Biters seem MUCH easier in 0.15?

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garath
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Biters seem MUCH easier in 0.15?

Post by garath »

The biters seem much easier in 0.15 than in 0.14. Playing 0.14, I would typically see at least small biter attacks almost immediately. But playing 0.15 for 2-3 hours, I finally stopped what I was doing and went looking for them just to make sure I hadn't turned them off. It's been quite a long time since I played. Am I just remembering wrong? Maybe after playing dozens of hours every weekend for a few months, I had bumped up the biter difficulty?

In any case, what are the thoughts from other more seasoned players--especially those who played a TON of 0.14 just before now? Do you feel like the biters are about the same?

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Re: Biters seem MUCH easier in 0.15?

Post by Frightning »

garath wrote:The biters seem much easier in 0.15 than in 0.14. Playing 0.14, I would typically see at least small biter attacks almost immediately. But playing 0.15 for 2-3 hours, I finally stopped what I was doing and went looking for them just to make sure I hadn't turned them off. It's been quite a long time since I played. Am I just remembering wrong? Maybe after playing dozens of hours every weekend for a few months, I had bumped up the biter difficulty?

In any case, what are the thoughts from other more seasoned players--especially those who played a TON of 0.14 just before now? Do you feel like the biters are about the same?
Start area size has a very profound impact and how soon you will have to start dealing with the biters, even in 0.14, you can adjust that timing from almost immediately to a good 10ish hours off just by playing with starting area size in the mapgen.

Aru
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Re: Biters seem MUCH easier in 0.15?

Post by Aru »

All I can really compare against, is that biters are indeed much easier in vanilla 0.15 than in 0.14 with RSO mod. The attack waves, in early game at least, are much smaller (1-2 biters, it was never this small in RSO, ever) and take longer for the first wave after the game starts.

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Re: Biters seem MUCH easier in 0.15?

Post by The_Destroyer »

I haven't noticed a difference. I usually play with a big start area so that I don't have to deal with biters, but I was getting regular (every... 20 min?) biter attacks of about 5-10 in a group, until I destroyed their nest....

Then I saw that behind those nests, were about 20 more, uneffected. So close to my base....

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Re: Biters seem MUCH easier in 0.15?

Post by ChoMar »

We had some Problems with Biters on our multiplayer-Server. But that may be because we advance rather slow compared to our pollution output.
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garath
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Re: Biters seem MUCH easier in 0.15?

Post by garath »

I dunno... I'm three hours into my game with default settings--including default start area--and I haven't seen a single biter attack yet.

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Re: Biters seem MUCH easier in 0.15?

Post by Zonk »

Importet my map from 0.14 but havent seen biters for like 16 hours now. Even if i have some light defenses prepared iam happy they stay away

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Re: Biters seem MUCH easier in 0.15?

Post by Matthias_Wlkp »

I'm a couple of hours into 0.15 on standard settings and I haven't been attacked yet. However I changed the spawner spreading significantly (I hate when the map turns all red) and I blamed it on that.

What I noticed in 0.14 was that biters would attack even if you didn't reach them with the pollution cloud. Maybe it's fixed now that they won't attack until your smell starts disturbing them.

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Re: Biters seem MUCH easier in 0.15?

Post by Tev »

Biters are much easier in 0.15 . . .

. . . because you have 250hp now. Fish are so awesome now, I can take everything down just with non upgraded piercing bullets :) (kind of fresh Death world map)

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Re: Biters seem MUCH easier in 0.15?

Post by ccravens »

That's actually what I came to the forums looking for a discussion on... they don't seem easier to fight, but I spent many day cycles before anything attacked. The initial nests were far enough away that it took quite a long time before attacks got big enough a single turret with yellow ammo couldn't keep them off the wall. In previous games, I typically had bugs attack before I could get walls up around important equipment, while in this game I had a huge wall up around all my stuff before bugs really started showing up.

Because I'm not dealing with the bugs so much, and because I don't have a need to hunt bug spawners for resources, I'm just building defenses at the walls and ignoring the bugs. I'm almost baffled at how quickly I'm progressing compared to multiple start-ups in 0.14. It doesn't hurt that I got a good setup, with every resource including uranium inside my walls at this point, but I feel like, because the bugs take so long to attack, and I don't have to spend time running around destroying spawners, the game progresses extremely fast.

Maybe it would be different with a less optimal starting setup (I'm surrounded by water on one side, all ores within that arc) and I just got lucky this time around.

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Re: Biters seem MUCH easier in 0.15?

Post by Gus_Smedstad »

I've noticed the same thing. Last time I played was 0.12, and I was in the habit of bee-lining turrets and walls because I knew I'd need them, and generally I had to put up little pillboxes while I struggled to get enough stone walls made for a proper perimeter wall.

I played 0.15 the same way, and nothing happened. No attacks. I got my perimeter up, and no attacks. I'm very far into the tech tree now, just getting laser turrets online, and the biters have completely left me alone.

I thought it was because I was playing with the Resource Spawner Overhaul mod, and that had pushed back the initial nests or something, but they're completely leaving me alone. I'm sure it helps that I prioritized solar panels, as usual, but still at this stage of the game I'm expecting regular attack waves, and it's all quiet.

Eventually I'm going to run out of iron and the visible patches have nests, so I'll have to take the fight to them. But they sure are giving me plenty of time to ramp up.

I do like that the early attacks are toned down a bit, that was always a bit much I think, but this seems _too_ easy.

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Re: Biters seem MUCH easier in 0.15?

Post by Frightning »

Gus_Smedstad wrote:I've noticed the same thing. Last time I played was 0.12, and I was in the habit of bee-lining turrets and walls because I knew I'd need them, and generally I had to put up little pillboxes while I struggled to get enough stone walls made for a proper perimeter wall.

I played 0.15 the same way, and nothing happened. No attacks. I got my perimeter up, and no attacks. I'm very far into the tech tree now, just getting laser turrets online, and the biters have completely left me alone.

I thought it was because I was playing with the Resource Spawner Overhaul mod, and that had pushed back the initial nests or something, but they're completely leaving me alone. I'm sure it helps that I prioritized solar panels, as usual, but still at this stage of the game I'm expecting regular attack waves, and it's all quiet.

Eventually I'm going to run out of iron and the visible patches have nests, so I'll have to take the fight to them. But they sure are giving me plenty of time to ramp up.

I do like that the early attacks are toned down a bit, that was always a bit much I think, but this seems _too_ easy.
Try a fresh map w/ Very small start....and enjoy the early biter problems... Starting area size has a profound effect on how quickly you will have to deal with biter defense.

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Re: Biters seem MUCH easier in 0.15?

Post by Yogzototh »

I got a related question:

If expansion is enabled, do biters expand into the starting area? I see a lot of green circles in expansion candidate view, but i dont think i have seen any expansion in the last 8 hours.
Also, does expansion frequency depend on current evolution factor?


And regarding this discussion about biter strength, what are the changes? Player HP massive buff, Behemoth biter nerf (thank god), worm buff. Did i miss anything?

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Re: Biters seem MUCH easier in 0.15?

Post by garath »

Frightning wrote: I do like that the early attacks are toned down a bit, that was always a bit much I think, but this seems _too_ easy.
Try a fresh map w/ Very small start....and enjoy the early biter problems... Starting area size has a profound effect on how quickly you will have to deal with biter defense.[/quote]

Thank you for the awesome suggestion. It looks like the default starting area size is 'Medium'. I wonder if the default starting area in 0.14.x was closer to either Small or Very Small.

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Re: Biters seem MUCH easier in 0.15?

Post by Matthias_Wlkp »

Is the pollution spread affected in any way in 0.15? Maybe that is what is nerfing the bugs down?

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Re: Biters seem MUCH easier in 0.15?

Post by orzelek »

Matthias_Wlkp wrote:Is the pollution spread affected in any way in 0.15? Maybe that is what is nerfing the bugs down?
By default values are the same I think.
But presents can change those so a lot will depend on what you chose as preset.

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Re: Biters seem MUCH easier in 0.15?

Post by Nich »

I feel like the rate at which biters spread has been decreased. And the additional HP makes 2 shots a lot less likely but other then that they feel about the same

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Re: Biters seem MUCH easier in 0.15?

Post by ChoMar »

What i DO have to say, after getting in the game a while, Biters are Easier because the Player is stronger. uranium bullets, smaller personal Lasers...
At some .8 Evolution i can still simply run in a big biter nest and just clean it...
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Re: Biters seem MUCH easier in 0.15?

Post by Aeternus »

I did notice however that if left to their devices, Biter nests start to sprawl, with 20-30 spawners not being an exception. Clearing a nest that size takes some doing... This might be a side-effect of the Rail World map type however, that if biters may not migrate, they'll just form a new nest closer to home.

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Re: Biters seem MUCH easier in 0.15?

Post by Gus_Smedstad »

I've just started to clear nests, using the old tried-and-true laser turret creep. That doesn't seem to work as well now. Maybe I'm mistaken, but as I recall lasers used to out range worms, and now worms are roughly equal range, maybe a little longer. So my constructor bots are getting shot while dropping turrets. Maybe there's a point to building tanks and rocket launchers now?

Biter respawn rate seems much lower. I suspect it's more practical to just shoot your way in that rely on turret creep. Used to be, the biters spawned so fast there wasn't much point in trying to wipe them out with your own weapons, you needed the continuous firepower of a wall of turrets to keep the waves under control.

I read a couple of topics talking about waltzing in with personal lasers. Are those worthwhile now? I remember they used to handle maybe 1-2 biters in a wave of 20, so I abandoned them entirely long ago.

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