Factorio - a factory building game - now with Space Age expansion

[Nutria]

Flamers are good but eventually research on guns will make them insanely op. And if you really want to see aliens killed fast, get yourself some depleted uranium ammo.

 

[Jaedar]

I always just spam laser turrets. They're expensive and consume a lot of power, but it is so worth it to not have to manage ammo for 100s of turrets.

 

[Nutria]

The statistics I got seemed like laser turrets just didn't perform that well. (And I didn't invest in laser weapon tech because of that.) I figure it's just as easy to have a conveyor belt with high-perfomance ammo, but if you've done the math and lasers are better I'd be happy to hear it.

 

[Andnjord]

Cool, I now have blue research set up, batteries coming out of my ears and and robo-production has started. I did have a hilarious misshap after switching to advanced oil processing without having enough storage space for all the light and heavy oil. I had switched my boilers from using coal to using solid petroleum fuel, so of course when the heavy and light oil tanks filled up the refineries just stopped working....Took me a good couple of minutes to figure out that one out .


Now I just have to understand just how in the hell do robots function :D

Also my factory is losing more and more of its nice and clean functionality it had at the begining, it's getting hilarious.

 

[Average Manatee]

The statistics I got seemed like laser turrets just didn't perform that well. (And I didn't invest in laser weapon tech because of that.) I figure it's just as easy to have a conveyor belt with high-perfomance ammo, but if you've done the math and lasers are better I'd be happy to hear it.

Lasers are better than gun turrets in firepower until you have uranium bullets, are not affected by enemy armor, have greater range and health than gun turrets, can be completely clean, and are much easier to use since a few power poles can supply infinite amounts of turrets anywhere. Also the personal defense lasers are very powerful and scale based on the same laser tech.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

You need a pretty beefy power production system in order to use them though. Gun turrets are fine if you use logistic robots. If you're a mad man like me and did a no laser, no logistic robot first playthrough then it can get a little...complicated.

 

[Norfleet]

Lasers are better than gun turrets in firepower until you have uranium bullets, are not affected by enemy armor, have greater range and health than gun turrets, can be completely clean, and are much easier to use since a few power poles can supply infinite amounts of turrets anywhere. Also the personal defense lasers are very powerful and scale based on the same laser tech.

Lazors generally work better because you can get far greater density of fire, as they have more range, so more ranks of guns can open up on your target at once in depth, whereas the density of gun turrets is limited because their range is shorter AND they need deadspace for ammo logistics, which means their maximum density is roughly half that of lazors just from this alone, while lazors can be layered in solid blocks multiple ranks deep without issue.

 

[Average Manatee]

The difference is that Uranium just deals absurd, absurd damage. Red ammo roughly keeps up with lasers (eventually surpassing them because the upgrades are just better). Uranium ammo though is 3x red ammo and individual turrets can chew up multiple of the toughest biters in seconds. It's also basically a free upgrade from red since U-258 is plentiful.

Lasers do tend to work well if they are only fighting sporadic weaker waves but the stronger the wave the less that the range gives you since you'll only kill a small portion before the gun turrets start firing.

Of course flamethrower turrets = god. With a properly spaced out wall to stop the spitters from getting close there's no reason flamethrowers can't defend everything, except for the annoying issue that the fire on the ground will still kill your logistics robots going to repair walls. Oil is incredibly cheap too. Playing on Marathon/Deathworld gun turrets are a massive iron drain best solved with by flamethrowers. Lasers then are also good support for spot defense when you don't want to run oil around.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

The logistics of getting Uranium production under way is pretty arse though.
You need to route Sulphuric Acid to your miners, and then get the ore to the centrifuge.

 

[Average Manatee]

Train that brings in sulfuric acid and takes out ore. Not that hard. It's the price you pay for

Uranium ammo is so efficient that you don't really need to care much about the throughput or logistics problem aside from devising a route for A to B. Kind of similar to how you can run basically an entire base worth of flamethrowers off one or two pumpjacks without needing to worry about oil pressurization in the line unless you are running it an absurdly long distance.

 

[Norfleet]

Lasers do tend to work well if they are only fighting sporadic weaker waves but the stronger the wave the less that the range gives you since you'll only kill a small portion before the gun turrets start firing.

I've not found any kind of attack that triple-banded lazor turrets can't stop cold, especially if backed by flammenwerfer. You can also fuck with their pathfinding by placing jagged strips of outlying wall, or fuck with them even more using belt carousels.

except for the annoying issue that the fire on the ground will still kill your logistics robots going to repair walls.

There's tricks to prevent that, that actually works especially well with flammenwerfer. Shut down the roboport in the area as long as flammenwerfer fuel reserves continue to decline, and continue to suppress the roboport in this manner until several seconds elapse without decrease in fuel, indicating the attack is over. Flammenwerfer make very good "enemy detectors" in this way. That way robots will not be sent to perform repairs until after the attack has ended and the fires have gone out.

 

[Average Manatee]

Well to give some numbers, a max tech (excluding space science) gun turret with uranium deals 2,904 DPS. A laser turret under the same conditions deals 152 DPS. Even considering the toughest armored biters the uranium turret deals 2,344 DPS if I'm calculating the damage reduction correctly. 3 rows of laser turrets is a lot of expensive infrastructure, you could replace it with a lot fewer gun turrets.

 

[Jaedar]

Well to give some numbers, a max tech (excluding space science) gun turret with uranium deals 2,904 DPS. A laser turret under the same conditions deals 152 DPS. Even considering the toughest armored biters the uranium turret deals 2,344 DPS if I'm calculating the damage reduction correctly. 3 rows of laser turrets is a lot of expensive infrastructure, you could replace it with a lot fewer gun turrets.

Almost makes me want to use uranium/flamer turrets. But nope, having to ship materials to outposts to run turrets is too much of a hassle, and when I could have max upgrades I'll already have artillery and the need to defend against large attack waves is a distant memory.

 

[Hellraiser]

There should be a mod that allows you to build a flaming moat of oil, for that ultimate "fuck you and fuck your enviroment, biters" industrial pollution dystopia feel.

Almost makes me want to use uranium/flamer turrets. But nope, having to ship materials to outposts to run turrets is too much of a hassle, and when I could have max upgrades I'll already have artillery and the need to defend against large attack waves is a distant memory.

Well like with a lot of good ideas one can get in factorio, it is best to start the game with the idea to do it like that in the first place thus accounting for it in your factory expansion plans, rather than redesign the layout all over the place to support the new concept.

Technically you need what, two wagons extra to do that? With outposts it might not be so much of a problem, but if your main train terminal was not designed with this in mind, it becomes a hassle. There's always the option of building a secondary terminal from which all defense supplies ship out on dedicated trains and adding a second platform at every platform so that it doesn't cockblock the normal supply trains from loading up or vice versa.

 

[Average Manatee]

Technically you need what, two wagons extra to do that? With outposts it might not be so much of a problem, but if your main train terminal was not designed with this in mind, it becomes a hassle.

Are you aware that cargo wagons can have filters? Middle click the inventory squares.

 

[Nutria]

My attitude toward uranium ammo is that you need oil pretty early on anyway. That gives you sulfuric acid, that gives you huge amounts of uranium. Sending the sulfuric acid out to the uranium mine is really not that hard. And besides that, red ammo is all you really need unless you're on a higher difficulty level then I've ever played.

 

[Hellraiser]

Are you aware that cargo wagons can have filters? Middle click the inventory squares.

*updates his factorio.txt*

For unloading though I would still need to filter output using a splitter belt or inserter I guess. Next time I build a train terminal, I'll take this into account.

 

[Norfleet]

Well to give some numbers, a max tech (excluding space science) gun turret with uranium deals 2,904 DPS. A laser turret under the same conditions deals 152 DPS. Even considering the toughest armored biters the uranium turret deals 2,344 DPS if I'm calculating the damage reduction correctly. 3 rows of laser turrets is a lot of expensive infrastructure, you could replace it with a lot fewer gun turrets.

Yes, but the thing with Factorio is that producing MOAR of something is generally easier than producing different things. Maintenance and upkeep of a lazor-wall area involves a lot fewer products, whereas gun turrets have so many things that can go wrong, like a belt, chest, or inserter getting destroyed by spitters causing the turret to die.

But if you really want a ludicrous defense, build walls of artillery behind rows of nuclear-powered trainsaws.

 

[Sinilevä]

Can someone recommend any good tutorial for this?

 

[Richard Leaks]

Can someone recommend any good tutorial for this?

Ingame tutorial is just fine.

 

[Jaedar]

Can someone recommend any good tutorial for this?

Ingame tutorial is just fine.

If you want more guidance than the in game tutorials I hear the youtuber KatherineOfSky is good.

But well, I think it is probably more fun to figure it out on your own, but there is one really powerful technique/design that will serve you well that is probably worth knowing:
It is a factory architecture called "main bus". What is basically means is that you build your factory in two dimensions: one that has a bunch of belts running in parallel with various resources (only plates to start with, but then adding more complex stuff, widening the bus as it goes along). In the other direction, perpendicular to the main bus, you build your actual production, consuming resources and feeding potential results back into the bus. This fairly simple technique means that there is almost always room to expand your production without running into other buildings, because your production always expands in one direction.

 

[Andnjord]

If you want more guidance than the in game tutorials I hear the youtuber KatherineOfSky is good.

She's a little bit too far on the "gigglesquee" scale for my taste and has some identical vocal ticks as one of my best friends (which is always super distracting), but she does explain things very well and I think it's a good idea to watch a few episodes of her Entry Level to Megabase after you've mucked around your first base for a while, if only to expand your mind as to what is actually possible to do in Factorio.

 

[racofer]

Can someone recommend any good tutorial for this?

Nothing beats Nihlaus when it comes to Factorio tutorials. Watch his "Let's Start Automating" series:

 

[Demo.Graph]

Also, if you think that you're ready for a death world experience, you can check a playlist I did for my pal.
It's not vocally commented and pretty sparcely edited. And I made some stupid mistakes (furnace row feeder had only half throughput, because I've overthought it). Still, it might provide an idea of the things to expect from DW (attack size, expansion priorities).
I've played with a railworld and x5 science cost for some extra challenge.


Edit: typos, spelling

 

[Andnjord]

Learning Mistakes: Part Deux

I went out into the world to set up raw ressources outposts, big patches of copper, iron and stone, coal will be next on the return trip (coal was running really low, hence why I had switched to solid fuel for the boilers, so in retrospect I probably should have started with that one first but it was the furthest one away) all delivered by train to the large train station area I had delineated for it (at least one thing I planned properly in advance). I plug their lines into the main double tracked line I had set up early for the oil, signals down, awesome, that was quick and easy. Fast forward 10 minutes later, and suddenly all power shuts down, the boiler are empty, the fuel refineries are down, and biters are eating away at the iron outpost that was only defended by the now out of power laser turrets, thankfully my main base still had a bunch of gun turrets defending it. Turns out I had made a mess of the signalling system and the oil train was sitting outside in the wilderness waiting for a green signal that never gonna come since I had completly gridlocked the train line. Oops .

I think I've now figured out the train signalling system and this souldn't happen again, at least now that I have the coal outpost up and running, I have a back-up line of it feeding the boilers in case oil goes down again. I now need to understand the circuit network system so I can balance out the oil refineries between their output of petroleum, heavy and light oil, that's going to be fun. Oh, and I probably should get started on nuclear power, The Factory Must Grow.

Also, Spidertron is love, Spidertron is life