Ranking Factorio Defenses - Tier List

[@givikap120]

Flamethrower is absolute OP thing when it comes to high difficulty, because it unlock it with blue science and it can be used up to green biters without any upgrades, because not only DPS is insane it's also doing splash damage It's literally your only savior against blue biters that appeared too early, because red-ammo turrets and lazers without damage upgrade are very weak against blue biters So if you're playing on a deathworld - even one flamethrower in addition to your normal lazer turret spam will increase your defense capabilities in multiple times

[@Hadriex]

Yeah. 100% agree. Been in multiple deathworlds. Flamethrower leaves fire the damages further biters, uses shockingly little fuel and is the most effective turret on Nauvis. Even late game a wall of fire is still a wall of fire they have to stand in while your other turrets do their work.

[@ruukinen]

I was gonna say the same thing. No way you rank the cheapest turret type that will deal with anything on Nauvis without upgrades below S tier. The ammo for them is even more 'free' than electricity as one pump with some storage will easily keep up for eternity for a whole wall section of them.

[@PeterZaitcev]

After flamethrower destroyed my artillery train on its way home I wanted to un-research damage upgrades.

[@panatutapapapa3]

you only need to see dosh's run on death world with rampant mod to see that flamethrowers are the best in damage/ammo ratio

[@logan5018]

flamers got absolutely shafted. anyone thats played a deathworld or rampant knows theyre absolutely invaluable

[@DrRussian]

Even on normal worlds, I always have 1 flamer for every 4 guns. They significantly reduce ammo usage for the small cost of a bit of oil and a pipeline.

[@erichimmelblau877]

Where is the Locomotive Chainsaw?

[@jenteelsinga]

Trainsaw*

[@Богдан-г6ы6ч]

Its like a tonn of trains mowing around ur base that is allmost fully cover perimeter of ur base like all track is filled and theres one train missing

[@ruukinen]

@@Богдан-г6ы6ч D tier.

[@GizmosShop]

Fun Tier

[@sakomeow]

hope you were joking when you said people don't use the flamer

[@unbearablysmug2437]

Bruh is your pfp cropped 34?

[@Netist_]

The most overpowered turret, used by anyone who is proficient in the game mechanics: C tier

[@happyzomby6526]

Y try rampant without ^^

[@seikanekasin]

It actually more impressive when you consider he made up downsides for it like "Requires oil" and "Mini range" when everyone knows that a line of walls and a SINGLE pumpjack means you won the early mid and even part of the late game deffense. So you know... even with made up bs C tier is impressive i guess.

[@Laci11280]

​@@seikanekasinI think he meant that by the time you unlock flamers, you also unlock lasers, which are far more foolproof overall, because they have a full 360° coverage, and there is absolutely nothing stopping you from just spamming them with normal world settings. Flamers may be great, but lasers are very much good enough to spam everywhere in the game besides space. You just automate them early and get on with your day.

[@seikanekasin]

@@Laci11280 Lasers are not better though- they require a insane amount of early game resources compared to Flame throwers whose ammo is free and are realtively cheap if you factor in gun turrets needing ammo, and Laser's base cost and the extra power gen and coal drain you are gonna suffer in the early game. Flamethrowers not only do not require power to work but also are free to run.

[@Laci11280]

@@seikanekasin I'm usually not in a rush. A few more hours of making solar panels is just not a problem for a significant portion of players. Biters are not a big enough problem to make lasers unviable, not by a long shot. On normal settings, there is nothing wrong with just going with comfortable options, and maybe it's just because I didn't use a whole lot of flamers before, but I find lasers way more predictable, so it's easier for me to trust. If you use solar the proper way, you can just way overbuild laser defences, like 2 straight rows around the whole perimeter and the upkeep will cost literally nothing. Of course, you don't need to do 2 straight rows, but there is literally nothing stopping you, and that way you can be absolutely certain that nothing will ever even scratch your defences (besides the ocassional worm). After unlocking artillery, perimeter defences become more akin to decorations, so I guess this debate doesn't really matter, but you 100% can get away with lasers only everywhere except space on normal settings.

[@macdjord]

Few things you missed: - Resource efficiency! Specifically in the early game. Gun turrets consume ammo, which costs resources to make. On higher difficulties, you can even get into a situation where the ammo required to kill a single biter creates more pollution to make than that biter cost to spawn, resulting in a death spiral. Flamethrower turrets, on the other hand, require only a *tiny* amount of oil per shot, and are available much, much sooner than laser turrets. Many Deathworld runs come down to 'can I get oil and flamethrowers working before the bugs kill me?'. - On Gleba, while your primary defenses will be tesla and/or rocket turrets, you still want some gun or laser turrets backing them up. The strafer pentapod's projectile spawns a wriggler when it hits, and having a line of gun or laser turrets to take those out means the tesla and rocket turrets, both of which are rather slow-firing, don't have to waste time doing so. (It's especially important with rocket turrets, which have a minimum range and, if using explosive rockets, will cause friendly fire.) - Land mines have a niche use: biter eggs and pentapod eggs. Both of these spoil into their respective enemy after a certain period. Worse, because all items in a stack share the same spoil timer, if you have a full stack of them spoil, you suddenly have _50_ biters or pentapods spawning at once in the middle of your base! However, if you surround the chest where the eggs are stored with a few land mines, then the moment the enemies spawn, they set off the mines, which do area damage, thus killing them all at once. (The explosion usually also destroys the chest, which is actually a good thing, since destroying a chest destroys all the items in the chest, meaning if you has any additional stacks of eggs in there that were just about to spoil, they are no longer a problem.) - Railguns cannot fire over walls; their projectile will damage anything friend or foe, that's in its path when it fires. This makes them a lot less useful on Nauvis, where walls are standard, but is less of a problem on Gleba, where many enemies can just walk right over walls anyway. - Railguns can be useful on Gleba, where even the smallest stompers have more HP than behemoth biters on Nauvis. - Railguns and artillery are both useful for killing demolishers on Vulcanus. Though technically that's not them being *defenses* but *offenses~*

[@ruukinen]

Railgun turrets are incredibly dumb to use against demolishers that you can one shot with the handheld version.

[@alexlowe2054]

"You can use them all based on your playstyle." I see this man has never tried to use laser turrets on Gleba. Not putting flamethrowers in S tier is crazy. It's dramatically easier to run a bunch of pipes for oil than it is to run ammo belts for gun turrets. A single flamethrower and a single layer of wall can deal with most attacks and even behemoth expansion parties. Go watch some Dosh deathworld videos for an example of how flamethrowers are the only turret in the vanilla game capable of handling the higher difficulties. Watch that one Michael Hendriks video where he supplies his entire endgame deathworld base from a single pumpjack, where flamethrowers are his only defense. The oil consumption is negligible, for a turret that can single handedly take care of all of Nauvis, which is 50% of the base defense you need in the game. Deathworld is basically a rush to get flamethrowers as fast as possible. So much so that a 1000x science playthrough I saw was getting close to skipping unlocking splitters to rush flamethrowers even faster. Seriously, they're the best turret on Nauvis by a huge margin. Nothing even comes close for a turret that only needs red/green science and ~50 military science that you can just craft by hand while you're building the rest of your base. As for rating turrets based on their use in space platforms, that's a bit silly. The space platforms don't function like regular base defenses. There's a clear and obvious progression required for space platforms. One a single type of turret can take care of each type of asteroid, so there's not much use in considering the use on space platforms, because it's a lock and key puzzle. Use gun turrets for the small asteroids, or die. Use rockets for the large asteroids, or die. Use railguns for the massive asteroids, or die. There's not really any choice, so rating them just doesn't make sense. If you want to play Space Age, you are forced to use the turrets the developers intended. Which brings a lot more logic to putting railguns at F tier. They're only used on space platforms, and they destroy your own walls and any other turrets in front. Which makes them useless for anything other than killing demolishers or massive asteroids. It probably makes more sense to rate base defense with two separate tier lists, one for Nauvis, and another for Gleba. Based on that, flamethrowers and lasers are high tier on Nauvis, and the rocket turrets and tesla turrets are high tier on Gleba. Seriously though, if you don't think flamethrowers are S tier, just try playing a deathworld game without them. Gun turrets consume way too much iron to deal with the biters, so the pollution from producing ammo can trigger more attacks than you can kill with that ammo. Relying on gun turrets is a slow death spiral. Meanwhile, lasers almost require nuclear before you can sustain base defense with them, because boilers produce a ton of pollution which leads to the same problem as gun turrets, and solar demands room and steel you simply don't have. With just laser shooting speed 3, each laser can consume ~3MW of power just to fire for a second. That's 100k of iron just for enough solar and accumulators to fire a single turret constantly. Plus, the passive power drain of lasers creates a ton of pollution surprisingly quickly. You're looking at trying to kill waves of big biters with regular gun turrets before you can get nuclear set up to power your lasers. Good luck. Lasers are substantially more expensive at a critical time during biter evolution. Flamethrowers are the back of any good Nauvis standing defense. If you don't think so, you haven't been playing on higher difficulties that show the weakness of the other turrets. With even just a small bit more difficulty, flamethrowers quickly come out on top as the most powerful turret on Nauvis. And if you're not playing on higher difficulties, then base defense on Nauvis barely matters, because the biters aren't a serious threat.

[@natanielantonmoroz1139]

Whats wrong with laser on Gleba?

[@Omnifarious0]

I use lasers on space platforms to handle asteroids ambling in from the sides or behind. They're terrible, but for slow moving medium or small asteroids, they're good enough.

[@ruukinen]

Railgun turrets are also useless against demolishers. Just use the weapon version instead. Why go through the hassle of getting electricity setup for a weapon that only fires in a narrow cone, when you can carry a similar weapon on your character. But yeah flamethrower turrets are so far above all other turret types, except maybe artillery, that it's not even close.

[@marksw5499]

Flamethrower on Nauvis is definitely at least B tier

[@the1unic]

Yeah the inexpensive splash damage is pivotal in defending larger biter rushes on Nauvis at insignificant cost, and I would argue that piping oil is as easy, if not easier, than supplying ammo to gun turrets.

[@DEMEMZEA]

Flamethrower on Nauvis is S tier.

[@flickotheswaggod5235]

S++

[@calleastrom6557]

No they're easily s tier, I only use flamethrowers on nauvis

[@Slavicplayer251]

flamethrowers are god tier defensives

[@MK_MitKit]

S - artillery and flame A - tesla B - laser and gun C - rocket D - railgun

[@MK_MitKit]

flame turrets are easily the best on nauvis, needing only a single pumpjack to supply an entire perimeter defense. gun and laser turrets can largely be skipped over for this reason, but they are helpful for support and special tasks. tesla turret is extremely helpful on gleba and great for support even on nauvis. rocket and railgun turrets force the player to use them.

[@Laci11280]

​@@MK_MitKitI mostly agree, but I tend to use only lasers on Nauvis. They are very comfortable and easy to reinforce if needed. I just automate them alongside solar early, they are infinitely more convenient than gun turrets. I also use lasers offensively, they used to be quite convenient for that, but now that I learned you can just include ammo in blueprints, they may have lost their edge there. I still think lasers are on par with teslas in overall usefulness, mainly because by the time you unlock teslas, they have kinda lost their relevance, thanks to artilery. If you just outpace your pollution with your artilery range, suddenly defense becomes no longer relevant, because you will have no biter bases in generated chunks, meaning you have achieved world peace. This is way easier to do than I used to believe.

[@michasokoowski6651]

Flamethrower singlehandedly carried me through the massive biters settings deathworld... lets just say they were firing 100% of the time and the whole map outside my base was just red. And slow projectile doesnt really matter that much when it has support from other turrets, it will deal massive damage to everything behind the first enemy making it hold the line extremaly well (as you can see in 8:20)

[@AndrewChumKaser]

Railgun is also very restricted in terms of placement because you essentially need to keep their front unblocked because they'll punch through your walls and destroy them when they fire, which is another contributor towards their heavily restricted placement. They have exactly one use outside of the trip to the shattered planet, and that's oneshotting demolishers. That's all they're good for.

[@Soul-Burn]

They don't, however, destroy cliffs. So if you build on a cliff, they are excellent.

[@ruukinen]

They suck against demolishers because you have a clearly superior weapon for them, the handheld railgun. And yes, it will one shot large demolishers.

[@Cyber_Cheese]

Flames done dirty here! Pipes are pretty easy to connect, the amount of oil they actually use is insanely low, and oil sources are infinite. Artillery is great but overrated here. you've already had to secure nauvis before you left. It's pretty good for proactive defence on Gleba Glad to see railguns this low. Friendly firing in front of them, only used because the game railroads you into using them with huge asteroids Bots carry ammo, what? That seems so wasteful. Your wall has a perimeter, use a belt loop and supply them all Missing pipe walls, which are a decent bridge to real walls. Great list, enjoyed the vid

[@peenkle6857]

flamethrowers are straight up op especially with light oil, if you are willing to work a little (make a pipeline and a tiny refinery site for light oil) they will clear anything you need without having to worry about setting up a nuclear or mass solar or have to upkeep ammo. i used flamethrowers only for my largest base that did around 1.5k spm (only have 700 hours don't hound me) and i never got a single building destroyed alert in the entire 140 hour run Probably should've mentioned this only counts for nauvis in the beginning but alas

[@schwarzerritter5724]

Does light oil make that much of a difference? I use it, because it is the most convenient fuel most of the time, since it is used to make train fuel. But oil fields are defended with crude oil.

[@theenigma8494]

@@schwarzerritter5724 light oil does 10% more damage than crude and 5% more than heavy

[@schwarzerritter5724]

@@theenigma8494 Heavy oil is definitely the least convenient, since you are processing it into lubricant or light oil right next to the refinery.

[@peenkle6857]

@schwarzerritter5724 with the damage upgrades they deal with behemoths better than crude, you can probably still manage with only crude oil but it's personal preference at that point though expect the occasional alert if you just let the biters do as they please and you only have crude oil

[@admiraltygaming3756]

Haha, if I redid this list I'd probably put flame turrets higher. I personally love them and use them all the time but I think the setup makes a lot of players forgo them for the easier turrets.

[@davinderc]

Artillery does not negate the need for defense... What are you going to do when the biters from the nest you just destroyed walk up to your base? Gotta deal with them!

[@ruukinen]

You presumably already have some defences, and the artillery pushes the bases back, so you generate less attacks in the long run.

[@shiinondogewalker2809]

true they localize the need for defence to the areas around your artillery turrets

[@salamelek9603]

You are getting the landmines notification because for a few seconds they are vulnerable to biter attack and aren't armed yet. If you wait a bit, they will arm themselves and wont be vulnerable anymore

[@Trainsnek]

Landmines being D tier is criminal, they replace every other type of defence as long as you have bots. Landmines are - Cheap, autonomous (They are great for anti-expansion walls), quick to build, have insane damage, serve as an offensive tool. Annoyance is a very stupid thing to judge the mines for. Also you can often make bugs ignore mines if you place an empty turret to lure the bugs to Also gun turrets suck ass with the expenses of ammunition and their logistics.

[@salamelek9603]

even better: landmines have an initial timer during which they are vulnerable to biters and will get destroyes by them without killing them. That's why you get pings. After the timer is up, the landmine activates and can't be destroyed

[@bruh1322]

You have got to be out of your crack-smoking mind if you put THE undisputed s-tier flame turret in C.

[@MR0KITTY]

Tesla turrets have an insane standby power of 1 MW each, making them the biggest consumer on Gleba. Tho it isn't like Gleba uses much power aside from that.... Landmines are also useless/bugged on Gleba: Stompers tend to stomp on them and not take damage.

[@ToppledTurtle834]

Not sure it is a bug. Stompers just seem to be immune to the land mines

[@UnknownSquid]

Stompers definitely aren't immune to landmines, since I've used mines as my primary defence on Gleba. The issue with stompers is that their "stomp attack" has an AoE, which means they destroy any mines they stomp near. This gives you the alert noise for coming under attack, but does still deal the mines damage to the stomper. The drawback of this is that it doesn't seem to trigger the mines stun effect on the enemy. Small stompers tend to trigger them normally due to having a smaller "stomp" area, getting stunned and dying in just a few mines. The medium and large ones are more likely to detonate the mines early and run through the mines, but they'll still take huge damage as they charge through. The mines also stop the other pentapod types with incredible ease. Based on my experience with them, I'd actually highly recommend mines on Gleba. You can get them set up faster than rocket turrets, and they're insanely cheap to produce, much cheaper than rockets whilst dealing more damage. By the time the large stompers start showing up and hitting the HP threshold to clear the mines, you'll be ready to back them up with some rocket turrets behind them, or will have the energy infrastructure set up to sustainably power tesla turrets.

[@viltur83]

Flamethrower feels low. It has been the core of most mega defence on navus pre space and still are the strongest turret before you go to space

[@nostory994]

Generally agree to most of your statements. I was missing some stuff though -Mentioning demolishers and what turrets are useful would have been nice -Artillery has Trains making them the only mobile turret - Walls have special designs (dragon teeth) that help rendering enmies a non thread (only navius) -Tesla turrents have an Insane base Drain so if you have a small gleba base it should be considered -Flame turrets are basically free as well since even 1 drained oil field can keep your defence alive, but they are a bit harder to scale since there is a maxium pipe length since 2.0 (I know pumps fix it with limited flow rate but still more work and harder to use on tileable BP) -Railgun turret destroys everything in front of it, was show in the video but never mentioned I think deffo a downside Honorable Mention: -Spidertron, not fully automated but a really strong option for defence and basically a remote controlled player -Tanks same as spiderton although not as usefull, but they can be used as a wall now, they have a inventory grid so you can have them self repair, add armor or even personal laser defence and get a spikey wall :) -Train saw... -Pipes (the wall bevor you have walls) -Lastly captive biter spawner makes rocket trurrets a failsave and also are not attackable by biters so and immortal wall in case you have the bioflux Anyways great video Idea gonna add my like now :)

[@Pablitto000]

Exacly what i was thinking

[@andrasfogarasi5014]

1 drained oil field? Hell, a pretty sizeable Nauvisian defence can be set up from just 1 pumpjack. A typical attack on a typical defence with a reasonable amount of refined flammables research will consume no more than 100 oi.. This means a pumpjack producing 1 crude oil per second will be able to comfortably fend off 1 attack every 2 minutes, which is less than what most midgame bases will experience. Flamethrowers are laughably cheap.

[@Cyber_Cheese]

Dragon teeth aren't really worth mention, it's overkill that people like doing. A single row of walls/laser turrets will hold all game

[@nostory994]

​@@andrasfogarasi5014 Ah dang sorry I missformulated that meant 1 pump jack (one oil puddle) sorry for the miss statement your obviously right

[@admiraltygaming3756]

Thanks for your well thought out comment! For the demolishers I went straight for Uranium tank rounds and so I guess I never tried dealing with them with turrets! And yes to all your other points! Great points here.

[@DEMEMZEA]

Have you gone out of your mind? Flamethrower outside of S tier???

[@5Davideo]

... did he just call the flamethrower turret one of the "most unused" turrets? The popularity of flame turrets is so high that it's kinda obnoxious. ... Now I'm wondering if he deliberately put flamethrowers low to drive "engagement". You know, as flame bait.

[@dakota0000001]

yea, lasers being so high with flames so low has gotta be bait.

[@doomskull7549]

I think you underestimate the stupidity of most people

[@admiraltygaming3756]

Thanks for the comment. I personally love flamers, but from what I've seen most players (excluding veterans) don't use them as much because of their setup. Newer players especially stick to the easier to setup turrets. But yeah, if I were to remake this list I'd probably put them higher.

[@quagmire111100]

I'd have to disagree that the flamethrower turret being unpopular! From what I've seen, It's THE best turret, and most useful while on Nauvis.

[@CraftsmanOfAwsomenes]

C tier flamethrowers is insane. Am I getting baited.

[@programmer437]

Never thought I’d see a Factorio tier list but here we are.

[@adon155]

honestly i disagree flamethrower turrets are hare to set up, either way you have to move some kind of ammo and atleast for fluids you dont need inserters

[@z-em4612]

My defenses late game: 2 row of lasers on nauvis, same + rocket turrets on gleba, same + cannon on spaceship.

[@ecogreen123]

my personal tierlist (as i like to do with these kinds of videos is as follows: Gun turret B tier, Laser Turret A tier, Flamethrower Turret S tier, Artillery A tier, Rocket Turret A tier, Tesla Turret S tier, Railgun Turret B tier, Walls A tier (definitely optional lol), mines F tier, Stone furnace C tier, Robots S tier, Landfill A tier. my list aside great video!

[@Qwertype315]

My gleba defense is using spidertrons, who just go around clearing nests once in a while

[@glennclapp2537]

This. One spidertron with rockets and personal laser defense in grid is all I ever needed. Also useful for fetching new eggs if the egg loop starves

[@dragonturtle2703]

Ranking of offenses next (armors, combat bots, guns, vehicles, grenades/capsules, etc)?

[@admiraltygaming3756]

You read my mind ;)

[@Illusion666]

Flamers are an absolute godsend if you want to wall off certain areas. Piping in a fluid is infinitely easier than setting up belts+inserter+power for the inserter for row of gun turrets, and they do WAY more damage than lasers.

[@acanadianderg4035]

I wish artillery was viable in space. Not for shorting down asteroids but for orbital bombardment

[@admiraltygaming3756]

Haha that would be awesome.

[@gilbertsikora3007]

Wuh flamethrowers are ss tier, Death world are near impossible without them

[@awindowsboi9213]

stone walls cost approx. 4 times as much to cover a given length, while also requiring additional research and decent automation to make enough of them it's especially cheap since a lot of players spend the early game by collecting rocks, which provides a surplus of stone to make a ton of furnace walls with if you're putting turrets in A because of their usefulness in the early game, even though they're basically suckass once biter evolution kicks in, then idk why stone furnaces don't get the same treatment

[@admiraltygaming3756]

Stone furnances S tier!

[@Sigma-xb6kn]

Mines and Flamethrowers have great synergy, as the Mines stun attack groups which allows the Flamethrowers to deal full damage to stationary groups instead of trailing behind enemies.

[@KalasenZyphurus]

If gun turrets are going to be S tier because of cheap construction costs and early Nauvis usage despite their flaws, then flamethrower turrets should get a lot of points too. They're nearly as simple to make and even easier to supply. Just divert a couple engines you're already making for blue science, and run a pipeline or train like you would belt ammo. Flamethrower turrets obliterate groups. The gun and laser turrets are single target. Flamethrower turrets' main downside is that the fast front runners can slip through if they're your only defense, so it's still a good idea to throw a couple gun and later laser turrets near them to cull the front.

[@DancaniaX]

No automated train grinders?

[@Templarfreak]

i think you value too highly access to the turrets vs their usability and what defenses you already have. adding something like a tesla turret or a railgun turret is so incredibly easy to do, though that's about the only thing i think i really have to say about the video itself. here are my thoughts on the turrets themselves, with stuff being semi-relevant to the video: for tesla turrets you dont need anything other than electricity and it literally _just_ makes your existing defenses objectively better period and there's not really much of any downside and it completely negates the one weakness of flamethrower turrets as well, and for railguns because you get them so late its completely trivial to use logistic chests to supply them ammo. so i dont think adding new things to your wall is really all that much of a barrier to a turret's usability because you can _just do it_ and get huge benefits from them or _dont_ and you _dont._ it's just that simple. for railguns their late access isnt much of a big deal unless you're speedrunning or your ONLY goal is to get a game completion. if that is the case, then there isnt much you'd ever do with railgun turrets, but that's not the only way people play the game (you say so yourself in the video). that said, there is something you didnt mention that is a huge limitation to railgun turrets and that is that they *always* damage anything in their line of fire including your own buildings, so adding them to an existing defensive wall is pretty much not doable for that one singular reason alone. you could maybe design new defenses that incorporate this big limitation, though, but i dont know how much that'd really be worth it. i would also argue that Flamethrower turrets are *easier* to use than gun turrets up until you get robot logistics at which point you can supply gun turrets with bots, but before then flamethrower turrets are by-far easier to install and use and you can address problems like them buffering fluid like crazy whereas it's practically not possible to address early-game gun turrets fed by a belt buffering bullets like crazy and doing huge belt loops beyond early game is so impractical because of how much iron you'd need and how much pollution you'd create to buffer the entire belt that its objectively a lot worse than pretty much any alternative such as flamethrowers or lasers. walls are imo not actually all that necessary for most of the game if you have enough damage upgrades on gun turrets, flamethrowers, and lasers. by the time you have robot logistics (which is a little easier and quicker to access in Space Age now as well) gun turrets start to become significantly better again and its pretty easy to place only a couple of them around everywhere and it will keep almost all kinds of biter attacks out of your base on Nauvis, and coupled with the ability to have Nauvis have very little activity because you can supplement a lot of it with space or other planets, attacks on Nauvis are so much more mellow now than they used to be which is where Gun Turrets become the most efficient they'll ever be (killing only a few biters here and there) and generally they outcompete lasers at this point if you have uranium ammo, but even piercing ammo at this point is still impressively high assuming you have bullet damage 6 and laser damage 6 (~35 for bullet vs 64 for laser). mines would be so much better if there was a delay to replacing them. one of the biggest disadvantages to mines is that your bots *immediately* go to replace them which then *very frequently* got the bots killed. there needs to be upfront damage and then the mine needs to not be removed for a few seconds or something, or the mine needs to get triggered and then be an over-time damage effect instead of what they currently are and then at the end of that duration they die after wich ideally most of the attack wave should already be dead. they are otherwise just so impractical in normal Nauvis or Gleba defenses because of how frequently they need to be replaced as well. there however is 1 very good key use for mines and that's against demolishers, especially if you have lots of explosive damage upgrades, up to 6 can easily make mines blow right through even a medium demolisher's health regen. landfill can also be pretty nice on Nauvis if you can take advantage of it in a very particular way, especially now that it can be removed in the base game by making artificial choke points or manipulating biter pathfinding so they attack your base from a different angle, but beyond that landfill doesnt serve much of a defensive purpose. i think that's all i want to say :D

[@admiraltygaming3756]

Thanks for your well thought out comment. It's great when I hear back from my fans with smart responses. It's cool to hear your perspective about the turrets and how it reflects how you play the game. I defs should have mentioned the point about railgun turrets needing to be unobstructed, but I do think a lot of players (and the average player) won't use them regardless because they are simply unlocked so late in the game (excluding the veterans who go for the high SPM factories). Great points about flame turrets and walls! haha I never thought to use mines on demolishers! But yeah a delay for them would be great too!

[@DavidSmith-cr7mb]

I have never liked laser turrets: they tap your power and can potentially accidentally cause a brownout if you spam too many. Im going to be building a wall design whos lategame goal is to be fueled by resources entirely made form space, IE infinite material, to gap the argument for lasers that they dont cost you valuable quantities of resources

[@chainsawplayin]

Gun turrets with green ammo can kill Demolishers in a split second if you place a bunch of them. Flame turrets carry Nauvis defenses on their own.

[@joshuasteffanie947]

laser turrets are pretty nice on big ships when destroying small asteroids as they have bad laser resistance and that way you don't need ammo turrets to retarget. If you just set targetting for normal turrets to medium asteroids and laser to small you will save a decent bit of ammo and not use that much power. Furthermore, laser turrets are also handy on space ships on remote locations on the ship where u can't really bring ammo to.

[@bjorn9875]

Lasers are great later in space, where they can be used to 1-shot the small asteroids (Need a few infinite laser damage upgrades, but affordable, even 2-shotting is fine, thanks to their crazy fire rate), (smalls seem to only exist once mediums are destroyed, and mediums are what you encounter when you leave Nauvis orbit.) Also, instead of accumulators for lasers, you can simply build more steam engines/turbines then you can actually supply with steam, and that way you can easily handle massive spikes in power draw. With the new fluid mechanics, the cost of that is trivial. Also, solar + accumulators for power is crazy expensive, and I wouldn't recommend ever doing that.

[@vasianduban9995]

Mines are actually S+ tier :D

[@MarcLucksch]

My base uses mines and flamers, and so far, even at the highest evolution factor with tons of biters, I have not seen so much as a damaged wall. Just because of the little stun they have.

[@vasianduban9995]

@@MarcLucksch they also really usefull at flugora when you deciding it to be the first planet since all other options would be pretty weak lol

[@joobin1049]

Now now, we are in space age, the best defense for navis and gleba is putting a wall of tanks with personal lasers they are (tanky) have high damage and supper easy to move and repair.

[@vitekharvey7575]

Anyone who plays deathworlds knows flamethrower is S tier. Between lasers & guns there’s a choicebut it is *nearly impossible to go w/o flamethrowers. Also furnace walls are extremely helpful in early game deathworld before brick/wall production scales up

[@Vadymaus]

Landmines are S tier. They are cheap, powerful, easy to setup. Only requires roboports. The strongest choice for fast progression.

[@leyn1092]

Considering artillery but ignoring spidertrons is crazy

[@MattWyndham]

Walls are amazing against asteroids, they stop the big ones in two layers -- without walls it will go through all the layers

[@vjollila96]

I use flamethrower turrets as offensive weapon for biter nest removal during early game

[@wrathofainz]

Landfill is A tier. You can section off all of your energy infrastructure (or other things) across bodies of water to isolate them completely (on Nauvis?)

[@ryanmaris1917]

What about landmines?

[@vHindenburg]

I always found accumulators to expensive...just was storing steam in tanks instead for power spikes...or you go nuclear.

[@sleepy6350]

interesting, on my Gleba planets I exclusively use gun turrets with red ammo + bots and 2 of those planets are quite big, though not megabase yet, around 40k~ fruits a min. You just have to make sure there are enough gun Turrets in one spot to shred stompers as they are in my opinion the only threat on Gleba actually. Oh on my most recent Gleba planet I just made a Roboport grid that extended quite a bit beyond my spore coverage at max production as Gleba Enemies won't attack it, it's kinda funny seeing Roboports hugging large rafts and the enemies just chilling next to them as the bots expand :P. after cleaning up the rafts inside the Robo area I am done with the defence for Gleba, as Pentapots can't expand into Robo covered land :)

[@givikap120]

Tesla turret should be A because it's the most universal defense you can get. You need only energy and it's good for every type of enemy on Nauvis and Gleba. Single target? Stunned and killed. Multi target? Killed with chain attack. Also it has the biggest range after Artillery (not really a defense but offense) and Railgun (only useful against asteroids and vulcanus worms), means that most of the enemies will die before even getting close. So it's your ultimate solution for any enemy that wasn't killed by Artilllery. Like Rocket turret is harder to get and it's way weaker than Tesla turrets, so I see only it's being used in Space. Maybe it's useful when you've gone to Gleba before Fulgora.

[@voswouter87]

Good rarity scaling? They only get range. Tech is really good because it upgrades both the turret damage bonus and munitions damage. With the flame turrets you can set target priorities to focus on the range biters first. With the artillery you still need other turrets in the short term, because destroying the bases provokes biter attacks.

[@Palewolf0Inubashiri]

Personally I'd move gun turrets to C and flamethrowers to S. But this from the perspective of playing deathworld though. The gun turrets are simply too expensive to supply, and have rather low health so they easily get destroyed by spitters. Meanwhile the flame turrets are extremly cheap to supply, quite tanky, and deal extremely high damage and you don't need a lot of them. Once I unlock the flamers it's really the only turret I use on Nauvis. A double wall with flamers spaced by the maximum underground pipe length and bots is basically all you need to make your base impenetrable even on deathworld(unless you start shooting a bunch of very big nests with artillery I guess) Oh, and do make some generous spacing between the flamers and the wall so the spitters go along with the biters up close to the wall.

[@cola-warthunder]

Flamethrower on Nauvis is easily the strongest turret.

[@angjeesiang]

I use the flame turrets on navius and it is able to be spamed on the oilflieds and it is geart for hordes

[@Hlebuw3k]

Other turrets can't shoot things that have a rocket flying at them, if that rocket will kill the thing. So rocket turrets are pretty bad against fast moving targets

[@SporBel]

flamethrowers are so god damn overpowered, it shloud be in S tier. Also where is locomotive chainsaw? Where are pipes as walls? (ik stupid idea, but i do use pipes as walls in the absolute early-game)

[@smc4229]

C tier for flamethrower is bonkers

[@RRanun]

4:32 the worms are resistant to laser.

[@NexGenration99]

HAAARD disagree on landmines. they are singlehandedly the most overpowered thing in this game. no, you dont need to pair them with bots and in fact they are probably better without them because bots like to just endlessly place them infront of spitters. im 200 hrs into my current save and my evolution is at .97 which is about as high as you will ever see. i dont have a single wall or turret placed on nauvis. just landmines. yes i do have to spend about 10 minutes running my tank/spider around replacing them with bots....every 6-12 IRL hours. its so ridiculously easy to upkeep. i urge anyone reading this to try it out. just drag rows and rows of them. make the landmines thick and dense. spam them as tightly pack and chaotic as you can. its literally 0 effort needed. also using them without bots does NOT result in the beeping noise because biters dont attack them.

[@admiraltygaming3756]

Hahaha it's awesome to hear how differently you play Factorio! I'm glad landmines work for you.

[@NexGenration99]

​@@admiraltygaming3756 yea i honestly think theres a lot of misconceptions about how to use them properly that results in people not liking them. just simply dont make bots auto-replace them. period. many problems are solved that way. if you try making landmine walls without roboports, i think you would enjoy them. also i would like to point out that they are also STUPIDLY busted when used offensively. i thoroughly enjoy driving around the nests in my tank and just placing mines under the nests and worms. they just melt. you can place a bunch of them near the nest before going in for your assault and use them to shake off the biters when things get hot. and then theres the cost: 1/4th a piece of steel per mine. the explosives are negligible on nauvis because oil is free and who's going to ever run out of coal?

[@Lolinatorishere]

Best defense is good offense Just remove all the spawners in map simulation range Thats cheese rank out of S

[@paulhardcastle3667]

Well I guess everyone is entitled to their opinions. And so in that same vein I have to completely disagree with your assessment of landmines.

[@mropinionaire]

I can't help but feel flame turret in C tier was bait

[@not_sugar7321]

Well, rainguns is really not for defense. Look, devs decided that you should get content after end of the game. And for it they added two mechanics - quality and shattered planet. You unlock them really only st the end(legendary quality and prometheum packs). And to maintain shattered planet way, you should probably use railguns, coz big asteroids just too hard for even rockets!

[@ValeriiMaliuk]

Flamethrower is at least A tier. They are the best on Nauvis

[@Hlebuw3k]

Flamethrowers are S tier

[@Sapeidra]

I'd rank the tesla turrets lower. They require a constant 1MW upkeep. If you want a perimeter in sufficient density (anywhere, especially Gleba) they need several heating towers in constant operation. That is equal to 40 laser turrets. 1 active shooting tesla turet equals 6 active laser turets. That's some overglorified sparcle!

[@ToxicVale]

Its not crazy difficult to set up a circuit that only turns on the tesla turret when other types of turrets nearby are also firing

[@AndrewChumKaser]

Power is relatively easy to come by, just scale up production or install some accumulators, which by the time you get to Gleba come cheap.

[@Juggernautdemon]

I brought a 1 gigawatt smart nuclear setup to gleba. Makes any energy worries nonexistent. I don't understand why people don't export nuclear to gleba and fulgora then always complain about power issues.

[@poshn9577]

Did you never try out that rocket fuel recipe on Gleba? It's far better than importing nuclear. I have more rocket fuel than I know what to do with on Gleba, and it makes so much energy that half my heating towers aren't even connected to anything because I just don't need that much power.

[@PeterZaitcev]

Artillery is overrated. It's good, but not S-tier good. Unlike Tesla turrets which are undoubtedly S-tier if you spawn on the desert.

[@skycaptain95]

This tier list was clearly made by someone who doesn't play the game

[@Dawg-sw2wz]

flamethrower should be S

[@cequmaquirarte9966]

I never use wall's,

[@EchoIrl]

is this ragebait

[@garath_]

Probably, I wouldn’t try to build your channel by creating videos for a game you’ve never played.

[@xxVampi33]

never let bro rate again

[@billgameful]

useless ranking

[@ane150893]

This is like doing rock paper scissor tier list

[@dacianhantig7810]

railgun, D tier -> stopped watching video!

[@vasianduban9995]

lol, would you really use them for defense?

[@AndrewChumKaser]

Railguns being essential for progression does not make them useful defenses. They have exactly one good use case outside of protecting your space platform from huge asteroids, and that's destroying demolishers. They do nothing else useful enough compared to its contemporaries anywhere else.

[@Cyber_Cheese]

Giving them a good rating against demolishers is generous. They need power connected and only do well if the damage hits a lot of segments. Made much harder with how wide they are The handheld railgun obsoletes them here. It's easy to run behind a demolisher and 1-3 shot them. And you don't need a turret because that area is now permanently yours