biters, spawn rate and evolution factor

[JimBarracus]

I was recently thinking about the biter spawn rate and evolution factor.
It seems like a one-way-road. The more you stress the biters the bigger they get.
And there is no way back.

Also biter behaviour is a little weird. I mean they dont eat, they dont hunt. How do they even live?
They just sit around and wait till a dust cloud hits them and then they attack you.

I think biters should run around in groups and when they see some player structures they attack.
Not only pollution trigger, also looking for food.(which doesn't exist or is not visible)

What makes biters grow?
Biters become bigger, when their nest is in a pollution cloud. Pollution influences their growth and when they grow up in bad (polluted) conditions they turn out bigger.
What does the evolution factor? (which should then be renamed because it doesn't fit anymore)
It limits the amount of spawned biters and the amount of roaming groups.
It decreases over time, when you dont interact with the biter nests.
It increases just like now.
The size of your factory could also be a determining factor. For example the amount of existing aseemblers could influence biter behaviour.

What is the benefit from this?
When you keep the pollution from the biters they will spawn in their small form and won't be such a big threat to you.

Addition: I did not post it in suggestions because it is not a direct suggestion.
I simply think that the system could use an overhaul, but my ideas don't feel like a finished suggestion.

Maybe others have ideas how the system could be changed in order to reward the player when he leaves the biters alone and keeps the pollution away from them.

[Koub]

The more you stress the biters the bigger they get.

Actually, this is not exactly true. Evolution factor ... factors the total produced pollution, even if that pollution never gets seen by any biter. That's one thing that make me dislike the way evolution factor currently works. Even if one builds in the most eco friendliest way possible (assuming we're on vanilla), and no pollution cloud ever touches a biter or a biter nest, there will be pollution induced evolution.

The evolution factor is not increased by the spreading/absorbed pollution, but by the pollution produced by all the player's machinery at every tick. This means that no matter how hard the player tries to contain the pollution, enemies will still evolve at the same rate. They just won't attack the player as frequently. The pollution cloud is used to trigger biter attacks and determines the size of the attacks.

Source : https://wiki.factorio.com/Pollution

I'd rather see the pollution induced evolution be triggered by the pollution absorbed by nests.

[zOldBulldog]

Currently biters evolve based on multiple independent factors:

(1) Time passed,

(2) How much pollution you produce globally, even if it doesn't reach the nests, and it is "produced" so even if the pollution gets scrubbed by trees or any of the devices available in mods... it still gets counted towards evolution.

(3) How many enemy spawners you destroy.

It is interesting that you were thinking in this direction. I just had some interesting discussions in other threads and it turns out that the key functionality to create a mod that makes evolution much more natural and allows you to evolve in a truly ecologically-friendly way is already in the modding APIs.

I already figured out the needed details, and as soon as I have time to word it right I will post in the mod requests forum. Hopefully one of the mod-writers will like the idea and implement it. I think there are many of us that would like to see a mod that enables true eco-friendly behavior (as in... if you build following ecological principles... the aliens won't evolve at all... finally a reward for doing the right thing!).

EDIT: Mod request created (viewtopic.php?f=88&t=70786)