Factorio Forums

While biters are on an relatively ok level with laser turrets, they are too overpowered against player and in 12 hours of playtesting, every encounter outside turret base ended with death (which is far from fun).

So i suggest following:
-first tier of biters should have speed reduced from 30 % faster than player to 10 % faster, and its health reduced to 2-4. The idea is, that only this type of enemy will be in the world without pollution, and encountering a player without industry, he should be able to kill them with 1-2 pistol hits, 1 ordinary turret should handle a few of them without damage.

-second tier of biters should jump after pollution kicks in, should have about 70 % speed of the player, and have such HP that it can be killed by sustained machinegun fire or point blanc shotgun shot. Player should be able to kite them. Ordinary turret should be able to kill it while taking a little damage.

-third tier could remain as it is, or be split between third and fourth tier, ballanced with laser turrets and power armors.

Same should go for worms, first should be killable by pistol, second by machinegun or rocket launcher. Also, iron and heavy armor should be buffed (dont know how much), just now you cant see any difference, running into lings or worms means death. What i mean, just now game has some stuff like gun turret, pistol, machinegun, shotgun, armor, but they cant be used for anything, they are too weak. But first hour of game should be just about using them.

Also, grenade is a joke, taking a slot, costing somewhat considerable, making 10 damage, it cant actually kill even weakest creatures.

100% agree with everything.
The enemies now are impossible. I wasn't abble to destroy even a tiniest of their bases even in full power armor.
The only thing I could do is to kill a SINGLE medium worm while in completely filled power armor and maxed out shotgun...
I don't think it is what they call balanced...

That is strange, with maxed power armor with shields and 2 fusion reactors and combat shotgun with piercing ammo and upgrades, I was able to kill hordes of enemies.
But yes, there should be some balancing. Adding 3rd tier of armor equipment and some 3rd tier weapon (bozar like killer ^^) is quite easy to do and might solve this.

Either physical armor of biters needs a nerf or machineguns need a buff.
Send a single medium biter at a gun turret filled with regular ammo and you'll see what I'm talking about. Armor piercing ammo probably wouldn't help a lot.

I don't like the idea of biters growing with increased pollution. It would be better if medium and big biters just ignored low levels of pollution and only guarded the bases until it becomes too uncomfortable. After all, not all bases need to be destroyable at low levels.
Also, "clean" bases defended only by weak stuff would mean player could just go on a raid to stock up on artifacts far away from the base.

Big biters shouldn't spawn as big biters. They're more resistant than their spawner building, it makes the whole base raid too much of a rpg-style summoner hunt.