Map gen puts enemies too close

[Two]

The new terrain generator is great, but it has a tendency to put enemies too close to the spawn. I had one game where I got attacked by biters before I could even start the first research.

Example:

Seed: 123456 (default settings)

[BlueTemplar]

It's 1234 56 (no extra3.)

It's interesting, this should actually be relatively balanced if you don't scale too much too fast, since there's a 2 chunks wide forest between your starting ores and the nest ?

[Zaflis]

If that's on default settings it's far from balanced. There isn't always forest to save you. Early game pollution spreads pretty far. Natural expansion minimum delay is by default 4 minutes. Every 0.17 game so far i've increased spawn size a significant amount, but that's partly because i play with mods that make the start slower, on the other hand i really hate rushed games.

[Two]

It's 1234 56 (no extra3.)

It's interesting, this should actually be relatively balanced if you don't scale too much too fast, since there's a 2 chunks wide forest between your starting ores and the nest ?

Thx for the typo, I fixed that.

No it is not balanced. I played that map and the burner miners already triggered an attack. The very first thing I had to research were turrets to get rid of that base.

Also other terrains can be generated which are far more difficult, i.E. I had a complete desert map with 2-3 spawners in pollution range of the initial miners, as desert does almost no pollution reduction. Playing on that map means you get attacked by 2-3 biter groups right from the start.

[BlueTemplar]

Well, wouldn't a desert start in 0.16 have resulted in the same situation ?

But yeah, spawners probably shouldn't ever start so close on default settings...
Should start to be affected by pollution... if say, you go over 10 burner drills total for a red science base ?

[Two]

In 0.16 there was a huge dead-zone around spawn in which biter bases could not exist. This zone seems to be much smaller now, resulting in a great variance in difficulty when generating a map.

It is ok if some maps are more or less difficult than others, but the game basically requires you to get a few researches done before you can even effectively defend against biters. A solution would be to either increase the dead-zone again or disallow biter attacks within like the first 30 minutes of a game.

[BlueTemplar]

According to the wiki :
Grass 3-4 (the less green-looking ones ?) now absorbs as much as Grass 1-2.
Dirt 1 and Dry Dirt absorbs less.
Sand absorbs much more (not a lot of difference with Grass !)
Red Desert 1-2 absorbs less. (Though it already absorbed as much as grass in 0.16 !)
Water absorbs much less - watch out for those spawners on the other side of lakes !
(And "Out of map" absorbs a lot now.)

So there should be a smaller variance of difficulty between landing on desert or grass in 0.17 than in 0.16 ?

[ManaUser]

According to the wiki :
Grass 3-4 (the less green-looking ones ?) now absorbs as much as Grass 1-2.
Dirt 1 and Dry Dirt absorbs less.
Sand absorbs much more (not a lot of difference with Grass !)
Red Desert 1-2 absorbs less. (Though it already absorbed as much as grass in 0.16 !)
Water absorbs much less - watch out for those spawners on the other side of lakes !
(And "Out of map" absorbs a lot now.)

So there should be a smaller variance of difficulty between landing on desert or grass in 0.17 than in 0.16 ?

Should be, but don't forget the trees. Those are also a big pollution sink and dense forests are only on grass as far as I can recall.

[Two]

Should be, but don't forget the trees. Those are also a big pollution sink and dense forests are only on grass as far as I can recall.

^ This.

But even with trees that base would have been polluted very early on.

[Klonan]

The code is working correctly, this is just a matter of tweaking the numbers,

So I have moved it to balancing

[Stakhanov]

I thought this was an intended change , it's entirely normal to be attacked prior to first research if you use lots of burner miners , and it should be manageable with light armor and pistol. Light pollution produces small attack waves , especially if it's just one nest.

Deathworld settings on the other hand can often place biter spawners on top of some spawn resource nodes , that's rather unfair. Ideally it should always be possible to hand mine each of the 4 starting resources without having to shoot any biters , if that's what it takes to research turrets in single player without being overrun.

[BlueTemplar]

If you consider that newbies to Factorio (some people don't do any campaigns/tutorials and just jump straight to Freeplay) should be able to get attacked like this, I'd consider that if you pick Deathworld you should be expected to be able to clean that ore-camping nest by using the respawn feature...

[bobucles]

Biters can be made less aggressive in the starting stages by playing with settings at extremely low evolution levels. For example biters under evolution 0.05 might not be aggressive at all. Nests at that very early point may not even spawn biters, simply absorbing pollution to generate nothing. Is it game breaking? Of course not, it's the basically establishing a norush period for the first few minutes of the game.

[Hiladdar]

+1

I concure with enemies to close. The way I mitigate it by expanding the size of the start up area.

The second issue I noticed is that cliffs are are also too close to the start up area. Once cliff explosive is researched, and sulfur production is in up, they are not an issue.

Hiladdar

[bobucles]

Another factor that may be fun to play with is biter aggression radius. Try linking their radius to evolution factor, perhaps as a simple linear %. So early game they'll attack at 20% range and quickly work up to 50% range. Only at the highest evolution stages will they have aggression at 100% range. The basic idea is that biters are getting more aggressive and territorial as they get larger and madder at the player.

It gives players more breathing room in the early game and ramps up difficulty later on.

[BlueTemplar]

The issue is with the default settings.

[redKnightKS]

I started a game with default settings without looking at the map preview, and see that there are three bases very close by. Nevertheless, I continued playing. 16 minutes into the game about 40 biters attack, just as I was finishing the turrets research.

Since this could very well be someone's first free play game, the biter attacks need to be slowed down, at least for the first half an hour or so.

Screenshot attached.

[BlakeMW]

Hmmm yes, a player who doesn't know about munching fish is unlikely to survive for long on a start like this, and going fishing isn't exactly an intuitive opening.

[Koub]

[Koub] Basically the same balancing issue. Topics merged.

[zOldBulldog]

Scenario:

- My first New Game in 0.17, with default settings except for expansion disabled.

- Barely had built a basic power plant and the pollution cloud reached the nearest nest, triggering an attack.

- Had not yet researched military and built initial turrets to defend, and the nests already had many worms. So, they could not be easily eliminated.

For seeing a nasty match, I simply abandoned it and started a new game with the same settings and max size startup area.

No problem for me, but a new player would not know to do so and probably get so frustrated by the constant attacks that he would likely quit. I strongly recommend either reducing the default pollution spread or increase the default starter area size.