Too many enemy bases

[cohaka]

Hello,
I very enjoy Factorio a lot. However, after playing for some hours I encounter A LOT of enemy bases outside the starting area.

Is there a possibility to reduce the speed of enemies creating new bases or to lower the enemy count somehow?

Thank you very much!

[-root]

this is in your world generation settings when you first start a map...

[LordFedora]

A note that i think somebody else had a similar problem,

The "Starting Area" is the radius of the "safe" zone, not the number of bases in the starting area

[n9103]

I think they're referring to the spread of biter bases over time... and that this amount of time is over the double digits before they scouted outside the initial area.

If I'm right, then dealing with biters is just a skill that has to be learned.
Lots of tactics and strategies on the forums about it though, the wiki too.

[cohaka]

Dealing with the biters and nests is not an issue.
I can destroy lots of nests without any issue, even if there are a lot of worms..

I try to describe what really annoys me:
My base is huge so I try to - let's say expand it at the south-west. I destroy all enemy bases and the area is clear.
Now if I would do nothing after some minutes of gameplay the biters will build some kind of "outpost" and some of the cleaned areas are cluttered with enemy bases again. (If I were heading to north to pickup something...)

I don't want my enemies to rebuild their bases so I don't have to cleanup again. I hope this clarifies my problem..

[n9103]

well, you can go about this the semi-exploity way, or the honest way.
The honest way is to ensure you leave a few defensive outposts around to keep them from settling there.

The other way is just to drop a single wall tile every couple hundred tiles. :-/

[Xterminator]

Yeah, as n1903 said, just put some outposts every so often to atop them from spawning. Make sure to have laser turrets in the outposts though just in case the critters decide to try and make a base near by, they will get blown to bits. hehe

[cohaka]

Hehehe
Yeah I will try this out, thanks a lot to all of you!

I would really love to see some configuration option or setting to adjust the enemy behaviour... Maybe there is something already planned?

[Skellitor301]

There are 4 things you'll need to know in order to reduce the amount of bases you run into over all. The first is of course in the new game menu where you have all of the drop down menus to adjust the frequency, size, and richness of each proceduraly generated resource that doesnt have to do with the actual terrain itself, such as Iron, coal, and Biter nests (resource is alien artifacts which is affected by the richness setting). The rest of the factors happen through out game play which affects the size of the bases, spawners, worms, and the biters/spitters which is all calculated through the Evolution value, which increases continually through out the entire time you play the map. Three things affect the evolution value, the first being time to simulate natural evolution without any outside forces, this the slowest of the three factors that increases the evolution value. The second is how much pollution you cause, the more pollution you have spreading over the lands, the faster the evolution value increases and the faster the base will grow over time. This is the second slowest increase to the evolution value. And the fastest factor is nest destruction, for each spawner you destroy it will add to the over all evolution value by 625 times that of the time factor.

You can save yourself alot of trouble if you keep your pollution spread in check, the rate of spawners you destroy, and putting defenses up in a timely manor

Now there is a cheaty way around this which is to edit the factors through the LUA console by copying the code below:
Note these codes are actually what the factors are set to by default, to make it easier add 0's to the right side of the decimal. Each 0 makes each factor increas 10x less

Code: Select all

-- percentual increase in the evolve factor for every second (60 ticks)
/c game.mapsettings.enemy_evolution.time_factor = 0.000008
-- percentual increase in the evolve factor for every destroyed spawner
/c game.mapsettings.enemy_evolution.destroy_factor = 0.005
-- percentual increase in the evolve factor for 1000 PU (Pollution)
/c game.mapsettings.enemy_evolution.pollution_factor = 0.00003

You can also check the evolution value by typing:

Code: Select all

/c game.player.print(game.evolutionfactor)

The evolution value is set to increase from 0 to no evolution chance, to 1 which is the max evolution chance per tick.

[Rahjital]

Evolution factor has no influence on the size of nests or worms, it only controls which biters and spitters spawn, how frequently they attack and how frequently they create new bases. Cohaka wanted to influence the last one, but there's a better way to go about it than editing evolution value:

Code: Select all

-- how often biters create new bases at maximum evolution; 5 * 3600 means once every 5 minutes
/c game.mapsettings.enemy_expansion.min_expansion_cooldown = 5 * 3600

-- how often biters create new bases at minimum evolution; 60 * 3600 means once an hour
/c game.mapsettings.enemy_expansion.max_expansion_cooldown = 60 * 3600

If you want biters to only create new bases every 30 minutes on full evolution, you would simply put this into your console:

Code: Select all

/c game.mapsettings.enemy_expansion.min_expansion_cooldown = 30 * 3600

[Skellitor301]

Evolution factor has no influence on the size of nests or worms, it only controls which biters and spitters spawn, how frequently they attack and how frequently they create new bases. Cohaka wanted to influence the last one, but there's a better way to go about it than editing evolution value:

Code: Select all

-- how often biters create new bases at maximum evolution; 5 * 3600 means once every 5 minutes
/c game.mapsettings.enemy_expansion.min_expansion_cooldown = 5 * 3600

-- how often biters create new bases at minimum evolution; 60 * 3600 means once an hour
/c game.mapsettings.enemy_expansion.max_expansion_cooldown = 60 * 3600

If you want biters to only create new bases every 30 minutes on full evolution, you would simply put this into your console:

Code: Select all

/c game.mapsettings.enemy_expansion.min_expansion_cooldown = 30 * 3600

Evolution actually does affect how big the base is, at least that's what I heard anyway, where bases upgrade themselves with new spawners and if the EV is high enough they'll start busting out bigger spawners