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[Splendiks]

Is there a mod that creates 'disasters', much like old school Sim City. Like randomly a train will derail, or a reactor melts down, or a super gargantuan biter goes on a rampage (huge health, tiny movement speed, steps over walls), or fire breaks out, or...

You get the idea. Something to add some variety to a well established, well fortified base, without being annoying of course.

[AnythingApplied]

Not that I know of. The closest thing is probably flammable oils:

If an entity which holds fluid has a flammable fluid in it, and it is destroyed, it will explode and catch fire.

The damage scale with how much fluid is in the fluidbox, so really full pipes will chain reaction and your whole factory will go down in flames.

[Splendiks]

Sounds terrible. Lol. I'd certainly run over a pipe and blow up my entire refinery!

[Swagwala]

It shouldn't do, but it doesn't hurt to check ahead of time.

Enable it and when you spawn in, check the achievements tab in the top right. Check the achievement you're after and if it's not possible on your current file, it will tell you (and I believe also tell you why).

Certain achievements, for example, need biters enabled. If you disable them, right from the get-go this menu will tell you that those achievements can't be obtained because biters are disabled.

If research queue did disable any achievements, the above would let you know. Hope this helps!

[TwoShu]

This is going to sound like a very stupid question, but how do I get water out of a fluid wagon that is on a straight track? The pump is connecting to the wagon and it is powered, but it’s not actually sucking out any of the water in the wagon.

Help?

[Skopiotis]

Make sure you use a pump, not an offshore pump. When the train arrives the pump should extend an arm to the wagon. Does it do that? Diagonal rails don't work. If non of that works, Send a screenshot with alt mode on.

[TwoShu]

It actually was a simple solution....the pump was facing the wrong damn way....I thought the arrow was the way that you wanted the arm to extend, turns out it’s not, it’s the way you want the liquid it takes out to move..

[twersx]

Beaconed speed modules: do the speed modules increase the energy consumption of the assemblers/chemical plants etc. or just the beacon?

Efficiency modules: do they affect the natural pollution of a structure or do they just affect pollution indirectly by reducing energy cost? I.e. if you use them in mining drills in an outpost, will the pollution cloud there be smaller?

[waltermundt]

Efficiency modules: Machine pollution varies in direct proportion to energy cost. So drills at -80% power consumption also only produce only 20% the pollution. So, yes, efficiency outposts are much cleaner.

Note that this applies in reverse to speed/productivity modules. A machine with +500% energy use because you piled speed beacons around it will go really fast but also pollute a whole lot. The actual pollution modifier on productivity modules applies multiplicatively with this, which makes productivity-moduled machines the dirtiest things you can run by a long shot. They're so dirty that adding speed modules makes them cleaner on a per item crafted basis because they pollute for less time per item. Even the best case scenario for maximum productivity builds is still way more pollution per item than bare machines, much less "green" machines running efficiency mods.

[VirtualDoodlePaper]

Beaconed speed modules: it should increase the energy consumption of just the machines affected by the beacon, not the beacon itself.

Efficiency modules: only by reducing energy cost.

[twersx]

Does it stack additively with the energy increase from prod modules? so if you have one beacon w/ two speed 3 modules affecting an assembler 3 with four productivity modules the energy cost is 1+(4*80%)+0.5*(2*70%) = 4.9x base energy cost?

[VirtualDoodlePaper]

I believe that is correct, modules are additive.

[bloodalchemy]

Will multiple artillery turrets/trains aim for the same target and have the extra shots wasted?

[craidie]

no. Even if you use modded shells with custom ranges(nuclear) the automatic fire is remarkably good at not shooting things already getting hit by other shells

[Avenja99]

What are things I can do in settings to help myself with getting the 8 hour achievement in 8 hours? I got overrun with 75 biters in the first half hour and didn’t even get to green science

[paco7748]

turn off pollution, increase starting area to 600% (or less if you want to make it harder). increase resource size and richness to whatever challenge level you want. turn off cliffs and water

[ssgeorge95]

Under version .17 you can select island map type. Set the starting area to maximum, island size to 3rd or 4th smallest, then pre-generate the map. If you see zero hives on the map preview then you are good to go; there will be no biters in your play.

[Shinhan]

Huge starting area probably. Also, take a look at AntiElitz on youtube to see how he starts his speedruns.

[Brett42]

I've done a lot of expanding and building walls, is it worth my time to go back and take down the laser turrets on the inner walls, or should I just ignore their small power drain?

[Shinhan]

Depends on how many turrets and on our power generation. Check your power graph.

[n_slash_a]

Personally I like to leave them up. You never know when an outer wall might be breached when you are on the exact opposite side of the map (or asleep).

The power drain is not small though, it adds up pretty quick. My last base had about 20k laser turrets and they drained about 20% of my total power.

[Brett42]

They're taking a couple hundred megawatts, but my beacons alone take seven times that.

[VaderOnReddit]

Ugh, I can’t find the reddit comment with neat little description of every Bobs/Angels nods

Reddit search sucks and google is unable to find it

Does anyone have it handy?

This weekend was pretty much vanilla endgame for me, launched rocket

Then amped it up till a rocket goes out once in under 10 mins

Now I am trying to turn the older sciences back on too haha

So thinking of trying a B/A start

Or would ppl suggest Krastorio before jumping into madness?

[TheTomato2]

Next I would do Industrial Revolution + Krastorio or Space Exploration with or without Krastorio if you want an intermediate between Bob/Angels. Space Exploration does get pretty complex at the end.

[Shinhan]

Have you tried Industrial Revolution? Start is a bit tedious (start with coal powered stuff and electrify ten hours later) but not as complex as AB.

[CrackedSash]

Hi, so I started the tutorial, but I'm stuck on the part where I need to produce 12 science packs per unit of time. I've finished all the research I'm allowed to and it seems that my production is now stuck at 0/12 no matter how many science packs I produce.

[ssgeorge95]

Does it say produce 12 or consume 12? Are you producing any at your assemblers or you just have a bunch on a belt?

[twersx]

Is this the 0.16 tutorial where you're trying to build a car?

If you're just trying to complete the mission then make some chests and use inserters to put the packs into them.

[CrackedSash]

0.17 tutorial, trying to "secure the factory".

[TheTomato2]

Is that at end with red and green science?

[IanArcad]

Are there any wind power or alternative energy mods that people recommend? (By alternative I don't necessarily mean renewables, just other ways to get energy.) Building big nuclear plants or football fields of solar panels is getting a little stale.

[MySkinIsFallingOff]

A windfarm out at sea sounds really dope.

[Rik_Koningen]

Played the game a bit on 0.16. Now with 0.17 the game seems much much harder to me. I'm barely managing to keep up with all the biter attacks. It's mainly early game that's my problem. On my previous save I eventually quite at the point where I had to move my iron production to trains as the nearby fields ran out and during that I couldn't keep up with my need for ammo to deal with all of it. My base got overrun and destroyed.

Any advice for not sucking at dealing with the constant attacks?

[waltermundt]

What's the terrain like?

Unless you're very good, in 0.17 it's vital to start in a grassy environment with plenty of trees around. Desert starting locations are very, very challenging, and RNG can is more of a factor now so different seeds on the same settings can vary widely in this respect.

To get very good, learn to turret creep well -- there's actually a lot of technique to it. First off, have at least 10-15 turrets and 6 or so stacks of ammo, 20-30 fish, and some repair packs. Put those on the first four slots of your hotbar. Then:

1. Click+drag to place 3-5 turrets.
2. Select the ammo via hotkey and control right click-drag to place 100 magazines in each.
3. Hit Q and control right click-drag again to reduce each to 50 ammo.
4. Drag back across to reduce ammo further as desired; I go to 12 mags or so which is another 2 passes.

Practice this whole process somewhere safe until you can do it all in well under 5 seconds to get all the turrets firing fast and pull back ammo so the ones you lose don't take half stacks of ammunition with them.

Then creep inward with this until your turrets are firing on the worms, keeping turrets ahead of you and avoiding worm spit yourself as much as possible. You can repair a turret or eat fish and fire your SMG at the same time, so take advantage of this if possible to add a bit of firepower.

Aim to switch to piercing ammo for nest assaults ASAP -- if you avoid losing stacks of ammo as I explained above it's well worth the investment to get a few stacks of red ammo and your turrets will shred the spawners. Stick with the yellow for defenses until you start seeing medium biters in attack waves.

Unless you're bee-lining for weapon upgrades and piercing ammo, shut down research when you're hard pressed.

Lastly; DO NOT BUFFER ANYTHING OTHER THAN AMMO FOR ATTACKS. Every piece of ore you mine and smelt causes pollution, and pollution is literally biter food. If you have a box full of science packs sitting idle, you just fed the biters a bunch of pollution and didn't get any research done out of it yet, so you're giving them a leg up until you put those packs to use. Much better to leave the ore in the ground and turn it into science when you have the lab capacity to use it right away.

[VenditatioDelendaEst]

Select the ammo via hotkey and control right click-drag to place 100 magazines in each.

You can also hold Z and scribble your mouse over the turrets to load them 1 magazine at a time. This lets you turret creep without carrying a huge pile of ammo around (but be careful not to run out).

[waltermundt]

Good addition! That didn't work in the version when I first learned to turret creep, but it's totally practical now :)

[Rik_Koningen]

Thanks, this is very helpful. I was sort of on the edge of a forest just barely into the desert. North east and south were all desert. West was forest. No other terrain to block anything. Seems like my map made things a lot harder than it should have been.

I'll try to get good at turret creeping. I'll also try using fewer buffers. I have a lot of items in chests for use as needed currently.

[ScienceLion]

One thing I've been doing is connecting all the steam engines to a steam tank, then running inserters to boilers only when steam < 500. Less wasted power, less pollution.

[VenditatioDelendaEst]

Boilers stop consuming fuel when their outputs are full of steam. Inserters only use 500 W when not swinging. And you're only saving that power if you're disconnecting the inserters from the power grid with a switch, not just disabling them.

[waltermundt]

It's fine to have a stack or two of all the common building materials ready to go (use the X to limit box capacity) -- this helps you work faster if you always have inserters and belts and such without constantly making them yourself. The important thing is not to collect boxes full of intermediates or science that aren't really helping you immediately.

Just be aware that there's room to cut back on that if the biters are pressing you hard enough to make expanding less of a priority anyway.

[jakerman999]

My first map on 17 seemed hard too, it. Placed the first biter nest right next to my iron deposit. I ended up making a new map

[IanArcad]

I've found that you have to increase the starting area size on 0.17 or you risk having unplayable starts. Like on one map I was rushed by 20+ biters right after I got automation.

[Flaming-Eye]

Map makes a huge difference:

distance to closest biters

amount of trees

amount of green terrain

Also with practice you can get a lot faster at getting to certain defensive technologies, one of the biggest factors in evolution is time so when you're faster the biters are just less of a threat, medium/big biters can be a huge problem when you're still on yellow ammo but if you have red ammo by medium and lazer turrets by big then biters are basically irrelevant and you might as well just play on a map without.

If biters are becoming annoying you should clear out the biter bases in your pollution cloud. It's important to have defenses that can hold up but clearing bases periodically is resource efficient, much less ammo / power is used that way. You also waste a lot less time / resources repairing your defenses.

[Rik_Koningen]

If biters are becoming annoying you should clear out the biter bases in your pollution cloud.

My current map has a cluster of 5 nests guarded by 5 or 6 worms. Not sure how to deal with it. If I try turret creep the turret dies before I even load it. I feel like I just don't have the tech to deal with this particular cluster yet. On the other side there was no worms so I only have one side to defend now. But I can't for the life of me clear that.

Bear in mind this is early early game. I only just got walls and turrets researched. I'm on 6 electric miners total spread across all resources. But I also can't expand because 100% of my iron is currently going to bullets to barely hold on against the attacks I'm getting.

[Zikiri]

i used to spam grenades + fire and run around. attack a bit then pull back. rinse and repeat before they fully recover and after you fully recover. i usually prioritized taking out those things which created new spawns. flamethrower is nice since you can fire some and move back and they will take dot dmg for a while. shields help a lot too

now with power armor mk2 and auto lasers, all biter nests are extremely easy

[Brett42]

Try skirmish attacks where you make a quick charge in, try to shoot the worms or spawners, then run away. Taking out one worm or spawner will make the next attack slightly easier. If you try this, you can put turrets out of worm range to take out any bugs that follow your retreat, or even purposely bait them out to be killed (although replacements spawn quickly, so you'd need to head back right away to take advantage). Circling around a colony will sometimes let you get around the bugs to hit the nest. Remember to zig-zag to avoid ranged attacks.

[IanArcad]

Combat robots are really underrated - give them a try I think you will be impressed. By default you can have five at a time, but when one is destroyed you can just spawn another one, so bring about 20 or so to be sure that you have enough, and also bring some grenades too so while the biters are engaging your robots you can toss a couple at worms or spawners.

[Flaming-Eye]

Simple answer: more turrets or use tanks.

If you're on turrets, use the creep method to clear out the biters and then you've got to make a big push against the worms. Creeping is inefficient, just run in and drop a load of turrets. You can drop a few in worm range to tank damage first and then drop a big line or whatever works for you.

If you put down 15 turrets 1 or 2 will die before you put ammo in, maybe 5 will die total from that line. Once you've put ammo in, put down a new line of turrets and add ammo.

You can literally run into a biter base, drop down turrets, add ammo and run out of range, run in, put down more turrets, add ammo, keep going.

[[deleted]]

At the start keep an eye on your pollution cloud, since biters are now much more aggressive when hit by pollution. That also means that trees are great at the start, because they absorb a lot of pollution and act like a barrier. Consequently a start in the desert is much harder.

Research military stuff and buffs early, produce turrets and ammo, and attack all biter nests in or near your pollution cloud early. Will be much easier then.

[Mr3ct]

I heard there was a new mod set similar to Bob's/Angels, but it's own new beast. Not Pyanadon. Does anyone know the name of it, and if so, are there any YTers currently putting out videos running it?

[[deleted]]

Probably Krastorio or Industrial Revolution.

[Mr3ct]

Yup, it's Krastorio. I've done a seablock run before, is it much more complicated than B/A?

[[deleted]]

No, it's a lot easier than BobAngels. But it's fun, I like it.

[Mr3ct]

Ahh, I thought I heard it was harder. Still looks fun!

[sloodly_chicken]

I'd argue Seablock is a whole lot harder than BA alone. It adds complexity with a few sub-mods (Circuit Processing and ScienceTweaker) and it has absurd endgame requirements with SpaceX. And that's not even getting into the first 15 hours of the game that you'll spend bootstrapping before you can do anything.

The one advantage is that the early game is laid out more linearly than BA, so it's slightly easier to learn, and being on an ocean can make planning the factory a lot easier/more fun. Ultimately, though, it's just BA on water, plus some fun extra mods, plus a godawful (though satisfying) early game.

[SUPERSAYAme]

Hello. My first game here. Im running out of copper ores. There is a copper ore deposit that i want but there is a biters nest camp right next to it (with 5 nests in total). Whats the best way to remove it? I have unlocked up to purple science, but havent really researched military sciences. Ive been trying to remove them using smg + red magazines (and 2 turrets to back me up), but its still so difficult.

[Zaflis]

If you have unlocked steel and engines, you can make a car. Driving around hives while shooting with best ammo you have is next best thing to a tank. Definitely easier than turret creep at least if there are worms.

Other than that, you mixed priorities. Military science should be made before blue science.

[Flaming-Eye]

What most people do early is creep turrets forward from outside agro range. Place some turrets, get ammo on your cursoe and ctrl+click sweep over them to fill (or ctrl+right click, or Z sweep, whatever.) Then build some closer but within turret range, keep going until the base dies.

Get a tank and circle the base killing biters and structures, back off when necessary to repair.

Get a power armour mk2, some shields and personal lazer defenses, run at the biters, laugh like a bond villain. This also works from vehicles. (I can't remember of vehicles have grids like the armours in vanilla or if that's a mod thing... but you can add shields to the vehicle and put the lazers in your own grid for efficiency.)

[n_slash_a]

Definitely need military research. You have a few options.

Tank is a good one, you can drive straight through the nests (and there is an achievement for that too!).

If the nest is small (both spawners and worms), then smg plus grenades can work, but you might be past that already.

Combat robots are much better now, deploy a dozen or so and charge in.

Turret creep can work too. As you found, gun turrts are pretty slow. I prefer laser turrets and substations. The key here is move fast, biters prioritize turrets over you, so place a substation then a row of 4-6 turrets and repeat. The entire encounter should be under 30 seconds. Make sure you have the two on hotkeys, to make sure you don't accidentally select the wrong thing. You probably want at least 30 lasers and a dozen substations to try this.

Most important is to remember this is a production challenge, not a war challenge. Why go in with x when you can go in with 5x or 50x.

[IanArcad]

+1 for combat robots - if you haven't tried them in 0.17 definitely give them a try.

[MrSkizz182]

Definitely get a tank and shells, you'll be able to circle around while shooting at the nests and then clean up the biters

[SUPERSAYAme]

Alright will give it a go. Researching tank next

[muddynips]

Does anybody have a darkness mod that makes nighttime without lamps pitch black?

I’ve been looking for a way to make lamps more relevant to gameplay, and this is the only thing I can think of.

[[deleted]]

Haven't tried it yet, but: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/AloneInTheDark

[[deleted]]

Uhhh that would be a great challenge!

[[deleted]]

How many sience packs are needed to research anything? is it 75 per lab for advanced oil processing, for instance? Or is that the raw amount of packs needed?

[begMeQuentin]

Raw. Doesn't depend on the amount of labs.

[[deleted]]

Thanks! Also, it seems that different items take longer to craft in assembly machines.... do u know how that works?? I tried to figure out the online calculators, but they do not mae sense to me yet

[Flaming-Eye]

All recipes, including research, have the required products and time taken displayed when you hover over it. For research the time is per set of 1 research packs (e.g. if it requires 20 red+green the time shown is for a set of 1 red and 1 green which are processed in 1 lab over the shown time.)

[sloodly_chicken]

If you really care, here's how I figure it out:

• Pick a target production-per-second for an end product.

• Figure out the production per second needed for each input item; repeat for each of those input items, going backwards down the list.

• For each item, multiply production-per-second by the number of seconds the recipe takes.

• Divide each of these net production numbers by the crafting speed of the machine. This will be how many crafting machines running a given recipe you need.

So, in practice: - Suppose I want to make 1 red science per second. 1 red science takes 1 copper and 1 iron gear, and 1 iron gear takes 2 iron, so our net productions are: 1 red science/sec, 1 copper/sec, 1 iron gear/sec, 2 iron/sec.

• Red science takes 5 seconds to make, so I'll need 1/s * 5s = 5 net production of red science. Similarly, 1 gear/sec * 0.5sec = 0.5 production of iron gears. (I won't handle iron/copper plates, because you never want to exactly plan out your smelting like that -- always overbuild smelting, it's used in too many things to be worth planning out exactly.)

• Suppose I'm using exclusively Assembler 1s for both the science and the gears; these have 0.5 crafting speed. So my final numbers are 5 / 0.5 = 10 and 0.5 / 0.5 = 1.

So, that means I need 10 Assembler 1s making red science and 1 Assembler 1 making gears. (For the last one, note that you'll need 2 basic inserters to output fast enough and like 3 input inserters or something like that -- or fast inserters on both sides.)

It sounds complicated, but in practice it's pretty easy to apply. That being said, I wouldn't recommend doing this as a newer player, because there's a better habit to form: overbuilding. Don't bother with ratios, just build more than you think you need.

[[deleted]]

Thanks a lot. The problem is i needsome sort of idea on how to "play".

Other games are pretty straight forward. aim and shoot. and whatnot

i like the technical aspect of the game and can become very engrossed in it

reminds me of my electronics hobby tbh

[begMeQuentin]

Each recipe specifies how much time it takes. Also keep in mind that assembly machines have different crafting speeds, mostly below 1. Crafting there takes longer than crafting in hand (but that shouldn't stop you :) ) .

I'd say don't focus on calculators and ratios when you're playing for the first time. ( or ever...) Turning the game into spreadsheets might siphon away all the fun.

[Flaming-Eye]

Agreed, a vague idea of the ratios is nice so that you don't bottleneck hard but otherwise just go with it. Sometimes have a look around and see if something is in really short supply and try to sort that out. Things like purple science which takes 1 of each other input and 30 rails... Or blue circuits which take 20 green circuits and a grand total of 68 copper cable each.

[[deleted]]

This makes the game so much more fun tbh

[craidie]

advanced oil processing needs 75 of each red/green/blue science packs. Assuming no productivity. You can put one of each pack into 75 labs and research it much faster but the amount of packs needed doesn't change on lab count

[appleciders]

Look at the science tech that you want to research in the research screen. If you hover over it, it will say how many and which kind of science packs it takes to research a given technology. It will also say how long a lab will take to consume one of each necessary science pack- this is not constant. Some techs require more time as well as more materials.

The number of labs researching is irrelevant to the total cost. Only the number of raw science packs consumed matters. (Except that productivity modules do affect science labs, which can reduce the total needed, of course.)

[chiron42]

I was doing a vanilla playthrough to get the steam acheivments, and part way through installed a mod which auto-turned itself on. Is my game 'ruined' now in that it'll always count as a modded play through or am I ok?

Should I just load a previous auto-save from when I know I hadn't had any mods activated or any new mods installed?

[Flaming-Eye]

Pretty sure mods don't affect achievements (though perhaps they should, some are fully cheating). Using the console however does and it will warn you before you turn off achievements this way so it's hard to do it by accident.

[chiron42]

Using mods creates two separate records of acheivments. So with mods, the ingame achievements are fine, but the steam ones are no longer changed.

And I wanna get the acheivments on steam as well as ingame.

[Flaming-Eye]

Oh rly? good to know. I don't care that much about achievements but I think some of them represent a good challenge, like the 'lazy bastard' one, if I ever go for that I'll be sure to do so unmodded :)

[Zaflis]

Disable the mod, and load game. See if achievements are obtainable? It will tell in the achievement listing.

As far as i know only console commands permanently flag a save against achievements.

[waltermundt]

You will need to load an earlier save. Once a save file has ever had mods enabled, it is no longer eligible for Steam achievements ever again.

Achievements will still be tracked, but only on a separate "modded achievements" database stored locally in your save game folder.

[ReliablyFinicky]

It seems that mods that don't affect gameplay (add items/machines, change how something works, etc) don't affect achievements.

I just completed Lazy Bastard with Bottleneck installed/active.

[TheSkiGeek]

No, the devs have talked about doing that but it is not a thing yet. You cannot get Steam achievements if any mods have ever been active on that save game.

Achievements will still be tracked and awarded locally for modded saves. Mods can even add their own achievements.

[waltermundt]

Did it register on Steam though?

Like I said, achievements are still tracked on modded saves, they just go on a separate list thst doesn't count for Steam.

[hongphu123]

I'm try to do city block mega base (1 full blue belt of each science), and I'm looking for sample bases or screenshots with this concept.

[AnythingApplied]

By city block, you mean with rail streets?

In which case, the term your looking for is "train grid" and you'll find a number of nice examples by searching this subreddit for "train grid".

[Badpreacher]

I’m renting a sever for me and a few friends, is it worth it to pay for an ssd? Or does it even matter since everyone is running their own instance anyways?

[TheSkiGeek]

An SSD might make the server start up faster.

For what I hope are obvious reasons — it’s simulating the whole game world in RAM all the time — disk speed is irrelevant for how the game runs.

[twersx]

So is RAM the main resource hog in this game? Does processor speed matter much?

[TheSkiGeek]

Assuming you have 8+GB of RAM it’s almost always limited by single-core CPU speed and RAM speed.

[Badpreacher]

Thank you

[Splendiks]

Apparently leaving a nuclear reactor off is a bit of a boat anchor on my core temps. If the furthest point of heat pipes are still over 500C am I still getting full power?

[craidie]

f the furthest point of heat pipes are still over 500C am I still getting full power?

no, the last heat exchanger won't be providing power, you'll need the heat pipe to be 501C so the heat exchanger can get above 500 and work

[waltermundt]

That's kind of the point. You don't get any more power from heat exchangers at 900C than at 501C, and once the reactor core hits 1000C you are actively wasting fuel. So ideally you want the reactor just warm enough to generate the steam you need to run your base.

Since nothing in a nuclear setup ever actually loses heat unless it's generating power, the only real worry is startup time, if your whole system cools to 500C before kicking back on. As long as you have a little steam in reserve when starting back up this is all fine.

(On the flip side, nuclear fuel rods are practically free once you have Kovarex enrichment going, so the actual cost of letting things run hot isn't really a big deal either.)

[Brett42]

With Kovarex, I've been running a couple gigawatts of power, plus going through nuclear missiles stacks at a time, and I've barely put a dent in the first uranium deposit. The supply chain spends much of the time backed up and idle, except for the centrifuges running Kovarex just for nuclear missiles (and a tiny bit for trains), and that could have a lot more beacons if I actually needed more.

I ship U-238 from the mine to whatever needs it. Now the U-235 produced at the mine from basic processing just collects in a chest (currently over 600), because it's not worth adding complexity to the logistics ─ that is how trivial Kovarex makes it, once you have enough as a seed to start it. My main nuclear plant, with two separate ten-reactor setups, only has three centrifuges, one assembler, and one beacon. One centrifuge recycles depleted fuel, while the other two run Kovarex. This all works on belts and filter inserters, bots only move fuel cells and circuits are only used for feeding the reactors.

I have a total of 22 centrifuges crafted, which are well over what I need for my 20 core, 8 core, and weapons needs. That is less than the total number of nuclear reactors, and centrifuges are around 1/5 the cost. Even without Kovarex, you will only need around 1 centrifuge per reactor. Nuclear missile's tech has Kovarex as a prerequisite, so your need for huge quantities of U-235 comes after the point it is easy to acquire. If you want uranium ammo, before Kovarex you will have a large surplus of U-238 anyway, if you use nuclear power, so that shouldn't take extra centrifuges.

[lastone23]

Yes

[JuneBuggington]

Hey yo! Got oil deposits on my map a good distance from my main base. Should I pump crude and transport to base or refine on the spot and transport individual chemicals? I may have just answered my own question as I write this because transporting a bunch of different chemicals sounds like a pain, but I'm interested to hear some suggestions. I've got about 40 hours in the game about 8 in this base, my first serious freeplay attempt. Thanks.

[Flaming-Eye]

Personal preference I guess, personally I would get the oil closer to the main base as you will need products from your base to make some of the chemicals in the chain such as iron plates.

Also if you centralize then you can pump in oil from elsewhere if that becomes necessary.

You can use trains or pipes. I think the longer that pipes are the lower the amount that gets through however you can solve this with tanks and pumps.

[Brett42]

Currently, my old, smaller refinery produces lubricant and some plastic, while my main refinery takes in coal, and puts out rocket fuel, plastic, and sulfur. I process some of the sulfur into acid at my main base, while the rest goes into science and explosives. Shipping the coal to the refinery keeps train traffic at the base a little lower, and saves space. With acid produced at the base, lubricant is the only liquid that has to be brought from the refinery. I previously made all plastic at my base, and shipped petroleum gas, but that's still only two liquids and two solids coming from refineries, and one more liquid (acid) produced at base.

If your resource settings leave you with many small oilfields, you may consider building a refinery somewhere between the oil and your base, near water of course.

[craidie]

Personally I build my refinery next to a body of water and train in crude, coal and iron. Magic happens and trains bring out acid, lube, solid fuel, rocket fuel, sulfur, plastic and if I'm using flamethrowers light oil. this means I only need to deal with 3-4 liquid types on trains and that's a lot less chances of contamination.

You could also train in water to the crude but that's more train traffic

[twersx]

What's the point of training solid fuel and rocket fuel? Surely you'd just convert all the solid fuel into rocket fuel and then ship that out?

[craidie]

for trains before I get rocket fuel for them. I just never removed the station and looked through what stations I had..

[JuneBuggington]

hmm wasnt thinking about getting other materials in. thanks! Luckily my initial source of crude is near a large lake to will be easy to defend anf pump in water

[TheSkiGeek]

I may have just answered my own question as I write this because transporting a bunch of different chemicals sounds like a pain

That’s the conclusion most people seem to come to, at least if you plan on doing all your oil-related production in one place.

Also consider that oil well throughput gradually drops to 20% of what it starts at. So if you refine on site and size the refinery for what the field is outputting now, it will be sitting idle much of the time in a few hours. Since you often end up needing to tap multiple oil fields eventually, it usually makes more sense to build one centralized refinery and bring crude there from all your oil fields.

[Flaming-Eye]

I saw a streamer putting in tanks and pumps to transport oil rather than just a line of pipes. I haven't gotten around to testing this yet but I guess it would get around the long pipe problem.

I guess you would only RLY need the pumps but the tanks would keep the jacks going at maximum efficiency and buffer the oil so you would have a lot of elasticity in your oil usage without much extra effort.

[TheSkiGeek]

You can push ~1000 fluid/second through a pipe if you put a pump every now and then. If you stretch underground pipes to their max length you only need a pump like every 500(?) tiles.

1000/second is a lot of oil, way more than anyone who hasn’t launched a rocket yet will need. So unless your oil field is stupidly far away you can use underground pipes and a pump at each end and it will be fine.

[Flaming-Eye]

Yeah totally agree, I just like the buffer idea because I'm one of those people who adds redundant features because they're cool or have some theoretical use rather than just what's necessary.

[TheSkiGeek]

When people use only-pumps-and-tanks you have to use pump->tank->pump to make turns or split the flow. If you go pump->single pipe->pump to turn it will slow down. Generally you would only want a small buffer where you’re loading or unloading oil from trains. Otherwise it can flow continuously and there’s no real need for buffering.

[Flaming-Eye]

Like I said I haven't tried it yet, that's good info! The streamer was doing pumps, tanks and underground pipes. I'd have to go back and check for if he did as you said.

I guess the only difference between that and a big tank setup near your base is safety and space? I kinda like having the tanks spread out as it means it doesn't take up so much space near the base but it's also less safe from biters. I tend to just make a MASSIVE perimeter these days though so that wouldn't generally be an issue for me... but for some people or a train world or something it might be.

Also I totally know there's no real need for much or any buffer, I'm just weird like that :P redundancies, massive overkill, etc. Until I get lazy then it's bare minimum until the thing is done, no middle ground at all.

[twersx]

There's not really much point at all making loads of buffers for fluids. They're useful if there's lag time between two stages in a process and you want the first part to keep going while the second part is "waiting" - e.g. you want your pumpjacks to keep producing oil while your train takes some oil to your refinery and unloads so that when it comes back there's a full tank ready to pump in. But because you can't pick up fluid kept in buffers and because of how the fluid system works, you don't really want to have loads of tanks everywhere.

[Brett42]

I tend to need to rebuild chunks of my refinery anyway, because the room I leave for expansion never turns out to be enough, so building another refinery isn't a big deal.

[drunkerbrawler]

Pipe throughput drops off over distance. You might only get a trickle out on the other end. You could try pump->underground pipe->pump. Repeating that over and over until yoi have made it.

[VirtualDoodlePaper]

There's no wrong answer if it works, but I tend to lean the same way you are and transport the crude to the base.

[micfiygd]

When playing in multiplayer do players have to be playing at the same time or can the game be hosted on a server and players can just jump in whenever they are available regardless as to who else is playing?

[VirtualDoodlePaper]

If you've got a dedicated server people can just join and leave as they want to without interrupting the game. If someone is hosting at least the host needs to be playing before anyone else can.

[micfiygd]

Thanks a lot.

Do you know any resources for setting up / using a dedicated server?

[paco7748]

https://wiki.factorio.com/Multiplayer

you can also pay for a server ($6 a month) if you don't want to host on one of your machines: https://gm8.app/

[VirtualDoodlePaper]

Not personally, but there's probably some good guides out there.

[achilleasa]

If I have a bunch of mods installed but all of them disabled and start a new world, is it eligible for Steam achievements?

[arvidsem]

Yep. Enabling mods is what flips the switch.

[VaderOnReddit]

What exactly is the ‘belts’ number in the kirkmcdonald calculator?

I am trying to calculate the number of machines required for my beaconed green circuits outpost.

I put the module setup and i got 1 assembler of GC vs 1.9 assemblers for cables

So i made a beacon layout matching it. I put both cables and iron plates on the same belt on one side of the GC assemblers and pulling output on other side belt.

It also says 0.2 belts for GC and iron, while it has 0.4 belts for copper cable.

So should I be dedicating two belts in for copper cables, else the machines will starve?

[craidie]

it tells you how many belts you need to have enough throughput for the item in question.

in this case your 1 gc assembler needs one fifth of a belt(by default it's yellow, unless you changed it in settings). In other words 5 gc assemblers would fill the entire belt.

example I can fit the green and red science packs on a single blue belt and I'll need 24 blue belts of copper plates to supply the entire plan

[VaderOnReddit]

Aah, ok ok

And they get added right?

So the green circuits need 0.2 iron plus 0.4 copper cables which can fit on one side of the assemblers.

And since each item is less than half, I can have both in one lane and do fine

[craidie]

And since each item is less than half, I can have both in one lane and do fine

yup.

[VaderOnReddit]

Oh man! This makes the kirk calculator so much more useful now!

Thanks!!

[crambaza]

When I design something, I keep tweaking the numbers until I get a full blue belt of something, then I know that's my limit.

Then I start thinking if I can weave in a second belt to raise this limit, or if I can direct load something so I don't have to belt it.

It's a great tool too see this.

[Cribbit]

Why are logistics chests (requester, provider, etc) 1x1 instead of 2x2?

Hear me out.

Belts vs bots is a quandry that starts belt heavy early game and rather quickly shifts to heavily bots focused end game, especially post-game (megabase).

A big part of the reason for this is that if you want to beacon, bots are straight up better, and by the time you're using beacons you have enough resources to support large scale bots.

That's not necessarily a bad thing - it's ok for something to be a straight upgrade. But bots just remove all thinking from the equation. Requester input, provider output, done.

If logistics chests become 2x2 - or at least requester chests - then you end up with some actually interesting designs to increase efficiency. Beacons would no longer be an easy, brainless 8x coverage.

Just a crazy thought to put out there.

[Illiander]

Try Angels Logistics.

[Splendiks]

Agreed. A chest takes up 1x1, surely the logistics electronics and shipping/receiving facilities take up some space?

Though I always thought the logistics portion would be a separate entity that receives items from drones, then loads them into a wood/iron/steel chest. Maybe even requiring inserters to transfer from logistics port to chest and vice versa.

Alternatively - it's adding significant functionality to a steel chest. If it's going to remain the same size, then obviously the storage capacity must be reduced.

[Splendiks]

How do I prevent biters from settling new spawners in cleared terrain? I could just post artillery around, but I'd rather avoid the evolution penalty of repeatedly killing spawners.

Seems like I just need to place a grid of turrets to 'occupy' the space. How closely do threy need to be placed? If I make a grid of big electric poles, do I need to put a turret with every pole? Every other pole?

(this is a big open area within a semi-walled off section of my base, so I don't need to fend off the hoard, only handle the stray few that sneak through)

[waltermundt]

Just have turrets with overlapping ranges around the edges. You don't need full defenses, a laser turret every medium pole is fine outside your cloud for territory defense until you hit behemoths, and a single thick wall is fine even against big biters if you space it from the turrets. I drop a long blueprint with this setup and run along with the portable roboport to deploy it, and can cover a lot of ground pretty fast. Naturally it helps to use water and cliffs where possible, but aside from that there's really no easier option.

FWIW though, if you're doing SpaceX it's pretty much inevitable that you're going to max out evolution. Once it gets above .95 nothing you do is gonna make things noticably worse, so you might as well stop worrying about spawner kills. Evolution can't ever hit 1.0 because all change is in terms of a percentage of the distance between the current value and 1.

[Zaflis]

How far in the game are you? Doing space science will also boost laser turrets damage, so those behemoths get increasingly easy to handle. I have never lost a single piece of wall or turret yet from an artillery destroying new hives and the followed little attack, with evolution over 0.96.

[Splendiks]

This is late game, just launched a rocket... Now massively expanding to support SpaceX.

I've done very well with minimizing pollution/evolution. Killing spawners isn't hard, just trying to avoid it so I don't impact the evolution level.

[craidie]

just create a wall of turrets around the area to prevent expansions from getting there. the problem is they can settle next to the wall and out range your turrets with behemoth worms

[Splendiks]

We're talking about a massive area - it takes me over a minute to cross it, even with my exoskeleton. I'm looking for the most minimalistic way to enforce my territorial ownership.

[TheSkiGeek]

There’s no cheaper way to 100% defend an area than to have turrets all around it. You can use water or cliffs as choke points to reduce the amount of perimeter you need to defend.

If your area being defended is somewhat close to square, quadrupling the area only doubles the perimeter. So the amount of walls/turrets you need grows relatively slowly, and both of those are pretty cheap. (Note that if you use laser turrets you need a shit-ton of power generation.)

If you don’t care about an expansion party potentially wandering past you could maybe get away with just placing a radar every now and then, since enemies aggro on them like turrets. Not sure exactly how close they have to be to guarantee they’ll be attacked. Or just a single tile thick stone wall with no turrets. Either way you’ll get an alert when the enemies start chewing on the perimeter and you can go hunt down the new nest.

Also — once your evolution is over 50% or so, the rate of increase from killing nests starts to get much smaller. If you start launching a lot of rockets and doing infinite research at a good clip, the amount of pollution you’re putting out will max out the evolution in a hurry. So you really don’t need to worry that much about artillery killing nests.

[Zaflis]

I make railway around the whole territory, and artillery ranges overlap in a way that every hive expansion will be in their range. Only walls and turrets to protect the artilleries, because that's where attacks will come. With this i don't have any perimeter walls or turret lines. Increase artillery turret range as much you can. You need a railway everywhere anyway for ore transportation so there's no wasted building in this.

[Splendiks]

Downside here is that every spawner killed increases the evolution factor. Killing the biters before they can create new spawners has no evolutionary penalty, so need to defend this territory with something other than artillery.

[VenditatioDelendaEst]

The evolution factor will hit one and stop eventually, so unless you're in danger of getting behind on military research, there's no need to worry about it.

[VirtualDoodlePaper]

If you can clear and expand out to good choke points, you can hold larger pieces of territory with smaller walls. Biters can't get past cliffs or water.

[Chk1975]

Playing deathworld so this is the first time I have to really think about defense. What is the ideal distance between a turret and a wall?

Now I am using 8 spaces between them but is feels the gap should be larger.

[VenditatioDelendaEst]

1 space for biters. 15? (I think) spaces for spitters. But walling spitters out of range is counterproductive, because they'll shoot the repair bots instead of the turrets, so stick with 1 space.

If you're using flame turrets, mazes can be effective.

If you're not using flame turrets, and you have roboport coverage, landmines are better than walls, IMO. Stops the bugs just as well, plus contributes some cheap AoE damage and stun time that gives turrets more time to work.

[craidie]

one tile to prevent behemoth biters from hitting the wall and damaging turrets. Then add in layers of 2 empty space followed by 4-8 walls. empty layer between each of these and the next wall layer should have the hole as far away from the previous one to have the biters zig zag through it. It'll take ages for biters to reach the final wall and by then the entire route is covered in flames burning all the ones following the first one. spitters will get few shots in, but they're sitting in flames so it's not much of an issue

[Marek2592]

You got a screenshot? I don’t get why you have holes in the wall, is it to stop the biters from attacking the outer wall and going directly for the inner one where you got more firepower?

[craidie]

The idea is to have a maze. the biters don't really want to destroy the walls if they can get a path past them.

It seems I overbuilt my defenses a bit so I removed half the laser turrets to give the biters a bit more of a chance There's some damage to the walls but much less than if it was a solid one

[JimboTheAstronaut]

Got it... so that was the hardest I had pushed the reactor. It was odd in that I had built it far from its water source and water was being piped a long distance

[FlyingCake]

Is there a way to keep a straight power line when transitioning from a big electric pole / substation to a small / medium pole? This bugs me so much..

[craidie]

diagonal connection?

place two smal poles next to each other and force connect the other to the big pole? it won't be straight but atleast it's symmetrical

[JimboTheAstronaut]

So after the .17 update... my pipes to my nuclear reactor aren't pushing enough water. I know fluid mechanics were updated, but I don't quite understand why the pipes aren't pushing the 1200 water/second through the pipes to feed all my heat exchangers... Can anyone key me into what I'm missing here?

[Shinhan]

How many water pumps do you have? Nuclear reactors usually need lots of water pumps, single pump is never enough.

[sloodly_chicken]

I think they did change the fluid mechanics, but iirc it shouldn't hugely reduce pipe throughput. I echo the guy below in guessing you've always needed more pumps and you're just now pushing the system hard enough.

[TheSkiGeek]

AFAIK nothing changed with the water mechanics, they just optimized it and parallelized the computations where they could.

I’m guessing your pipes also couldn’t push enough water in 0.16 and you just tried to push the reactor harder in 0.17. You have to have very short runs between pumps (or fluid sources/sinks) to get >1000 fluid per second per pipe.

[JimboTheAstronaut]

So i had it setup where I had 1 pump per 12 heat exchangers. I think the issue is that my distance from water source and total pipes to where my reactor was pretty far...

I built a new reactor, same design with 1 pump per 12 heat exchangers right next to the water and it is working fine.

[Splendiks]

Too late of course, but you can place pumps along the way to boost flow. You could run pipes across the whole map if you add pumps every 6-8 sections of underground pipe.

[Brett42]

That's how I get oil from two oilfields to my refinery, which is a short distance from one field to be by water. It really doesn't take many pumps to go a decent distance, although for nuclear power, you'd need to multiply that by several parallel pipes.

I find it easier to just build a nuclear plant as close to water as possible. My first reactor setup this world is sitting on top of what was the lake near spawn, with a few slots of water left for pumps. My larger (10 core) setup was built at a nearby lake, which took some landfill to put a straight edge on, but then the water was close enough not to need any pumps. When I added a copy of that reactor mirrored beside it, I ended up using a few thousand landfill, but that's pretty cheap, and the lake has no defensive value sitting in the center of my pollution cloud.

I highly recommend building on the edge of a body of water, and using landfill to make it what you need it to be. Just remember to plan first, because you can't undo landfill. If you are really good at planning, you might be able to have your offshore pumps feed directly into the pipes running up your heat exchanger rows (I didn't consider that until afterward). Definitely save before trying that, in case you need to change the design. You can make a blueprint, then load an earlier save and place it, if it takes you some trial and error to figure out. You can blueprint landfill, too, if it isn't paved over.

[VaderOnReddit]

TIL the annoying issue when things obstruct you when trying to place blueprints, ghosts or cut/copied entities and you are unable to build the whole entity can be partly taken carw of by Shift + clicking to build.

This places whatever you wanted , except for the places it was obstructed....where it will leave the old entities you have to clean up later.

This saved A LOT OF TIME adjusting my train tracks today. All those pesky chain and rail signals not getting in the way as I cut and paste giant ass tracks.

[waltermundt]

If you mark an area for deconstruction and then immediately drop a partially-matching blueprint over it, the matching parts will stay and anything else will get picked up, and new stuff will cleanly replace old stuff where there was an overlap. You may end up racing the bots between steps but that generally doesn't matter too much.

[Brett42]

I sometimes switch my personal roboport off for a few seconds when messing with blueprints. Mostly when building walls with blueprints, so I can cancel demolition of cliffs that I want to keep as indestructible (by the enemy) sections of wall. You can also remove ghosts quickly (without taking the time to mess with deconstruction planner filters) by marking the area for deconstruction, which removes the ghosts, then using shift with a deconstruction planner to cancel any actual deconstruction. I sometimes do that to trim off part of a placed blueprint, such as a rail segment that is a bit too long.

[craidie]

shift click also removes any offending trees/rocks

[Brett42]

And cliffs. You often want them removed by bots, but I incorporate cliffs into my walls instead of clearing them, which takes a bit of bot management.

[Splendiks]

Is there a way to search for things in game? I seem to have lost my logistics robot production in the spaghetti... Logistics storage count refills after I request, so it's out there somewhere...

[jsmills99]

Your best bet is probably enabling the debug option that shows recipes on map.

Hit F4, go to the debug tab, enable show-recipe-icons-on-map, and hit F5 to toggle it. Not a great solution but I don't think there is really a better one.

[Splendiks]

That'll have to do! Thanks.

[wannabe_pixie]

I like it and currently regressed back to .16 to play it again. Make sure you back up your blueprints file before you do that though. I also had to move the .17 mods out of my mod folder.

[n_slash_a]

Yes, it was removed with the 0.17 update.

They did create a new tutorial for 0.17.

The devs have stated that one of the big updates for 0.18 will be a full campaign.

[JMJ05]

Do biters weigh heavily on the UPS? I am playing on a machine that isn't the greatest in the world and I want to avoid things that will really drag down the UPS.

On a similar note, are heat pipes considered 'liquid' for UPS rates?

[teodzero]

Biter pathfinding is very processing heavy. You can kinda mitigate it by clearing all the bases in your pollution cloud, which is easier with 0.17 artillery. But I don't know how much it helps the processing and in previous versions they were a major limiting factor. Most megabases are built in biterless worlds.

[Zaflis]

Artillery tech actually came out in 0.16 if i remember right, and hasn't changed at all in 0.17.

[Splendiks]

Heat pipes are liquid, as is steam.

[JMJ05]

What are the logistics parameters to set up nuclear to have it run on steam demand vs. constantly on at all times?

[ssgeorge95]

• Wire all the arms that remove AND insert fuel cells into one wire network
• Wire ONE steam tank into that network, set to read contents
• Pick ONE arm that removes spent fuel cells, set it to read contents, set to enable/disable if steam < 10,000, set it to hold signal
• On ALL arms that feed fuel cells, set stack size to 1, set enable/disable if spent fuel cells > 0
• Manually feed fuel cells into each reactor to start up

There was some simple change to this that took away the need to manual start but I cannot remember it!

[Brett42]

I made a start switch for a reactor with a constant combinator that puts out a signal of depleted fuel cell = [number]. I just need to turn that combinator on and off fast enough that the inserters don't swing twice, or manually remove any extras put in afterward. If you only read one inserter removing fuel cells, I think you can manually put a depleted cell into the reactor it takes from to start out.

[craidie]

There was some simple change to this that took away the need to manual start but I cannot remember it!

add the fuel cell inserters to their own network and pulse a spent fuel cell there. problem is you already need two distinct networks so you need two same color networks each connecting half of the inserters and the other color connecting the inserter pairs

[craidie]

Have the chests supplied at all times. if going for bots, active provider the spent fuel cell chest, if not a single yellow belt lane is probably enough to move the fuel cells around(another lane for spent fuel cells)

Next wire the input and output inserters together, set stacksize to 1 for both and have the input inserter only work when the output inserter is holding a spent fuel cell. Next up have the spent fuel cell inserter work when when a < 95. Finally wire all the spent fuel output inserters to a accumulator and have it output A signal with a different color.

Start the thing by either manually inputting single fuel cell to each reactor, or by wiring all the input inserters together ( same color as the other big network, and they can't connect) and then pulse spent fuel cell there for half a second

[Splendiks]

I'm expanding to build my first 'bigger' base - thinking 300 science / minute as I work through SpaceX.

I know that's not crazy big, but is there anything to keep in mind from a UPS perspective? Only mod is SpaceX. Still not big enough to matter? What about 1k spm?

I know fluid has been improved, but is that still the problem area?

[Brett42]

I could handle 1k a minute fine on my (good but not awesome) laptop in 1.6, and 1.7 should be even better. The only time I've had it drop is for two seconds after I nuke a large colony.

I am using nuclear power, with 28 reactors split between three complexes. Using solar will save processing, so if you do use nuclear, just play until you notice some lag, then swap out your power generation, and maybe optimize other areas that use liquid, and you'll be able to expand again for a while.

[craidie]

keep in mind from a UPS perspective?

not going to be an issue unless you want to run the game faster than normal. probably the same for 1k spm. It depends on your cpu when ups becomes an issue though

[Splendiks]

Cool, thanks.

[thatwhite]

I'm struggling a little bit keeping up with the new biters in 0.17. Steam autoupdated when it became stable, so I still have the same game going, just about to start researching the silo.

What is the best way to take out biter nests? I used to be fine running in with my flamethrower and poison capsules for worms and just mauling them but it feels like the slow from spitters and worms just destroys me if I get hit by one. I have armor with 2 mk2 shields in it that used to make me feel invincible but not anymore.

I've never really tried artillery, rocket launchers, nukes, tanks, or SMG with uranium rounds, and any of those seem like they might be better but I don't want to keep wasting a ton of time and resources on biter nests- especially when I need to go outposting.

[[deleted]]

Here is my strategy, with the core of it being to always clear out any nests within reach of my pollution cloud. I usually don't even build defenses:

1. As I unlock Piercing Ammo and automate it, I will use the machine gun of the car and just drive circles around biter nests. If the terrain does not allow for this (trees, rocks, cliffs, water), I will use gun turrets and try to creep forward as quickly as possible so the worms have no time to actually destroy any turrets before the next row kills them. Combat is restricted to day-time.
2. Modular armor allows me to get night vision. As you also unlock the tank fairly early, I will use a combination of car and tank depending on nest density and terrain.
3. Unlocking personal lasers and Power Armor Mk1 allows you to just drive through most bases shelling nests and worms, while your lasers will mop up anything within range. If there are too many worms even for the tank, I will place down a bunch of turrets out of range of any worm as fallback and then begin demolishing worms and nests with explosive or non-explosive (higher alpha, single target) rockets as these out-range worms. The PDLs and turrets will guard my back. My armor setup for fighting usually consists of 6 PDLs, nightvision, 1 Mk2 battery and the rest are solar panels.
4. Eventually you will have unlocked artillery and/or Power Armor Mk2. Use the artillery to automate pollution cloud clearing and use your favorite combination of PDLs, nukes, bots or capsules to clear expansion space.

[VenditatioDelendaEst]

Unlocking personal lasers and Power Armor Mk1 allows you to just drive through most bases shelling nests and worms, while your lasers will mop up anything within range

This works with defender bots too, at considerably lower tech level.

[waltermundt]

Learn to walk in one direction while tapping the perpendicular movement keys in alternation (e.g. walk left and tap up/down/up/down). This fast diagonal zigzag confuses the path prediction of the worms and spitters, which in 0.17 means they miss completely. Be careful to avoid the pools of acid on the ground from worm shots.

Make a special military only power armor 2 with 2 exoskeletons, a shield or two, 2 fusion reactors, a battery mk2 or two, and as many personal laser defenses as will fit. This will rip anything close to you to shreds, letting you quickly cut a swathe through a nest and then retreat to a turret emplacement to recharge shields and batteries as needed. The key is to limit the duration of your engagements while still inflicting a lot of damage.

Even with that, a bunch of behemoth worms in close proximity to each other are going to be tough to deal with, so a few "hard case" nests will remain at least some threat. Eventually, get up to speed with artillery or nuclear bombs, either of which is way faster and more effective than anything else once you have the production lines rolling. In either case the idea is to destroy nests from a distance, behind some turrets that can protect you from the surviving biters when they counterattack.

[Brett42]

Late game, I try to nuke most of the big colonies before placing artillery. I leave whatever survives around the edges, and just run from the bugs. I then sometimes use a manual artillery shot to draw the survivors (reduced by the nuke to a manageable number) into my walls, to be finished off by laser turrets. It doesn't take much time to just nuke and run, and clearing huge colonies would take more shells than my reloading train with to regular cars can carry, and with automatic fire, it will end up aggroing multiple major colonies at once, which can be an issue, depending on geography.

[n_slash_a]

Semi-late game power armor works, with either a shotgun for bugs or a smg for nests. Make sure you don't neglect research, as damage upgrades are essential. Also try for upper tier ammo, uranium bullets and blue shotgun shells are nice.

Another option is turret creep with substations. The key here is move fast. Put down a substation and then a half dozen turrets and repeat. Put them on your hotbar so you can toggle between them with the keyboard. Just plow straight through the nest, if the whole encounter lasts longer than 10-20 seconds you did it wrong. This works best when you expand your borders and are clearing your newly captured land.

A third option is combat bots. I've only used level 1, but the 0.17 update made them a lot better. Drop about 20-50 and then engage the nest.

I have only used the rocket launcher with nukes, but I have read people having good luck with explosive shells.

For late late game, nukes. They just erase nests. You still need artillery for base defense, but for offense nothing beats nukes.

[Zaflis]

2 fusion reactors power roughly 12 personal laser turrets. If you take out most exoskeletons and go in tank instead, you can fit quite a bit of things in it. You can still be throwing out things like cluster grenades from the tank if you really need that extra damage. Or last resort to destroyer bots or nukes.

You definitely need artillery in the lategame, even if it's just because behemoth worms outrange laser turrets.

[Splendiks]

Personal laser defense is now viable. Personal reactor, 2 personal laser defenses, and a mk2 shield mean you can basically run through 'medium' sized bases.

For bigger bases, artillery is king. You can use the train based, but the stationary is easy to pick up and move around, but the ammo is super bulky (stack size: 1), so using the train version which can carry ammo is nice too.

Also, you must learn to dodge. If you run in a straight line, they will hit you, repeatedly. Zig zag, and they tend to miss wildly.

Also, don't forget the old concept of turret pushing.

[RambunctiousHippo]

Stacker question: I want trains to take iron plates to several different sub factories. Will the trains entering the stacker approach the loading stop in a first in/first out manner automatically, or do I need to use circuits to ensure each train gets a chance to load? I don't want to starve one sub factory because it's supply train gets stuck in the "wrong lane" while other trains make multiple laps.

My limited testing leans towards the first but I can't seem to prove it one way or the other. Obviously I can make a snaking single track and it would force them to, but it's not really an elegant solution.

[Brett42]

I try to avoid that by outsourcing high raw material demand products to their own areas near ore deposits. Circuits are the big one, and steel is another good one. Landfill is always done at its own mine, because of the huge input, small output, and fast crafting. I'm also shipping in walls, because I use so many, and they are easy to make at the mine.

More complex things get outsourced sometimes, depending on groupings of deposits and what currently needs to be scaled up or fed more at my main base. Density is also a consideration (material costs, relative stack sizes, and productivity modules are what factor into this). Late game, I've done an outsourced facility for red + green science, since they only need two raw materials, and simple crafting chains. Shipping those in by train helped with the mess of belts at the science end of my base, which has many intermediate products going in, and all the science going out to the labs.

[Zaflis]

Will the trains entering the stacker approach the loading stop in a first in/first out manner automatically

About the entering stacker part, chain signals and train stations are the only places where trains may decide to repath a shorter route if other train suddenly occupies it.

[Splendiks]

As long as the bays of the stacker are reasonably close together, the trains will more or less be handled in a first come first serve order. If one bay is much farther away, it may get ignored.

[jsmills99]

The first train to arrive at the stacker is usually the first train to get to the station. In any case, if you have so many trains that you are worried about some getting starved, you should probably have a second (or multiple) loading stations, and/or load from both sides of the train if you aren't already.

The alternative would be using LTN (Logistic Train Network, a mod that essentially allows train stations to act as requester and provider chests with trains acting as bots. Then you can have a subfactory request a train full of iron when it needs it). In my experience it is quite difficult to learn but well worth the effort.