What causes the attack waves to increase in difficulty

[Kip]

Is it time? Tech? or something else that increases the attack wave difficulty?

[Pinochle]

Only guessing here, but I have been putting off electricity as long as able and seem to have weenie attacks until done, I mostly use canned vegetables for food, do not care about refrigeration, but need electricity for end game armor and weapons. Also about the time I start doing electricity I also start building a fence, so not sure which triggers but the battles get a bit worse. Or, could just be a day of the year kind of progression, your guess is as good as mine.

[Delaradra]

My guess is it's a variable called Progress, which seems to be a combination of time, survivors, resources, and buildings. The variation of the Progress value is probably dictated by difficulty setting (haven't tested yet)

There is also a cooldown called NewInsectSpeciesUnlock, that I believe is a chance for a new type of insect to be added to the pool of possible attackers... still trying to figure this all out.

[Stolen1st]

The more nest... ? I'm 5yrs in, 6-7 things left to research.. have rifles and pistols, no sniper.. yet... 7d research on that one. bricks and concrete rooms, ore refining and a handful or so left.

[Cotaks]

Nothing, 4 years in bored as fck, people all complain about big waves blablabla. Biggest wave here is 150, all kinds of mobs, scorps, mantis, gasbags etc, they walk in they can't even get past first 3 flamethrowers omg, Builded a nice killzone for nothing. Wish there was a challenge, very dissapointed.

[Kip]

I felt good about my defenses until flying creatures were introduced. and by introduced, i mean the entire wave could fly, so my funnel was worth nothing!

[Desh51]

When you build the orbital radio , it says it basically pisses off the wildlife. And the size of your base.

[Kip]

I know in some games, if you advance too quickly in certain areas (usually tech), you can find yourself too far behind in other areas (usually defenses). If I have time, I'll play a few test games where I keep my base super small, or don't research any tech other than weapon crafting, and so on.

[NukeAJS]

My guess is it's a sum of weapons, survivors, turrets, defense towers, traps, and time.

Still, it's almost always worth it to get heavy on defense. Charging forth with bows and spears doesn't really work once you're on wave 5-7. Eventually there are just too many bugs so just sit in your defense towers and shoot them as well.

[spacedog]

I never build defenses until late in year 2 or early in year 3. And until that point the attack waves are always completely pathetic. Like so small that often the (overpopulated) wildlife wipes most of them out before I can get a survivor there to snipe them.

But once I have a bunch of defenses built, the big waves show up. So I think the game is definitely taking into account how "strong" it thinks your defenses are.

[kaneeden]

Originally posted by Kip:

Is it time? Tech? or something else that increases the attack wave difficulty?

-time
-survivors
-resources
-buildings
-difficulty level / scaling
There is a guide how to unlock devmode here on steam in which you can see how the "progress" is calculated

[Teckie]

Originally posted by Kip:

Is it time? Tech? or something else that increases the attack wave difficulty?

The Devs..... :-P

[Emperor Fooble]

Originally posted by Cotaks:

Nothing, 4 years in bored as fck, people all complain about big waves blablabla. Biggest wave here is 150, all kinds of mobs, scorps, mantis, gasbags etc, they walk in they can't even get past first 3 flamethrowers omg, Builded a nice killzone for nothing. Wish there was a challenge, very dissapointed.

I have to agree. Before year 2 is close to over I have a large, fully self sustaining base, everything that matters researched and built, unbreakable defences that will wipe out any wave even if I AFK and nothing to do.

Great game but it's certainly lacking in both challenge and things to do after the first year.

[nidion-leidbringer]

from my point of view, it is the food, if i have around 9k Food, only get around 400-500 enemies, if i have 11k food it will be around 500-600 enemies .. but not realy a challenge, if your walls, killzone, flamethrower and traps are set. having a "tower with a roof and open sides" for the survivors next to 1-2 Killzones, it is a nice place to shoot at the hummingbird enemies .. while they hit the turrets.

[Cotaks]

Originally posted by nidion-leidbringer:

from my point of view, it is the food, if i have around 9k Food, only get around 400-500 enemies, if i have 11k food it will be around 500-600 enemies .. but not realy a challenge, if your walls, killzone, flamethrower and traps are set. having a "tower with a roof and open sides" for the survivors next to 1-2 Killzones, it is a nice place to shoot at the hummingbird enemies .. while they hit the turrets.

It's not the food, i'm sitting on 13k+ every moth it grows, waves are like 50 scorps +50 beetles and a handfull of mantis. Never had more then 150 mobs.

I do play on medium, got a base where yours will fit in 3 times if not more, unlocked/researched all research, got 2 radio antennas so i get endgame waves. It's all to easy.

[123]

They should add custom wave that can be triggered anytime using a tech item, so if we feel confident or want more challenge we can start a wave with custom difficulty (a list of x amount of y mobs) . Or maybe with cost like some foods for luring, and some tech item just for item sink, the more number the more item cost needed.

The tech used is endgame, something like "Alien Summonator" or smth, it needs a lot of fuel which is foods that will spread aroma for luring aliens. Different types of alien need different foods, and more amount of aliens also need more amount of food. At endgame it will be hard to know people's progress and how they build, so let them summon custom challenge to suit their defense.