Keeping biters at bay

[samuri]

Has anyone come up with a sustainable, working solution to permanently keep biters at bay on Nauvis while you're travelling around in space? And I mean something that can be left alone so you don't keep having to go back to Nauvis just to maintain stuff.

I've got something that semi-works but I still have to go back regularly to repair/rebuild things.
This is my base on Nauvis.

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I have a train that continually travels round in a loop and stops at each station on the loop, like this.

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Each station looks very similar to that. The train distributes turret ammo and repair kits for the robots at each station. The train also has two artillery turrets which take out biter nests each time the train stops. The biters attack where the train was but the turrets shoot them all. This maintains a buffer zone around my base.
Sometimes the biters destroy a turret, I've not yet taken to putting spare turrets on the train for robots to install, maybe that's part of the answer.

Obviously the artillery turrets need restocking so I have an artillery shell manufacturing factory which loads them all up at a single station.

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Naturally I have a supply chain working automatically from Vulcanus to keep the shells being built up and I'm making my own calcite in orbit around Nauvis.

Interested to see what anyone else has tried for this.

[eugenekay]

You’re doing pretty good so far! A few suggestions to reduce the amount of Repairs that are needed:

• Eliminate any Concave sections of your Perimeter wall. The outside “ring of defenses” should be a Convex shape, such as a Square or Octagon
• Use the Natural terrain to your advantage. I like to make a series of Straight walls between Lakes/Rivers (uncrossable by Nauvis enemies) to define my Base.
• Use all the Turret types you have available: Guns, Lasers, Flamethrowers, Tesla. Each one adds something unique to the defenses, slowing and stopping enemies.
• Add a ring of Land mines at the edge of your Repair Roboport’s range to soften up enemies as they approach
• Yes, you need to have spare Turrets in-stock at each outpost - or defenses will get Weaker as they are attacked

Good luck!

[Mr Wednesday]

I don't see any walls. A double wall will keep biters off of your turrets. My edges are double walls backed by gun, laser, and Tesla turrets (with arty to keep the spawners well outside of the pollution cloud), and my defenses run indefinitely on their own.

I keep spares of turrets and walls in addition to repair packs.

You may want to consider converting your supply train to on-demand instead of having it always make a circuit.

[Tertius]

I built a wall around my base. I chose the shortest possible wall length by using water as natural barrier, just closing the space between water.
The wall is defended by artillery (after I unlocked it on Vulcanus) to keep nests far away. For directly defending the walls, I use flamethrower turrets for big damage and laser turrets to finish enemies off. Laser turrets don't need ammo, just electricity, so it's easier to build and keep working. Flamethrower turrets deal incredible damage, need an oil suply very easy to add and have almost no oil consumption. One single oil well is enough for the whole base. However, you need pumps every 320 tiles to overcome the 320 tile pipe limit.
Gun turrets are not the best weapons here any more.

I divided the whole perimeter wall into segments of perhaps 800 tiles, and each segment is one logistics network wit and has one supply station to provide repair packs, construction robots and replacement items. And later to supply artillery shells of course.

Without walls, biters will be able to destroy your turrets before they kill the biters, so it's definitely required. That's different to other planets where walls have no use, but on Nauvis walls are a defacto requirement.

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[samuri]

Thanks for the tips. I'll try walls in the relevant places.

[theolderbeholder]

Remember tp leave gaps in the wall so the biters can reach the turrets. This will prevent them from attacking the walls, and slows them down to give the turrets more time to shoot at them.

[NineNine]

If you're supplying enough artillery shells to this base, then at some point, artillery will have demolished all of the biters, and the attacks will largely be over, except for the very occasional nest that spawns within reach of the artillery. So, you can just keep doing it however you'd like (guns, flamethrowers, mines, walls, etc) until the artillery knocks them all back completely. Once that happens, you're essentially done with biters on Nauvis.

[pioruns]

I do the same thing, built full walled perimeter early on, since I left for other planets I never needed to come back. Perimeter consists of:

• double wall
• Laser turrets
• Flamethrowers
• Vulcanus artillery
• Light Oil supply train stations in separate wall sections, so I don't need to run pipes through separate sections or water.

I don't get any destroyed items, only occassional damage. Light Oil is more efficient to run in flamethrowers, as you get more light oil out of crude in advanced refining process.

[adam_bise]

Only thing ur missin really is walls and flamethrower turrets.

[J-H]

On my current playthrough, I've gone beyond the edge of the solar system (so VERY far in) and haven't even researched laser turrets. I only built gun turrets for my space platform. I have defended successfully with nothing but flame turrets, walls, and artillery.

I do have some tesla turrets, but only around my biter egg handling sections.

I went ahead and extended roboport coverage pretty far out. It's inefficient in terms of robot speed, but keeps me from having to manage distributing repair packs, spare turrets, etc.

[R060]

Try mines. They are very high damage and deal it in a radius of an explosion. And they are even cheaper than yellow ammo.

To automate them, place a roboport with a construction bots and a storage chest full of mines in its logistics zone. Any blown up mine will leave a ghost after it and contruction bots will replace it if it's in their construction area.

[Kyralessa]

I use a double wall and behind it, the turret chain, as shown below.

The double-layer ensures that if a turret is destroyed, turrets further down the line keep being fed. You can of course make as many layers as you like. The blueprint is a 5x5 block with absolute positioning so it tiles easily with the power pole as the center point.

At points that get a lot of attacks, I'll put some Tesla turrets behind it, or possibly flamethrowers if I don't have Tesla turrets yet.

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