Factorio Forums

Hey all! I've played this game for a looooong time, year or two before steam launch in fact, and i've enjoyed it. I keep coming back to it now and then and binge play it for a few hundred hours then put it away for a while and come back to it again later on, and so on. It's such a fun, addicting game.

I'm no novice by any means, and my current factory has 4 lanes of constant, never-ending metal plates, 4 lanes of constant never-ending copper plates, and 2 lanes of everything else. I'm producing about 10,000 circuits per minute as a decent measuring stick of the factory's output capability.

Here is the problem I have run into...

The enemies have just become far too numerous and/or strong for me to deal with in a decent way. I don't remember having this problem the last time I played, so i'm thinking something may have changed a bit between versions? But basically the bases are absolutely GIGANTIC, huge, huge bases full of bugs. Now they are zero threat to my factory, that isn't the problem. The problem is whenever I need to tap new resources, for example right now I need another oil expansion and running train track up to it and so on... I have to kill thousands of biters and about 3-4 dozen nests and 2-3 dozen giant worms to clear a path to it. And every single little base of these biters is the same, all absolutely enormous in size.

The damage output from the worms is really intense, they can destroy a tank from full health to dead in a matter or 4-5 seconds.

I "can" clear theses bases. It just takes a whooole lot of running in at full shields, using flame thrower, and running over. Over and over and over. It takes an extremely long time and quite frankly it's getting pretty boring dealing with these nests just to get back to what I enjoy which is building the factory. Now I don't want to disable the biters or anything like that because I enjoy that strategic element and building defenses and all, but clearing these nests is just getting out of hand. At this point I have researched all weapons technology and I find flamethrower to be the most enjoyable weapon to use. it has decent enough range and does a lot of damage, it's ideal for the hit-n-run tactics I tend to use. The reason I use those tactics is because nothing else can survive! Vehicles get blown up right away, shields get chewed through quickly even though i'm running 3 of the MK2 shields... It's just so much damage and it takes a really long time to clear.

So i'm just wondering if anyone has any advice or tips or anything to clear out these enormous nests of overpowered biters in a reasonable fashion? The only other thing i've found that works is using my swarm of 30 robots to constantly build laser turrets closer and closer to the base to wipe it out. That is another tactic i'm not really fond of. Isn't there some way I can just wade in there and blow them up quickly?

I like watching biters throw themselves against my walls and die, but I hate clearing the nests. Don't know what to do.

If you are fully researched, and can't cruise through the enemies, you are doing something wrong.

You should have Power armor MK2 armor with no fewer than five Energy shield MK2s and two or three Portable fusion reactors. You should be walking in with no fewer than 100 Destroyer Robots active. And then you should either be using a fully upgraded combat shotgun, or a fully upgraded flamethrower. If you use the flamethrower, do your best to stay out of your own fire -- it does damage you. If you do that, you really should be able clear even massive bases without too much hassle. Additionally, since you have plenty of resources you could load up the LateUpgrades mod and really up your damage making it even easier.

Oh, and there was a change to the biter behavior starting in version .13. They are more active about migrating and are no longer repelled by man-made objects. It did make it "harder", which I personally didn't agree with. I think it is a logic / planning game, not a combat game. There are people who feel the total opposite way. That the battle is intregral to the game. *shrug* To each, his own.

But since there are options to reduce the number of enemies, or even eliminate them if you desire when creating a map -- it doesn't leave much room to really complain about it.

I swapped my MK2 armor to have 4 fusion generators and 7 MK2 shields and I can finally wade in there. It's just a shame it takes every slot my armor has to do it, guess i'll need to make a second suit specifically for the roboports and construction and so on and leave this one for base destroying. Oy. Wish I could simply keep combining them into better and better versions to fit it all on one suit

C'est la vie! It'll do for now, at least I can clear out those nests much quicker now.

The LateUpgrades mod essentially would do that for you -- eventually you could get enough bonuses to robot damage and follower count that you could wade in and clear stuff out before the can really do you much damage. It would take A LOT of resources though... the upgrade costs scale up pretty fast, which is kind of the idea...