Making things a bit tougher with mods... [Challenge]

[Yolan]

After getting back into Factorio after a half year absence and tinkering a bit, I decided to start fresh with a few mods installed to make things much tougher. Here is what I'm doing now....

MODS -

Resource Spawner Overhaul (resources appear further out, bugs are spread out a bit more too, to encourage logistic solutions and using trains).
Energy Crisis (reduces fuel value of wood and coal by half, and solid fuel by 20%. Solar panels are heavily nerfed (minus 95%!).
Mod for making the bugs behave in more challenging ways (what was that called?).

+ Fuel tanker for the trains.


I've got a basic desert start (will update with pics later). A few oil wells nearby will help me keep running after the coal is exhausted, which might not take that long if it's half value and solar will be only playing a minimal role. Will design with trains in mind from the beginning.

[Yolan]

Mission accomplished... Thing's are certainly tougher now. Especially the combination of fewer resources with more aggressive bugs.

I ended up running out of iron before I was able to finish my train line to a very distant iron deposit, making it hard to invest in enough base defense so that I could spend all remaining iron on rail track. I did finally succeed, but the very minute(!) after I did my main base was hit by a massive swarm after ten minutes of silence. I raced back, but it was too late... ><

[ssilk]

The car is a very good train replacement, you know. Build two or three cars, fill it automatically up by the inserters at the outpost and empty it at homebase (you need to drive it of course). Up to 9 inserters at a time can push/pick stuff.

[kiba]

The car is a very good train replacement, you know. Build two or three cars, fill it automatically up by the inserters at the outpost and empty it at homebase (you need to drive it of course). Up to 9 inserters at a time can push/pick stuff.

I don't use them because the cars are not located at convenient locations. I forgot to drive them back...or they cluster....

If they automatically park or drive themselves back, that would be great. But they don't.

[Yolan]

Sounds like a good temporary solution when in a pinch like I was.

The evolved bug behavior though really got me. I wasn't expecting them to chew through my walls so easily, or come so relentlessly in waves. I'm not sure how I could have guarded against in, save for keeping pollution much lower by carefully beelining for efficiency modules, manufacturing more things by hand, and thickening up my walls within a tighter space.

I'll have to try again and see.

It's great having these various difficult constraints to have to fight against though.

[ratchetfreak]

The car is a very good train replacement, you know. Build two or three cars, fill it automatically up by the inserters at the outpost and empty it at homebase (you need to drive it of course). Up to 9 inserters at a time can push/pick stuff.

I don't use them because the cars are not located at convenient locations. I forgot to drive them back...or they cluster....

If they automatically park or drive themselves back, that would be great. But they don't.

you can use belts to align them

[bobucles]

If they automatically park or drive themselves back, that would be great. But they don't.

It would take 3 things to help automate this:
1) A train cargo flatbed that can haul 1-2 vehicles.
2) A Heavy cargo arm that can haul vehicles to-from these flatbeds
3) A conveyor belt that can slide cars around.

The flat bed is the most important because it lets you organize your cars using the train system. Finally you can move more than one car at a time. A cargo arm would let you take cars on/off the train without having to drive them manually. The conveyor system is already a thing and you can use it to funnel parked cars to wherever.

If you want to automatically resupply cars, that would probably take some combinator magic like cargo lifting a car to some inserters, and only cargo lifting it out when full.

[OBAMA MCLAMA]

Hope its rso 1.0.3

In my latest new world with rso, I was exploring the world for 2 hours (placing chests too so enemies couldnt expand).... then I started. The nearest biter base has not yet attacked me but I made a base just to produce raw materials and research, so I can make a mega base far up north. It worked great.

Idk if your mods change it, but pollution is what affects the biters from attacking ya.

[Yolan]

I wonder, and maybe this depends on the mod I'm using, but I have a feeling the biters are responding to my total amount of pollution generated, regardless of if it is in one location or spread over multiple locations. ;-(