Deathworld shouldn't be about time race

[imTheSupremeOne]

I'm mostly a deathworld player, but this time I've decided to go with a calm default settings... I created my world, didn't changed richness of ores, wasn't looking and rerolling map to get ores close, and increased enemies to 200% to still have some challenge from biters.

I was playing really relaxed, spending a lot of time designing base; killed many nests and got to medium biters pretty quickly. So quickly that I even checked the wiki, and learned evolution growth is not linear, but logariphmical — so the increase is fast on the start, but then slows down. So I shouldn't have big biters much soon — I thought.

... but on 6th hour, when my starter iron patch become less than 100k ore, and I still haven't got oil, I noticed that evolution factor is almost at the big biters... (with no setup of blue science and oil at all) ... I checked my world string and for some reason even though it saying it's a default mode(modified) world, all settings were from deathworld... I've never been in situation like this because in my previous games, as I was on higher resources and was pushing everything...

I plotted some graphs to see evolution factor increase only from time for normal and deathworld, as this is the biggest factor, and you can only race against it:

I had 55% evolution from time at 6th hour mark so I was playing deathworld indeed.


At that point I had to choose what to do next... either I somehow cheat to decrease it and change rates to default world values or I fight big biters with green tech, without resources, until I got that iron patch from far away on the map, designing everything in creative so I don't spend more time on deathworld... and I've ended up doing last : ))

It was my most intense experience in Factorio... but I did it — I got ores, oil, ammo production and defences, blue science and ammo upgrades. And I knew what I still have to do next... I had to push last two 6th lvl of ammo researches, that cost 1,200 of yellow science packs, because those last two researches would more than double turret's DPS against big and behemoth biters. So it would be very much cheaper on the ammo, health of a turrets and just safety overall...

So I transformed my base to a complete mess by making automanual setup for producing yellow science... I got the ammo researches, and also logistics and final power armor aswell...





And I don't think that this race against time is a good "default hard way" to play game. It's forcing to not do thing nice, but fast, spend time on designs on a separate worlds... Before I figured out that I'm playing on deathworld I wanted to play slow, try early blue science logistics to manage my inventory, supply vehicles with rocket fuel, play with the tank, but missed all those and other things because I had to race science against the time... And this is why I think it's not supposed to be like that in the "official" game mode...

You can create any game mode for yourself by changing the sliders, but even if you are expirienced player you can't know what can you expect from those values without making graphs... Because you don't want to get big biters at 7th hour, but you also don't want to be against small biters with blue science...

So I think that values for deathworld should be changed so that it would be at least 12 hours before big biters. Also there could be even more nests everywhere to compensate the change, and maybe, even to transform deathworld towards early game so players could find time and it would be justified to explore combat robots, tanks, flame turrets...

[Xeorm]

If you're looking at evolution I'd recommend using the /evolution command in the console. It's not cheating or anything, so you're free to use it, and it'll tell you how much evolution is from each of the 3 factors. Which is important, because personally, I find that time usually isn't a big factor in how much evolution I have. It's the biggest factor for the first few hours, but then pollution quickly overtakes it. Later on the increase from killing bases also begins to factor in more heavily.

Which is important, because you will find the larger biters fairly quickly into the game if you're going gung-ho on pollution and killing bases. Not really sure how you managed to get deathworld settings on a default map though. Sounds mainly that you messed up your initial settings and made things much harder than you intended. The default gameplay mode has always been that the biters are there but not overwhelming, and act as a drain on your resources.

[Jap2.0]

Additionally, pollution scaling is not the only change between normal and deathworld.

[Solinya]

You can create any game mode for yourself by changing the sliders, but even if you are expirienced player you can't know what can you expect from those values without making graphs... Because you don't want to get big biters at 7th hour, but you also don't want to be against small biters with blue science...

Honestly, I think this is the biggest thing. We have these settings, but you have to guess at which values are going to give you the difficulty you desire, and it's not quite clear how that translates into the game experience you're going to have 5, 10, 30 hours in. If I want to make pollution more punishing, I can crank up the slider, but the default is fairly low on the set of possible values, and I won't know if the setting is right until around the blue science era when the factory is expanding out but still on boilers.

It would be nice if there was a bit more information in-game to suggest what kind of evolution experience you'll get on the game creation screen with the settings you have selected. Even if it's an incredibly approximate estimate, it'd better than the wild guessing or out-of-game mathing there is now. Doesn't have to be comprehensive either, just an estimate for the individual effects of each slider. "With this time setting, the biters will reach 0.5 evolution in under 10 hours." Same for how many units of pollution and spawner kills to get to 0.5 (both of which can be tracked on the production screen today). Or some other kind of approximation.

Though ultimately when you play a game where a single map can last a hundred hours or more, it's hard to pick the right difficulty curve values at the start. And I don't think there's much that can change that.

[mudcrabempire]

Playing against biters is always a race against time. Increasing the difficulty in any way forces you to race harder, forcing you to build "ugly but effective". It's just the way the game works.

The experience you're probably looking for is marathon (since everything is more expensive the biters effectively gain an advantage, but you have much more time available).

Alternatively take default, go to advanced options and reduce the "attack cost modifer" under "Pollution". This will simply make the waves bigger (E.g. at 50% the waves will be roughly twice as big). This option has no real impact on the offensive aspect (when you go to destroy bases) so you may end up just running around stomping all bases in the pollution cloud and feeling like it's more a pain than a challenge.

[imTheSupremeOne]

Not really sure how you managed to get deathworld settings on a default map though. Sounds mainly that you messed up your initial settings and made things much harder than you intended. The default gameplay mode has always been that the biters are there but not overwhelming, and act as a drain on your resources.

I was considering about playing deathworld or not by physically toggling settings ang looking on theirs values. I was copying some settings from deathworld, so I would have 200% biter nests, 75% starting area... but the evolution rate I wanted to remain on default. I knew that enemies on deathworld evolve fast, but I never considered for how much, as my previous deathworlds were with increased richness of resources, I was rolling to get easy oil spawn...

Playing against biters is always a race against time. Increasing the difficulty in any way forces you to race harder, forcing you to build "ugly but effective". It's just the way the game works.

Still, I'm thinking that the current rate of biter's evolution on deathworld is too high, which makes this mode all about racing. This is the official "hard mode" for the game, and I believe that this is wrong because you not only forced to build quick and ugly, but also skip many things that you could try in early game, that will become obsolete later.

I think you described "hard mode" that would fit the game — much much more enemies, their attacks are bigger and they attacking more frequently, but evolution is more like in default world, so you don't get big biters in only 6 hours.

[SyncViews]

If deathworld was easier then people would want another harder standard setting. Not sure the devs want to add too many for a full difficulty range.
You can customise it, I agree it could maybe indicate the effect of the time factor, but the other factors are too hard to account for as they are caused by player actions and can vary a lot.

6 hours is getting towards the end of a game of going straight for rocket, so personally feel lucky are not behemoths by then. Getting armour piercing rounds, or upgraded lasers should be possible before then. Not getting oil or secondary iron long before then is usually a costly mistake.
Deciding what is actually needed, and how much is part of the learning experience I think.

I think the time pressure is a major feature, there are other presets or custom options if want to lounge around.

[JimBarracus]

The line between handling the biters easily and fighting to keep them from munching through your base is very thin.

You can either handle them or you dont.

Suggestion:
The evolution factor could go up to 2.0
What it would mean:

From 0.0 to 1.0
Normal biter behaviour like on a default world.

From 1.0 to 2.0
The enemy expansion settings of a default world would change to deathworld settings to spice the endgame up.
This would slow the start down but would still allow massive biter waves on endgame.

Optional: Make the transition from default to death world more flexible like starting from 0.5 evolution up to 2.0.

[lovewyrm]

Combat in Factorio is bleh tier anyway. Just 'cheat' or set settings or whatever to give you the balance you need.

There are better tower defense games out there. Much better.

Even with tweaked parameters, Wube won't be able to match everyones preferences. Cheat, mod, etc, to your liking.