Early Defense Setup

[skillabstinenz]

What is a good early defense setup? I'm pre military science, so it's a long way till flamethrower turrets. My setup has problems with the medium biter, spitter combo. The medium biters soak up the damage, while the spitters wreak havoc: https://www.bilder-upload.eu/bild-44c65 ... 9.png.html
Is there a good solution for that, or do I have to rush for flameturrets?

[BlueTemplar]

Piercing ammo and damage upgrades should help a lot against medium biters.

[Serenity]

The regular armor doesn't cut it against larger biters because of their increased resistances. As said you need to switch to piercing ammo, which requires a decent amount of steel (by early game standards).

[Xeorm]

For early defense the +damage upgrades work really well. The first upgrade alone doubles the damage output against medium biters with basic ammunition. (Yes, doubles. Not an exaggeration.) The second upgrade triples the damage compared to no upgrades. It's pretty required if you're still using the basic ammunition against large amounts of medium biters.

If you need more then that piercing ammunition is also good. It's not going to be more efficient in terms of resources, but it does kill things a lot faster and the actual difference in cost is minimal.

My suggestions for defense on deathworlds is to go for flamethrower turrets asap from the start. They're stupidly good at killing lots of biters cheaply. Something that you'll really want to get you over the laser defense hump. Lasers are good, but getting them built in high enough quantities + getting the energy infrastructure necessary can take some time. For a normal game I wouldn't consider flamethrower turrets all that useful.

[skillabstinenz]

For early defense the +damage upgrades work really well. The first upgrade alone doubles the damage output against medium biters with basic ammunition. (Yes, doubles. Not an exaggeration.)

Yes, because to the flat damage reduce.
I have the second damage upgrade already, which cost a whooping 800. Three will be 1200 with military science! So that will take quite some time too.

If you need more then that piercing ammunition is also good. It's not going to be more efficient in terms of resources, but it does kill things a lot faster and the actual difference in cost is minimal.

Yes one problem of piercing ammo is that it's not more cost effective. Another is that I will need lots of copper and steel and all that needs to be build and till the belts fill up... Finally this will produce extra pollution, which will anger the biters even more.

My suggestions for defense on deathworlds is to go for flamethrower turrets asap from the start. They're stupidly good at killing lots of biters cheaply. Something that you'll really want to get you over the laser defense hump. Lasers are good, but getting them built in high enough quantities + getting the energy infrastructure necessary can take some time. For a normal game I wouldn't consider flamethrower turrets all that useful.

Yeah, they owned in the new Wavedefense! But I can't see a single oil patch on the map! So oil will be a long way(literally *cough*).

The biggest problem I'm having are corners, all fire is focused on a single turret. Are there building styles that mitigate that problem?

[Xeorm]

Yes, because to the flat damage reduce.
I have the second damage upgrade already, which cost a whooping 800. Three will be 1200 with military science! So that will take quite some time too.

Yes one problem of piercing ammo is that it's not more cost effective. Another is that I will need lots of copper and steel and all that needs to be build and till the belts fill up... Finally this will produce extra pollution, which will anger the biters even more.

Yeah, they owned in the new Wavedefense! But I can't see a single oil patch on the map! So oil will be a long way(literally *cough*).

The biggest problem I'm having are corners, all fire is focused on a single turret. Are there building styles that mitigate that problem?

Not sure that I'd consider the 3rd upgrade all that economical. The first two are awesome. The third starts getting expensive at a time when you're wanting to transition to other defenses.

Do note that it's not that much more expensive to use piercing ammo. Especially with only two damage upgrades, as soon as you start seeing large biters they're about the same on marathon difficulty in terms of price. They're cheaper even for normal play to use. Not sure where you're at in terms of evolution, but I'm going to wager it's around 50% and there's not much difference by then.

I'd recommend going out for it then. The biters don't get easier with time, so now's the time to go. Flamethrower turrets are the turning point in any deathworld runs I've done. The difference is so very stark.

I'm sure there's some building strategies out there that are cool and work? But all I've done is add turrets to the side of the one getting beat on. The biters tend to follow the same rough paths and as long as you meet them perpendicularly then the turrets do very well. Corners don't feel afraid to build in a diagonal fashion.

[BlueTemplar]

This was for 0.16, but I don't think anything has changed ?

vanilla_ammo_cost_effectiveness.png (77.54 KiB) Viewed 5347 times

Yeah, you totally want all the upgrades you can get against blue biters.
And yeah, ideally, you'll be able to get oil before you have to face them in your base.
(Outside, you can always wall them in, I'm doing that pretty successfully in my Py game where I don't have access to piercing ammo and grenades yet...)

[skillabstinenz]

I'm at 0.42 pollution and 0.5 is big biter time...

Can't see much in the charts.
Normal is king vs small and spitters, obviously.
Piercing is better for medium worms, well shotgun should be even better. Can't see for big worms.
Against medium biter upgraded normal is better than upgraded piercing , that's one of the reasons I didn't use piercing.
The interesting thing would be the big biter, but can't see which is better in the chart.

I did some calculating myself. For the medium biter piercing is only more efficient at 0 upgrades! Normal ammo gets even more efficient with upgrades: normal 3 is already better than piercing 5!

Now the interesting part big/behemoth biters:
At 0 upgrades normal ammo is "better". Piercing is a bit better at upgrade one. And gets even better Piercing 2 > Normal 3, P3 >> N4, P4>>N5, but at upgrade 6 normal is ahead again and gets better. And it's similar for behemoth.
Looks like the devs thought that through.

Well time to rush piercing and oil.

[BlueTemplar]

Yeah, I was interested in the red science era at the time, never got around to upgrade it for later (and I was not sure how to deal with combined bullet/turret upgrades, since they multiply with each other).

But I had the misfortune to experience blue biters at red science recently, and you pretty much can NOT kill them with regular ammo and a single upgrade - maybe except with insane amounts of turrets - they pretty much regenerate faster than you can damage them !

So sometimes you just want to kill the biters faster, regardless of resource efficiency - especially when attacking nests !

[skillabstinenz]

Big biters with normal ammo at upgrade 1 hmmmm
Turrets will deal 6,05 dmg, but big ones have 8 flat and 10% damage reduction. That should mean 0,2278 real HP damage per shot and they have 375 HP! So you need 1645,83 shots per biter. Equalling: 164,58 Magazines or 658,3 iron plates *G

Doh, right, that was my player not turret formula. Turrets get extra damage twice (physical * turrets).
Normal ammo is still king against small and spitter.
Medium biters: Stays basically the same, but only N3>P4, N4>P5 and so on.
Big biters: Piercing is better at upgrades: one, two and three.
Behemoth biters: Piercing takes the lead at upgrade 3, with upgrade 5 normal is better again.

Well, when attacking nests shotgun >> submachine gun: dps and efficiency wise. If you have uranium ammo with low upgrades and fight behemoth biters, uranium may be more efficient: https://www.bilder-upload.eu/bild-677da ... 9.png.html

[BlueTemplar]

First gun turret damage research is (relatively) much more expensive than first bullet damage research though.

Also, I'm using Py in that game (that's why I'm behind so much), where at start a regular magazine costs 10 iron plates, 2 coal and 2 stone, and an iron plate costs 8 ore !
(I'm at the first ore processing tier though, so an iron plate is only 3.33 ore. And the second magazine recipe is 2 lead plates, which with first lead processing goes down from 6 ore per plate to 2.5 ore per plate.
Piercing ammo is one extra lead plate and one steel plate, and a steel plate still costs 10 iron plates at this point...)

[skillabstinenz]

Which version are you playing? I'm playing 0.17.21 and https://wiki.factorio.com/Physical_proj ... (research) gives you bullet, shotgun and turret damage all in one! Or is it from the py mod?

Haven't played much since 0.15, so I'll be playing vanilla for now.

[BlueTemplar]

0.16 - I thought that I checked for 0.17, but looks like I got confused by the wiki still linking to the 0.16 gun turret damage research from the 0.17 (?) gun turret page...