enemy nests respawning

[DragonHalo99]

no matter how many times i clear out nests and try to clear then farther away they just seem to respawn which is kinda lame. ive got a nice surpise for those bugs once i finish setting up automated construction for defender capsules! wonder how much more effective the tank is with it's own airforce.

[KatherineOfSky]

You should clear nests out beyond your pollution zone -- that will slow their colonizing efforts.

[Maelstrom]

Even on the lowest possible biter settings (other than None), they will still eventually spread everywhere. There's only two ways to keep them away:

First is the "normal" way. Build walls around your territory and defend them. Like most things in Factorio, building long walls and walling off large amounts of territory takes forever at first but once you get good at it it goes pretty fast. Get a flamethrower, a combat shotgun, and power armor with some shields and you can kill even the big biter nests quickly. Load your supplies on a train (Mine has 5 wagons. I call it the "Base-On-A-Train" and I use it to build everything) and wall off the territory you want. Make sure to drop radars in your interior so you don't miss any enterprising biters that establish nests behind you. Use water to your advantage - defending a long wall is resource intensive and requires many stops for your perimeter train (I prefer to limit my roboport networks to a chain of 9, with the train stop at the one in the center.)

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=773777260

The second way is to game Factorio's map generation mechanics. The world only exists 3 chunks beyond what you've explored or polluted. If you have your biter settings low enough, the initial bases will be spread widely. So what you can do is save your game, explore until you find a biter nest, then reload your game before you explored. As long as the edge of what you've explored (or polluted) is at least 3 chunks away from the nest you won't spawn it and hence they won't expand.

[Fire Miser]

After clearing a nest I just place a bunker with a few turrets to "keep the peace". Effective early game.

[AlexMBrennan]

they just seem to respawn which is kinda lame.

Let's consider the alternative: You kill the aliens once, and then never get to use any weapons/defences/killer robots again. Do you think that this would be more fun? Would you feel motivated to upgrade your sentry guns knowing that they will never fire a single shot?

[DragonHalo99]

question does the very big map have a limit?

[KatherineOfSky]

Originally posted by DragonHalo99:

question does the very big map have a limit?

Maps are (functionally) unlimited unless you limit them.

[Acarin]

Originally posted by DragonHalo99:

question does the very big map have a limit?

No, the map is infinite (effectively).

And to the OP, you should try building perimeter walls with flamethrower turrets mixed in with your regular/laser turrets. It makes biter attacks SO MUCH more entertaining...

Of course, you have to fuel the flamers, which uses some of your precious crude/light/heavy oil, but ohhh the pleasure just watching a good ol' Biter Barbecue! :-D

[DragonHalo99]

flamethrower has saved my bacon the few times I went for an enemy base and it turned out it was a massive hive and my tank ran out of ammo and fuel. then again maybe if I didn't power it with wood. Im just trying to use up the wood in a chest I have.

[DragonHalo99]

I am the op though

[The_Vulcan]

Just finished my first game.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=774153006

Blue print a section of double wall, with large power pole each end, 1 laser each end.
Then you just create zones and clear it out section by section.

Even though I had used blue prints to move and expand my base early on
For some strange reason I kept doing walls by hand for ages.
Probably cause I no sleep for 2 weeks after buying this game.

[DragonHalo99]

Originally posted by Acarin:

Originally posted by DragonHalo99:

question does the very big map have a limit?

No, the map is infinite (effectively).

And to the OP, you should try building perimeter walls with flamethrower turrets mixed in with your regular/laser turrets. It makes biter attacks SO MUCH more entertaining...

Of course, you have to fuel the flamers, which uses some of your precious crude/light/heavy oil, but ohhh the pleasure just watching a good ol' Biter Barbecue! :-D

actually I just thought about this but if the map is infinite then why have the nests respawn? I can't do much scouting without tripping into massive hives while trying to find more oil sources

[Pat]

Nests don't respawn they just rebuild. There is no reason for them to do so they just do it. You can't block aliens from building in a large open area other than walling it in. You may want to expand your perimeter past your pollution to decrease biter attacks.

[Warlord]

As said before, nests do not simply respawn. Biters in currently existing nests will expand into empty territory within a half dozen chunks of so of their nest and make new ones. So you may notice new nests in the same area, or slightly nearby, but never the "same" nests as before.

If they never did this, they'd be a very static enemy. If you eliminated all nests within a mile of your base, you'd never be attacked again. And never having to fend off biters is boring.

It's not done to make alien artifacts renewable (ore isn't), it's done for gameplay purposes.

[Acarin]

You can always select "Peaceful" mode, either from the map spawn options at the start of the game, or from the console interface (although someone else will need to provide the actual command). This prevents the biters from attacking you unless you attack them (on a nest-by-nest basis). It makes for a quieter game if you want to concentrate on base design :-)

[Pat]

Originally posted by Warlord:

As said before, nests do not simply respawn. Biters in currently existing nests will expand into empty territory within a half dozen chunks of so of their nest and make new ones. So you may notice new nests in the same area, or slightly nearby, but never the "same" nests as before.

If they never did this, they'd be a very static enemy. If you eliminated all nests within a mile of your base, you'd never be attacked again. And never having to fend off biters is boring.

It's not done to make alien artifacts renewable (ore isn't), it's done for gameplay purposes.

Using the debug menu option "Show_enemy_expansion_canidade_chunks" allows you to see what chunks they are currently expanding to. I can't proof this but the game likes placing it near the original nest. You can try this by spawning a biter spawner in a no biter world. Biters are then taken from the nearest nest having enough units to build a decent sized nest.

I don't know why I'm into this technical stuff but I guess it's the same reason I play factorio ^^