What to do when you don't have iron?

[258789553873]

I've gotten tired of relying on my main bus to supply my gear and steel lines, and so this playthrough I was thinking of doing the normal thing and setting up dedicated colonies for each of these.

Sadly though, that hasn't panned out. For some reason, iron is rare on this map. There was one large one near my base, but that ended up feeding my main bus (the supply I had at the starting location was rather petty). Sadly, there seems to be no iron anywhere near my base. I normally rely on radars in my colonies to find things for me, but for some reason none of them were finding iron. Even more strangely, they did find like half a dozen copper patches, many of them quite bit, along with 3 or 4 stone quarries. I resorted to just getting into my car and trying to find some iron myself. Even that didn't turn out too well. I only managed to find two, both of them being super far away. One is ludicrously tiny and clearly wouldn't be sufficient for steel, and even gears would be a bit of a stretch. I did find a 12m one that would be perfect for steel, but its insanely far away and is surrounding by these colossal biter nests that I clearly don't have the resources to take out. I don't see myself exploiting that patch anytime soon, if ever.

Right now, I'm suffering from lack of steel. I only made a temporary setup to make ammo that I intended to replace with a train station, but its obvious that steel train ain't happening. I don't have enough space there to expand steel processing, and this all means I can't produce purple science at a decent rate, making it hard for me to get the tech I need to take out biter nests for more colonies. I've had to completely forgo any research that requires purple beakers I'm producing them at such a low rate. My steel line can't even maintain the one assembler making railroad tracks, let alone the three making furnaces.

Its obvious that this one iron patch feeding my main bus is all I have. This is so stupid, I have far more of every other resource on the map, including stone and coal, than I do iron. Honestly, iron seems to be so rare I'm worried that my time with this base is limited, and once I run out I'll be helpless. Luckily, I'm not consuming at a super fast rate right now, but at the same time I can't upgrade my weapons at all to set up new colonies. What's really funny is I was initially worried about copper too, but now I have far more than I could ever use, even if I did have enough iron.

What am I supposed to do here? I don't have enough steel for purple research, only one mine that I can harvest from, and of the two I have found one is ludicrously tiny and the other is guarded by a wall of biter nests! I can't even set-up nuclear here just because I don't have enough purple beakers being made. I can't even research blue belts right now things are so bad. I really just don't know what I can do here, and I don't see anyway I could take out those collosal biter nests even if I did have all the resources I need. What can I do here?

[Fel]

Your best bet is to pick a direction and go straight (well, avoid nests if you can) until you are pretty far away then search for iron there.

The further you go from the better the deposits become so any iron patch you find way out will be bringing you a whole lot more (they are bigger and last longer).

Of course, don't go so far out that you can't get rails up to there but a couple screens worth on the map view is enough to see some significant changes.

[Tydo]

If you don't have the means to fight (because you have NO IRON)?
Take a few minutes to cry then start over. Not everything is a winable scenario, specially when you spend on non-essentials too soon.

[Purpleganja]

Why can't you supply both iron bars and your dedicated iron for steel from the same patch? You didn't find the splitter recipe in the wreckage when you crash landed?

Edit: sorry this isn't funny. Try to get to flamethrower turrets as best you can by scraping together some steel with whats left of your iron. This will save a lot of bullets.
Can you reach the next patch with yellow belts that you can borrow from your bus? If so delay the railway and go mine that tiny patch and secure it with a crude pipeline and flamers and dragons theeth walls.
Borrow pipes from your bus as well if you must.

[Jupiter3927]

If you have access to oil and have some leftover iron, you can use flamethrower turrets to clear out nests.
Just be careful not to stand in their fire.

Exploring is your best option for finding more iron (and every resource).

[knighttemplar1960]

It depends on what researches you did get done and how much iron plate you have left.

If you don't have iron plate to make steel and therefore ammo you'll have to rely on other things like flame throwers and lasers if you got some made. Lasers use power instead of iron and flame throwers use oil instead bullets.

If you don't have these things made yet you'll want to take that small iron patch and use it to make ONLY lasers, flame thrower turrets, and poison capsules. Bonus points if you have laser defense modules in your personal armor all ready.

Take a couple dozen laser turrets and string a long line of large power poles from your power supply to a location near the huge nest and set up a laser bunker that you can run back to.

Then use the lasers to turret creep until you are just outside the range of the closest worms. Run out and back to get the attention of the loose bugs so that the huge swarms goes splat with your laser turrets.

Once the wave is cleared, run out as far as you safely can and throw 3 poison capsules so that you get all the worms that you can with the cloud (3 poison capsules will take out even the largest worms) but especially the ones nearest your lasers.

Retreat and wait for the poison capsules to kill the worms and then start creeping forward with the power poles and the laser turrets the lasers will eat the bugs that rush you and as you get close to the spawners eventually them as well.

When your farthest laser gets too close to the next batch of worms repeat the poison capsule trick again. You'll be able to clear that entire mess. It will be slow and tedious but it can be done. If you don't have enough iron ore to make rails to run a train out there drop a few miners on the patch and let them fill a couple of chests while you set up a wall and laser turrets to defend that spot.

Fill your car with iron ore and run it back to your smelters and use it to make only rails until you get enough to run rails out to the patch. Set up your train to automatically bring ore back to your smelters and use the iron and steel that you get to completely defend that patch with lasers and flame thrower turrets (you can set up an oil train to deliver oil to the outpost).

Once that patch is yours an you can defend it use the iron from that patch to make what you need to set up your next iron outpost and go ore patch hunting again. Once you get another large patch or 2 you should be set up to where you can start concentrating on research again.

You can recover from that but you'll have to be very careful.

Once you have that iron patch prioritize its use to expand your defense capabilities

[bigdale]

The only game I ever outright lost (couldn't come back) was a desert map with almost no iron, the biters ran me dry through ammunition before I could expand.