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

[Jaedar]

100 SPM

What's SPM?

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Stutters per minute

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

I really want them to implement Atomic Artillery shells.
Being able to nuke a biter 1000 miles away sounds hilarious to me.

 

[Andnjord]

What's SPM?

Science Packs per Minute. Essentially, since the rocket launches with satelites in cargo are the ultimate ressource consumer in the game, and since to use the space science packs it generates you're also using all the other types of science packs, it's what I've seen being used to track how much stuff your base produces/how powerful it is.

Think about it, to generate and use these space science packs you're using every single ressource in the game, from the start of the chain with iron and copper ore and oil all the way to blue circuits and low density structures.

 

[Caim]

Think about it, to generate and use these space science packs you're using every single ressource in the game, from the start of the chain with iron and copper ore and oil all the way to blue circuits and low density structures.

According to the wiki you'll need the following raw materials to build one rocket with a satellite:

• 9,950 Coal
• 324,722 Crude oil
• 101,788 Copper ore
• 57,535 Iron ore
• 306,444 Water

That's more than 100 of one of the game's most basic materials for a single Science Pack. That's over two stacks!

 

[Average Manatee]

Real men play Marathon.

Also productivity modules cut down the resources required by a shit ton.

 

[Demo.Graph]

Actually, let me show the unholy, creaky but still barely functional mess that my base has become

Much better than my first base)
Also, you've seriously overengineered your perimeter. If you had a single wall on the north, for example, you would've needed only one train stop for ammo and stuff.

I've heard this place they call 'Deathworld' is lovely this time of the year, isn't it?

Yeah. Beeline to AP ammo and flamers ASAP and you're golden.
Terrain really matters in early game DW. If you start in a green area, it's a cakewalk - grass sucks most of the pollution you would be able to generate early game.
Also, biters tend to expand fast. Your current north-west is full of holes. It will be completely infested with bases in like an hour or two. You'd most likely need to make a series of artillery outposts or mono-wall to be sure biters won't slip through.
If you decide to run DW marathon, keep in mind that biters are less aggressive there. Marathon is more about bloated factories than native opposition.

 

[Nutria]

In real life you would want a hedgehog defense with strongpoints with 360 degree coverage. But remember that in Factorio the aliens are designed to be pretty dumb so they won't really try to find weak points in your defenses. Even if they stumble across one, they don't know how to exploit it in mass and roll up your flanks. This isn't PvP. So you can probably get away with just having a really long wall as long as you keep up the ammo to those guns. And that can include very very long conveyor belts.

 

[Andnjord]

Much better than my first base)

You're in luck, because this was my real first base before I junked it.

Spoiler

Look! Nothing is actually automated beyond science production!

Also, biters tend to expand fast. Your current north-west is full of holes. It will be completely infested with bases in like an hour or two. You'd most likely need to make a series of artillery outposts or mono-wall to be sure biters won't slip through.

I actually did have bitters expansion turned on (I think it's not by default on trains map). The gaps between the bases are just about too small for them to squeeze through, the laser turrets range just about overlaps in those gaps, always aggroing any bitters that would try to get through.

Also, you've seriously overengineered your perimeter. If you had a single wall on the north, for example, you would've needed only one train stop for ammo and stuff.

This isn't PvP. So you can probably get away with just having a really long wall as long as you keep up the ammo to those guns.

Agreed, I did a few stress tests by having artillery aggro as many nests as possible at once (including some really big ones down in the south) and even the massive attack waves they sent would barely register on the defences.

Spoiler

It could potentially cause issues if they sent those kind of waves non stop at several points of the perimeter, because by doing so they would eventually run them dry of supplies since the supply train can only be in one place at once. But then if that was to happen you just send in the artilley train (which in a better rail network than mine wouldn't block the supply train) to clear out the nests.

Overall, it would be much better to have one of these outposts (and then, only the danger facing half) suplying separate smaller edgehogs (no, I'm not just belting the ammo, that's not fun!)

 

[Average Manatee]

If you decide to run DW marathon, keep in mind that biters are less aggressive there. Marathon is more about bloated factories than native opposition.

That's a bit misleading. Marathon alone is harder than Deathworld IMO and Marathon Deathworld makes both look like baby mode. DW Marathon does make biters slightly more tolerant of pollution (DW has 50% normal cost for biter attacks, Marathon 80%) which means that for a given amount of pollution you can expect about 60% more biters in Deathworld than DW Marathon. But Marathon's price increases means that everything produced is about 2x as expensive at a base cost. That directly translates into much bigger biter waves. Note that piercing ammo is 2x as expensive in iron as well, which also leads to increased pollution trying to kill biters which can quickly devolve into a feedback loop if you don't get to lasers or flamethrowers quickly.

Tech receives a 4x multiplier, which is actually an 8x multiplier in total ore/pollution needed to tech due to the increased cost of stuff in general. Normal Deathworld lets you sprint to advanced tech very quickly, basically as fast as you can build a decent 120 SPM main base off starting resource. In fact in non-marathon it's pretty easy to just stay green enough that you trigger next to no attacks all game and barely need to clear out much land at all. In Deathworld Marathon you'll need multiple yellow belts of iron and copper just to advance early tech and defend the base, along with an advanced train network of outposts just to supply midgame teching.

Similarly alien evolution is slightly slower in DW marathon than normal DW, by about a 25% factor in pollution and time (though destroying spawners is unchanged). This obviously is vastly outweighed by all the extra time and pollution you are producing.

Note that due to the absorption mechanics 200% more pollution is much worse than it seems, since under normal circumstances a small to mid base will probably have ~75% of its pollution absorbed by just the ground or trees. So in reality it's more like a comparison of 25% pollution absorbed by spawners vs. 125%, because none of that extra pollution is absorbed by the already saturated ground.

 

[Andnjord]

Got started on the deathworld map, and whew lads, shit's intense!

This was my starting point, as you can see there was a nest right next to the copper. They sent their first attack wave right after I put down my first set of turrets, talk about good timing on my part. The next 10 minutes were spent with me grinding them out with a pretty haphazard turret creep, definitely could have played that one better but I did managed to wipe them out eventually, juuuust in time for the northern nests you can see on the minimap to start attacking.

They did destroy the iron smelters I had there, but having secured my eastern flank I was able to transfer the turrets to protect the northern flank before the next wave came in.

About 30 minutes later, automation has started (with ammo being the very first one obviously) and the turrets are managing to deal with the attack waves before they can reach the furnace walls. I finally have some breathing room to establish the early base, hopefully things will be a little less insane from now on.

 

[Twiglard]

What? Factorio runs way better than that. What's your base doing, having a million unneeded pipes with fluid calculations? Try downloading a megabase save.

Do you actually want to look at my save? I'm honestly not purposely doing anything inefficient. There's an absurd amount of resources going into making 2700 SPM, as per the factoriolab calculator.

 

[Demo.Graph]

If you decide to run DW marathon, keep in mind that biters are less aggressive there. Marathon is more about bloated factories than native opposition.

DW Marathon does make biters slightly more tolerant of pollution (DW has 50% normal cost for biter attacks, Marathon 80%) which means that for a given amount of pollution you can expect about 60% more biters in Deathworld than DW Marathon. But Marathon's price increases means that everything produced is about 2x as expensive at a base cost. That directly translates into much bigger biter waves.

Yep, "more about bloated factories". There're more biters in vanilla per the unit of production than in marathon.
And yes, marathon is more demanding as you'd need to liberate and defend more space for the increased factory size.
I don't play marathon as I'm too lazy to remake all the BPs for the new item costs. I prefer to gimp myself with arbitrary limitations (no terraforming, no lasers, etc.). But I see the point of marathon for those who got bored with vanilla.

Normal Deathworld lets you sprint to advanced tech very quickly, basically as fast as you can build a decent 120 SPM main base off starting resource.

Yeah. I've increased science cost for my current game to mitigate that.

I had a nice side adventure because of that, when I've discovered that I need to clear a significant portion of the map from biter bases, because I needed resources for tech. I had missiles, flamers and +2 AP turrets at the time. They're fine and dandy for defense, not so much for the attack, especially if there're big biters around (evo 60+). And artillery was behind something like 15k vanilla science points (i.e. about 2-3 millions of ore that I didn't have).
Since defender bots are gay in my book, the best thing I could come up with was flamer turret creep with LOTS of walls. So I ended up in several hours of flamer trench warfare, WW1 style. It was unlike any previous Factorio experience at all. It was fun. For a time.
Then I've invented

Spoiler

drive-by minelaying

and all went pretty well. I've later found out that it's a common well known tactic. But I made it up myself. It is mine. Nobody can take it from me.

I finally have some breathing room to establish the early base, hopefully things will be a little less insane from now on.

You had a hard time with the base, because nests spawn defender biters and, when those are killed, they're respawned much quicker than attack/expansion parties. If you kill bases, kill them quickly.
You'll have some breathing time now. In your screentshot you have no production to speak of, and you're on the grass, so attacks from afar are nonexistant to small. They will increase. My 15*15 chunks starter base had an attack somewhere on the perimeter pretty much constantly.

You should consider whether you'd be able to defend an iron expansion. If not, maybe you should restart. Your iron patch is too small and probably wouldn't support a proper AP ammo production.

 

[Average Manatee]

What? Factorio runs way better than that. What's your base doing, having a million unneeded pipes with fluid calculations? Try downloading a megabase save.

Do you actually want to look at my save? I'm honestly not purposely doing anything inefficient. There's an absurd amount of resources going into making 2700 SPM, as per the factoriolab calculator.

I'm not an expert on megabases, I haven't gone much past launching a few rockets on marathon or the usual modded games. I'd probably not be able to debug UPS problems but from what I can tell well optimized bases on the current patch should be able to reach around the 10-30k mark. 2.7k seems very low. You can download some examples here:

https://factoriobox.1au.us/results

 

[Andnjord]

You should consider whether you'd be able to defend an iron expansion. If not, maybe you should restart. Your iron patch is too small and probably wouldn't support a proper AP ammo production.

Hum...The patch is worth half a million, and there are iron expansions not too far off but they look kinda awkward to defend.

Spoiler

I do have this other one were iron expansion looks easier:

Spoiler

You had a hard time with the base, because nests spawn defender biters and, when those are killed, they're respawned much quicker than attack/expansion parties. If you kill bases, kill them quickly.

Yeah I know all that, but I had gotten spoiled rotten by my previous game where I didn't start expanding until I had AP ammo, so the turrets were far more powerful than this. Lesson learned

Then I've invented Hide Spoiler drive-by minelaying and all went pretty well. I've later found out that it's a common well known tactic. But I made it up myself. It is mine. Nobody can take it from me.

I like it! Consider it stolen

 

[Norfleet]

Deathworld looks comparatively tame compared to "Mass of Zergs" mode where the outside no longer has discrete nests, but is just a continuous mass of Zergs out to infinity.

 

[Jaedar]

Deathworld looks comparatively tame compared to "Mass of Zergs" mode where the outside no longer has discrete nests, but is just a continuous mass of Zergs out to infinity.

Afaik the map will fill up pretty quickly as time advances. Andnjord is probably only an hour or two in. It probably won't ever be just a continuous mass of hives though.

 

[Demo.Graph]

You should consider whether you'd be able to defend an iron expansion. If not, maybe you should restart. Your iron patch is too small and probably wouldn't support a proper AP ammo production.

Hum...The patch is worth half a million, and there are iron expansions not too far off but they look kinda awkward to defend.

It's not only about the size of a resource patch. But also about the throughput. You would be able to fit about 50 electric miners on that patch. It's 25 iron ore per second. AP ammo costs 9. So if your perimeter consumes 1 ammo pack per second on average, hald of your iron production would get consumed by your perimeter defense.

OTOH, I might've overestimated your consumption, because I'm too accustomed to my settings. Most likely you'll be fine. Last time I had ~80 electric miners in early game and it was barely enough. I had to double that to be able to do black tech at some manageable speed.

Consider it stolen

You taffer.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

I really don't like how gears need two iron plates. It doesn't make sense to me that a gear would need that much iron.
It just feels like something the devs decided to make the logistics a little more difficult.

 

[Caim]

I really don't like how gears need two iron plates. It doesn't make sense to me that a gear would need that much iron.
It just feels like something the devs decided to make the logistics a little more difficult.

Yeah, it would make more sense if one plate instead made two gears. Up the requirements of gears in a few items and things should be fine.

 

[Andnjord]

Tales from the Deathworld, Part Deux:

So yeah, this happened...

Spoiler

I thought I was safe enough to start working on the jumpstart base, how wrong the biters proved me to be... It's also very much possible that the increased pollution from doing this triggered the increased attacks that did me in, talk about miscalculating.

So I reloaded the previous save and built a looping belt around my defences. Despite a few hairy moments, it all worked out.

Spoiler

That's a lot of dead biters

. Pic taken a bit later. Originaly this belt was fed by three assemblers fed directly by the burner mining drill

This allowed me to build the jump-start base (shamelessly stolen from Nilaus, things were just too intense to take the time to figure out an early base)

Spoiler

From there I was able to beeline to AP ammo, built a car and grenades and clear out the nests on my northern border.

Here is the current situation:

Spoiler

Military tech is on-line! The latest gun damage tech was big bump on the offensive capabilities of the turrets, they're now able to blow up the medium biters almost instantaneously.

Next step will be to grab that oil on the north-eastern edge and use it to get the flammenwerfers and use those to creep my way down straight south from there, blocking off the eastern side completely.


Next, I'm thinking of expanding the perimeter all the way to that big iron patch in the west (it has about 8M ore). From there, I should be able to finally start establishing the real main base. Trouble is, I can't see any additional copper in my proposed perimeter

 

[Nutria]

I would have suggested using that cliff to the west as a defense line, but if you've got the guts to be more ambitious, go ahead.

Not sure why you're complaining about copper when there's about 15... oh wait, that's the wrong shade of red.

 

[Norfleet]

I really want them to implement Atomic Artillery shells.
Being able to nuke a biter 1000 miles away sounds hilarious to me.

Pretty sure there's a mod that does exactly that, but yes, I don't see why they didn't, instead of making us hand-deliver them.

 

[Andnjord]

Tales form the Deathworld: Part Trois

Forgive me Father, for I have sinned...I have commited a war crime...many war crimes...

Spoiler

Iron secured!

Spoiler

 

[Norfleet]

Forgive me Father, for I have sinned...I have commited a war crime...many war crimes...

Nah, 'sall good: Biters have not demonstrated sapience or even sentience, and are xeno filth. Suffer not the Xeno to live!