Is 20% evolution normal for 5 hours gameplay?

[Officer Joe Balogna]

So, I am playing heavily modded Factorio, and every playthrough I struggle endlessly to keep up with the biters. As of right now, with only 5 hours of gameplay, the biters are rapidly growing in strength! I want to know if this is the result of vanilla factorio, or the result of modding?

[impetus maximus]

are you aggressively killing biter nests?
https://wiki.factorio.com/Enemies#Evolution

as for mods, check if they affect evolution rates.

[Officer Joe Balogna]

are you aggressively killing biter nests?
https://wiki.factorio.com/Enemies#Evolution

as for mods, check if they affect evolution rates.

I checked the settings, the time and pollution factors are about the same as vanilla, and the nest-destruction factor was drastically reduced. I haven't even been that aggressive, either, I've killed no more than 50 nests so far.

[Koub]

20% seems legit. Evolution factor has a logarithmic-ish progression.

[thereaverofdarkness]

20% sounds entirely reasonable. You're still on small biters. Since you said you have the nest destruction factor reduced and you said you've killed a few dozen nests already, I'd guess you're building pretty quickly in those 5 hours. Most likely it's the pollution that's doing it. I take it you're killing the nests that get in the way of land you want?

If you play hard, you'll get rapid evolution. In my games, I can go as long as I want without seeing any medium bugs, at least until I start destroying their nests. This is because I build slowly and I give pollution time to dissipate. I'll have a pollution cloud and I'll get attacks, but where most players have a thick red blob covering up their map, I have a light pink tint. I'm not suggesting you play like me, only that the way you play affects the evolution rate.

If you find it to be too much for you, I have a few suggestions:

1.) Work on Your Defense
When I start a new map, I get turrets early on and put a handful around my perimeter to hold off the biters for a while. Once I get better established (into green science production) I set about making a perimeter defense. I pick a large area I want to claim, and I build a wall with turrets all the way around it. I like to take advantage of bodies of water to reduce how much wall I have to build. In 0.16 I can also take advantage of cliffs. Don't bother with turret/bullet upgrades just yet--when you're dealing with small biters, it's more cost-efficient to just put up more turrets and load em up with cheap basic magazines.

The reason I build a defense perimeter is geometry: a larger area has a greater area to perimeter ratio. If you section off a big place to build, not only do you have a lot of open safe terrain to play in, you might actually put up fewer turrets than if you just placed them on the outskirts of your factory.


2.) Get Air Filtering or Another Mod
Air filtering mod lets you build air filtering units. If you're willing to sacrifice a bit of production to reduce your pollution, this mod is one of the most effective and efficient ways to do it. You could also try a mod that enables your evolution factor to decrease. If it gets too high, decrease it. I once used a mod which made the pollution evolution factor decrease if the pollution decreased. Once I put up air filters, the medium biters stopped coming, and only small biters attacked. Unfortunately it's an old mod and deprecated, but you could probably find something else like it on the mod portal. There's lots of mods that can help you control how difficult the enemies are.


3.) Take Advantage of the Trees
If you start a game in a thick forest, the trees soak up your pollution so well you could be making red circuits before you get attacked. The drawback is of course chopping down all that wood to clear some space to build. So strike a compromise: start in a clearing surrounded by a thick perimeter of trees. You might have to try over quite a few times before you get the map you want, but it could be well worth the effort in the long run.

If you use a larger starting area, it'll put the biter nests further from you, making it easier for the terrain to soak up your pollution before it gets to them. Also consider that while trees are best for it, terrain tiles do soak up pollution, and grass soaks it up a whole lot better than sand.

[Deadly-Bagel]

It really depends on how casually you take the first few hours. If you spend a lot of time tinkering and designing, laying out plans, taking time early to save more later, then the biters aren't going to evolve as fast but also won't attack as hard or often.

If you're playing heavily modded then it could be any number of things that don't directly affect the biters - eg if any new machines have a high pollution output. Honestly though, I don't really think you should be playing heavily modded games without solid vanilla experience first. Vanilla isn't exactly simple itself and if you don't have an idea of when to build and solidify your defences then, well, you find yourself posting vague questions on the forum lol.

[Officer Joe Balogna]

Thank you for the input, guys. It seems 20% IS normal, I just didn't remember it.

[garath]

2.) Get Air Filtering or Another Mod
Air filtering mod lets you build air filtering units. If you're willing to sacrifice a bit of production to reduce your pollution, this mod is one of the most effective and efficient ways to do it. You could also try a mod that enables your evolution factor to decrease. If it gets too high, decrease it. I once used a mod which made the pollution evolution factor decrease if the pollution decreased. Once I put up air filters, the medium biters stopped coming, and only small biters attacked. Unfortunately it's an old mod and deprecated, but you could probably find something else like it on the mod portal. There's lots of mods that can help you control how difficult the enemies are.

Thank you for the suggestion about the Air Filtering Mod. I was looking for something exactly like this to try doing a more "green" early game build.

[Engimage]

Thank you for the suggestion about the Air Filtering Mod. I was looking for something exactly like this to try doing a more "green" early game build.

You can opt into using Efficiency 1 modules in all of your machines. Not only this dramatically reduces power consumption (and as a result pollution from your steam power plant) but this also dramatically reduces pollution generated by all other machines. This works especially good with miners as their pollution is really high compared to other machines and you can fit up to 3 modules per miner reducing overall pollution by 80%.

Efficiency module 1 is available pretty early in the game right after you get those red chips produced.

[impetus maximus]

+1 on efficiency modules. level 1 that is.

[Ringkeeper]

Thank you for the suggestion about the Air Filtering Mod. I was looking for something exactly like this to try doing a more "green" early game build.

You can opt into using Efficiency 1 modules in all of your machines. Not only this dramatically reduces power consumption (and as a result pollution from your steam power plant) but this also dramatically reduces pollution generated by all other machines. This works especially good with miners as their pollution is really high compared to other machines and you can fit up to 3 modules per miner reducing overall pollution by 80%.

Efficiency module 1 is available pretty early in the game right after you get those red chips produced.

+1 on eff level 1 module (other 2 level are not worth it) but only in a small staring factory, before you can defend yourself... later, when you need a lot of products, beacon/speed and prod modules have better effect as you need less power and machines. There you can use the left over eff+1 modules in assembler where you can't put prod.

[garath]

I wanted to do an all green game from the very start. So, I wanted green power. I thought I would build the smallest possible base until I got solar panels for power. But I decided I didn't want a daytime only base. So, that meant I needed batteries for accumulators. Efficiency modules are great for mid-game. But early game, you can't make them without oil. And I wasn't sure I could get oil going on the minimal base. (It's probably possible. But I wasn't sure.)

I saw a cool Sea Block video by Nilaus, and it looks like AB / Seablock has cool wind mills for power. Once I figure out how to add just those items to my mostly vanilla game, I'll try again for a green game.

Thank you for the suggestions!