Killing nest are becoming annoying - Strategy to play?

[Qon]

Does worm trigger nearby landmine?

Yes.
To not have all your robots shot down you need to overwhelm the worms with a minor swarm of bots. And you don't want the bots too grouped up so space the land mine orders out a bit in time to spread out the bots, the spit will kill multiple bots at once otherwise. And do some distraction placements first so the ones suicide bombing the worms are less likely to be targeted.

[Qon]

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...

Faster? Depends on the scale of it. Robots can expand your territory in all directions at once, without your supervision. Spiders need to be manually controlled. That means you can use 1 spider, but a swarm of thousands of bots. The bots will claim area much faster for larger expansions. The rate of increased depth might be slower for robots, but you can move your entire wall in parallell with robots so for moving longer wall sections spidertron will lose.

Also the time investment is just a single drag placement on map once every sometimes to claim tens or hundreds of chunks. For spidertron you need to manually fight for every chunk.

Designing the right blueprints might take a while, and will be harder to do optimally if you want a fast and efficient expansion process. But once it's done, it will trivialise expansion.

Also if your blueprint is correctly done your infrastructure with poles, rails, roboports and radars is already completed after the territory is claimed. You can do both at the same time, so what's the point of spidertron if you have to plop down your grid blueprints after anyways? You basically just include some laser turrets and artillery and then expand just as if the nests didn't exist, because artillery says they don't. xD

[TheRangerLOL]

Sounds rampant.

[Ringkeeper]

problem with base game: radar has way too small visible area for artillery.

In one of my 0.17/18 maps with biter expansion i came to the point, where i needed 1h to clear them with modded radar and nuclear artillery (firing nuclear bombs) on one side of the base.

[robot256]

If the automatic targeting range of the artillery turret is smaller than my pollution cloud, normally I just expand the artillery perimeter. They can target nests even if they do not appear on radar.

For manual targeting, I use the pollution map to see what chunks are absorbing pollution more than surroundings, which indicates where nests are. They I use a couple artillery shells to reveal the nests with their in-flight radar, and target everything that it finds.

I'm not certain whether butter nests even exist in unexplored chunks. But you can use arty shell radar to explore large areas of the map if you want.

[astroshak]

I designed what I call a “Defense Firebase” ... it is designed for integration into the rail network (or it was, before I widened my two track system, without updating this BP), contains four Artillery, a whole lot of Lasers, and is surrounded by Walls with some Gates where the train enters and leaves. A train delivers Artillery Shells by Artillery Wagon when the number of shells in the storage boxes for the four Artillery get low. Said train also delivers replacement Walls, Lasers, and Artillery if needed.

Set up something like that, and stamp the BP as needed. Delete the Firebase after you’ve put another one (or more) further out. Try to space them such that their Artillery range just overlaps (prevents expansion up past them).

[Serenity]

With expansion turned off you can also improvise these. Lay down track and then at some point just put down a train stop and a way for the train to go back (like a switch to the return track). Surround that with lots of lasers. With high enough laser damage you don't even need walls as nothing will get through. Then you can hit all bases in range and just send the train back when it's empty.

[TheRangerLOL]

It all still sounds a bit rampant.

I designed what I call a “Defense Firebase” ... it is designed for integration into the rail network (or it was, before I widened my two track system, without updating this BP), contains four Artillery, a whole lot of Lasers, and is surrounded by Walls with some Gates where the train enters and leaves. A train delivers Artillery Shells by Artillery Wagon when the number of shells in the storage boxes for the four Artillery get low. Said train also delivers replacement Walls, Lasers, and Artillery if needed.

Set up something like that, and stamp the BP as needed. Delete the Firebase after you’ve put another one (or more) further out. Try to space them such that their Artillery range just overlaps (prevents expansion up past them).

This one sounds like the US protocol in Vietnam though.

If you haven't figured it out by now, rampancy is generally a bad thing.

[Impatient]

..

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.

...

You pretty much figured it out. At normal settings, killing all nests in pollution reach, is the most efficient strategy. Grats on drawing that conclusion early in your first game.

And yes, especially when there are few trees on the map, which absorb pollution, the player has to spend some hours on waging war, once they made the decision to destroy the nests.

One advice is to seal off the cleared areas. That way, biter migration parties can not re-settle the already cleared areas. Eg clear the area up to bodies of water, which are natural barriers and connect these with defensive structures. And as these defensive lines should be outside the pollution, they don't have to be strong, as they will only be attacked by migration parties, which are weak.

[Impatient]

Only after I wrote my first reply, I read all the other replies. Most of them seem to recommend to just build strong defenses and forget about the biters until the very late game, when you can clear them effortless with arty or spider.

although that can be done, I stress that clearing all nests in pollution reach and sealing the areas IS the most efficient strat in normal vanilla games. You will incur some initial evolution for destroying the spawners. but after that you will only incur the minimum evolution over time, which means the biters will be weak for a very long time. for long after you will have powerful late game weaponry.
( I just learned, that biters will still evolve because of global pollution. See the post further down),

But the biters will not launch attacks because of pollution anymore. So except for expansion parties, and an occasional nest spawned too close outside the defense line, there will be no more attacks.

How the cleansing is done is a matter of taste. I usually wait until I have powerful lazors and then I laser turret creep the whole area. for me it is safer and less stressful than using a tank. because I am not very skilled with vehicles in factorio. I just keep myself getting stuck and killed.

[TheRangerLOL]

It's because you're Impatient.

[Nosferatu]

You will incur some initial evolution for destroying the spawners, but after that you will only incur the minimum evolution over time, which means the biters will be weak for a very long time.

Thats not correct

From https://wiki.factorio.com/Enemies#Evolution

The global pollution production increases the evolution factor

So absorbing doesn't drive evolution. Production does.
But your tactic will make sure that only weak expansion party's will reach your defenses - attack party's won't be spawned at all.

[jodokus31]

although that can be done, I stress that clearing all nests in pollution reach and sealing the areas IS the most efficient strat in normal vanilla games. You will incur some initial evolution for destroying the spawners, but after that you will only incur the minimum evolution over time, which means the biters will be weak for a very long time. for long after you will have powerful late game weaponry.

I also think, that usually this strat is the best in default settings. But it depends also on landscape, if pollution just spreads further.
That said, when I started playing, I was very anxious and wanted to avoid all attacks. The best way I learned defending was to embrace the early attacks...

[Impatient]

..

From https://wiki.factorio.com/Enemies#Evolution

The global pollution production increases the evolution factor

So absorbing doesn't drive evolution. Production does.
...

Oh boy, there is always something left to learn. Thanks!

[astroshak]

Yea. Time, pollution generated, and spammers destroyed add to Evolution.

Pollution absorbed just gives the nest money to buy units for its next attack. Simplest way to look at it.

[TheRangerLOL]

Oh boy, there is always something left to learn. Thanks!

Just make sure you're learning the right thing.

[HadesSupreme]

Absolutely go for efficiency modules on your first playthrough, if you want to take your time, or you are on marathon-esque settings.

-60%/80% pollution from level 1 efficiency modules on most of your stuff directly leads to at least 60%-80% less biter attacks. Including terrain absorption into the picture means that you'll barely need to clear nests a few screens away from your base to stop your pollution cloud from triggering attacks where before you'd need to drive miles around killing things.

Obviously lategame things like artillery/nukes/spidertron are incredibly good, and you can blueprint an invincible wall of laser and fiery death all around your base, but unless you are very good at rushing to that stage then by far the easiest method is to spam level 1 efficiency modules as soon as you unlock your basic oil and red circuits. It will absolutely murder the amount of pollution you produce.

Pollution production, blue is drills orange is stone furnaces which I am only starting to replace now.

[Pentium100]

When I started playing, I did not use modules for a while. Instead, I just accepted that there will be biter attacks and built defense, starting with gun turrets, then, once I had oil research done, upgrading to flamethrowers and lasers (lasers have high peak power consumption, I had to use accumulators for that). Then, at some point I started to use modules, but primarily the speed module (and productivity module for anything uranium-related).

I used to clear the nests (with a car machine gun or on foot with the SMG and grenades), then plant gun turrets and fill them with ammo. Later, I would bring power lines to the border and place laser turrets and flamethrower turrets. On borders that are further away from my main base, I just use laser turrets as they only need electricity.

I wanted to load my old save and take a screenshot, but the same is too old and I would have to find an old version of Factorio.