How Hard is it to Beat Factorio's Death World with the RAMPANT mod? (and armored biters)

By the way, if you're wanting to replicate this, it was done with an older version of Rampant. The newer ones are more forgiving and have the different factions on by default. Just trying to clear things up for the people asking me why their death world rampant runs aren't nearly as insane as this. You can pull an older version from the mod portal if you're really interested in reliving the Dosh™ experience

I am wondering if there is a mod where you can dig a moat outside of your walls. I observed that the Biters can't cross water so maybe that would be a possible tactic for the next Rampant mod playthrough.

Edit: There is an option that lets biters essentially launch squads based on how much your character is present in an area. That's why the hit squads keep coming. The option that is letting them build near the base is called sieging. I turn off nuclear biters, pheromone hit squads and sieging for now. I gotta get better at the game before I put that shit on. There's worse than behemoth biters. They could have mutated the entire nest group into flame resistant biters.


Before I watch. Um yeah, how hard could it be with all default options? You gon die. xD People may want to consider playing with extra ore in patches. One time I ended up draining a patch from defense and couldn't expand to a new iron patch. I have not mastered this mod by a long shot, but I will tell people there is no shame in increasing the safe starting area to max. You are still going to be challenged. You don't need the armored biters mod, rampant biters nests that keep having their troops killed by ammo can potentially morph into physical resistant biters... basically armored biters. The bug bases mutate in response to what is killing their waves. Not always, but it's not uncommon. Also, go ahead an install Rampant Arsenal. It's made for the mod. Another mod, for making alerts sound for things you care about is the biter detector mod. I forget what it's called but it detects biters in configurable ways and you can put those detectors near important stuff.

This is exactly what I was looking for, yes.

I was waiting for Pharoahe Monch to start spitting at the beginning of the video.

About 28m in I recognize that music lol. Teque.

this is painful, you sir are a glutton for punishment

I love how the video has a section called my name is death and then not too long after, my name isn't death.🤣

Did anyone know what song is it when he gets in the tank. I can't stop but laugh with joy with the way he has edited it in 🤣🤣

This is a really great underdog story with that sixth run and the comeback after the base got destroyed, this might be my favorite video that you've made

the mod where nuclear warfare is not a suggestion. its a requirement.

I would like to see a replay of this mod, but with the new Biters Rampant has to offer

Respect for being upfront about loading up an older save. I've watched people play games live and when something bad happens be like "oh nooo my game crashed. Oh shucks oh darn" we all know that when shit goes down and you just wanna get past the gruesome start of some of these games that most of us will load up a save

They should make it where you can recycle the alien corpses for biofuel…

Not sure if it would have helped at all, considering the halved pollution absorbtion, but the first time I played Factorio I knew from the videos that got me into the game that pollution drew biters.

So I did everything to keep pollution down. I only expanded my power supply when I absolutely had to, kept the number of furnaces down, and went for solar power as soon as I could.

In the end I only suffered one small biter attack before I went on the offensive, which got murdered by laser turrets, and when I did go on the offensive I had the flamethrower. Made things much easier than I've had on most subsequent runs, though it also made it very, very slow.

Edit: Ah, it's on a timer. Well, going slow and stealthy wouldn't do anything then.

What prevented you from creating redundancies, so that a cut to a single line wouldn’t crash the grid

Now I wan't to see a Rampant + Space Exploration walkthrough.

When I watch this video, terms like digital masochism and cock and ball torture come to my mind.

Was so rad to randomly hear "Necros - Point of Departure" in this video! You must be a child of the Mod generation. Far out!

I didn't expect to learn anything from this video but I didn't know how to queue research before

one of his best videos

So, there's a few companion mods for Rampant now.
Of particular note: Rampant Arsenal. Better guns, more guns, different kinds of turrets (including a Rifle Turret that you start with access to before you research "proper" gun turrets, as well as Shotgun and Rocket turrets (which might be able to fire atomic bombs, unsure about that), and many MANY more ammo types.
I installed (just Rampant Arsenal) over top of a Space Exploration run just to see what happened. The result? Fun(TM).
My defenses have never been more in-depth, more layered, more impenetrable.
Oh yeah, and they give you better walls too. Including one made from Refined Concrete (works identically to normal walls, put in refined concrete, take out heavy-duty walls, none of this "you need to upgrade stone brick walls" stuff).
Even better, have you noticed that you need only a tiny nuclear fuel cell production line, and you're bothered by it? What if I told you that Rampant Arsenal provides Nuclear Locomotives? That's right, they take Uranium Fuel Cells, they spit out Used-up Uranium Fuel Cells, they have a whopping 16MW of acceleration power, but they're incredibly heavy. Better pull the long trains with them! Oh and they have an equipment grid now too, meaning your trains can fight back without needing Artillery Wagons.
Speaking of equipment grid, not only is there a Mk3 power armor (with a massive equipment grid), there's now a new Nuclear powered personal equipment grid generator (only works in the mk3 power armor). It's a burner-type generator that runs on nuclear fuel cells (and produces used up uranium fuel cells). Don't have to pay attention to it very often, but it puts out a whopping 12MW of electricity for whatever you want, be that a massive collection of personal roboport mk2's, loads of energy shields and exoskeletons, lots of equipment grid defenses (there's more of those now than just the PLD), and the list goes on.
Oh yeah, almost forgot. Laser turrets, there's upgraded versions of those too. They're bigger and meaner than the normal laser turret. The Advanced Beam Turret is basically a 'big laser turret" that's 3x3 and draws more power to put out more damage. But the real showpiece is the Advanced Laser Turret. It doesn't shoot beams. Nope. It's a Star-Wars type heavy Blaster cannon, with the high power draw to match (so heavy a power draw in fact that you'd be wise to have a bank of accumulators even if you just have your whole base running on nuclear power, seriously ONE of these turrets draws over 250MW for a few seconds while firing) And yes, this massive 4x4 turret deals a combination of Laser and Explosive damage. It also is slow to aim, has a minimum range, and fires slowly. However the tradeoff is that it can eliminate MULTIPLE behemoth biters, behemoth spitters, or a combination of the two, in ONE SHOT. And that's WITHOUT damage researches... if only there was a way to research increasing the AOE of an explosion when its damage increases...

Oh right, Rocket turrets. There's a "pepper-box" style one that fires quickly but has a shorter range (best used with normal or explosive rockets) and there's a longer-ranged, slower firing "twin-rail" launcher (that looks like it took heavy inspiration from a 70's era US Navy Destroyer's "Talos missile" turret).
That last one is interesting for a very specific reason to me. You know how all rocket launchers get increased range when using Atomic Bomb ammunition? Well, I need to do some controlled testing, but I'm relatively certain that applies to these rocket turrets too.
So you can have a wall defended by gratuitous use of the Power of the Atom, which is VERY much in line with the Dieselpunk aesthetic of Factorio.

Speaking of atomic weaponry, there's more ammunition types available for Artillery too. Including an Atomic Artillery shell (also high explosive, biological, and incendiary arty shells, (along with HE, Bio, and Incendiary versions of firearms magazines, shotgun shells, and rockets, for the "more ammo types").
Handheld weaponry, there's a Rocket Launcher Mk2 (slightly longer range, slower fire rate, might have homing like the Spidertron's rockets but I'm not sure), and a Minigun (basically just two SMG's duct taped together, but it sounds a lot better and it has a fantastic effect on target, for roughly twice the ammo consumption of course).
Oh yeah, and I almost forgot. There's Cannon Turrets too. They take tank ammo (which also has new HE, Biological, and Incendiary versions), and they act as you'd expect. Except there's a Rapid Cannon Turret that blurs the line between "an artillery piece" and "an autocannon". IMO the Rapid Cannon Turret is basically the 5" QF gun fitted to modern US Navy Destroyers. It goes Bang Bang Bang Bang and the biters kinda turn into green and purple mist.

But that's not all you can use cannon ammo for. There's now Light Artillery! It's Artillery just like the "big" guns, but it takes Cannon shells, has a lower range, and (I think) is unlocked earlier. I'm of mixed thoughts on it having its own Targeting Remote, because on one hand sometimes you only want one kind of arty to fire, but on the other hand sometimes you want "all of it right now even the atomic arty".
The Atomic arty ammo is as expected (and unlike standalone mods that add similar) fantastically easy to craft. One arty shell, one atomic bomb, put them together, now you've got an atomic warhead that gets fired out of a gun tube.

My favorite use for the Atomic Artillery shell (from either the standalone mod or Rampant Arsenal) so far is that I have an Artillery wagon on my engineering train. But it's not for killing biters, or even clearing large swaths of trees (that's what the nukes in my character's rocket launcher are for, because trees are the ever-present enemy in Factorio even after the biters no longer pose a threat).
Nope, it's because of another mod I have installed. That mod? A very simple mod, with a title that tells you all you need to know. It's called Nukes Destroy Cliffs. Because really, if a Cliff Explosives is just a barrel full of explosives with a grenade to set the whole thing off, why can't an Atomic Bomb destroy cliffs just as easily? It's project Plowshare made real (in Factorio), a "peaceful" application for the atomic warhead (mind the fallout).
So that mod lets me destroy cliffs with nukes. But you know what can carry around a lot of nukes? An artillery wagon filled with Atomic arty shells. IIRC they still stack to 100 in an artillery wagon (why they only stack to 1 in other inventories is beyond me, sure it's a simple code adjustment to fix, but I'm too lazy to do it myself).
So the train is VERY MUCH an engineering train, because not only does it carry around building supplies for me to use, it also carries around the means to perform some Civil Engineering of its own by leveling cliffs in the (distant) vicinity. Makes setting up new outposts much easier.

In any case, all of this is to say that I would love it if you could do a re-run of this thing, with the "new" Rampant mod (and it's companion mods, of which I've only covered Rampant Arsenal, which can function standalone).

The dedication of this man

I even struggle in vanilla with my limited brain capacity 😂 factorio is a puzzle game. But here we have him trying to establish a beachhead on a unknown alien planet😂

I attempted a factorio playthrough on easy settings with rampant and armored biters. As well as explosive frost and fire biters and a few other mods I don't remember. ... I realized I wasn't going to be able to do it when a single NON armored biter absorbed 30 entire mags and wasn't even down 4 health squares and was rapidly tearing through my base.

I would really love to see another shot at this mod. Counquer them biters properly.

This seems hard until you remember that even the older version of rampant can let your biters evolve with subspecies such as nuclear biters

For anyone thinking of trying Rampant
DON'T
Seriously this mod is stress hell I literally had to turn off the alert noise to avoid having an aneurism. This isn't tower defense it's a literal never ending siege. If that's your cup of tea fine by me. If you just want tougher biters I recommend looking elsewhere if you don't want your factory smashed into dust like you just crash landed in the middle of a tyrranid invasion.

Legend

i love it when factorio turns into a permanent war economy

I think this is my favourite video from you
amazing narrative honestly

Yeah, the main thing I've noticed with rampant is just how much they EXPAND. Even in a normal world it can get overwhelming if you aren't careful.

oh god watching this i just had a horrible idea

imagine this, but with biters that can shoot at just slightly longer ranges than flamethrowers

Suffering. Definitely the suffering part.

Well played!

I didnt know that RIck Hunter plays factorio
Awesome voice dude

Ahh, Rampant. What isn't to love? Props to you for doing it something of the hard-mode way for this run, without utilizing Rampant Arsenal. It also looked like you just had normal biter variants on too, minus the armored biters mod of course. Adding those two things together - the expanded toolkit of Arsenal and the expanded biter mutations from the base mod - makes for some addictingly stupid-fun gameplay. Nothing says "all hands on deck" like that "oh shit" feeling you and your friends get when the screen flashes with a blinding light and you suddenly see 70+ destroyed structures and a huge crater where your wall defenses used to be. Time to go clear out the Nuclear Biter nests! Be sure not to let them bite you, cause you will die. But it's fine, because maybe you thought ahead and researched miniguns and you can just tear them all down safely from a distance with your hail of metal.

The extra types of turrets and personal armor gear provided also do wonders. Laser turrets are great, but how about Beam Turrets? Souped up versions that kill your power grid even faster, but churn through enemy health like no other. Or maybe rocket turrets, to pick enemies off at extreme range? Or my personal favorite, the Advanced Laser Turret, the only turret to peak at 1+ gigawatts of power drain. It literally shuts down any pre-nuclear power base each time it fires. Do beware of the acid turrets though. Their friendly fire capability exceeds even that of the flamethrower turrets. One step into the acid pools and you're a goner, even with heavy shielding and maxed health upgrades. Repair capsules are a god-send when using those turrets, if only to cut down on the robot death count.

Having said that, it's fun while solo, but becomes far more entertaining with a few friends. My own group typically has one of us acting as the "heavy," who has the job of going around and distributing indiscriminate justice to the biter hordes. Often 3-4 of us will focus on infrastructure and base expansion, with a nightly rotation of 1-2 of us aiding our heavy in base defense. We also utilize the "attacks at night" condition because it at least gives us a little breathing room. But even with that aiding us, yeah, sometimes we go through a dozen servers before finally managing to eke out a win.


Point of all this being I love the Rampant mod, and the range of supporting mods you can add to it just makes the experience all the richer. Not at all recommended if you're the kind of person who likes the building and development side of Rampant and sees the biters more as an annoyance than anything else. But if you're someone who loves that feeling of clawing every victory out of the jaws of defeat while you desperately try to expand, upscale and optimize your base, then Rampant is right up your alley.

do a 2nd run with some better settings to explore the mod a bit better

"I've got to do something I was hoping I wouldn't have to do. Use my brain"

Ah yes, every gamer who wants a challenge to make them feel alive's greatest enemy. The challenge that requires brain power

Brother beated the game before i got bots working

Im surprised that the base is so strong that he can just stand for 30minutes