Flamethrower turret advice?

[Furry Eskimo]

I haven't used them before, but they seem really powerful!
When I built my new perimeter wall I installed regular flame thrower turrets.
They run on next to NO fuel, which is really weird, but ok.

Weird thing is though, they frequently spray fire diagonally, and hit my own turrets, and sometimes take out my own defences!
So, I don't put flamethrower turrets on outward turns of my wall. Easy fix, right? :D

But sometimes the flames seem to fall short, so they don't make it past my wall, the firthest block of which is four tin squares out.
Why, do the flames damage my own wall?? Should I have less wall to shoot over?

[Killcreek2]

Flambe turrets fire in a forward arc (you should see a green overlay when you have a turret in hand). If you have other turrets inside that firing arc, they can be hit. "Friendly fire, isn't."
The fuel consumption is excellent, as you have found out. Using heavy or light oil instead of crude gives a +5% or +10% damage bonus.


Walls are immune to fire damage, so you can setup some "dragons teeth" or mazes to slow / stall biters as they enter flamer range, & thus get caught in the fires for longer.

Here is a pic of a rather over-engineered fortified wall, but you can see the dragons teeth out in front of the gun & laser line quite clearly ~ https://i.imgur.com/x95qNDR.png

[Furry Eskimo]

I did something like that in the past, but it seemed to slow me down more than the bugs, so I stopped.

Now I jusy have 8 laser turrets, then two fire, and this repeats.
All the flamethrowers are connected on one pipe, and astonishingly this works.

I have blueprints, so I can easily expand the perimeter at a moment's notice.

But are you sure the flames don't damage walls? Just other turrets?

[Warlord]

Originally posted by Furry Eskimo:

I did something like that in the past, but it seemed to slow me down more than the bugs, so I stopped.

Now I jusy have 8 laser turrets, then two fire, and this repeats.
All the flamethrowers are connected on one pipe, and astonishingly this works.

I have blueprints, so I can easily expand the perimeter at a moment's notice.

But are you sure the flames don't damage walls? Just other turrets?

I'm pretty sure they don't. If you select a wall, it says it has 100% fire defense, indicating it takes no damage. If you saw damage to a wall, it was likely caused by something else (biters/spitters).

[Killcreek2]

Originally posted by Furry Eskimo:

But are you sure the flames don't damage walls? Just other turrets?

Can confirm: Walls, gates & rails are completely immune (100% fire resistance).
Pretty much everything else will take damage though, so take care routing power poles, rail signals &etc near flamer turret firing arcs.

Originally posted by Furry Eskimo:

I did something like that in the past, but it seemed to slow me down more than the bugs, so I stopped.

You can try some different patterns & see what suits you best. I settled on a hexagonal grid with 1-tile gap between each, as that slowed the biters nicely but without causing them to attack the DTs often, & yet still allowed easy player navigation on foot. YMMV.

[Avloren]

Flamethrower turrets themselves are also immune to fire, for what it's worth.

I experimented with some wall setups that funneled biters towards a flamethrower turret, allowing them to run right up to melee range. It's a very effective way to force biters to run through your flames: if they have a path to your flamethrower they'll use it, even if it takes them straight down a line of flames, even if it kills them before they manage to damage anything. They will do this instead of stopping and trying to eat your walls, which is nice.

The drawback is that inevitably a few biters will survive to get up into the flamethrower's minimum range dead zone. You can cover the dead zone with gun turrets, but let's be honest, why would you use boring old bullets when you can watch the world burn instead? So I had a line of secondary flamethrowers behind the front line, where they could hit the dead zone of the front line flamethrowers. Which they can do safely without friendly fire, thanks to the flamethrower turret's fire immunity.

Sadly the pipes supplying your turrets are not fire immune, and they get destroyed all the damn time.

[Arby's Donuts]

If you have artillery turrets, build a turret station with an artillery turret in the middle and place flamethrowers around it. This way, while the artillery focuses on enemy bases, your flamethrowers can take care of any biters that run to your station. Make sure you've got walls!

[Furry Eskimo]

Well I have laser turrets, but not long range altilery. Unlocking and building it seemed to expensive.

Laser turrets are working fine though; plus they don't require ammo.

One reason I haven't used a fancy wall system though is because my bots try to repair the wall, and I don't want them running out far, trying to repair the wall.
I had a wall like this before and I just wasn't impressed. The bugs seem to prefer straight lines, and don't waste time with clever mazes.

So far my simple wall is working great, and even though I'm not investing in new tech, I've been able to expand my base exponentially! I claim new land, throw down a new wall, fill in the new land with solar panels, betteries, and roboports, and repeat. If there's ore I put a mine down, and have it funneled into storage. I'm building storage creates by the thousand :O

I can build a factory later. Right now I'm just asserting my control and gaining enough power to run Anything I want to do.

[stlyau]

Originally posted by Furry Eskimo:

Well I have laser turrets, but not long range altilery. Unlocking and building it seemed to expensive.

Laser turrets are working fine though; plus they don't require ammo.

One reason I haven't used a fancy wall system though is because my bots try to repair the wall, and I don't want them running out far, trying to repair the wall.
I had a wall like this before and I just wasn't impressed. The bugs seem to prefer straight lines, and don't waste time with clever mazes.

So far my simple wall is working great, and even though I'm not investing in new tech, I've been able to expand my base exponentially! I claim new land, throw down a new wall, fill in the new land with solar panels, betteries, and roboports, and repeat. If there's ore I put a mine down, and have it funneled into storage. I'm building storage creates by the thousand :O

I can build a factory later. Right now I'm just asserting my control and gaining enough power to run Anything I want to do.

First, Laser do take ammo, it's just in the form of electrical power.

Second, the expense of Artillery is dwarfed significantly by the devastation it wrecks on the biter colonies. In no time, you'll realize the cost is minute in comparison to other biter clearing methods, once you factor in the time factor.

[Hedning]

Artillery shells are expeinsive, and their blast radius is tiny, so you'll go through a lot of them. Also the radius is not that great without some infinite research and the manual targeting is kind of slow against larger nests becaouse of all the clicking required. For these reasons I consider artillery to be comfortably considered post-rocket weaponry.

[Serathis]

Arti is awesome, use it!

[Furry Eskimo]

I'm sure it's great, but right now I'm not investing in it. Basic lasers are doing a great job. I just place eight at a time with a blueprint, and breeze through nests.

[bigdale]

The rail mounted artillery is a game changer. Every one of my trains carries one and it helps fight encroachment with very little micro. Make sure you dump at least 4 laser turrets at your loading stations for when the angry bugs come seeking your train.

[Mio Rin]

Just make a 3-tiered concrete wall, then an inner wall out of turrets. :3
Don't forget a supply belt for the turrets (burner inserters and an ammo/fuel belt)