Biter expansion changes and it's implications

[ameowva]

Hello!
I've been playing 2.1 since it came out and i saw and experienced the changes to biter expansion sizes and personally found them incredibly overtuned and it made me think about what this change is meant to accomplish or imply. I mainly was thinking about this because 2.1 specifically besides the biters had other changes (such as the non-negotiable removal of Space Casinos) that were ... strange? oddly against the idea of Factorio? as in, it being a sandbox where your solutions are your expressions translated into gameplay. Space Age in general strayed away from this IMO already, but they continued this trend in this latest update.
But to go back to biters, for example my go to method of destroying expansions in the pre-tank early game is driving around with a car and taking care of the minor popups with guns and grenades, quick and easy, no hassle, in my mind it fits the balance of player power and threat levels faced on default settings. However, these giant nests that pretty much immediately just emerge from nowhere are not exactly very favourable for this gameplay, so it made me wonder did they intend to exactly limit this behaviour? Or perhaps did they intend to increase the use of turret / flamer turret creep behind walls as to be intended? Because a 450 HP flimsy car against a swarm of biters and worms that i only saw previously by the time i was about to leave to another planet feels unbalanced. However i am just one player among many and consider myself relatively maleable, maybe my experiences are not universal, this particular change is just a matter of getting used to (or balance, i've also read they are actively doing that), which is why i'd be glad to read insights and thoughts from you!

[ProMeTheus112]

For me so far my opinion of the expansion changes is positive, I've been playing only 1 DWM game since 2.1, and I think :
• It makes the game more difficult, and I like it because before this change I would get to a point where I was able to set up a large perimeter of defenses securing a good bunch of ressources far enough from the biters that I could start ignoring them until the very late game, and this from the blue science phase~ which was ok but now the game feels more dynamic before I would reach that point and most likely also after I would reach it.
• It makes producing smaller defense points in the early game and placing them down more valuable, and simply clearing a existing biter base a more difficult choice to consider as the biters can then re-expand bigger in that area. You also may want to be now more active in spotting and countering biter expansions early on but you also have the choice how much you want to do that or not.
• In the mid-late game investing more heavily into military is valuable to become able to cleanly stop expansion groups.
• I imagine default settings must play nicer, because in my opinion it was a bit too easy to win a game while barely engaging with biters after clearing a few key closer nests in the early game (at least in vanilla).
• As an added bonus because the expansions are so big now, they cause the biters to evolve faster if you clear them because clearing these big expansions is killing a lot of spawners, so that's an extra layer of difficulty there which I think seems to work well in DWM and I'm sure it makes evolution threat better in default settings too. I can also see those situations where you fight swarms of small biters early on like in the menu screen happen more naturally in default settings now for example.

TLDR before now, biter expansions were small and not a big threat themselves, more of an "annoyance" to clear every now and then. Now these expansions are big so they are a real threat to consider, and even an expansion group running into your defense can cause issues so you need to invest more in military and perhaps place more stuff at some key points on the map which is nice. Expanding your control area is harder. Surviving early on may be harder.

Note: I barely use flame turrets, I know they're good at clearing big attacks at a wall but I don't setup my factory like that very much, I rely more on key points on map with gun + laser turrets + mines, + sometimes walls. But now with an opportunity I would probably use flame turrets more.

[DSL-Exodus]

There are too many people who started playing in 2.0 and think the weak biters are the baseline.

The reason I say that is because relatively speaking, massive nerfs happened to the biters and related mechanics. Pollution consumption of blocks/terrain was increased, majorly affecting attacks and expansion. Ammo was also made cheaper in 2.0. There was a long standing bug in relation to biter expansion that has been fixed. The ammo thing was indirect, supposed to help with copper consumption rather than make ammo cheaper. These are just direct things, rather than indirect like remote tank control etc.

Gleba also had bugged expansion and it has luckily been fixed.

In my experience the biters are closer to what they were pre 2.0 and that's how they should be(more difficult). They were put in the game to be a challenge after all, people who don't like them can disable or tweak them. The real core of the conversation boils down to "how the game should be played" and conversations surrounding "achievements". If you can't play with the biters on, then you don't deserve the achievements. In my opinion, the biter difficulty should match 1.0 or be slightly higher for Space Age(considering you have the safety of other planets when playing Space Age DLC). There were no major content additions that justify an easier biter experience, if anything the contrary(remote tank control for example, big fancy shock turrets for behemoth biters in SA, SA quality defences).

Just as long as its not the lobotomized biters we've seen in 2.0 ever since the tile pollution consumption changes, in combination with the cheaper ammo and expansion bug.

For context I have been playing since 2017, on all kinds of worlds, including extreme death worlds, so I noticed the big nerfs to biters immediately, the entire reason I made a forum account was to report a bug in relation to enemy mechanics(pentapod expansion problem).

[Atraps003]

It's very easy to deal with biters. Open your game to multiplayer and we can show you.

[coffee-factorio]

It's tricky. I'm still feeling them out. I did a blind run, and I got used to the 2.0.x ruleset. I wasn't able to get a No Spoon off a blind desert start but I'd estimate a rocket launch in the 9-10 hour range if I continued. With a map scout and forest run I'd be launching in the 6-7 hour range, previously.

The issue which I'm feeling is that the expansions are set to be about twice the size they should be in the early game. I'm noticing nests that are 8-10 big which kind of demand I stop and do a lot of military science and run assaults. Not being familiar with how much military research I needed to rush the map got me. But it didn't feel like "Well, if I only did x thing I'd be alive" but rather "If I did X things I'd be at 9-10 hours because I needed to kill 10 size 5 nests so they wouldn't spawn 3-4 size 10 nests."

I have to play a bit more because the context might be "Don't go into a desert and expect to run fast." in the same way you probably wouldn't get an achievement without dialing up resources before. I don't remember having to deal with that many small nests before, which might be a map quirk. Pre-planning helps a lot. The new shotgun helps.

I don't necessarily feel like it's a bad thing yet, still figuring it out. Might be a good thing because it was relatively easy to get a No Spoon in 2.0.x.

[NineNine]

I'm in the middle of a 2.0 game right now, so I haven't tried 2.1, but if it's true that the biters are more of a challenge, that's great! I think they're waaaay too easy in 2.0.

[Jap2.0]

Do note that there are still plans to rebalance biter expansion some time while 2.1 is in experimental (134297, 134446#p696539).

[Meehael]

Hello!
I've been playing 2.1 since it came out and i saw and experienced the changes to biter expansion sizes and personally found them incredibly overtuned and it made me think about what this change is meant to accomplish or imply. I mainly was thinking about this because 2.1 specifically besides the biters had other changes (such as the non-negotiable removal of Space Casinos) that were ... strange? oddly against the idea of Factorio? as in, it being a sandbox where your solutions are your expressions translated into gameplay. Space Age in general strayed away from this IMO already, but they continued this trend in this latest update.
But to go back to biters, for example my go to method of destroying expansions in the pre-tank early game is driving around with a car and taking care of the minor popups with guns and grenades, quick and easy, no hassle, in my mind it fits the balance of player power and threat levels faced on default settings. However, these giant nests that pretty much immediately just emerge from nowhere are not exactly very favourable for this gameplay, so it made me wonder did they intend to exactly limit this behaviour? Or perhaps did they intend to increase the use of turret / flamer turret creep behind walls as to be intended? Because a 450 HP flimsy car against a swarm of biters and worms that i only saw previously by the time i was about to leave to another planet feels unbalanced. However i am just one player among many and consider myself relatively maleable, maybe my experiences are not universal, this particular change is just a matter of getting used to (or balance, i've also read they are actively doing that), which is why i'd be glad to read insights and thoughts from you!

Hi,

Looking at the 2.1.7 release notes, I could see only these points about biters, basically.

• Reduced biter/spitter spawner spawning range and increased spawning precision
• Biter/spitter spawners will emit a cloud of damaging acid if they are blocked from spawning units.

Were there some other undocumented changes?
Is it documented elsewhere?

Thanks

[NexGenration]

ive heard talks that the intent behind these changes are to make the biters more willing to expend into territory that you clear out and to make their expansions more impactful in the late game. however, what im seeing is deathworld-level expansions 1-2 hours into default-settings world.

it doesnt make much sense to me to clear out a 3-4 nest cluster 1 hour into your world only to come back ten minutes later to find that it has been replaced with a brand new 30-40 nest cluster. i can imagine that feeling completely overwhelming for a new player who doesnt already know how to deal with the biters with things like landmines, surrounding nests with defensives rather than killing them so they simply dont expand, and pushing your defensive perimeter way past your pollution cloud so you only have to kill expansion parties instead of a constant flood of angry attacking parties

[Jap2.0]

Were there some other undocumented changes?
Is it documented elsewhere?

See Klonan's first post in 134297. Expansion nests are now generally larger, with the intent to match the size of map gen nests.