Was 0.17.7 biters nerfed already?

[christian]

So I held off on playing 0.17.0 for a week, now it's 0.17.7. And on the release of 0.17 I've been reading some people complain about the biter difficulty so I was expecting it to be very hard. I was expecting to lose on my first try. But you know, that's what I wanted, I wanted a challenge. So I kept Rampant mod on (I also have a couple of very minor mods like squeak-through) And it's still not that hard on default settings, I would say easy... Everything is still pretty mellow, just build defenses around and that's it. All the talk about putting pressure on the player to prioritize between x or y, didn't really materialize. Which is fine, I can set biter difficulty higher manually.

So my questions are:
1. Has the biters been nerfed already at 0.17.7?
2. Would Rampant may have made the biters easier?
3. Because I play with Rampant ON prior to 0.17, does it mean I'm just more acclimated to the harder difficulty that people are complaining about?

I write this thread also to serve as feedback for the current biter difficulty.

[CDarklock]

I honestly think the problem isn't that the biters were ever hard, they were just harder than people expected.

Basically I feel like people went "this is the tutorial/demo for new players who don't know anything, it will all be really easy." And then it wasn't.

I felt like they were hard, but I also really suck at combat in this game, so I didn't find it at all surprising. As far as I'm concerned, if I can beat the level being this bad at combat, nobody else has any real excuse. It's possible that I'm better at combat than I think... but... I don't really see any evidence of that. Every time I say "this is hard for me," a half-dozen people pop up to tell me how easy it is.

Plus it gets really easy when you know what to expect. I still suck at combat in freeplay, but the demo isn't even remotely challenging anymore.

[m44v]

And on the release of 0.17 I've been reading some people complain about the biter difficulty so I was expecting it to be very hard.

People complained of the difficulty of the introductory campaing, that spawns waves and waves of biters at the end of it. The difficulty in freeplay hasn't changed really.

[Serenity]

The difficulty in freeplay hasn't changed really.

For someone used to Rampant probably not, but there were some changes. For example pollution not stopping at the first row of spawners anymore as they don't absorb an infinite amount now.

Default base density is also higher, but probably just back what it used to be in earlier versions

[dood]

They are much harder to deal with because of the way ranged attacks work now and because the tank was nerfed into oblivion.
Turret creep flat out doesn't work anymore due to lingering acid destroying power poles and if you build laser turrets right next to power poles, eventually the power pole will get hit by spitters and destroyed so that might become a problem.

[Nefrums]

It is harder now in a few specific cases.
In 0.16 there was a bug that a nest consumed all pollution regardless if it could generate biters from it or not. This caused biter acctivity to not scale in proportion to generated pollution.
As this is now fixed biter acctivity scales with pollution now. So if you generate a lot of pollution, there will be more biters.

Also map generation has changed a bit. It is now possible for biter nests to appear very close to the starting ore patches. When that happens there will be very early attacks and it might be difficult to survive the early game. But this is only a problem on some maps, and hence will only affect unlucky beginners. Experienced players will look at the map preview and reroll for another map that does not have this problem.

[ManaUser]

I started playing right away in 0.17.0 and didn't find the biters noticeably harder either (discounting the campaign which throws literally thousands of them at you for no good reason).

It may have to do with differing play styles. My policy was always to exterminate biter bases inside my pollution cloud. So the biggest change doesn't really effect me much. People who prefer to build strong defenses and fight off the biters spawned by pollution as the come may have a much rougher time of things.

[Dragonmaster0283]

Currently up to utility science on my default settings run and the biter's haven't been a huge issue. Really its early game that feels like it got a smidge harder and not really because of stronger biters but the fix to the pollution and spawners.

I do feel like if you expand way to quickly at the start and pollute heavily that your going to have an escalating problem. Those building super malls right at the start I can forsee it have biter problems. I started slow and kept my pollution footprint down and early game wasn't too bad till i was able to get my defenses set up.

[BlueTemplar]

Turret creep flat out doesn't work anymore due to lingering acid destroying power poles and if you build laser turrets right next to power poles, eventually the power pole will get hit by spitters and destroyed so that might become a problem.

You know that there are other turrets than Laser, right ?
(This actually feels like a nice balance change for making laser turret creep less easy compared to gun/flame... at least for a short while - until blue science and substations ?)

See also this thread :
"There are not enough options vs bases early game"

[BlueTemplar]

Experienced players will look at the map preview and reroll for another map that does not have this problem.

Experienced players will not cheat using Preview, but look at the map as soon as the game starts, and use the "Restart" button (which seems to be actually faster than preview!) if really warranted.
(EDIT : Also, Preview doesn't work for RSO-placed ores anyway... nor maybe for RSO-placed nests ?)

[dood]

You know that there are other turrets than Laser, right ?
(This actually feels like a nice balance change for making laser turret creep less easy compared to gun/flame... at least for a short while - until blue science and substations ?)

Maybe in another world in which gun turrets get filled with ammunition when you place them.
And yes, I know mods exist. This is not about mods.

[BlueTemplar]

Flame turrets do.
And you have Ctrl+right click+drag or inserters for gun turrets.

[BlueTemplar]

on the release of 0.17 I've been reading some people complain about the biter difficulty

For those that complained about harder biters in the Freeplay, this might be why :
[0.17.x] Pollution [...] has changed
(At least in the beginning, before solar.)

EDIT : probably not, depending where they placed their furnaces / drills... (made a math mistake)

[Braize]

I never had a problem with biters. Even early when a couple nests were spawned by my base, I just used all my iron to make ammo, cleared them out, then proceeded as normal.

I don't do anything special. I don't copy guides and other builds, I do my own messy builds. And I am not having any issues. Build walls, build turrets, clear nests when they get out of control, build more. If people are having issues with the default difficulty settings, it's not the game that is the problem.

I mean one guy was complaining about worms.... Does he even realize that you couldn't avoid their projectiles before? Some people just can't accept that just maybe it's their strategy that is the problem, and not the game.

[Zaflis]

2. Would Rampant may have made the biters easier?
3. Because I play with Rampant ON prior to 0.17, does it mean I'm just more acclimated to the harder difficulty that people are complaining about?

I only played with Rampant in 0.16 a couple games. Only thing i noticed then was that they act badly when there's lots of water in the map. 0.17 makes maps with water prettier so i have lots of it now. Don't know what kind of map you made, but i suspect we all like chokepoints.

[Termak]

Just plop pairs of turrets to mines/powerplant and near production areas early on, and keep defenses up, just pairs of turrets early on is enough, then add small wall, biters definitely not a problem for normal game.

[humblegar]

So I held off on playing 0.17.0 for a week, now it's 0.17.7. And on the release of 0.17 I've been reading some people complain about the biter difficulty so I was expecting it to be very hard. I was expecting to lose on my first try. But you know, that's what I wanted, I wanted a challenge. So I kept Rampant mod on (I also have a couple of very minor mods like squeak-through) And it's still not that hard on default settings, I would say easy... Everything is still pretty mellow, just build defenses around and that's it. All the talk about putting pressure on the player to prioritize between x or y, didn't really materialize. Which is fine, I can set biter difficulty higher manually.

So my questions are:
1. Has the biters been nerfed already at 0.17.7?
2. Would Rampant may have made the biters easier?
3. Because I play with Rampant ON prior to 0.17, does it mean I'm just more acclimated to the harder difficulty that people are complaining about?

I write this thread also to serve as feedback for the current biter difficulty.

In freeplay they do not seem harder to me, but that is hard to judge. Lasers do seem to be extremely potent, maybe too much so. And I mean both as turrets and in power armor.

You can however get swarmed in the introduction campaign, and that is at least what I have been discussing/reading about.

[humblegar]

They are much harder to deal with because of the way ranged attacks work now and because the tank was nerfed into oblivion.
Turret creep flat out doesn't work anymore due to lingering acid destroying power poles and if you build laser turrets right next to power poles, eventually the power pole will get hit by spitters and destroyed so that might become a problem.

I have been turret creeping easily with both gun and laser turrets, but yes you do take more damage from spitters. Early game the point is that you can let them have a turret, just don't let them kill 200 ammo.

[christian]

2. Would Rampant may have made the biters easier?
3. Because I play with Rampant ON prior to 0.17, does it mean I'm just more acclimated to the harder difficulty that people are complaining about?

I only played with Rampant in 0.16 a couple games. Only thing i noticed then was that they act badly when there's lots of water in the map. 0.17 makes maps with water prettier so i have lots of it now. Don't know what kind of map you made, but i suspect we all like chokepoints.

My strategy is to build turrets up asap. 1 turret every cross chunk (or 1 every chunk) along my border. Then build a 1 thick wall around the turret. Depending on biter activity I just increase the number of turrets, it's really as simple as that. Having piercing ammo early helps a lot as well. And of course, don't ignore the weapon damage/speed research.

[Guenni7]

So I loaded my late game in 0.17 and it took the biters 5 mins to crash the main wall.
The laser turrets are doing not even half the damage they did in 0.16,
probably because of the changes in Science, Laser damage science after conversion of the savegame is down to level 6 (?).