Killing nest are becoming annoying - Strategy to play?

[douglasrac]

First game ever! Playing 100% on default settings to get to know the game. Looks like I'm playing a completely different game than anyone else. When I see youtube videos is all about factory developing and logistics, rarely see anything about killing nest. But that's all I'm doing.

First I've been reading this forum about how to fast kill nests and read ppl saying you need tank and ammo for tank and that is hard because their oil production is low, etc. I have only 4 oil extractors and it brings me so much ammo I don't need anymore. Using plastics for red chips as well. I have rockets and explosive rockets, I have tank and flamethrower. I have red ammo for machine guns. With only 4 oil extractors and mostly temporary factories, I have no problem at all with resources.

Second thing I don't know how the devs wanted us to play, but once I started getting alien attacks I made walls and protected my base. But since I discover pollution is what makes the aliens come destroy the base I just went out to destroy them. I see no point on spending ammo forever on regular attacks if you can destroy them forever and have no problem. So I destroy them in pollution radius and also before pollution gets to them and further away because I'm planning to expand the factory and this will increase pollution radius.

So I've been doing this for hours. Its starting to get so annoying and repetitive task that I want to play without nest if possible. But then, the major reason to expand is to fight nests, if I eliminate them I'm afraid the game experience will be worst.

So, how you guys play? Just defend the factory forever or kill them in advance?

Or maybe there is a way to make less of them? They are weak but so many. Red spots everywhere. I'm so eager to make a larger train network and deal with logistics but I see myself for hours just shooting creeps. I came from Satisfactory which is all about logistics an none about defending.

[Serenity]

A lot of YTers do the killing off screen after a while

I have only 4 oil extractors and it brings me so much ammo I don't need anymore

Oil last quite a long time these days and you can do a lot with just 4-6 oil wells. It's enough to launch a few rockets. It used to be a lot worse. But oil wells eventually deplete to a trickle. And while that happens gradually, the moment you realize that you need more oil wells happens very suddenly.

So I destroy them in pollution radius and also before pollution gets to them... So I've been doing this for hours

Then don't if that takes up too much time. Clearing the pollution cloud certainly helps in the early to mid game. But they just expand again. They can make a new base every 4-10 minutes. Eventually it becomes easier to just play defensively. Destroying spawners also drives up evolution a great deal, but that's only really an issue on deathworlds.


Late game there is artillery, which makes clearing larges spaces very easy.

If you don't like biters you can turn them off during map generation. A middle ground is to turn off expansion, so you only have to destroy bases once. That's also a popular setting for YouTube videos. Or slow down their expansion rate to make keeping bases low more managable.
In my current game I turned off expansion, but doubled the pollution spread. That means defense is still necessary as the pollution cloud is huge.

[5thHorseman]

I personally cut all biter properties by about 25% in the map generation settings. I leave expansion on but - at least for my play style - that keeps them a constant threat but not an annoyance. I leave everything else the same, just slow down their rate of expansion, base size, and evolution rate.

[zombieroboninja]

In a vanilla game, if you want to spend the least amount of time dealing with biters, don't destroy bases. Destroying a base is the fastest way of increasing evolution. Build enough turrets to protect your base and then pretend biters don't exist.

[Koub]

Late game options to get rid of biter nests are very powerful and quick. Artillery can turn any nest to dust hundreds of tiles away, and a mk2 power armor filled of fusion generators, a few exoskeletons, personal laser defenses, and a couple shields allows one to basically run through a nest and create wide trenches of death in it. Coupled with exploseve rockets, or even poison capsules, it's dreadful. Atomic bombs are also very potent, especially when you're careful not to blast yourself with them .
Before that, in mid game, I prefer not to clear nests too far away : killink nests does crank up evolution factor quite quick, and that, in turn, makes the biters more aggressive.

If you want to keep biters, but be less bothered by them, you can :
- play in peaceful : the biters will not attack first, but keep their mechanics
- crank up the starting base area. This is a very efficient solution to delay your need to cope with biters.

[Pentium100]

Spidertron with one portable fusion, two batteries, three exoskeletons and the rest personal shield Mk2.
Character grid with one portable fusion, two batteries and the rest personal laser defense.

This combination kills most biters pretty fast (even faster if you have researched upgrades to the laser turrets). Atomic bombs are useful against big nests (similar or bigger than the explosion radius of the bomb).

It becomes a bit tedious because I like to clear everything inside "my" territory and just have walls and turrets on the borders. Combine that with the fact that I like to use water to reduce the length of the border means I have to take a large territory from the biters, every expansion phase takes a while.

[jodokus31]

Second thing I don't know how the devs wanted us to play, but once I started getting alien attacks I made walls and protected my base. But since I discover pollution is what makes the aliens come destroy the base I just went out to destroy them. I see no point on spending ammo forever on regular attacks if you can destroy them forever and have no problem. So I destroy them in pollution radius and also before pollution gets to them and further away because I'm planning to expand the factory and this will increase pollution radius.

The problem with clearing biters far out is, that they coming back (biter expansion in default settings). You can avoid this by changing map generator settings at the beginning or use "rail world"-preset.
This can also be done with this mod for existing game: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/ChangeMapSettings, but be aware that steam achievements are not counted with mods.

If you don't want to do this, then I would embrace the attacks and defend:
- You can make a nice perimeter with gun turrets (+ammo belt) or lasers which enclose your territory. But be aware, this cost even more time. (construction bots are your friend with building and repairing).
- You can also make small turret camps (2x2 or more) around your base, this is fast and very effective to protect. But they need some maintenance esp. with gun turrets. And it gets dangerous, if they get destroyed.

[Skev]

Your problem with the game is the way you're choosing to play the game. So... stop it! On default settings, the aliens evolve incredibly slowly and you don't have to expand very far at all for gigantic amounts of resources, so just build some defenses and ignore the nests that aren't directly in your way. By the time you want to expand further you'll have teched up enough that you can steamroll the nests.

[douglasrac]

Thank you all for the replies. Really helpful.
I didn't know the nest can grow back! The best approach is indeed to defend instead of trying to clear the entire map.
And I see there is a lot of options to destroy them late game and I was trying to do that early/mid game.

[blazespinnaker]

As mentioned, you can speedrun to artillery without ever really expanding much. Once you've done that, it's like biters are turned off.

[Nosferatu]

Additionally:
Use efficiency modules in the early game - less pollution means less biter evolution and less attacks

In late game I use atomic rockets for clearing out and artillery only if I want to make sure they don't come back

[Theikkru]

I'm probably a bit late to the party, but I find the tank to be more than enough to get the job done on default settings. As I see it, there are 2 key points to follow to keep the biters from bugging you:

• Clear your perimeter a good distance beyond your pollution cloud
• Wall off that perimeter and guard it with just enough gun turrets to pick off expansion parties.

There's no need for logistics or power; hand-loading a half-stack of ammo into each perimeter turret should be plenty to last until you need to push the perimeter out further.

[starlinvf]

Rule #1 of Factorio: Automate All the things. If you're doing it yourself more then once, you're doing wrong.

[Theikkru]

Rule #1 of Factorio: Automate All the things. If you're doing it yourself more then once, you're doing wrong.

Unfortunately, you can't automate expansion in vanilla. You'd need a grey goo mod for that.

[Pentium100]

Rule #1 of Factorio: Automate All the things. If you're doing it yourself more then once, you're doing wrong.

How can I automate placing radars and running power to them in newly-occupied territory? Without mods I mean...

[starlinvf]

Rule #1 of Factorio: Automate All the things. If you're doing it yourself more then once, you're doing wrong.

How can I automate placing radars and running power to them in newly-occupied territory? Without mods I mean...

Blueprints (or ghosts) and Spidertron installed with a Robotport. yeah that blew my mind too when I learned you could do that.

[Qon]

Rule #1 of Factorio: Automate All the things. If you're doing it yourself more then once, you're doing wrong.

How can I automate placing radars and running power to them in newly-occupied territory? Without mods I mean...

Blueprints (absolute grid alignment) with power, roboports, laser turrets (or land mines), artillery and place from map view. Roboports outrange behemoth worms so you can kill even them remotely as soon as you get good production of con bots and land mines and can accept some losses
Or laser turrets if you can advance the fronline quickly enough that they are placed in range to attack the behemoth worms without too much delay.
You could even automate placing blueprints if you use Recursive Blueprints mod or Conman mod.

[Hannu]

I'm probably a bit late to the party, but I find the tank to be more than enough to get the job done on default settings. As I see it, there are 2 key points to follow to keep the biters from bugging you:

• Clear your perimeter a good distance beyond your pollution cloud
• Wall off that perimeter and guard it with just enough gun turrets to pick off expansion parties.

There's no need for logistics or power; hand-loading a half-stack of ammo into each perimeter turret should be plenty to last until you need to push the perimeter out further.

In my opinion clearing of nearby biter nests is not necessary at default settings. Clearing of nests are more tedious than producing some extra ammo and turrets. Biters are so weak and resources so abundant that it is easy to defend walls. But it depends of course on personal opinions. If you like to fight and feel Factorio resources as valuable as money in your wallet it is better to clear nests.

I make usually one clearing run when I need first outposts or if there is nest too close. Second run is when I get a tank and explosive cannon shells and I get some large resource patches able to keep utility and production science at reasonable rate (0.5-1 per second). Then I do not need fight before I get spidertron which seem to be very powerful. I like the change of focus from surviving to large scale building during the game. Spidertron is reasonable option to clear biters "honestly" instead of commands I have use before because nukes caused too much dies and artillery was tedious as active attack weapon.

[Hannu]

Roboports outrange behemoth worms so you can kill even them remotely as soon as you get good production of con bots and land mines and can accept some losses

Does worm trigger nearby landmine?

[Pentium100]

How can I automate placing radars and running power to them in newly-occupied territory? Without mods I mean...

Blueprints (absolute grid alignment) with power, roboports, laser turrets (or land mines), artillery and place from map view.

I'll try next time I decide to expand. Clearing nests is probably faster and easier manually with a spidertron, personal lasers and nukes, but radar/power placement after that is annoying. I'm going to need lots of roboports...