Biter Settings - Challenging but not heavy Earlygame

[Gouvi]

Hey,

i want to start a new mostly vanilla Game with some friends, that are new to factorio. So I need some suggestions for biter-settings.

In early game the biters shouldnt be that difficult and aggressive, but after the first steps they should be challenging until lategame. we like big factories, that have to be really defended and expansion should be challenging too later in the game, so that its not complete easy mode in midgame/endgame.

Thanks for your help

[mmmPI]

You can make it so that pollution and time are less of a factor in biter evolution and instead increase the weight for destroyed nest.

the default i think is:
40 for time
200 for destroy
and 9 for pollution

5
400
9

Would give you more time to discover thing, but biters evolution will catch up if you fight them offensively, and the pollution would stay the same, so probably quite low if you begin the game you don't start a massive factory in a few minutes.

It's hard to tell if you are going to help your friend a lot or not, so it would make it so that biters are weak or very weak unless you start attacking them, at which point they get stronger the more you kill of them, but not when just defending only when expanding and killing their nest.

The "ennemy expansion" settings is turned off in rail world, this means when you destroy some nest, they won't recreate some. It makes it easier for the whole game, that may not be what you want for your late game but it may be less frustrating for new players that start in multiplayer and won't restart a few times when not managing to keep up with the biters at first.

[Koub]

The "challengingness" is something highly subjective. With over 1k hours of Factorio, I still find default settings challenging. And there are people, with less gameplay time out there, for whom marathon deathworld is not challenging enough, and seek mods to be challenged. Also, the sweet spot between too challenging and not enough can be paper thin : things are not challenging enough, until they are, but then, it's too late.

Depending on the speed at which you'll be going to expand, the evolution factor can be time driven (you play slow), pollution driven (you build BIG) or military driven (you destroy lots of nests). And each playstyle will have better suited settings.

Why not try with standard "touch nothing" settings first, and then, you'll know which part was too easy and which too difficult, and tweak your next accordingly ?

[Qon]

If you haven't tried default, do that. It's what you are looking for.
You can install mods mid run or switch to editor mode later on to change biter, pollution and evolution settings to customize it to your needs when you know what you want more.

There's a starting area setting that you might want to increase if you want no attacks for a while longer. But listen to Koub, default is great for many beginners and long time players. Since beginners build slower their nest kills and pollution will be lower so attacks and evolution will be slower as well. So it will naturally fit a wide range of experience levels.

[Khagan]

There's a starting area setting that you might want to increase if you want no attacks for a while longer.

Exactly this. It sounds to me like default settings with an increased starting area is probably what you want, at least for a first try.