Factorio Forums

I played the game for over a year now, and I always play with biters.
I feel the games needs the challange, there has to be a way to theoretically lose.

I like the new combat rebalance, although I have not yet got all the new stuff in my death world.

Problem: I feel like biters lategame become pretty tedious since
1. You can not take much damage before dying, so you only have time to kill 1-3 buildings before retreting and killing the biters following you. When you come back to the biter base the biters already respawned. This running back and force takes alot of time and is not very fun.
2. Biters reexpand very quick, so even if you spend all your time clearing nests around your base they will be built faster then you can clear them.

My sollution:

1. It seems when you kill all the biters at a biter base it respawns new ones very quick until it gets to its desired amount. It also seem to spawn biters quick when it decides to gather up for an attack. At other times it spawns very slow or not at all.
Instead I would like them to produce biter in a constant speed (depending on pollution and evnolution) and when they get to x amount of biters they attack.
This way if you clear a base of biters you can then take care of the building without running back and fourth.

2. The biters should reexpand much more slowly, so clearing an area actually pays back. I noticed the new "rail world" mode, and I´m eager to try it, but I dont want to remove the reexpand altogether, just slow it down.

3. To help with the ability to tank damage you could have your own version of biters and spitters (meele tanks and ranged damage dealers) who you pluck down at some place and then tell to attack a biter base (I think there was a mod for this, but I didnt try it).
This would let you "automate" the fighting. Other people have mentioned that the lack of ability to automate makes biters not as fun, and not as fitting in the game.
If this was implemented i think biter spawning rate mentinoed in point (1) could be left like today (high when biters are killed).

4. The points above make the game easier, so to balance the biter bases should be bigger/tougher and futher inbetween (to stop it from becoming one big biter base surrounding your base)

This would make it feel more of an achivement to actually clear a biter base. And it would make it worth the effort (since it reduces the attacks on your base), now it feel just like an waste of ammo unless you are going to build there right away.

I also like the idea to make biters favoritise building bases on mineral patches.
And I think you should not be allowed to build turrents close to biter bases to stop turret creeping (turret creeping makes all the other weaponds and tank kind of useless).

There is/was a factorio starcraft2 mod that did some of these things, i liked that one.

Who is with me?

I'm partly with you, but my experience with the aliens/biters are a bit different. Some counter-points:

1. In all of my games I've ever played, alien bases never "spawn". This is how it works in the games I've played: An existing alien base makes biters and spitters which gather in a certain spot forming a exploration/attack party, after they reach a certain count, they move to a spot if they don't "aggro" on the way (find certain structures to attack or wander into pollution nearby), then they sit there for an amount of time, and finally they make spawn structures which establishes a new base there. In the early game I'd clear a base, then plop a gun turret where it was to prevent the spot form being used for a new alien base again. In medium/late/over game I clear the area and build a wall (of lasers usually) to prevent aliens from ever moving to the area.

2. I've played many many hours in this game, all with aliens on and aggressive settings (and no mods). I don't find biters to be much of a problem after I get my military advanced enough to deal with them. They were slower in version 0.14.x so I understand that some are having trouble with them; so maybe a slower option setting? Maybe it's already there and I haven't seen it?

3. I'm on-board and all for having even the smallest ability to automate defense. Unfortunately I can't even imagine how that would be implemented without some major game-changing update. So at the moment I'd rather improve other parts of the game over this.

4. Since the aliens are fictionally like bugs, I lean towards quantity (a sprawling base) over quality (a really tough but isolated base). It can be very tough to clear a sprawling alien base. I'd rather keep seeing that over making them smaller yet tougher. If you concentrate HP in a small spot, I'll just come along and launch atomic bombs from afar no muss, no fuss. Today I forgo launching nukes into sprawling bases because it's a lot more fun and engaging to take it apart (and yes sometimes I die if I get too aggressive, so the risk is there).

Power Armor MK2 with ~5-6 MK2 shields allows you to stand in the middle of a train track and not die when hit by an express (this, BTW is how to get the golem achievement). Trust me, biters are not a problem. When you can run through the fire from your flamethrower without worrying about fire damage, biter bases are trivial to clear (but not as trivial as .14, when I cleared a humongous mega base with 15 flamethrower fuel and really careful fire discipline).

Biter expansion is an issue though, but only if you insist on keeping them cleared back (I just let them waste themselves on my walls).

Before power armor just use a tank and lots of piercing rounds/flame thrower fuel (I don't usually bother with cannon rounds).