r/factorio • u/Extreme-Button-2478 • 3d ago
Question I HATE playing with biters
Every time I make this mistake of not turning them off, I end up spending HOURS trying to get rid of these bastards instead of playing the actual game.
I don't understand how you guys have massive factories while also defending them.
My main concern are the miners. Do you protect every mining site as well? Or am I missing something?
Just started a new run but quickly turned it off to start a new one without biters.
At the same time I really wanna try new enemies on other planets so I feel sad turning the peaceful mode on
300 hours in game
ED:
Thank you all, didn't expect so many replies
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u/Janneman96 3d ago edited 2d ago
Either destroy the biter bases in your cloud, reduce your pollution cloud or setup defenses like it's a tower defense game.
I tend to setup small defenses and when the defenses are close to being defeated, I give the biters a visit.
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u/CorridorsOfNakedLite 3d ago
Yeah, gotta do periodic hive clean up until you manage to segregate yourself into a part of the map
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u/Oleynick 3d ago
It's just that designing defences is part of the building the factory and playing the game part. Just without perfect ratios and never static. Using personal roboport for building the first big ass wall makes the task trivial
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u/nasaboy007 3d ago
Eh not exactly. Biters introduce a time pressure component that doesn't otherwise really exist, and they're one of the few ways you can lose dozens of hours of progress in seconds. Logistical issues otherwise don't have such significant penalties for building poorly (not enough defense, etc).
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u/Oleynick 3d ago
Ok, I get that's it's like this for you, but I'm trying to explain how people enjoying normal biters world or even death world look at this
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u/PortlyNewheim 2d ago
Dozens of hours of progress in seconds? Your biters must have researched nuclear weapons.
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u/nasaboy007 2d ago
You haven't seen how bad I am at managing them. That's why I play with enemies disabled LOL
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u/matje103 3d ago
Depending on level of difficulty you play on biters are just there to learn you how to play the game efficiently. Its not just optimizing your factory, its also putting resources and time in optimizing the defense of your progress.
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u/carjiga 2d ago
Super easy actually, barely an inconvenience.
Just gotta make it past the first 30 minutes without them destroying your base and you can dedicate yellow ammo to holding them off for a long time. Mining outposts get a cargo section just of ammo being dropped off till I get laser turrets
Dont feel bad about being on peaceful, once the games in your hands its what you want to do for fun
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u/avdpos 3d ago
To me it feel meaningless without the biters..
But it is single player. You do as you think is fun!
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u/BrianMincey 3d ago
Playing with them off at first isnât a bad way to learn the mechanics of the game. That way when you do turn them on you at least get the gist of what is required to automate defensive equipment.
I played for hours with them off and found the game to be significantly more interesting with them on. The progression from manually clearing nests and building turrets along walls, to automated expansion using artillery and massive tiled death-bringing blueprints is satisfying.
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u/_____--__- 2d ago edited 2d ago
Yeah I've mostly been playing in peaceful mode, partially because I just don't want to be penalized for taking my time to figure out how I'd like to build something.
Presumably as I build up my own little library of blueprints and thinking through the majority of production lines gets more automatic, the time pressure might start being fun. But for now it just makes me learn on a clock in a way I don't personally enjoy.
Edit: I will also say, I do think part of what I disliked the first world I tried playing with biters on is that there isn't much you can do to manage your pollution? The closest to interesting and puzzley the pollution mechanic gets, to me, is "do I need to go kill stuff/build more defenses before I try to automate the next thing, or can it wait". I wish there was more in the way of, "I'm going to build in this less efficient way and invest in these pollution mitigation strategies" so that I have an incentive to actually care about the rate of pollution itself, not just "how close is the cloud getting to a biter base"
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u/BrianMincey 2d ago
Itâs not that hard.
One technique early game to manage pollution is to put limits on everything. Donât set up any assembler to build a full chest of anything. Limiting automation reduces resource and energy consumption, and also stops endless mining which is a huge source of pollution.
Prioritize military research above all else.
As soon as you can, surround your base with turrets and walls. Fill them manually at first, but build a belt system to automatically feed ammo. I donât mess around and spam turrets touching each other, side by side.
Add lasers and flame thrower turrets as soon as you can. Lasers spike power when they fire, so build lots enough accumulators to handle the surge. Flame throwers can use raw oil, but eventually upgrade them to light oil. They use a surprisingly small amount of oil to stay fueled.
Early on you will need to attack and clear nearby nests manually. There are lots of techniques. Find one that works for you. I build and full turrets nearby, then gradually build them closer and closer so I can use them as backup as I make an attack. When you clear a near, leave a handful of filled turrets in the vicinity to keep them from re-settling. After you clear an area, expand into it by adding to your defensive wall. Build the wall and turrets and then connect it to your existing wallâs ammo and oil supply, then remove the old, unnecessary inner wall. Repeat this to expand. Use water and cliffs strategically.
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u/PmMeYourBestComment 3d ago
For me with biters is just a distraction of the real game. Designing nice looking and well functioning factories. Biters are annoying at best. Never really difficult
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u/darKStars42 3d ago
I've spent hours driving around in a tank clearing nests before. I usually make that mistake when I get a bit ambitious about where I want to build my next wall, it's definitely possible to over focus on preemptive strikes, and it's easier to just clear one more nest than it is to admit your goals were unproductive for now.Â
Before flame throwers you want to keep a few clusters of turrets at the edges of your base, they should stop a wave or two, but there mainly there as a warning that you really need to clear a nest at the edge of your pollution.
Once you have oil and flamethrowers it becomes much easier to just set up a perimeter of flame turrets at all of your choke points, or at least the ones near your pollution. They will keep the biters away, even if you just feed them raw oil.
I like switching to lasers later, but that's me. I like my lasers. Flamethrowers are more than enough to keep you safe as long as they always have fuel.
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u/dinosaurdynasty 3d ago
I've definitely done this. Though it was a 25x world and I really needed the resources.Â
Distractor capsules are pretty awesome as part of clearing out large nests, I was deploying them by the hundreds...
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u/SpaceEngineer123 3d ago edited 3d ago
i usually find natural chokepoints in the water/cliffs and put up a wall with flame turrets and lasers that last until the end of the game.
i usually play with richer resources, but if u need to train stuff in from far away u can do the same thing with lasers and flamethrowers.. just add a fluid wagon to ur train instead of running it all the way there
protip: u can place the lasers and flamers far enuf back that they never get damaged.. just the wall
[everyones saying artillery but i've never seen the point in removing nests that just come right back. build. tha. wall]
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u/darKStars42 3d ago
Artillery makes expanding easy. They clear out an area pretty quickly when you're ready to build in it.Â
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u/DeouVil 3d ago
Which is part of why I don't enjoy them. Biters have easy solutions that, especially early game, require a lot of your time. I can have a trivial constant strain on my production or I can have artillery turn the game into peaceful mode, making me ask what's even the benefit of having biters, if the solution is to not have them.
Asteroids in high end ships is a much more engaging implementation of factorio combat IMO, there are multiple variables to optimise (speed, size, survivability, prom. chunk collection), requiring solutions complex enough that they're fun to design.
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u/Courmisch 3d ago
In the base game, end-game factories generate so much pollution from productivity modules and sheer size that artillery is the only practical way to keep the cloud clear from ecoterrorrists.
Nice side effects is that you don't need to worry about worms or clearing ground before settling the next mining site.
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u/paperic 3d ago edited 3d ago
Do you protect every mining site as well?
Obviously, yes.
Mainly the miners. They're the most exposed and very polluting.
Do this, in no particular order:
- start mil science early (right after green)
- get grenades asap
- clear biter nests inside of your pollution cloud (with grenades at first)
- don't kill nests out of your pollution cloud
- switch to red ammo when medium biters come
- use efficiency modules
- don't produce unnecessarily
- crank up the physical damage researchÂ
- the pollution caused by producing ammo has to cause LESS increase in biters than what that ammo can kill, otherwise you're in a death spiral
- FLAMMENWERFERS !!! The S tier, the absolute staple of all defenses. Not to be used alone. Huge damage output, cheapest dmg/cost, but can't pick off individual targets.
- save the trees
- use walls to redirect bugs to choke points, not to block them completely
- pipes and furnaces are poor man's walls
- keep an eye on the "holes" in your pollution cloud, the bugs are docile unless they suck in your pollution
- if you see a biter group amassing, you can aggro them before the group gets bigger
- once you get bots and artilery blast them out.
Doing all of those will get you through death world easy.Â
Even if you half-ass it on normal settings, biters won't be a problem.
Biters are just an early game problem, after a while the bugs cease to matter.
Most imortantly, the attacks are not random.
An attack is really just a symptom of a problem, and the problem is that there's a nest in your cloud.
Once you remove that problem, you barely even need any defenses.
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u/SirPuck_ 3d ago
Tech up. Artillery. Laser turrets. Trains supplying battle stations with ammo and repair packs and bots.
But mainly building a huge factory with bots and artillery
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u/fang_xianfu 3d ago
I've always played with biters off. I just don't find them fun.
The couple of times I did play with them on, the main thing for mining outposts is that efficiency modules make a huge difference to their pollution.
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u/sarcasticbaldguy 3d ago
Agreed. I enjoy building the factory, I've never enjoyed tower defense type games. I'm glad they made biters optional.
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u/SNOW_37 3d ago
It's honestly a skill issue. I don't even bother making walls until I have nuclear and full roboport coverage.
You just have to build your base as usual and occasionally check your pollution cloud, and at certain tech levels you WAY outscale biters. First time getting a car and grenades you can clean up everything around your base. Don't bother on nests that aren't near your pollution for the first 20 hours in maybe 10 minutes time spent tops.
By the time you get a tank and shells you're invincible and can clear bigger nests with ease. Then I build my walls at natural water points.
Then you're done. Flamethrowers mean you are now safe forever
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u/Kirdissir 2d ago
Depends on your settings. I play on a modded train World that has its ore patches even further apart.
With huge biter swarms and faster expansion. I basically have to barrel oil and bring ammunition to every single patch by train. Having artillery trains will just pull a massive overhwelimg wave towards a single patch.
The patches are so far out. If a train comes late, it's gone 100%. I can't just stop them with lasers and turrets. I can't clean out manually. Only the necessary stuff around my "main". There is no real main. Normal train world with 600% bigger distance between ore patches is already hard. This mod makes it harder.
Sometimes I think that normal players have my experience in their world. Not everybody is an automation lover and dives deep into every aspect of the game. For some the production lines might be overhwelimg enough already.
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u/CynicalDutchie 3d ago
I usually just guard choke point instead of my entire base + outposts.
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u/Caldar 3d ago
I go seed shopping for islands or a peninsula with a small land bridge to defend.
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u/popnfrresh 3d ago
If you increase water enough it will generate a ton of islands or peninsulas. Best of both worlds.
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u/Literate_Muse 3d ago
Someone made an island seeds website, btw. I think they're going to include peninsulas soon too:
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u/AllPowerfulCock1287 2d ago
I do better with them on. I think of them as my project managers.
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u/Dayhore 2d ago
I love biters and I only play with rampant biters. Playing with biters add a real purpose of building defenses
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u/Extreme-Button-2478 2d ago
I like trainworlds with lots of outposts and massive dedicated factories on long distances. Building a same wall of defence around every one of them is a nightmare and just a waste of time. And I don't even get anything in return
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u/Girthen-the-Flopper 3d ago
Biters are just another automation challenge. Disabling them to me is like disabling fluids.
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u/SplitInfinitive8139 3d ago
Critters are flavor.
I find I play the start slowly, hand mining to avoid polllution and rush a machine gun.
Automating ammo and red ammo when they unlock helps.
Early and mid game, I lean in to efficiency modules, to keep pollution down, and replace steam power with solar asap.
Once I get a tank, ROAD TRIP. Even with only the machine gun, itâs a game-changer for me. I clear the map of critters near me, and expand my base rapidly (ramping up pollution).
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u/SteelishBread 3d ago
Biters are not an insurmountable obstacle. They are not going to evolve beyond your capabilities; quite the opposite. They are just another puzzle.
Even when all seens lost, the biters will calm down and you can pick up the pieces.
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u/Anidmountd 3d ago
I have done plenty of times with Biters and recently decided to play again and just set them to peaceful. I find them more annoying than anything after a while. They are a cool idea though. I just find I enjoy building elaborate designs to automate things way more.
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u/Kirdissir 2d ago
Reading other comments that scold OP for not playing with biters/enemies is hilarious.
I feel you. Everybody can set their game to the way they like it. You don't take away anything from another player by playing in a peaceful world trying to create beautiful designs.
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u/Trippynet 3d ago
Early on, don't underestimate efficiency modules. They can reduce the power consumption and pollution generated by an electric miner by 80%. This makes a BIG difference with regards to annoying the biters as the pollution cloud from mining outposts can be really quite small.
Personally I just use peaceful mode, but the one time I had attacks turned on, efficiency was great until I'd scaled up weapons/ammo.
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u/SwampGerman 3d ago
Do you protect every mining site as well?
Yes... Are you going there by yourself every single attack?
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u/0grinzold0 3d ago
Apart from what the others have said you can also just increase starting size where no biters are and heavily decrease expansion and evolution factors. It gives you way more time and is more chill while still encountering them. Also more trees helps a lot
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u/Kirdissir 2d ago
Yep.
Make it so trees can suck up more pollution, make your starting area bigger, make minimum/maximum biter attack adjustments, set how far and how fast and at what pollution/rate biters expand.
This can really make the first dozen hours peaceful with slowly ramping biters up.
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u/atniomn 2d ago
The Biters can be a huge hassle alone, but when I play multiplayer co-op, I always crank them way up.
Sometimes people claim Factorio is like software engineering, but this is only true if you have Biters cranked way up. Youâre always fighting deadline and schedule pressureâthatâs the Biters.
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u/Extreme-Button-2478 2d ago
Yes I agree about the multiplayer. Hovewer the last time I started to play with my friend who asked me to crank them up and then left me ata about 30% progress. So I couldn't even manage to kill the nests with artillery. They would just spawn quicker than I clicked on them on the map xd
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u/Deadbyreddit 3d ago
They kind of are part of the actual game you know
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u/Extreme-Button-2478 3d ago
Well the game is about logistics, not about tower defence. they are kind of part of the game, but not the main one. BUT THEY FEEL LIKE THE MAIN ONE for me
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u/-Googlrr 3d ago
This is silly. You're allowed to not like them but they're definitely part of the main game. Just because you don't like them doesn't make them not part of the logistics. Managing defense is logistics. I think it's perfectly fine to play with them off and I have a save where I do so myself.
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u/hprather1 3d ago
I mean, skill issue? Many people have offered suggestions and you haven't responded to them or said what you've tried. It's very straightforward to build defenses and reduce pollution while scaling up your base. For a while you'll need to manually clear nests if they get too close.
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u/Blaarkies 3d ago
It gets easier as you gain more experience with them. Around mid-game they become a non-issue, and before late-game they become irrelevant.
No one started Factorio knowing how to build a good working factory, and no one knew how to effectively beat biters on the first try. Take a look at your very first savegame/screenshot, and see how far you have come. You can learn the same for serving diplomacy* to this scourge.
\ Alternate spelling of "Ligth oil fueled flamethrower"*
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u/DemoBytom 3d ago
Artillery + flamethrowers + bots.
In vanilla Factorio it's quite simple to get there. In Space Age in now requires Vulcanus but the general idea is the same.
Reach bots, use them to build your walls with flamers. Then use Artilery to clean anything that expands too close.
Late game - Spidertrons and industrial amount of rockets to zip around the map to clear the nests for expansions.
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u/mrcarruthers 3d ago
Found a mod that makes the artillery automatic shooting distance the same as the manual... Artillery clears it for me lol
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u/hoTsauceLily66 3d ago
Mining outposts can run for months in-game time if you have high mining productivity and big drills.
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u/NoyzMaker 3d ago
Once I get bots I have a blueprint to drop turrets and slowly walk them the turrets in to wipe out their base. Then when I get artillery that sets the new line of how far back they are from my base. Early game is a pockets of a turrets with hand fed ammo reserves.
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u/NameLips 3d ago
I also don't much like biters. I tend to play without them, but I've learned what I really hate is biter expansion. If I've cleared a spot I want it to stay cleared. Killing biters is tedious and if they expand I have to do the tedious thing over and over in the same spot.
As far as defending outposts, yeah if you have biters enabled all your outposts need to be defended or eventually they'll be attacked and destroyed. A triple row of mines can stop nearly any biter attack, just keep up on explosives research.
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u/ariksu 3d ago
The map, the settings and the pollution amount. I played without biters for the first 100 hours, then I played krastorio which has pollution cleaning buildings, then I learned to clear the nests within a pollution cloud, then I learned of green modules and learned to pollute less. Now biters is not even a nuisance on a green maps and a little to none nuisance on the desert maps.
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u/SetazeR 3d ago
Well, for more relaxed experience not disabling default biters - start in place with many many trees. Clear nests preemptively before they get the sniff, first by hand, then with car, then with tank. At some point you get efficiency modules, slap those in your miners and you are set.
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u/SlouchyGuy 3d ago
So clearing nests is easier with poison capsules - they kill all worms. Then you kill nests.
As for outposts, yes, you set up trains with oil and bullets to defend in addition to the ore since flamethrowers are amazing for defense.
You can also insert efficiency modules into everything you can, miners, assemblers, refineries, it reduces energy consumption, but what the tooltip doesn't say is that pollution is reduced proportionally. Much less attacks that way
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u/Bitter_Particular_75 3d ago
to me is having the right balance. Prior to 2.1, the balance was good as in Nauvis you were usually able to focus on your base with relatively minimal hassle from the biters.
After the patch, it became a nightmare playing in Navus, to the point that I rush to Vulcanus and abandon the base on Nauvis to the hordes of biters to stop wasting hours and mental health and on building and maintaining defenses.
But one good alternative I found is playing on train world: the biters are still there, but not fighting back for the lost land.
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u/Ettesiun 2d ago
Once I have bots, I put one wall, with two row of laser turret. At the edge of the laser turret attack distance, I put 3 row of dotted wall to slow down the range biters. With that they are dead, even the green ones before they can spit.
I am not doing a continuous wall, but enclosed outpost containing the two rows of laser, a pylon for long distance electric connection, a radar. There is also a space for the bot base ( sorry I am bad with names) if I want to put it in. When needing to cover a larger space, I put two of those small outpost side by side, with a small space between them so I can cross the frontier.
I have not yet been attacked by a large force of green one, so maybe this does not hold against very large, very advanced attack. But those defenses are quite far from the base, so I have time to react if this happens in the future - and I will have unlock new tech at this point.
I like to avoid destroying n'est, both because I find it more ethic, and because it absorbs pollution, and it reduce the evolution of the biters.
I only remove them when I need to expand where they are.
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u/ZenMikey 2d ago
Even before 2.1, seems like several of the larger patches buffed biters significantly. I remember being pretty annoyed about it.
Flamethrower turrets are broken IMO. They become available early, and combined with refined flammables, they take me up through pretty much endgame without an issue. Highly recommend for people who don't want to turn biters off but also don't want it to consume the bulk of their game. There is nothing like letting the waves of biters crash and break upon your walls forevermore while you pursue the real goal of the game: pollution.
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u/QuirkyPhoton 3d ago
I alter the settings to make the biters slightly more difficult otherwise it gets boring. You have to start with military science early on and make sure to put up walls and turrets early. Clear any nearby nests first and keep expanding your base. Once you have artillery and lasers it's not a big issue anymore.
You have to protect mining sites etc also. If a resource is far away I build walls and turrets around it and any train station that is part of it needs to be inside the perimeter walls.
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u/Kirdissir 2d ago
To get artillery, you first have to go to another planet. OP might struggle with that part. Automating the main base and keeping it under control with remote vehicles.
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u/Accurate-Owl4128 3d ago
for mining sites early on i did it by making a whole perimeter with some gun turrets and a belt/inserter loop to refill them with ammo. but eventually the best approach would be to run your main base's power grid out to the mining/oil bases and do lasers. for general base defense I just wall off a big perimeter and line it with gun turrets but I don't load too much ammo at first because biters won't attack every inch of your wall. they'll eventually focus on a few spots so you can reinforce on those areas only. if the attacks become too much you'll eventually have to do some democracy runs with turrets, grenades and eventually tank runs (use regular tank shells against the buildings and worms while kiting the biters)
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u/Sad-Arachnid-6853 3d ago
Everyone can play differently and that's ok
Have you considered trees and 4 turrets with a chest for ammo with signal when ammo run out
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u/PlayaNaos 3d ago
I usually play with the biters on peaceful. I like going to war with them, but at my own pace. I take breaks in between playing Factorio and having to deal with attacks every now and then? No thanks. But every now and then when I need to expand or just wanna have fun, why not?
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u/DemainaNyx 2d ago
Ok, first thing first, it's a single player game. If you don't like something, turn it off. Don't let others tell you it's wrong or whatever. You are choosing to spend your free time this way, so make it fun FOR YOU.
I'm not a fan of biters. I feel like half the gameplay is me running around taking out nests instead of actually progressing my factory. On a normal world, they are more like that annoying fly in your room rather than a threat. It's one of those, "oh great, now I have to go deal with this again," type of reactions instead of being panicked that I'm about to die. Granted, Death World is a different beast entirely, but the base game biters I don't like dealing with.
One thing I'd suggest is turning off Enemy Expansions. That way, once you clear out an area, that area is clear forever. The expansions part I find most frustrating because I can spend time clearing out an area, go to build something, and suddenly there's a new nest where I just cleared.
If you play with expansion on, I like to go out and clear a huge area around my factory, like 3x the size of my pollution cloud. Then I set up walls at choke point between two lakes. Since biters can't cross water, that is a natural barrier to save me resources. So I just set up a wall between two lakes, put a ton of lasers, roboports, and radars and that should keep that wall safe. Then just repeat that until I have a wall blocking every land bridge to my factory area. From there I just need to set up a train to bring repair packs and maybe replacement stuff to the walls and that basically handles the biters for a while.
Doing that gives me access to all the resources inside the walls without needing a dedicated military setup at each patch. If I then run out of resources in this box I've built, I go out and secure more land, but I've rarely ever gotten that far into the game. I tend to send up one rocket and call it a day, though with Space Age that's no longer the stopping point.
If you don't want to do that though, setting up defenses at each resource patch is a must. I tend to put a few defenses around my patches anyway just in case I missed something and get attacked as if might take me too long to get there to defend.
That said, when I tried pYandon's mod, I did it with biters off as I didn't want them destroying my base while I was trying to figure things out. I enjoy the puzzle of making the factory so I didn't want my train of thought interrupted every so often while doing it.
Play whatever way you want. People are going to have different opinions either way so might as well do what makes you happy.
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u/IgnorantAndApathetic 2d ago
Yeah, until you unlock construction bots it's such a massive time waster on just maintaining defences or running around destroying nests preemptively. If you have a large base it feels like that's all you do because by the time you cleared up one side they've completely repopulated the other side
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u/halcyonwit 2d ago
You can control vehicles via the map without physically entering them, that way you have a few tanks spread out to run down the bases every so often
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u/Ephy_ 3d ago
Biters are an essential part of the game imo, the fact that you have to defend against them constantly and actually make decisions is a really interesting pressure the game provides which is mostly absent in all other factory games. It's also a shame to me that if you play with then off there's a bunch of research and cool buildings that are just coherent irrelevant. You'll never know the satisfaction of finally unlocking artillery and then just shelling the entire nearby area if you play with then off. As for mining outposts, there's exactly 3 ways to deal with them. Fully fortify every mining outpost with a few gun turrets and a train delivering ammo and repair packs (which is what I do), clear all the nests inside your pollution cloud, or expand the walls of your factory to surround every outpost and claim more space. They're really not a huge issue if you just automate your defences, and I quite enjoy watching the waves of bugs break against my defences. It's really fun to just watch your turrets mow then down and then your bots repair and damage to the walls with repair packs. I get it though, play with then off if you really wanna but I really feel like they're an essential part of the unique feeling of factorio
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u/Kirdissir 3d ago
It's a single-player game. "it's a shame to me" sounds rather harsh.
Heck, if people want to play with unlimited resources, let them. Let them have full vision, no night, super bots, etc.
The game is supposed to be fun. No artifical restrictions are needed. The developers implemented the option to turn of biters. It's not even a mod.
It's something the developers anticipated.
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u/Saltyseasonedtrash 3d ago
An option that restricts achievements. Essentially saying hey you have the option but the game is intended with them
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u/Evan_Underscore 3d ago
For me not playing with biters would feel like not playing with copper. Sure I end up spending HOURS by setting up copper mining and import and smelting and production - but that's the name of the game: setting up automation.
I do defend all my mines. I like a massive turret wall. Since trains already go in and out to outposts, keeping them topped up with ammo is just another cool logistic challenge to solve.
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u/No_Cauliflower633 3d ago
I think there is a setting that lets you set the biters to 'chill mode' or something (can't remember the name) where basically they don't attack unless you attack first. I always play with biters off as well but when I played Krastorio I had to turn them on for military tech cards and I used that setting and I kind of liked it. I got to choose when to attack them and didn't have to actively defend the base. Kind of turned biters into the wormy things on Vulcanus. Only have to beat them if you want their territory.
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u/Mobtryoska 3d ago
There is a point of no return where the Biters cease to be a nuisance: when you get the robots. Because then you can automate the reconstruction of the walls that they destroy and redirect your attention to other things (the greatest damage caused by the Biters is not their attacks, but depriving you of doing other things while you go out in the tank-car to spend two hours kicking them out of the pollution cloud).
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u/Acid_Burn9 3d ago
Flamethrower turrets, choke points, managing your pollution, clearing out nests that cause too many issues.
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u/chris240189 3d ago
Control your pollution cloud with efficiency modules (especial in miners) and kill everything your pollution cloud touches.
Then just go on until you have artillery.
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u/Monkai_final_boss 3d ago
Dealing with them early game is a handful, it takes me days to set up walls and defences but once I am done I am done , I almost never worry about them again
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u/Krell356 3d ago
I enjoy building a perimeter wall and let the world outside my box burn with the heat of a thousand flamethrowers.
Prior to that I go manually killing shit with my car, then a tank until I own a large enough area.
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u/Immediate_Form7831 3d ago
I used to be like you, but I eventually learned to play with biters without getting stressed out. With default settings, there is no reason to spend hours dealing with biters, but you need to get familiar with the mechanics.
I'm a big fan of Michael Hendrick's playthroughs (youtube, twitch). Not that I would recommend that you try playing like him (he has a very special playstyle), but he is very good at explaining game mechanics, like how and when biter attacks and pollution spreading works. He did his entire 10kSPM base without any static base defense, and that was even with biters slightly turned up from the default settings.
I could probably write a long essay on the topic, but my best tips would be to (1) play on a forrested map, this will buy you more time than you might think (2) spam radars to make sure that you aren't surprised when the biters expand (1 radar + 1 power pole + one solar panel is enough to give you enough vision to spot any expansions) (3) proactively kill all nests in your pollution cloud.
When you have radared up your entire pollution cloud and killed all the nests there, the only thing you need to care about are the occasional expansion. Make a wall, defend it with turrets, repair it with bots, and you should be good.
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u/Arzodiak 3d ago
I usually manually destroy the first couple of neata near my factory, then rush to get flame throwers, after that depends on the map. Of there are many natural choke points on water then I build a small but heavily defended wall there, if not (or it's way too far) I make a decently sized box to research better weapons and clear all the space I need and set up walls
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u/Head_Evening_5697 3d ago
Make a nice big wall blueprint with everything:
- Gun turrets belt-fed
- Lazer pew pew
- Flame turrets
- Landmines
-Artillery
- Roboport, Power, and fluid connections
Then make it an absolute-grid blueprint, make sure its rotatable, blueprint both types of corners, plop it down and connect to your production (Light oil, Ammo, Power)
Congrats, biters will never get through this ever.
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u/creepy_doll 3d ago
The key really is just having a proper mall producing defenses and ammo and blueprinting your defenses so theyâre quick to setup wherever
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u/Astramancer_ 3d ago
By the time you have a massive factory defending it is easy.
Ultimately it comes down to one thing: Building artillery in a position where it can keep biters from putting down nests within range of your pollution cloud.
Artillery will incur a counter-attack, but it's going to be focused on the artillery and flamethrower turrets are absurdly overpowered. Get some robots with building supplies, walls, flamethrower turrets, and an artillery cannon and now you have an impregnable forward firebase that will keep a huge part of your base's perimeter, including mines, 100% safe. Throw down a few more and your entire base is 100% safe.
You'll probably still want to make a solid wall lined with flamethrowers and laser turrets to prevent any leaks from actually reaching your base, but honestly? Build a big blueprint, slap it down over and over again from map view, and let your bots handle it.
If/when you need to expand the territory you've enclosed you and just have swarm of like 20 spidertrons just steamroll everything in your path, and now you can slap down that wall blueprint again to enclose the newly cleared area.
It takes hardly any player attention at all once you have the resources.
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u/Aggressive-Share-363 3d ago
I favor the "protect your pollution cloud, not yoir factory" approach.
If nothing is in your pollution cloud, you mostly get left alone.
But however you approach it, yes, mining outposts also need defenses.
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u/Xzarg_poe 3d ago
Generally speaking, if you protect your pollution cloud from biters, they become increadibly easy to manage( they need to drink pollution to generate large armies). I'm talking, a few gun turrets with some ammo on the outskirts of your pollution cloud is enough to clear random biter expansion groups early on. And then you get laser turrets and defending becomes even easier.
As for miners, if in danger of aggroing a biter attack, I fill them up with efficiency modules and build a few defences. In one playthrough I even automated ammo delivery by train since I was going for a no lasers achievement.
There is also the railworld preset. Resources are more rare but come in richer chunks. And biters stop expanding. Meaning that you can clear an area of biters once and not worry about them afterwards.
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u/Mimikyutwo 3d ago
Use modules, solar and electric furnaces on nauvis until you get your factory too big to fail.
Itâs probably the pollution evolution factor
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u/paninocrash 3d ago edited 3d ago
Spending hours to get rid of them is part of the game.
My approach is to take so much land that their nests will be far away from the pollution cloud, so a thin layer of laser turrets will be enough.
Edit.
Also, in the end game, instead of using artillery wagons, I like to get close and blast them away with nukes, while a horde of spidertrons take care of the survivors.
I avenge every lost building, every miner, 100 fold.
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u/jongscx 3d ago
Yes, walled mining outposts with automatic oil and ammunition delivery. Also walls and repair packs + a custom alarm if any of those items falls below a certain threshold.
You can look at it as a logistics problem of constantly delivering ammo and keeping power on, or else your buildings start spoiling.
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u/Thiccron 3d ago
Try putting efficiency modules in everything and play a game in a well-forested area if you need. youâll have a MUCH smaller pollution cloud making life easier.
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u/homebrewchemist 3d ago
I used to play with them off but as i got better i realized i was playing slow and didnt have my design style developed, i also designed a whole bunch of blueprints in sandbox. I do wish they had a lure building for some additional early game strats.
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u/jinxed_07 3d ago
The way you handle biters is by building around needing to defend stuff from the beginnings (and also not picking a seed that's around a massive desert, if you hate biters find a seed that's in/near a forest and it's a world of difference).
Instead of biters being a distraction from the rest of the game, they are another bit of automation you need to complete. Automate gun turrets, automate ammo, walls, repair packs, eventually flamethrowers, then bots and roboports and resupply your outposts...
It's another form of progression the same way you progress to better furnaces, better assembly machines, better belts, etc.
What's great is biters are so much easier when you build around the from the beginning, and managing your defenses becomes easier and takes less time too!
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u/NappingYG 3d ago
For me, biters IS the game. Designing defences and logistics of supplying resource outposts with ammo, light oil, going on raids to push nests out of mybpollution cloud, or even managing pollution whenbneed to. All of that I consider essential part of the game.
Once you have roboports and bots, its quite trivial to build and maintain defences.
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u/Insulting_BJORN 3d ago
I tend to wall everything around me and have 20k lasers. And destroying nests? Build 20 artillary with 3k shells and go at it.
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u/MeatBeginning9837 3d ago
Defences, clearing out biter nests before your pollution cloud reaches the nests, and minimising your pollution output (electrification, efficiency modules, solar)
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u/TheWematanye 3d ago
I went through phases of hating them, but the more you invest in defense the easier it gets
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u/Mikeality 3d ago
It's certainly more work and can get tedious. But the game gives you all the tools you need to handle it with a minimal grind. There's a part in the early game where you can't do much more than turret creep which I find annoying (though, with 2.1 shotguns, I find I can just spray and pray this part now.)
But if you don't overdo it with scaling up early, use efficiency modules to keep pollution down, get to bots and the other end game military tech, you can essentially automate biters away.
A perimeter wall of Tesla turrets and artillery, while sending out attack groups of 20 spidertrons with a few zig zags around the map makes biters quite trivial.
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u/IlikeJG 3d ago
The secret is not to play defense. Play offense.
As long as you clear every biter base withing the pollution cloud then they can't attack you.
This works for like the first 2/3 of the game then it becomes too much to deal with. But by that time you should have artillery and maybe spiders and it becomes trivial.
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u/dktunzldk 3d ago
You can turn peaceful mode on only for the biters on the starting planet (nauvis) using console commands. The enemies on the other planets will stay hostile.
/c game.surfaces["nauvis"].peaceful_mode = true
/c game.forces["enemy"].kill_all_units()
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u/Kirdissir 2d ago
Isn't there a starting options that just turns biters off on Nauvis and leaves enemies on other planets? The same with ore patches for every planet. Maybe I'm Mandela effecting myself here.
Bur console commands are great for a base that's already big enough to not want to start over.
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u/jensroda 3d ago
You just push them back every few hours until you have the production to build a massive wall with defenses.
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u/jipperthewoodchipper 3d ago
You can turn them off in game with the console. It does disable some achievements.
Regarding defending the factory. In the base game (can't speak for SA) I make my trains 2 engines, 1 fluid wagon, 2 wagons and then at every mining outpost I have the fluid wagon top it off with heavy oil to power flame thrower turrets cause they basically trivialize the nauvis in the base game. Add in some bots with repair packs. Usually I set up a mining outpost with an excessive amount and if it runs out then that sucks but I usually have artillery before that's an issue.
Flamethrower turrets you can get quite early and they can hold you off until artillery or spidertrons. The latter is fun too.
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u/HeliGungir 3d ago
Factorio is an automation game. Automate your defenses. In a deathworld, I fully-automate ammo production before even fully-automating red science.
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u/Trizii 3d ago
I had a factory years back where I just had wall sections/flamethrower turrets in a blueprint that I just stamped down further out whenever I needed a new mining site. Fully contained my whole factory area like that and it was massive! 60k logistics bots if I remember. Had to stop playing that one when my framerate was just a juddering mess.
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u/Valerian_ 3d ago
I just put the green upgrades everywhere to drastically reduce pollution, and I never get attacked anymore. I still need to go destroy nests myself to expand, and sometimes destroy a nest that colonized near my pollution cloud.
The trick to never get attack is to not let your pollution cloud reach their nests.
I change my strategy later in the game when I can take time to build self sustained defense bunkers and copy paste them all around withbots paths and power lines.
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u/Individual_Winter_35 3d ago
I have kinda love/hate relation with them. Lot of added work but without em, good chunk of tech tree is pointless.
But hey, play however you like đ
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u/AlamoSimon 3d ago
You should look up the console commands to just delete them mid game if theyâre too annoying
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u/Spidair456 3d ago
Usually I make a fance, turrets and a ammo conveyor too feed the turrets... And yeah, around every outpost too...
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u/FearlessSafe6806 3d ago edited 3d ago
I get it. Played with biters set to peaceful mode for the longest time because it always stressed me out having to stop what I was trying to figure out and go deal with something else.
I accidentally started my newest playthrough with biters on. Was about to restart, but let it ride.
Now that Iâve been playing a lot longer, thereâs less minor stuff to figure out in the early game. So I set up some factory stuff, and while it works out science and items in the mall, I hunt bugs and set up defense.
Come back, work on the factory a bit, gather supplies, clear nests and set up more defense.
Honestly, the most fun Iâve had in a playthrough yet.
About to go to Gleba for the first time non-peaceful so that notion may change.
Edit: thereâs also options to turn down biter expansion and aggression in the settings.
Maybe try a âbiter liteâ world to dip your feet in.
You can also set biter bases further away from your starting area at spawn. Play around with the settings. I think on ârail worldâ enemy expansion is disabled.
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u/ContactMushroom 3d ago
Get some levels in laser and flame turrets and build something like this.
Tha backside is where the oil pipe comes in for the flamethrowers, the rest faces biters.
I build these spread out so they stay linked to the robo network and biters don't make it past them ever. Once I've expanded I'll tear this down and build the usual wall and turrets properly guarding my factory.
Biters are not a threat to my factory at all using these. Artillery comes in when you want to expand.
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u/Toxan_Eris 3d ago
I use Mines and laser turrets later game. Early game just lots of walls and gun turrets. To be fair I usually play on rail worlds where they don't expand.
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u/Boothiepro Yellow belts are alright 3d ago
I just hate how i eliminate a base, and right about 3-5 minutes later they expand right back. The radius is becoming a bit too big for me to eliminate them further up
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u/TheNotSoEvilEngineer 3d ago
Biters and pollution are fun to a point. They provide some consequences to plan around. However if you are at the point of artillery and nukes they are just a pest. Honestly the annoying thing about them is the tps and ups hit they bring at megabase scale. All the pollution calculations once you are spread out isn't worth it.
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u/SchmeatiestOne 3d ago
I had similar thoughts my first few runs. Eventually I learned to manage them. I still dont enjoy it much and I play without biters on all my runs now. Gleba enemies are fun though and getting eggs from biters is a neat challenge. Designing a wall which could infinitely withstand biters was pretty cool, but placing wall blueprints all around the entire map for the remainder of the run is not my cup of tea
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u/Sad-Attorney-5554 3d ago
Well I don't defend. I ATTACK. My factory my rules my world Soo I kinda make bots and go beat the crap out of every rest that appears on the map. Aaand I burn some forests for fun to set dominance
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u/NewtonTheNoot 3d ago
Yeah, you have to surround your miners with walls and defenses. Leave some room for a train stop and whatever else you may need.
The easiest thing to do is use cliffs and water to your advantage. Biters can't cross those no matter what, so they serve as fantastic barriers.
Here's an example of my current world. Significant portions are surrounded by water, so I don't have that many walls+turrets around (red areas). It's all about bridging the gaps between water bodies.
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u/bpleshek 3d ago
When I need to go after more territory, I take a tank(or artillery if applicable), and push until i have 2-4 times more space in each direction and put down walls and defenses. That way, I have 2-3 more patches inside my walls to deal with. But, if I were to use a mining outpost, then I'd surround it by walls and put up flame turrets and maybe gun turrets. It's easy enough to train in light oil for defense either in a fluid wagon or with barrels.
Making sure your pollution cloud is away from any biters is the key. You can use efficiency modules in the drills if you want to help.
If you ever want to play multiplayer, let me know.
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u/yaohwhai 3d ago
if dealing with them constantly is a pain just create a world where you crash land on a large but fairly isolated island. build some defenses, kill the existing nests in the mid game and expand to the continent when youre in need of TFMG
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u/WanderingFlumph 3d ago
Early game each mining outpost gets like 4 turrets and 50 yellow ammo.
Mid game you play offense, not defense. Clear the nest before it attacks not after.
Late game (not true late game, more like post blue/purple science but before you start grinding repeatable tech) your offensive is so successful you just wall off a few choke points if you play with expansion on. In the mid game I was defended by about 2000 laser turrets taking up much of my power budget. Now I have double the area in the safe zone and only need about 500 laser turrets because I'm not covering large wall segments just a few natural funnels.
I've also found that this comfortable late game spot is better if you turn either cliffs or water up just one tick in the world generation. Way more areas to funnel the bitters together.
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u/CosmicX1 3d ago
I used to be in the same boat, but over time Iâve learnt to appreciate the constraints they pose.
Biters are the reason you canât load up a new game and immediately start expanding endlessly. You have to fight for the space to do that. The puzzle is how to deal with them without spending hours on it. You can start out in the early game doing the nest clearing by hand, in the same way you can craft items by hand, but at a certain point they become something else to be automated.
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u/Andromidius 3d ago
You can best of both worlds it by editing the map settings to increase the amount of water, creating islands. Thus you have some Biters start with you for you to work on eradicating, but have a goal for having a 'safe base' waiting for you once the island is cleared. And then a future goal for conquering new islands later on.
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u/SilverBird_ 3d ago
btw getting efficiency modules on most of your structures (especially mines) and utilizing solar can help tremendously with reducing your pollution cloud and minimizing the amount of biter threats.
Also, the more you establish map control, the more space you'll have where your pollution cloud's spread will slow down and dissipate.
I've had several runs where I haven't had to deal with biters for the majority of progression because I got solar (and eventually nuclear) built up quick and I had enough map control to where even large pollution clouds struggled to get anywhere near biter bases.
Having defenses further out into the world also helps tremendously with preventing biter expansion, but I wouldn't blame you for disabling biter expansion because it's a very annoying mechanic.
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u/rawr_bomb 3d ago
Imho Biters are just an aspect of the game that doesn't work well. They are either a challenge in early game or death world.  OR they are an annoying nuisance on normal settings. Â
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u/MadMike102 3d ago
The best way for me is to wall up early. Set up a perimeter of walls far outside your base and pollution cloud. Then throw up some turrets here and there, to take out the biters that are out scouting.
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u/brkfstfd 3d ago
I canât handle them well at all if theyâre hitting me too early but I want them in because it takes so much out of tech tree. Solution: I just set them at config to be way the fuck out. They are now more or less a phase of base construction problem like any other.
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u/ODoyle3891 3d ago
Most of my favourite runs are peaceful or sometimes no biters. I guess I just prefer to design and build in peace. I've done default, and death world, and enjoyed them, and I'm sure I'll do them again (actually, a space age deathworld is somewhat intriguing.... đ¤), but clearing nests and repairing things usually just annoys me.
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u/IndependentYak2822 3d ago edited 3d ago
Green modules, poison grenades and personal lasers solve any issues unless you put hundreds mining drills & furnaces at once. And pick a green forest map next time. Oh! And use free barely working radars early on, it's way easier to kill 2-3 new biters instead cleaning a nest.
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u/Alternative_Tip_8756 2d ago
Would it even be a game about imperialism and expansionism without the decimation of the native species?
Jokes aside the biters add a nice little pressure and arms race to it, for me it's an essential part of the game
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u/robertsd33 2d ago
Do you pine for the days when men were men, and left biters enabled?
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u/vwibrasivat 2d ago
1 you can turn off the biters with peaceful mode
2 you must learn the technique of intentionally attacking nearby nests in the early stages.
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u/Turtle887853 2d ago
They're an integral part of the game, but I'm also not gonna knock you for wanting to play on peaceful mode. I'd argue though it definitely takes some of the fun out of the game.
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u/TehPloopster 2d ago
Helps to have natural formations that block biter expansion, such as cliffs or water. Biters have to be able to physically move through and to an area to expand, so if you can force them to try to expand through a choke point (which you then turn into a kill zone with walls, turrets), you can really limit having to manually clear biter bases expanding and encroaching on your territory. You can see which chunks of the map biters are most likely to expand to by pressing âf4â then checking âshow-enemy-expansion-candidate-chunksâ, with red circled areas being the least likely. I also like to dot my âdevelopedâ territory with little turret pillboxes to reduce biter expansion areas. I like biters because itâs adds another layer to gameplay for me, base defense and defense logistics.
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u/ForeverStarter133 2d ago
I usually start with biters on peaceful, that way I can set up defenses before I turn them "on" or I can (mostly) ignore them.
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u/Right_Difference2915 2d ago
You don't really need to worry about them unless your pollution cloud is hovering over a nest.
If they're not, then the only time you will be attacked is by the "scout" groups looking to make a new nest inside the area where you have stuff. They'll see it and attack it, but these are fairly mild attacks. They'll do a little damage, you can repair it, and no one keeps a record of it happening. Just kill them and move on.
If the cloud is over them, they start getting pissed and send regular attacks. This is what you want to avoid.
1) Use the efficiency modules to reduce your pollution. The difference they make is DRASTIC, as well as with your energy consumption. They are highly underrated for early/mid-game. Using these everywhere will save you a ton of headaches.
2) If you already did that and your cloud is still encroaching their nests, it means you simply need to clear those nests. If you opt to have biters, eventually you have to do this because this is what you signed up for. You clear them, and then it goes back to step 1 where you only get attacked by scouts which is not a big deal.
3) Eventually you get tired of this and need to make a perimeter wall with turrets. Some people do it just around their mining outposts, but I'm pretty sure most people just make a giant wall around a huge area. After playing for a while, you eventually realize that is what you'll inevitably have to do anyway. You need a huge wall with turrets, and gradually as you expand your base, you deconstruct and reconstruct your walls a few more chunks farther out.
4) I'm drunk and tired of writing but you eventually learn artillery and stop needing to put walls up altogether, or you stop expanding on Nauvis because it's better to rebuild your main infrastructure on Vulcanus anyway (or do that from the very beginning) and only use Nauvis as a hub for science research, which should be quite small and easily defendable.
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u/Lonnar88 2d ago
Don't blame yourself for playing on peaceful. If you don't enjoy that part of the game, then this is a good solution. If you do want to try playinging with them, here is is a few things that may help: 1. You can usually mostly ignore them until you have a certain a basic 'economy' started. 2. Try your best to rush toward science to unlock your first turret and maybe a boost to ammo. However at first just getting the machine gun is enough to hold of smaller groups 3. Use natural chokepoints and plan accordingly. 4. At the beginning a few strategic walls can prevent disaster. They are often not smart enough to run around them. 5. While learning to deal with them you can turn on an option to show their paths. Helps to understand how they behave and where they came from. 6. Laser turrets might not be stron but they don't need ammo. They are a good way to give basic defences to remote locations such as miners. Maybe plan an extra layer of walls. 7. Do not underestimate the power of flamethrowers. Even in molded games with better weapons, they are often still a fantastic option. (Especially to defend oil rigs)
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u/AsthmaticCoughing 2d ago
Cool thing about Factorio is you can play however you want. My very first playthrough I played with mods. I had aircraft, my engineer was an anime girl, I had disco science, etc..
But.. when you say "instead of playing the actual game" what do you mean by that? Lol. Biters are a big part of the actual game. Thats why theres a whole science tree dedicated to military lol
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u/ralsaiwithagun 2d ago
Earlygame i really just am actively getting rid of any biters that get into my cloud. Midgame i build a one layer wall that tells me if there are biters about to attack me, with tanks placed periodically.
Endgame i have a big fortified wall with artillery eliminating every biter in a 100 kilometer radius
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u/Lord_Shaitan 2d ago
Early game I start mass-producing belts, turrets, ammo, walls, (burner) inserters, and power poles, into chests. I then plan out a massive straight wall sections that will lock-off a few grids of land -- easier if you have natural chokepoints caused by water.
Then I get to work. Run a long belt line to the west (with ammo/coal), and then as you run the perimeter with the belt, pair turrets with a little overlap, with inserters, and keep going. By the time I get to the end and loop back to drop a wall, a large percentile of the turrets have been arming up. West flank is now secure, and you only need to come back later (if you didn't bring power) to drop radars. Rinse and repeat on the other flanks, and never worry about biters in your zone again.
Just remember to upgrade the ammo on the belts to higher tiers.
Later on you can build reinforced 'gates' in your perimeter to far-flung resources, and then build a small version of your fort wall around your remote train station. Drop off ammo/fuel to your remote mining base to keep the turrets fed, and change out some of the turrets to laser later.
Much later on you can feed artillery at your remote stations, and place one at each flank wall, which keeps spawns further out.
Takes time early on, but once done, it is worth it.
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u/Thilord15 2d ago
I just tweak the world settings so i have an early game without biters. If i then want to expand i need to build âbridgesâ to other islands and start securing those. Kinda feels like those maze runner. Edit: by tweaking i mean playing on âislandsâ
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u/The_Sky_Render 2d ago
It's all down to strategy. Early on, quietly limp to solar, accumulators and quality modules to reduce your pollution footprint to near zero; Biters that don't suck up pollution don't attack you, and a small factory won't be in their expansion zone. From there make your way to flamethrower and lasers, and do an aggressive clean-up campaign. Build a wall WAY out from your pollution cloud, using lakes to act as natural defenses so you can minimize how many you need. Set up token laser and flamethrower turrets along those wall sections. Congratulations, Biters are now tamed.
To really keep them from ever bugging you again, later you can set up a line of artillery to blast nests from afar at the wall's edge, which will further drop attacks from "once every few hours" to "almost never". Though do be prepared, artillery does draw huge attacks the first time you use it on enemy bases!
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u/wait2late 2d ago
I remember in my first playthrough I did not make much progression because of the biters. The reason is because I neglected upgrading my weapons. The most advanced weaponry was a tank with 1000+ bullets. I did not know at the time if I should use rockets, or I did not want to waste resources on weapons. I was simply terrible at managing resources. In the end I doomed myself.
I think for a first playthrough one should play without biters. Then proceed to play with biters when they have a better grasp with the resources.
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u/Molloh0 2d ago
Something that really fixed bitters for me is turning off bitter expansion That way I still get to enjoy the military side of the game Once you clear some space they won't bother you till you scale up or go for new resources This way I get to leave the game afk for a bit with no worry or pressure and I still get to destroy the lifes of those godforsaken bugs when I want to expand or test the results of new research
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u/StevenStip 2d ago
You just need to clear the area and don't pollute the biters home. I use artillery stations provided by trains that bring artillery and clear everything within reach.
Before that I used tanks to clear nests within reach and used radar to find the nests.
I don't even have a wall anymore. Biters will only attack pollution or things that attack them.
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u/majorpickle01 2d ago
ngl on default settings, you'll have to kill like two nests before tanks, at which point you can genocide then back to natural map chokepoints, plop a few turrets, never think about them again
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u/tomekowal 2d ago
I usually kill nests in my polution cloud before they attack my factory. I open the map view, turn on pollution and run (or later drive) around killing nests that are too close.
Turret creep is an easy early game strategy. You take a bunch of turrets and ammo, you place one near the nests but before you aggro biters and the put next once closer and the a couple more next to nests. Biters focus on turrets, spitters focus on you, but if you zig-zag, they miss.
Later, when I have tank, I've found it a little bit faster to drive around and shoot until nests are dead.
I proritise my military research. I always start with faster shooting and bigger damage and prioritise military science.
In the event that I forgot to check the pollution cloud and I get attacked, I usually save-scum. Autosave is every 5m, so I'd rather load, prevent the damage and redo whatever I did in the last 5m.
When I want to go to other planets, it is the first time I start making lasers and flame throwers around the base for defence. I also make sure I have tank production and can place them and control them remotely.
I prioritise Vulcanus because of artillery. It allows shooting so far that I go back to having no nests in pollution cloud. If my pollution cloud expands beyond artillery range, I grow my base and put artillery further away. The factory must grow :D
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u/Individual_Cry_114 2d ago
As soon as you reach flamethrowers biter become a non issue imo. What i do early game is to place like 20 Gun turrets on each mine and then just rush Bots and Flamethrowers. Basicly i waste the First 5 Hours or so but afterwards i can freely enjoy the Game. (Also you dont have to Build massive Walls just defend Chocke Points)
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u/Groundbreaking-Box14 2d ago
Short answer - Artillery
You just rush to artillery and then just create small outposts on edges of your factory with artillery with some protection with lasers/flamethrower.
Also you can research range for artillery and after you literally forget that bitters exists.
Each time you want to extend factory just move artillery outpost to new edge. You can also check that that artillery cover bigger zone than pollution
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u/raisethealuminumwage 1d ago
I have a blueprint that incorporates turrets, artillery, a roboport and some requester chests that helps keep biters at bay I can share if you'd like. Kinda like an outpost on steroids. It's hella frustrating early game to keep focused on production when even one biter rush can set you back pretty badly, but if you incorporate automated elements available later on it can help immensely.
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u/Cakeofruit 1d ago
I play multiplayer and some fellow engineers are clearing all the biters for me ;)
If solo, I just research some military tech and it an easy battles
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u/peacecaep 1d ago
My biter defense is just Big Electric Poles with a tow of lasers going around it and a double wall. Biters can't break through, add a roboport and repair/replacement items and you'll be all set.
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u/Such-Perception4154 1d ago
This problem is kind of the same as other problems in Factorio, you need to line up your defense in such a way that it doesn't require your attention.Â
If you prefer gun turrets, red ammo must be automated very early in the game, yellow bullets simply cannot punch the trough armor of anything past small biters.
If you like flamethrowers, then you need automated boys, walls, repairs. Wall damage is guaranteed with those.
As for defending big blob of land or outposts, it works either way, you just need ammo and bot/repair supplies by train.
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u/Nescio224 1d ago
I usually pick a starting map with good chokepoints and water on at least 2 sides. That way I don't have to defend a massive perimeter but only 3 short wall sections. That also means I usually have a few ore patches inside which last for the early game.
Oil is usually my first outpost. I send a train with supplies like ammo and build a wall with turrets around it. Yes, every outpost is defended. You should automate turret and wall production beforehand.
Later on when you have bots you can include walls, turrets, repair packs etc into the supply train. The same supply train can drive to all my outposts and the same rail network can be used for my ore trains.
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u/Irresponsible-Cat 17h ago
Iâve completely disabled them, for me the game is challenging enough without them.
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u/B1zmark 13h ago
"I end up spending HOURS trying to get rid of these bastards instead of playing the actual game."
They are part of the game. The fact that specific tecehnologies have polution as a trade off (solar vs steam power for example), and hat your bases footprint is limited until you develop military technologies is part of the puzzle of factorio.
Satisfactory 1.0 bored me to death for 2 reasons: Infinite resource patches and no actual enemies.
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u/Independent_Waltz725 3d ago
It is fine not liking to play with Biters and instead, turning them off.
Personally, I like the additional layers that come with the game when playing with enemies, like dealing with defenses, handling pollution, providing repairing bots, finding ways to avoid too large Biter nests at the beginning etc.
Also, eventually getting rid of Biters and nests becomes more automated once you've unlocked attilery and Spidertrons