Factorio Forums

TL;DR

With 2.0 and Space Age, Deathworld no longer lives up to its name. Factorio needs some real pressure from hostile entities and it needs them as a pre-set.

What?

I've done a couple of Deathworld runs on Factorio and am left unsatisfied with the threat. Deathworld only affects Nauvis and all biters and spitters there die easily to a small amount of walls and flame turrets. Even at Behemoth level adding some automated repairs and the periodic biter-targeting turret will keep your walls safe indefinitely.

There's not much to be done for Aquilo and Fulgora as those planets are peaceful but what about Fulgora and Gleba? Currently the Deathworld settings do nothing for them. Clearing nests on Gleba is simple as they are tiny and have no static defenses like Nauvis' Worms and while Demolishers are cool they pose no active threat which again does not change on Deathworld settings

I'd like to see some greater threats so that I can't just set up a wall with basic defenses around my basein Nauvis and spend as long as I like on other planets without feeling any Deathworld pressure at all. Biter Bases gaining more Health with Evolution is a great addition in 2.0, how about increasing damage resistances on the Biters themselves so that you feel a pressured rush to get other planets' techs to counteract the 80% flame/laser resistance these hypothetical Biters now have? How about larger bases which expand more rapidly on Gleba so you feel a similar chokehold as you do in early Nauvis? Make Big Behemoths take areas back unless defended and give them the good ore patches so you feel a resource-urgency to get railguns over to Vulcanus before Coal/Calcite run out. Anything to bring back that wonderful pressure that early game Nauvis provides.

The game does have plenty of sliders to make your own ultra-deathworld configuration but I would like to have a definte preset for it as I find that tweaking difficulty settings takes me out of the experience in the same way that other self-imposed challenges do. I like knowing that I'm giving me all against a set challenge rather than purposefully holding myself back.

Why?

This is simply what I would like to see. Are other Deathworld players satisfied with the current implementation?

I mean, Deathworld always was a rush to flame throwers, efficiency modules and maybe landmines. After that, it's getting easier.
What exactly changed, that makes 2.0 easier?
- some pollution absorption changes. f.e. water absorbs more
- Deathworld Marathon has no expensive recipes anymore, which makes a huge difference.
- Red ammo is considerably cheaper.

What else?

Yeah agree, they might as well have removed all those extra presets in Space Age.

And yeah, I really miss the expensive recipes, made my own mod for that but it's not the same.

IMO the biggest differentiator are the expensive recipes. The rush to flamethrowers, and the steel investment into the flamethrowers was the fun ballbusting part. Afterwards, when scaling up, I perceived oil and circuits as main bottlenecks (both also "solved" in a way, by pipes and by the circuit assemblers).

I had a lot of fun on the couple of playthroughs of SA that I did to beeline away from nauvis, and don't have anything there until I return in full glory to re-colonize, I believe those turbo-biters would be a fun/interesting addition.
I also agree that this new hypothetical mode should focus less on Nauvis and recipe changes, and more on making other planets less forgiving.

Presets are for novice players. If some veteran player needs more challenge then he can adjust sliders manually, use mods, do speedrun, etc.