TL;DR
I think right now Factorio misses the official "medium" difficulty.Why?
The default world is ranging from literally being peaceful (grass spawn) to just easy. While a Deathwrold, on the other hand, in gaming terms, should be called as "Hard+" or "Very Hard".Ofc Factorio allows to adjust everything manually; but for me it took many worlds, and years of play to feel and perfect for myself. And from my expereicne I think it's not just my whimp or taste -- there's no base preset for somebody who wish to have game be just challenging, even on other playthroughs; yet not too hard like ruin the world by running out of resources and/or being too slow (quite likely in deathworld if you don't play in a state of constant hurry).
Time based challenge is generally much harder than effort and attrition. You can fail, and Factorio has default, and then Deathworld which is both much difficult world (bigger & more bases) and additionally has a timer on it. So where's the "Medium" difficulty ?..
Also, I think current "default" difficuly is bad, and I'm writting this topic on behalf of my friend, to whom I showed combat vs dense biter nests in mid/endgame; and he felt bad because his world dosen't have as much biters to use all those lategame "toys" against.... And there's no official "medium/hard" difficulty with deathworld being more like a"Hard+".
What?
Here's my suggestion for attrition based medium difficulty world. Simplify time based aspect by nerfing evolution speed and buffing BOTH size and richness of ore pathces to make player not run out and not being crippled by slow extraction rate.Numbers
Here's numbers I suggest : (default/deathworld/attrition)ENEMIES :
Evolution Time Factor : (40/200/80)
Evolution Destroy Factor : (200/200/350)
Pollution Factor : (9/12/12)
Enemy Bases Frequency (100/200/300) //I like frequency it adds variety when some nests are merged
Enemy Bases Size (100/200/200)
Starting Area Size (100%/75%/150%) //it should be medium difficuly not a Death
Enemy Expansion Maximum group size : (20/20/50) //i would even suggest progresively increasing this stat depending on evolution. Bigger evolution = bigger expands
=================
ORES :
Iron, Copper, Coal, Stone : (default & Dethworld is everything 100%)
Frequency : 50%
Size : 200%
Richness : 300%
Uranium :
Frequency : 75% //i think lower frequencies can fuckup it's spawn
Size : 100%
Richness : 150%
