My desperate attempts to clear land

[Mauslag PIngman]

What I'm looking for is feedback on my various ideas. Would it work? What would go wrong? Is there something better?

If I fire at biters with an artillery wagon and then move on after a few rounds will the biters know my new location and chase me over there or will they divert to some nearby human constructions or something else? Do biters ever just turn around and go home after awhile?

I recently tried building an island base in the middle of a big lake so that spitters couldn't attack my stationary artillery. Of course there was a way for biters to get in on the causeway I built so that I could get to the island. I found I had to shape the island into an upside down U and fill those prongs with laser turrets. Also had to put down lots of laser turrets, preferably surrounded by slowing forests where the causeway attaches to land. These measures were somewhat effective with the massive bands of roving biters. They will attack random powerlines sometimes or train tracks. Don't know why this or that powerline is chosen for destruction as they leave lots of structures untouched.

I found that it is better to fire from only one or two artillery units. This makes it easier to deal with smaller roving bands. Its tricky keeping the power flowing. Building powerlines to islands is slow and meticulous. I could build a causeway that doesn't actually reach an island and then build small separate islands for power poles. That way biters couldn't reach my main island but power could. I could bring steam to the island to insure the laser turrets have power, but that means I also have to bring steam turbines and make more island to fit all this stuff.

Its a shame that biters can see land mines. Its almost pointless to lay mines expecting them to do anything but slow biters a little bit.

I was thinking of building a supertrain with a couple of artillery wagons and some fluid cars to haul steam. That way I'd be able to attack biters with rolling artillery and build large steam farms and create power from multiple locations. I know it can take time for biters to reach targets so I guess I'd have to set up defenses with steam storage, power generators and lasers to wipe them out when they finally get there. I'd have to set up train routes to bring up steam. I've no idea how long one storage of 25K steam can power 50 lasers.

[astroshak]

I designed a little fortification that is designed to be placed at a Tee type of stub off of my main rail lines. It consists of walls all around it, a bunch of lasers, some Artillery, etc. It is designed to be visited every so often, as the artillery shells or consumption of other replacement items decree.

To expand, I would simply run another rail line near the end of the firing range of the first base, and build a second. Can build a line of these bases for a perimeter if desired, and as long as the pollution cloud does not go past the bases, you’re good.

[lois lane balancer]

You only mention using laser turrets. The advantage of laser turrets is the simple infrastructure, but if you're already hauling a train around there's not much reason not to slap on a wagon full of uranium ammo and a wagon full of flamethrower feed. A defense based on uranium-firing gun turrets and flame turrets will vastly outperform pure lasers and be much simpler to set up and pack up.

>"If I fire at biters..."
The biters will head to where the artillery wagon was, and wreck anything you left there (tracks included). After that, I can't remember offhand - I'd suggest testing it in sandbox mode, it'd be very easy to set up.

>"They will attack random powerlines sometimes or train tracks."
Biter pathfinding sometimes gets stuck on an obstacle, and if it's a killable obstacle they'll give up trying to go around and kill it instead. Nothing really to be done about it, unless you want to have repair coverage or defense coverage for all your infrastructure. Or a hard border, so they can't get in.

>"Its a shame that biters can see land mines. Its almost pointless to lay mines expecting them to do anything but slow biters a little bit."
Land mines take a few seconds to deploy. Biters can only attack them during that window, after which the biters can't hurt the mines except by walking right over them - which they'll happily do.

[mrvn]

>"Its a shame that biters can see land mines. Its almost pointless to lay mines expecting them to do anything but slow biters a little bit."
Land mines take a few seconds to deploy. Biters can only attack them during that window, after which the biters can't hurt the mines except by walking right over them - which they'll happily do.

Which means replacing mines with construction bots during an attack is quite pointless. They see the freshly placed mines and destroy them. You need to replace landmines only in between attacks.

[Mauslag PIngman]

Turning off the robots would be fine except for they also do repairs on turrets so if I turn off my personal roboport I don't get repairs done unless I do them myself. Too bad the game doesn't let you turn off mine replacement while allowing repairs.

Using artillery wagons I managed to take out another big bunch of biters, but it took a long time to build this temporary base because it included storage containers for steam, about 18 of them and 18 steam turbines to keep the power flowing when the biters take down a random pole miles from this outpost/firebase. All of it surrounded by maze barriers and then that surrounded by mines. I had spidertrons, but they're more trouble than they're worth because they tend to destroy more of my own structures than the biters do with their reckless use of rockets. Maybe if they fired poison gas rockets instead of explosives they'd be worth using. And they don't know enough to back away or try to draw the biters here or there. Be nice if we could upgrade their intelligence and battle patterns.

I've never heard of anyone using steam storage to power hundreds of laser turrets. It works well, but is tedious to set up even with blueprints. Unless you're good at circuits you won't be able turn off turrets while you're setting up so if the biters are close, the turrets will open fire the second the steam turbines get steam if you have power poles set up. I got around that by leaving out the pipes between the turbines and the storage. It would also be cool if you could fire artillery at greatest range and then move closer as time goes on instead of always shooting at the closest worms and nests first. This would allow you to take more shots before moving your artillery wagon train. I used up about half the steam in the 20 minute battle. It was good to have my own power because power and rail lines both were cut and inaccessible during the siege.

[astroshak]

My Rail BP’s are based on the distance between Large Power Poles, so I bring electrical power with me when I go extend my rail network somewhere. Its a lot simpler than trying to train in temporary Steam to power the Lasers.

[Laie]

If I fire at biters with an artillery wagon and then move on after a few rounds will the biters know my new location and chase me over there or will they divert to some nearby human constructions or something else? Do biters ever just turn around and go home after awhile?

They never go home.

If biters come across an obstacle, they will spend only so much time trying to find a way around before they start attacking the obstacle. If you see biters attacking a rock or trees, it's because those were getting in the way. Any electric pole is a potential obstacle and may be attacked as such. Unlikely, but bound to happen sooner or later.

My experience with shelling biters: sometimes biters start tearing up the track instead of the firing position. It doesn't happen very often, but it's not exactly rare, either. The rail-wreckers destroy only a few tiles of track and then stop. Typically they forget about their original mission and stay in the area, so they're still around when I come to patch up the track, even if it takes me minutes to get there. Sometimes, however (very very rarely) they do move on to attack my factory proper.

For context: I play without enemy expansion. My defense is to eradicate the biters before the cloud gets to them, I don't have any walls or defenses. I place track, sometimes deep into enemy territory, build a firing position, eradicate everything in range, then pack up and move on. Perhaps one in four artillery placements had it's tracks attacked. Attacks on the factory itself have occurred, uh, twice I think? I don't know how many artillery placements I placed and removed overall, but statistics say that I killed 104k nests.

You only mention using laser turrets. The advantage of laser turrets is the simple infrastructure, but if you're already hauling a train around there's not much reason not to slap on a wagon full of uranium ammo and a wagon full of flamethrower feed. A defense based on uranium-firing gun turrets and flame turrets will vastly outperform pure lasers and be much simpler to set up and pack up.

Seconded. A firing position that is dependent on power lines is a catastrophe waiting to happen. Flamethrowers are excellent for dealing with wave attacks and quite economical: with increasing artillery range I've expended upwards of 3000 shells from a single firing position, yet never needed more than half a fluid wagon of light oil.

[mrvn]

You only mention using laser turrets. The advantage of laser turrets is the simple infrastructure, but if you're already hauling a train around there's not much reason not to slap on a wagon full of uranium ammo and a wagon full of flamethrower feed. A defense based on uranium-firing gun turrets and flame turrets will vastly outperform pure lasers and be much simpler to set up and pack up.

Seconded. A firing position that is dependent on power lines is a catastrophe waiting to happen. Flamethrowers are excellent for dealing with wave attacks and quite economical: with increasing artillery range I've expended upwards of 3000 shells from a single firing position, yet never needed more than half a fluid wagon of light oil.

That's because I think at some point the aliens get lost on the way to your artillery and go home.

[Mauslag PIngman]

I made a smaller firebase with no steam backup. Its much more compact. Before I bring the artillery up I look at the map to determine the placement of the firebase. I make sure electricity comes up from the rear. Biters go straight at the firebase so since all the nests are to the east, northeast and southeast, my powerpoles are safe on the west side. I've done it about 10 times and had no problem.

I originally wanted the steam backup for another reason which is that I have tons of surplus steam. My nuclear plant is creating about 1500mw and I only use 600mw so I have huge storage fields, but still a lot of steam is just vented. Its a waste. If anyone has ideas for using steam, that' d be nice. Too bad you can't steam the biters by shooting jets of steam at them.

I did a lot of flame thrower work back at version 16. They're spectacular but they used to destroy a lot of my stuff. Have to be carefully placed and backed up with lasers to protect them because the oil is slow to get to it's target and often just chases biters until they stop. Can you still use crude? Flame thrower turrets will gladly incinerate me if I have to go out there and I do like to lead the biters into laser fire so that's a negative. Lasers never shoot me.

In the event that my base is over run by biters because maybe a lake or something diverted some of them to the rear of my base, I'll use a quicksave to do it over. I've already had something like that happen and I went back there and laid lots of mines near my power poles and then got the biters to chase me so that they'd run past my lasers. The big ones are always eager to do that. That was pretty effective if there aren't too many biters and I'm paying attention. Every time there is a lull, I run out there with my portable roboport turned on and the robots replace damaged and spent mines and turrets.

[T-A-R]

It depends on the map if there are useful chokepoints. When those are not an option use landfill and spiral out a track around your base, making rings, and let them attack (semi) perpendicular to the track, always. Your power lines idealy get supplied from 2 sides, avoiding dead ends besides when building.

Regular spaced arty outposts keep the biters way from tracks/poles/radars, since they head straight for the artillery guns. Then let the radar shells do the exploring.
Avoid the situation where biters would cross or run parallel to your track.
Personally i prefer stationary turrets getting supplied by wagon turrets. Bullet defence is powerful lategame, but like lasers they need power to operate (inserters). Flamers have a superior buffer when they break a pipe, but don't keep up very late game imo. I prefer wires for the fact of radar sight. I have never used steam trains on the front lines, as tracks are just as edible as poles for hungry biters. I prefer wires along the for the fact of radar sight.

Random wrecking is usualy caused by new nests/expansion resulting in new biter paths to your base. I'm surprised it also happens without enemy expansion.