Episode 16 is another live stream, and it picks up the long main belt from Episode 15. The plan stays the same: one belt heading north with a lane for each resource, and assembling machines along it. This time the machines make the things Basket keeps crafting by hand: gun turrets, transport belts and more ammo, while belts carry ammo out to turrets on the edges of the base. Biters attack all hour. Gun turret damage 3, Battery and Stack inserter are researched, and when the video ends nothing is researching and blue science has not been started.
Lanes, and a search for blueprints
The opening recap lays out the belt: "copper, iron, steel, ammunition," then a belt for gears and copper cable, then circuits. Inserters already fill the turrets at the top of it with ammo. Basket goes looking through the game's controls for a way to save a section as a template and paste it, finds nothing that does it ("maybe that's not a thing"), and goes back to placing things one at a time.
The research screen offers Battery, but defense comes first: "I sort of want to defend myself better, so let's make our turrets do more damage." Gun turret damage 3 starts.
An assembler for turrets
The turret recipe needs gears, copper and iron, and all three are on the belts. A filter inserter pulls gears off one line, and a new copper and iron lane runs up beside the machine. The output goes into one small chest: "this whole thing will fill up with turrets, and eventually this whole machine will stop because I'll have plenty of turrets."
The extra lanes cause a backup, with iron on the side meant for copper. Basket rebuilds the joins so "steel and iron will only go on this side, and then copper will only go on that side," and swaps some inserters for fast ones. "I just got technology, so we have better turrets," the commentary says about twenty minutes in, and Battery goes into the research box.
Belts that make belts
Next comes an assembler for regular transport belts, fed gears and iron by filter inserters, and a second one that takes those belts plus gears to make fast belts. Both drop their output onto a belt that ends in chests. "If I'm gonna make stuff, instead of crafting a bunch of these I can run over here and grab a bunch of conveyor belts." A chest for spare ammo goes in nearby.
Battery finishes. The commentary reads the next step: blue science needs sulfuric acid first, so it waits.
Turrets on a belt, and a big wave
For several minutes the research box reads "Press T to start a new research," until a viewer points out that nothing is researching and Stack inserter goes in. Meanwhile ammo gets its own belt out to a new defensive line, with an inserter beside each turret. It is filling when a large group comes out of the trees. "Wow, look at all these guys," the commentary says. The turrets run low on ammo, but the line holds.
Afterward the ammo assemblers turn out to be short on iron, and another filter inserter feeds them more. Near the copper mine, which had no turrets, "we lost a bunch of stuff," so turrets and ammo go in there too.
More ammo and a wall of turrets
"All it takes is just iron," so Basket builds a new block of ammo assemblers off the iron line, sets one up and pastes its settings to the rest, and later adds two more. Stack inserter finishes. "It doesn't say what it does, so let's make one." A test into a chest shows it "moves more things" at a time.
The last build is a long row of turrets across the north side, two spaces apart, with a belt and a filter inserter so that only ammo reaches them. "Now that we have that in place, I feel a little bit safer with this whole area."
Where it ends
At the oil field, all the storage tanks are full except the one feeding plastic, so Basket adds more tanks and pipes. Sulfuric acid needs water, iron and sulfur, "and those are the steps we would need to make level 3 science. Maybe that will be the next episode." A last check finds steel blocking a belt, and one more filter inserter starts storing steel off it. The video ends over the new turret line with nothing researching.