Whats up with the big biters??? Getting creamed so early!!

[Hogweed]

Hi,

I had created a map in the editor, when I set it up I set the rules for the Aliens to Low, Small and Poor, thinking to reduce the Big ones at least till much later in the game. I had only researched Sci Packs 1, and did not have a whole lot of construction in my base, the biter bases were just out of sight of my viewing area, so I wanted some action before I made sci packs 2. I spend much of the time building turrents and walls until I had the base well contained and defended. I had the gun turrents and ammo fully upgraded.

Then the FIRST attack came, but it was a swarm of big biters! The guns had between 50-75 clips in each of them. The big ones tore through the walls, took out all the guns and wiped everything out.

I have a few pics below. How can that happen? I thought the first attacks would be small and a few mediums, not a swarm of big ones????
Is it dependent on something? This is not the first time it happened, as I have played a few with low alien settings and keep getting massacred by large biters early in the game. I was far from getting laser turrents. With the settings on low, small and poor, why so many big biters?? what is going on??

(edit) - the thing is I have watched a lot of videos of players, and they always get attacked first for a long while by only the small and med, not the large, why so the big ones like me sooo much?? even Malkasphia's videos of his super hard deathworld, his first attacks were all small ones he easily beat with a shotgun! So I just dont get it!


The setup before the attack:




Attack!




Wipeout!!

[Calico]

First off: What version are you using? Any mods in use?

I really can't say that i've ever witnessed swarms of giant biters that early. A single one, with several small and a few mediums maybe, but never a horde of them. Maybe the custom map creation is somehow bugged? Even in my current game (4th freeplay, all medium settings) there aren't that many heavy Biters around and i'm at over 30 hours into the game. Most waves have 3-4 heavys and a couple of normal biters... nothing a defense with a single wall and a couple of Lasers can't handle.

[immibis]

The big biters are almost invincible against bullets. You need lasers.

I don't know why there were big biters to start with, of course.

[Hogweed]

Hi immibis,

I am using the 0.9.0, since I wanted to use the oil, but I am watching a new series on UTube with the same version, and he only has the small ones. I am guessing that it has to do with making custom maps, as this has happened several times with them. I am now playing a reguar map to see what happens. I am not using any mods.

I will wait to see if someone knows about this and what I can do....

[slpwnd]

The logic behind sending biters is called an evolutionfactor. This has been coming up more often recently so I summed it up how it works on the wiki: https://forums.factorio.com/wiki/inde ... #Evolution

At the moment there is no in game way to see what the evolution factor is (except for opening up the dev console and asking for the value - see the wiki on how to do that). However we really feel it is needed and it will be added. Otherwise the player doesn't know how much time he has before the bigger biters start coming.

I suppose the problem here could be with the fact that the map was created in the map editor. There is a concept where further away from the start the spawners are stronger from the beginning (we call it the spawn shift). In case when you would not start with the player on the position 0,0, but moved somewhere more appropriate before this would cause the spawner nests to be more enhanced from the beginning. Maybe the spawner shift is not a good concept after all. I have put this on our todo list.

[elkar]

Actualy i like that logic. Further out = more dangerois enviroment.

But for editor; wouldnt it be better to make it that once you put player entity down it marks that spot as 0,0?

[ssilk]

https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... f=6&t=2557

[Hogweed]

The logic behind sending biters is called an evolutionfactor. This has been coming up more often recently so I summed it up how it works on the wiki: https://forums.factorio.com/wiki/inde ... #Evolution

At the moment there is no in game way to see what the evolution factor is (except for opening up the dev console and asking for the value - see the wiki on how to do that). However we really feel it is needed and it will be added. Otherwise the player doesn't know how much time he has before the bigger biters start coming.

I suppose the problem here could be with the fact that the map was created in the map editor. There is a concept where further away from the start the spawners are stronger from the beginning (we call it the spawn shift). In case when you would not start with the player on the position 0,0, but moved somewhere more appropriate before this would cause the spawner nests to be more enhanced from the beginning. Maybe the spawner shift is not a good concept after all. I have put this on our todo list.

Hi slpwnd,

I did read that wiki article before. I see now that it is an issue with the editor, thank you for clearing that up. I only moved a very short distance from the starting point, as I placed the player just a bit north of the center of the area I was going to use. I guess I will just have to wait until there is a fix in place, I will keep an eye out for that, as I like creating maps to play on, but cannot now. I dont want to make changes with the console values until I am sure of what I am doing.

I like ssilks idea about being able to set the evolutionfactor in the editor at least, so that this does not happen. The best option I could hope for is that the game mechanics stay the same with maps created in the editor as they are in the game. If you know of anyway around this problem that I can use I would appreciate it, as I want to create some maps to play on, but now I have to use the regular games until that is fixed.

Thanks!

[Zourin]

it really shouldn't matter where you start. I would rather know that i can tackle a small single spawner nest with a pistol if I have to within the first 30 minutes of the game knowing that I can safely 'set up' in a good spot, than having to reload-spam until I get a suitable prison cell to hole up in for most of the game.

if I keep my pollution profile low and avoid aggressing nests without good reason, I should be able to stay a little ahead of the evolution factor. It seems wierd that I would land in the only place on the planet where the biters have died from dysentery, and if I have to relocate because the local resources are bad enough to give ME dysentery, I should be able to move along the trail and find a reasonable place to set up with little hassle.