Forts or walls

[Rjskeet]

So I know that long Walls have been the norm for a long while, but now with artillery the way we defend has been changed.
So do you use artillery forts or long static walls for defense. Please share I would like to know

[Hannu]

I prefer long walls and gun turrets. I like pressure and resource demand regular attacks cause and do not want to clear all biters from my pollution range.

[mrvn]

How about artillery wagons? I find artillery turrets rather useless. Simply build one artillery train and a resupply station. Then have it drive around your base with 200s inactivity per stop or so.

It's too bad you can't connect a station to a radar and have it "enable if alien present".

[Rjskeet]

How about artillery wagons? I find artillery turrets rather useless. Simply build one artillery train and a resupply station. Then have it drive around your base with 200s inactivity per stop or so.

It's too bad you can't connect a station to a radar and have it "enable if alien present".

Those trains are great offensively but I feel they lack the defense unless you have a way to dispatch the train to certain points of your line quickly or automatically

[zOldBulldog]

How about artillery wagons? I find artillery turrets rather useless. Simply build one artillery train and a resupply station. Then have it drive around your base with 200s inactivity per stop or so.

It's too bad you can't connect a station to a radar and have it "enable if alien present".

Those trains are great offensively but I feel they lack the defense unless you have a way to dispatch the train to certain points of your line quickly or automatically

You dispatch the train to an outpost or position along the wall. With ammo capacity of 100 they carry more than a regular cargo wagon.

The defense comes from your static turrets and flamethrowers.

[Nosferatu]

I stopped using artillery trains because they confuse the enemy.

If you have a fixed artillery it will fire and trigger an attack which focuses on the artillery outpost.
If you have a train the train will leave after fireing --> the alien retailliation force will loose it's target and will eventually attack somewhere unpredictable.

So my answer to OP's questions:

I use supplied and automated fixed artillery forts as main defense + simple laser walls around the mainbase and mining outposts - simple means no repairbots and supply tains.

[zOldBulldog]

I stopped using artillery trains because they confuse the enemy.

You can fix this by using an inactivity timer to leave the artillery post. Set it to at least 120sec - or however long it takes the aliens to reach you plus a safety margin... and you are good.

I use supplied and automated fixed artillery forts as main defense + simple laser walls around the mainbase and mining outposts - simple means no repairbots and supply tains.

This is what I used to use and my defenses would never get even touched, but it will no longer be enough in 0.17.

My aliens went past 90% alien evolution very quickly (using default evolution values). I have a very low volume science line up to yellow (LOL, just 2 assemblers for yellow) and I have not even finished building my main blue circuits production line, let alone any meaningfully fast science production.

Even on Railworld settings where the aliens won't expand, I get very massive and very tough retaliation waves when I use artillery. I am using Lasers (almost maxed out to yellow science) and flamethrowers... and the big spitters still manage to hit my defenses so I have to have bots and repair kits. I am still a very long way from getting space science for the infinite upgrades.

BTW, this map was created *after* the devs claimed to have fixed the "runaway evolution" bug they had. In other words, this seems to be exactly how they intend the game to play... unless you significantly adjust your New Game settings.

There is a good post by phi Seeker for trying to simulate 0.16 behavior in 0.17. Far down the first page of this thread: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=70073&e=1&view=unread#unread

[The Locator]

I have settled on the overkill system.



I just stamp this identical pattern out as I extend the wall to encompass more territory. Really huge attacks will sometimes damage the walls/turrets/power poles, but the redundant large power poles and repair packs in buffer chests at every other roboport make that a non-issue. Once the giant ammo belt is saturated it takes very little to keep it filled, as ammo usage really isn't that high.

I've seen artillery trains in videos and they just seem silly to me when I'm already belting out the ammo for the defense turrets, it's easy to just add the artillery to the loop, and when I do decide on clearing out a new area for expansion, it's fantastic to have huge numbers of artillery turrets in range to make fast work of the clearing so I'm not waiting on an artillery train to go reload and come back. I can spew out thousands of artillery rounds and not really make a big dent in that belt buffer, and due to the low normal consumption a large/fast resupply isn't really needed. I have 6 assemblers making ammo and they sit idle for a large percentage of the time.

[dood]

Why would you ever want to build something that instantly overflows your inventory if you ever want to deconstruct it?

[Hannu]

Why would you ever want to build something that instantly overflows your inventory if you ever want to deconstruct it?

You do not have to collect all ammunition. If you expand, just connect old belt to new with priority splitter. If necessary, it is relatively easy to change direction of the belt.

[vanatteveldt]

I used to be a walls guy, but as said, artillery outposts are a dramatic (and good) change in expansion and defense.

In my current game I'm using artillery outposts with artillery turrets plus flame and gun turrets for defense. The resupply train has one wagon (with ammo, repair packs, barrels, etc) and one artillery wagon. The artillery wagon holds 100 ammo, which is unloaded into a chest which feeds into the artillery turrets. That way, in the initial 'expansion' phase the artillery train helps clear nests, but when it leaves there is enough ammo left for 'maintenance' (or grass-mower operations, as the IDF would term it).

The problem is that single biters can still just walk through between two artillery outposts. I currently complemented the outposts with regular walls between the second line outposts, but I think I will replace that with adding laser turrets to the train lines connecting the outposts.

[The Locator]

Why would you ever want to build something that instantly overflows your inventory if you ever want to deconstruct it?

My base is a large rectangle which expands to the west as I need more resources. I expand by opening the wall and extending the north wall along with the belt and track as far west as I want then turning South and then eventually turning and connecting back up with the old wall at the South edge. By the time I get that done the belt along the previous west wall will be empty.

After the new expansion is done I go into map mode and deconstruct the no longer needed wall and turrets/belts, which my robot minions store in the buffer chests by my expansion train station, all ready to be used in the next expansion.

The ammo that us collected goes into temporary storage, but requester chests and inserters place it into the very beginning of the ammo manufacturing line do that it gets used prior to new ammo being produced.

I am certain that this system isn't for everyone, but it works pretty well for my very slow and methodical play style.

I am no expert, I just got this game as 0.17 came out, and after launching a rocket from my first factory, I started this one and it's well over 200 hours old now as I explore all the different ways I can screw up, and then try to fix it.

[dood]

Why would you ever want to build something that instantly overflows your inventory if you ever want to deconstruct it?

You do not have to collect all ammunition. If you expand, just connect old belt to new with priority splitter. If necessary, it is relatively easy to change direction of the belt.

Leaving belt spaghetti corpses all over the place sounds even worse.
Try that at a megabase scale.

[FasterJump]

I don't use outposts and I don't use much walls. I just add laser towers in my rail pattern.

Rail_.png (162.92 KiB) Viewed 7096 times

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Copy blueprint

[Zaka]

Walls

Walls

[Qon]

I have settled on the overkill system.

It's beautiful!

[The Locator]

I have settled on the overkill system.

It's beautiful!

I've added flamethrower turrets on both sides of every artillery set now, and triple sets at the corners... no real reason except to try it really, but they are awesome to watch.

Now all my expansion area walls are surrounded by the burned out remains of forests.. haha..

[Koub]

Also, as a reminder, I've seen somewhere that land mines are surprisingly effective at crowd controlling biter waves, for a very small price (for 2 explosives and 1 steel, you get 4x300 damage explosion + 4x 3s stun, all that in a 2.5m radius AOE). Keeping those pesky spitters at bay while unleashing cleansing fire upon them could be a valid strategy (with the wall thing).

[Qon]

Didn't know mines stunned. They didn't do that last time I checked, which was only like 4 years ago

Seems like that could be really useful.

[Koub]

Can't find the topic I was looking for, but this is a (slightly outdated) topic about lans mines :
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=57500
Note : Now, landmines benefit from explosives damage upgrade .