Little Biter, Where Are You Going?

[Silvador]

OK, so, I posted a couple of weeks back about returning and attempting to play with biters turned on. After numerous restarts (none of which were biter related), I'm looking to hopefully actually progress -beyond- producing the 3rd science. O:

But, I've found myself spinning my wheels a bit, where the biters are concerned. The problem is, without a clear direction or idea of what to expect, I tend to... stall in indecision. As my minor pollution cloud crept closer to the nearest nest, I ended up spending a good couple of hours just trying to decide on a small defence outpost design. As it is still very early, I don't have the resources to just lay down extensive walls, or dozens of turrets, so I was wanting to just put down a group of four or six, hoping it would be sufficient.

Anyway, that was before the release of SA. That nest was quite a distance away, so nothing ever ended up attacking, so I never got to properly test any of the layouts I came up with. Since then, I've restarted, and once again, I'm on the doorstep of my initial biter attacks. The first nest is closer, so the pollution reached it sooner, and I discovered that A. I wasn't satisfied with the positioning of my little outpost, and B. I was worried about the number of turrets for nothing. Six (for now) is quite enough.

However, as I watched a later group of biters launch their attack, I noticed that they went a different direction. While they still turned to go towards the turrets, it raised another concern...

I realised that in an area with little to no obstructions (my previous save had a nice, natural bottleneck I was certain they would flow through), it might prove problematic in predicting where the biters would actually go. I realised that I am unfamiliar with the detection range of biters, so I don't know how close something has to be for them to redirect to attack it. And, I realised that I have no idea how the biters choose their initial target when first setting out.

These points leave me with the dilemma once more of "How many turrets should I put out, and where?"

To that end, I was hoping to get some advice on how I might go about setting up early defences, particularly where there is a lot of open space. What should I expect biters to target, initially? Is it anything that produces pollution, or do things like steam engines have a higher risk of being targeted? How can I predict the likely path they will take so I can best position my little outposts to intercept the attacking group?

Or, in general, I'd like to hear (or even see) some defence layouts that you find to be reliable. Do you only rely on one? Or do you scatter a few around for better coverage? Do you always include a radar? Do you produce ammo close to the outpost or closer to the base?

TL;DR - I'm looking for ideas/advice on how best to deal with biters, and what to expect from them (especially in open areas with little obstruction) very early in the game.

P.S. If you'd gotten this far, thank you for your time. I know it's a bit of a long read. Sorry.

[TyrannicalTeabag]

From what I have experienced, radars will make most biters b-line for them, and you can then trick them into a killzone

[Fletch]

I tend to... stall in indecision. As my minor pollution cloud crept closer to the nearest nest, I ended up spending a good couple of hours just trying to decide on a small defence outpost design.

You are overthinking this, and vastly overestimating the problem with biter attacks.

You can easily kill off the first attacks yourself no turrets needed (just use a sub-machine gun with basic/yellow ammo). After that a single turret can handle the attacks. Look at the map, and set up a turret covering the part of your base closest to their nest. After the first attacks, go take out their nests, all you need is two turrets and some yellow ammo: place first turret halfway to their base, then "creep" forward and place the 2nd turret. Go back and get the first turret and creep forward leap frogging turrets. Eventually you are close enough to place a turret that will be shooting the base, and the further back turret is taking out any biters attacking the first turret.

Pro-tip: always take out biter nests before your pollution cloud touches them (use the map view, and have at least one radar so your map view is widely expanded far beyond your pollution cloud). If your pollution cloud never touches a biter nest, then you never get attacked. Simple.

I never set up "defensive outposts" with walls / gates / etc. Biters are just a non-issue for me (with default game settings).

[Budmind]

yea i usually just kill the closes 3-5 nests with submachine gun and grenades/pumpgun, then tech as usual and once i have walls and flamethrowers biters become trivial until very late game.

just slap 2lines of wall right next to each other and cover the whole wall with flamethrower turrets, connect them to oil and forget about the possible threat

[Delle(DK)]

in general i think that biters primary attack things what come into their range and is on their way from a-b. But if they detect allot of polution they will get angry and trigger a large attack and run in the direction of the pollution.
my strategy is to simply said kill the biters bases so they always are far away from my areas then you dont have to worry about large attacks but only scouts that get near the base.
Regarding radars maybe build them a bit away from your main base and some defensive turrets there that way if there is a big attack they might go there and its fairly easy to rebuild vs if they damage the main base.

I typical build a 2-3 thick wall arouund my defensive possitions and a mix of laser towers and gun towers and maybe 1 flame tower.
The flame tower will kill anyone pretty fast but have a short range.
And once you advance in the game then i recommend to have some drones that automatic can repair and rearm your guns.

A good strategy to take out enemy bases are either to build a tank and run over them ect, use fire/napalm. Just drive fast in their base and sprey napalm everywhere.
and it can even be a good idea to set a forrest on fire and then the fire sometimes will burn down their base far away. And ofcourse later in the game you can get long range artillery and nuclear shells, just remember to use manual fire els it might nuke your own base if they get inside.

A good strategy if you dont have tank or other stuff is to have example 15 gun turrets or lasers and then place down 5-10 in a line.. then move forward and lure the enemy closer and run and hide and then build a new line of turrests and remove the old ones..
That way you can take out big bases pretty easy.

[Silvador]

I've been hesitant to aggressively attack nests, as I know destroying them can contribute to the evolution factor. So I thought it better to defend, especially early on. I don't want to risk pushing their growth beyond what I can defend against.

I don't have grenades or tanks, those are still very far away.

And there is no "closest" part of my base. My factory is very large, and will be very -long-. so any nearby nests will have large areas that are close. No -single points- that are closer than the rest.

[That Fish Guy]

#of Turrets shouldn't be a limiting factor, it doesn't take much to make a turret, before I have the nests mapped out (after I've taken down the first wave by pistol) I drop 1-2 turrets at each "critical"node (iron, copper, coal, Stone, radar, power and production) with 5-10 ammo each, I'd say 75% of them never see an enemy, those that do get a couple more turrets (4-5 will hold off almost any early game attack, no walls needed) with 10-25 ammo each. By then I've got a good idea where the nests are, load up 9 turrets, a bunch of ammo (yellow for turrets, red for smg) and some repair packs, and "leapfrog" my Turrets into their base, keeping the turrets just out of worm range, while using my smg to clear out their base, worms first then spawners.

I go all around the pollution cloud, then slightly outside of the pollution cloud, and that'll keep me from being attacked until very deep into blue science, by then I have a car and more red ammo for turrets and their bases melt.

Biter evolution is pretty miniscule, and once you get rockets the bases are a joke to take out.

Learn how to quickly drop and add ammo to your Turrets, and how far away you want to be from their base before laying down your first line of "covering fire" turrets.

Biters will never be a problem again.

[kremlin]

Before you're totally surrounded by massive nests, you can go a long way with a few well placed turrets. Scattering a few in the areas where raiding parties pass through can take out a lot of raiders before needing to be reloaded. Those waves are much smaller than pollution driven attack waves so it requires a lot less firepower.

[Caramel_Clown]

It helps a lot to clear your nearest neighborhood right away pretty much. Also, defense doesn't have to be reactive. There's nothing wrong with spending time trying to get a map seed you want. In which case you'd look for starting positions on peninsulas, clear narrow choke points, etc. Defense starts way back when you just lay out your first base in your imagination. Terrain can be a powerful ally.

[Avloren]

The evolution increase from killing nests isn't that bad, more evolution will come from your pollution. And it doesn't matter much how evolved the biters are if you kill every nest inside your pollution cloud, which will prevent almost all attacks from happening in the first place. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, as the saying goes.

I usually go in stages:

First get an SMG and heavy armor, then handcraft and place a few turrets around your factory. I put two near each ore patch and near the steam engines. When an attack shows up, go help your turrets fight it off - at this point your base is small and your personal combat abilities are as good as your automated defenses.

Whenever you feel like fighting biters is becoming too much of a distraction from factory building: craft 10ish of turrets, 20-30 grenades, mine 20-30 fish, and automate a bunch of ammo production (400-800). Use all that to clear any nests that your pollution is hitting. Place turrets nearby a nest, place more turrets closer in where the old turrets cover them (turret creeping), pick up the old turrets, repeat. Use grenades on big groups of biters to save on ammo. Use your SMG to pick off worms, they're the biggest threat to your turrets. With no nests inside your pollution cloud, attacks should come to a halt for quite a while.

Once your factory is really going and pollution is growing, and attacks are starting to happen again, mass produce turrets and ammo (automate it, don't do it by hand!). Use them to clear more nests until until you've expanded out to some natural chokepoints that will be easier to defend. Make sure you've included adequate resource patches within your planned borders. Put a string of turrets along your new borders, fully encircling your factory in so that biters can't reach you. Place the turrets loosely, just close enough to each other that each turret can cover the ones on either side of it.

With a few damage upgrades, this should cover you through small/medium biters, but the guns will struggle when big (blue) biters start to show up. At that point you should upgrade to walls with flamethrowers, which will last you throughout the game (you might need thicker walls and possibly a few laser turrets once behemoth (green) biters become common, but that is very lategame).

[That Fish Guy]

Avloren nailed it.

[Looks like Duke]

Important: Play the game with smaller time evolution factor than default. And you may want to switch off the resettlement - saves time.

[Silvador]

Hmmm.

It was my understanding that the pollution cloud doesn't contribute to biter evolution, that it only triggers them to attack. If I'm understanding what is written on the Factorio wiki, only the amount of pollution that is -produced- factors into their evolution, and even then, it does so by much less than destroying a nest.

Is that information incorrect?

[Chindraba]

Origineel geplaatst door Silvador:

Hmmm.

It was my understanding that the pollution cloud doesn't contribute to biter evolution, that it only triggers them to attack. If I'm understanding what is written on the Factorio wiki, only the amount of pollution that is -produced- factors into their evolution, and even then, it does so by much less than destroying a nest.

Is that information incorrect?

Yes, that info is incorrect.

Pollution cloud is important for causing attacks. The nest absorbs some pollution from the cloud and tells one of its biters to go fix the problem.

The pollution you make, every single point of it, is counted and that affects the evolution. After you make the pollution some is absorbed by the ground and some by the trees, so the cloud is a little bit lighter, but once it is made it is already counted for increase in evolution.

[Silvador]

Origineel geplaatst door Chindraba:

Origineel geplaatst door Silvador:

Hmmm.

It was my understanding that the pollution cloud doesn't contribute to biter evolution, that it only triggers them to attack. If I'm understanding what is written on the Factorio wiki, only the amount of pollution that is -produced- factors into their evolution, and even then, it does so by much less than destroying a nest.

Is that information incorrect?

Yes, that info is incorrect.

Pollution cloud is important for causing attacks. The nest absorbs some pollution from the cloud and tells one of its biters to go fix the problem.

The pollution you make, every single point of it, is counted and that affects the evolution. After you make the pollution some is absorbed by the ground and some by the trees, so the cloud is a little bit lighter, but once it is made it is already counted for increase in evolution.

Wait, you just... that's exactly what I said!

The amount of pollution -produced- counts toward their evolution.
But the -cloud- that spreads across the map, (and it absorbed by nests to trigger attacks) doesn't.

[Bystandard]

I'll run a loop combo wall/conveyor round my base and set up plain gun turrets with a loop of clips ever circulating the base. Later to be replaced with laser turrets and solar panels.