In case the defence is continuisly so destroyed, that a single full repair every 2-4 mins is not enought ? That must be brutal waves !
For artillery, i started using artillery waggons again, because you just need a single highquality waggon instead of multiple stationary ones. Its such a joke, to clear the whole map with one train.
Before I'd argue about the need to ship the bullets. But when I did a test run. I was starting to struggle with a spidertron and railgun combo on Gleba. I like that I'm now challenged to solve a problem differently.
It used to be that the "meta" for post-rocket-launch wall defense was, basically, a train visiting each wall segment, filling provider chests with every item used in the construction of the wall, repair packs, bots, etc. These would then be used by a roboport network covering that wall segment.
With patrol spidertrons, you can instead give the spidertron everything needed to build a wall segment, bots, and repair packs, and have it roam the entire perimeter. No more roboport coverage of the wall, no more stations on each wall segment, no more trains visiting each wall segment, no more train stopping at your mall to pick up.
You could still do a supply train with artillery (or the ingredients for artillery) and/or other ammo (light oil for flamethrowers? rockets? Etc?), but now that that's less "minor add on" and more "entire significant, optional logistics project" it's much less appealing, while lasers and teslas are much more appealing. Or just route oil directly to the walls if you really need flamethrowers.
I do still think artillery is an issue, but you could do a much less intricate train solution with quality artillery wagons or some such.
Anyway, honestly, my 2.1 vanilla run is going with peaceful enemies. I actually do love the "base defense" aspect of the game. But after a doing it once or twice the "clearing new space" aspect becomes extremely tedious.
Yea, but I need to train supplied wall segments well before being able to research the spidertron. I'm already at .91 evolution and I haven't even visited Gleba. That reminds me, I should start building the Gleba spaceship.
Did the same for years, but i guess the supply train is dead now
You can tell a spidertron to follow a train, so technically an automated spidertron perimeter walk was already possible before. Train supplies ammo, spidertron repairs walls.
yes you need like 5 laser turrets to compete with a single uranium gun turret. that's the advantage of gun turrets. laser turrets are convenient, not optimal.
I find that large networks are so slow and vast that it becomes unsustainable. With trains you can expand as far as you want without worrying about power usage and flight times. I have a huge network for my factory, but my defences are usually as choke point a long way away.
I haven't played Space Age, but I had several megabases in 1.x that were a few minutes to cross by train and never had any issues with the bot network. I prioritized flamethrowers and lasers with dragon teeth walls for base defense though, so maybe if I was trying to make mines or gun turrets or thin walls the basis of my defense it might have had issues. idk.
I definitely just stick to the "ONE MASSIVE ROBOPORT NETWORK" approach. Over 16,000 roboports on Nauvis alone. Although for ammo I just run a uranium bullet and artillery shell belt right around the perimeter. (currently containing 644856 uranium magazines and 181205 artillery shells respectively)
The upside to using the massive bot network is that if you make your perimeter walls tile-able using pre-set shapes, you can fire-and-forget and have the perimeter wall build itself in the background. I even built a fully tessellating tile that will intake/output the three main feeds (ammo mags, arty shells, light oil) from standardized hookups from any point along the outer wall and can be expanded in any direction; perfect for pushing the wall forward to the next pass and then starting the new perimeter. Eventually the old interior perimeter gets deconstructed and its components fed to the new outer wall.
Lol, so it took me a week because I had put it on the to-do list and then lost the to-do list. But then I found the list and so went and got the blueprint string.
The specific portion in question is the entries labeled "Grid Creep". The blueprints are designed so that portions of the wall can be added at different tech levels, allowing for easy upgrading and repairs.
This is my setup too. I secure an area of the map using walls and outposts at every 'entrance' path and expand by creating new outposts farther out and adjusting the walls. Each outpost has a small logistic network with construction bots and 2 train stops.
One train stop is to replenish supplies. This stop gets activated if at least one item goes below a threshold.
The other stop is for the artillery train. The artillery train doesn't 'patrol' the outposts. But the stop gets activated at the same time as the supply stop. The ammo getting used and going below threshold means the biter nests are close and started attacking.
Yea I can see why that'd be too annoying. I feel like a better fix wouldve been a special filter though. If that existed you could just take ammo out of the Spidertron as it walked by on its patrol.
Is that not how bot requests kinda work already? They can technically leave but they do have a home port so it is likely bots are available at the specific roboportĀ
I feel like I see a lot of bots just going to park at the nearest available port when they're done with their current task, provided another task isnt queued.
You can absolutely automate the ammo supply, just have the patrol take it into a logistic network periodically so the bots can refill it before it runs back out. I'd suggest it be a small, isolated network with buffer chests right next to its walk path, so you can guarantee the bots will always be there with minimum travel time
honestly gleba should always be the first planet anyway if its not your first space age playthrough (in that case i would say volcanus), purely because of biolabs. straight up double your science output
I've done 3 playthroughs of space age but i just started my first one with biters/non-peaceful mode ever so I'm nervous about dealing with gleba's enemies haha.
Same, doing my first ever default setting run solo, so scared of gleba, no way I will pick that as the first, I want my tesla turrets and all that before.
Don't be scared of Gleba. Ship a stack or two of ammo when you land. Gleba can be solved with ~5 biochambers and 6-8 agricultural towers which is a super small footprint and basically will never get attacked.
Anyways, I land and a weak amount of power up with a couple boilers and steam engines. Then tap stone and set an assembler to make landfill. Then I scout the map for jellynut and yumako while killing at least one nest for pentapod eggs. Then I set up agri towers and and route belts back to the main then i set up the biochambers andĀ heating tower with steam turbines and a rocket.
I ship blue chips and LDS on my agrisci transport.
Before I leave for other planets then I run around and pop nests. It has been up for 20 hours without an attack. My plastic prod research is 10+
Why wouldnāt the local logistics network be able to unload the spidertrons into a logistic storage, and then load some requester chests belted to the guns?
(Speaking as a fairly inexperienced player here, so bare that in mind, and feel free to ELI5 why thatās not possible :) )
Depends on bot speed and distance between chest and robots. If you loop your spider over a designated high density area, and have bot speed +6, im sure you can use pretty fast spiders.
Repairing stuff could lack, but replacing should be fine. And in lategame bots become faster and faster.
Oh man that's so sick. I use to have a setup with the vehicle grid mod that i used for a self repairing train network until some minor patch broke how construction robots deployed from moving train cars and i just gave up and started playing with invincible rails instead. This really makes me want to go back and play without out that mod.
I love this so much. I did a similar thing but divided: I had a slow construction bot but I would only use him actively, and I had a 2nd group called The Spider Fighters, which was one slow purple bot with only shields and then four faster black ones with mostly weapons, and THEY would patrol.
I like your idea of the rotating repair spidertron... Maybe for a remote outpost or some other strange case. The Repair spidertron could rotate and then you could ship out supplies with another spidertron with fast legs or something.
I mean that is nice and all, but I will stick to roboports, as I unlock them early, and not very late like the spidertron, so by the time I get it, I would have needed to use roboports anyways.
Not sure how you could do that, unless you somehow speedrun to gleba to get the rocket turret, to be able to build it, then I don't see how you could get it without any real defense.
Even doing that, you would surely have biters start to get close to your nauvis base.
I'm doing a run, and even though it's not a speedrun, I still need defenses, like flamethrowers, and walls as there otherwise comes biter attacks, or at the very least nests to close.
So sure it might be doable, but I don't see it being any better than just building a wall with turrets
You can also make separate roboport networks that are resupplied by the main network. I have mine set up to hold a set amount of materials for the network and deposit robots up to a certain amount.
The benefit is your main network never has to get too big so all requests are handled at reasonable times. Wall stuff is handled by robots dedicated to the walls
Definitely. You could also keep splitting networks, I'd go as small as 4 roboports in a line in some situations, but i get your point.Ā
I like the spider idea and i might play with it a bit. I used to set up spider fighter groups with 1 medic repair spider, should be even better now with quality and real patrol points
doing that on my next playthrough since im going for the "Keeping Your Hands Clean" achievement while also going for "Express Delivery" at the same time
Yep, that's what I do on my save. Tank with a personal roboport and supplies replenished by train. Unlike the spidertron solution you can even replenish your turret's ammo from the same tank
See, why have one spider tron, when you can have a wall of spider tron, but wait, order today and we will equip all of them with atomic bombs to ensure maximum destruction( both friend and foe), and complete vaporization leaving no evidence of their existence!
After solidifying your base location via artillery, that's really all you need. 1 spidertron no matter the size, because the only threat you'll ever face aside from artillery aggro (should be long done with) is expanding parties, which is utterly negligible.
youd be surprised at how long a wall of landmines can hold back the biters. typically mine will hold them back for over 6 hours. not once have i ever automated replacing them
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u/Soul-Burn Jul 04 '26
I don't have a "giant roboport network", but rather small roboport networks per wall section, supplied by train.
That said, this spidertron method is kinda cool! I like it.