Factorio Forums

As the title says... I always have trouble defending a large enough open area to contain my solar farms (I can do it but it's really boring until you get logistics and exoskeletons in late game). So I'd like to build the solar stuff outside the walls of the factory proper. Will biters prioritize those buildings, or will they always go for the pollution creating things inside the fort?

As long as they can do their job (walking to the main pollution) they won't harm your solar field.

In other words: let them space, that they can walk and you may will have only small looses.
Watch their patches. In the debug mode you can turn on the paths. Keep them as free as possible,

How do you enter the debug mode?
So biters will always try to reach the power plant and maybe the smelters/assembly machines but not much else?

Keyboard-options. By default F5-F7. Pretty self explaining, play some minutes around with it, it's sometimes very useful, for example I use it to count the number of tiles before the train stop, to place my first inserter. And meanwhile I try to organize in chunks (the thicker lines, 32x32 tiles), because that leaves enough room for other things between sub-factories, like roboports, enough place to drive, etc.

You can also use F4 key to select individual debug information you wish to be shown for each of debug report or which information is always shown.
NOTE: If you have low screen information Debug configuration UI won't be shown entirely (some entries will be hidden at the bottom). Man I wish I have monitor with higher resolution.