Enemy level based on distance

[Zechner]

TL;DR

A setting at game generation to get higher-level enemies at greater distances from the base.

What ?

Currently, you can control the rate of evolution — how fast the enemies get stronger over time. I would like a setting to make them also (or alternatively) get stronger with distance from the base. Not just the size of enemy bases, but also the level of enemies.

Why ?

The higher your skill at the game, the faster you can develop and expand while minimising pollution. For any given technology, a skilled player will reach it while at a lower evolution factor than a less skilled player. That means that a less skilled player will face more challenging enemies.

The difficulty can of course be adjusted by changing the evolution settings at game generation, but it can be hard to guess the right setting for your skill level, and it may be several hours before you realise you've made things too hard (or too easy).

If you're a less skilled player, or you prefer to play at your own pace, but you still want enemies present, you can switch off evolution. But then you don't get to experience the higher-level enemies at all.

If enemy level increases with distance — basically, a distance factor is added to the evolution factor — players who are more skilled and expand faster will face harder enemies, while those who expand more slowly will have a lesser challenge. This makes it much easier to balance the difficulty.

This is obviously not for everyone, but should be fairly easy to implement, as a mod or in the main game, while significantly increasing the appeal of the game for more casual players.

[Panzerknacker]

AFAIK this is already in the game.

[Koub]

AFAIK this is already in the game.

They are not stronger with distance, there are just more of them (which indirectly make them marginally harder to fight, but just because they may overwhelm the player). More precisely the nests generated by map gen get bigger with distance.

[Panzerknacker]

Ah ok, I thought the worms were also of stronger type in the more distant nests.

[thekoreanseal]

Yes, but at least worms get stronger

[Panzerknacker]

Yeah I was right from the beginning. The worms are stronger and the nests bigger which makes these further nests much harder to destroy.

[AnriMachishiro]

I think it won't work as good as OP thinks.
In current game, the more distance there is, the more nests biters have.
If you just let "the more distance there is, the more evolution biters have" happen too, the more distance there is, (the more nests * the more evolution) biters would have.
The change of difficulty would be too precipitous.
Also, more evolution does not only mean more life points, but also means more resistance. To those who just start their game, it's nothing with you're a new player or a skilled player, lv3 biter is almost invincible. Nests with lv3 biters in them around the player base would be actually a cage to player, and when they get lv4, they would ruin everything very fast than current game.
In short, it's only a punishment to players who want to expand their factory, limiting their choices more than increasing strategy.

Then how about limit the size of nests to "similiar size"?
Since the evolution would usually level-up to 99% at last, it just turn the final phase less challenge than the current balanced game.
Then it's only a degraded variant than current game.

Actually in most situations, enemy system is some "tax" you pay when your factory is growing.
You pay a tax when you want more space or mines. You pay another tax when you expand the producing.
It's nothing with "skilled" or not, or in other word, the only thing about "skilled" or not is whether you can afford the tax or not.
The idea of OP would destory the current tax system.
A lv1 biter (HP:15) costs 4 pollution points to attack, and need to pay 4/10*3=1.2 iron plates (as yellow magazine) to kill it.
A lv3 biter (HP:375, PHY-RES: 8/10%) costs 80 pollution points to attack, since not-upgraded yellow or magazine cannot damage it, it actually needs unlimited materials to kill one.
And it doesn't need any pollution if it's just defending.
I don't think introducing lv3 biter in a game just starts would be good, even you've upgrade the bullets, it's still too heavy a tax.
Even you shrink the lv3 biter into a lv1 biter's size, it's 4 pollution points -> 18.75HP + 8/10% PHY-RES. Obviously it's not designed for an early phase game.

Btw, to new players, there is always a choice to:
- Don't allow biters expand their nests (like the railway world);
- Only allow biters evolve by destorying their nests
Then biters would act like playing chess with you. Even new players won't be blocked up anyway.