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

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

You know you are in a bad spot when you look at Sisyphus and be like "At least that guy's rock didn't get heavier"

"Western Front is a stalemate for ages requiring untold amounts of ammo for the turrets" "The tide turns after deploying tanks" That sounds familiar

After all that effort, the Factorio engineer returns to his home world and dies 4 months later due to stress-related complications.

Rampant is inspired by Robert Heinlein’s “Starship Troopers.” “Every time we killed a thousand Bugs at a cost of one M.I. it was a net victory for the Bugs. “

The invention of the tank broke the stalemate on the Western Front. 10/10 for historical accuracy.

i really liked how you let them eat your base and rebuilt entirely from just the resources you saved without even powering it on? that's epic.

The moments where you managed to expand the base into the abandoned oil field after being defeated previously and remembering the coal liquefaction was a thing really felt like a movie. 10/10 might be my favourite factorio video yet, congratulations

People underestimate poison capsules, they are literally just grenades but better > 8 Damage twice a second for 20 seconds, totaling 320 damage, compared to a grenade's measly 35 >11 radius, near double a grenade's 6.5 >Clouds can be stacked, meaning with just 2 poison capsules you are dealing 32 damage per second, meaning you now have a large area that is dealing a grenade in damage every second >They don't damage structures, so they are perfectly safe to use against a wall where biters will be piled up at, or inside your base to lock down an area >They decimate worms, since they cant move they take all 320 of that damage per capsule, and you only have to be in the worm's range for a split second to throw, since the cloud stays there to deal damage >They have 25 range, once again almost double that of grenade's at 15 >With their ability to be stacked, and a fire rate of 2 per second, you can easily build up a cloud that will decimate large and behemoth biters within seconds

Incredible. I've never seen anyone bounce back from losing practically the entire base on a death world. And a seemingly impossibly modded death world too! Great job with the coal liquefaction too. I had completely forgotten it myself!

This is just the story of a lone Mechanicus adept, surviving against a massive horde of Tyranids

I’m impressed how well you can drive and fight with a tank. I get so overwhelmed easily and I always crash into a cliff or forget to drive or forget to attack.

I really feel more people need to know this about rampant: the biter AI has a set of states and those states are restricted to only certain aggression levels. Iirc, the "siege" ai state is responsible for biters doing base creep. There is another more general expansion state too for more sparsely placed bases and one for consolidating and expanding existing bases. Both of these states are reatriced to certain aggression levels or "temperment" as it is refered to. additionally, biters do things like make new nests and generate units for attack based on points. They recieve points based on pollution AND destruction of bases. Destroying bases also raises their temperment which generally results in more dangerous ai states being allowed. Beware the dangerous quiet before the storm. Some temperments have a "peaceful" state mixed in. The biters will STOCKPILE points recieved during this. When it switches to a new state, this can result in an absolute nonstop flood of biters for minutes straight. I once had one for 20 minutes or so. on final thing, you mentioned biters being "gravitationally pulled" towards you? Thats them smelling you out. Biters will track players down based on "scent". A similar system *can* push biters towards less dangerous attack routes from them "smelling" dead bitters... generally they dont seem to do this much in my experience outside of certain cases such as a loooooong wall with turrets behind it but a gap in defense towards one or either end

finally, I found an underrated factorio youtuber!

I admire you, you were reduced to almost nothing yed decided not to give up

Never been a factorio guy but I love this. its like a 1 man version of the Terran campaign from Starcraft 1

Regarding the "Weird Square Formation" with unmoving enemies: The mod states that it uses "potential fields" to do it's pathfinding and to find attack vectors and strategies pertaining to them. Thing is, potential fields (and other systems that use gradients and whatnot) have a certain weakness, the "local minimum/minima problem". Basically it's when (in the case of this example, a potential field) the system is getting stuck in a local 'minimum' instead of reaching the desired global one. Consider a marble rolling down hills to detect the deepest valley between them. It would get stuck in the first valley even though others might be deeper, because from the marbles perspective, the moment its at the deepest part of even a shallow pit, everything else goes up, which is not what it seeks, it seeks down. Thus, it gets stuck. So, maybe it hit an edge case, or some error that caused the local field chunk of its overall considered options to be "good enough", not reaching far enough to notice that something else is beyond its local area of consideration. The marble being stuck in a shallow valley, not being able to see beyond the hills around it. Going in depth on this is beyond the scope of this comment, and probably my ability to explain/teach anyway. (caush I'm nud det shmort)

Man, the moment he practically lost the run, got his base crushed, but still rebuilt and persevered, only one word came to mind - DETERMINATION. You, my dude, are a LEGEND!

You should definitely play this with rampant arsenal installed, it's a mod made to balance out the new biter AIs adding a bunch of new turret types like rifle turrets a mini 1x1 turret you use before you unlock regular ones, all the way up to the giant laser turret which is a massive turret a bit larger than a radar or elec furnace I believe that can vaporize all but the biggest bitters for an ungodly amount of energy

I love the songs chosen for this! They perfectly fit the industrial ambiance and lonelyness of Factorio! I especially like: Jester - Elysium Skaven - Cannon Angel Nighthawk - Playing with Death Deus Ex - Paris Streets Combat Zaril & Xerxes - Vinter

This is the most entertaining video I’ve seen in a while. So many ups and downs. Favorite moments are the “Cuck Box,” the battle to retake the oil fields, and T H E T A N K

27:36 Actually yes. Rampant has a bit of a pheramone effect where if they get too close to the player, it'll cause the bugs to zero in on you if there's nothing of equal threat. Least if I recall the basics at any rate.

Alright, you're my favorite channel now. I also love how you acknowledged that normal let's plays take way too much time and that highly edited content like yours makes it so much more palatable and is much more unique.

This feels more like War than an Industry Simulator. Edit: This is now my most liked comment

I've really enjoyed all your Factorio runs, but I have to admit this is a personal favorite. The absolutely constant, brutal pressure reminded me of the very first Factorio content I ever found, Warlord Mal's deathworld run before that was a setting. Back when copper plates had a different shape from iron. In fact, I remember now, it was literally the update that added oil to the game. No tank, he just drove around in a car tossing slowdown and poison capsules by the hundreds and lapping them around the 1x1 laser turret walls. Constant attacks, no space. He didn't even use a traditional main bus and... now that run is privated or gone or sth. But the memory is always there, and this helped me relive that wonderful sense of seeing somebody else sink or swim.

Last time I did something like this, I required dual line of lasers with my flames. With my very limited power and capacity it was impossible to support just he passive drain; therefore I had to group the lasers into sub-power grid groups that were un-powered till a sensor laser fired. Finally the power systems would disable core base power when the power storage got to low and monitor for day/night cycles for power plant efficiency (to reduce coal consumption rate and pollution generation). The UPS eventually forced me to disable the modded biters I was using unfortunately.

i think going lasers was the biggest mistake. they're next to useless without at least 5-7 upgrades, require way more power than everything else and are definitely way weaker than flamers by the time you get them. i think you should have tried pushing towards artillery if anything.

Mad respect, I saluted the rocket launch, and everything it stands for in this world where nothing but pain and suffering exist

These videos are absolutely great. This is so much better than watching a drawn out series. You have made factorio videos tolerable. I can't wait to see more.

You have suffered and come through unbroken and with the fruits of your.... Apocalyptic? No not the right word. Cataclysmic? No... Masochistic? Hmmm. Insanity inducing.... Lets just go with stupidly masochistic world annihilating and insanity derived mod showcase. Good job. You have truly earn what internet points I can pin to you and my future attention with similar works.

Finally a factorio content creator who know what he is doing and doesn't make 324728374875 10 minutes long epizodes. You earned a sub buddy!

Weirdly enough, the biters destroying everything is what made the run possible since there’s no way you would have been able to properly set up a base with a base already there. So them destroying everything and stopping the pollution made it all possible since the research was out of the way, which was arguably the hardest part since it took the longest

34:20 has gotta be my favorite bit of the video. The cut to 99% research for tank followed by your impressive driving skills, and the awesome display of the AI splitting its attention between you and your base with large clouds moving every which way was just so fun to watch.

You've earned a new sub, your factorio content is well done, the commentary is perfect, your music choices are incredible additions to the video. Thank you for the videos!

I'm a decent Factorio player and have beaten Deathworld Marathon handily (even went on to build a megabase 10km out from spawn). But this... this was legendary. Riveting watch, well done sir! You have a new fan.

Great video! Thank you for putting in all the effort playing, recording, and editing for these videos!

I havent watched the whole video yet but as you are playing rampant (and not rampant, fixed) the default settings only enable the new A.I. and not the different biter factions and all the cool things they add and do, as well as a few other things. I personally always have the rampant mod installed on my play throughs because even without the new biter factions it just makes the game so much more fun for me. There are indeed settings in the mod settings section for it that let you turn on where they only attack at night (BUT STILL BUILD UP ATTACKING FORCES DURING THE DAY so if you enable it expect some BIG attack groups at night XD) and make it to where they ignore rails and power poles and lamps so you dont have to worry about rail worlds and stuff. I wont lie i active those settings, im not ashamed :p. Also youre downloading fireproof bots but in rampants mod settings theres a setting to make construction and/or logistics bots invulnerable. I like it, great video and fun run lol. Thank you for letting me know in advance that i may not like death world settings cause i was thinking about it XD. Ive never done a death world was also thinking how hard can it be XD. I have other mods installed tho, its not pure vanilla with rampant (and armored) so that should help me immensely with staying alive. I shall now subscribe and go watch more while i procrastinate actually playing

dude i love your style keep going at it! you have something really special here

Honestly, this is a great video. I can sense the effort you put into telling an immersive story.

This was an amazing video!!! Usually you see an hour long factorio video and dont expect it to grip you... but you really did an amazing job making a story out of the gameplay.

It's amazing to watch you struggle and put up a good fight!

Absolutely underrated channel, incredible work man!

Ever since I discovered your channel, I find myself rewatching your videos over, and over and over again. Just so good

your goddamn underrated as hell, I have no idea what Factorio is but seeing your gameplay just interests me into it. you earned a new sub

The factorio videos are, like, actually amazing. Please keep on making them and I'm almost fully positive your channel will grow exponentially.

I can't believe you did this without also installing Rampant Arsenal! My one rampant playthrough has the accompanying arsanel but I've still had to temporarily uninstall rampant once to recove from a particularly bad biter attack. So watching you triumph over this challenge is particularly impressive!

The intro cutscene from Jurassic Park to the actual gameplay as you are running from biters actually made me laugh out loud. Masterclass transition! Oh and the rest of the video was perfectly entertaining as well. Subscribed!

One of my favorite videos of yours. Also the first I truly watched all the way through. Love it.

And I thought watching uncut gems was stressful

Amazing dedication and a great video! Would love to see you do this again but make a thriving base with artillery!

absolutely incredible video. such a rollercoaster. Can't believe you beat it!!

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

You sir, have gotten my respect from this run. Absolute perseverance and determination despite the circumstances.

What a great movie, the editing is on another level , thanks a lot for such a great time .

Thank you for taking the time to make 1 video for the whole playtrough! You've got yourself a sub

this was a treat to watch, I genuinely stood up and rejoiced when you took over the oil turret with walls and turrets edit: what kinda shakespearean ass shit was I on when I typed this

31:05 When starting research queuing, you can shift-click the icon of the research instead of clicking the "start research" button every time. Useful when playing different mods that change the research, go to the one you want and shift click the icons earlier in the tree that leads to it.

I just bought Factorio the other day, somehow I've already accumulated 18 hours on steam and it never once occurred to me to use underground pipes to safely transport water in to my base and have my steam engines IN the base, rather than a nearby small compound. Great video, thanks for learnin' me something so simple haha

I love these videos your voice is so calming and your actually hella informative as the video goes along. I hope you can make many many more playthorughs in this style

This was so entertaining man. Looks like quite the formidable challenge. You are going to gain so many viewers and subscribers so quickly it’s gonna make your head spin.

honestly, still one of your best videos in my opinion.

Your factorio content is amazing!

Hey dude, great video and commentary. I'm not one to watch hour long videos but you hooked me on this one, you are persistent.

great video. one of the only videos over 30 minutes i've watched without skipping anything. very high production value.

your music taste is goated. Skaven and deus ex and hl osts!

100/100 Amazing video to binge!

Lovely video, rewatched even just to appreciate all the steps taken, earned your self a sub.

What a great video. Watched the whole thing. I honestly don't remember when was the last time I paid attention for so long

Another great video!

You are my new favorite factorio youtuber

Loving your Factorio content, and good to see it doing well :)

Looked at that Impulse tracker song "Nighthawk - Playing with Death" and I looked at its release date, marked nov 22 thats exactly my birthday! Not the same year of course but its the exact day. Now this song is special to me and I love it. Thanks for including it mate!

If this is an actual mod review I think that its a 10/10!

There are so many biters that it reminds me of the ridiculous number of cops in Payday 2.

First time ever watching a factorio playthrough, you have very entertaining and understandable commentary that even a newbie like me can grasp

Wow your dedication i crazy. Loved the 3 part series. Can't wait for your next video whatever it might be.

This was really good

That was hard to watch. Well done!

This is one of the coolest Factorio videos I’ve seen. Well done, sir.

thank u so much for putting the source to the soundtracks you used in the video, wish more yt creators would source the soundtracks they use in there videos to.

Very underrated. Good video

Wait, poison capsules? That's a thing?

Amazing Video! Loved how you made a whole movie from just a couple of mods

Nice, interesting gameplay, good editing, good length and a near perfect choice of music (understated instead of the usual blaring). I hope to see more videos like these 4 in the future.

now do B&A with rampent and some QAL mods. love your content and knowledge about the game

Made a subscriber out of me lol, can't wait to see more videos!

i love your challenge runs, always very educational and along with your sarcasm also very entertaining

The persistence in this video has more than earned my sub, not sure why I wasn’t already really. This looked super fun! Except for all of the super frustrating bits (almost all of it) lol but this was really entertaining and maybe in the future you could do a run with harder settings but the addition of the rampant arsenal mod.

Dosh finally reclaiming the oil field has the same vibes as Eren reclaiming wall Sina from the Titans.

I suffered a lot watching the whole video. The only thing that gave me hope was knowing you were able to launch the rocket.

I just happened to find your video in my recommended and I like your personality and editing. Definitely subbing for more Factorio content

Had to pause my own play through to appreciate you kiting biters with a tank to the beautiful sounds of Deus Ex's soundtrack. Loving the music choices, lots of tracker music.

OH MY GOD THIS IS AMAZING! A new factory rising from the ashes of the old one like a burning phoenix.. powered by oil!

very nice video, have you considered doing a full lets play with a mod like the space exploration mod

That was an excellent run. Solid edit. Great video, thank you.

Thanks for the video. It gives a good example of what to expect from the mod.

So with the joy you have had with this mod, I assume you're going to look into doing a Deathworld Marathon Rampant Bobs Mods base?

As someone who's only ever played part of the tutorial for factorio because my stupid smooth brain can't figure anything out I find videos like this fascinating and all the belts melt my brain so badly. I don't even know what a science is, let alone red green or whatever other colors there are.

Note to history, I was here at 4k subs before this channel blew up. Your videos are amazing, keep up the good work!

Brilliant video. You're right that this is perhaps the most extreme showcase of Rampant possible, but it was incredibly entertaining watching you do something I don't have the skill, determination, or time to do - in that order.