When playing with some friends in a multiplayer game, I realized that the default settings for biter base size make it a little easy, since you can start walking around with a rifle and clearing them fairly early, removing any threat rapidly if you beeline early military technologies.
To counteract this, I changed the game's settings to demand expansion, as per Rail World, with biter colonies that are colossal and infrequent. This makes it so the biter bases are nearly impossible to destroy early on, because of their standing armies, and establishes strong threat, since they send a percentage of their population when attacking because of pollution. Larger colonies mean larger attack forces, so base defense is no longer a job for 1 or 2 turrets per area, instead requiring huge defense perimeters with significant amounts of turrets to withstand the waves of forces that will come.
This is a setup ideal for multiplayer maps with people who seek a greater level of difficulty than is offered by the normal biter colony settings. It can be done single player, but may necessitate peaceful mode for the initial phases of the game the first few times you play these settings.
I have not given a seed because depending on the mods you use, the same seed does not lead to the same results.
Settings
- Baseline world:
- Rail World
- Resources:
- Adjust all to 200% richness. If using mods, standardize frequency/size to rail world defaults.
- Reason: With the massive colonies, you need to be able to depend on non-biter infested resources and paths longer.
- Terrain:
- Default/To taste
- May recommend more water, to allow the player to create more choke points when defending.
- Enemies:
- Enemy bases:
- Enabled
- Frequency: 17%
- Size: 400%
- Peaceful Mode:
- If multiplayer, Disabled.
- If singleplayer, recommend Enabled until ready to build military on first few playthroughs.
- Starting Area Size: 200%
- Enemy Expansion:
- Enabled
- Maximum Expansion Distance: 20
- Minimum Group Size: 20
- Maximum Group Size: 40+
- Minimum Cooldown: 30 minutes
- Maximum Cooldown: 90 minutes
- Evolution:
- Enabled
- Time Factor: 0
- Destroy Factor: 0
- Pollution Factor: 0 (To change with command)
- Enemy bases:
- Advanced: Default/To taste
- Seed: Turn on preview and randomize seed until you find one with distinct starting ore patches.
- Post-start:
- After the game has started, you need to change the evolution factors to allow the enemies to evolve. Default values lead to significant evolution before you have any defenses.
- Commands:
- /c game.map_settings.enemy_evolution.pollution_factor=0.00000001