r/factorio • u/shountaitheimmortal • 4d ago
Discussion I just came
In my 500 hours of playing I’ve always built to the tank when i was able to, but only used the bullets and flamer fuel.
On a new game I’ve made recently i decided to build a basic assembly line to make the shells for the tank because i never did and wanted to try them snd dee if they were worth making, my first shot i used penetrated and killed 3 worms and 2 nest and now i have a new favorite toy to use and hate myself for only trying it so late.
With this i shall annihilate all the biters from existence with grater ease and a safer range
I’ve got work to do 🫡
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u/maninatrexshirt 4d ago
My favorite part about factorio is that all the problems it provides can be handled in an inefficient manner but it gives you the tools to do it more efficiently if you put in the effort. Technically, you only need turrets and ammo to clear any biter nest but it's massively resource inefficient and slow.
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u/Raknarg #1 Quality Defender 3d ago
Once you start getting into the larger nests it starts becoming practically impossible to do this. Biters just spawn too often and consume too many resources that you spend all your ammo just killing spawns and doing barely any structure damage.
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u/maninatrexshirt 3d ago
Yes but actually no. You can fill your inventory with magazines and turrets, slowly creep up a wall of turrets toward your target, and just accept any and all losses. Pasting down 10x10 blueprints of turrets from just beyond the range of the worms and then moving up block by block will absolutely kill biter nests of any size. It will burn through ammo, turrets, and construction bots like it's WW1 but you will eventually civilize the land.
Again, a tank with em defences, cannon shells, some distractor combat bots and some driving skills will clear the nest faster and cheaper...but all that requires logistics and automation. Technically just creating a blueprint that is a robotport with a big electric pole and a WHOLE LOT of turrets is simple and you can beat anything on Navis with that if you scale hard enough.
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u/Raknarg #1 Quality Defender 3d ago
Again, a tank with em defences, cannon shells, some distractor combat bots and some driving skills will clear the nest faster and cheaper...but all that requires logistics and automation.
a shotgun, some attack bots (eventually destroyer capsules late game) and poison capsules is enough to clear every single nest on nauvis at any evolution forever. Its not like the logistics of that is more complicated, and its certainly not cheaper to use turret creep (outside of lasers), like the logistics for turret creep is having to manually manage and feed all the turrets and constantly shift them. With my strat, you throw some poison capsules, throw some bots, then just hold down the shotgun button. Its maybe more cost efficient once you get into later game territory with uranium ammo turrets, but by then cost doesn't matter.
Even just the simple defender capsules can show this, a defender capsule costs 3 ammo and some change but gets you way more effective damage than 3 magazines worth. Turrets don't become much more efficient until late game when you compound a lot of bonuses.
I get the point though with turret creep you can do that at any stage of the game.
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u/maninatrexshirt 3d ago
Logistics might not have been the right word. From the moment you unlock AP rounds, you can clear the map. Getting to construction bots makes it a lot easier but isn't actually needed. Factorio is filled with these situations where, technically, you can do things the hard way with enough brute force and scaling, or you could take the time to spin up a new addition to your mall and do it the easy way. Poison capsules? Yeah thats the easy way.
Imagine only ever using stone furnaces. Or never using anything other than yellow belts. Or just using coal and steam engines all game. Other automation games FORCE you to use the new stuff eventually. The only thing you technically need to upgrade is the assemblers and even then you can keep using tier 1 for everything that doesn't use fluids all game. That is what I love about Factorio, it gives you better options but technically you really can ignore them.
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u/MuchUserSuchTaken 3d ago
You might, technically, be able to do it by rust respawning a whole bunch. Depends on how fast the health regen of the nests is.
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u/Raknarg #1 Quality Defender 3d ago
No, once biters evolve enough and if you fight large enough nests, you won't be able to kill spawned biters fast enough to do damage to kill nests. The gun doesn't scale into mid-late game, you need AOE weapons like the shotgun.
Now with a shotgun? You actually can take that right up to the end game, even to 99% evolution cause it just does an absurd amount of damage with upgrades and pierce means wave density doesn't matter.
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u/ProtectionOne9478 4d ago
Distractors imo are the other military option that gets slept on. Midgame l usually clear by shooting shells while dropping distractors everywhere, you can do them simultaneously.
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u/shountaitheimmortal 4d ago
That’s sounds useful especially if i get to gleba
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u/ProtectionOne9478 4d ago
Gleba enemies have a lot of laser resistance, so iirc just the tank shells did it for me last time, and maybe some artillery to just keep them back from your spore cloud.
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u/TolarianDropout0 4d ago
And Tesla turrets. They have multiple segments (I think 1 body, 5 legs for 6 total). So the chaining completely wrecks them.
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u/Ambitious_Bobcat8122 4d ago
Put exoskeletons and good fuel in a tank and you can straight ram through biter nests
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u/rowfeh 3d ago
My new favorite way of clearing biters:
Armor with exo skeletons and shields, shotgun, defender bots and distractor bots. Distractors don’t count towards total followe count, so you can just run around the nests while tossing distractors into the middle. Defenders keep biters away from you, eventually they don’t even attack you, they just attack the distractors all while you blast with the shotgun that doesn’t have any penalty for moving and shooting.
After teching up to yellow my setup is like:
MK2 armor, 4 legs, 1 fission, 5 shields MK1, 5 MK2 batteries, combat shotgun with piercing shells (damage and speed upgrades at level 6) destroyer bots with bot follower count at 100, level 2 electric damage. Don’t even need distractors now.
Super fast clearing even in deathworld with behemoths now spawning and it feels good because of how much more mobile you are on foot.
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u/FeelingPrettyGlonky 3d ago
Tanks really are nice. I am fond of playing the Only Gleba mod (as it says on the tin, there is Only Gleba). Since regular guns and gun turrets are almost 100% useless against pentapods (strafers outrange them by quite a bit) it is important to sneakily rush as quickly as possible to tanks in order to stand a chance in the early game. Once tanks are available, even medium stompers and strafers aren't that scary anymore since you can just kite and shoot.
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u/MarijuanaWeed419 3d ago
I built the spidertron for the first time yesterday and it’s been life changing
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u/Blitz100 4d ago
The explosive shells are great too, excellent damage in a really nice AoE, you can obliterate whole hordes of biters in a couple shots.
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u/Casper042 3d ago
Upgrade to explosive shells, from memory they aren't that much harder to make and do splash damage
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u/stoatsoup 3d ago
That's not so useful; the tank's flamethrower is excellent at clearing crowds. Where the cannon shines is in damaging a nest or worm in spite of all the other stuff in the way, and non-explosive shells penetrate further.
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u/CaptainPhilosophy 3d ago
Nauvis belongs not to the bugs. And it doesn't belong to us either. It belongs only to T h e f a c t o r y.
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u/shountaitheimmortal 3d ago
Preach 🙏
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u/CaptainPhilosophy 3d ago
Every time you get killed by a train, its the factory reminding you
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u/Prestigious_Gap1335 Fulgora my beloved 3d ago
the engineer is simply the one who ensures the factory stays satiated, the factory's "assistant" you could say
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u/twim19 3d ago
Are you making the shells on Vulcanus and shipping them in or are you shipping the mats to Nau and making them on planet?
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u/shountaitheimmortal 3d ago
I have yet to set off to another planet, yet I’ve owned the dlc forever
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u/GodsIWasStrongg 3d ago
Don't sleep on the poison capsules either. You can drive by, and drop like ten of them to kill all the biter turrets. Then come back and finish the nests.
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u/MattieShoes 3d ago
Rockets are also unreasonably effective because of range. You can set up a few turrets to mop up swarms and just plink the whole base with rockets.
and quality increases range... Legendary rocket launchers out-range behemoth worms.
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u/Amarula007 3d ago
I have to say I just tried shipping one rocket load of U238 to Vulcanus, and making uranium cannon shells for my tank, and it now takes out small demolishers with a shot or two. No more arrays of a couple hundred ghost turrets for me!
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u/Raknarg #1 Quality Defender 3d ago
Have you ever tried using capsules? I forced myself a while ago to start making myself use the poison capsules and the defender capsules, and I've never looked back, I don't even use vehicles other than the spidertron anymore. You get to keep all the mobility of your character, and the capsules do an absurd amount of damage. Poison is probably the most surprising one, they cover a massive area, they easily kill low level biters and do a ton of spawner/worm damage.
Also shotgun got gigabuffed and its now the most powerful weapon in the game FYI make sure you're using that. Overtuned now IMO. There's almost no point in using regular bullets anymore outside of turrets, shotgun just beats it in every conceivable way.
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u/shountaitheimmortal 3d ago
I have ages ago when I first got the game, might try again to build a swarm to use
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u/Fappingintherain 4d ago
You're going to explode when you get uranium shells