear power plant (currently being built by my bots while the initial uranium gets refined... the plan is to shutdown coal power and so reduce my pollution by 30%).

So -for me- there is very little difference between manufacturing explosive ammo and artillery shells. I just wasn't planning to build an ammo Depot before my first real production smelter. Oh well... the game changes and we must adapt

I am now making blueprints of my early 0.17 designs and will create the ammo Depot next. After that... Lasers and artillery at the end of my soon to be built train line should do quick work of those nests... buying me room for the next expansion. I am already stockpiling materials to load on the train

[Iggy_OG]

I'm still trying to sort out my new deathworld marathon game. Desert start--terrible amounts of cliffs and overlapping resource spawns. At any rate, the changes to weapon tech have made defending simply not fun. The enemy groups attacking are too long + there seems to be a range issue with the gun turrets now v spitters. I was watching combats and basically the gun turrets' last targets are spitters + spitters are flat out killing a turret or doing lots of damage per fight. Really really tedious situation.

I am pretty near laser turrets but big biters have just started and this is why I noticed this thread. I'm not sure the math on this--is it simply that gun turrets were slightly nerfed? I thought ballistic weaponry / gun turret upgrades were combined, but it feels their base damage v enemies are terrible now. I'm not sure if it's just better pathing / how the combat is resolving. But my best guess at the moment is to rush laser turrets and avoid trying to deal with a lot of gun turrets if you can help it. This may be a larger issue in deathworld marathon than it is in normal as the time component gets more dangerous enemies spawning sooner.

[zOldBulldog]

As some suggested I tried to use the tank with explosive ammo. I was able to push back a few nests to get a slight buffer between nests and my pollution cloud, but it was a pain.

Next game in addition to using No Expansion and maximum starter area I will dial down pollution and evolution. I really don't want to go completely peaceful, I want to find settings to make 0.17 similar to what 0.16 was. I positively hate the pile of manure that 0.17 defaults made the game become.

[BlakeMW]

I'm still trying to sort out my new deathworld marathon game. Desert start--terrible amounts of cliffs and overlapping resource spawns. At any rate, the changes to weapon tech have made defending simply not fun.

On Deathworld marathon you 100% want to rush Flamethrower Turrets. They are available much earlier than Laser Turrets both in terms of tech and recipe complexity, and do a far better job of cleaning up the massive hordes of attackers. Laser turrets are pretty weak without upgrades and you need a lot of them to deal with deathworld swarms, while a single un-upgraded flamethrower turret when combined with walls will destroy everything in its firing arc, regardless of how many attackers are coming and regardless of what evolution they are (okay, okay, you do need upgrades for Behemoths, but not for Bigs). The flamethrowers also sip "ammo" using such little oil you can't really notice it, while the lasers will need a substantial energy infrastructure and get wrecked if the power is cut.

On deathworld marathon my approach is to skip piercing ammo and bust my ass getting Flamethrowers literally ASAP (using a combination of hand crafting and ad-hoc setups to produce the required military science), that means I end up being somewhat overrun by mediums at the time Flamethrowers come online and I try to do as much hand combat as possible (as grenades are very, very good against smalls and mediums), but once Flamethrowers are researched I'm secure. Alternatively you can invest in Piercing Ammo which will do a much better job of slaying medium biters and then aren't under the same urgency to get Flamethrowers, though piercing ammo is a lot more expensive and any gun turret defense is strictly temporary as Fire is basically an order of magnitude better than bullets against massed attackers.

Note that with appropriate abuse of walls you can use a setup where Flamethrower Turrets do ALL of the killing, and the walls take very little damage per attack. The setup I use looks like this:



I do have Laser Turrets behind the Flamethrower Turrets in case there is a breach of the wall, but this basically never happens because the loose staggered grid of walls completely bewilders the biters (especially larger ones), I just run around once an hour or so so to repair any damaged walls or if I get a "thing destroyed" alert I run and patch it. As a side note, in the earlier game you can simply wall the spitters out of gun turret range, gun turrets have 2 more range than spitters, so there is a distance you can place a wall in front of a line of gun turrets, that allows the turrets to shoot the spitters but doesn't allow the spitters to shoot back, the wall will get pretty shredded by pissed off biters and spitters, but if you're clinging onto existence until Flamethrowers is researched it's pretty useful and you can then immediately use the wall to hold biters in place for the Flamethrower Turrets. Also before I've research Personal Roboport I just use solid walls and repair more frequently, because dragon teeth are a pain to place by hand.

[greep]

Yeah flamethrower turrets are so damaging I don't even use heavy oil, just straight crude. Buys me some extra time to get them online. Can always start a second ring when you expand which uses light oil.

That said, I usually can't fully finish my defenses until 0.45 evolution so I go for piercing rounds and walls. I didn't have to resort to walls before flamethrower turrets 0.17, but an enemy expansion sounds like it will just absolutely wreck you in this version, although I don't seem to have actually noticed any expansions??????

Anyways, the key thing about this version seems to be absolutely eliminating anything that even remotely touches your pollution cloud. Which means going straight for turrets immediately and focusing on killing any opposition asap. Probably something like turrets->automation->military->shut everything down and pump out ammo.

[BlueTemplar]

Yeah, I'm at mid-blue science now on DeathWorld Marathon, and the expansions are getting annoying - I'm spending a lot of time just driving around and killing the nests that pop up... I was laying mines with a token turret, but they always place a new nest in a slightly different spot !
I'm considering to make a big wall- probably a "train-defended" one considering the distances involved !

Not having the spawners touch my pollution cloud was my policy since I got stuck with Blue biters and no oil in Death World RSO in 0.16...

I'm still trying to sort out my new deathworld marathon game. Desert start--terrible amounts of cliffs and overlapping resource spawns. At any rate, the

Both should make defense easier?

changes to weapon tech have made defending simply not fun. [...] there seems to be a range issue with the gun turrets now v spitters. I was watching combats and basically the gun turrets' last targets are spitters + spitters are flat out killing a turret or doing lots of damage per fight. Really really tedious situation.

AFAIK, this has been happening since at least 0.16...
My rule of thumb is : when they destroy a turret - double the number of turrets !
(An extension of the general rule of thumb of doubling anything in Factorio when reaching a limit of some kind...)

I am pretty near laser turrets but big biters have just started and this is why I noticed this thread. I'm not sure the math on this--is it simply that gun turrets were slightly nerfed? I thought ballistic weaponry / gun turret upgrades were combined, but it feels their base damage v enemies are terrible now.

No change in the actual damage. Earlier tiers of damage upgrades are slightly cheaper, while later tiers are more expensive.
This shows damage per shot dealt to Blue Biters using Armor Piercing Magazines in Gun Turrets :

dmg_upgr_vs_blue_016_vs_017.png (21.97 KiB) Viewed 5733 times

dmg_upgr_vs_blue_016_vs_017.ods

(11.71 KiB) Downloaded 99 times

(note how damage basically doubles at each damage upgrade tier !)

Weapon firing speed research is significantly more expensive though :
Went from 50-100-100-200
to 100-200-300-400
but it's because it has combined multiple weapons together.

Desert start--
[...]
The enemy groups attacking are too long
[...]
I'm not sure if it's just better pathing / how the combat is resolving. But my best guess at the moment is to rush laser turrets and avoid trying to deal with a lot of gun turrets if you can help it. This may be a larger issue in deathworld marathon than it is in normal as the time component gets more dangerous enemies spawning sooner.

This is from the desert start
and/or due to the reduced water absorption
and/or due to spawners now not absorbing more pollution than "they can handle" (though unlikely at an early stage of the game?)
and/or especially due to the new Absorption Modifier set to 50% on DeathWorld. The pollution spreads much farther now !

On deathworld marathon my approach is to skip piercing ammo and bust my ass getting Flamethrowers literally ASAP (using a combination of hand crafting and ad-hoc setups to produce the required military science)

Uh, you can't do that - Piercing Ammo is a pre-requisite for MilSci, which you need for Flamethrowers.
And Piercing Ammo, while expensive, helps on offense, killing stuff faster means that spawners have less time to spawn new biters.
(Though the overkill approach with just dragging a line of turrets and then drag-filling it with regular ammo is perhaps the easiest and the most effective... but requires a significant up-front investment and is perhaps not as fun after the first few times !)

[zOldBulldog]

TBH I don't see anything wrong with Death world mode(s) being a total nightmare in 0.17.

The deathworld lobby pushed hard to get the devs to make enemies harder not just for them but also for those that believe that believe that the main characteristic of Factorio is design and not combat. In 0.17 default settings even feel like death world and to play a normal game we now have to customize the New World settings.

So I would just remind them of the old Chinese proverb: "Be careful what you wish for you might get it" . And you got it, so "enjoy".

[BlueTemplar]

I'm sorry, what ?
What are those changes that they would have made that would have been specifically designed to make the game harder ?
1.) Tank machine gun nerf - designed to make you use the cannon as the main weapon (it's a tank!!).
2.) Nest absorption bugfix
3.) I guess that you might have a point with pollution having been (slightly) increased across the board while normalizing it in 0.17.12...
4.) Ok, I'm stumped about the changes to the pollution required to spawn a biter : Did they really decrease by a factor of 50-200 in 0.17.12 ?!?
And how come I didn't notice it ?!?
(Well, I guess that I haven't played since 0.17.12 much, and my pollution cloud is almost totally under control... But still? )
5.) Same goes for absorption per second of terrain and trees - the new values given on the wiki seem ridiculously low ?
(Maybe there's a wrong factor of 60, or two, in there ?)
6.) Water absorption has been reduced from being better than grass to be worse than sand - because that was not intended according to the pre-0.17 FFF.
7.) Sand absorption is much closer to grass now - easier.
8.) Dodgeable acid spit - not sure if it makes combat easier or harder in the end. Certainly more interesting !

I would also ask you to provide proof of us "push[ing] hard to get the devs to make enemies harder not just for them but also for those that believe that believe that the main characteristic of Factorio is design and not combat" ?

But I certainly am enjoying 0.17 Marathon Deathworld - with the caveat that biters still become a mere nuisance once you get oil (at least pre-Behemoth?) - but that is not something that is easy to fix.

[greep]

That's a wall of text, and yet default is like 10x harder on 0.17 than 0.16 You probably don't notice cause we're mostly playin on deathworlds.

A) Enemies spawn closer and in bigger numbers
B) That's it.

[BlueTemplar]

Heh, good point !
And it looks like it might mostly come from the change that I have not listed : the new world generator !

[BlakeMW]

On deathworld marathon my approach is to skip piercing ammo and bust my ass getting Flamethrowers literally ASAP (using a combination of hand crafting and ad-hoc setups to produce the required military science)

Uh, you can't do that - Piercing Ammo is a pre-requisite for MilSci, which you need for Flamethrowers.

It should probably go without saying that I just get the prerequisite 100 piercing ammo required for producing the 200 military science packs, but otherwise never shoot a single bullet out of guns, skipping over it for better weapons like Flamethrower, Lasers and Rockets. TBH without the OP Tank Machine Gun I haven't found bullets - even uranium - terribly useful, occasionally okay for machine gunning down lines of spitters but it's nothing the flamethrower can't do. Some marginal usefulness in the Car but the Car is all kinds of marginal for combat. Bullets are okay on normal Deathworld but on Marathon the biter armor always seems to be way too far ahead to justify the investment, not when there are weapons that ignore physical resists. And heck, Rocket Launcher uses explosive damage upgrades, so when using Fire/Laser/Rocket there's no reason to even get the physical projectile damage upgrades unless really wanting to use the Tank Cannon.

And Piercing Ammo, while expensive, helps on offense, killing stuff faster means that spawners have less time to spawn new biters.

I almost entirely avoid killer spawners until I have laser turrets so as to avoid driving up the evolution factor. I don't mind if swarms of weak enemies run into a wall of bullets or fire. Even when I have lasers, personal roboport and rocket launcher I don't really kill many spawners. This could partly come from exclusively playing on deserts making it generally infeasible to clear the pollution cloud before late game weaponry, especially on Deathworld Marathon.

In my current game I just walled out a section of land to build my factory in and let the biters live in peace outside the wall, offering them low-cost crematorium services as compensation for the land: it's a very popular service (I believe around 30 nests send biters to get cremated) and doesn't cost much to build or operate.



Other than clearing the space needed for building the factory I see little incentive to kill nests until Behemoths evolve: since they can halt any train less than an 2-7 they are something of a nuisance to a train network, there is no way to automatically replace destroyed trains, so the Behemoths have to be excluded from the entire train network.