On verge of losing, need help (frequent/large enemies)

[PostfixingEdginess]

Hi guys,

I'm playing on a map (for about 50h now) with very frequent, very large and very rich enemies; other settings are default. (My goal is to get a massive war factory running up to the point were any biter base can be easily obliterated.)

Due to bad planning I ran into massive power problems, which I have been unable to solve so far. I have a lot of laser turrets defending my bases which are very close to large enemy bases. Since my factory has no power, ammo production has grinded to a halt, so I can barely keep any gun turrets stacked.

I ran out of coal and had no conquered coal patches handy. I thought I was being smart by using all my remaining stocked weapons to clear an area with some oil wells.

I've built a massive power plant which is powered for 100% by oil using solid fuel. Unfortunately, 7 oil wells with 0.1 oil will only get the plant running at around 5%, leaving me with barely any power.

So I'm currently rerouting all my oil trains to bring all the oil to this plant so that I can at least (hopefully) get my power to acceptable levels.

But with all the oil used for power, I'm unable to produce any advanced weapons (destroyer and distractor capsules mostly)


Is anybody willing to join my game for a while to help me sort out my problems? I might have to give up this map otherwise.

PS Im living in Europe with a pretty good internet connection, so multiplayer should work fine, especially with people living in or near Europe.

[Xterminator]

Have you considered trying to convert to Solar power? I know with hardly any power it can be hard to get many factories up and running, but I think solar might be your best option right now. One other is if you have robots at this point you could order them to cut down a ton of trees and burn those for as long as you can to get everything kick started again.
Out of curiosity,are you using any mods? I would be willing to hop on for a while and try to help get things started again if our times coincide. I am in the US at GMT-7, so your probably several hours ahead of me? Feel free to PM me if you want to try to do some multiplayer to fix things up!

[PostfixingEdginess]

I managed to solve my problems for now by rerouting all my oil to the power plant.

This means I cant produce combat capsules or laser turrets but it wil buy me enough time to kill biter bases that are blocking acces to a coal deposit. Once I switch to that coal deposit I can reroute my oil to my main base to finally resume military production.

Thanks anyway for replying

[bobucles]

50 hours? Gun turrets? You dun goofed. Laser turrets are the king of base defense. Gun turrets have some niche use to prevent damage, but the cost of ammo is so much higher vs. the cost of repair that this is a moot point. Just get lots of lasers.

Your energy issues can be addressed by filling your base with heaps of efficiency modules. Rank 1 modules are actually less expensive than solar panels in terms of energy, and they save real estate so you don't have to risk expanding too hard. But the real bonus is what they do with POLLUTION. The game mechanics force pollution to match the energy consumption of your structures, so less energy means less pollution. If the red zone doesn't touch biter territory, you don't get attacked. It's basically game breaking.

Coal deposits are not balanced around lasting more than a day or two of energy supply. You NEEDED to invest in solar power 30 hours of gameplay ago.

[PostfixingEdginess]

Maybe my post was unclear about this; I actually mostly use gun turrets. The reason I'm having these power problems is due to the high amount of laser turrets that I have. I have a lot of turrets because I have the biter settings on very frequent, very large and very rich.

I agree that solar would solve my power problems, but I'm avoiding them because I think steam power is more fun to do.

My problems came mostly because I vastly underestimated how well steam plants would scale. I didn't realise that an increase in scale would also increase complexity.

Also I thought I was going to be able to run fully on oil power, it seemed like a fun challenge. I really underestimated how quickly I would burn through fuel.

I'm still having a blackout every now and then (when the rail network is blocked for ~30 seconds, it is enough to cause a deathspiral. This then results in the coal plant getting overrun because bots are unable to constantly repair and replace turrets). Right now 8 trains and with 2 stations on each side are constantly hauling Coal to the plant and its barely enough.

[Kewlhotrod]

do we have to state the obvious here?

[bobucles]

Ballistic ammo isn't cheap on the energy consumption either. A clip of 10 armor piercing rounds will cost you about 5MJ in terms of extracting, electric smelting and assembling. Burning through a low fire rate of one clip per second will mean you need 5MW of base to feed that turret.

Assuming 10 damage x 10 shots/sec, you're looking at 5MW for 100DPS of damage.

Laser turrets hit for a base of 20 damage, 3 times a second. That is 60DPS for 2.4MW of operation.

That's not forgetting that assembly lines produce pollution which draws in more biters, while a solar farm with lasers will not.

Laser turrets, man. And solar power. Just do it.

[PostfixingEdginess]

Never thought about the energy consumption for amma production. Its not important though, since im only using laser turrets.

@kewlhotrod: what obvious thing are you talking about? Im avoiding solar power because i like a challenge.

[Phillip_Lynx]

... @kewlhotrod: what obvious thing are you talking about? Im avoiding solar power because i like a challenge.

or that the images are not shown?

[PostfixingEdginess]

[quote="joelmeijering"... @kewlhotrod: what obvious thing are you talking about? Im avoiding solar power because i like a challenge.

or that the images are not shown?[/quote]

I can see the images, I'm on Chrome/OS X. Are you on a phone?

[PostfixingEdginess]

UPDATE: I just died; two trains ran out of fuel, blocking all coal trains. Coal ran completely dry before I started noticing power issues.

My western oil base has fallen and the power plant is being overrun as we speak. Im fueling trains using power poles (!), since the only coal left is the coal on the belts.

So I'm in urgent need of help. Could anybody join my game tonight, ASAP? Im on GMT+1.

[Smarty]

Uhh i have some spare time so sure

What is the ip?

[PostfixingEdginess]

Lets get on skype or any IM first, itll make things easier.

Do you have skype? Skype name: joelmeijering

[Phillip_Lynx]

... @kewlhotrod: what obvious thing are you talking about? Im avoiding solar power because i like a challenge.

or that the images are not shown?

I can see the images, I'm on Chrome/OS X. Are you on a phone?

No, I am on Firefox

[edit]
If i 'quote' your post with the images, I can see the urls and copy/paste it into my browser. But in the post itself I do not see them
[/edit]