Hello everyone, and welcome to my new side
project... A challenge so insane, it MIGHT be completely
and utterly impossible, so let's just reveal the grand idea... We are going to try to beat factorio's default
settings, on a pretty decent map with a start... nicely surrounded by forests? What? That doesn't sound like much of a challenge? Ok, yeah, well, who knows what could happen... Let's jump right in! Alright, good map, there's three nests in
the north here and... WHAT THE HECK IS THAT! Behemoth biters and Behemoth spitters RIGHT
AT THE START OF THE GAME? Ok, nope, nope, NOPE, I'm outta here! Alright, so THAT's the secret ace up this
challenge's sleeve, I guess... Let's take a look in the MOD folder and see
WHAT is going on... I've made and installed a little mod called
100% evolution start, and what it does is quite simple:
it starts off the game at maximum evolution! So, we are going to play a default settings
map, and that means with enemy expansion ON,
starting off the game at 100% evolution. That means these 3 factors don't do anything
anymore, as the evolution simply cannot progress any
further! We might as well slide them up to the maximum! Now, next to the obvious problem of, well,
blatantly being unable to survive any enemy encounter for a long time,
there's an even bigger problem: the enemy expansion timer! You see, it looks like enemy expansion should
happen randomly, once every 4 to 60 minutes, but that unfortunately
is NOT the case. The enemy expansion cooldown time
scales with the current evolution factor, so at our maximum evolution start,
ONE enemy expansion will pop up every 4:00 minutes sharp,
right from the game start! And to make matters EVEN worse,
Factorio only generates a teeny tiny map at the start of the game,
which means in the first 20 minutes of the game,
the enemy has hardly anywhere to expand TO, except for right in the middle of my base... So, the only other changes made to the default
settings template are enabling the research Q,
and turning off cliffs, as many people are of the opinion
playing with cliffs is super easy, barely an inconvenience,
as they basically are just free and indestructible walls. I cannot say I agree with this position, but
heck, I'll grab any excuse to play with those annoying
things disabled! So, let's go! Alright, attempt number 6... So, that means I already know where the coal
rocks are to start off, so let's grab one and head over to the iron
patch. Now, the start would be a lot less RNG
if it weren't for the fact that we're also trying to get
100% achievements on the 100% evolution challenge, which makes the opening a whole lot slower. So yeah, 100% achievements right? So, most of them are of the "can-get-them-any-time"-type,
but there are 2 timed achievements, namely building a train within 90 minutes,
and finishing the game within 8 hours, and then there is ONE single achievement
which has a MAJOR impact on the playstyle: Yep, it's lazy bastard. The one that prevents you from handcrafting
anything for the entire game, except for the minimum
amount of stuff you MUST hand craft to unlock the first assembling
machine... That means, we cannot hand craft
more than 2 burner miners and 3 furnaces until we unlock automation,
so we're going to have to handmine 50 copper or so
while the burners mine iron. Now, the lazy bastard achievement tracker
is visible in the top left corner, and as of now we hand crafted 7 things of
the 111 allowed in total. That may seem like a lot of leeway,
but we'll use up ALL of them to get the first assembling machine. In total, we need 10 red science packs,
a lab to process them, the smallest power plant possible to power
the lab, and the means to hand craft our first automatic
assembler, and EVERY single copper wire, iron gear and
green circuit we need for all of those, are EACH counted as ONE
hand craft... So let's get the other 2 coal rocks to keep
the burners going, and some trees for power poles later,
and then we decide to TAKE the former copper furnace
in order to save ONE hand craft for later, as the furnace can be used as an ingredient
for the boiler for the power plant. So, Lazy Bastard's slow start also means we
are unable to have any influence on the location selected for the
first few enemy expansions, which are represented by the green circles
in the minimap. Every 4 minutes sharp,
ONE of those circles is selected for the biters to go and make a new nest over there. The brighter green the circle,
the higher the chance THAT chunk is selected for enemy expansion,
and at the moment, THIS early in the game, ALMOST all circles are visible for us on the
map. I say almost, as the 4-minute mark passes
and the first enemy expansion is happening, yet we don't see a blinking circle on the
map indicating the chunk SELECTED for expansion. That is good news and suspiciously good RNG...
and it's the reason why this is "attempt number 6"... In the first 5 games, an enemy expansion
happened too closeby our base and we needed to reset. So, where IS the enemy expansion happening
then? Well, the minimap shows only the 14x14 chunks
generated at the start of the game, but the game keeps
slowly generating more terrain as a background process,
at about 1 chunk every second. This terrain acts like explored terrain in
every single way, except for that it's not visible on the map. So, the game chunk selected for enemy expansion
is still very closeby our base, but JUST outside the explored map visible
on the map! Well, we have survived ONE RNG-moment,
but we'll need to survive SEVERAL more! But we are already researching Automation,
which means soon we can start to... influence the biter's choice of expansion
location... But not before the 8 minute mark we can't,
so we'll need to survive one more Pure RNG-moment of Death... At 6,5 minutes, automation research completes,
so as our penultimate hand craft, we make the assembler
and hurry over to the power plant to assemble the first building blocks we need to expand
our production somewhat... I tell ya, for an achievement called "Lazy
Bastard", this sure is a LOT of work... After turning our copper into wire,
we combine it with wood to make more power lines and after quickly making some furnaces from nearby stone, we draw the power line out to the mining area. Meanwhile, the 8 minute mark passes,
and THIS time we indeed DO see the chunk selected for enemy expansion on
the map! Even with the forest inbetween,
That is DANGEROUSLY closeby the mining area, which is destined to become a large source
of pollution soon... I almost bailed here in order to start attempt
number 7, but ultimately decided to push on and go take
a look first... So, now we're reaching the 12-minute expansion
mark, but still we first need to increase our production
and automation... We're completely out of coal,
so first up we place 6 miners on the coal, before trying to expand to 6 miners on the
iron... But the 12 minute mark approaches too fast,
and exactly at 12 minutes we will see that the current blinking circle stops blinking,
and a NEW chunk will be selected for the next expansion... Again we're lucky to see NO new blinking circle
on the map, so it's happening again somewhere nearby in
the yet uncharted area... But I'm sure we'll find them sooner or later! Anyway, we awkwardly scramble together the
ingredients to make a few more much needed assemblers,
but then, since I missed the 12-minute mark, I foolishly think I have enough time to expand
to 12 instead of 6 burner miners,
before starting our anti-enemy-expansion campaign... Well, by the time that is fully up and running,
we're 15 minutes in, and only NOW I start making
LOTS OF PIPES? What? What are PIPES gonna do against behemoth biters! Anyway, here is the master plan... Throw random pipes on the floor everywhere
to make the land... less attractive for biters to settle into... Now, pay close attention to the colors of
the circles on the minimap, as I complete the next 2 pipe squares... That's right, the went from Shiny Uranium-235
green to Factorio-orange, which means the chance
that THESE chunks are selected for enemy expansion are now somewhat reduced... Despite my late start to the anti-enemy-expansion
campaign, the 16-minute mark passes without ruining
my game with a nice new biter expansion right in the
middle of my base... But here we DO find the first expansion,
which happened at the 4-minute mark! 2 nests protected by 2 behemoth worms! Mommy! And a little south we find the 2nd expansion
which happened at the 8-minute mark. We severely lucked out in that NO nests spawned
here, only worms! Unlike biter nests, Worms don't send out attack
parties to come and instakill us the moment they smell
pollution, so that truly is a great save! Also, they settled a little further away from
the base than the expansion chunk indicated. This sometimes happens if the targeted chunk
is too forested and there's no space for the biters to form
a new nest, in that case the biters may settle
against the forest edge nearby the selected chunk instead. But yeah, BEHEMOTH worms... They can easily onehot us,
and just like behemoth biters, they're immune to anything we can throw at
them for a long while... Fortunately they'll only pop up in enemy expansions,
where the worm type is decided by the 100% evolution factor. In all biter bases created upon generating
new terrain, the worm type is decided upon
as a function of distance to the player spawn area...
which means small worms in all nearby nests, medium worms a bit further out and so on. Anyway, the gameplan for the next good bit
is to cover all starting terrain, AND all terrain where our pollution can easily
spread to, with enough pipes to severely reduce the enemy
expansion chance to those chunks... After the pipelaying is complete,
the chance for each affected individual chunk will be roughly decimated,
which is very good news, as just a SINGLE enemy expansion in an unfavorable
location means a hard "game over". Even if we can PERSONALLY avoid contact,
any pollution spreading to any biter nest will cause them to start sending biters to
attack US, and currently we couldn't even deal with MEDIUM
biters attacking us, let alone Big or even Behemoth biters... Anyway, during our campaign
we spot the 16-mute-mark expansion in the south,
and before the 20 minute mark expires, we get a good deal of pipes laid down to protect
our starting area, but despite the fact that the game SHOULD
have generated like 1200 extra chunks outside of the visible
300 or so, the 20-minute expansion STILL happens JUST
outside of the base area, on the West side of the starting lake! Due to the hole in the pollution-absorbing
forest, that might prove to be another game ender
right there! Anyway, while testing I didn't find any way
to stop expanding biters from... well... expanding... Even personally distracting the biters
with fatal consequences for ourselves has no effect,
after they had bitten my head off, the biters just wander straight back
to resume their expansion business... Anyway, next we protect the area up north. Also these chunks are largely unforested,
so pollution from the miners will easily spread up north,
and as the 24-minute mark approaches, I think we denied expansion in the most critical
areas around our spawn point! Before the 28-minute mark we then protect
what's left of the western forest expansion chunks,
and we get a clear vision on the dangerous 20-minute expansion... That's a fairly sizable expansion indeed,
so let's steer clear of those guys! Then we even spot the most recent
and still ongoing expansion effort in the southwest corner! That means that we've now located 4 of the
in total 6 enemy expansions which have happened since the start of the
game! After doing some maintanance on the home bases'
machinery, we head out to place pipes in the LAST unprotected
area adjacent to our starting area: the thick eastern
forests... Wow, I gotta be careful with those
48-range, insta-killing Behemoth Worms though! And NO, it does not really matter where you
place the pipes... Like with most Factorio players,
OCD is working it's dirty magic here, but keeping a pattern is not totally useless,
compared to random scattering, it DOES help to prevent overspending
or locally underprotecting an area somewhat... So yes, it also doesn't need to be pipes per
se... Any player entity placed in any location
counts towards reducing nearby enemy expansion chance... Pipes are just the best entity available to
us at the game start: they are cheap and simple to make. The type of player entity does not matter
however, a piece of pipe, a mining drill, a belt, or
a nuclear reactor all just count as "one entity" in terms of
enemy expansion chance reduction. So, I saved the dense forest parts for last,
as they are relatively safe, as they also function as a natural pollution
barrier, and they're also the most annoying
to actually try to place the pipes into, especially in the OCD-friendly way we are
trying to do. So, as we arrive back at the home base
while approaching the 36-minute mark, our starter area is relatively safe. At least 5 of the 8 enemy expansions
happened in the explored portion of the map, and our pipe-littering efforts,
together with the fact that biters additionally dislike settling expansions near OTHER biters,
means that almost all explored circles are red now,
meaning that from this point on, almost all expansions will likely happen
in the still unexplored part of the generated map. I guess I should show you what that looks
like, so let's use a command to reveal the WHOLE
generated map so far! This is what the
fully generated map looked like at the 20 minute mark... And to compare,
this is the fully generated map at the 8 minute mark...
quite a bit smaller, and with less places for the enemy to expand to. And this is right at the game start,
with almost NO places for the enemy to expand to... So, that's why the expansion RNG factor in
the beginning is so high, especially when accounting for the lazy bastard
achievement! In a normal game, you can start laying pipes
before the 4-minute mark even, but with lazy bastard you're helples
during the first couple expansions. Anyway, that outline I'm using
is the maximum distance from the current player location
at which the game generates new terrain in the background,
so now, at the 36-minute mark, that background terrain generation has fully
stopped, and no new terrain will be generated until
we start exploring out further beyond our base. So, while that means there are still
quite a lot of green circles available for expansion now,
every 4 minutes a blob of those green circles will turn red and once ALL areas are unlikely
for enemy expansion, NO areas are... But for now, we have bought ourselves some
much needed time to get working on one of the other important
achievements! Getting on track like a pro,
or building a train in the first 90 minutes of the game! Almost HALF of that time has passed already,
AND we need to do so without triggering any enemy attacks with
our pollution... But our pollution
is already right about to spread on to this enemy expansion here! We immediately turn OFF all burner miners,
but due to the slow inertia of the pollution cloud,
it's probably already too late... Is this playthrough over still? Find out... Next time :)
No no no, just kidding, we'll just continue and if we're destined
to fail, so be it and let's just get it over with! So, my first 5 attempts all failed after 4
or 8 minutes due to expansion RNG,
and this is the firsy attempt that passed the opening,
so just because this is attempt number 6, it doesn't mean this will succeed from now
on. I just cut those first 5 attempts due to repetetiveness! Let's first go take a look
at what type of enemies we're dealing with here. So basically there's 2 types of enemy spawners
in factorio, the melee biter type, and the ranged spitter
type... Now, if there's a biter nest in here,
there's nothing we can do about it, but if they both are spitter nests,
we may have a chance to get rid of it! And it looks like both nests are spitter nests,
so that is good news! The accompanying pair of ultra-dangerous behemoth
worms though, is NOT so good news! Anyway, so why does that enemy nest potentialle
mean game over? Well, I didn't recognize the danger immediately,
but it is just located in a very unfortunate area... Most of the bases pollution will be generated
from the mines at the ore patches, and we can't move THAT source of pollution! And from the ore patches, there's a clear,
unforested path north and east towards that expansion,
meaning pollution will spread there quickly, like is happening now. So in general, a smallish base
can reach a pollution equilibrium fairly fast. That means, that the pollution cloud grows
to a certain size and then stays that way,
as the terrain and forests will start absorbing pollution
at the same rate as the factory is producing, thus reaching an equilibrium. But due to the miners fixed location,
we don't have much control over the SHAPE of that steady pollution cloud,
and those 2 spitter nests are in such a bad location,
that the pollution cloud reaches there quickly. That means, we either must keep production
EXTREMELY small, which severely stalls progress and gives the
biters too much time to cover all free land with
expansions. That means ultimately WILL expand into my
base or into my pollution cloud, which is game
over. OR we can try to get RID of that unfortunate
spitter expansion, meaning that, from that point on,
we can operate at least a normal sized small base,
while still retaining that pollution equilibrium. If those 2 spitter nests are destroyed,
the pollution cloud can then grow further, and reach many more pollution-absorbing forest
chunks before coming in contact with other biter
bases. It's basically an economic system,
where we can produce only as much pollution as the polluted forest chunks can keep up
scrubbing. If we overproduce,
the pollution cloud grows to reaches biter nests,
which will then send unstoppable attacks. Just 1 behemoth biter in the base and we're
done for. OK, so we expanded our assembler arena,
and we are preparing to switch over to electric mining. Compared to burner mining, electric mining
generates less than half the amount of pollution per
ore produced, meaning we can have double the production
with the same pollution cloud size! And a small portion of that pollution is generated
off-site, at the power plant,
for which we can choose a more favorable location! When building a power plant,
it's a good habit to layout the whole thing and see how it will fit later... That will do. Since we've stopped generating much pollution
after switching of the burner miners, let's check the effect. Great! And it seems NO pollution has actually spread
on the spitters nests, as the right graph only shows
only trees and terrain as pollution absorbers! So, let's start up our electric mining project! We have less than HALF of the 90 minutes remaining
to get a train on the rails, and we still have no base and no research... Can we still make it? We also replace coal with electric miners... The coal patch is located in an even worse
location though, so we have to keep a good eye on pollution
spreading! Anyway, I had a great idea for the layout
of the iron mine in my head, but in practice it's not turning out that
great. The idea was that you can walk the lane in
the center, and from there, we would be able to reach all miners, furnaces
and chests without moving laterally,
to speed up the process of feeding coal and taking the plates. This is the good aspect of the build,
but to achieve it I had to lay out the chests in such an awkward way,
that in the end it won't save me any time, if not cost me more time! I hate this layout already! Anyway, the main hurdle to getting a train
built, is actually the amount of science we need
to do to unlock the damn train. So, the main thing we're focussing on now
is getting all the ingredients together for the red and green science packs,
as well as making the labs to process said science packs. Since we cannot hand craft anything
due to the lazy bastard achievement, we can't be properly lazy
because we just don't have the time for proper automation,
so I'm actually doing a lot of work hand feeding assemblers
to make all the copper wire, iron gears, green circuits,
transport belts, inserters and whatnot, while keeping an eye on our pollution cloud
from time to time. We even think it's safe to add another line
of iron miners... and look at that mess of chests we're creating... Did I mention I don't like my setup? And it turns out we DON'T have
the extra pollution space for the extra miners, as we can see in the pollution graph,
the orange line showing the pollution of the electric miners
ALREADY was at the same level as the blue line showing the former Burner miner
pollution, even BEFORE we added the new miners. Oh well, I'm gonna keep them anyway. And now the real pain begins... Adding the inserters to ouput plates is good,
so the furnaces don't stop producing after filling up with
a stack of plates, but man, now I need to collect from those
awkwardly laid out chests... Don't ask me for a blueprint for THIS setup
please! So, let's take a look at the tech screen
to see what we actually need to unlock trains... Well, it takes roughly 400 green science and
600 red science, let's say... And we barely have half an hour left to get
it done, without even having science setup yet, We don't even have more than our 1 starter lab in our inventory,
so let's first make some more labs! We decide on 12 labs for now,
which means we want 6 pairs of assemblers. Now, you know the panic is setting in
when you just scavenge assemblers off other parts of your base,
instead of just making new ones! But pollution is looking scarily active again,
and when we look at the pollution graph, we can indeed see the spitter nests
are just starting to absorb pollution! Oh No! Even switching off the miners immediately
won't stop this immediately, as the lingering pollution will continue
to spread on the nests for a while, but let's try anyway... Yeah, this is not good... Anyway, the achievement clock will keep ticking
even with the miners switched off, so let's start converting our resources into
science! The rest of the base is FAR less polluting
compared to the miners, so I'm not too scared to leave these assemblers
running... Now, some more awkward chest collecting later,
and we're off on the research patch to trains! But let's DO get military and turrets first,
in case we're attacked by those spitters! While we are unable to defend against even
a single biter, we do stand a small chance against spitters,
as they don't have any damage-ignoring armor like the biters do! Now this is factorio we're playing,
so let's at least automate SOMETHING! Routing the coal belt to the power plant is
always a good first step, and now the belt can act as our coal buffer,
to grab coal for the furnaces later. And once the belt fills up,
the coal miners will stop and so will their pollution! As the logistics science pack tech completes,
we see that the spitter nests pollution absorption curve
is on the downward trend again, and we can see the thresholds we need to cross
for them to send the different types of enemies. Because we noticed immediately and switched
the miners off, the nests absorbed only 11 pollution in total
so far, so as for now, we don't need to expect
more than ONE medium spitter showing up... But we gotta keep a close eye on it in the
future! Anyway, let's start green science production
as well with the belts and assemblers we made earlier, and work on replacing our panic assemblers... Next to more science ingredients,
let's also make a few gun turrets and some ammo
in case the spitters DO send an attack! The funny thing is though,
triggering an attack for the first time by polluting enemy nests
is actually an achievement, which means the game will notify us of the
incoming attack as soon as they start their journey from their
nest to my base! So, at least we don't need to fear a surprise
attack, at least for now! Well, meanwhile we're completely out of resources,
so if we want to have a chance to get the train achievement,
we will have to switch on the miners again, enemy attack or not! Let's hope they were off for long enough
to give us some leeway in the pollution spreading... Let's actually make 2 radars so we can see
something on the map... They won't generate new terrain for the biters
to expand in anymore, but they will slowly reveal and update our
surroundings... And their pollution is paid for exclusively
at the power plant, which is a little further away from the critical
spitter nests... An attack will either target the base or the
coal mine, so let's defend that... ONE single medium spitter is no big deal for
our gun turrets, even for the early game unupgraded ones. So, we quickly smelt a little bit of steel,
which we will need for the rails, the train, and the train's engines. Meanwhile we're researching the most expensive
tech on the way, logistics 2, so we work on getting some more
labs operational... But perhaps we SHOULD have been working
on making more red science first, as research is at a dead standstill while
we place the labs! Ok, so science is running again... Let's not forget to make a few iron sticks,
which we'll need to make the rails later... And again our pollution has started to spread
onto the spitter nests, and this time we noticed a little bit late! It's again off with the miners, continue what
we were doing, and just hope for the best! Less than 15 minutes remaining to getthe achievement! We try to be really careful with our resource
spending, but the problem is, we just don't have enough
resources... So, despite the spitters still absorbing pollution,
we have no other option but to switch on the miners again! Let's not forget to make some engines! A locomotive needs 20 of them,
and they are very slow to assemble, so we use 4 assemblers to make 5 each. Meanwhile my game is lagging out,
messing up my Z-key inputs, slowing me down even more, and with just 10 minutes to go, we start researching the final tech of Railway! Will we make it? It seems like we're good on science, and with all the labs running at full speed,
it looks like we're well ahead of the deadline... Not a single thought of failure pollutes my
mind... The thick smoggy smell of victory is in the
air... I cannot think of any potential problem
that could possibly go wrong now... As the last tech completes, we make and lay out the rails, let the assembler assemble the locomotive, and BAM! We did it! "Getting on Track" and "Getting on Track like
a Pro", the first 2 out of the 38 achievements in
the game! And the spitters where nice enough to postpone
their attack until we were done! Let's quickly switch off the miners,
and prepare for their eventual revenge...
