Saturday, October 7, 2017

Factorio AAR Part 2

3rd Log Entry:

We've got visitors! The others made fun of me not liking the dark, but then we end up with biters at night. Really glad I grabbed that survival pistol.


Biters - an ecoterrorist's crazy construction. How do you stop humans from despoiling new planets without breaking the bank? You bioengineer a species that grows with pollution and is incredibly violent towards that growth source. No pollution and they have a minimal presence. Start polluting and they grow to terrific sizes and can overwhelm an unprepared settlement. All it takes is a few spores and the planet's safe from harm. Quite genius. They're why the space-engineering course came with a mandatory military course. Combined with aim assist and I can make a shot between furnaces and drills and only hit my target.

The guys in the ship get all proud when they make a head shot in Halo 27, by comparison.

But why do all the work myself when I can automate the killing? Next on the research list: turrets. As soon as I mass produce research, at least. The clock is ticking.


Doesn't take long for the biters to wreak destruction. The next night they target my road production again, but do a much better job. Production will be stalled until I can do heavier repairs. The turrets must take priority. Then lights. This flashlight ain't cutting it.

[Dan here, here's some more base pictures:]

This is my first time putting down bricks to speed things up and I'm really liking them. Especially with that long trek down to the boilers/iron ore and back. Things are looking good though, mass production is really starting and I'm enjoying not being resource starved.


4th Log Entry:

Turrets are great. Biters are dying and I don't have to lift a finger. Even better, they don't feel pain when the biters nibble on them, while I'm still sore from the bite I took last night. Since not getting bitten is a good goal, I'm expanding the furnace lines to include a stone brick and steel line. The bricks I'll make into walls, while the iron goes through an extra refining step to make good quality steel for -


Ow. Clearly there's a hole somewhere in my defenses. My turrets aren't exactly setup for full coverage - I don't have enough turrets yet for that. Hoping the guys in the ship didn't hear my panicked screams as I ran for the nearest turret grouping. What? Don't think they're that scary? Clearly you've never played Starcraft. But picture this: it takes a non-zero amount of time to kill a biter. (.2s for me) In that time each biter moves forward just a little bit. If there's not many like earlier then they're harmless. But get past that number where they actually reach you? Suddenly that time they spent running is spent biting. And biting hurts. Iron armor does surprisingly little to stop them, and they'll gleefully tear through turrets if they can reach them.


So what if dozens of biters die? They've got more. I'd call it unfair, but it's not like I don't have more turrets. Nor am I the one dying. Or the one getting shot at. Really, I'm quite comfortable now that the pain meds are kicking in. Poor biters. All these died to destroy maybe 100 iron. Which according to my handy dandy chart is about 8 seconds worth of production.

(Note: the Y axis is not the same between the right and the left)

We'll get that wall setup, and then oil. I need me some of that black gold. Both for making different products (hello plastic!) and for powering the factory. My coal mine isn't big enough. More burning is required.

No comments:

Post a Comment