Factorio Forums

Here it is! (beep boop)

https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-445

good that they are human generated facts , i hate all those robots and automation things

Though sometimes it's not that bad, and if you are going to have the alert based on radar range , maybe the radar could be used for automated detection of those base that triggered an alert ? some players suggested that some times ago, you know, so you can have your artillery train on demand or something.

Now i remember , weren't supposed to be some new achievements with 2.1 ? that sounds related to biters no ? wouldn't there be another FFF planned somehow that needed this one first ?

Are there any plans to add achievements to beat the base game/space age in the death world preset?

Michael Hendricks must be grinding his teeth having to learn all the new algorithms, after everything he's done after spending hundreds of hours reverse-engineering every micro-tick of biter AI, map chunk candidate scoring, and expansion mechanics down to the exact pixel.
Knowing him, though, he's probably already spinning up a 20-hour video essay series titled "Is it possible to beat Factorio with 100% Evolution, 0% Pollution, and 1 Teeny Tiny Mod (that breaks all the new pathfinding algorithms)?"

why are we still talking about a game that released in 2021... expac doesnt count...as there were mods anyway...

Tell us about Wube's new project Prosimte! :D:D

I hope the new expansion planner does not mean that the old "victory poling" is back to manipulate it.
I mean the "trying to ensure that areas explored but otherwise untouched by the player" sounds like you could manipulate it easily but hopefully I'm just reading too much into it.

It's really nice to have added early-game functionality for RADAR! During my DWM runs, I've always avoided building it, since it consumes a lot of energy (lot of pollution) and was not that important.

I have always adventured around a lot, early on my DWM runs, so I was using this "bug" (without knowing about it) of the expansion behaviors, so together with the behavior change, RADAR will be on my early must-have list.

+1

Great work, I like the changes. It would be pretty cool though, if it was not only on active, but also on "this square did not have spawners and now does" alert, on can dream
But it does smell like victorypoling again, I must say.

Eternal wrote: Fri Aug 07, 2026 11:43 am why are we still talking about a game that released in 2021... expac doesnt count...as there were mods anyway...

Tell us about Wube's new project Prosimte! :D:D

Because this is a forum thread about a blog post about factorio. Also usually hoping a next game is good simply because same devs do it is usually a good way to be disappointed

danbopes wrote: Fri Aug 07, 2026 11:21 am Michael Hendricks must be grinding his teeth having to learn all the new algorithms, after everything he's done after spending hundreds of hours reverse-engineering every micro-tick of biter AI, map chunk candidate scoring, and expansion mechanics down to the exact pixel.
Knowing him, though, he's probably already spinning up a 20-hour video essay series titled "Is it possible to beat Factorio with 100% Evolution, 0% Pollution, and 1 Teeny Tiny Mod (that breaks all the new pathfinding algorithms)?"

the funny thing is.... he doesn't need to, because in case you didnt notice yet, Biter Bases spawn far enough apart from each other now that you can actually have mining operations between nests!

And the Biter Nests wont increase their density anymore like they did before, so if you have a mining setup next to a nest that has the exact pollution output that is absorbed before reaching the nests, then you are permanently safe!

Especially since expansion parties are chosen from nearby nests, so if there is no expansion chunks next to your mining outpost, then the Biters wont even bump into your Outpost with their expansion parties!

Wait, what happens if you kill the entire nest except ONE spawner? Will that one Spawner prevent expansions from forming nearby if you feed it enough ammunition to keep it from being a danger? aka Biter Zoo?

It WOULD make sense for players to actually do that at least to one of the nearby nests for glebic purposes

With radars detecting expansions, wouldn't it also be nice to have radars output the type and amount of enemy units as a signal?
I like playing death world, and this would make radars a lot more useful in the early game.

(This would also make my turret train mod a lot more useful, since you could automatically dispatch patrol trains with this)

Also I know pvp isn't really a thing, but being able to detect an enemy player before they crash through your walls seems necessary to be able to react to an attack.

Really excited for this change.
Late game biter are unfortunately a bit trivial. And post-game they are pretty much just a nuisance. So I appreciate seeing their AI get buffed a bit.
I'm still part of the camp that believes that at least in Space-Age Behemoth Biters should get some fire resistance.

Perhaps nest-clusters should also be able to grow, so the early game nests don't stay small forever.
Or if you go out and kill clusters of nests until only one remains to combat expansion, so they can "rebuild" their nest cluster.
I suppose a max size would need to be put in place so clusters don't grow indefinitely... though that too sounds interesting.

But seriously, how much of this was pushed because of Michael Hendricks' continued exploitation of biter mechanics.

I have been playing a 600/600 DW marathon run since 2.1 dropped and while i was having a real blast there was a couple of questionable aspects that may or may not have been intentional.

First one is that biters are capable of expanding under the range of your turrets now, causing infinite attacks (a nest might spawn too close, a biter accidently walks into the turret range, turrets shoot at him and you get an infinite stream of freshly spawned biters who get instantly aggroed) which could drain your starter base's resources pretty fast if you aren't there to clear the nests (or even spot the infinite attack happening). This issue hits out of nowhere and if you aren't prepared to immediately clear those nests you can hit the unrecoverable death spiral scenario pretty fast (as infinite attacks cause infinite ammo consumption). I see that the game will have expansion alerts now but it isn't really fixing this issue as you can't really tell if a close expansion will cause an infinite attack or not (sometimes biters walk into the turrets range, sometimes their idle walking path barely avoids it). The closeness-to-player's-base factor was nerfed at some point too (so worms wouldn't be able to spew at bases from afar) but idk if that's enough to also clear the turret range aspect, especially with biter nest group sizes above vanilla/DW values (like 600/600). With that said, it sure can cause some memorable recovery moments.

The second thing is an exploit you can use to counter expansions as a whole mechanic - you clear out the nests but keep like one worm alive so no new nest groups would appear in that spot or even close to it. So in a way it goes from one extreme to another: first biters suckerpunch you with infinite attacks and then you suckerpunch them by forever blocking their expansion range. If it's intended for a player to learn and use that exploit then I'd've liked much more if it was a part of the expansion mechanic (i.e. make it so no new nests spawn at a place where a group of nests has already been cleared from) rather than this.

P.S. Oh and defending Gleba feels pretty underwhelming when you visit it as a last planet even on DW 600/600, the attacks barely scratch me (even while continuously producing something like 600SPM). Wish there was some sort of internal modifier for gleba enemies' aggressiveness that'd go up based on how many planets you've been to (cos vulcanus gives you artillery and fulgora electric turrets both of which curbstomp gleba's difficulty tremendously) or something different that'd cause the same effect.

I whish the radars could emit an "expansion base built" notification not only when the base expansion is being built while a chunk is being refreshed by sheer luck, but also when a new (finished) expansion is discovered on an already discovered chunk, during chunk rescan.

Apart from that, I like the announced changes, especially the fact that expansions will be indistinguishable from map generated bases.

danbopes wrote: Fri Aug 07, 2026 11:21 am Michael Hendricks must be grinding his teeth having to learn all the new algorithms, after everything he's done after spending hundreds of hours reverse-engineering every micro-tick of biter AI, map chunk candidate scoring, and expansion mechanics down to the exact pixel.
Knowing him, though, he's probably already spinning up a 20-hour video essay series titled "Is it possible to beat Factorio with 100% Evolution, 0% Pollution, and 1 Teeny Tiny Mod (that breaks all the new pathfinding algorithms)?"

Ah Factorio is an engineer's game; staying on a version is very, very easy.

But instead he's more likely celebrating - there is absolutely no way that the new system doesn't have incredibly exploitable side-effects ... next time. His hardest thing will be recording everything before Wube notices and patches whatever 'feature' he found ...

Draxinusom wrote: Fri Aug 07, 2026 11:55 am I hope the new expansion planner does not mean that the old "victory poling" is back to manipulate it.
I mean the "trying to ensure that areas explored but otherwise untouched by the player" sounds like you could manipulate it easily but hopefully I'm just reading too much into it.

"Victory poling" Still exists though? If anything this sounds like it might mitigate it with biters ignoring places far away from the player forcing them to expand toward the player even if there are buildings lowering the likelihood of those chunks being selected.

1. Sorry to hear about your neck injury! Hope you get well soon!
2. About those biters:

I usually do play with biters because I enjoy the engineering problems they bring, but I don't enjoy the combat as much as some folks. I'm usually playing Factorio to get away from urgent interruptions that otherwise fill my life from my job and kids! As such, I tend to over-build my defenses and clear bases back quite far so that biters won't become a problem when I turn my back, though I find both of those actions too repetative. More recently (this year) I've tended to just turn expansions off entirely, or at least dial them way back. Everybody plays a bit differently, right?

I'm glad to hear you've given them some attention and will need to try a biter-enabled run again at some point. (I'm playing biterless Pyanodon's at the moment. I just got logistic bots this morning! Woot!) I'm also glad to read in the comments here that biter bases no longer spawn close enough for a worm to be able to out-range your turrets. That was super annoying. Thanks!

Could we get a map setting controlling the recklessness of expansions? Turning it up would make them less likely to expand to a zone perceived as dangerous. "Danger" could be proximity to player turrets and recent confrontations (artillery or attacks that are a bit more -- personal). My play style would lean towards turning down expansion recklessness, but compensate but turning up something else. I forget, is there a setting for size of attack parties? Something that would make fewer attacks, but more dangerous when they do come.

Another idea, but probably one too involved for this phase of Factorio development, would be to add patrols. Bases would send out parties to check out places where they were previously attacked, or even just wander for a bit then go home. It would make land outside your base feel a bit more like untamed wilderness.

Anyway, thanks for your years of dedicated work on this wonderful game! I've been playing since 0.12 and have appreciated this game like no other! Thanks for the FFF windows into how you guys work, and we look forward to seeing your next passion project, whatever it may be! <3

I've always played railworld because I hated how biters expanded and the fact they'd surprise you. With this change I may play not a rail world save. I especially love the alert in radar coverage of new expanded nests now so you can clear them before they become an issue, as well with the ability to catch it early when the base is small.

I wonder how you solve a problem, at least for me. Many players switch on the chunkoverlay and place a pipe or something like that to prevent the biters from choosing this chunk for expansion. I would like to see this solved as the expansions are too easy manipulated in that way.

JigSaW wrote: Fri Aug 07, 2026 1:22 pmP.S. Oh and defending Gleba feels pretty underwhelming when you visit it as a last planet even on DW 600/600, the attacks barely scratch me (even while continuously producing something like 600SPM). Wish there was some sort of internal modifier for gleba enemies' aggressiveness that'd go up based on how many planets you've been to (cos vulcanus gives you artillery and fulgora electric turrets both of which curbstomp gleba's difficulty tremendously) or something different that'd cause the same effect.

The whole point of giving the player the power to choose the order to take the planets in is that it allows them to bring the spoils of one planet to make another easier. If going to Gleba last made Gleba harder, you basically take away this element of the game.

If you want challenging enemies on Gleba, go there first. If you want less challenging enemies on Gleba, go there last.