Plateuing at 200 pop

[Reachforthesky]

I'm having a bit of trouble taking my factory to the next level. There are several things that are impeding my progress that I'm unsure of how to tackle. I'm on the default seed with three islands unlocked. I'm thinking of scrapping my current factories and starting over but would love advice before I do so

1. Resources are starting to get very far apart. for instance the only glass deposit I can find is literally the width of the second island apart from Energy 2. My ants are getting pretty spread thin, and wasting a lot of lifespan just getting from one area to another is this normal?

2. Energy seems to be in really short supply. I'm harvesting the energy on my first island pretty aggressively and it still doesn't seem to be enough to keep my queen fed, my pod workers recharged and my beacons lit.

3. Gyne production is really intimidating, are there any guides on how to set this up so that it's at least somewhat automated with my current tech level? And why, oh why dear god are regular worker ants required.

4. I'm finding it difficult to maintain sustainable pops on the other islands. I was wondering if people found drone carrying larvae or ants using bridges to be more optimal? Should I be relying more on Pod Workers?

Help with these things would be appreciated as well as any advice for this tricky spot in the tech tree.

[Tenebrais]

Pod workers are great for getting your population up.. They're ideal for being at the far end of distant outposts, since they only need to go and get topped up with energy, no need to do long marches anything beyond the first time going out there. The energy cost is also a fair bit less than the energy you're feeding your queen per larva. Primarily, their benefit is in letting your population get higher than (queen larva production rate) * (average total lifespan of an ant), pretty much as high as you like until your hit your population cap.

It's also worth looking at using accelerators for your energy pellets. Combining two yellows into a green turns 2 energy value into 3. On top of giving you free energy beyond what your flowers can provide, it's also needed to beat the rate limit for how much energy your queen can consume at a time.

My approach to gynes is having drones and workers march through the entrance of the pyramid on their way to getting repurposed, and pod workers go through on their way out to the factory. I won't claim my approach is optimised, though.

I have drones bring larvae to the islands. Drones fly much faster than ants can walk, and they can bring materials back. Ants live out worker lives on those islands then get for their final phase get made into more drones.

[jan]

Hi,

1. Flying drones do the trick sometimes. Or if you need worker(or miner): Let the smaller ones walk all the way and upgrade them on the destination. Maybe you have to recycle them nearby, depending on the walking length.
Ressources in stockpiles can be transported on the entire island type. You could incubate in multiple areas, timed gates may be useful here.

2. Energycollider buildings. On the main island i'm not using pod workers, because i have to much ants anyway. But i do recycle a lot of inventors for the tasty lvl 3 energy.

3. I build it near a recycler. A waypoint to the cocoon and from there to the recycler is my way to go. The ants will check if they are needed in the cocoon and if not walk away happy in the direction of the recycler.
And: Timed Gates. A lot of them. Why create nonstop princesses, if you only need one every 15 minutes?

4. Both. But larvae behind a timed gate is my way to go at the moment. The bridges are great for ressource transportation.

Hope some of my ideas are helpful

[Fwiffo]

1. Bring the larva to deposits via Drones, then store them locally. After that you can build a dispenser on the other side of the island. Dispose of the diggers on-site and get resources out of the recycler via same drones that carry in larvae.

2. Sounds like you either (a) have too many pod workers (b) feed the queen too much (c) have too many lamps etc (b) don't have enough production
For queen, feed her higher level energy pods, but put them on a timer to limit the energy consumption.
For the rest - what pods are you missing? Is it the higher level ones while you have a lot of lower level ones? Then you need more energy colliders. Is it the lower level ones that run out? Then you either need to gather more, or if that's impossible, you may have reached the limits of what your island can provide - in this case switch pod ants to lower level batteries (every level of energy pod adds 2:30 to the ant life timer, and given the production involved they become less efficient for pod workers with each tier).

3. I made a separate setup specifically for gyne production, notice that every ant except the princess is a multiple of 5 - with a few branching trails you can produce ants at a perfect ratio, plus use a counter gate to make sure you have a princess available (with possible a timer gate to make sure not every larva goes into there while there is no princess). That way you might waste 2-3 princesses an hour (each costs 1 fabric), but then you will also have fully automated gyne production.

4. I only use pod workers on the main and 2nd islands, because that way I can free up larva to do things on other islands or for building drones. Don't really do anything on the jungle island, and the toxic island I just throw more free(tm) small workers and normal workers to collect mold - because I don't need larva to sustain my main worker force, I can throw it at whatever other task that needs doing, and so I don't really need hazmat ants either.

[Opium]

1) Dispensers go over the whole island, so i just have drones "relaying" back and forth at a point where two islands are close to each other: the "far way" point i gather glass or gather pods just dispenses across the other side to the drones. And the lava storage near the relay is dispensed over at the glass and pod areas... so no far travelling (though i end up with too many drones so i sometimes just send them on long simple flight paths to gather iron). I only use bridges within the same island. Gotta use drones for "something" i figure :P So yeah i have two relay points, one close to each 'other' island (desert and jungle only for me so far). But yeah.. i was stuck around 250 for ages: iron workers are good. But i see most people like pod workers? Either way... dont be afraid to try a new type of worker and make better use of old ants... Also do smart things like send a small worker to walk all the way over to your miner ant assembler rather than make the miner ant and have it walk across the map...

2) I put quite a lot of ants in to pod gathering, 20 or so? I set up multiple loops, maybe 5 - 10 flowers on each loop? I also use "carry" gates a fair bit once unlocked: so if they've picked something up i return then straight back to the storage. Somehow i now have way more pods than i need i dont really know how it happened lol. Collecting pod II on the two other islands too. So yeah... i guess both increasing lava output aswell as maximising life span by feeding old ants in to assemblers/combiners etc to give them rebirth...

3) I manually built two or so Gynes until i got rid of the huge concrete structure blocking space lol ill try remember to send a screenshot when i get home... You have to do a bit of maths. But i feed small workers: i have a 50/50 split to start with: path 1) combine to workers then a really big splitter lol: 2/25 goes to making inventors (for princess) the rest goes 2/5 to drones, 3/5 are fed to cacoon... 1 in 11 drones goes to the princess, the rest fed to cacoon... then all the way back at start: path 2) 3/5 goes to making iron workers, 2/5 go to make pod workers (empty pod maker, then 50/50 to pod I and pod II). But yeah ill take a screenshot... It's still not super perfect but you just have to do some maths :P It's all just using the basic split path thingo (no logic gates etc)

[Bob, the doge]

Originally posted by Fwiffo:

notice that every ant except the princess is a multiple of 5 - with a few branching trails you can produce ants at a perfect ratio,

I count the princess as 5 extra iron workers, then branch that arm so that of those 5, 2 become an inventor, 1 becomes a drone, and 2 get sent back to the main path.

[Opium]

Originally posted by Bob, the doge:

Originally posted by Fwiffo:

notice that every ant except the princess is a multiple of 5 - with a few branching trails you can produce ants at a perfect ratio,

I count the princess as 5 extra iron workers, then branch that arm so that of those 5, 2 become an inventor, 1 becomes a drone, and 2 get sent back to the main path.

hmm good point i should use iron workers rather than workers to make drone/princess... i feel stupid lol half the small workers

[Bob, the doge]

Originally posted by Opium:

hmm good point i should use iron workers rather than workers to make drone/princess... i feel stupid lol half the small workers

Unless you are (somehow) short on iron, replacing regular workers with iron workers is the way to go, after you unlock them. Though it can get expansive (with an A, as in it takes a lot of space), since you need 4 assemblers to handle the same amount of ants as 1 combiner.

[Opium]

Originally posted by Bob, the doge:

Unless you are (somehow) short on iron, replacing regular workers with iron workers is the way to go, after you unlock them. Though it can get expansive (with an A, as in it takes a lot of space), since you need 4 assemblers to handle the same amount of ants as 1 combiner.

Yeah am building iron workers for main trail from old small workers, but i just split off some small workers after birth straight to my gyne automation. I'll probably still do that for the iron workers needed for gyne (so i can have a predictable supply) but ill change drone/inventor/princess to iron worker sources and that'll save me umm, <maths> amount of small workers :P 18 or so?

[3tamatulg]

LOL the easy way to get population up: put a few 100 larvae on the ground, they count for some reason

[Bob, the doge]

Originally posted by Opium:

umm, <maths> amount of small workers :P 18 or so?

Yea, using iron workers instead of workers to make the advanced ants for the cocoon saves you 18 ants per gyne. I'm just about to reach the T3 gyne tech, which is what I'm waiting for to get a guide out on the topic.

[Arkane Wisdom]

ant launchers are a niffy way to cut travel, takes some trial and error to get to land in the right area. once you got them landing in the right area, make a little web of trails that can pick up when they land. they tend to land in either a 3x3 or 4x4 area, if your measuring by foundations. i suggest using small ants as your Evel Knievel's on getting the launcher and landing area right

[Bob, the doge]

Originally posted by Arkane Wisdom:

ant launchers are a niffy way to cut travel, takes some trial and error to get to land in the right area. once you got them landing in the right area, make a little web of trails that can pick up when they land. they tend to land in either a 3x3 or 4x4 area, if your measuring by foundations. i suggest using small ants as your Evel Knievel's on getting the launcher and landing area right

In my tests I could never get the ants to pick up a trail on the destination end of an ant launcher, so I never bothered with it in my colonies. I guess I'll give it another shot (pun definitely intended).