0.17.3 Default enemy difficulty is kinda ridiculous

[BlakeMW]

Bear in mind I had neither grenades nor piercing magazines for that attack. Grenades are still a game-changer.

Well I killed a 4 Spawner ~10 Small Worm nest before I got Military 2 (because the nest was parked almost on my iron patch), I just used backline of turrets to kill any small biters and SMG'd down the spawners while tapping left and right to make the spits go astray.

Why heavy armor but not piercing/grenades - oh right, Military 2 is much harder to get now, due to the green science tech requirement... (which it probably should be !)

Actually for Military 2 in particular you can just handcraft the 20 Green Science, it's a trifling amount of hand crafting.

[CDarklock]

Well I killed a 4 Spawner ~10 Small Worm nest before I got Military 2 (because the nest was parked almost on my iron patch), I just used backline of turrets to kill any small biters and SMG'd down the spawners while tapping left and right to make the spits go astray.

I was avoiding turrets in that attack, for testing purposes. Turrets change things a lot; I dropped exactly one next to a 4-spawner base with some worms, it made short work of them. Needed a lot of repairs tho - I'm wondering if it's just assumed that you'll bring and use turrets for 0.17 biter hunts.

I seem to be having a lot less trouble with the combat changes than some people, probably because (a) I already know I'm terrible at this, and (b) I don't really have a known-good-tactic to fail with. So when I go up to a base and don't do well, I'm thinking "wow this is hard" and not "but that totally should have worked!"

[orzelek]

I did not fight new biters yet but it seems that acid pools are simply to good? Both slow down and decent dps.
Someone would need to do some science and figure out if they stack - because in that case they might not need single one with big dps it's just 50x of them

[BlueTemplar]

Why heavy armor but not piercing/grenades - oh right, Military 2 is much harder to get now, due to the green science tech requirement... (which it probably should be !)

Actually for Military 2 in particular you can just handcraft the 20 Green Science, it's a trifling amount of hand crafting.

My point is that now you need to *research* Green Science !

So, to rush Military 2:
0.16 Normal :
Mil1 (10) + Steel (50) + Mil2 (20/20) = (80/20)
0.17 Normal :
Mil1 (10) + Steel (50) + GreenSci (75) + Mil2 (20/20) = (155/20)

0.16 Marathon :
Mil1 (40) + Steel (200) + Mil2 (80/80) = (320/80) (and not *so* trifling amount of handcrafting, except relatively...)
0.17 Marathon :
Mil1 (40) + Steel (200) + GreenSci (300) + Mil2 (80/80) = (620/80)

(Wait, what does the "Expensive" Technology difficulty do already ? Science Packs 1/2/3 seem to be the same for Normal and Expensive ?)

[Ranakastrasz]

https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comme ... expensive/
Unless it changed since, Expensive research does nothing. Maybe it will later, whoknows.

[BlakeMW]

I did not fight new biters yet but it seems that acid pools are simply to good? Both slow down and decent dps.
Someone would need to do some science and figure out if they stack - because in that case they might not need single one with big dps it's just 50x of them

They use the same logic as fire patches, except unlike fire patches they have no extra initial charges. So the more spitballs hit a location the more intense the acid patch becomes.