You actually want to farm ground based dark fog

[fambaa]

Containing a relay base and constantly killing it is a form of mining now.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3116071326
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3116071594
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3116071068

There are several items that only come from Dark Fog, and lets be honest we all want x3 speed assemblers and fuelrods that charge twice as fast as antimatter and have 10 TIMES the energy in them. Those look insane. I wonder if those can be proliferated also.

[VA gamer]

Would be an interesting mechanic if these alien modules had the option to infect your network -- a true trojan horse...

[jetah]

You're saying to let the Fog base deploy and produce ships or just constantly destroy the base?

[kalirren]

In my experience it works best to let the Fog grow the base and just farm the ships it sends. Try to put laser turrets in range of the patrolling ships but not the structures. The Fog will constantly send you material.

In the end I view it as more of a symbiosis: the Fog build core mines, I build Dyson spheres, and the spawn-killing of pointless ground forces is just a form of high-energy interspecies resource transfer...

[fambaa]

I think it is pretty much necessary to farm fog if you ever want to own a x3 speed assembler or smelter. And these things seem to look pretty cool.

[Egon]

On what difficulty are you playing at? Does the fog level matter?

[Zaflis]

Publicado originalmente por Egon:

On what difficulty are you playing at? Does the fog level matter?

Yes the loot table changes by the level of entity you are killing. Game difficulty doesn't matter, only that the enemy levels up slower or faster but the cap they can reach - if any - is still the same.

Of course some difficulty settings can allow larger waves and different aggressiveness etc from them too on top of that, but it shouldn't affect the drop quality. I'm assuming if you farm the planet bases like that then your actual kill count is far higher than the waves would be.

[hypersonicliontamer]

mm yes got the first 2 base on farm now and I killed all but the 3rd relay quickly. Have most things on max settings and only density 3. Next time I try max density.

[Mr. Fibble]

Relatively small amount of copper to get to the point where you're comfortably into yellow science with laser weapons and stellar logistics before leaving the first moon.

[vamad695]

Publicado originalmente por kalirren:

In my experience it works best to let the Fog grow the base and just farm the ships it sends. Try to put laser turrets in range of the patrolling ships but not the structures. The Fog will constantly send you material.

In the end I view it as more of a symbiosis: the Fog build core mines, I build Dyson spheres, and the spawn-killing of pointless ground forces is just a form of high-energy interspecies resource transfer...

Note: Turrets with a larger range set to low air only can be used against the rangers.

[schey111]

How are you supposed to get the Drops from The Hive? It states that it has to be an advanced hive, so i assume it has to lvl up enough?
Also i have no clue how to collect items in Space.

[Talon_65]

Publicado originalmente por schey111:

How are you supposed to get the Drops from The Hive? It states that it has to be an advanced hive, so i assume it has to lvl up enough?
Also i have no clue how to collect items in Space.

So don't know if this is the best way or not but heres what I have done. I kept placing Geothermal plants on their destroyed hive spots for most of the early to mid to late game. This gets rid of the relay station temporarily. Then when I was ready to start farming. I picked one of them that was secluded enough for me to farm. Then I surrounded it with laser turrets in a pattern far enough away to let their base develop a bit. Then outside of my massive turret circle I placed Battlestation analysis stations that each have small storage boxes attached with logistics drones to pull the goodies and transport them to an ILS for transport back to main hub for use. These keep the ring repaired and give me a chance to select the goodies I want. Ofcourse you could also do this with belts or individual Logistics towers with each battle station to pull and transport what you want. Honestly if you develop this enough there is no end to the amount of items you could collect for free.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3120874782
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3120886723

[fambaa]

Publicado originalmente por Talon_65:

Publicado originalmente por schey111:

How are you supposed to get the Drops from The Hive? It states that it has to be an advanced hive, so i assume it has to lvl up enough?
Also i have no clue how to collect items in Space.

So don't know if this is the best way or not but heres what I have done. I kept placing Geothermal plants on their destroyed hive spots for most of the early to mid to late game. This gets rid of the relay station temporarily. Then when I was ready to start farming. I picked one of them that was secluded enough for me to farm. Then I surrounded it with laser turrets in a pattern far enough away to let their base develop a bit. Then outside of my massive turret circle I placed Battlestation analysis stations that each have small storage boxes attached with logistics drones to pull the goodies and transport them to an ILS for transport back to main hub for use. These keep the ring repaired and give me a chance to select the goodies I want. Ofcourse you could also do this with belts or individual Logistics towers with each battle station to pull and transport what you want. Honestly if you develop this enough there is no end to the amount of items you could collect for free.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3120874782
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3120886723

Great minds think alike. I am not doing it as big as you because I was testing. I basically allowed a base to build 6 ranger camps, also completely surrounded with laserturrets and 4 bases to pick up loot. But I did it so adhoc I initially got so overwhelmed by the masses of loot my base that is "sorting, its filters and inventory look like a mess.

I had to switch almost every drop off, only to pick and choose what to export. Right now I am getting broadband and other goodies, and yesterday I built my first x3 assembler.
That thing looks sweeet.

My hive is lvl 12 and the planetary base is lvl 15. Killing the things levels them.
Also a lvl 10 hive will send lvl 10 planetary bases, so technically you can level a hive faster by killing its ships and relays, because getting a planetary/hive to lvl 24 will take a looong time.

And I think ppl underestimate the difficulty. I saw a video of someone getting attacked by 35 ! ships from a hive at lvl 3. I cannot imagine what it will be like at 10 or even 20. I am not sure a planetary shield will even hold at lvl 20 during an attack of a hive. Because not only do the send more ships, the ships also get exponentially stronger.

I remember looking at lancer ships at lvl 0 and 1 it had like 1K HP. Now they have 9K HP at lvl 12.

And yes laserturrets are best. With energy upgrades the dps of a laserturret is somewhere inbetween a Gauss turret with titanium and superalloy ammo I believe. The only weapon higher is the implosion cannon with upgrades, but we don't want to blow up camps.

I have my other 2 planets so covered in geothermals, my lavaplanet is saturated, every time a relay flies there it cannot establish a new base, it just turns around again. My home planet also is not tasty enough there are no relays comming. Only on the furthest planet I have my farm on they keep comming. I am now in the process of pruning the hive. I think I went up there 4 or 5 times every time with 200 ish destroyers.

PS: If you do want to do space battles, you better double your magnetic ring/coile/motor/turbine production.

Especially destroyers eat into turbines like candy. ANd doubly so. STrange matter-Particle COntainers take turbines. ANd destroyers need 4 engines which also need a buttload of turbines.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3121117015

Here is my farm spot. I do not allow it to build any other guns than its standard sentries.
Eventually we can turn entire planets into fog farms, the only problem is moving all the items, and more use of interstellar towers at home than planetaries to have enough destinations to ship it off to.

Also if you want dark fog assemblers save some of that early green crystal stuff.

[pemmons1]

According to my calculations, with full mk3 proliferation, one mk1 assembler producing magnum ammo boxes can support 3.9 gauss turrets firing constantly. I'm new to playing with the dark fog. How many turrets can we expect to fire constantly (or almost) during farming? Would gauss turrets alone be safe and satisfactory, or would you advise other weaponry (or better ammunition) as well? I want to be sure that I'm ready for the attempt.

[josmith7]

I like using laser turrets for farming because they only require power. Of course you have to backstop them with battlefield analysis bases to repair them and scoop up the loot.

At higher difficulty levels gauss or laser turrets may get overwhelmed and need to be backstopped by nearby missile turrets[1] or implosion cannon (for their knockback effect). I haven't experimented with jammers to slow down high level enemies but they may also work.

That said, be aware that farming the dark fog will level up every base and space hive in your entire game -- so be caution about starting too early; it might make expanding difficult.

---
[1] I say nearby because while signal towers can summon missiles from anywhere on the planet, or even from especially nearby other planets, the extended flight times from such distant fire can give that higher level DF wave time to reach your turrets and kill a few.

[nevryn]

Go look at JD Plays current Death Sphere series. He did a trial with jammers when they first came out. Completely useless and a complete waste of time and resources.