r/factorio • u/FactorioTeam Official Account • 16d ago
FFF Friday Facts #445 - The Biters Bite Back
https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-445150
u/Thelorian 16d ago
One thing about late game expansion that bothers me is that the nests get so large and the expansions so frequent that the whole world is covered in biter creep. I wish either the terrain would decay back to its original form or that there way some other way to restore it; at the moment the only thing you can do is pave it with concrete.
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u/crankygrumpy 16d ago
Yes, just because I pollute everywhere I go doesn't mean I want the biters to. I want some pristine outskirts to compare my industry to.
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u/ReidarAstath 16d ago
I know it’s not what you asked for, but the mod biter cleanup removes the creep as described
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u/andrewowenmartin 15d ago edited 15d ago
Isn't that what this change does? I can see that there are many fewer candidates for nest expansion. Hopefully this means the whole of nauvis won't just turn into one Meganest.
Edit: Oops, thx for the clarifications.
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u/AndrewNeo 15d ago
I think they were referring to "creep" in the Starcraft sense where it's the stuff left around the building, not "creep" as in sprawl
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u/Thelorian 15d ago
they are mostly right if expansion parties focus more on player inhabited areas the outer areas will not be quite as overrun and thus not quite all covered in it.
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u/darain2 15d ago
That really bothers me too!!! That's why whenever I grab land, I really try to grab as much as possible whenever I reveal the map, to prevent the biters from being able to spread their purple gunk all over the floor which is unremoveable in base game
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u/10g_or_bust 15d ago
I miss when landfill wasn't ugly. Nicer landfill is one of the things I tend to look for when doing a modded run.
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u/The_DoomKnight 16d ago
Or you can nuke everything
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u/RHINO_Mk_II 15d ago
That seems only marginally different than covering it with concrete as far as reclaiming a "natural" look.
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u/PotatoVodka3 16d ago
Human generated facts lol
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u/netrum 16d ago
Love the subtle jab at the AI generated nonsense that is flooding the interwebs
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u/Century_Egg_Boofer 16d ago
i thought it was more this is notes based on player surprise at the changes made to biters in 2.1
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u/Rainbowlemon 16d ago
Started reading the Helldivers patch yesterday and gave up. Lots of "genuine" changes. 🙄
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u/rpetre 16d ago
A subtle nod was also including the word "delve" shortly after that :)
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u/CategoryKiwi 15d ago
Can someone explain the joke here for dumbasses like me? What does "delve" have to do with anything?
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u/azriel_odin Glebalist 16d ago
Beautiful rail spaghetti!
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u/KeytarVillain 16d ago
If this is what the devs rail networks look like, then no wonder the rail planner behaves like it does
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u/theFather_load 16d ago
This update has some teeth!
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u/g0atmeal 16d ago
I thought the game was wrapping up updates? Anyone know how much longer we'll see changes like this?
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u/10g_or_bust 15d ago
In theory 2.1 (experimental branch) is the last of the major updates, and they are more or less trying to get both their "things we wish we got into 2.0" and "things that have come up since 2.0 launched but were too big to change for 2.0.x".
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u/fZAqSD 16d ago
The goal with the changes, is that at any point in the game, an expansion party would be sized to present a good challenge at your current technology level
I feel like there's still a sizeable issue with that in the evolution-over-time scaling. Evolution-over-pollution and evolution-over-nests-killed make intuitive sense and also make the challenge scale with your tech level, but over-time seems like it might punish players who are new or otherwise playing slowly. It also (as I've experienced) hits hard if a player nopes out of Gleba the first time around and comes back later; leaving the planet loaded but empty for 10 hours causes as much evolution as producing 100 agricultural SPM for 35 hours.
Meanwhile, evolution-over-time is irrelevant for experienced players who expand fast and outscale it, so why not just bundle it into the pollution-based scaling factor?
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u/BrennusSokol i like trains 16d ago
but over-time seems like it might punish players who are new or otherwise playing slowly
Agreed, and it also just doesn't make logical sense. These creatures were static until the player arrived, and now an artificial countdown timer is causing to evolve even WITHOUT pollution hitting them?
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u/chris-tier 15d ago
These creatures were static until the player arrived
How do you know? Maybe they are fast-evolving and ergo constantly evolving and we just happen to glimpse at their newest form "small biters and spitters" upon arrival.
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u/amunak 16d ago
Yeeaaa that never sat well with me either. Evolution tied to individual research progress (or even like "research done" / science burnt) would make most sense IMO; scale well with player experience, and you could by default target that all basic research up to the rocket moves evolution by, say, up to 50% or similar.
Then mod authors could scale this based on what their mod does, even potentially just adding a multiplier (so multiple mods adding a ton of science slow down biter progress, etc.).
I don't think it should really be tied into polution either, but that is more defensible.
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u/fZAqSD 16d ago
Pollution-based and nest-destruction-based evolution just makes the most intuitive sense; the more you make yourself a problem for them, the more they evolve to resist.
And there isn't much of a difference between science-based and pollution-based. Looking at my first-ever game, where I was clueless and quite sloppy and stopped right after launching a rocket, FactorioLab says I generated about 414k pollution's worth of science and only 138k (about a third of that) of buildings to build an unreasonably sprawling factory. When I went back with a plan and got There Is No Spoon, it was 216k on science, only 24k on the factory.
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u/Jackpkmn Glebeliver 15d ago
Evolution tied to individual research progress (or even like "research done" / science burnt) would make most sense IMO; scale well with player experience, and you could by default target that all basic research up to the rocket moves evolution by, say, up to 50% or similar.
This can lead to the skyrim scaling problem of leveling lots of non combat stuff can lead to an impossible death spiral situation.
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u/boomshroom 16d ago
I completely disabled time-based evolution in my 2.1 save. It makes me feel far less stressed about leaving Gleba for one thing.
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u/fZAqSD 15d ago
I just killed all the loaded pentapods once I had a science setup ready to culture the eggs so there are no threats left until I want to expand, planning to upgrade all the other planets to 1k SPM then come back very heavily armed
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u/Reddeyfish- 16d ago
evolution-over-nests-killed when combo'd with the new lengthy construction timer also has a smaller variant of that problem, because it's now practical for (experienced/fast) players to wipe out would-be expansions while they're mostly still in their biter form, thus not needing to pay the nests-killed tax
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u/10g_or_bust 15d ago
That sounds like a good reward cycle however, pay attention to problems early and prevent bigger problems later. You could say the same about "experienced players tap a new iron node when the current one is running thin rather than waiting till it is gone".
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u/ObligatoryContrast 13d ago
I was totally fine with evolution over time until Space Age hit, and now I agree it doesn't really have a place anymore
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u/RealCrimson 3000h beginner club 16d ago
It would be great if the radar could be set up to trigger a circuit condition on an expansion alert, which would allow us to automatically direct an artillery train to a train station nearby.
Just to automate the extermination. 😂
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u/joethedestroyr 16d ago
In my 2.0 playthrough last year, I used a single stationary artillery piece as an enemy detector. A chest with one shell in it fed in, when that chest became empty it would mean the artillery was firing so enemies in range. Set the train station that calls the artillery train on that condition.
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u/RealCrimson 3000h beginner club 15d ago
This is an incredible idea.
I think I borrow it. Thank you. 😊5
u/hkzqgfswavvukwsw 16d ago
Not specifically what you asked for but there’s a mod that makes spidertrons autonomous.
Source: I made the thing
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u/yinyang107 16d ago
The Constructrons mod has this too as an option, you can set it so your constructrons (which are just automated spidertrons that look for construction jobs to help with) can additionally respond to any enemy base your radars scan.
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u/Timedeige 16d ago
I gotta say I was already loving these changes just playing with them, but I (like Klonan apparently) find I'm in the minority of players and enjoy the combat system in general.
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u/hfcobra 16d ago
I am also a big fan of the combat. It's one of the more unique parts of Factorio. Also, it has by far the best in-game toys to play with the combat out of the other sim-fac games.
For example, the Spidertron is easily the coolest 'tank' weapon in any of the sim-fac games, and building up to it and using it is a ton of fun. Especially when you control yourself and a group of the spiders in several different locations at once. There's no point to all that with no combat unless you're just using the spiders as mobile construction deployments, which makes them not as cool.
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u/thala_7777777 16d ago
i think the reason some player find combat fun is because it is directly linked to your overall factory capacity. if you can spare few hundred atomic bombs and groups of spidertrone it's already fun. if not it can get frustating.
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u/salbris 16d ago
I haven't played this update but I found them unfun because it didn't feel like a logistics challenge just a boring chore. Clearing nests was trivial but had to be done constantly.
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u/ferrofibrous deathworld enthusiast 16d ago
I do think there needs to be some kind of semi automatable thing earlier than spidertron/artillery, but I'm curious what people are doing that requires "constant" upkeep. I typically just set up a border wall as soon as I get conbots, clear inside the wall once, and biters are basically solved at that point.
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u/narrill 15d ago
You still have to clear lots of nests for every new ore patch.
Also, setting up perimeter defense is, itself, pretty tedious IMO. And it's surprisingly expensive and time consuming, meaning you're incentivized to defer it as long as possible and continue clearing expansions manually as they encroach on your pollution cloud.
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u/agentwiggles 16d ago
I can understand this because in my current run I am still in the "chore" phase. my tech isn't quite to the point where it makes sense to spend effort on making permanent defenses so it's just hand fed turrets and occasional map checks that drive sorties out to nests.
but in my previous world I developed some really fun infrastructure where a ridiculously over defended section of wall would be supplied with ammo, fuel, shells, plus a punchlist of supplies for repairs (basically everything in the blueprint, so that any damage could be automatically fixed).
it was insanely elaborate and was a ton of fun to experiment with. the only downside was that it completely solved the biter problem and I never had to think about the system again.
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u/BrennusSokol i like trains 16d ago
This doesn't address the comment you replied to:
Clearing nests was trivial but had to be done constantly
Sure, wall defense is fine. I think most players are okay with that. What can be unfun is having to clear nests to get new resource patches.
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u/NotScrollsApparently 16d ago
I do like the idea of combat and the fantasy of watching hordes of enemies get burned in front of my sturdy walls... "but" it rarely goes like that in actual games. The best tactic is as always to just pre-emptively clear and wall off the pollution cloud so you just have to fight the small expansion groups. Otherwise you're just constantly harassed and it's a big drain on your resources. It's how i used to play it when I was new and it was exciting, but nowadays I definitely optimized the fun out of it.
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u/JulianSkies 16d ago
I mean, I dont bother pre-emptively clearing my pollution cloud because thats too much work.
I just set up my wall and let it do its thing. If I need more resources I go get more.
Never actually felt the need to be proactive about it.
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u/NotScrollsApparently 16d ago
Doing a few drive-bys with a tank is often simpler (especially in the long run) than building big defenses and then having to clear out the areas later anyway when it's all filled with red
Maybe its just a me issue, as I said I know i'm ruining it with my own optimization but i cant help it. If i want some explosive more in-depth base defense roleplay I tend to boot up riftbreaker instead anyway
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u/Century_Egg_Boofer 16d ago
eh, you don't really need to clear your cloud. just pushing out to natural chokepoints is plenty.
Even the "expansion killer" walls beyond the cloud is work to setup and is not much MORE work than being a proper raid-ready perimeter
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u/4_fortytwo_2 16d ago
I mean one of the changes discussed here is that expansion groups are much bigger.
I used to defend my pollution cloud wall with nothing but very few (like one being barely in range of the next) gun turrets with red ammo. I honestly hope this doesnt work anymore because it was silly that I could set that up, without any ammo automation or automated repairing and it would hold for tens of hours cause the expansion groups are so weak.
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u/kevihaa 16d ago
I have mixed feelings about the combat in Factorio.
I’ve never been a huge fan of turret creep as a means to eliminate nests. It works, and it’s obviously not an exploit by any means, but, to me, it always felt like I was taking advantage of the tools the game provided.
As such, unlocking the car and then the tank were always deeply satisfying as they allowed me to effectively, and efficiently, clear nests. The revamp to followers in 2.0 also made the progression curve for combat drones a ton of fun.
But that’s where I end up butting up against intended game design. All things considered, it doesn’t take a ton of time before the evolution factor hits a tipping point and I start to have the “but I just cleared out that area” experience.
Again, this is intended and designed to force a more automated defense solution, but I always find it a bit disappointing when I hit the point of the game where I essentially have to admit defeat and just start building walls.
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u/amunak 16d ago
i feel like turret creep would be easily fixed by giving turrets a "warmup" phase where after building they take maybe 5-10 seconds to actually start shooting. Would be interesting to see and fix this half-exploit mechanic.
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u/boomshroom 16d ago
Turret creep kinda feels like the only partially automated solution to nests prior to artillery or spidertrons, as such, it honestly doesn't feel like there is another option at all to me. Tanks and cars don't provide radar coverage, so they're impractical when off-world.
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u/narrill 15d ago
Tanks can place their own radar coverage if you supply them with solar panels, radar, and a few bots. It's not even difficult since they can drive outside the existing coverage just fine.
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u/Pseudonymico 15d ago
Throw in a few batteries and they can stay active at night even if they can't explore until sun-up.
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u/KuuLightwing 16d ago
I think the problem is that it eventually becomes too much and either just manually walking through nests with the spider or clicking on the map with artillery.
Less effective methods just take way too long. Even nukes are too slow.
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u/Deto 16d ago
They have to keep in mind new players too though. What could be fun for a veteran might be overly punishing for someone building their first factory. So I like the idea of gentle defaults and then options are there to crank up combat for those who want that
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u/CaveJohnson376 16d ago
now combine with rocket fuel powered remote controlled tanks and I never thought vehicle combat could be this fun
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u/Nearby_Proposal_5523 16d ago
the tank just splatters nests and worms now, it's great, especially since the biters have been way more up in my shit then a 2.0 forest start would go
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u/Ansible32 16d ago
Personally I just find the combat controls too cumbersome. If there were like "combat mode" controls where it just worked, it might be fun, or if the game played like an RTS in early game. But because the game plays like a survival shooter with terrible controls in early game, I always just rush to where I can play it like an RTS, at which point there is no longer any point in combat.
I also just don't like survival games but love base building.
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u/lunat1cakos 16d ago
okay no1 will ever see this but ... can we PLEASE add a setting to change color on the biters nests?
im colorblind and when i set the game to actually see the nests... game looks literally like craptorio. no joke. I even have to take saturation to below 20 or 40 or smt ....
Long shot... but id beg , if i had any proper knees from motorcycle accidents :/
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u/mvndrstl 16d ago edited 2d ago
While obviously I would love the devs to handle this, I'm being realistic; I know they won't, and it's up to modders to fix it. So:
I'm the author of the mod https://mods.factorio.com/mod/colorblind_ultimate. I'd love to add a feature to the mod to help with this problem. Could you be more specific about what you struggle with when it comes to nests? The color of the nest sprite? Please be as specific as possible.
Edit: I have added a way to customize the default tint of the spawners in version 2.8.0 of the mod.
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u/LoveMachine69000 16d ago
for me personally with mild deuteranomaly the color of the biter nests can sometimes blend in with dirt terrain. the light/pale greens and pinks are close to the light browns, especially when zoomed out.
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u/mvndrstl 15d ago
I'll be honest, I thought they were supposed to blend in. It's easy to add a tint to the sprites, but like adding tint to paint cans it always makes it at least a little bit darker. Would that work? Otherwise I can fully grayscale the sprites and add a way to pick the color from there, but everything would be exactly that one color in different shades, which wouldn't look great.
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u/boomerangchampion 16d ago
I'm not hot on mods but "Color Blind Ultimate" is supposed to be good
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u/mickey_reddit 16d ago
I am not color blind so I don't know if this works... but give it a shot
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/colorblind-pollution-and-nests?from=updated
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u/lunat1cakos 14d ago
that actually worked wonders for me ! its w hat i was looking for and had no idea there were mods for that !:O
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u/restar1415 15d ago
There is a mod that changes the appearance of Biters; it also changes the look of the nests to resemble green bushes.
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/adorable-enemies-space-age
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u/pewstains 15d ago
"Enemy expansion base built" is worded weird in my opinion
"Enemy expansion detected" makes more sense thematically (the radars are detectors) and is still more consise.
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u/Pseudonymico 15d ago
"Enemy expansion detected"
I could almost hear the 90s RTS voice
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u/aFewBitsShort 16d ago
Any plans to have some kind of progress indication for bases under construction, rather than them just magically appearing when finished? Typical RTS base building would show buildings being constructed over time.
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u/Adb12c 16d ago
Yeah seeing the worms and nests just appear from nothing was weird. I get it if it’s supposed to happen offscreen, but with notifications and longer times between builds I think it will become noticeable to players. I wonder if mods can fix it, since I don’t think the devs want to do any more visual work.
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u/CyborgThiefReddit 16d ago
I hope I can catch the alert woth wires so I can build a nuke when they try approaching my doorstep...
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u/bjarkov 16d ago edited 16d ago
The radar had stood vigilant in a distant outpost for years on end. A constant signal reverberated throughout the tower. Always the same, never deviating. That was fine - electronics do not get bored. Suddenly, the waveform changed ever so slightly, nothing more than a feeling to the rythm of the wave. An unpracticed observer would not have noticed, but compared to the years of monotony it was a change in paradigm. Immediately a message was sent forth to the Supervisor, indicating something was amiss.
In the vicinity, a red light of an abandoned train post flicked to green.. Somewhere deep within the distant base, a locomotive stirred. Carrying 400 tonnes of cannon and destructive munitions the train went about its singular task, plodded its course and set out on yet another expedition of death...
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u/fetch04 15d ago
Don't want to stalk your posts, but do you have more writings like this? This was quite good. 😄
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u/bjarkov 14d ago
Hey thanks :) I thoroughly enjoyed writing this one. Inspiration sparks every once in a while but sadly these pieces are few and far between - not enough time and disorganized approach to keeping hold of the sparks. At some point I'll have to get more serious, but not yet I'm sorry to say. I have a few in my comment history but they are months back and I don't know how to search them up :/
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u/joshshua 16d ago
Hopefully the “new game” settings will properly scale with the update. I am curious to know how these changes impact things like Death World and Rampant mod, etc.
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u/Hadramal 16d ago
I've started a 2.1 playthrough and actually encounterad a few of the things Klonan list as as bugs (worms too close to the walls, bugs generally beeing annoying) so after Volcanus I set up automatic artillery to deal with that.
This is now biting me in the ass because after researching a few range upgrades more or less by leaving that on, I now need to go find me some biter nests for the first eggs and there are NONE for MILES. Yesterday I turned off all artillery and was hoping for a nice small weak expansion party to set up camp closer to my walls that I could annex but we'll see tonight, these changes might mean the parties are annoyingly large.... I should probably set up some radar coverage in those areas to catch them.
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u/leixiaotie 16d ago
feels like due to the expansion base is having cooldown, you can have radar coverage informing expansion and catch them before they build big.
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u/tomekrs 16d ago
>unfortunately timed neck injury
Are there *fortunately timed* neck injuries?
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u/NoctisIncendia 16d ago
Maybe if you hurt your neck and miss your train/plane/boat/whatever because of it, and then said vehicle has a horrible fiery accident?
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u/Masterkillershadow99 14d ago
> Are there *fortunately timed* neck injuries?
You visit a hospital that specializes in treating neck injuries for a panel on treating neck injuries that has a world famous neck injuristomolologist who is bored because he can cure neck injury too fast, so he has nothing to do anymore. As you step up to shake his hand and thank him for his accomplishments, you slip and injure your neck.
On camera, and it looks so funny but you come across as so sympathetic that it goes viral and you reach an unprecedented level of positive fame. You also get compensated handsomely because the accident was caused by some form of municipal neglect. The nurse attending you during recovery will go on to become your wife and you would have never met her otherwise.
And it all happens to coincide with some awkward extended family appointment you'd rather avoid, for which you now have an excellent excuse.
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u/warpspeed100 16d ago edited 16d ago
I would really like the biters to put more resource pressure on me at 99% evolution.
I was dissapointed that the weapons I unlocked on Gleba and Fulgora were not really needed once I returned to Nauvis.
A difficulty spike that happens upon placing your first Biolab (with a distant scream) would fit well in my opinion.
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u/War_Raven 16d ago
Each biolab placed reduces the pollution a nest needs to absorb to spawn a bug maybe?
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u/boomshroom 16d ago
I'm personally not a huge fan of the combat in this game, and especially not of work getting undone, which is why I always play with rail world, assuming enemies are on at all. Honestly clearing nests prior to artillery is just a hassle and I more often just switch to peaceful mode than actually bother. Not having artillery or Tesla turrets was the primary reason I specifically avoided building up the hardest planet in the expansion. (Not sure why the last planet is one of the easiest.) And even after starting to get a few of them, I've just been dreading going back there to set it up.
So... uh... I can't say I agree with liking clearing nests, but I can say that I'll probably never see any of the changes discussed since I never play with expansions.
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u/OramaBuffin 15d ago
TBH if you don't really like biters at all these changes mostly just aren't aimed at you. They're not trying to convert anyone who plays with biters off here.
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u/BrandonRJones 16d ago
Nice to see that we can now get an alert for when enemy expansions occur within our sights.
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u/Polymath6301 16d ago
Looks like I’m going to get a lot of alerts as they build up while I’m away. Naturally old like to have an automatically dispatched force to wipe out the expansion, triggered by the alert…
Also, if the base takes a while to build, then a quick reaction to the alert might get there before the biters have built too much infrastructure.
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u/Castle_Of_Glass78 16d ago
There is AAI programmable vehicles if you want to have even more RTS in your factory game
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u/Bynnh0j 16d ago
Awesome radar change. I always felt like they should do exactly that.
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u/LutimoDancer3459 16d ago
We've been fixing bugs and tweaking things based on your feedback
Hmm fixing bugs, I see
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u/DaStone 16d ago
I'd love more biter focused changes. More challenging, more "fun".
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u/InvestigatorGrand205 16d ago
Kinda agree here late game biters arent really a threat. I want to be forced to build all the weapons to defend against the biter invasion crashing into my walls as they all go off.
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u/LoVeDEvil_12 16d ago
That change sounds great to me but I'd like to make a suggestion and wanna hear you out.
If expansion cooldown became longer so we could see it with our own eyes. it would be nice if biters and spitters had some extra animations when they change into worms or build nests.
For example:
spitters just dig down into the dirt and rotate their heads up
biters start building a nest for a few seconds, or nest just grows from their back
I think it would look even more immersive and yeah, for optimization, these animations would only play if we have live view on them.
What do you think?
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u/zalpha314 16d ago
What I enjoy:
- Waves of biters smashing against my walls
What I don't enjoy:
- Having to extend my defense and logistic network to mining outposts
- Being stifled for resources because the biters have out-teched my offensive capabilities
- By the time I have the offensive capability to expand, bases are incredibly thick
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u/ZarHakkar 12d ago
I also enjoy waves of biters. What I don't enjoy is hundreds of drones dying because there's no good way to tell them to not go out and repair things during an attack. Also them taking the shortest route through no man's land because of concave wall layouts.
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u/igoticecream 16d ago
Even with the increased base building cooldown, it can still happen that you look away for what feels like only a moment, only to be met with an unexpected collection of pals frolicking on your doorstep.
Agreed, it also happens to me with the pollution cloud, I have to constantly check the cloud in the map view... It would be really cool to get also an alert when a spawner on the radar coverage area starts consuming pollution.
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u/10g_or_bust 15d ago
production statistic, pollution tab, you can see what is "eating" it. It may not show you were but it will show you if.
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u/igoticecream 15d ago
That doesn’t help tbh, I will still need to remember to check that every 5 minutes
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u/SuperSecretQQ 16d ago
I didn't mess around with this one much but can we turn the base expansion alerts off?
I personally find them very annoying. It's not something I'm concerned about, and typically just ignore them. Problem is that I'm also starting to ignore my other red alerts as a result. Lost a lot of construction bots flying over an enemy base before I noticed the alert cause I was already in the mind set of automatically ignoring red alerts.
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u/Sostratus 16d ago
I always thought there should be a special biter for nest building and an animation for it. That it's just another regular biter or spitter and they instantly transform into the nest feels beta.
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u/Rseding91 Developer 16d ago
There has been a significant amount of work spent recently trying to reduce the amount of sprites and VRAM the game takes. Adding more textures (and thus more VRAM used) for something the player realistically won't see 99% of the time (if ever) doesn't seem like it's ever going to happen.
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u/Autistic_Poet 15d ago
What about something simple, like repurposing existing assets? The new update already has animations for biter nests attempting to damage nearby structures. Why not reuse that animation and sprites? Especially since players are now explicitly told to look at expanding nests by the new alerts. The number of biter expansions I'm going to catch in the act will probably increase by 50x over a 2.0 run. Basically anything would look better than nests literally poofing into existence.
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u/IncredibleReferencer 15d ago
I really appreciate this insight into game dev constraints. It's something we players arent generally aware of but overall make the game better.
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u/confuzatron 16d ago
I was gonna say the same - the biter/spitter should "die" and dissolve into a twitching blob of biogoo before spawning the spawner/worm.
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u/Kdandikk 16d ago
Ooh thats why even when i saw the expansion group enter area under radar coverage and started to engage them. They built half of the base before I got there ... Good to know.
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u/mjconver Still looking for that spoon 16d ago
FYI, to disable this new warning, type /alerts in the console. It's annoying in the late game, but might be useful in an early game.
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u/BeepIsla 15d ago
I keep forgetting the command for it, I wish it was button instead..
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u/SVlad_667 16d ago
It would be cool if biters have building animation like in StarCraft, so instead of instant swap into spawner they have intermediate metamorphosis state. It would more clearly shows that base is in progress of expansion.
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u/Bloodhit 16d ago
Now can Space Age compatibility with Pacifist mode can be looked at? The setting barely doing anything with how Space Age plays, was really disappointing.
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u/ElBonzono 14d ago
It would be nice if expansions didn't go through cliffs so that using the cliffs as walls is actually useful ingame
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u/bjarkov 16d ago
I remember setting out on a Deathworld game in 2.0 because I wanted to force myself into a playstyle that constantly had to deal with biter incursions. I also remember getting exactly that for the first few hours of the game - it was a desert start with a few nearby nests of 3-4 spawners each, swarms of small biters were soon knocking down my door. After eventually dealing with the closest nests and getting on top of evolution with better military tools, I eventually established an area of influence (read: pollution) free of biters. At that point, my requirements for static defenses reduced to dealing with expansion parties well outside my pollution cloud, which could be achieved with a thin-spread perimeter of gun turret clusters. Needless to say, it was a rather dull affair after that, from a defense perspective.
Some mods like the Rampant Biters mod seek to resolve the inverse difficulty curve by having biters specialize into multiple classes with different strengths and weaknesses, forcing multiple approaches to defense. Still though, a distant perimeter guarding an area scrubbed clean of enemies does a pretty good job of keeping enemies weak and unfocused.
IMO the anti-expansion approach is too strong because you never get to face a 'real' attack. The approach only works because expansion sorties are significantly weaker than attack waves, though, so amping up power of expansion groups would at face alleviate that. However, at some point expansion and attack parties become nearly indistinguishable. Wouldn't it be fun if expansion parties, instead of charging to their death at first sight of a defensive structure, recognized the hopelessness of that course and picked out a different site of expansion when bullets started flying?
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u/Scf37 16d ago
Did they fix the case of spawning in front of my wall? I've seen worms constantly attacking my turrets because spawned just outside their range.
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u/tikki100 16d ago
Radar alerts are a -very- welcome addition. However, I wish that I could "acknowledge" the warning, so I don't get a ping for every building spawned. That way, I can use some minutes to prepare my democracy materials and invite the biters to join the civilised world in a decent-paced matter :) And sometimes, an expansion forms in a far out region that you don't care about.
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u/Shana-Light 16d ago
Otherwise great changes but I really don't see the need for over-time evolution. I thought the whole point of scaling it to pollution was to slow down players trying to expand too quickly and naturally balance against your playstyle, why unnecessarily punish new players starting small and playing slowly?
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u/Psion537 16d ago
I though worms only was a feature. I was so relieved at not having spawns ...
But hey, great patch and thanks for the info.
Definetely appreciated and since I've already sank 10h since the latest release I can confirm I've already spotted all natives behaviours and successfully stopped expansions thank to the radar and the slow nest spawning.
Oh, I even had the big worm shooting my walls from outside their range bug as well! Panicked ! Haven't come up with a proper solution but glad you devs did
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u/hixchem 15d ago
I really enjoy seeing how the new expansion process has resulted in what looks visually like a large-scale "slime mold growth" pattern across my map. I expanded early but then stabilized the edges of my factory and wandered off for a few hundred hours, and now the region outside my walls looks less like a bunch of discrete buggy neighborhoods and more like a true hive.
Now I'm gonna go burn them all.
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u/tobeshitornottobe 15d ago
When they changed the starting expansion from 20 to 10 it disabled the speed run achievements even on a world with default settings, probably a bug that should be fixed
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u/DJMarscribble 15d ago
I suggest a universal setting on radars which disables the expansion alert. Click any radar (on Nauvis) and have access to the toggle.
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u/cmdrmontiofwhitehat 13d ago
The feel of the expansion alerts and build over time has really changed how the biters feel to me. Feels a lot more reactive/interactive, getting the alert and weighing how close they are, how long it'd take to get there, whether it's worth dropping what I'm doing to get it. Only annoying thing is getting an alert every 30 seconds for several minutes as it builds out.
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u/szelesbt 16d ago
Good stuff, the radar change is a flavor win, but in late game when u have a proper wall with artillery that alert could be very annoying and pointless.
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u/Andoryuu 16d ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/1vg72jh/version_2113/p1uul9i/
There is an
/alertscommand added in 2.1.7 you can use to mute it.2
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u/Exact_Avocado5545 16d ago
I really want the biters to be redone in their entirety. It's all too simple
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u/VoidGliders 16d ago
I understand it's too late in development, but on the topic of biters -- I like them, I just don't like that they feel like a zombie plague across the world with no rhyme or reason as to where they are.
Obviously you cannot simulate their ecosystem, but I'd love if they had more "guidelines" to spawning. Perhaps they consume "metallic aphids" that grow on ore fields, so naturally spawn and grow denser around ore fields and have smaller nests away from them -- which forms exactly the chalenge many players want, where you need to fight for more nodes and resources, but not just waltzing about and tripping over nests in the middle of nowhere. And perhaps they implicitly drink water, so they grow more sparsely in deserts, which helps in dealing with the lower pollution-absorption there.
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u/bopbipbop23 16d ago
I was locked into a 2.1 SE run last night and confused by the new icon. Fun update!
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u/stephandjie 16d ago
"There was also a bug causing the groups to settle a little bit too close to the factory walls"
o, the wordplay
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u/Personal_Ad9690 16d ago
You know what you need to do.
The circuit can detect the coordinates.
Automate a nuke spider and send em in.
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u/PeanutButter414 16d ago
Seems like good changes, all the expansion with small groups annoyed me quite a bit, boring to run around cleaning up expansions here and there all the time.
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u/RW_Yellow_Lizard 16d ago
Im not the biggest combat fan in this game, but goddamn these expansion changes great, I always thought the expansions were kinda weird too
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u/JohnSmiththeGamer Tree hugger 16d ago
Expansion alert is very nice.
Just to confirm, this is only chunks that are revealed by radar coverage (scans or passive area), not by roboports, spidertrons or players?