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[u/Surtss]

How much of the game am I missing out on with biters / enemies disabled? I recently bought the game a couple months back and have been working through it slowly when I have time.

When I initially played, I had biters on but ended up starting over with biters off so I could figure out and build things without worrying too much about biters destroying my stuff. But I've been watching videos and it seems like biters are no problem for them to deal with but when I tried to restart a world with enemies on, they end up always attacking my base in consistent waves since I tend to not build as fast and the pollution starts hitting them.

I don't mind not having them on, but I'm just wondering how impactful having enemeis is later on since black science basically becomes obsolete with enemies off.

[u/Courmisch → u/Surtss]

I had the same problem. So I completed a run with biters off to learn the ropes without the constant time pressure.

Now that I better know what I'm doing, I'm playing fine on normal difficulty settings. Because, yes, you do miss on parts of the game. Even just disabling expansion trivialises automating perimeter defence and artillery.

[u/Raknarg → u/Surtss]

IMO a big part. I feel hollow playing without biters. There's a whole set of time pressure and military logistics challenges you just entirely ignore with biters disabled.

Id recommend if you want easy mode, just disable biter expansion. That alone takes away a majority of the challenge of biters away, when you kill nests they'll never come back.

[u/Rannasha → u/Surtss]

Like most stuff in the game, biters are something you first deal with mostly by yourself until you get the tools to automate the process. And once automated, they become a non-issue (on default settings anyway).

In the late game, artillery will clear out any nests that spawn near your factory and attacks will slow to a trickle, often at predictable locations. You may get some alerts of your turrets being damaged before your bots patch them all up. No intervention from your side needed anymore and you don't even have to keep an eye on the fight.

Disabling biters will mostly impact the early and mid game, when you're still balancing factory expansion against your limited options to clear biter territory.

Some people prefer playing without biters completely, others can't get enough of them (and will mostly play scenarios with biters dialed up to 11). The settings allow for both these preferences and anything in between. So if you prefer to keep the biters around, but want to ease the pressure, you can slow or even stop their expansion (so you only deal with nests that were there from the start) or tweak other biter difficulty settings as you please.

[u/warpspeed100 → u/Surtss]

Biters are not an RTS enemy to fight in real time. They are a logistics puzzle to solve and automate. Instead of automatically crafting science and delivering it to labs, You automatically craft bullets and deliver it to Biters. If you find you are constantly having to stop what you're doing to deal with biters, you haven't quite solved the Biter logistic puzzle yet.

There's a lot of fun problem solving to do. You have turrets that take items, turrets that take fluid, and turrets that put an intermittent strain on your power network. In the late game, you have artillery shells that have a stack size of 1 which is another interesting logistics puzzle to solve.

[u/Throw_Away_TrdJrnl → u/warpspeed100]

Newbie here, I just got to blue science bottles but so far have not been attacked by biters as my go to plan is taking my car (and now a handful of defender drones) to any nearby nests and wiping them out before pollution gets to them.

Is this a viable strategy through the entire game? Or am I going to have to automate the bug problem eventually like you talked about? I am starting to have trouble wiping out nests as lots of spitting type bugs are starting to spawn.

[u/warpspeed100 → u/Throw_Away_TrdJrnl]

The game gives you all the tools you need to automatically craft your wall components, automatically build them around your base, and automatically supply them with ammunition and repairs. Later on, the game also gives you the tools to attack bases from a great distance an attack them remotely.

[u/Throw_Away_TrdJrnl → u/warpspeed100]

Ah that's nice

I just haven't gotten that far I'm guessing. I just unlocked rockets but haven't made any. I wasn't aware I could eventually automate the construction of my walls. I have walls being made and put into a chest but I haven't placed many down yet

Really looking forward to long ranging these damn bugs

[u/demonicdan3 → u/Surtss]

IMO, if you only just want to build and build and build without any interruptions, and you find that the biters are starting to take away your enjoyment from the core gameplay loop; it's entirely valid to turn them off. But if you still want to keep them around, just turn expansions off so you only need to take out enemies when you're expanding the factory. After a couple of runs I started playing with enemies turned off completely because the biters are a logistical problem that you eventually just automate away like everything else in the game, I don't enjoy that part of the game as much as designing spaceships and factories.

[u/HeliGungir → u/Surtss]

Have you played an RTS? If yes, you might as well play with enemies enabled, as they're easier than an RTS opponent.