Automatic Dark Fog LOOT SORTER | MAX DIFFICULTY | #5 | Dyson Sphere Program - Dark Fog | Lets Play

[@MobiusOne1005]

I have to admit, being used to the ordered, blueprinted, symmetrical Nilaus builds in DSP, I am thoroughly enjoying the spaghetti-filled, mild panic builds of this series. It reminds me of the first time I played this game with spaghetti everywhere.

[@CoFloCipher]

Nilaus, I have watched you for years now and this sort of stuff is by FAR my favorite type of content from you! Your super organized stuff is great too but man I've missed this unedited chaotic "figure it out as you go" type content. Thank you!

[@YouCountSheep]

Having them come from one side only is a must, if anyone else struggles with that, build towards the enemy bases, that will shift your "center of mass" that is the destination of the fog and they always choose the shortest path. I started a 1800% run also, took me almost 10 hours to destroy the bases on my homeworld. Now I am cleaning up the mess I made and restructure everything.

[@TehIdiotOne]

Once you get signal towers, those also work for that purpose, attracting their attacks toward one single point

[@YouCountSheep]

@@TehIdiotOne Well that is red science and the droprate of the green dice is reduced when you don't have silicon smelting. You get a few towers from that little bit of loot, but not nearly enough to advance on the bases. And that research is another 400 red and blue.

[@rekrn12345]

They don't always choose the shortest path. Half the time they will even split into multiple groups and go different directions. Basically you have to surround them as soon as possible. He should have signal towers by now also.

[@YouCountSheep]

@@rekrn12345 That happens when the base is on the exact opposite side of your base because they don't start from a single point they come out of their spawners. Because those bases are spread a little and where they are when the threat reaches 100% some will go that way and others another way.

[@epicnab]

I don’t know how he’s still against only 3 bases. In my playthrough DF expanded to 6 bases in the first couple hours, and they were attacking from all sides cause the other bases spawned on the other side of the map

[@micheljolicoeur6094]

@Nilaus, Darkfog is taking a direct path to your power infrastructure, that is why they are flanking your defensive wall.

[@Gazer75]

No idea why hes not understanding this. The closest path from that base is over the pole to what hes building on that side. Would actually be fun if they would swing around after a while to test other sides defenses.

[@MG_Steve]

Yup, they always choose the direct route to the nearest infrastructure. It's why a good tactic is to build a forward defensive line with turrets etc.. nearer to their bases, that way it doesn't matter quite so much how big your base gets, they'll always go after the nearest buildings first, which will be the defensive line. Yes, the AI should learn and bypass it, currently it doesn't appear to so it's a valid tactic. Once this gets patched, the game will get a hell of a lot harder!

[@Steev42]

Yep, Base #3 is the one that always attacks the sides, and it's taking a fairly direct great circle path.

[@Italianburrito]

Nilaus: Sorry for the spaghetti. Me: *Looking at my base on default Dark Fog settings full of envy with how good his base looks*

[@Kruszcontrol]

Finally Nilaus is playing the game the way it was intended--as a giant spaghetti mess. It warms my heart.

[@erichvereen1988]

I’m really enjoying this series. It’s been a long time since we have seen struggling in a Nilaus video, and to have five straight videos of panic and on the fly thinking is refreshing. While I enjoy the ordered base building and engineering oriented gameplay, this is a very entertaining change of pace. 😂 (Stupid autocorrect on the iPhone incorrectly edited my initial post *grrr*)

[@altkev]

I feel like the DSP Dev's die a little inside every time you use a Factorio term to describe something in DSP

[@Maadhawk]

I find it hilarious that Nilaus keeps getting attacked by the farthest biter base into the rear of his factory and he doesn't know why. The closer two have their shortest path directly into the teeth of his turrets. However, the farthest one did as well only until he started building farther and farther back. At that point, because of how straight lines work on a sphere, the shortest path changed to the rear of his factory.

[@lapisliozuli4861]

Brings me back to my days in technical Minecraft building all kinds of mob farms for the drops. My favourite design was in a modded skyblock where my main source of gold was from smelting zombie/skeleton armour.

[@dimlag]

@Nilaus, the Signal Towers, Except for going on the offensive, they offer something else too. They emit a signal to the Dark Fog that makes them go to attack their location. In this case you will reduce the sideways attacks and all you need is a Signal Tower in front of your Missiles

[@singingrazors]

I came up with the same sorting system when I destroyed and rebuilt my entire starting world at one point. Glad to know I wasn't alone in this train of thought.

[@Alexandragon1]

21:00 May be use turrets? LOL 28:11Finally! Happy New Year, @Nilaus ! Thx for the video!

[@fare-5174]

just move the power generators closer to the defensive line, the Fog is aiming for where your center of power production is and your power plants are generating way more than wind turbines; if you put a bunch of coal burners next to turrets, you can finally relax a bit.

[@MikelNaUsaCom]

FYI, don't let your guard down after you defeat them in a system. I assumed once I wiped out everything in the system, it was mine, however, after a couple of hours (after removing defenses from 2 out of 3 planets) they rebuilt the hives and started new assaults... word to the wise, keep a signal tower network on your planets and at-least a small defense force in place on each one, that way any invasions are knocked out before they can re-establish a foothold. =D

[@PupOrionSirius26]

2 things to point out. Always expect attacks from every direction. Also why set a filter sorter and then a sorter with a box on it separately? Just set a box on the sorter with a filter to pick up that item directly from the sushi belt. Set a filter out one direction only to pull that same item and use it in your automation set up. Or to additional storage as needed.

[@dumaskhan]

Battle stations are the biggest argument for letting logistics bots pick up from boxes with multiple items. Plop a hat on a box, and set to provide all. and then let different areas call from it and you won't need to do filter everything.

[@ExiTuMHD]

i build a sorter as well for the dark fog loot, but why do you pick up wood and leaves, you can disable what you dont wanna pick up in the Battle Analy B. and a little tipp i build some thermal power plants in the blue print as well, they use the energy dark fog splitters and Graphene to power themselves with a buffer (loot dropp).

[@joshuarogalsky8379]

Really excited to see Nilaus go on the attack and attempt to take out the Dark Fog bases!!

[@deanlawson6880]

Great Episode Nilaus! Lots of good incoming attacks action! It's so very Factorio of you to build that incoming loot sorter, but also so very useful. Nicely Done!

[@disconap.d5214]

the fog strikes from the flank yet again!!!!

[@omnimous69]

The moment you had to go to level 2 on that belt was the moment the build hit spaghetti lol love your game play!

[@stollie7608]

You can turn down the alert sound in audio settings so its not constantly beeping in your ear :)

[@Philmo888]

Thanks again for your blueprints - they save so much time. On your Loot sorter there a few incorrect filters set (I think nearer the end of the line - well they were as of Friday 5th January anyway).

[@AhmadSammy]

It’s ok to say Purple Science by mistake. After all Blue + Red = Purple

[@0x0404]

If the dark fog had some sort of destruction heatmap that they ended up avoiding for pathing that would be interesting.

[@neoasdrubaul]

Nice one. Thanks again.

[@MrLancar]

He is so insanely lucky in this run. It seems everyone I hear talking about max diff is that they always get 1-2 extra bases land on the starter planet rather fast, making the only 3 that Nilaus is facing a cakewalk in comparison. I mean, once you got signal towers and a few rows of missiles up then it doesn't really matter anymore, but up until then it's a real slog.

[@Verechter]

What i did( by accident mostly) was make a tower of boxes on a splitter and then, have sorters with filter put it on belts to planetary towers, since there's 12 places for sorters on each box there's plenty, even withT1 sorters.

[@dimaworld2448]

I have to admit, only Nilaus can play on max difficulty against three bases))) I tried but they just crushed me, 1 wave somehow turned out that they attacked me with all 3 bases at the same time, 180 units each, the biggest problem is the lack of space, but I came up with a tactic to build base first without giving it energy, I will try my luck again ) and thank you for the blueprint for sorting loot!

[@SimpleBanana]

looks like the center of your base has moved to the opposite side of that one hive so the shortest path varies a lot based on where the units are around there hive. I'd rush signal towers to defend the sides. Edit: nevermind I spoke too soon.

[@DrDoktor60]

Highest difficulty tips: Pause science is your friend. A significant amount of energy goes into research. Allows you to more easily control when raids happens. Move closer to the enemy base when the game starts. Do not use the initial starting position. It is much harder to control where the enemy comes from.

[@tiolavara13]

Geodesics can look counter intuitive, I love the videos btw :D

[@throwitouttheairlock9556]

I’ve essentially completed the game rn (I’m currently in the final stages of building a Dyson sphere in my home system but I didn’t even know secret dark fog tech even existed so having cleared the fog from my home system entirely I found one with stalagmite bc I needed that anyway and set up probably close to 100 laser turrets, 20 missile turrets, and a fuck ton of other shit to power it and get some production up and running, it’s been doing it’s thing for the last 7 hours and I’ve got 4 level 18 bases and 1 level 19, waiting for the final bits of tech soon!

[@DasLama69]

With your spliters have an alternate 2nd out that loops back into a second splitter. This provides an alternate path in case you ever get a blockage and will feed down the line for bulk collection

[@PhrazeMuzik]

Planetary defense system is important, use those laser turrets for your first defense, save resources.

[@crazymammoth]

i love this series

[@sintaxera]

Im gonna need you to stop sleeping so you can make 8 hours of this a day. riveting

[@CaffeinatedFingers]

With Rampage, the center hive will plant two more landing sites on other parts of planet to get waves sources up to 5, yes? Won't that make long term control over wave direction near impossible unless you can close and take out the landing sites?

[@blkspade23]

It would be smart if they were actively trying to avoid your defenses, but those 2nd waves seem to fly to the launchers almost because they start pulling power when launching on the flanks. I think its likely at some point prior/during a raid they're picking the highest draw buildings.

[@madeinsergei8492]

Nilaus, I think I know why that hive in the back is going to the sides of your base, from the looks of it, raid troops aren't allowed to cut through another hive base (might be some dev issues). So they go around the 2 hives in the front by selecting the nearest target that isn't blocked by another hive base, which is why the 2 front one attacks at the frontline, while the one in the back is going to the sides.

[@salionshatterstar]

I think it's more that he extended his factory backwards and sideways, so that the closest attack vector from that base is now a different route around the sphere.

[@madeinsergei8492]

@@salionshatterstar I thought so too, but judging from the distances between both sides to the frontline, it doesn't seem like its close enough, unless there's another factor which prompts it to attack from the sides (power gens?). until we can get a good look at the distances from his build to the hive we can't say for sure.

[@salionshatterstar]

@madeinsergei8492 It's so hard to tell distances on a 2-d representation of a spherical surface. I suppose I've been assuming two things: 1) When setting an initial direction, groups of dark fog units have a weighted target metric that considers not just proximity of buildings, but also the density of power generation/consumption. (This is what it has seemed like to me, but I should question my anecdotal assumptions.) 2) By extending his wind fields in the directions Nilaus has, the distance to the edge of those fields has shortened enough and the weight has increased enough to make an alternative axis preferred. So I guess I've now turned my assumption into a hypothesis. Hmm...I wonder if there's a reliable way to test aggro mechanics...

[@walter2945]

dark fog will fly through other bases. tested

[@MikelNaUsaCom]

also, don't let your guard down after you defeat them in a system. I assumed once I wiped out everything in the system, it was mine, however, after a couple of hours (after removing defenses from 2 out of 3 planets) they rebuilt the hives and started new assaults... word to the wise, keep a signal tower network on your planets and at-least a small defense force in place on each one, that way any invasions are knocked out before they can re-establish a foothold. =D

[@robinfox4440]

Wow, the game's changed a lot since I last played it. I was aware they brought in an enemy and combat mechanics, but a lot of the UI has changed, there are new buildings I'm unfamiliar with, and there seems to have been some QoL changes too. I should give it another go!

[@JAY-fq7sb]

Absolutely enjoy your blueprints and by studding the way you have built I have become a better factory builder myself. Thank you for the hard work and dedication you have put into this project! 😉😁👍

[@michaeldavis8549]

Also want to mention that you are heroically patient with the attacks and buildings being destroyed. I am frustrated to no end rebuilding things.

[@Justin123434]

"I can't believe people still don't know to use tab with splitters" - TIL after 147 hours in DSP

[@thet00nl1nk3]

Not sure if you know this yet... (yes I could tell you on twitch which i'm already subbed at but I didn't make this stream so watching it here) but you can just click the button at the top left of the ui in the battlefield analysis units that has like a box with recycle symbol to toggle auto-pickup instead of limiting all the slots to red

[@jamieridenour1275]

(Thor’s voice) - “ANOTHER!”

[@mysticvoid7x966]

it's funny how confused Nilizus seems to be by 1 of the 3 hives attacking from the side while the other 2 attack in the "front"

[@joshuarogalsky8379]

Your right, its definitely just the one in the back that splits to the sides.

[@michaeldavis8549]

I love this idea, but why not just filtered boxes on top of a single splitter? Or is it to visualize where the backlog starts?

[@kavitiko335]

Storage space. As soon as one thing fills up, the whole setup upstream jams. The more boxes, the more room

[@salionshatterstar]

I think @michaeldavis8549 is right. His method would keep the same number of boxes, but halve the number of splitters, belts, and overall footprint.

[@YouCountSheep]

There are multiple ways, but usually exporting the loot will always back up regardless if you use a splitter no matter how high you make it. In my case optical grating crystal backed one of my filters up because I didn't use so much of it. There is a no back up solution, but that requires alot more research and setup.

[@MetalHev]

@@YouCountSheep I mean, you can just feed each of the 9 outputs of the base each into its own box. Then just copy the design 6-7 times as the hive levels up and more drops enter the loot table. All you need are some boxes, some splitters, some sorters, and tier 1 belts. Its pretty small too.

[@YouCountSheep]

@@MetalHev There are over 50 drops which means you need 6 individual bases which will not loot everything because they can't be at the same place at once, hence you want 1 base with 5 boxes on top, because the second stack of box has all 12 ports available + 9 on the base itself, its a belt mess but the only way you can grab everything without having different versions. But you probably don't want everything, like steel iron and copper you can totally neglect aswell as titanium and brick and steel, wood and plantfiber and probably everything up to lvl 12, so it is manageable in one base.

[@Voltlighter]

They're pathing to your thermal generators. If you deleted a few missile turrets to really snuggle your thermals deep into the defense wall, they won't bother with the rest of the base.

[@darianleyer5777]

Also, the Icarus Mecha has a built-in LASER system.

[@matteocdt5214]

keep in mind that signal towers require silicon crystals to make. pretty sure crystal smelting is not on the queue...

[@rekrn12345]

They drop it quite a lot so its not a big deal.

[@argspid]

The dark fog will drop stuff as long as you've researched either the tech or something that requires it. On his stream, Nilaus farmed motors before researching them because he went for missile turrets, and they need motors. For example.

[@AaronGearheart]

"I cant believe there are people who still don't know tab to get different splitter organizations" Wait wtf you can do that?? Im 30 hours in and I never knew that!

[@giin97]

Lol. Take a gander at the tooltips sometimes, there's some interesting stuff. Today I discovered that while right-clicking items in a logistics station to take them to your inventory, the further you move your mouse from the menu vertically, the slower and more precise the selector. And holding shift makes it jump by stack amount.

[@owendmartin]

holding shift....that would have been nice to know 100...ish hours ago.

[@darianleyer5777]

I've noticed that it's always the same Planet Fog Base that attacks from the side of your base.

[@predur4136]

at least, since they persist in not taking the path to Valhalla, the attacks have been desynchronized... I think it could also be a strategy, to keep a single unit stalled, or at least a few on one of those self-repairing towers. .. it seems that if the attack doesn't end another one won't start...

[@BMO_Creative]

Once you get signal towers, you can go on the offensive right?

[@joshuarogalsky8379]

Thats what im waiting to see, you can't under estimate the offensive attack tho, as the enemy gets super charged base and the ships come out very quickly. Still very excited to see how that plays out.

[@BMO_Creative]

in war and factory making the best defense is a good offense! LOL

[@blkspade23]

You don't even technically need the towers. By the 4th-5th wave in my play though , I burned crude in 3-4 thermal gens from a deposit close to their bases used solely for an assault. Discovered that the impact Cannons are basically mortars, and kept inching them closer. 2-3 of those wreck the base pretty quickly from just outside of their laser turret range.

[@BMO_Creative]

awh man, I thought you posted a video of your playthrough... you play the guitar really good tho! LOL

[@LukasThelen]

25:30: I think i understand why: The reason the enemy robots are starting to flank is because the A.I. is starting to realize that it was facing an obstacle on its pathway.

[@MrSamogot]

the most rathe stressful part is spaghetti ) but we love anyway

[@Aldrasio]

I might be missing something, but with the loot sorter design, are the filter splitters before the boxes necessary? Since the boxes have filters set on their items, couldn't you just run the belt directly through the splitters with boxes on them and have the boxes pick up their corresponding items with their filters?

[@aracuron9956]

All these beautifull rockets in the sky. You are early with the fireworks.... Well only if you sit in the wrong location. Happy New Year to you. Oh wait... That was not Silvester rockets..... Never mind, it looked good. So far it dont Look like this World became your Alamo. Maybe its more a "this is Sparta" Moment for you, especially if you add signaltowers.

[@Cloakdasasin0]

You should have moved the old turret line to the flanks when you finished the missile turrets.

[@Tolastun]

you already know this since i am just learning the game from watching your videos, but... you should get signal towers and then setup some signal tower lines out ahead of your base to catch them before hand and just move them out ahead each time you start to expand until you get rid of them on the planet

[@kavitiko335]

Just be mindful of the typical sushi belt sorting problems: As soon as 1 thing jams... x.x Struggling with my own form of sorter right now. Dark Fog Shards keeps clogging me up faster than I can burn it.

[@AbsoluteHuman]

You can make a bypass in case of blockage

[@merendell]

If it's too much of a hassle you can ban particular drops in the battlefield base. One of the filters lets you globally block that particular item from dropping.

[@kavitiko335]

@@merendell problem is with stuff like motors: you don't want to ban them because you use them for belts and stuff, so they are very useful and used very often and in large quantities - but still frequently back up when you dont use them.

[@craidiefin]

@@AbsoluteHuman The problem is that they jam the sushi belt itself, the only way around this is to use filtered sorters and 9 items per bab(chest(s) ontop to increase that). 6 babs gets you all the loot and it CAN'T jam

[@AbsoluteHuman]

@@craidiefin you can make a temporary solution by adding a bypass to every splitter and feeding the excess to a big vault at the end that can be later recycled to the entrance with low priority feed. It sounds complicated but it's not that bad and should work rather long.

[@UncleKennybobs]

There's nothing odd about an enemy flanking your defences.

[@CaseyRamo]

Are they heading for your power generation perhaps? 😏

[@mikeprior4202]

Where did all that soil pile come from?

[@Pyromanemac]

How far away are the towers for the missiles? Those should solve a lot of the base defense problems I imagine.

[@mysticvoid7x966]

I wonder if dark fog targets power output buildings first unless fired at.

[@Zelk1]

started playing this game beaus of Nilaus got killed by the dark fog bc i did not know what i was doing

[@RBAWintrow]

at this point you have anough launchers to circle the enemy bases with signal towers.

[@chimmy_jim]

riveting content

[@williamkarkaba]

Somewhere we can get blueprint that he uses? I want the material separation 😮

[@sawyeriii]

Make those prototypes for your BABs

[@kokishorttail3471]

It’s only hive *3 that’s attacking the flanks.

[@fasddfadfgasdgs]

tbh playing on max difficulty it seems like you need to make a perimeter with defenses. Having 1 section then expanding will change where the dark fog will attack.

[@JohnMeinel]

I believe your red vs blue ratio is off. IIRC you need 2x the number of red science research vs your blue. If you aren't making enough hydrogen then you could use that to decrease your consumption to make more missiles.

[@EIG12]

Part of me is starting to think that missiles are a sort of jack of all trades master of none defense. You can use them for every single task, but they are by far the most expensive with regards to ammo of every tower type. ... honestly, they are fairly costly compared to the drones, with a single unit of missiles being somewhat comparable to one or two prototype drones in resources, and the prototypes are in theory reusable.

[@maevrik]

With towers, missiles can reach the other side of the planet without any direct line of sight. Is this something drones can do?

[@EIG12]

@@maevrik I'll admit, they cannot do that automatically, and I'm still testing to see if they would act as an instant response to new bases, but the last patch did make it so that planetary shields stop new bases from being made under them. I'm just not sure that for taking out bases it isn't better to establish an artillery base close enough and then use that to break the base. Possibly even just use drones when you have enough tech in drone force size.

[@ruukinen]

@@maevrik Afaik you can just use the map view to order them to go wherever on the planet.

[@chemie7037]

signal towers need crystal silicon which needs to be researched (red); you clicked on it and moved straight by it....

[@Erkle64]

Apparently once the signal tower research finishes the fog will start dropping crystal silicon.

[@gregorbasse]

Are they targeting your powerplant?

[@AlessandroCattabiani]

I am playing max difficulty at 1200%. I have 4 planet hives in my starting planet and no silicon (obv). The only planet with silicon has less than 1M and 10+ bases. A little hard for my second planet. Thus, I want to perfect farm the dark fog. I am struggling with the loot. They drop sooo much loot. The sorting cannot keep up even with higher level belts. Filtering out is a strict no: it is against my OCD. Killing the bases is against my OCD too. Also, this system fails when a box is filled up. Is there something to destroy items? Atm I am thinking of changing this setup and use a sorter instead of a splitter to deviate the items. Why? Because if a line with something like copper is filled up the sorter lets flow of the main belt go. With splitters everything gets clogged. The item that passes through can be used later in another factory down the line. However, I am not sure. I also devised a way to get the same behavior with splitters but it is too bulky for my ocd. I am also thinking of progressing towards towers and just stuff everything there. Comments? Suggestions?

[@c9zyra294]

Wont signal tower help him against thoses attack from the side? Edit: i wrote this before he researched signal tower as first red science.

[@WardoctorGaming]

man i have 5 planetary bases atacking me xD it started with just 3 but for some reason 2 more appear ^_^ well it was hard at the start now i have a perma dark fog farm xD

[@MirageGSM]

You deleted the Mecha core from the research queue instead of the Green Engines.

[@ElectricalInsanity]

Ding...Ding...Ding... Ding...Ding...Ding... Loving the new DSP Soundtrack

[@flesby]

Became completly impossible to play along during this episode, in my game almost every attack came from the sides and the back. You are in luck, I could not rebuild my base as fast as it was destroyed.

[@LaMainy]

Doesnt seem like ur enjoying it much anymore. You not doing anything about the attacks from the side is getting annoying to watch.

[@NeedItForFacebook]

OKAy i know u have more vids than this up. BUT WHY are u not pushing the turret line further and further up to there bases??? Then surround em just outside so that u dont trigger the space attacks but keep em controlled? Then can use the rest of the planets recourses freely!