Factorio Forums

As I understand only biters existing on map will expand. So if I sit on same place and ignore radars they will not spawn and not expand outside of starting area because their map part will not be generated. Correct?

If true, it seems to be very wrong from the point of honest game. Whether things happen or not should not depend on whether you are looking at them.

I understand the optimization but the end result should look the same regardless of player exploring or not exploring map.

No, biters expand at a predefined rate (see New game, Advanced settings), regardless of how much the map is generated.

You can affect where they expand by exploring more of the map. If you don't explore, they will expand their existing bases, which might be even worse for you.

DaveMcW wrote:You can affect where they expand by exploring more of the map.

This is what I'm talking about. Let's assume you have 10 spawners generated on explored map. Until you explore more of the map only those 10 will expand. So if you kill them and sit at the same place for long time and then decide to explore more map you will find only new nests with a normal frequency. If game would try to be more fair to you the more time passed the bigger nests frequency should be when you explore more map (because they were expanding while you waited). Moreover, "guests" should come from the map borders.

Another case: you explored the map and now you have 100 spawners "active". They will expand much faster, right? But for game to be fair there should be no real difference in their expand speed regardless of you exploring map or not.

I'm not sure if it works the fair way or not.

wvlad wrote:They will expand much faster, right?

No. There will be 2 expansions per hour* on the entire map, regardless of how many spawners exist**.

*Assuming default settings and medium biter evolution
**Unless you kill them all

I didn't know that. Where did you get this info? I thought the expansion cooldown is per-base.

Interesting, so exploring large map is even profitable - because if they expand somewhere far away from you it won't affect you in any way.