[MOD 0.12.x] Rescaled Evolution Factor

[BenediktMagnus]

Rescaled Evolution Factor

Description:
Overwrites the existing evolution factor system with a more dynamic and interactive one.

Details:

• Factorio Version: 0.12.12+
• Latest version: 1.3.1
• Released: April 26th 2016 (First: March 10th 2016)
• License: The MIT License (You can find it here!)
• Tags: Evolution Factor, enemy strength, pollution
• Author: Benedikt Magnus

Download:
Download from GitHub

Rescaled-Evolution-Factor_1.3.1.zip

(5.52 KiB) Downloaded 634 times

Long Description

The mod changes the existing evolution factor system in a way it is more controllable by the player (this means you).
In vanilla game every produced pollution, every destroyed spawner and every single second increase the evolution factor, which means make the enemies stronger. It is impossible to decrease this factor.
With my mod this changes totally. That three values will still be important but in a different way.
Time increases the evolution factor to a maximum of twenty percent (after 24 hours gameplay time, exponential progress) now.
Destroying spawners will increase the factor to a maximum of thirty percent.
And producing pollution will not increase the evolution factor anymore but the total amount of pollution in the environmont will do so (to a maximum of 50%). This means if you decrease your pollution production the enemy strength will decrease, too!
All three values will be accumulated to (if every single one is at maximum) hundred percent.

What does that mean?
This means you have more ways to interact with the natives and your decisions have more impact. In vanilla you can only decide how fast the enemy strength increases. With this mod you can do more: Imagine you had a very high pollution production and the evolution factor stands at 100%. More and more behemots come and try to kill you. Even your great factory cannot produce enough energy to supply all lasers. That's why you decide to become more efficient! You build efficiency modules and solar panels and after all your work the pollution decreases and so does the evolution factor. Because you safe the natives environment the natives become less aggressive. There are no behemots that could kill you anymore. Very easy!

Examples

For example twelve hours gameplay time past means five percent evolution factor.
Many enemy spawners destroyed for more twelve percent.
A good production of pollution means maybe 37% evolution.
In sum this is 5% + 12% + 37% = 54% evolution factor!

Future plans

• Decrease the count of destroyed enemy spawners over time (like forgetting very old wars).
• Make a GUI to see the actual values of pollution and destroyed spawners. Maybe also how much that (with time) impacts in evolution factor.
• Change "destroyed enemy spawners" to something like "level of war".
• Make the progress of the evolution factor more complex. It should differ from start to mid and than late game.
• Implement the great ideas which the community had on page three.

Testing Version

Because balancing is hard I need your help.
In the new version 1.4 the mod will totally change. I have implemented the new behaviour for pollution based on the suggestions on page three (thanks to bam13302, seronis and mattj256!).
Pollution will now increase the Evolution Factor over time if the total value of pollution is higher than a "Neutral Value" (you can see it as the value of pollution the biters are used to). The Neutral Value will approximate the pollution value over time. If you decrease your pollution (or if you explore new chunks) and it gets lower than the Neutral Value your Evolution Factor will decrease, too. The higher the difference is the faster will the Evolv Factor change (and the faster the Neutral Value will approximate).
Yet only the pollution formula works this way, time and destroyed spawners will change (maybe) later.
Please test this beta version and tell me how the balancing is now.

Rescaled Evolution Factor Testing Version.zip

The latest testing version (current 1.4.2)

(5.59 KiB) Downloaded 184 times

Changelog

1.3.1 (April 26th 2016)

• Corrected spawners influnce to 30% (forgot to change maximum at the counting function in the last release from 50 to 60).

1.3.0 (March 28th 2016)

• Changed evolv factor quantities from 10% time, 20% spanwers and 70% pollution to 20% time, 30% spawners and 50% pollution.
• Changed time formula from linear to square.
• Changed German translation a bit ("Feindspawner" changed to "Nester").

1.2.0 (March 22nd 2016)

• Changed pollutions influnce on the evolution factor from square root to linear. (Less influence at the beginning of the game.)

1.1.0 (March 12th 2016)

• The number of destroyed enemy spawners decreases every hour by one. This shall simulate slowly forgetting very old wars and a "time of peace".
• Added a GUI feature. If you have the (very great) mod EvoGUI/Evolution Factor Indicator installed (you can download the required version here) you will have three new displays: Total pollution, number of destroyed enemy spawners the natives can remember and a monitor how every value impacts in the evolution factor (time, spawners and pollution). A great thank you to Narc at this point for his really usefull interface (and mod that I still used before I even had the idea for mine).
• Localisations for English and German. (If anyone wants to translate the few words into any other language I would be very grateful.)

1.0.0 (March 10th 2016)

• First Release

Previous Versions

Rescaled-Evolution-Factor_1.3.0.zip

Rescaled Evolution Factor 1.3.0 for Factorio 0.12.12+

(5.52 KiB) Downloaded 465 times

Rescaled-Evolution-Factor_1.2.0.zip

Rescaled Evolution Factor 1.2.0 for Factorio 0.12.12+

(5.51 KiB) Downloaded 263 times

Rescaled-Evolution-Factor_1.1.0.zip

Rescaled Evolution Factor 1.1.0 for Factorio 0.12.12+

(5.52 KiB) Downloaded 262 times

Rescaled-Evolution-Factor_1.0.0.zip

Rescaled Evolution Factor 1.0.0 for Factorio 0.12.12+

(3.56 KiB) Downloaded 199 times

[Koub]

This is the way (or alike) I want the evolution factor to work in vanilla

[BenediktMagnus]

Thank you, Koub!

The evolution factor in vanilla is very... boring and how it works is unexspected. But that's why I made this mod!


New version! Three little changes I hope you all enjoy!

[NoriSilverrage]

Excellent idea for a mod. Unfortunately it freaked out a bit on me.

Started a new game and was placed in a large badlands area. Built a few dozen burner miners and furnaces and after less than a hour evolution was at 30% (!) all from pollution. I had only just started researching and still only had pistol and maybe 20 mags when I got hit with biters. The GUI showed something like 150k pollution.
I have a few mods:
Scalar
RSO
Rail Tanker
Ammo Box
Flow Control
KS Power
Modular Armor Revamp

I think that is about it. Scalar slightly modifies evolution, but I think it only changes the time one and doesn't touch pollution.

[BenediktMagnus]

Thank you for your feedback! I hoped to get some feedback concerning balancing.

The evolution factor is (after a minimum of development) increasing faster than it does later in the game. Maybe too fast. I will rebalance that.

EDIT: Did it. Should be better for you now (feedback would be cool).

[FirroSeranel]

Excellent mod! It makes soooo much more sense than vanilla.

It never made sense to me why, just because I arrived on planet, the bugs would suddenly "evolve" in a matter of weeks, more than they presumably had in millions of years.

Now it's more like... over time they learn that you're there. Then as you destroy their nests, it leaves pheromone signatures that enrage them... but all of that pales in comparison to how much pollution pisses them off.

It does create quite a nasty difficulty hump during the transition from early to mid game (before you can get Efficiency module and/or air filter production going).

Basically, I hit over 50% evolution, mostly through pollution, just barely managing to fend off wave after wave of -very- tough enemies, before I got efficiency modules in my miners, and slowly lowered it back down to around 15%.

To be fair though, I'm using Natural Evolution's enemies and enemy spread algorithms. I just turned off its evolution algorithms, to use yours instead. Natural Evolution enemies at 30%-50% are much tougher than almost anything in vanilla, about equivalent to 90% evolution in vanilla I'd say. I did make it through, but just barely.

Edit: Ah, I see you rebalanced it from an exponential formula, to a linear one. That should be much better.

[BenediktMagnus]

Excellent mod! It makes soooo much more sense than vanilla.

Thank you!

Now it's more like... over time they learn that you're there. Then as you destroy their nests, it leaves pheromone signatures that enrage them... but all of that pales in comparison to how much pollution pisses them off.

Really good description for my thoughts when I created this mod! ^^

It does create quite a nasty difficulty hump during the transition from early to mid game (before you can get Efficiency module and/or air filter production going).
[...]
Edit: Ah, I see you rebalanced it from an exponential formula, to a linear one. That should be much better.

Yes, that's true. My intention was to increase it faster at the mid game and stabilise it at the end. There should be more time until the behemots come, in late game it should not decrease too much and if you have modules you should be able to controle the evolution factor easier.
The formula was exponential because I thought there should be more "reaction" if you increase the pollution from 0 to 100,000 than from 500,000 to 600,000. This is the same reason why I put the explored chunks into the formula. If you have a giant factory with a lot of pollution and settle a huge area the evolution factor should react in a different way than it does when you are a single man with a pickaxe and a furnance in the wild nature.
But I think it is better now, too.

For all of you: If you have ideas, feedback or remarks, say me! You can write it here in this thread, send me a PM or make a pull request on GitHub. I am happy about every opinion!

[Peter34]

How does the change from square to linear cause that stat to have less impact in the early game? Surely it'd be the other way around?

[BenediktMagnus]

I mean square root. Didn't see that could be not clear. Changed this. Thanks for asking!

[Murlocking]

Can I use this in an already existing world?
Will it rebalance my Evolution factor?

[BenediktMagnus]

Yes you can use it in an existing world. It will work exactly like it would in a new one. And you could even remove it every time if you wanted to. It will NOT break the game.

[Murlocking]

Yes you can use it in an existing world. It will work exactly like it would in a new one. And you could even remove it every time if you wanted to. It will NOT break the game.

Cool thanks man

[Dom_Drops_Bombs]

Question, I installed this super late game and had already destroyed multiple bases and alot of time has passed by. So when I installed the mod, would it count the nests I've already destroyed and the time passed before the mod was installed?

[BenediktMagnus]

No, it will not. It will only count new nests and decrease them with the time passes after installation. There is now migration feature (yet).

[bam13302]

As far as balance goes, I agree this seems to hit hardest mid game, perhaps put more weight on time and bases killed and less on pollution (especially since pollution already causes them to attack).

Story:
Mid game was trying to get my first expansion and was at about 60% evolution factor, didn't have the resources to make (enough) solar panels yet. Had to shut down basically my entire factory and let my pollution die down so i could expand. Now, i am in late game, running on a full solar panel farm, got about 50% evolution factor with close to %5 in time and a capped %20 in destroyed bases, pollution is minimal and the game is super easy, rolling through massive enemy bases without problem.
Time should probably scale quicker and higher, and destroyed bases feels like it should carry more weight as well.
perhaps 15% time, 30% bases, 55% pollution, makes having high pollution mid game not as deadly as long as you having not gone out killing, and actually makes the evolution from time something to consider.

[Murlocking]

As far as balance goes, I agree this seems to hit hardest mid game, perhaps put more weight on time and bases killed and less on pollution (especially since pollution already causes them to attack).

Story:
Mid game was trying to get my first expansion and was at about 60% evolution factor, didn't have the resources to make (enough) solar panels yet. Had to shut down basically my entire factory and let my pollution die down so i could expand. Now, i am in late game, running on a full solar panel farm, got about 50% evolution factor with close to %5 in time and a capped %20 in destroyed bases, pollution is minimal and the game is super easy, rolling through massive enemy bases without problem.
Time should probably scale quicker and higher, and destroyed bases feels like it should carry more weight as well.
perhaps 15% time, 30% bases, 55% pollution, makes having high pollution mid game not as deadly as long as you having not gone out killing, and actually makes the evolution from time something to consider.

I agree with this post since I am using 5dim's Mod and Air Filtering and reducing my pollution is quite easy

I would love a more hardcore version for the people who play modded but still want a challenge.

[BenediktMagnus]

@bam13302:
Thank you for your feedback, especially for your story.
I thought about your suggestion for a while and basically you are right (your experiences are very valuable). That's why I changed the formula again. But with an extra.
Becaus of you (and because of the others who gave feedback, thanks to all of you a lot for that!) I had an idea to make the mid game a bit easier and the late game a bit heavier.
Thats why I changed the time formula from linear to exponential (square) and increased the maximum count of destroyed spawners (to reach the maximum evolution factor for it) from 50 to 60.
In 1.3 it will be like follow:
20% time (at 24 hours past), 30% destroyed spawners (at 60 destroyed spawners) and 50% pollution (like its formula).

@Murlocking:
Thanks for feedback!
Is it better now or would you still have another suggestion?

[Sander_Bouwhuis]

Could you please tell me how to see what the current evolution factor is?

The wiki states that you have to type this:

Code: Select all

game.player.print(game.evolution_factor)

I press the ` key (the key that also has the ~) to get a command prompt en then paste the command there.
Unfortunately, nothing seems to happen when I do that.

[orzelek]

You need to prefix it with /c to make it work.
And use local_player instead of player possibly - makes it work in single or multiplayer.

[Sander_Bouwhuis]

Yes! That worked.

Sorry for being ignorant, but isn't the evolution factor in multi-player the same for every player?!? I thought it had to do with the map, not the player.