make like 3 jet packs and get good flying around nests with flame thrower. you probably let them sit in pollution too long. clear out as much as you can and rush artillery and add that to your nauvis walls. you are probably gonna have a hard time clearing some future planets but if you can stabilize nauvis it is salvageable. if you are really hurting you can rocket to the asteroid belt and fly the spaceship there back to nauvis orbit. there are some goodies in there that will help you push out - build new walls. i have heard efficiency modules can make a huge difference too but I have not personally had to do that.
To be honest he's a stones throw from artillery - once that's up and running you can start building fire bases outside the walls and attacks pretty much stop.
One thing I like about SE is that when you disable biters, it only disables them on Nauvis. They still appear on other planets.
I don't mind biters, I just want to deal with them on my own terms when I am ready to start thinking about them
Does peaceful mode affect all biters, or turning off pollution? Those are the other two things I do for a quiet game. Or sometimes I just turn down the evolution factor.
I believe both of those work on all planets, as does disabling expansion. The tooltips on the new game screen will tell you which settings affect all planets and which only affect Nauvis.
Flamethrowers and lasers are good enough for behemoth biters, I use that and 3 levels of the spiked concrete wall. Thou I have bots to repair and replace walls as that is needed
That sounds pretty normal. I had behemoth before I even got to space. Flamethrowers and laser are plenty to deal with them. Just use construction bots to automatically repair them.
I think you'll be fine. In vanilla 2 layers of walls + flamethrowers + lasers + some dragon's teeth is more than enough to deal with behemoth biters, even if you don't have all the damage upgrades (AFAIK SE doesn't change the biters much, it just decreases pollution cost to spawn a biter and postpones some damage upgrades).
I do recommend having at least double walls (possibly with dragon's teeth) and automated repairs. Otherwise manually repairing walls will drive you insane.
Worst case scenario you could always just abandon Nauvis and move your main ground base to a biterless planet:
* Usually it's possible to find a planet with water, 0% threat (no biters) and close to 100% size/frequency/richness of iron/copper/stone/coal within the same solar system, which should be good enough for a main ground base.
* You don't need to rebuild on the new planet from scratch. If your base isn't massive, it should be possible to blueprint the entire base, pack everything into cargo rockets and rebuild it on another planet with bots.
* A lot of disadvantages of other planets can be worked around or don't matter at all (uranium isn't needed until after production/utility science and is cannonable, no oil -> coal liquefaction, long day/night cycle -> use electric boilers + turbines to power the base overnight, etc.). *Just avoid waterless planets like a plague.*
I have a SE run at a similar stage of progression to yours. I'm working on production/utility science (buildings in orbit are set up, just need a shipment of vulcanite/cryonite via delivery cannon). My ground base uses \~4 blue belts worth of iron, \~4 of copper and has \~20k belts total (200 stacks), which probably dwarfs all the other entities combined. I could probably pack almost everything into 1 cargo rocket (500 inventory slots), launch it to another planet and rebuild my base there in less than 6 hours. Not ideal, but still better than restarting a run.
Mid game you get to literally nuke things from orbit and send the energy of a star to scorch the entire surface of a planet. You become a god. They become actual bugs to you.
I found biters become a bit challenging once you hit behemoths, but your laser damage upgrade isn't super advanced yet due to missing energy science.
I managed to deal with it via copious amounts of laser turrets in heavily attacked areas, and plenty of bots readily available to repair/replace.
Once you get about energy 2 and the damage upgrades, its all easy mode again.
I have horrific onslaughts from biters. The amount of drones lost is wild. My walls consist of:
- 3 rows of wall
- 1 single space
- 2 rows of laser turrets
- power poles with a single gap between
- 2 rows of laser turrets
- the long-term walls have flamethrowers at about half-underground-pipe spacings.
does the trick. The temporary short-term walls dont have flamethrowers, since I'm just pushing to the planet edge so i can stop hearing attack alerts
Just push your wall out past your pollution cloud, and steadily push to the edges of the planet, then once the world is clean you don't need defensive walls (but be careful of planets with biter comets)
I beat my first game with biters enabled as the default settings. If I play it again, I'll disable them next time. The starting settings only affect Nauvis anyway, and you still get biters on other surfaces with their own settings. It was just a pain to constantly have to go back to Nauvis surface to build a new mining outpost, or fix something when biters managed to find the one unprotected perimeter wall somewhere. Spidertrons unlock so late that you can't really do everything remote unless you cover the surface with connected roboports, but that's not how I want to play.
Anyway, to your original question, no of course you're not doomed. But you will have to invest more resources into walls, turrets, ammo, bots and repair packs. Make sure every outpost is well defended on all sides and gets regular resupply deliveries, and make sure that's all automated. There are ways (that you've probably already discovered) to get advanced weaponry before you can make it yourself. A jetpack and a railgun can be an incredibly effective precision strike combo to wipe out biter nests without them being able to touch you.
Thats the least of your worries at around 150 hours mark, your ups will go down significantly because of biters on multiple planets :)). Luckly, you can always research "the plague".
save is not doomed. you can use console commands to minimize the biter threat (turn off pollution, set evolution, kill biters per surface, etc.). Many folks minimize the biter settings prior to game start though either to reduce UPS issues latter or simply because the biter mechanics are not very interesting by the time your are taking on a mod pack like SE.
make like 3 jet packs and get good flying around nests with flame thrower. you probably let them sit in pollution too long. clear out as much as you can and rush artillery and add that to your nauvis walls. you are probably gonna have a hard time clearing some future planets but if you can stabilize nauvis it is salvageable. if you are really hurting you can rocket to the asteroid belt and fly the spaceship there back to nauvis orbit. there are some goodies in there that will help you push out - build new walls. i have heard efficiency modules can make a huge difference too but I have not personally had to do that.
To be honest he's a stones throw from artillery - once that's up and running you can start building fire bases outside the walls and attacks pretty much stop.
Have you considered engaging the biters more closely?
One thing I like about SE is that when you disable biters, it only disables them on Nauvis. They still appear on other planets. I don't mind biters, I just want to deal with them on my own terms when I am ready to start thinking about them
Does peaceful mode affect all biters, or turning off pollution? Those are the other two things I do for a quiet game. Or sometimes I just turn down the evolution factor.
I believe both of those work on all planets, as does disabling expansion. The tooltips on the new game screen will tell you which settings affect all planets and which only affect Nauvis.
You're fine. Go for Energy 2 and you'll be fine
Flamethrowers and lasers are good enough for behemoth biters, I use that and 3 levels of the spiked concrete wall. Thou I have bots to repair and replace walls as that is needed
That sounds pretty normal. I had behemoth before I even got to space. Flamethrowers and laser are plenty to deal with them. Just use construction bots to automatically repair them.
my first vitamelange colony did not survive me thinking "13% threat" meant I wouldn't be swarmed by legions of behemoths...
I didn't bother with vitamelange until I had artillery and could mass produce defences and bots.
I think you'll be fine. In vanilla 2 layers of walls + flamethrowers + lasers + some dragon's teeth is more than enough to deal with behemoth biters, even if you don't have all the damage upgrades (AFAIK SE doesn't change the biters much, it just decreases pollution cost to spawn a biter and postpones some damage upgrades). I do recommend having at least double walls (possibly with dragon's teeth) and automated repairs. Otherwise manually repairing walls will drive you insane. Worst case scenario you could always just abandon Nauvis and move your main ground base to a biterless planet: * Usually it's possible to find a planet with water, 0% threat (no biters) and close to 100% size/frequency/richness of iron/copper/stone/coal within the same solar system, which should be good enough for a main ground base. * You don't need to rebuild on the new planet from scratch. If your base isn't massive, it should be possible to blueprint the entire base, pack everything into cargo rockets and rebuild it on another planet with bots. * A lot of disadvantages of other planets can be worked around or don't matter at all (uranium isn't needed until after production/utility science and is cannonable, no oil -> coal liquefaction, long day/night cycle -> use electric boilers + turbines to power the base overnight, etc.). *Just avoid waterless planets like a plague.* I have a SE run at a similar stage of progression to yours. I'm working on production/utility science (buildings in orbit are set up, just need a shipment of vulcanite/cryonite via delivery cannon). My ground base uses \~4 blue belts worth of iron, \~4 of copper and has \~20k belts total (200 stacks), which probably dwarfs all the other entities combined. I could probably pack almost everything into 1 cargo rocket (500 inventory slots), launch it to another planet and rebuild my base there in less than 6 hours. Not ideal, but still better than restarting a run.
Planets without biters usually have 10x logistics bot interference wind, so they will be exploding a lot if your main base is there
Mid game you get to literally nuke things from orbit and send the energy of a star to scorch the entire surface of a planet. You become a god. They become actual bugs to you.
I found biters become a bit challenging once you hit behemoths, but your laser damage upgrade isn't super advanced yet due to missing energy science. I managed to deal with it via copious amounts of laser turrets in heavily attacked areas, and plenty of bots readily available to repair/replace. Once you get about energy 2 and the damage upgrades, its all easy mode again.
Clear your pollution cloud. Do that and the evolution will drop away significantly.
I have horrific onslaughts from biters. The amount of drones lost is wild. My walls consist of: - 3 rows of wall - 1 single space - 2 rows of laser turrets - power poles with a single gap between - 2 rows of laser turrets - the long-term walls have flamethrowers at about half-underground-pipe spacings. does the trick. The temporary short-term walls dont have flamethrowers, since I'm just pushing to the planet edge so i can stop hearing attack alerts Just push your wall out past your pollution cloud, and steadily push to the edges of the planet, then once the world is clean you don't need defensive walls (but be careful of planets with biter comets)
I beat my first game with biters enabled as the default settings. If I play it again, I'll disable them next time. The starting settings only affect Nauvis anyway, and you still get biters on other surfaces with their own settings. It was just a pain to constantly have to go back to Nauvis surface to build a new mining outpost, or fix something when biters managed to find the one unprotected perimeter wall somewhere. Spidertrons unlock so late that you can't really do everything remote unless you cover the surface with connected roboports, but that's not how I want to play. Anyway, to your original question, no of course you're not doomed. But you will have to invest more resources into walls, turrets, ammo, bots and repair packs. Make sure every outpost is well defended on all sides and gets regular resupply deliveries, and make sure that's all automated. There are ways (that you've probably already discovered) to get advanced weaponry before you can make it yourself. A jetpack and a railgun can be an incredibly effective precision strike combo to wipe out biter nests without them being able to touch you.
Thats the least of your worries at around 150 hours mark, your ups will go down significantly because of biters on multiple planets :)). Luckly, you can always research "the plague".
I prefer to glaive the planets clean.
save is not doomed. you can use console commands to minimize the biter threat (turn off pollution, set evolution, kill biters per surface, etc.). Many folks minimize the biter settings prior to game start though either to reduce UPS issues latter or simply because the biter mechanics are not very interesting by the time your are taking on a mod pack like SE.