Py and Biters

[Marconos]

There was a discussion in the PyAlienLife thread about biters with Py. I would like to have a discussion on biters with Py outside of that.

So .. here are my thoughts

I play with biters on in my Py suite.

My last run I ended up having to disable them as they evoled too fast. There really is no way to get it right without testing and with how long things take ... that can take awhile .

My next run I will be making the following changes:

• Disable time evolution

• Greatly Reduce killing hives evolution

• Decrease pollution evolution

I do not want to change their spawning time or distance. More focused on greatly slowing down their evolution as that is where the problems come in. Tech has to keep pace with their evolution. By tying their evolution to pollution , they should scale as your base and tech does.

Effects of doing this:

• Giant Py bases at low tier tech will get you killed (hopefully)

• Decrease the affect of killing hives as respawns will need to be controlled and many more will be "re-killed" as you expand

• Keep biters and the threat of attacks in game and making sure you have to have some type of military to controll them

I would love any thoughts on the best way to integrate biters with Py.

Edits [Additional changes from discussion below]

• Max starting area size

• Preferred start is a forested start (abosorbs pollution and reduces attacks)

[shadowpho]

Artillary science costs 2000 science for some reason.

[Squelch]

A couple of other settings that I use:

• Biter expansion off
  This has the effect of still allowing spawned colonies to grow, but prevents nesting groups from encroaching on new land, or repopulating claimed land.
• Increased starting area
  This allows us to establish an early base, and research footing before even needing to deal with biters. The actual size used may be dependent on the map type, and settings. ie large land masses allow access to resources within a smaller start area without the need to interact with biters early on, but maps with lots of water, and limited routes as a consequence, might benefit from a larger starting area. The starting area also affects the distance at which some of the rarer resources spawn, so player expansion is absolutely necessary (read, no turtling down). Just as more diverse, and increased yield resource patches become available further out, so do the size of the biter nests increase.

I have only recently realised that biomes can make a large difference to how pollution is spread. As mentioned in the PyAl thread, pollution control seems to be the key to having any sort of balanced relationship with biters, so mods like Alien Biomes actually become complimentary to Py with biters.

Biters are not for everyone, but for those of us that like the extra challenge, and also to have the pollution metrics actually mean something, it adds new levels of required strategy on top of layouts and balanced feed rates. Pollution absorbing buildings can be wonderful.

[Marconos]

A couple of other settings that I use:

• Biter expansion off
  This has the effect of still allowing spawned colonies to grow, but prevents nesting groups from encroaching on new land, or repopulating claimed land.
• Increased starting area
  This allows us to establish an early base, and research footing before even needing to deal with biters. The actual size used may be dependent on the map type, and settings. ie large land masses allow access to resources within a smaller start area without the need to interact with biters early on, but maps with lots of water, and limited routes as a consequence, might benefit from a larger starting area. The starting area also affects the distance at which some of the rarer resources spawn, so player expansion is absolutely necessary (read, no turtling down). Just as more diverse, and increased yield resource patches become available further out, so do the size of the biter nests increase.

I have only recently realised that biomes can make a large difference to how pollution is spread. As mentioned in the PyAl thread, pollution control seems to be the key to having any sort of balanced relationship with biters, so mods like Alien Biomes actually become complimentary to Py with biters.

Biters are not for everyone, but for those of us that like the extra challenge, and also to have the pollution metrics actually mean something, it adds new levels of required strategy on top of layouts and balanced feed rates. Pollution absorbing buildings can be wonderful.

I like the expansion though. Without it, you kill them and move on, no threat to your base. I want them to respawn / repopulate an area so I have to have defenses and such to keep them back.
Increased starting area is a must with the number of machines needed for basic startup, added that to my changed settings list.
Also added that I want a biome with more trees. They absorb pollution and decrease the frequency of attacks. As I clear the forest that will make it spread out more so things have to be balanced.

Good suggestions

[DarkyPupu]

I play with bitters and Py mods (or any other modsets, for what it worths), with "Research cause evolution" mod, not using vanilla evolution rules (time, pollution, destruction), only evolution per research with the mod.

Together with that:
- I have severe control over pollution as i always disable things which are not absolutely necessary to reduce pollution
- Depending on mods, techniques may vary: Py mods allows to make remotely easy pollution walls with farms, IR mods allows very early turrets, etc.
- Also doing some extremely early "raid" to push ennemies as far as possible eases a lot
- And of course, a start zone as big as possible else it's often unplayable early in the game on a h24 online server.

It does happen that when i come back to my game, the base is destroyed Depending on how bad it is, i repair or i take a backup save and plan it differently (i save every 24h).

Anyway, pollution control is the key. If you don't care about pollution or consider it's "normal" to pollute like hell, it's probably unplayable.

[DreadIron]

I play Py suite with https://mods.factorio.com/mod/PyPollutionFix + RSO, no other mods. As you may noticed, pollution generation in Py is broken (most buildings produce 0.06/m, even turbines which state in description that pollute a lot)
I found reasonable settings the following: pollution factor down to 2 from default 9. Disable time factor. Destroy factor I left intact but you can lower it to 50. New bases disabled. Starting area 133%. Other settings I left default and I would say it's pretty balanced
Some notes: don't produce/mine when you don't need mats. Go for more effective smellting. Tier 2 smellting is good start. Solar helps, but you would need a lot of copper and pyrite.

I hope Py will find some time to fix pollution issue

[YunoAloe]

Try viewtopic.php?f=219&t=79261