Factorio Forums

TL;DR

Radar's detect biter expansions

What?

Implement some countermeasure against biter expansions, that gives the player more agency, rather than realizing a giant new base just spawned in his pollution cloud while he is halfway across the world, because he is being attacked by a giant wave he is not prepared for.
The core idea is that there should be an alert if biters create a new base within reach of any of your radar dishes. I don't even think it has to reveal the base, just letting you know there is a new one nearby should be plenty information to react or ignore.
There are several ways this could be done specifically, some ideas:

• give radars a separate mode that uses more power
• hide the ability behind a cheap early game research
• decrease range for radars in such a mode
• prioritize a radars next scanned chunk to be a newly invaded one
• only give a notification when a new base is successfully scanned
• or any combination of the above

Why?

There has been a big discussion about the recent changes to biter expansions (here).
Just in case this will become or stay a controversial decisions, this might be a way to make the change more impactful.
Also games should be designed around player agency, and by giving the player options and tool to get possible information for other ressources, time, construction, building, power, careful placement, paying attention to notifications, you can reward players with agency for the afore mentioned.