. I didn't really understand combat despite the tutorials (ie, what do I need to go up against a biter base?) so instead I played it safe and limited my pollution to not touch anything I could see on radar. This was painful in some ways until I found the effectivity module, but I had a huge forest around my spawn point which probably helped a lot now that I understand how pollution works better. The biters were a certain distance out and didn't bother me, but at the same time I was limited in my build space by that and all the trees (that I did not want to cut down since it was absorbing pollution). I had a huge iron deposit that last me until the endgame, but my copper ran low at the endgame and I was forced to look at expansion.I think the hardest part was throwing stuff up as needed and keeping the factory organized. When I realized that boilers were going to be the biggest pollution source (and no slots to decrease it), I focused hard on solar power but I didn't have a lot of space. Then naturally I needed tons of accumulators to cover the night. I controlled pollution for the longest time with a partial night outage. It went pretty slowly and getting green beakers was hard (I hand-crafted about 1/2 of them for the longest time just to keep the techs moving since all the factories to make them was polluting too much - having only the science pack factory and crafting the rest of the items like inserters to feed it is faster than doing all of it by hand).
At about 20 hours I had my first biter wave. Since I had double thick walls and laser turrets every 3 tiles of the perimeter of the base (using water to reduce the area I had to cover) it was pretty much nothing, but I was aware that *eventually* they would evolve the dreaded big biters. Luckily I wasn't provoking them with pollution and it was a fluke, no other waves came. Around this time I was running short on T3 techs (blue) and to get the fancy stuff I needed alien beakers. I left the base with the composite armor and I was able to take out a few of the 1-2 hive clusters with backup laser array support (retreat to it). I didn't necessarily care about killing the aliens but I needed those alien artifacts to continue onward, and I also needed to exploit a couple of rather large copper patches to the north and south. Luckily, I could operate those with just a few defenses because the pollution diffused enough to not attract anything.
It didn't take too long before I reached power armor MK1 + fusion reactor. I still couldn't take out a large base without laser support, but I was able to get enough to start researching more. I didn't realize at first that 1 alien artifact = 10 beakers so I went on collecting for awhile (like 100+ artifacts trying to get any T4 tech). Personal Shield MK2 is wonderful for taking long enough to kill off the hives then retreating, but I still could not run fast enough. At about 30 hours I finally had power armor MK2. With 2 fusion reactors, 2 bio-legs, 8 shield MK2 and 10 battery MK2, and piercing shotgun shells with as many upgrades as I could afford (96+77 physical damage) I became able to take out a dozen hives at a time and run away if swarmed, without having to bring out power to laser support me. Ah sweet freedom! Now I can kill them off and pollute as much as I want!
I guess now it's just alien stomping time until I get the tech for the fleet to land, which should be interesting. Now that I've experienced the full tech tree (more or less) I can say that only the shotgun appears to be a viable endgame weapon, which I don't like. The machine gun might do some damage with T4 upgrades, but it also consumes too many rounds too fast. The combat shotgun with piercing rounds is a good early T4 that helps a lot, and I noticed the first T4 damage upgrade really changes how it affects big biters. It's also great for clearing trees out of my path
although in-base have to watch for friendly fire when trying to kill stuff on the outside, but usually it's dead before I get there due to my lasers + upgrades.Thoughts:
- Extensive reading of wiki was really helpful to my understanding prior to this challenge, and throughout (though some things like logistic bots I didn't understand fully until I used it).
- I would in the future tech quickly up to logistics because it's not as expensive as I thought and the bots really allow for more flexible layout (not needing to feed outputs into inputs directly or have the stuff near each other) and it kind of 'integrates' the base into one network.
- I found a layout I like which can get all my assemblers in a couple chunks (see image). I experimented with denser formats but it just didn't work.
- Beacons can with a regular grid layout hit 8 buildings, but I've gotten up to 12 buildings (this makes for nasty layout though). It's very difficult to justify using them not to mention when I realized that productivity module cannot be used I gave up on them entirely.
- For labs speed module is OK. For making alien science packs productivity module x4 is worth it. For all other polluting buildings, only effectivity module max that fits or -80% is worth it most of the time - otherwise just make more smelter/assembly plants it's cheaper on energy/pollute. I make an exception for oil industry where some speed/productivity modules can help more once the yield drops from crude. Even without the fact that increase in energy = increase in pollution, I don't really find the modules worth it on energy alone so am a bit disappointed in how its balance is currently.
- I did not find drones that useful. By the time you get the good ones, you're already sort of at the point you don't need them.
- The need for alien science packs to get enough tech to really be good at combat... I've seen it mentioned elsewhere. It's also the reason I broke my mostly pacifist strategy because I hit a wall. That said, I appreciate being able to go the solar route my first game and control pollution. Many people just build whatever they want and then wonder why they get attacked all the time. I was able to play more a sandbox game and learn before I had to fight.
- I didn't see the use in advanced transport belts or rail. I just used regular belts for everything and it didn't really matter I was able to feed my base plenty of resources from 'beyond the wall'.
- Spawning in a forested area is good for pollution but having trees in your way kind of sucks. I'd prefer the marsh/desert or whatever type of biome in the future.
- I think the initial spawned nest size is larger than intended (up to 10-12) based on some latest release notes ? This is on 0.9.2 and I didn't upgrade yet because I didn't want to risk losing my save.
- I wonder when triggers the aliens to spawn a new base, if it happens no matter what I do or what ? It seemed to happen more once they were 'activated' the first time I attacked them.
