Enemy expansion on or off?

[Mohican Laz]

What setting did you choose for your 2.0 run?

[Nero]

I usually play rail worlds (is that the name? idk) which disables it by default.

imo keeping up with the expanding pollution cloud is tiresome enough, biter expansion is just another annoyance i'd rather not have to deal with

[königplatzen]

I took default settings, which has enemy expansion enabled. It forces you to do something about them growing back after clearing big areas and more military techs are useful.
If you are on other planets, you have to establish defenses, which are working more or less automatically. (Remote tank for the rescue...)
In the end, it will lead to artillery, which you wouldn't need so desperately without enemy expansion.
Will see, if it's fun or not.

[argrond]

I do not even understand why one should switch off expansion. It's a part of challenge.

[Simon]

I would leave it on, otherwise you're trivializing leaving your base behind, which would typically require some degree of automation to defend, which isn't too challenging but teaches you a lot about the new remote features.

[Societas]

I like to use both the peaceful mode toggle mod and the edit map settings mod to slowly ramp up challenge as I go along and give myself a break from it if I need it.

Sometimes I just need an hour or so of peaceful mode to get something figured out and back on track.

[Ook]

Off. I like peaceful worlds. No biters. No conflict.

[RiO]

Originally posted by argrond:

I do not even understand why one should switch off expansion. It's a part of challenge.

Because at the point where expansion actually becomes a hindrance to actively deal with, the entirety of the biter problem has already devolved into little more than a nuisance to be solved with an additional artillery shell.

It's not a challenge. It's an annoyance.
And thankfully one that can be turned off without repercussion.

Cliffs used to be the same, given the point in time at which you unlocked cliff explosives. Now in Space Age those come later, on another planet even, and cliff generation itself is more meaningful and mechanically interesting and usable as part of overall defensive lines. Pretty much turning it into an invincible variant of concrete wall, if you play your cards right.

[jamiechi]

I disable biters completely.
And for Cliffs, this mod looks interesting. (Usually disable them though.)
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Mineable-Cliffs-SpaceAge?from=search

[Simon]

Originally posted by RiO:

Cliffs used to be the same, given the point in time at which you unlocked cliff explosives. Now in Space Age those come later, on another planet even, and cliff generation itself is more meaningful and mechanically interesting and usable as part of overall defensive lines. Pretty much turning it into an invincible variant of concrete wall, if you play your cards right.

It's easier (and usually better) to just build a straight wall in front of a cliff. Walls are ridiculously cheap and rarely get destroyed. Typically it's the turrets you lose.

[The Undead Watcher]

Railworld settings (aka Expansion turned off) since i like to focus on my factory instead of babysitting the local biter population.

[knighttemplar1960]

Pre-Space Age I would set up rails world and then turn expansion back on. Right now and for my first few SA runs I'm using default settings.

[MangoMan]

all defaults for my first space age playthrough. generally I would leave enemy expansion on even if I chose railworld or some other option. I need the world to feel alive and dangerous, the more the better. a dead safe world gives me no incentive to play.

[Taehl]

I leave it on. To me the game is less exciting without it, and alternating between growing the factory and preparing defenses / taking territory is more fun.

[N311]

3 * research cost with less frequent but bigger/richer res deposits

[Zaflis]

I had enemy expansion on but increased the minimum time between expansion parties from 5 mins to 15 mins or something like that. Also slowed down evolution rates. It's because i the playthrough was for steam achievements, not to run back and forth checking defenses on both Nauvis and Gleba. Even now the buggers got through my few laser turrets set on Gleba and halted everything in the base. It was quite a pain to restart.