Despite what I said about being afraid, I couldn’t resist trying a run on default settings with this mod. I’m pleased to say that, thanks in no small part to applying what I’ve learned from your past series, I’ve lasted 15 hours so far, and built a flamethrower-defended double-walled base!
I was lucky enough to roll a viable biter-free starting area on the first try, and didn’t need to restart. Early game has been a careful, slow accumulation of resources through sporadic hand-fed smelting and hand-crafting, while tightly managing pollution to prevent any attacks. All science has been hand-fed assemblers; the only belt I’ve laid after 15 hours is to bring in stone from an outpost for making walls.
It definitely helped that I made an early effort to devalue the local property with random (ok, not random, actually chunk-aligned) clumps of pipes and stone furnaces, and explored distant lands with my car to expose more valuable real estate for biter expansion.
Rushing to flamethrower turrets was essential for defense, though I’ve so far I have tried not to depend on them. It’s amazing how many walls a behemoth biter can nibble through despite being on fire. Explosives were the key to making offensive action possible - rockets to take down behemoth worms, and landmines to slow down everyone else long enough to apply a liberal dose of fire.
Anyway, now that I managed to clear my immediate neighbors, it may finally be time to set up a real smelting line, and perhaps even automate red and green science for the first time! Rocket launch may yet be possible, but the challenge definitely isn’t over yet, and I have a long way to go.
