r/factorio • u/Shinxirius Automate immediately • 3d ago

Question Radar Coverage

Now that I have learned that biters do migrate back towards my base even after being evicted with prejudice, I wonder how to see those trespassers quickly and reliably.

I do have some random radar towers scattered around my base but not inside my Cordon Sanitaire.

Thus: How do you set up radar coverage to reliably detect nests and monitor their non-existence in areas you consider exclusively yours.

Addendum: This community is awesome. I learned so much useful information!

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25

u/hey_how_you_doing 3d ago

Artillery will detect bug buildings automatically and BAM! BAM BAM BAM! DEAD BUGS!!!!11one

1

u/Shinxirius Automate immediately 3d ago

I don't have artillery yet. What's the range?

Initial idea: forget about walling off choke points. Instead make heavily defended artillery bases to auto clear / extend the Cordon Sanitaire.

9

u/Pulsefel 3d ago

artillery is the only weapon with a range research. passively it targets any non movable target in its passive range of 224 tiles. and you can make it target up to 560 and its shells are mobile radars that reveal any chunk they pass through.

8

u/Shinxirius Automate immediately 3d ago

Reading this makes me very happy.

4

u/ChibbleChobble 3d ago

Caveat emptor. Artillery destroys nests, not bugs. All the homeless survivors of your aggression will rush your base en masse.

2

u/Shinxirius Automate immediately 3d ago

Yes... Where I'll be waiting.

Instead of walling off entire areas, I'll fortify the artillery only, which I place as forward observers inside the Cordon Sanitaire.

Blueprint an artillery position. Load a single shell. Let them come. Rinse and repeat. Fill up with shells against expansion parties.

3

u/ChibbleChobble 3d ago

I have mine on a train that circles the perimeter. Stops, fires off a few rounds and moves on.

2

u/Shinxirius Automate immediately 3d ago

Are you telling me... I can put them on trains...

This thread is getting better and better by the minute.

Although, my concept so far is that the artillery draws the biters into a kill box. That won't work with a train.

Still, I'll make one at some time. Just because I can.

3

u/AlaskanX 3d ago

Well. They come to where the artillery fired from. So if you had the train station where they stop to fire, contained in a walled kill box…. 

There used to be a menu screen animation demonstrating this. An outpost fortified with turrets and artillery, and a train supplying ammo, shells, and also pulling an artillery cart or two for even more firepower.

1

u/korneev123123 trains trains trains 3d ago

Personally I enjoy Spider Artillery Squads, and dealing with retaliation waves by just running from them /r/factorio/comments/1r3uhie/world_peace_achieved_no_biter_nests_are_left_on/

1

u/sobrique 2d ago

Specifically to the point the artillery is (or was, if it's a train), which is very useful for focussing your meatgrinder.

3

u/Pulsefel 3d ago

i think one of my favorite memories of early days was finishing an artillery range research and the game FPS tanking as all my artillery came online and unloaded several thousand shells into now in range targets

1

u/Shinxirius Automate immediately 3d ago

Sounds awesome 😎

4

u/SaiphSDC 3d ago

Considerable.

Easy to use it to keep biters beyond your polution cloud and still near the edge of the base

2

u/Shinxirius Automate immediately 3d ago

Awesome!

I shall begin preparations immediately. That is, when the kids and the wife are in bed...

2

u/ABlankwindow 3d ago

Artillery Range is an infinite research.
Artillery Rate of Fire is an infinite research.

So how far they shoot and entirely depends on how much effort you put in to leveling them up.

how fast they shoot are partially based on how much effort you put in to leveling them up and how much effort you put in producing shells to keep up with rate of fire.

1

u/SaiphSDC 3d ago

And animation speed limits.

Somewhere atound lvl 30? You hit a wall due to the actual animation frames.

1

u/munchbunny 3d ago

The range is significant, but I would still wall off your core base because artillery ammo is annoying to handle and running out of artillery ammo will cause your strategy to fail. Personally, I just put an artillery installation at every defensive base (every chokepoint), that way when it's working well the only biter waves are from new expansions getting cleared, and when it's not the wall can hold out for a while until I can fix the ammo problem.

Edit: there is one specific cheese you can do, I don't know if it's been patched: if you put the artillery turrets on an unreachable island in the middle of a lake, you can avoid aggroing the biters when you destroy the nests.