[Klonan] [2.1] Enemies not expanding to chunks with any player building

[Volodymyr]

"Balancing: Reworked enemy expansion planner to reduce expansions in already infested areas."

I built a few walls on each "enemy-expansion-candidate-chunk" and it seems to have completely disabled all attempts for the biters to expand. Is this a bug or a feature?

[GregoriusT]

"Balancing: Reworked enemy expansion planner to reduce expansions in already infested areas."

I built a few walls on each "enemy-expansion-candidate-chunk" and it seems to have completely disabled all attempts for the biters to expand. Is this a bug or a feature?

This might be a bug honestly, as now you can just put literally anything (except landmines) into the expansion chunks and nothing will ever get close to your base.

And I always thought Behemoth Worms spawning near your perimeter Wall but outside your Range were an intended feature, guess they wont do that one anymore. XD

Edit: gotta love forums not telling me i have a message when one of my messages got moves >.> (at least editing my message fixed it)

[Klonan]

Thanks for the report,

It seems it was just a little bit of an over-zealous threshold in the candidate pruning,
It is fixed for the next release

[GregoriusT]

Judging by the Title. the intention was to have Biter Bases not overcrowd themselves, while player stuff merely reduces the chance, am I seeing that correctly?

[Klonan]

Judging by the Title. the intention was to have Biter Bases not overcrowd themselves, while player stuff merely reduces the chance, am I seeing that correctly?

One major part of the rework and fixing for 2.1 was trying to ensure that the nests don't over crowd in explored but otherwise untouched areas,

in 2.0, if a player would explore around a lot, it would generate a lot of chunks, many of which were expansion candidates,
And then those randomly explored chunks (far away from the player base) would get expanded to

In 2.1, the expansion should be more consistently targeted to open areas and places where the player has been clearing nests,
And the 'natural environment' of the untouched areas shouldn't experience much expansion

This before/after shows the aim of the changes (independent of expansion group size balancing changes)

2.0 expansion candidates

06-27-2026, 16-58-30.png (1.21 MiB) Viewed 228 times

2.1 expansion candidates

06-27-2026, 16-58-48.png (819.54 KiB) Viewed 228 times

Additionally, since now the expansion planner has to chonk through significantly fewer candidates, the whole system should have a much lower performance impact

[GregoriusT]

So placing stuff as the player in those expansion chunks will still prevent them from expanding to there? As long as there is enough Player Stuff there that is.

Or did you finally manage to get rid of the trick where you just spam eight pipes in a chunk to reduce expansion rates to near zero?

Because the way expansion works now, it would be a good idea to get rid of that trick since now Biter Bases themselves can prevent the further away Ore Patches from being directly settled on.

[Klonan]

So placing stuff as the player in those expansion chunks will still prevent them from expanding to there? As long as there is enough Player Stuff there that is.

Or did you finally manage to get rid of the trick where you just spam eight pipes in a chunk to reduce expansion rates to near zero?

Because the way expansion works now, it would be a good idea to get rid of that trick since now Biter Bases themselves can prevent the further away Ore Patches from being directly settled on.

Building things will reduce the candidate score, but not all the way to zero any more

[GregoriusT]

Excellent, it never made sense to me that building Stuff prevented expansions, because why wouldn't the biters decide to lay SIEGE upon you with Worm Turrets, which should be much more likely now with the new System.

[Erfar]

Judging by the Title. the intention was to have Biter Bases not overcrowd themselves, while player stuff merely reduces the chance, am I seeing that correctly?

One major part of the rework and fixing for 2.1 was trying to ensure that the nests don't over crowd in explored but otherwise untouched areas,

in 2.0, if a player would explore around a lot, it would generate a lot of chunks, many of which were expansion candidates,
And then those randomly explored chunks (far away from the player base) would get expanded to

In 2.1, the expansion should be more consistently targeted to open areas and places where the player has been clearing nests,
And the 'natural environment' of the untouched areas shouldn't experience much expansion

This before/after shows the aim of the changes (independent of expansion group size balancing changes)

2.0 expansion candidates

06-27-2026, 16-58-30.png

2.1 expansion candidates

06-27-2026, 16-58-48.png

Additionally, since now the expansion planner has to chonk through significantly fewer candidates, the whole system should have a much lower performance impact

Are that change was made with considered how it will change balance? Especially for new players who already struggled with bitters in 2.0?
Before with expansion like 1/hour and lot of expansion candidates player had like 5+ hours of bitters not expanding on their face. Now it look like every bitter expansion would go straight in player direction increasing player stress and reducing ability to concentrate on understanding how game works


And yes, I have already did suggestion to improve new player experience at least in tutorial twice
viewtopic.php?t=117830
viewtopic.php?t=133980
One from my own experience one from looking other new player experience, both times tutorial left quite bad taste and required some attention

[GregoriusT]

Are that change was made with considered how it will change balance? Especially for new players who already struggled with bitters in 2.0?
Before with expansion like 1/hour and lot of expansion candidates player had like 5+ hours of bitters not expanding on their face. Now it look like every bitter expansion would go straight in player direction increasing player stress and reducing ability to concentrate on understanding how game works

In the closeby areas around the starting zone, biter nest density is much lower, giving plenty of space for expansion between nests. This Screenshot Klonan showed was clearly a Deathworld one without starting area considerations. So in the end they should only expand inbetween each other unless you are very unlucky.

And yeah i know how stressful random biter attacks and nearby nests are, so I wonder if Biter expansions could have a slider where you can set the evolution percentage that is required before biters expand (as opposed to the expansion ON/OFF checkmark) and set it to 30 or 40 for normal worlds (and 10 for deathworlds)