Enemy option levels for newer player?

[jpinard]

I started a game and turned them way down (not off) and I ended up having no enemies whatsoever. So I was hoping to get enough enemies and evolution to keep things interesting and force me to setup defenses, but not so much that they wipe me out, or it becomes hopeless dealing with them.

[Fel]

The problem is that the balance between "boringly easy", "keeps things interesting" and "wipes me out" is kind of hard to determine since it varies greatly from one player to the next, especially for newer players.
Just a slight difference in your pace in the tech tree can turn the same setting from "wipes me out" to "boringly easy" after all, and if you have even half of an idea about how to set your defenses then enemies are no threat unless they out-pace you by a large margin.

The train world preset is not bad for that since there are fewer nests and they don't expand, but the resource deposits outside of the starting ones are also further apart so you will have to contend with enemies when expanding to those outposts.

The peaceful mode is also a decent option, they don't initiate attacks against you based on pollution but you can always go temporarily agravate a nest to get some fighting done by shooting at an enemy or a structure of that nest.

[Morsk]

It is hard to outright lose to biters, and probably impossible once you have flamethrower turrets. You could try just making the starting area larger. It will put them slightly behind in evolution, as you won't have to clear as many nests at the start of the game, but won't have long-term consequences.

[Nailfoot]

Originally posted by Morsk:

...You could try just making the starting area larger...

This is my advise as well. Even though I know a thing or three about Factorio, I always make the starting area as large as possible. I turn on biter expansion, so they quite often threaten me before I build out to them.

But the large starting area gives lots of time before they will encroach upon your factory.

[knighttemplar1960]

Part of it depends on terrain. A desert start is much harder than a forest start. Cliffs make it harder for you to expand at the same time that it makes the base easier to defend. How you set up your water availability also makes a huge difference. Many small lakes make it hard for you to develop. Fewer but larger lakes makes it easier to defend.

The thing that is most likely to get you is the time it takes to figure things out and get a working set up going. That said I would recommend one thing. Leave every thing at default except for the time parameter. Set that to the lowest non-zero value and then preview your start area to make sure there are no nests too close to any of your starting ore patches. If there are then adjust your base starting area values and preview the map again.

[jpinard]

Originally posted by knighttemplar1960:

Part of it depends on terrain. A desert start is much harder than a forest start. Cliffs make it harder for you to expand at the same time that it makes the base easier to defend. How you set up your water availability also makes a huge difference. Many small lakes make it hard for you to develop. Fewer but larger lakes makes it easier to defend.

The thing that is most likely to get you is the time it takes to figure things out and get a working set up going. That said I would recommend one thing. Leave every thing at default except for the time parameter. Set that to the lowest non-zero value and then preview your start area to make sure there are no nests too close to any of your starting ore patches. If there are then adjust your base starting area values and preview the map again.

What do nests look like in the preview map?
What time parameter are you referring to? There's a few settings related to time, so I"m a little unsure which you suggest I change.

[jpinard]

Originally posted by Nailfoot:

Originally posted by Morsk:

...You could try just making the starting area larger...

This is my advise as well. Even though I know a thing or three about Factorio, I always make the starting area as large as possible. I turn on biter expansion, so they quite often threaten me before I build out to them.

But the large starting area gives lots of time before they will encroach upon your factory.

Biter expansion? Is that DLC? Or a parameter you setup in your map?

[jpinard]

Originally posted by Fel:

The problem is that the balance between "boringly easy", "keeps things interesting" and "wipes me out" is kind of hard to determine since it varies greatly from one player to the next, especially for newer players.
Just a slight difference in your pace in the tech tree can turn the same setting from "wipes me out" to "boringly easy" after all, and if you have even half of an idea about how to set your defenses then enemies are no threat unless they out-pace you by a large margin.

The train world preset is not bad for that since there are fewer nests and they don't expand, but the resource deposits outside of the starting ones are also further apart so you will have to contend with enemies when expanding to those outposts.

The peaceful mode is also a decent option, they don't initiate attacks against you based on pollution but you can always go temporarily agravate a nest to get some fighting done by shooting at an enemy or a structure of that nest.

What exactly happens when the nests expand?

[Fel]

Expansion means that existing nests will periodically send a small group out to make a new nest within a relatively short distance.
As time goes on, it means that more and more nests will appear even in places that you had already discovered, making it seem like they magically appear (or re-appear when it happens roughly where an old nest yoou destroyed was).

[DCYW]

There are options before you start playing, this expansion of their bases depends on how much pollution spread you done to the environment of the map seed number. They will notice to attack when your pollution starts to spread towards their bases.

Hover your mouse to see how much pollution per second "I think" for each building you infrastructure. This pollution ratio is your spread of pollution.

You set your enemy expansion to the max distance from their base before your pollution gets to their base.

[knighttemplar1960]

Originally posted by jpinard:

Originally posted by knighttemplar1960:

Part of it depends on terrain. A desert start is much harder than a forest start. Cliffs make it harder for you to expand at the same time that it makes the base easier to defend. How you set up your water availability also makes a huge difference. Many small lakes make it hard for you to develop. Fewer but larger lakes makes it easier to defend.

The thing that is most likely to get you is the time it takes to figure things out and get a working set up going. That said I would recommend one thing. Leave every thing at default except for the time parameter. Set that to the lowest non-zero value and then preview your start area to make sure there are no nests too close to any of your starting ore patches. If there are then adjust your base starting area values and preview the map again.

What do nests look like in the preview map?
What time parameter are you referring to? There's a few settings related to time, so I"m a little unsure which you suggest I change.

The nests are bright red circles on the mini map. Worms are small red dots.

The time parameter I'm talking about is evolution based on time spent playing. Time at the start is what you are going to be most in need of to learn the game so you want the evolution to rise due to time played at the smallest amount possible without turning it completely off. The other things like evolution due to pollution and attacking you have some control over so they are fine on default settings for a new player.

[DCYW]

Originally posted by knighttemplar1960:

Originally posted by jpinard:

What do nests look like in the preview map?
What time parameter are you referring to? There's a few settings related to time, so I"m a little unsure which you suggest I change.

The nests are bright red circles on the mini map. Worms are small red dots.

I thought there were rectangles?

[Fel]

Well, a nest is a group of spawners (the bigger red squares) and worms (the smaller ones), so nests on the map (preview or not) show as a group of red squares in close proximity.

[CMDR Sweeper]

Enjoy your lull moments, even if you start out with very few, once you get to the later stages you often find yourself wading through so many of them that you start to look into WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction)
In one of our games we needed to run several Ion cannons just to clear enough space to expand the base to get more of the resources, they were so thickly packed together that it was almost one solid red blob.

[knighttemplar1960]

Originally posted by DCYW:

Originally posted by knighttemplar1960:

The nests are bright red circles on the mini map. Worms are small red dots.

I thought there were rectangles?

They may well be. My vision isn't the best. They are bright red though and are unmistakable.

[Warlord]

Originally posted by jpinard:

What do nests look like in the preview map?
What time parameter are you referring to? There's a few settings related to time, so I"m a little unsure which you suggest I change.

As said above, biter nests show as clumps of red dots on the preview map. Small red squares are the worms, and larger squares (2x2) are spawner nests. ANY red spot will be an enemy. Sometimes nests will spawn in a forest area. It can be hard to find a gap large enough for a spawner, so the only things that fit are the smaller worms. Those worms do not spawn biters or absorb pollution, so you don't need to worry about those unless you want the area under them.

The time level we are talking about is under the biter evolution parameters. These 3 parameters are at the bottom of one of the panes. For now, ignore the other sections up top in this pane, lets just look at evolution.

Biters evolution level increases through various ways. The evolution level (in case you didn't know) determines the type of biter spawned by spawners. It also effects which kind of worms appear when a new nest is revealed or spawned by an expansion group.
-Pollution generated: Any pollution you make. This does not need to spread out and reach a nest. Simply by being generated, all biters everywhere hate you more.
-Destruction factor: Destroying a biter nest gives a large one-time boost to evolution levels. Sometimes clearing a nest is beneficial to claim the land under them, or to lessen attacks from a nest that is being hit by pollution you are generating. But doing this too much can increase their threat.
-Time: This is an amount that is added to the evolution level constantly. Simply by being in the game, biter evolution increases. Even if you do nothing, biters eventually grow stronger over time.

The biter evolution levels have been tuned pretty well to have the biters more-or-less keep up with the normal player over time. Around the time you start seeing red biters, you have turrets and AP ammo. By the time you see blues, your military tech SHOULD be high enough to have gained shotguns, high levels of bullet damage, and lasers. By the time you see green, you should be end-game.

So lowering any of these levels should slow them down enough to keep them as little more than a nuisance. Even if you turn evolution down to nothing so you only have brown biters, you still need to put up turrets as a large biter group triggered by a steam power group can eat up your boilers before you can get there yourself to defend.