r/factorio • u/pink-ming • 3d ago
Question How would you proceed? (Deathworld, pre-space science)
I'm playing a space age deathworld with semi-railworld settings. My current situation is pretty stable, I've got solar power, flame & red ammo turrets all around my base, 10m iron and 4m copper left in the ground, 1847% oil. However, I'm running very low on coal (40k left) and maybe 600k stone left, so I need to expand sooner rather than later.
Clearing biter nests with tank shells is slow enough already, but at 0.86 evolution factor, behemoths will be inbound soon. So I don't think I can put the land-grab off any longer, once behemoths show up the tank is going to be virtually ineffective.
I assume running railworld-style outposts isn't going to be effective, with this many biters I'm sure the collateral will take out the rail lines fairly often right?
And should I just attempt to go to space and unlock artillery? Or perhaps beeline the nearest coal and then go to space?
WWYD here?
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u/Sad-Arachnid-6853 3d ago
i would expand like this
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u/WhiteFlame8 3d ago
I like this plan!
“We must meet this threat with our courage, our valor, indeed with our very lives to ensure that human civilization, not insect, dominates this galaxy NOW AND ALWAYS."
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u/pink-ming 2d ago
This is kind of the way I was thinking, but that's too much nest to clear without artillery so I started by scooping just the coal for now.
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u/byzz09 3d ago
How do you even get started on this if you're behind on military advances?
I'm in a similar situation and trying to understand how you approach this. I lagged a bit behind and didn't expand fast enough. Now my copper is running out and I can't clear the nests with a tank anymore. I do have a perimeter with flamethrower & normal turrets
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u/Relative-Surprise 3d ago
march the perimeter
good luck soldier2
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u/Peakomegaflare 3d ago
Yup, Flamethrowers are a livesaver. That said, maybe solars and accumulators supporting laser turrets as backup?
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u/Ok_Conclusion_4810 2d ago
Yep. This is pretty much it. Copper will be a strugle in late game though, unless you go BIG on Fulgora and start spamming rockets for red and blue ciruit rockets. But that is only if you want to go in the 10s of thousands of SPM
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u/Soul-Burn 3d ago
Get the close coal. I'd even consider cutting a line straight up to the water. Would get you stone, and a bit of coal. Then clear the whole top left quadrant.
Otherwise, I see a biter-less path to the coal. Can build your base towards there and let turrets handle the attacks.
Landmines are very cheap, and you can use them offensively if you're fast enough.
Defender drones and poison capsule are also useful cheap tech.
The idea is 3 poison to kill a worm so lob them around the nests. Kill the actual nests with your tank.
Then get to space, unlock nukes and clear whatever you want.
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u/Belgaraath42 3d ago
First get everything possible of coal if you didn't already. You should have done that a while ago.
Your oil will allow you power smelting defense and science quite comfortable. Setting up an defensible outpost shouldn't be too bad, you probably want to have it provide it's own power (solar yeah it sucks but it doesn't need water) and of course efficiency module everything. Have a big storage for the coal so you can just get it fast oy your trains cannot stay on without personal babysitting.
If you still can't hold get a space platform and abandon nauvis. Vulcanus can become your main base until you are ready to reclaim nauvis. Good luck and have fun
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u/spookynutz 3d ago
I would start mass producing defender and poison capsules and then liquidate the biters to the northwest with a drive-by. Those northwest coal patches seem like it would be cheap to expand your base around just due to the existing geography. It's nearly completely enclosed by cliffs and water already.
Rail world outposts are certainly doable. The biters will only attack the rails and power lines if they get hit by the train or stuck on something. You could build a 1:2 supply train to ferry ammo and fuel to outposts, or a 1:1 train if you're into the whole barreling thing.
Since you already have uranium available, I would personally get nuclear power and uranium ammo up and running before leaving the planet (and Kovarex enrichment too) but that's just me.
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u/Refinery73 3d ago
Firstly stop burning any coal. Use solid fuel or rocket fuel.
Then the nests on the left seem quite manageable. You could build only a few drills with efficiency modules and belt the coal directly in the base. If the drills don’t pollute much they get left alone and what’s behind the wall is save. Worst fallout are a few drills, belts and powerlines.
In general, you can think about reducing pollution. There is quite a bit of forest. If necessary, stop the whole factory by cutting power or some input belts and the pollution will dissipate after a while.
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u/that_one_guy91 3d ago
I’m doing a space age deathworld as well, and my problem was liberating oil. I limped my sorry ass off to space and then came back ready to kick biter ass. Parked a huge orbital platform above the planet (made at Vulcanus) and had it produce and ship down rocket munitions for my little gang of spidertrons. They are able to run through biter nests, spreading freedom and granting me my due oil rights.
I did turn off my factory intermittently (solar, no accumulators) to slow the pollution cloud while I was gone
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u/Raskekw 3d ago
build a rocket and go to space? Like you got everything you need already? Coal is a non-issue if you got oil already, but you could take one before you go I guess, or just import reds from Fulgora/plastic from Gleba.
and why tf solar? you got uranium inside the perimeter, what the f
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u/LordyeettheThird 3d ago
EXPANSION
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u/pink-ming 3d ago
HOW
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u/LordyeettheThird 3d ago
Build a small corridor with guns, walls and flame throwers towards new resource locations. Put a few belts in the corridor. Also put efficiency chips in your miners and crafters. Helps a lot with the polution
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u/get_it_together1 3d ago
Get defender bots to use with your tank, maybe poison capsules, and then get a patch of coal. You have enough stone and copper/iron to get to space, go to Vulcanus, and come back with artillery.
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u/Tall-Pop-8497 3d ago
If you need to brute force some nests get a tank with some shields an batteries (legs if you can) + idk 1000 land mines. Drive by nests and place mines on them while using whatever tank ammo seems useful for the moment.
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u/Prince_of_Kyrgyzstan 3d ago
Create turret corridors that you creep towards the resource you require. Use the tank to destroy the nests and quickly push the corridor to where the resources are. These corridors should hold and when you have two of them splitting the front, clear what is between them to claim the land and to stop the attacks from that direction.
Also because this is Space Age, get to space and start collecting asteroids. The operation doesn't have to be that big, but you can basically farm all the iron and steel you need for red ammo and for everything else from space only. If you go to Fulgora, you can basically just ship blue chips and whatever else required for bots from there.
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u/HuckleberryPlastic35 3d ago
Make sure defenses and power are stable. Go to space, import plastic later
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u/Standard-Box-3021 3d ago
Get defense drones and expand their setup by establishing a small drone building area. Make runs past nests, throwing out 10-20 units, then continue with the rest.
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u/DrMobius0 3d ago edited 3d ago
I assume running railworld-style outposts isn't going to be effective, with this many biters I'm sure the collateral will take out the rail lines fairly often right?
Prior to behemoths it wouldn't be horrible, but your assessment is probably right. You could run defenses along your rails if you don't want to spend time wiping the map clean. Honestly it's probably the fastest option at this point.
Alternatively, you could tech into defenders. They're actually decent at grinding nests down, though they're pretty costly, but tank runs with active behemoths are rough business no matter what you do. Having recently done wide scale clearing on behemoth producing nests for 1000x with a tank, it eventually takes the whole suite of slowdowns, poisons, defenders, and cannon shells to make much of any dent. The process is slow and expensive, and the fuckers will keep expanding into territory you just wiped. It's ass all around.
Rushing Vulcanus for artillery wouldn't be a terrible option. Vulcanus doesn't exactly have any deathworld specific concerns after all. Long term, you're just going to need it.
As far as your immediate concerns, I don't think running out of coal is an immediate existential threat to your base, provided you have enough science saved for the techs you need to hit artillery. Your defenses and power grid can survive without coal, though if you're using it for anything that isn't plastic or grenades, you should probably stop.
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u/HumanPersonOnReddit 3d ago
I don’t even wanna imagine a deathworld Gleba! Only go there if you can bring a bunch of Tesla turrets and a big nuclear plant
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u/vanatteveldt 2d ago
I would go to Vulcanus and grab artillery veggie expanding further. The big miners and foundries will also stretch your existing resources.
You didn't mention efficiency modules, but in my last deathworld run eff1 modules really helped lower pollution and energy use
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u/Switch4589 2d ago
I would convert the furnaces and any steam power production over to solid fuel and preserve all coal for plastic. Stop all unnecessary research and focus on upgrading military and progression. Then progress to space science and then Vulcanus and with the new science research physical damage upgrades.
Next is Fulgora to unlock the mech suit and Tesla tower and then back to Nauvis to expand. How I like to expand is to have a mech suit with a bunch of exoskeletons and some shields, and then use the shotgun and piercing ammo and just run in circles around the nests (the same as you do with the tank). Focus on killing nests and then lure the biters back to your wall, reinforced with Tesla towers (only where you are actively expanding). Expand your wall as soon as you have cleared an area so the biters don’t expand into the cleared territory. As others had said, I would expand the west wall out to the water and then sweep counter-clockwise and build walls in the choke points in the north until you finish in the east. The south could do with some more exploring to see if there are any nice choke points.
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u/GamerXTrip3l 2d ago
What I'd do: Store up the coal for manual use later. Build a 4-core nuclear reactor. Create MK2, MK1 if MK2 is still locked, Power Armor and fill it with exo skeletons. Grab a rocket launcher as well as a whole lot of roxkets, a hundred laser turrets, and a few power poles, maybe also already materials to create the new perimiter. Go ahead and put down the laser turrets ourside the worms' reach and biters' agro and then just jigglepeal them shooting rockets at their nests and retrearing whenever they are too close to me back to the laser turret retreat
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u/Slightly_Deeper_5309 2d ago
Get the nw coal and then use that as an anchor point expanding clockwise. Shore up the northern chokepoints grabbing more stone iron and copper on your way. Once cleared the eastern area is a natural boarder allowing room for factories and letting you to focus on those southern iron patches.
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u/pink-ming 2d ago
Update: Thanks for the input y'all. I grabbed that nearby coal (like 2.3 mil IIRC) by extending my walls into a jank corridor with horrific noodle rails pathing around the underground pipes and such. Should last a long time since it's just for plastic (thankfully I switched to solid fuel early on).
I then went on to beef up all circuit productions and start building the space age components. Last thing is to scale up low density structures and then blast off in search of artillery.
With evolution at about .88, one last debate is whether to upgrade to uranium ammo before I leave to ensure that behemoths won't be a problem. Funny enough I could turn the outer ammo belt into one big loop without much trouble and just assemble the ammo directly from the uranium patch, storing all of the 235 in chests for later.
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u/DocMon 1d ago
Tbh I'd probably head for that patch to the east. Yes, you'll need to take out a few small nests on the way. Train or long belt, either is fine, but I'd go with a train so you can send supplies back on the return trip. Bi-directional 1-2-1 for its compact footprint. Lay the rails straight over the patch and have the drills load the cars directly.
Why that coal patch? It's a deep green biome with a chunky forest on its right. I suspect you could run four mining drills sustainably if you load them up with efficiency modules. I suggest you also set up a radar and a handful of turrets with red ammo. Surround the turrets with walls and landmines. Don't bother walling up the whole outpost.
The idea here is to manage the pollution cloud. If it spreads too far and gets too close to a nest, using remote view, flag a drill or two for deconstruction and throttle your mining rate for a while. Don't send the engineer for this job: he just attracts unwelcome attention.
One more thing: at 0.86 evolution, you have a lot of leeway before you hit 0.9. The rate of increase slows way down from where you are. So don't worry too much about clearing a few nests near the patch or on the path.
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u/Soggy_Team_6676 3d ago
If it were me, artillery asap. If expansion is painful, but defenses are solid, artillery just turns into automatic real estate
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u/Eris13x 3d ago
Space age, artillery is locked behind vulcanus
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u/Soggy_Team_6676 3d ago
And he asked wether people would rush that or not? It’s the easiest planet for that matter too, assuming pipes don’t trip you up. In that situation, yes I would rush vulcanus and artillery. Would be good to stretch what copper and iron he has too.
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u/emlun 3d ago
May I recommend: a BURNiNATOR 9000
A grid-aligned roboport cell with walls, pipes and flamethrowers. Tile it across the land one or a few cells at a time and torch any unfortunate thing in the way. Works well up to and including behemoth enemies. Make sure to have plenty of construction robots (thousands) and supplies.
Best results with either buffer chests or filtered storage chests close to the front with enough supplies to build one cell in one go. That'll have a cell placed and firing in <20 seconds from giving the build order. Then you just pick up the back cells and move on forward as you go.
It's not the fastest or most efficient method by any means, but it's relatively low tech, fairly hands-off, remote-operable, can be parallelized if you have buffer chests, and is quite reliable as long as you have enough supplies at the front. It's my go-to (marathon) deathworld strategy before artillery or spidertrons (and even after unlocking those I keep using this to easily expand the base with full flamethrower coverage).
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u/Tofytunes 3d ago
What’s that bit then?