How do I deal with insects ?

[Naughtious Maximus]

DO I have to rush this game if I play default freeplay ? I noticed them respawning. Do their nests grow ?
Its pretty complicated to deal with their nests alone with a tank. It takes a lot of ammo and a lot of effort. So even if the map is infinite, rapid expansion is prevented by these insects.

Trying to kill off all nests too near to my base so I basically only got attacked by them once. but exploring a bit around revealed very huge nests very close to each other.

So the question is how do I deal with them in a relaxed default freeplay ?

[knighttemplar1960]

There are several options. You can start the game in peaceful mode. The bugs only retaliate if you attack first. You can choose a rails world setting. This disables expansion. You can also reduce the evolution rates in the settings when you start a game. This slows the speed at which the bugs increase in size and strength.

You can disable pollution, or you can slow pollution spread by selecting a green start and increasing trees when you set up a game or proactively control pollution yourself by cutting as few trees as possible, placing things that create lots of pollution (like power production and smelting) next to nearby large clumps of trees/forests and you can reduce pollution by hand crafting as many items as possible (hand crafting creates no pollution). Once you increase your tech and get modules you can produce efficiency modules and reduce both electricity consumption and the pollution associated with it for that machine AND reduce the pollution created creating power since you'll need less of it.

On default you may want to increase your military tech as quickly as you can and set up automated defenses, belt and inserter fed turrets, banks of flame throwers, and 2 sets of doubled walls, one set one space away from your turrets, (larger biters have a damage radius of 2) and then another set just inside your turret's maximum range to keep the spitters from spitting on your turrets.

Pave your base (or paths) to increase your running speed inside your base or set up strips of belts to run along to increase your speed (or both).

Cars are much quicker than the tank. With a bit of practice you can literally run circles around the bugs (they'll never get a mandible on you) while you mash the machine gun button and chuck grenades out the window.

[Fel]

Gun turrets plus flamethrower turrets, with 1 tile of empty space before a wall is a combo that can keep them away reliably when if comes to defending.

For attacking, the tank is fine up to a degree but you will probably want more advanced stuff soon, like the power armour mk2 with portable fusion generators, shields and personal laser defenses along with a rocket launcher is a pretty deadly combo.

In the late game, you will get uranium ammunition which will make the SMG and gun turrets much more potent, nukes are as strong as you might expect (but a bit fidly to use properly) and the artillery (turret or train wagon) are able to shoot down the spawners and worms from long distance (but won't damage the bitters and spitters that will then swarm where your artillery is).


As for how they work, they have an evolution factor that is based on time, pollution produced and spawners destroyed.
At specific points they start to get some larger variants that slowly become more numerous before the next larger variant appears, up to behemoth bitters and spitters that are the biggest they get.

Existing nests periodically pick a random spot nearby and send a small team to make a new nest, those nests won't show on the map until you refresh the tiles they are on so they can appear to have magically spawned there.

[GreenBeanN1]

Vanilla biters are relative easy. Nothing to be worried about. I prefer to build a wall around everything (even the outposts are part of the main base wall). So no surprises and I can do what I want with my land (I mean before my visit they didn't needed the land either and now they think it is theirs :( ).

Trains bring in the light oil and if I need to expand it is quite easy to do.

Flamethrowers and lasers are more than enough for every situation. I should worry more about the performance of your PC :) .

[Nonotorious]

You can also increase the starting area. Lasers will also shoot while you are in the tank so get them researched because they help immensely when you are only at the tank stage. construction bots will also repair the tank while you are being attacked although this can be expensive because they get hit by splashes and destroyed aswell.

[mikeday]

The above responses are very good. Here's some additional info that works well for me:

+ After getting turrets, prioritize increasing projectile damage before fire rate, but do both early. They can massively increase your combat capability.

+ Lay down four to six turrets out of range of a base before you attack so you have a safe place to fall back if needed.

+ Upgrade ammo as soon as you can as the 2nd tier ammo does a lot more damage.

+ Defender capsules are not just for defense! I've taken out large early/mid game bases with just a shotgun and defender capsules, with follower count increased.

+ Slow down capsules will save your life if you get overwhelmed and chased.

+ Poison capsules are shockingly powerful mid game. Get in a car, run circles around the base, and throw 5-10 poison capsules at the base when shooting with the car and having defender (or later) capsules following you... its a powerful combo, as enough poison capsules can destroy all the worms in the base, and severely weaken or kills the new enemies that spawn while you take out the nests.

Late game there are many, many options. My favorite is a three-way tie between:
1) spidertron loaded up with rockets and personal laser defense,
2) artillery
3) nukes :D