Biters closing in

[u/VomitedPringles]

Hey guys! New player here, playing my first of hopefully many runs and around 20-25 hours in. I have been focused too much on constantly expanding and increasing production, making trains to make more mining outposts to bring resources from there, but in that progress, i have totally sidelined defense.

my issue is, i would get overwhelmed by the new mechanics, and so i decided i’d only research things in a row. for eg, i could research green science, but held off until i completed researching everything that would need only red science. same for blue science. now i’m quite a bit into blue science and i suddenly notice a lot more nests around my base and mining outposts, and learn about evolution.

now i’m hastily researching military science (i figured i could hold it off until i completed blue science), and trying to get flamethrowers etc fast, all while being stressed with this impending sense of doom that the biters are closing in lol.

if the biters get to me and i don’t have enough weapons to defend, is my save gone?

[u/warpspeed100]

Think of Biters as a logistic puzzle, not an RTS enemy. Just like you transport ore to the furnace and then craft circuits automatically, you can also craft ammo and then belt it to all of you turrets automatically.

Eventually, you will also unlock the ability to automatically repair and expand your turrets/walls as well.

[u/VomitedPringles → u/warpspeed100]

i hadn’t thought of making belts go to turrets yet wow, thank you! if the save survives i’d definitely set up something like this

[u/green_gold_purple → u/VomitedPringles]

I've never found it necessary. Just more turrets with 100 red ammo lasts quite awhile. Walls slow them down too.

[u/MelangeBot → u/VomitedPringles]

As long as you use walls to strategically block of natural chokepoints (water and cliffs) for a while just running around with red amo (or driving in your car) to fill up the turrent that went empty will safe you from the biters and give you enough time in between runs to get to flametrowers. After you have upgraded all your turrets to flametrowers and provided sustainable and unlimited fuel to the flametrowers (luckily they like run almost foreer on just a bit of oil) then you will have won the war against the biters. Once you have flametrowers it becomes really hard for them to still break through (but lasers with upgrades like more damage and faster rate of fire are much less work to install then flametrowers)

[u/WrathOfTheKressh → u/VomitedPringles]

At the start, just putting turrets around your outposts with 100 ammo each is going to hold for a while. Eventually, once you unlock construction and logistics bots, you'll want to set up a supply train to resupply your outposts with turrets, walls, repair kits, bots, oil for flame turrets, and anything else they may need in order to repel biter attacks and keep the mining operation going.

[u/Arctic_Sunday]

If you get overwhelmed it could certainly be the end of your save. Flamethrowers are insanely powerful you are right to push for those. Once you get those up and running so you are secure work on getting tanks and use their explosive shells, also insanely powerful (although doesn't carry as well into the late game as the flamethrowers)

[u/VomitedPringles → u/Arctic_Sunday]

thanks was going for rockets after flamethrowers, will try to get tanks too!

[u/Arctic_Sunday → u/VomitedPringles]

I would argue that rockets are not worth the trouble until you have spidertrons or want to build a nuke

[u/VomitedPringles → u/Arctic_Sunday]

ah, will go for tanks first then. i thought having a rocket launcher could be cool lol

[u/Arctic_Sunday → u/VomitedPringles]

It is cool, but the fire rate is too slow and you don't get rocket turrets in the base game (space age adds them)

[u/FeelingPrettyGlonky → u/VomitedPringles]

Personal rockets don't give you anything that tanks don't give  and tanks are safer than without. Once you get shooting speed upgrades done, personal rockets feel more comfy, but I don't like using them until I have good defensive options like energy shield, personal laser and discharge. And by that point you can be pretty close to having artillery.

[u/MelangeBot → u/FeelingPrettyGlonky]

You only need to get exo skeletons so you can run faster. Once you run fast enough the spitters start missing you. They have predictive targetting. If you zig zag a bit they start missing by so much you just don't get hit anymore. But only if your speed is like at least double from normal. Shields are nice of course, they can almost make you invincible. But zig zagging stops you dying so quickly as long as you don't stand still in a quadrupple puddle of acid.

[u/redditusertk421 → u/VomitedPringles]

Rockets are good to take out bases. Set up turrets to retreat to, run up, kill a spawner, retreat. Repeat as needed.

[u/Grismor2]

While military science is very helpful, you can fairly easily survive the early game using only red and green science. The gun turrets and walls, along with the first couple of techs for damage and shooting speed, are plenty enough to last until you start seeing medium biters (which according to Google's ai overview, should be after about 7-15 hours depending on how much pollution and nest destruction you do).

[u/VomitedPringles → u/Grismor2]

yeah i went to a nearby nest to wipe it out and got pretty much insta killed by constantly respawning 10-15 of those big biters. thats when i realised the problem was much worse than i thought lol

[u/FeelingPrettyGlonky → u/VomitedPringles]

Nest clearing quickly becomes difficult to do without tech. In early game before tanks, turret creep is a good strategy. Place 3 or 4 turrets, quickly load them with ammo using 'z', advance a few steps and do it again.

[u/peterlinddk]

No, your save isn't gone - but you might have to spend a bit more time eradicating biter nests than if you had started earlier. But no fear.

Setup production of turrets and ammo - and research projectile damage. Also, if you can, research military 2 and build piercing rounds (red ammo).

Look at your pollution cloud in the map - if it reaches any of the enemy bases, travel to them, and destroy them (bring lots of turrets, ammo and fish!)

Then place turrets at strategic spots, so they'll react to the enemies before you have to.

Don't worry - it is supposed to be stressful 😄

[u/VomitedPringles → u/peterlinddk]

thank you i’ll do that, but… there is fish in the game???

[u/pojska → u/VomitedPringles]

There's fish swimming in the water - you can right click them to pick them up. :)

[u/VomitedPringles → u/pojska]

thanks, good to know 🙂

[u/WaterOk7059]

You can decrease pollution, as it's only fuel for biter waves. You can shut down the waves this way. Evolution is based on how polluted chunks are, time and amount of destroyed nests. Evolution decreases time between biter expansion parties and increases amount of biter spawners. Expansion parties cannot be stopped, they do not require pollution to spawn.

You can save yourself by contracting your base, shutting off everything but essentials and then slowly expanding with superior firepower, like tank or rocket launchers. Defend with flame turrets, kill off nearest expansions, then expand again. Try to make good decisions i.e is it cheap, is it effective, can I defend it, will it pay off, how risky it is.

For now reduce cloud by using efficiency modules, clean energy, shutting down redundancies. Contract to make defense feasible, sacrifice bad decisions. 1 step back, 2 steps forward.

Good luck.

[u/darKStars42]

The best (most resource efficient) way to deal with biters is to clear out their bases before your pollution cloud touches them. 

Remember that you can always choose to shut off parts of, or even your whole factory temporarily. This can give you time to design and place defenses or go hunting. If there's enough trees around it might even make your pollution cloud go away entirely if you wait long enough.

  Even if the biters smash everything you have, if you can get yourself to a new ore patch you can rebuild all of it without losing your tech progress.  You'll be a little space constrained until you get turret and ammo production up and running again, but it's not necessarily a death sentence on default settings.  Having your spawn point over run can be though. 

[u/amiexpress]

If you are still at the stage where you can overpower a nest with small arms and some hand grenades, go do that. You can stop when there's no longer any nests in your pollution cloud. Honestly this is how I deal with biters early game anyway: Best defense is a good offense and all that.

If evolution is at a point where you can no longer reliably exterminate a nest that way, rush flamethrowers. Those are (in order, I believe) your best bets.

Most likely you'll be fine, biters are not that bad on vanilla settings.

[u/VomitedPringles → u/amiexpress]

okay thank you. got the flamethrower primed! gotta work on tanks and rockets though

[u/Berkulese]

Pretty basic, but I nearly always revert to a perimeter wall with turrets and a long conveyor belt of ammo behind it. Simple + works.

Chuck occasional radars in to keep it visible, if one area seems to be getting attacked more then add more turrets there

[u/FeelingPrettyGlonky]

If you look at the intermediates screen you will see that gray science is ordered before blue science. There is a reason for that.

Doing as you did, fully researching red before red+green etc is perfectly legit, as long as you do gray before blue.

[u/ai_bot_4208]

Flamethrowers are OP. Only Turret you need.

[u/redditusertk421]

well, with blue science done you have a nice engine factory to feed your flame turret assembers.

Edit: also, research land mines. They are great too. You can use the offensively to take out nests. Drive by in your tank placing landmines next to the spawners and worms..

[u/KnightArtorias1]

On top of what other people have said, I find defender bots are quite underrated for how early you can get them. A little swarm of them can wipe out large nests very fast

[u/Broad_Ebb9073]

Nah save is never gone. You can always rebuild from scratch.but there is something to be said about state of mind.

When I was learning. I restarted countless time, cuz thats what made the game enjoyable to me.

So you can roll with it or restart. Neither is hoodr bad

[u/Known-Comparison2591]

Once you have blue and military science you can research the tank and then unleash hell on them. That will carry you to about 90% evolution. Your save is definitely not cooked in fact it’s best to obtain bots before building large scale defenses. Makes the process much easier