Biter Build up more intuitive

[thriem]

I am a fairly slow builder and like to spend my first half of the game not over producing any items in bulk, since every new resource patch becomes harder to capture and secure and to hold.

And what brings me in a bad situation - the time evolution. I end up with big biters before bots or laser turrets. And to me, it just makes little sense.
I noticed all of this again in space-age, where i tried to play on vanilla settings - since to me it is "the way the game-dev intended to be played on". Yea, ok that - but to be on the clock while not seeing the clock, feels off - wish there would be (more) warning signs that you are behind -other than the ammo does not suffice all of a sudden.

[LCStark]

You've got access to current evolution factor. Before 2.0, (without using the console command "/evolution") we only had the option of hovering over a nest to see how far the evolution has progressed, but it also gives us a better idea of what kind of enemies can be coming our way:

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Now we have the additional evolution marker on remote view planet info:

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Though just the evolution factor requires you to be at least somewhat aware of what starts appearing when:

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, so it might still be better to do an occasional check on a nearby nest.

And as I was writing this, I wanted to add a suggestion of adding in the Factoriopedia something similar to the asteroid spawn chances graphs but for enemies, but it looks like it's already in game :

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[AileTheAlien]

Maybe a different world preset for new games, that's got a good name would work? I had a similar experience to you the first time I played Factorio: build up turrets, walls, etc, then eventually the resources run out and I need to expand...and I zoom out to find that the aliens have absolutely carpeted every square inch of the planet in spawners, and they're all huge and weird colors. Now I always disable expansion because there's no setting for minimum distance between new biter bases, and lower the evolution speeds. (But then the aliens are almost always too easy, except for the worms that outrange and slow me.)

It seems pretty weird to me, that the starting planet is harder than (two of) the three secondary planets. On Vulcanus the worms are very dangerous and difficult to kill until you know the trick, but they don't swarm your base. They're more like mountains or cliffs that happen to move. Fulgora has lightning, but it's easy to avoid, and building your base naturally just makes it safer and gets you more electricity, so you're rewarded for dealing with it at your own pace. Gleba...is too complicated for me, but it seems like spores are the same as pollution, but after you stop producing things and making spores, the aliens back off. Nauvis' difficulty seems more like a ratchet to me. One-way escalation until it's game over.

I think in the discussion of one of the FFF blogs, or maybe these suggestions forums, someone asked why the "death world" setting was removed. The reply from a dev (or maybe a mod?) was that they'd rather have difficulty settings that have some actual effort or balance put into them over time, and that one hadn't been updated in a long time. (Something like that.) Anyways, that's a bit of a tangent, but IMO the difficulty of the different planets is like a brick wall for new players, and you don't get to see outer space without a lot of effort. Feels like it was balanced for players more skilled than me!

[BlueTemplar]

because there's no expansion-speed to tweak

There is ?

why the "death world" setting was removed

They weren't.
You're probably talking about the expensive mode that was part of the Marathon presets ?
(And it was more probably because of code maintenance and modding considerations...)

[Panzerknacker]

Yeah Death World is still there and the same. Marathon and Death World Marathon are nerfed because those modes are without expensive recipes.

I made my own expensive recipe mod and played one map so far in Space Age, on Marathon. Evolution was almost .60 when I launched my first space platform. I have to say it's much easier than before when you still needed purple and yellow science for the Rocket silo. Laser turrets is a blue science tech, you can rush that pretty quickly. You don't need to have a big base or all the red/green techs.

[EustaceCS]

Yea, ok that - but to be on the clock while not seeing the clock, feels off - wish there would be (more) warning signs that you are behind -other than the ammo does not suffice all of a sudden.

Unless you've obliviously left gaps somewhere in your defences, getting either "building destroyed" or "not enough repair packs" warnings (or both) is a decent wake up call.

If, however, you're really into turtling - use Lakes terrain gen preset (one which is marked as similar with v1.1 terrain generation in its tooltip) with seed 31415 .
600% starting area size optionally on top of that.
You'll have all time in the world to reach lasers and space tech before first biter attacks - and it does NOT disable any achievements!
AND excellent defensive position afterwards.

[AileTheAlien]

why the "death world" setting was removed

They weren't.
You're probably talking about the expensive mode that was part of the Marathon presets ?
(And it was more probably because of code maintenance and modding considerations...)

Whoops, wrong difficulty setting, thanks! But either way, the default difficulty of the first planet seems a lot higher than the later planets, because you can't go at your own pace. I definitely like turtling more, because turrets can be in more places than I, a lone engineer, can be with a rocket launcher or whatever. Anyways, two of the later planets are completely about going at your own pace, but Nauvis seems to be about guessing how the biters will act, and how fast you need to expand to keep up with them.

[Panzerknacker]

Yeah I was also surprised to learn that there are planets without any threat. Seems very anti-Factorio imo, like the game isn't finished yet. People that don't like threat will obviously disable it anyway, it is already on the first planet afterall.

[Nosferatu]

@op
As others said watch your enemy.
But even more: watch your pollution cloud (option on the map)
If pollution reaches a nest evolution will raise fast.

Once you have efficiency modules mass produce them and use them everywhere.
Once you have electric smelting replace the old smelters.
Once you get solar. Build it.

This will reduce your pollution a lot. Still monitor your pollution cloud.
If it reaches a nest. Kill the nest.

[BlueTemplar]

Yeah I was also surprised to learn that there are planets without any threat. Seems very anti-Factorio imo, like the game isn't finished yet. People that don't like threat will obviously disable it anyway, it is already on the first planet afterall.

Be careful what you wish for, Factorio's alert system might not be flexible enough for even just two planets with aggressive enemies (until very late game ?) :
(Gleba spoilers) viewtopic.php?p=636212#p636212

[Koub]

If pollution reaches a nest evolution will raise fast.

This is actually false. Evolution is caused by :
1) Time passed
2) Pollution emitted by the factory (no matter the cloud, no matter if the cloud reaches spawners)
3) Nests destroyed

The only thing that changes when the pollution cloud reaches the spawners is the biter attacks frequency .

The 2 is the part I least like, closely followed by 1. Biters will evolve no matter what, even if they never see the smallest particle of pollution. I would have preferred if the evolution was caused mainly by the pollution absorbed by the nests : that way, managing one's pollution cloud would have direct advantages, like buying oneself more time. I've always found extremely unintuitive the way evolution works.

[BlueTemplar]

It already has an advantage (at least pre flame turrets in vanilla) in not making you waste finite resources on ammo.

If on top of that, if you could completely stop evolution like this, wouldn't it make the biter threat (even more) trivial ?

(And of course all 3 of the factors can be configured to your liking, see also : Change Map Settings (during the game) mods.)