How are you realistically supposed to keep up with Biter evolution?

[Sky Render]

I'm asking mostly because this has befuddled me for a long time now. I tend to reach about the point just after you need to start expanding and looking for resources outside of the starting area when this becomes a problem: suddenly you have to encroach on the Biters' territory. It's not that hard initially, and getting your factory expanded is fine for a while, but pretty much the second oil production kicks in, the Biters start evolving to medium-sized. You can kind of keep up with this if you focus on weapons research and get laser turrets going ASAP, but before long you've got large Biters charging at your factory walls and those lasers can't cut through them any longer. So you switch to the flamethrower, and all is well... until the Behemoths start showing up. This tends to happen to me before I've even reached the nuclear stage, even if I'm very conservative about the size, scale, and focus of my factory.

So what is the magic trick I'm missing here? Because it kind of feels like you're stuck in a losing spiral where the Biters get too strong for your weaponry almost before you get the next level of weaponry, even if you've exclusively got your science focused on developing it. Focusing more on production just makes the problem worse, since you exhaust your resources faster and have to expand into the Biters' domains (and thus increase your overall chain of exposure to Biter attacks) just to get more resources to keep production high.

[Name Lips]

You have to aggressively clear biters out of your pollution cloud so they don't continually evolve from exposure to pollution. Find them with radar and eliminate them.

You can reliably clear out biters once you have AP bullets, heavy armor, and grenades. (and preferably all the red and green research for bullet/turret damage/speed).

Some people actually build walls outside their pollution cloud, so the biters can't even expand into it. They'll never turn hostile if they're never exposed to pollution, so this method keeps you safe -- but requires a lot of building very far away from the base.

[Sky Render]

Originally posted by Name Lips:

You have to aggressively clear biters out of your pollution cloud so they don't continually evolve from exposure to pollution. Find them with radar and eliminate them.

You can reliably clear out biters once you have AP bullets, heavy armor, and grenades. (and preferably all the red and green research for bullet/turret damage/speed).

Some people actually build walls outside their pollution cloud, so the biters can't even expand into it. They'll never turn hostile if they're never exposed to pollution, so this method keeps you safe -- but requires a lot of building very far away from the base.

Their evolution must have changed then, because I tried that once... and the nests far out from my main factory evolved to producing much stronger Biters the second I killed off the existing Biters in them. At least in early 0.15 builds, the Biters had a natural evolution progression that caused them to evolve automatically the more resources you mined up, which made it an inevitable losing game trying to keep up with them: clearing them out made the surviving nests evolve extremely fast.

[Kitchen Gun (TM)]

I think killing biters increases the evolution.

[ouch67]

Well I think the problem is you said you "switched" to another weapon type. The different weapon types are best used together. And don't forget to surround your turrets with walls.

Also, the biters evolve slowly over time and when they are killed or when a nest is killed. in another words build your base quicker and don't expand into thier territory until you really need to.

It's also a good idea to kill a base as soon as they send out an attack. This stops them from sending constant biters to get murdered which will increase the evolution rate.

Also throw down a turret with some ammo on top of the base you killed. It will keep them from trying to reclaim that area.

[Sky Render]

So is evolution still world-universal, or is it confined to specific nests? Because in 0.15 it was a global variable that determined ALL Biter nest evolution levels, meaning the second you started expanding out and wiping out nests, the Biters would start to beef up literally everywhere. Meaning you'd have early radar stations getting overwhelmed in no time by large Biters as you expanded outward.

[ouch67]

it's world universal. they all evolve at the same time everywhere.

[Sky Render]

Well then I have a problem on my hands, don't I. As I said, any attempt I make to expand out of the starting area ends in disaster as the Biters evolve from tiny to huge almost instantly. Even if I clear out a huge swath (no small feat when they go to large in a punishingly short period), the outer radar stations I put down and blockade with walls and turrets get frequently assaulted despite being so very far away from the main pollution cloud.

[Jupiter3927]

Bigger walls and turret creeping worked for me.
The tank is very good at clearing out biters until the green biters start appearing.
Biters are incredibly easy to clear out once you get nuclear bombs.

[Name Lips]

Once they get out of hand, and you don't have the tools to handle them, it can become unwinnable.

The biggest problem I've seen is when they've evolved to the point where they can't be killed without things that require blue tech -- which needs oil -- and there's a big biter nest on the only available oil patches.

Factorio seems very sandboxy when you first start playing, and it isn't readily apparent to new players that they're on a time limit. Danger is looming and they need to get ready. You pretty much need to have a plan for how to deal with your nearby nests BEFORE your pollution cloud reaches them.

[ouch67]

Yeah it's possible to lose. But you may want to upload your save somewhere and see what some more expirenced players have to say.

[Sky Render]

I actually have a better idea of how to deal with the problem now. I just need to be more aggressive during that first expansion out from the starting area is all. Normally I pick a single direction, plant down a radar and turrets around whatever oil field I come across, path the logistics back to the central factory, and call it a day. Clearly I need to be planting radar stations with guarding turrets in an ever-increasing circle around the central factory.

[Doctor_Moriarty]

Blue biters do go down to turrets if you get the damage upgrades. I've never seen the behemoths until people had massie factories equipped with nukes and artillery.

[MoDon]

Plenty of people played and won long before artillery and nuclear options were available.

[Doctor_Moriarty]

Truthfully, by the time you can really deploy such things, you can also blanket the area in turrets or just build the rocket and win.

[Sky Render]

Well, this map will certainly challenge my new more aggressive policy... I started in an area with an absolutely massive oilfield miles from any Biters... and the only coal in the starting area covered with Biter nests. Lots of trees, so I was able to build up a quick slash-and-burn turret solution and claim one of the closer coal deposits, but this factory is going to have to switch over to solid fuel in record time.