Factorio Forums

Hello so far I have played the campaign and a sandbox game with peaceful mode enabled (after a lot of trouble with the biters in the campaign), but now I think it's time to start a sandbox game with aggressive biters. I want to avoid getting struck after some hours trough, so I have some beginner questions regarding the enemies.

1. I know the enemies expand, but do they only create new bases or does existing bases growth too? --> Do I have to destroy them as long as they have a manageable size, or do small enemy bases even work as some kind of 'spawn'-protection against bigger bases.

2. Do new bases follow the 'size' map-setting (From what I have learned so far with the 0.9.8 balancing big bases are no fun for me) or does this parameter only affects the initial bases

3. What does the map-setting richness do for enemy bases (for resources this is clear)?

4. What is generally found to be saver if I encounter an enemy base early?
a) kill on sight --> will increase evolutionfactor, but allows a tighter easier to defend base after that
b) build around and avoid that pollution reach them --> will make my base more open and slow me down
c) ignore (obviously not good) --> They will soak up pollution which will increase their evolutionfactor and I still have to destroy them sometime later.

1) biters migrate AND existing bases will grow. Paradoxically, if you want to go for a peaceful route it is indeed easier to eliminate them early on.
2) They should, but the way the algorithm works is not very intuitive. Bases will on average be smaller / larger, but it's a modifier, not a hard cap on sizes.
3) Afaik it will increase the amount of alien artifacts dropped when a spawner is destroyed.
4) option B in the early game. Then make sure that when the pollution radius expands you clear the bases before they have a chance to grow large & dangerous.

Thanks Teurlinx. That should reduce the risk of failure a bit.

I am testing a way to prevent new bases from spawning. Every new base always have worms in my game, to stop the constant 'whack a mole' play I simply destroy spawners while leaving the worms behind. The spot still counts as a base and no new bases will appear next to it. For now it works.

I've noticed that they seem to keep spawning bases on the same spots unless a building or object is nearby, so I drop crates in the middle of those bases after I destroy them.

I havent tried this but it might work Make an outer perimeter like one gun turret every 25 blocks because i believe in order for a new base to spawn some biter must travel to that new location to build a base. Which is why you dont have random bases popping up in your factory.

Skycommand1 wrote:I havent tried this but it might work Make an outer perimeter like one gun turret every 25 blocks because i believe in order for a new base to spawn some biter must travel to that new location to build a base. Which is why you dont have random bases popping up in your factory.

I'm sure, he / she solved the problem within the last two years