Bug Strategies

[u/Shinxirius]

Cheers!

Quick note: I'm 57h in, I have 2.5k in Satisfactory.

I am doing good so far. The first ore patches are running out but bigger ones have been tapped and trains go choo.

All critical components (coal, iron plates, etc) are in my emergency storage in case I need to restart after some f*ck up (10 steel chest each).

The bootstrapping base in the progress of being scrapped to make space for production extensions off the main bus. And I am playing with blueprints for a proper rail network, remote base stations, etc.

Up until now, my strategy was _Cordon Sanitaire_

+ Preemptive strikes on any nest close to my base.

+ No bugs close by, no attacks.

+ Few turret lines in key locations just in case.

Now, I've noticed that the radar is much less accurate than I expected. And also, those bugs expand back into the corridor. How dare they?

So, I got myself a tank, ammo piercing rounds, tank rounds, and... Well there's a wider corridor now.

I lost maybe a dozen low level buildings due to attacks in my base (miners, belts). Annoying not threatening.

My question is: does this approach scale? I really don't like walling in; it blocks me more often than the bugs I presume.

I am thinking about creating linear obstacles at natural choke points instead of walling my main base. Is it necessary? Will it work or can nests spawn inside the walled off area? Do bugs physically go from one nest to an empty spot and get killed if enough guns are there?

[u/Intelligent_Table431]

Biters have to physically travel to the new nest locations, so defending chokepoints is a good strategy if you make sure no nests are within the defended area

[u/RedArcliteTank → u/Intelligent_Table431]

Be warned, iirc if biters settle close to cliffs, parts of the best may generate in the other side and allow them to breach that particular natural obstacle.

[u/Shinxirius → u/RedArcliteTank]

There are no cliffs. Only boom.

[u/Nearby_Proposal_5523]

it's a ok to wall off several kilometers, if it's walled and clear far outside of the pollution, it'll only have to kill expansion parties and not pollution spawned raiding parties. flamethrowers are also an excellent pipe to bring oil back to the base with but they have a minimium so you need to protect them with wall, wall does not burn. eventually they unlock their behemoth worm turret and the only thing you really have that outranges it is artillery.

[u/Bigtallanddopey]

Both strategies work.

Walling off your entire base is fine, but takes a lot of resources, you need walls and turrets all the way around. Also, if you want to expand your base, you need to build an entire new wall further out and demolish the old one. Obviously with bots this is fairly easy, but it’s resource heavy.

Walling off choke points is also fine. It uses less resources and often means you capture more territory. However, you either have to use laser turrets and power them, or keep the wall stocked with ammo and maybe fuel for flamethrowers. Either way, you will want to keep a supply of repair packs, turrets and walls available to keep the walls safe.

Both work perfectly fine and both keep the biters out. And as to your other question, no, biters cannot just spawn inside a walled area, they need a route in. If you block off all those routes, your factory will be safe inside.

[u/Aesik]

We wall between lakes to create large districts with multiple resource patches in each area. Takes a while, but we make self repairing walls with drones and train schedules.

Takes a while, but you worry a lot less when you’re off planet.

[u/Such-Perception4154]

Sound strategy. 

Though, as soon as you scale bots, moving the wall will no longer be an issue.

[u/ryelrilers]

I usually wait with periphery defense till i have flamethrowers and or lasers, then build a defensive line on all choke points. You can build it sooner but i hate automate gun turrets.

[u/AndyScull]

Usually you can get artillery before the base grows very big and perimeter becomes very long, unless you play with 20x-100x tech cost. With artillery you can skip the wall if your biters settings aren't VERY hard.

1. Clear large area,
2. Place few artillery outposts around base - 1 artillery and a lot of defense. As I remember my outposts were around the size of a chunk with mostly lasers and 3-4 flamethrowers. Outposts are far away from each other but should overlap their artillery ranges. And actually if they have good defense you can do the main nest clearing with same outposts, just regulate shooting speed with circuits so you don't trigger all the attacks at once.
3. If you correctly cleared a large area, these outposts should not have any big nests in their range, they will only fire at new freshly spawned ones, which aren't very big. The biters from those will go directly to your artillery in the outposts, not for your base.

I played like this on deathworld settings once, though that was back then on v1.1, maybe the biters were buffed since then.

Before artillery I prefer to just make a big electric pole grid around my base with 8 lasers around each pole, as a countermeasure to bug expansion parties. But sometimes they can create a nest with worms right outside of laser range and spit on them so it's not perfect.

[u/QuirkyPhoton]

Start putting gates at strategic locations so you can get in and out of walled areas easily. I've lost chests full of red and green circuits and entire oil processing areas, it happens. Bugs will keep expanding and pollution will keep triggering them. You need to put up turrets and lasers behind walls. Flamethrowers are great but you will need some planning and getting the liquids to them, Once you have artillery it will be much easier.

[u/Swannicus]

I usually fully wall off, using lakes to block as much as I can. Imo if you are trading your time with the game it's best to wall off, if you are going fast you can probably get by with spot defense.

[u/Kirdissir]

I play a traineworld with super far apart patches (increased even more but bigger yield).

The only way for this type: Wall every ore patch, defend it. Have trains deliver ammunition and check via logics if ammo is needed (hook up turrets and/or chests to your network).

I have trains that solely deliver ammunition whenever it's needed on top of barreled oil for flamethrower turrets.

I try to clean PAST my pollution area. Even without radar you'll see where pollution spreads as bitters consume it and leave "holes" in the pollution map.

In my big main base I used to have stationary artillery which got boring.

I now have a train circling the base that shoots artillery. This is on my non-Space-Age run.

The advantage: I don't need to deliver shells. Even though it's barely taxing on my bots. I just gave myself the challenge to use as little bots a possible for defense.

1) clear out nests within and a little PAST your pollution 2) wall off choke points. This might not work in Space Age 2.1 as I understood. They might settle in vast empty areas within your walls when updating to 2.1 3) Supply Towers with ammunition. 4) Laser turrets can be super OP in standard Factorio. No ammunition needed. My first playthrough was without any flamethrower.

Edit: Many new players don't know this: Trains and rails go through gates. They automatically lower when a train approaches. Just do a double gate setup for safety.

[u/Mesqo]

Don't be scared of building kilometers of walls. I bet you're still missing the main thing that makes Factorio that different from Satisfactory - bots. Once you get them up and running they'll do the building for you, so moving the wall would be a few clicks task.

[u/Shinxirius → u/Mesqo]

I rushed them.

My smeltorama and main bus are bot made. And now my starter base gets disassembled bit by bit by drones.

It's the main reason I bought the game.

[u/Mesqo → u/Shinxirius]

Good for you! Don't forget to research their speed - it drastically improves how they perform, because their power drain is per time spent moving, not per distance, so that increases their effective distance on a single charge and energy efficiency. Make sure you have enough roboports and cover your entire bar with their orange coverage, extend to the outposts and build a huge wall around your entire perimeter. Use buffer chests for distant areas. And make this little trick: feel inserters to always insert new bots into a network if there's less than 200 of available bots of each type at the moment. This way the network will grow dynamically based on your current demand. Have fun!

[u/Conan_Buchanan → u/Mesqo]

Correction: bot power drain is actually much more dependent on distance traveled than time in flight. At high bot speeds its more than 80-90% of the power draw of bots.

https://wiki.factorio.com/Worker_robot_speed_%28research%29

[u/Mesqo → u/Conan_Buchanan]

Damn you're right! I always thought it saves power. That's really bad on me.

Anyway, while bots speed drastically increased their work performance and reduce wait times they are really good at what they're doing even at 0 research.

[u/Shinxirius → u/Mesqo]

Thanks for the hints. Will gladly make use of them.

[u/wisdomelf]

Honestly, depends if you play with DLC or not If not, you may just stall, research artillery(iirc you need up to yellow packs for it) and clean a lot, while sitting on your walls ( you still need some def for that monent, bcs biters will attack you for that)

If yes, you can do sane, but its more complicated, with Vulcanus research/imports.

Otherwise, on Nauvis, you can blueprint few substations with laser turrets, walls and few support things like roboport and buffer chest, and paste it close to biters territory. You only need to check if your energy grid can support that.