brutal survival help

[taintedcat]

I need some help as it seems i'm clearly doing something wrong. i run out of minerals for better towers - my base gets devastated by omega's and i barely survive the waves after save scumming and spamming tons of lvl 1 towers + walls.
i did get some fusions power+ decent supply of carb / iron so early expansion was quite fast...
but then i lack uranium for heavy artillery and palladium and everything else i need for any tier 2 or 3 towers.
am i supposed to use only lvl 1 towers with some lvl 3 to affort some heavy artillery?

went the minigun - grav-mine route, while that kills mobs fast enough, for bosses it was a bust.
do i have to use specific weapons to counter the biome. e.g. for jungle use energy towers/ guns?

i don't think i have the time or space to set up big cultivator farms for minerals either.

only made i through by kiting waves and massive ammo factory spam before final wave.

not really enjoyable if i'm honest.

[cswiger]

Brutal survival is supposed to be really hard. It isn't intended to be enjoyable for casual play, not unless you are an APM guru who has mastered the game, anyway.

The solution to which towers to make is simple: build an assortment of everything, because many enemies have a specific weakness and you either have towers which can deliver that type of damage or you don't.

Sure, there are biome-specific enemies where you really want fire for the fungal swamp biome, acid for the volcanic lava/stone biome, etc-- building more towers of the appropriate type will help. But keep a broad mix or you'll probably regret doing otherwise.

[taintedcat]

stuff i learned the hard way that can help.

if you use shield generators, make sure they only cover your towers never the walls. or they get almost instantly depleted and your towers take lots of ranged damage soon

you can do alien research even with the standard communications hubs only. this really changed my game. railgun here we go.

stick to lvl 1-2 towers as the lvl 3 are much more expensive in rare resources. some might be worth it but you can do the upgrading before final wave.

better to reload if you loose a lot of towers during a wave, rebuilding is gonna suck you dry,

get carb/iron synthesizers as soon as you can establish stable power supply, for me it was fusion plants.

build layer of walls with a space between each, 3 - 5 or more, spam walls around the map to delay final wave. build walls behind your outposts, if it falls enemies get delayed buying you time.

[blackphoenixx]

Equip fusion cores while building and upgrading.

Even the grey ones already reduce build costs by 8% per slot and they're dirt cheap to research and craft.

[taintedcat]

thx for the suggestion with fusion cores, equipping lvl 3 reduces costs by 48%. half price everything.

some more things i found out.

get tech going fast, upgrade 5 lvl 4's then lvl 5 if you can afford it, much faster teching means red weapons earlier. as research costs no resources in survival, speed is key.

save them resource eggs for when you have red weapons, those are insanly expensive, if you can pop 10 eggs you end up with a bunch of red weapons, that really level the playing field.

gravity mines are you friends, place them while exploring, building, in front of walls -> everywhere, cheap defense that works wonders against swarms.

[deltahazer]

Originally posted by taintedcat:

thx for the suggestion with fusion cores, equipping lvl 3 reduces costs by 48%. half price everything.

some more things i found out.

get tech going fast, upgrade 5 lvl 4's then lvl 5 if you can afford it, much faster teching means red weapons earlier. as research costs no resources in survival, speed is key.

save them resource eggs for when you have red weapons, those are insanly expensive, if you can pop 10 eggs you end up with a bunch of red weapons, that really level the playing field.

gravity mines are you friends, place them while exploring, building, in front of walls -> everywhere, cheap defense that works wonders against swarms.

Mines are always so easy to overlook because they don't "feel" very effective if you're trying to lay them mid-fight.

But lay them in advance all over the place, when you can afford the reset timer on the laying and have time for your Armory to produce more, and you can turn the whole map into at least a "wounding floor" to weaken & thin the herd out.

[blackphoenixx]

I like to put nuclear mines behind my walls as a last-ditch defense. They don't take damage from AoE effects so they just stay there permanently until something breaches your walls and gets 5k area damage to the face instead of dismantling your power plants.

[taintedcat]

i'm embarrassed i figured this only out after ready a loading screen hint, never bothered to upgrade extractors in survival, as they run out anyway...
but extractors only use up 1 resource per sec so upgrade and you get more per 1 resource extracted. i mean yes its in the description as upkeep, but never made sense of that part^^
wonder who else missed this

[FkYoSht]

I ran into the same issue and had to Wemod my ass out of it. Too hard for me on vanilla