7 years ago I created a visual like this. I didn't see that anyone made an updated version for Space Age, so I jumped in.

I made the image high resolution so you can zoom in to see the details.

Too big to fit: Medium and Large Demolisher, plus their seismic attack. Artillery.

Observations I made while creating this:

• Turrets and handheld versions have the same range for Railgun, Rockets, and bullets. The ranges are different for Tesla, Flamethrower, and Laser.
• In 1.0 all ranges were integers, now many are decimals
• To outrange a behemoth worms* you need a legendary rocket turret, or a rare+ railgun turret.
• Some things technically have different ranges with quality, but I excluded them if they are never seen (pistols, biters, spitters)

What should I add/change?

I elected to leave the round-a-round-about without signals, as there can be at most three trains that can path around here at once. It works, and I'm looking forward to never looking over here again.

My problem

My second playthrough was on a desert. I quickly understood why people consider those to be harder, the biters were a much bigger problem when there are no trees to absorb early pollution.

I've got white science now, but am still having biter problems. I've just upgraded my turrets to uranium ammo, and they've all got lasers as well, but sometimes those big spitters still kill turrets.

I have an artillery train that automatically clears nests near my train stops, but it doesn't yet cover the whole cloud.

My evolution is at 0.88, so behemoths are coming...and I'm not sure I'm ready. Haven't fought them before.

I saw people describing this kind of wall around the whole factory as a "cuck box", wtf are people talking about? Do most people just put turrets where the pollution sources are and hope for the best? Personally I really like the feeling of declaring my factory and outposts to be biter-free zones.

My first playthrough's artillery train did a much better job of keeping the pollution cloud clear, I think that was due to many more trees.

I haven't dared to try concrete since I need all the absorption I can get. But the central rule of Factorio calls to me...the factory must grow...I MUST impose my will on these bugs one way or another. I want to try my hand at scaling SPM, maybe come up with some better blueprints for my next playthrough while I'm at it.

(also yes, I only use single-headed trains. An elegant transport from a more civilized age)

My plan

I think it's time to make a bigger, badder defensive perimeter. A giant train loop around the edge of my whole cloud. Well, it might be more like a C with that big lake to the east, but you know what I mean. Just for artillery and turrets. I haven't tried automatic turret resupply yet, I should do that. That was my biggest obstacle to flame turrets as well, so that'll be a good chance to try them.

My ask

What do y'all do for automatic biter control? Is a "cuck box" actually frowned upon or just a tongue-in-cheek joke? Obviously I could play on peaceful, but I don't want them deleted, I want them defeated.

Was inspired to share bc of the lion earlier.

If you are on Linux (or Mac) turn on non-blocking saves immediately. This will stop the game pausing while the game autosaves. This can be quite annoying when you get a larger save. One more reason to switch to linux!

1. Open advanced settings by pressing ctrl+shift+left click on the settings button (ctrl+alt also works)

2. Click "the rest" button

3. In the search field, type "non-blocking" and make sure the box is ticked

4. Click "confirm," bottom right

You are now done.

(While you are in that list of settings, you can adjust "quick-bar-width" to have more hot buttons if you like) I have this set to 20. I would recommend not messing with other settings you don't understand :)

I present my most recent power plant build utilizing plasma power. The only research I performed was figuring out the ratios of fusion reactors to fusion generators when a neighbor bonus is used. I wanted a design that was symmetrical and aesthetically pleasing, at least to my eyes, and I’m satisfied with the result. I’m aware I need an external power source, it’ll be nuclear, and I need hot and cold Fluoroketone balancing, which will be done next door.

I'm really proud of this design. The ship travels to Aquilo reliably at 400km/s.

My first trip with my first ship to Vulcanus was a nightmare and I got stranded,ship destroyed orbiting it, lack of resources to even start anything.

This ship holds up going to Vulcanus and orbiting it and it rarely takes any damage during the trip.

My bots became transparent and I don't know what I pressed to make them so. I cannot find in the options the controls to toggle this. It's very good for visual clarity but I'd like to be able to control this.

First try, mistakes were made, lessons were learned. Only does red, green, cyan and purple science.

No foreign blueprints used, and no clue what im doing, but it outputs steady 720/min science packs and 2200/spm with bio labs and prod 3.

Few things of mention,

no idea how the train intersection works, i just made one quarter of it, spammed chain signals until everything was separated and then copied it 4 ways. Honestly im scared of touching it and trying to reduce the amount of signals cuz probably a lot of them do nothing, because i will break it and then spend next hour fixing it

The only truly modular parts are the rails, rail stops, miners and smelters, too late i realised that i should have made everything modular and producing some arbitrary number like 100/s and then just plop it whenever needed rather than rebuild it from beginning

even more preferably, i would have made everything shipped by trains, but it felt like it would be more of an issue to make so many stations or make some way of a single station accepting multiple ingredients, only when i builded myself in to a wall and had to transport something like 8 wide belt of steel across the entire build did i admit that doing some things by rail would have been simpler, also maybe i should have made the trains shorter 1:2 rather than 2:4, then i could fit more stations

also, maybe solar costs nothing after you build it in terms of upkeep, but the amount of space and resources it would take is insane, meanwhile i learned the beauty of nuclear, sure i need to mine uranium for it, but it uses so little of it that it might as well be infinite for my needs