Is there an available Evolution timeline?

[Peter34]

Is there some kind of timeline for Evolution/Pollution that tells us in what order things begin to happen?

[Xterminator]

To my knowledge there is not something that specific. However the wiki does have info on what actually impacts the evolution factor and by how much, so you can figure it that way.
For example...
There are 3 things that impact the evolution:
Time
Pollution
Killing their spawners

And that is listed from what effects it the least to what has the biggest effect. I don't recall the exact numbers but I do remember that killing spawners has a far more dramatic effect on it than time or even pollution.

I hope this helped a bit. Or maybe I misunderstood the question and it only said stuff you already know :p

[Koub]

As of 0.9.1 the biter spawning is done probabilistically based on the current evolution. Lets imagine a wheel - the "spawning wheel". We will be slicing that wheel as a cake. Small biters take the first 0.3 part of the wheel, medium ones the middle 0.3 part and big biters take the last 0.4. When a biter is about to be spawned the random point on the wheel is selected limited by the current evolution. So in theory while the evolution is below 0.3 there should be only small biters, then slowly medium ones will enter and in the end the big ones. The composition of the biter animation in the end should be 0.3-0.3-0.4. There is one more factor called the spawn_shift - this is a mechanism when the further away from the starting location the more the "rolling of the wheel" is shifted towards one. That means that if the shift is 0.2 for instance that at the time when evolution factor is 0.25 the result for spawning is actually 0.2 + 0.25 = 0.45 and a medium biter might be spawned.
Besides choosing what kind of biter will be spawned the evolution also influences the spawning interval. As of 0.9.1 this interval (spawning_cooldown in the enemy-spawner definition) is interpolated between 360 (0 evolution) and 150 (1 evolution) ticks.

Source : https://forums.factorio.com/wiki/inde ... #Evolution

[DaveMcW]

5 hours - small spitters
10 hours - medium biters
15 hours - medium spitters
20 hours - large biters
25 hours - large spitters

Killing a spawner = +10 minutes
Polluting a spawner = +2.2% evolution speed

[orzelek]

That time table is suspiciously linear.

Wasn't evolution based on multiplicative increases - it would increase faster at first and slow down near the end?

[Alekthefirst]

Wasn't evolution based on multiplicative increases - it would increase faster at first and slow down near the end?

Logarithmical, i believe. I remember reading something 'bout this too
Gonna look for sources

EDIT: from the wiki:

The percentages are applied on the base of (1 - current_evolution_factor). So for instance destroying the enemy spawner in the beginning of the game results in increase of evolution factor by 0.005 (half a percent) while doing this when the evolution factor is 0.5 the increase is only 0.0025 (quarter a percent)

So i think it creates the same effect as a logarithmical funcion would have

[Koub]

How evolution evolves is described in the wiki, link provided 3 posts above.

[Peter34]

How evolution evolves is described in the wiki, link provided 3 posts above.

I have read the wiki article several times, including a few days ago, but it does not tell me that which I desire to know.

[Peter34]

5 hours - small spitters
10 hours - medium biters
15 hours - medium spitters
20 hours - large biters
25 hours - large spitters

Killing a spawner = +10 minutes
Polluting a spawner = +2.2% evolution speed

Thanks. Even if, as poster orzelek says, it looks suspiciously linear, it still tells me what order the more challenging aliens appear in. First Spitters, then Medium Biters, then Medium Spitters, etc...

[DaveMcW]

Ok, I recalculated everything for the nonlinear timeline.

10 hours - small spitters (0.25)
12 hours - medium biters (0.3)
24 hours - medium spitters (0.5)
32 hours - large biters (0.6)
32 hours - large spitters (0.6)

Killing a spawner = +10 minutes
Polluting a spawner = +2.2% evolution speed

[Koub]

Every second, evolution factor raises 0.000008*(1-evolution factor)
Every 1000 pollution units produced, evolution factor raises 0.00003*(1-evolution factor)
Every biter spawner destroyed, evolution factor raises 0.005*(1-evolution factor)

At spawn point, medium biters appear at evolution factor 0.3
At spawn point, big biters appear at evolution factor 0.6

The more you are far away from spawn point, the more there may be bigger biters than evolution factor should produce.

Time table is not linear. Theoretically, if you just let the time pass without producing pollution at all from the beginning of the game, medium biters will appear at more than 12h of gameplay. But according on how you pollute, it happens a lot earlier.

[Peter34]

At spawn point, medium biters appear at evolution factor 0.3
At spawn point, big biters appear at evolution factor 0.6

Nice, but I wanted to know about Spitters too. Part of the problem is that the article in the wiki is outdated, in that it makes no reference to when Spitters appear, or even that they exist. That makes it untrustworthy, as far as I'm concerned, and that's a general problem of volunteer-edited game wikis. That a given article, or the wiki in its entirety, can very quickly come to look as a garbage source of information if it gives the impression of not being up-to-date with current game mechanicsl developments.

[orzelek]

Spitter spawner works as follows:
- till evolution 0.25 spawns only small biters
- from 0.25 small spitters are enabled
- from 0.5 medium ones are added to the mix with chance increasing till 0.7
- from 0.6 big ones are added with max chance at 1.0

At evolution 1 final chances are 30% small, 30% medium, 40% big.