How easy is to lose?

[Zychuu]

Well, by losing I mean getting overrun by bitters so hard that you might as well start from scratch. I'm playing my first game on default settings. Right now, when my pollution is about to reach a new enemy spawners I just raid and destroy them to avoid defending from their attacks. But as a newbie I progress quite slowly and take ages to branch into new productions and technologies and I'm worried that eventually evolution factor will catch up to me one day. How common is to just 'lose'?

[Fel]

It depends, once you get flamethrower turrets it becomes hard to lose but for new players I would recommend disabling e,emies or setting them on peaceful mode so that they don't hinder you while you are battling to the death against a monster factory with belts everywhere.

[Scarsick]

You don't need to worry about evolution that much. The more you play, the harder will be for natives evolution to catch up with your research.

What you need to worry is expansion. It's like a war you can't win, they will just keep expanding towards you no matter what you do. The only thing you can do is keep them under control, meaning clearing the bases nearby your base and outposts, if you have them. Don't wait until you start to get constant attacks to set up some defenses. Place some radars, so you can predict from where they will be attacking based on their position on the map. Don't sweat though, you're new to the game, you will get better with time, but you will have some defeats until you get there. Combat is not the main focus of the game, so it's not hard to get the hang of it.

[Eagle_of_Fire]

Never ever even came close to this sitation ever.

Biters are a joke.

[Jupiter3927]

The evolution factor moves up pretty slow.
You should be able to run out to biter bases with a machine gun, yellow bullets, and some fish and clear out early bases no problem.
You need the military 1 tech for the better gun and the fish can be found swimming in any large body of water.
Stay out of worm range while shooting nests and eat a fish when your health gets below about half and you win.

The other ways to lose are a little harder to deal with.
You could just not have the resources to take ore patches from biters and slowly watch your factory die.
This one can be resolved easily once you get laser turrets and solar panels since you can clear biter bases using only electricity at that point.

The island map is finite in size and will eventually run out of resources.
You'll have to use your resources wisely to launch a rocket for victory.

If you ever go for the 'steam all the way' achievement, you could very easily run out of power and find it's too hard to restart your boilers.
This essentially kills your factory and makes any laser turrets completely useless.
You'll have to either plan in advance for this and keep a supply of reserve fuel or start running only small sections of your factory to get things going again.
You could also plop a few solar panels down and not get the achievement.


Use your resources wisely and don't panic with the biters and you should have no problem.
You can also start a game in peaceful mode to make the biters non-aggressive unless shot at to experiment with different designs and tactics.

[fractalgem]

It generally takes playing with mods that MASSIVELY complicate things and slow you down to be at real risk for being overrun...

orrrr just not paying attention and massively expanding the factory but not building any defenses.

Otherwise you really won't get overrun on default settings.

[BlueRock]

If you set your starting area large (biters start further away), turn off biter expansion (biters don't repopulate an area that you just cleared) and choose a map with a good amount of grass and trees, you can keep aliens on an not worry about losing. Just keep an eye on your pollution cloud and don't let it reach the biters. If it doesn't reach they will never attack. To help control your pollution cloud, keep chests limited so you don't make more pollution than needed. It's ok to let belts back up for a bit and have your factory stop for some time while you plan out how to lay out the next part of your factory. During this time the trees will slowly absorb your pollution and your pollution cloud can actually shrink. Yes, evolution factor does go up slowly over time if you take too long, but evolution increases due to time are pretty small. Or if you want to keep building quickly and don't want your factory to stop researching, you can go out and offensively destroy bases that your pollution cloud is starting to touch, but only destroy the ones you need to as doing so increases evolution faster. Eventually if you keep focusing on military upgrades, you will get to the point that you will completely stomp on the aliens.

[Eagle_of_Fire]

I've found the aliens so boring I'm used playing on Deathworlds. They are pushovers even there, you simply need to know what you are doing. Would certainly not recommend a new player to start with a Deathworld for sure but even if you have taken an untold amount of time in the default settings all you really have to do is wall yourself in and make sure you have sufficient defence. The biters always attack on the same spots and the only different entry points are completely random patrols sent to colonise a new area, which can easily be repelled by simply a few guns behind a wall. It doesn't even need to be a long wall, just enough for the biters to run around it while the turrets shoot.

You notice that some nest are in range of your pollution? Clear those nests out. You can use the breathing space and they'll evolve slower. The best way always been to use turrets by yourself. You place them down, give it ammo, build the next row, give it ammo... And work your way up into the base. Easy as pie. Especially since it mean no way of even getting harmed yourself, the turrets will take any damage for you if any damage has to be taken.

By the time you have to worry about stronger biters you should have discovered laser turrets by then, along solar power and robots. This along weapon damage upgrades should make the whole thing trivial.

Please note that there is a maximum amount of evolution the aliens can achieve as well. I strongly believe it is impossible to find yourself in a situation, in the default settings, where you can't simply defend yourself with only laser turrets until the point you are ready to send your rocket in space. And as said prior to this post, there is more powerful ways to defend yourself than only using those turrets.

[DaemosDaen]

if you new to the game, as OP seems to be, it's fairly easy to have issue with Biters.

If they wipe you out, just start over and play with expansion off. That't the one setting that REALLY can get to you. Even then, you should be able to launch a rocket by just defending yourself with gun turrets either way.

Other than that, Just keep you military research up, make sure your defenses are covered till you get to the point where you just don't care anymore.

[Drizzt]

Originally posted by Eagle_of_Fire:

You notice that some nest are in range of your pollution? Clear those nests out. You can use the breathing space and they'll evolve slower.

just going to take a little issue with this point - destroying nests significantly increases the evolution rate, especially at the beginning of the game

for this reason i tend to defend against biters in the early game, and only start destroying nests once i am ready to expand or as i am clearing around my base to set up defensive perimeter

but everyone develops their own tactics and ways of playing, just wanted to clarify that destroying nests is actually one of the best ways to quickly increase the evolution rate

Edit: as for defenses, biters always rush using the shortest route to the nearest pollution producing building - so once you know where a base is, usually putting a short wall and a few turrets directly between them and your base is enough to keep them at bay for a while, and then as you get more resources you can increase the length of the wall and the number of turrets, and radar is good so you can see any new bases that go up, and groups of biters collecting together before they attack, as well as the routes they use

[The_Pastmaster]

On Freeplay I've only lost 4 times in 500 hours.

[The_Pastmaster]

Originally posted by UltraStonedFrawg:

How does one simply lose

Deathworld mainly. ;)

[Drizzt]

yeah - if you have a situation where all the resources are covered in biters and you have no way to clear them, it's game over - but that's pretty hard to make happen in a normal game - just keep a stack of armour piercing rounds and some grenades on you, so in the worst case you can always clear out a spot with some coal, iron and stone and start over (but starting by making ammo and grenades and turrets) - it'll be tough since the biters will be more evolved and in larger groups, but should be fun! :-)

and obviously this can be simulated by simply running in one direction until your path is completely blocked by biters and then starting a base there :-)

[Coffee Daemon]

Lost once or twice, often due to mods but once in vanilla when I started in a desert and even the tiniest pollution just SPREAD EVERYWHERE.

[🆄🅽🅲🅻🅴 🅹🅾]

I never loose, I'm a serial wall and turret builder, no biter is touching my factory. I also don't care how much pollution I pump out, let them come I say. I get a certain satisfaction out of watching biters burn.

[Drizzt]

lol - funnily enough i still haven't used the flamethrower (more than just once to try it) in 1600+ hours - i'm a machine gun turret builder - not even laser turrets for a while, but have used those extensively in the past - so i shall have to try a wall of flamethrowers and see if burning biter smells like victory ;-)