Experimental Biter expansion too strong

[worph]

From looking at the FFF post it makes sense that the best candidate chunk that gets chosen is the same every time, if nothing else changed.
I didn't test this myself.

Adding a bit of randomness certainly seems like a good idea if it holds true.

[Klonan]

Adding a bit of randomness certainly seems like a good idea if it holds true.

If there are many candidates, the game will pick randomly from the top 10%

[worph]

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Even in the example given in the FFF, there is an area with a single candidate.
This is the edgecase I was talking about.
The person 3 replies up seemingly reported a similar behaviour close to his base.
All I'm saying is that this edgecase might not be too rare.

Maybe in those cases it could randomize between the candidate chunk and its adjacent 4 (or 8 with diagonals), so long as there is no pollution cloud nor an actual existing nest in any of them.

The reason being that when you destroy just that nest (for example because you have some drills or oilpumps nearby) it will come back in exactly the same location every time. It's not a huge deal, but I can see how it could break immersion to some degree, if biters kept building in exactly the same spot over and over again, no matter how often you remove them. A tiny bit of randomness could make that behaviour feel less algorithmic and more arbitrary / "natural".

Again, I didn't test this.

[Fletch]

... The reason being that when you destroy just that nest (for example because you have some drills or oilpumps nearby) it will come back in exactly the same location every time. It's not a huge deal, but I can see how it could break immersion to some degree, if biters kept building in exactly the same spot over and over again, no matter how often you remove them. A tiny bit of randomness could make that behaviour feel less algorithmic and more arbitrary / "natural".

Same phenomena seen in v2.0.x too. In my current playthrough (2.0.77), biters expanded to a particular spot within the pollution cloud -- I ride out there with a tank and destroy them. Sometime later my base is under attack again, from newly formed base in the exact same spot. Rinse/repeat this ~5 times (same spot every time). I even ran big power poles out there and set up a radar dish, and they expanded on top of that

I finally got around to building a bunker at a choke point to kill all the future expansion parties before they could reach their "favorite spot" again.

Perhaps an idea to add some randomness, is to make expansion coordinates have some time-limited anti-affinity so players don't get into this loop where expansions happen in the same spot repeatedly (game would need to track the last XX expansion coordinates and not pick the same place until that spot ages out of the history list). Its not a big deal though, and its taken a couple of years for me to even notice it.

[coffee-factorio]

I put in some more time. I was wondering if they weren't spawning out in the wilderness sometimes. Saw some larger nests from 2.1.7. They were not necessarily expansion directed at me.

It also felt like if I had them engaged, they'd choose to attack or at the point where pollution was intense. So I had one block off to the west in my check game where the biters impaled themselves, then I'll have to drive down south but the radar wasn't seeing much to be scared of from some open areas there and to the east.

It does feel like behavior of an animal rather than an aggressor. The biters never struck me as something with malice, so it plays towards that. Up to others whether that is as intended, but it's like how I'll occasionally see a skunk strolling around my neighborhood and we just go our separate ways.

[coffee-factorio]

But as a general "thing" and whether or not the biters normally move around randomly, there's an area to the north they like to settle on my map. And it is a thing where I can go out, work for 2 hours, and then I'll be really, really glad I drove up to that spot because they will make a run on my base from 2 directions if I don't manage that area. I'm going to gain +3 hours on this play through I think so skill progression/impact of strategy and motivation is a factor. You do have to be a lot more aggressive, but a strategy of running turret lines with good steel works. Spawning size at the level I'm at, pre-launch blue science, feels satisfying. I'm just getting big boys out at that point.

Marker points to give a sense of the radius of engagement.

Screenshot 2026-08-29 172721.png (301.34 KiB) Viewed 44 times

The .750 kilometer engagement zone feels about average for what I do.