REVIEW: Next Gen Evolution - how evolution should really be

[zOldBulldog]

I want to point out a very small but impressive mod: Next Gen Evolution, by Qon.

It all started when I got frustrated that no matter what I did (using efficiency modules, non polluting power like solar and nuclear, keeping the pollution from touching nests and even using mods that let me plant trees and scrub the pollution)... I would still get runaway evolution due to pollution.

I knew I could turn off pollution but that is not what I wanted, since I wanted evolution but I wanted it to be a consequence of my failures to control pollution. I made a mod request in the forum and Qon created a mod that is both simpler, much better and more flexible than what I asked.

The brilliancy of this mod is that it does not bother with already solved problems, and it focuses on evolution generation/reduction mechanisms. With negligible impact to UPS.

- You can generate evolution when pollution touches nests, damages trees, etc. It can generate or reduce evolution when pollution is harmlessly absorbed by trees. And much more.

- You can combine your setting choices in this mod with setting choices in the vanilla new game options, to define evolution to be what YOU like, easier or harder, realistic or tweaked to achieve completely new forms of game play.

- You can also combine it with mods that let you plant trees or place buildings that remove pollution from the air.

I still need to find the right settings for me, but for a first test I decided to configure it so that evolution happens only when pollution touches nests or I destroy nests on a new map. I kept my pollution cloud small and it has not touched the enemy at all and I have not yet destroyed any nests. The evolution factor? 0.00%, exactly as expected... Until I mess up or attack nests... and then I expect it will jump up sharply.

What might you try? Ultra-small starting area and try to keep evolution at 0% anyway? Massive base with heavy air scrubbing? Focus on keeping nearby trees healthy? The possibilities are endless.

[Qon]

You didn't tell me about this thread
It was an interesting read! But I've found it now so all is well

As you describe it, it seems like you have an evolution factor at 0% but still avoid polluting spawners as if they were behemoths. So you aren't threatened by the initial attacks in case some happen to wander into your base, but the difficulty is still mostly the same because you still have to manage the pollution cloud as if the natives were dangerous or they will run you over.

Now with the default settings I chose, for default settings or railworld (not deathworld, for those I recommend tuning them down a bit) the evolution factor should be about the same since even if pollution absorbed by spawners is affecting evolution more, less pollution hits the spawners since trees and ground absorb so much of it.

But if you crank the settings up enough you could have explosive evolution factor growth that basically forces you to never pollute any nests at all, while still being playable if you manage that task. Since you take the eco-friendly factory seriously maybe you have done so? I'm curious what your current settings are.

Any pictures of your pollution cloud maybe?

[zOldBulldog]

You didn't tell me about this thread
It was an interesting read! But I've found it now so all is well

As you describe it, it seems like you have an evolution factor at 0% but still avoid polluting spawners as if they were behemoths. So you aren't threatened by the initial attacks in case some happen to wander into your base, but the difficulty is still mostly the same because you still have to manage the pollution cloud as if the natives were dangerous or they will run you over.

Now with the default settings I chose, for default settings or railworld (not deathworld, for those I recommend tuning them down a bit) the evolution factor should be about the same since even if pollution absorbed by spawners is affecting evolution more, less pollution hits the spawners since trees and ground absorb so much of it.

But if you crank the settings up enough you could have explosive evolution factor growth that basically forces you to never pollute any nests at all, while still being playable if you manage that task. Since you take the eco-friendly factory seriously maybe you have done so? I'm curious what your current settings are.

Any pictures of your pollution cloud maybe?

You did an amazing job with this, so I just had to review it.

I am still in my first map doing this. I wanted to go at it gradually, figure things out, polish my blueprints, and then... Go much more aggressive. So, I probably used too easy settings for now, but I am playing it as if I had extremely high evolution when pollution touches the nests.

My current/first try settings are:

Preset = Railworld
Time factor = 0
Pollution factor = 0
Next Gen settings all at default.
Starting area size = 600%
Richness = 300% (a slight increase to support my design work, will likely use default in the future)

Resulting evolution = 0%.

I am currently focusing on the compact vanilla-based initial base (a 3x3chunk mall, plus oil and 0.5/sec science) even though I have several mods installed that I will use. I still need to add a few things to the mall from yellow research and the explosive/artillery ammo lines.

Next will come, in order:

- One 480MW Nuclear Power plant, as I am reaching the power limit of my Steam plant and I do not want more.
- A mods production module supporting LTN, Bulk Rail Loader, Mini loaders, some air scrubber (probably the Bioindustries BioGarden even though I am not sure I will use their other buildings) and one of the Advanced Solar mods.
- Place air scrubbers around the base and mines.
- Rail station for the mall and initial rail lines. Maybe push back the enemy.
- Compact/low volume rocket production.
- Volume production for Modules (probably choked by lack of resources at first).
- And here starts scaling, beginning with smelters, then green/red/blue circuits, all in 8-wagon loads.

Future game runs will most likely use progressively tougher settings until I find the right balance while still allowing me to make nice looking bases.

Will attach screenshot when I can.

P. S. : Do you plan to add an air scrubber to your mod? Or should I keep looking for the right mod to provide it?

[Qon]

Air scrubbers are out of scope for Next Gen Evolution. They fit well together but I'm not making anything that requires graphics and I think having the ability to combine with any other scrubber mod is good. And for those that only want NGE without extra stuff I don't need to have options that turn that off then. Besides those kinds of mods exists so I don't think more are needed. I like when each mod gives you what you want and no things you don't want.

[zOldBulldog]

I agree on leaving scrubbers out of scope. There are enough of those to pick from. I was just wondering because if you included one I wasn't going to hunt for another Do you have a favorite scrubber?

And here are the couple screenshots you requested. Nothing fancy, mainly a proof of concept and scrubbers are not yet present.

First the base. This will become the build-everything "mall" when I scale (already mostly built, just need to add volume materials volume via rail and a few small pieces).
- Bottom left 1x3 chunk is my Steam Power. Currently fed in priority order: Wood from logistic trash, solid fuel, and if all goes bad... coal. About 60-80% utilized.
- Bottom right 3x3 is smelting and the mall proper. Nest to it will go the 1x3 mod mall.
- Center is a mini-bus. Flows left to right.
- Top left 2x3 is the mall's Oil production.
- Top right 2x3 is the 0.5science/sec build. I am just finishing the yellow science.

nextGenBase.jpg (4.29 MiB) Viewed 4668 times

Then the pollution cloud. Bigger than I like (default pollution generation) and will stay so until I start scrubbing it.

nextGenCloud.jpg (671.79 KiB) Viewed 4668 times

[Qon]

I agree on leaving scrubbers out of scope. There are enough of those to pick from. I was just wondering because if you included one I wasn't going to hunt for another Do you have a favorite scrubber?

And here are the couple screenshots you requested. Nothing fancy, mainly a proof of concept and scrubbers are not yet present.

Neat base. But the grid hurts my eyes. If you want a grid you should use my mod ChunkyChunks q:

I'm using Noxys Trees as my 'scrubber' mod. I tried another tree growing mod but that used a lot of UPS. Noxys mod says it is performant and I haven't had any bad experience with it yet. And I also use Clean Tree Burning to get rid of trees once I invent fire. And Napalm Artillery once I reach late game FIRE!

[zOldBulldog]

I ended up going with the Air Filtering mod by Schorty. It is a bit of a pain to get the filters to and from the various locations but I am starting to get the pollution under control.

What really surprised me is that it seems that "nest/worm" reproduction does not seem to depend on any of the factors we discussed. Even with 0% pollution I noticed that over time the nests still got denser and bigger. Do you have any idea on how that mechanic works?

[Qon]

Even with 0% pollution I noticed that over time the nests still got denser and bigger. Do you have any idea on how that mechanic works?

Nope. But Creative Mode has a tool to tell natives to build a nest. So it should be technically possible to disable vanilla bitter migration and handle it with a mod. But it might be a lot more work than Next Gen Evolution and might not be easy to really make CPU efficient.

But if you changed the migration settings depending on the global pollution absorbtion then that might work. Nests not hit by pollution would migrate if any nests absorb pollution, similarly to how there's global evolution factor for all nests that NGE manipulates. That could be just as effiecient as the evolution control that NGE does. If no pollution is absorbed then native migration off might be a sensible value. But how would you scale that for different pollution absorbtion values? It would also be difficult to test since it takes quite a while to actually do the migration after they decide to and the factors are in migrations every x minutes so it takes a long time to see any effects. There's an event on_biter_base_built though that can be used for debugging so you don't have to watch every native all the time to see if the code is working.

[zOldBulldog]

It is really more about curiosity than anything else, and because it felt wrong when evolution is zero.

But I wasn't talking about biters roaming to establish new nests, I was talking about nest groups going from 1-3 nests/worms per group to 20 or 50 over time, even with time factor and pollution factor both at zero and evolution unde NextbGen's control and successfully kept at 0. I did not expect this to happen so it left me wondering.

[Qon]

But I wasn't talking about biters roaming to establish new nests, I was talking about nest groups going from 1-3 nests/worms per group to 20 or 50 over time

Does this happen if "expansion" is turned off? Because I don't know if there's actually a difference between the two, except in the distances to other nests.

[zOldBulldog]

But I wasn't talking about biters roaming to establish new nests, I was talking about nest groups going from 1-3 nests/worms per group to 20 or 50 over time

Does this happen if "expansion" is turned off? Because I don't know if there's actually a difference between the two, except in the distances to other nests.

Expansion, Pollution factor, Time factor... are all off. I wanted Next Gen to be the only thing causing evolution so that it would be very obvious how it behaved.

Destroying nests factor is on, but that one is under *my* control, so I figured that I would know what happened when I see an increase in evolution. As a matter of fact, I noticed this issue when I went on my first wave of taking over territory.

[Koub]

Expansion, Pollution factor, Time factor... are all off. I wanted Next Gen to be the only thing causing evolution so that it would be very obvious how it behaved.

Destroying nests factor is on, but that one is under *my* control, so I figured that I would know what happened when I see an increase in evolution. As a matter of fact, I noticed this issue when I went on my first wave of taking over territory.

Expansion has no effect on evolution, it's the other way round. The only indirect effect expansion will have is if a base is built by an expansion group within the reach of your pollution cloud, thus creating pollution induced evolution.

Expansions are made this way : https://wiki.factorio.com/Enemies#Expansions
And the influence of the different variables on expansions is described here : https://wiki.factorio.com/World_generat ... _expansion

Once a base is built, it doesn't grow whatever the evolution. However, base size is tied to evolution factor. If your evolution factor is 0, you should have always minimal size new bases.

However, if you have disabled expansions, the only factor governing the enemy base sizes is the map gen setting for enemy base size/frequency.

[zOldBulldog]

Expansion, Pollution factor, Time factor... are all off. I wanted Next Gen to be the only thing causing evolution so that it would be very obvious how it behaved.

Destroying nests factor is on, but that one is under *my* control, so I figured that I would know what happened when I see an increase in evolution. As a matter of fact, I noticed this issue when I went on my first wave of taking over territory.

Expansion has no effect on evolution, it's the other way round. The only indirect effect expansion will have is if a base is built by an expansion group within the reach of your pollution cloud, thus creating pollution induced evolution.

Expansions are made this way : https://wiki.factorio.com/Enemies#Expansions
And the influence of the different variables on expansions is described here : https://wiki.factorio.com/World_generat ... _expansion

Once a base is built, it doesn't grow whatever the evolution. However, base size is tied to evolution factor. If your evolution factor is 0, you should have always minimal size new bases.

However, if you have disabled expansions, the only factor governing the enemy base sizes is the map gen setting for enemy base size/frequency.

What you described is what I *thought* was the behavior. But it proved to be otherwise.

From the expansion side:
- Expansion is off.

From the evolution side:
- Pollution factor is off.
- Time factor is off.
- So, the only things that trigger evolution are Qon's mod (based on being touched by pollution) and the Destroy factor which I kept on.
... but... at the time I observed this the evolution level was still 0.0% (a long while into the game).

From the base size - and this is the main topic of my comment:
- I found fairly sizable bases when I went to clear them. I had the right stuff, so it was not a problem at all, but it seemed wrong. I would not have expected to see any with more than 5 or so spawners/worms. Instead, most were quite big.

My suspicion is that the real behavior is that base size depends on time and that there are no controls over it. Maybe, time determines the size a base will be created as, once it is spawned due to exploration. In other words, explore early and you get small bases, explore late and you get huge ones.

[Koub]

If I'm not mistaken, base size also increases with distance to starting area (as do all the resources).
Were those bases far away, or right next to your starting area ?

I reckon I'm only relying on theoretical data (wiki, ...) and have not experimented by myself, mostly due to lack of time to do so, so I might be wrong.

[Qon]

Bases grow with distance. If you make a deathworld and place a MK2 Super radar from Creative Mode you can see this on map view easily. Just outside starting area they are small and further away they get bigger until they cover everything. So it sounds like you found bases further away later than the ones close to you and thought that they started out the same size and Qoncluded that they has grown. You need to look at the same base at different times to see if they actually grow

- So, the only things that trigger evolution are Qon's mod (based on being touched by pollution) and the Destroy factor which I kept on.

Absorbed, not touched. And depending on the settings in Next Gen Evolution you can have other things increase evolution also. By default trees damaged by excessive amounts of pollution also increase evolution. You factor is 0 but it can go back down to 0 so you would have to look at the all time pollution stats to Qonfirm that no trees have ever been damaged (or other stats depending on settings) by pollution to know it has always been 0%. But if evolution factor doesn't make hives grow then that doesn't matter

[zOldBulldog]

Bingo! Distance.

[zOldBulldog]

Mischief managed!

Or rather, pollution controlled. Using Schorty's Air Filters.

pollution.jpg (494.61 KiB) Viewed 4442 times

[Qon]

That seems really effective

[zOldBulldog]

That seems really effective

It is very effective but not trivial. You can do it in a more limited manner early on, but to do it effectively I found it works best with Nuclear power, bots and yellow-science chests. Then you need to:

- Have enough power available. In the base you see it was 2 480MW nuclear power plants.
- Setup a production line for air filters (2 or 3 only at first). Consumes coal, some steel and plastic.
- Setup a much bigger production line for recycling air filters. This is where most of your filters will come from, but it only consumes coal.
- Setup a distribution system for air filters and to return used air filters. I found that the best way to do it is a combination of trains (with auto-disabling train stops) and bots.
- Setup the air filtering machines wherever they are needed, in my case each with a requester for filters and an active provider for used filters.

Still, I like it. The whole thing lets me stay green and the extra effort/resources make me feel that I earned the right of being left alone by the aliens