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I use radar outposts far from the walls of my base to have early warning of alien activity. These radar outposts are fully independent of the main power grid.
While they don't prevent the aliens from attacking the factory, they do prevent the aliens from making new nests closer to my factory. Since the outposts produce no pollution, the aliens mostly ignore them, preferring to walk in between them on the way to my factory. The long walk spreads out the aliens, significantly reducing their ability to damage my walls and turrets.

Here is the world map - the blue squares in the wilderness are the radar outposts:

Here is a screenshot of the radar outpost and blueprints:

Here is the mighty wall the surrounds my factory:



For anyone wondering about the solar panel to capacitor ratio: These structures produce no pollution, so the aliens ignore them for days at a time. When an attack does happen, it's usually a very large crowd of monsters that is on its way to the factory. The blueprint that I am using has not run out of power in over 20 hours, and they take only tiny amounts of damage because spitters tend to attack them only after they've been shot by the turrets.

Are behemoths in? I believe those would change the state of war here.

Adil wrote:Are behemoths in? I believe those would change the state of war here.

Yes. They are big, green, and can take a lot of punishment. My goal with the radar outposts is to keep the nests from getting inside the high pollution zone around my factory - thereby reducing the evolution of the aliens. The strategy seems to be working, because the swarms that attack my factory are mostly medium aliens with a few big ones.

Grimtongue wrote:

Adil wrote:Are behemoths in? I believe those would change the state of war here.

Yes. They are big, green, and can take a lot of punishment. My goal with the radar outposts is to keep the nests from getting inside the high pollution zone around my factory - thereby reducing the evolution of the aliens. The strategy seems to be working, because the swarms that attack my factory are mostly medium aliens with a few big ones.

I like the radar set up. I use a similar early detection system in my world. However, at a certain point in game progression, behemoths will be in every single pack of aliens that's attacking me, so radar outpost with guns will only draw attention and get destroyed. The radar outpost I use now have 6 accumulators and 8 panels. Cheaper to built, draws less attention. The walls to be base are still getting wreck with mass behemoths attacks. It helps a little bit if you place basic belt (I think 13 spaces) from your wall to mess up the spliter's animation so they can't attack you. Laser turrets are the main power hog in my world. So many of them... everywhere...

Have you considered linking the outposts together with big power poles? This would let them all share the same energy storage network, so you might be able to replace some accumulators with more turrets.

Yeah, I'm not a fan of the self-contained outpost. It makes just as as much sense to pack them to the gills with turrets and have them draw power from your main base.

I'm currently running a wall of outposts like this, only each also has a roboport. There are only a few construction robots in the outpost port network, but they can repair damage wherever it happens. And while I'm seeing a lot of greens, since this is long post-victory, they never do more than slightly damage one turret before they all die, so I'm not concerned about the outposts drawing attention. They do take some damage from green spitters, so they need that self-repair capability.

I thought of making something as a "maginot line" around my base. Making defense outpost in circles, providing each one with a roboport and some construction bots, and a very slow train moving in circles supplying them with the needed repair packs and maybe spare turrets/walls in case some get destroyed. Would that be a viable concept?

It takes days to build that. Not the train, but the whole outposts. You cannot automatically fill the car/tank so fast, as you need it, you need to do everything manually.

See also https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... =5&t=13200
Something like this is needed to build that. My opinion.

I disagree. I would start by cleaning out the spawners while laying the rail. After I have secured the area and layed the rail, I would get in into my construction train filled to the brim with turrets, solar panels, etc, drive manually to the place of the supposed outpost, place a station, lay a blueprint, construct outpost, provide it with the starting amount of repair packs and replacement parts and continue with the second outpost. It may take time for me to accumulate enough recourses for the outposts, though, playing with marathon.

ssilk wrote:It takes days to build that. Not the train, but the whole outposts. You cannot automatically fill the car/tank so fast, as you need it, you need to do everything manually.

It's not clear what you're trying to say here. I think you're saying that these outposts require a lot of material to build, a lot of turrets and walls, and that presents some sort of logistics problem. I haven't found that to be remotely the case, but maybe I'm not understanding what you want to happen to somehow make the collection of the materials faster.

As a practical matter, I've generally let logistics robots bring me more walls and turrets as I need them. I don't store them in a car, I'm notclear why you'd think transporting materials to the car instead of the player is required. I do bring along a car, mostly to store the huge amounts of wood I end up clearing to make room for the outposts.

aka13 wrote:I disagree. I would start by cleaning out the spawners while laying the rail. After I have secured the area and layed the rail, I would get in into my construction train filled to the brim with turrets, solar panels, etc, drive manually to the place of the supposed outpost, place a station, lay a blueprint, construct outpost, provide it with the starting amount of repair packs and replacement parts and continue with the second outpost. It may take time for me to accumulate enough recourses for the outposts, though, playing with marathon.

Calculate, how much trains you need... how much resources.
My statement: Without some automated supply this lasts forever. And is somehow boring, because you need to run/drive back (and return) the most time you're doing this. Ok, this is fun for the first time you're doing this. But after the third you wish some better method.

I still dont agree with you, ssilk. Biters settle closest at >3 chunks away from your buildings. That means an outpost every 7th chunk. Lets sax we male state of the art outposts with a roboport, repair packs and spare parts and a double-layered wall. We provide electricity centralized from the main solar array at a base, and assuming that outposts will be mainly idling since biters dont try that often to rush settling, we have to account only for passive drain, which is not that much even on newer turrets. Let's say we have 10-15 turrets per outpost. That does not really add up as something expensive energy- or recoursewise, imo.

Yeah, I didn't find building these outposts to be all that much work, nor did I find a need for some sort of automated supply. The flying robots getting more walls and lasers for me when I return to base is plenty. Running a rail out to where I'm working on the outposts would be pointless, far more work than actually building the outposts.

So, I just completed my outpost defense perimeter.


Power data says I have some 4000 laser turrets drawing 95 MW. Reserve power is 5,500 accumulators and 164 steam engines. The steam engines are for emergency use only - they're on a controller, and don't come on unless battery storage is depleted. Normal evening use is about half the battery capacity.

This is obviously far post-victory, since I didn't need anything like defenses like this when I reached the end game. Building outposts is pretty fast, I generally threw up 5-6 per trip away from base.

The main caveat is that since the outposts have linked roboports for shared self-repair, any time the line bends, I need to space them slightly apart so they break the chain. Construction robots always take the most direct flight route, which has them running out of power rapidly if they fly at an angle to the line of outposts. This isn't as catastrophic as it once was, but it still slows them down a lot.

The main reason I'm so insistent on self-repair is those green spitters. Inevitably in any big assault wave one or two get a shot or two into a turret. It's not much damage, but it does add up eventually if they don't self-repair.