Best base defence?

[Shaka]

Ive been casually muddling through my first freeplay gamer for a few weeks. I just got some automated trains running but neglected what i thought were decent base defences and got overrun a bit by biters. I know i made mistake by moving most guns to the perimeter, layered defence seems better as biter strength does increase.
I was using turrents and lasers and a couple of flame guns.
I want to know what strategy is best for base defence flame guns ?
Also I've read some threads about whether its best to be defensive or offensive. Does being offensive significantly increase biter spawn.
Because i spent a while learning the game and biter presence is now significant I'm wondering about restart. But not sure if the increase in biter spawning levels off or does it just always increase. Also will going nuclear increase pollution and biter strength, how can i check pollution?
Any help guys is appreciated.
Thanks

[The_Pastmaster]

Going on the offence is going to keep you much safer in the long run. I tried to do a defence run and I couldn't do it, even using tower defence strategies.
I usually do a perimeter wall around a large area with gun turrets and a single stone wall, then have broken layered sections of double walls to force the biters to walk longer to get to the main wall. This so that the turrets can shoot them for much longer before they get attacked themselves.

[astrosha]

You can check your Pollution Cloud on the map. Just open the full map, and turn it on, its the red button on the right, along with showing train stations, power lines, turret ranges, etc.

Spawners that are within your Pollution Cloud do not like it. They soak up some of the pollution, and every so often will "spend" it on biters and spitters with which to attack your factory. Barring certain mods (Rampant, I'm looking at you) as long as there are no spawners within your cloud, you won't ever be attacked.

Now, biters get stronger for three things. Time, total pollution you produce (for this, cloud size and spawners within are not relevant, its the total pollution), and spawners you kill. Left alone, the biters will get stronger. Provoked, by killing their spawners and by polluting the planet, strengthens them more.

Even with spawner kills contributing to biter evolution, it is better to clear the spawners from your cloud than to keep suffering attacks. Biters and spitters do not contribute to evolution, so killing them by the thousands is not going to harm you (other than stressing your ammo production, or power production, depending on what you are using for base defense) but it is far simpler to kill the spawners and not suffer those attacks. You'll want the room to grow, basically.

So what constitutes the best defense? Honestly, I've never bothered with flame turrets. What I have done is turret walls, and laser turret walls.

Gun walls, aka turret walls, are a wall, and one or two spaces away from the wall, is a line of turrets. An inserter feeds the turret from a chest, locked down to one slot. Another inserter feeds the chest from a belt of ammo that runs the entire length of the wall. Sound complicated?

A Laser Turret wall is similar. Except, instead of the belt of ammo feeding chests feeding the turrets, all you have is a line of small or medium power poles - or substations - behind the laser turrets, feeding them power.

Gun turrets are higher DPS, for the same amount of science spent, than laser turrets. Lasers, however, are far simpler to maintain and depending on your power supply, may not even require additional resources beyond what it took to make them. Gun turrets, by requiring ammo, require far more in terms of resources over time.

A single line of turrets is enough to defend a base. If you are playing modded or suffering from really large attacks, putting flame turrets out in front of the guns or lasers may make you even more secure. Feed the flame turrets with Light Oil.

[THE kilroy]

Best thing for defenses is to stack up wall tiles. One wall tile can be eaten and suddenly your turrets are under siege. If you thicken dangerous locations to 2 and sometimes 4 thick, you will give yourself more time to do damage before they do any real damage.

Best defense early is wall tiles with a few gun turrets in select areas to retain resources.

Laser turrets are the most robust as they dont require resupply production lines and delivery. They will eat alot of power though ,if not prepared they can cause a black out and disable ALL turrets. So bump up steam engines and other power sources.

Late game(after launching rocket or sooner on ceryain scenarios) artillery is king, as long as your artillery post is defended well. Expensive but supplied correctly biters will be no issue.

Flame turrets are hard ti use effectively if you are new.

[Fishy]

Flamethrower turrets are the most cost effective way and dependable in my experience. One pump jack on an oil deposit is plenty for hundreds of turrets for ages and ages, and requires no additional processing. The turrets themselves act as pumps, so no additional pumping is required. 7 solar panels and 5 accumulators will power the pump jack for eternity. Don't even worry if the oil pipe line is long. Fast throughput is unneeded.

Flamethrower turrets do require addition turret support, either gun or laser, as they cannot protect themselves. I prefer to use gun turrets as they require no energy and will still defend if your power goes down. I use a belt feed with ammo and wood and then burner inserters to keep the turrets filled with ammo.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1709506438

The gun turrets never actually fired a shot in this small attack.

I usually only start with one or two gun turrets next to the flamethrowers, and fill in more gun turrets as needed.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1709515054

[Shaka]

wow some detailed great responses. I think Im going to jump in my tank and clear some room, defensive strategy is not working that great for me.

[Varenvel The Festive Dinosaur]

Early on just slap some turrets to vaguely cover whole base , and if you know game better you may be a bit "exploity" and clear these early biter nests(like placint turrets closer and closer and destroy th base , pickup turrets and to next spawner)

mid/late game its going to be "death walls" , this been effective since "forever" and there is usualy not bad way to make them , you can make flame deathwall , turrets , lasers , mix of both or 3

if your low on recources first just make one not too far from base and as you get more recources later make another "further" and then just redirect ammo to second one and dissemble the first

[stevej018]

on default settings, will biters spread if left alone, or is this also something that occurs if the pollution reaches them

[THE kilroy]

Default they will make expansion partys, a group of mobs that attempt to make a new base, if you kill tgem they cant build the base.

[Sgt. Stedenko]

Great comments, thanks folks!

Just playing my first Deathworld and...failing :)

[Varenvel The Festive Dinosaur]

Originally posted by Sgt. Stedenko:

Great comments, thanks folks!

Just playing my first Deathworld and...failing :)

deathworlds are not as threatening now , now you got artylery , artylery train and nukes ,

tho getting to them is still challanging

playing with start location 200-300% usualy helps

[Beans]

Impenetrable perimeter defence on my factory, involves alternating laser turrets and flame turrets lining the walls of my factory. The flame turrets are fuelled with light fuel on site. Even with the aliens fully evolved (and tons of pollution on my end) they cannot touch my outer walls.
Its a super simple and inexpensive solution so you don't need to continually hint down alien bases (that's what artillery is for XD).