[0.13.x] Need help to understand the new biter expansion

[Bizz Keryear]

till 0.13 you just had to place some item and biters didn't expand to there...
Now (as far as I understand it) biters might build a base just outside your turret range in front of your base ... making it really annoying to deal with them.

Is that right? Are there more details to the expansion? Care still to explain the expansion in detail ... just in case I didn't got it right.

What is now the evolution ... only when killing biters /spitters bases? Or also when killing biters / spitters? What about the pollution (shall I better go for eco friendly?) ?

[TheSkiGeek]

Evolution didn't change. Enemies evolve from three things:

1) they evolve veeeeeeery slowly over time no matter what.
2) they evolve a tiny bit for every unit of pollution you produce (it doesn't matter if it touches nests or not.)
3) they evolve a bit each time you destroy a nest (killing individual biters/spitters/worms doesn't matter.). Early on this is pretty significant, but later on each nest killed has a smaller impact.

You can run "/evolution" at the in-game console to see information about the current evolution level.

In 0.13, biters can expand (create new bases) anywhere, but they are less likely to create new bases in areas with many player-created structures. You used to be able to drop a single power pole or wall segment to keep them away from a large area, but that won't work anymore. However, they should (mostly) stay away from large outposts unless they are producing enough pollution to aggro nearby nests.

Edit: there is a debugging overlay you can turn on to see where they are likely to expand. Hit F4 in-game, it's something like "show expansion candidates".

[Nexela]

I just view it like this

Biter AI changed to cockroach mode. You can never truly get rid of them!

[Bizz Keryear]

I just view it like this

Biter AI changed to cockroach mode. You can never truly get rid of them!

And for one you see there are a million you don't?

[Miravlix]

Another major thing people has mentioned, but I'm not sure of, is that biters need to be able to path to a location.

This make walls around an area important, putting a wall along rail lines can create huge areas of protected zones.


Biters that get annoyed by fire can go on really long hunts, for where the player has run of to. This can result in very unpredictable attack locations.

[garath]

The main thing I'm hearing about 0.13 is that "victory poles" no longer work. In 0.12, I think biter expansions would always appear a minimum distance from any of your base elements. That probably sounded like a reasonable idea to the DEVS until we all figured out we could put an ultra cheap small power pole all over the map and essentially keep vast amounts of the map clear of biter expansion bases. From what I'm hearing, this no longer works in 0.13.

Also, regarding running /evolution in the console, I might be somewhat cautious about doing that. I thought I read a post in a different thread where someone said they ran a fairly innocuous console command, and this disabled all achievements. Though, they did say they changed the color of something. So, the game *might* have treated that as a "cheat". I'm not sure. I just mention it in case you are interested in achievements.

[xattus]

This is a MAJOR problem for me as well, as I have a large number of bases and a huge area that's clear of nests. It's going to be a huge timesink to clear all that land again. Gaaah, I really wish they would not change this. Anyone knows any mods that help? Or do I really have to turn on peaceful mode? -.-

[orzelek]

This is a MAJOR problem for me as well, as I have a large number of bases and a huge area that's clear of nests. It's going to be a huge timesink to clear all that land again. Gaaah, I really wish they would not change this. Anyone knows any mods that help? Or do I really have to turn on peaceful mode? -.-

You can turn off the expansion only and prepare some defences/wall down a bit more and reenable it when ready?

[jojo_steed]

I rather hastily built a bunch of wall factories on top of a bunch of stone deposits, ramped up my laser turret production and added another few thousand solar panels then set about walling off all the continental choke points for my map. I think the structure density on a wall 3 rows thick backed by 2 rows of laser turrets is plenty high enough that they won't spawn bases within turret range, and attacks are dealt with very quickly. The new train wait conditions mean i've been able to set up a small logistics network for each wall to keep it repaired, with a train that sits waiting by the wall until the networks stocks of repair materials dropping too low prompts it to make a visit to the wall maintenance depo to pick up more repair packs etc.

To be fair tho, having spent a lot of time clearing those areas before 0.13, it seems a LOT easier to clear bases out now. The fact that armour resistances apply to shields now gives you a lot more durability in power armour mk2, plus a fully upgraded flame thrower cuts through them like a hot knife through butter

[xattus]

You can turn off the expansion only...

How exactly can I do that?

[TheSkiGeek]

The main thing I'm hearing about 0.13 is that "victory poles" no longer work. In 0.12, I think biter expansions would always appear a minimum distance from any of your base elements. That probably sounded like a reasonable idea to the DEVS until we all figured out we could put an ultra cheap small power pole all over the map and essentially keep vast amounts of the map clear of biter expansion bases. From what I'm hearing, this no longer works in 0.13.

Also, regarding running /evolution in the console, I might be somewhat cautious about doing that. I thought I read a post in a different thread where someone said they ran a fairly innocuous console command, and this disabled all achievements. Though, they did say they changed the color of something. So, the game *might* have treated that as a "cheat". I'm not sure. I just mention it in case you are interested in achievements.

Commands that start with "/c ..." will disable achievements, since you're running arbitrary script. Things like /evolution and /save are okay.

[orzelek]

You'll need to use a command so as mentioned above achievements will be disabled.
Command is:

Code: Select all

/c game.player.surface.peaceful_mode = true

It will turn off attack behavior for new biters so you might get some attacks after it.
You can set it to false later so newly spawned biters will be aggresive again.

[garath]

Commands that start with "/c ..." will disable achievements, since you're running arbitrary script. Things like /evolution and /save are okay.

Thanks!

[xattus]

You'll need to use a command so as mentioned above achievements will be disabled.
Command is:

Code: Select all

/c game.player.surface.peaceful_mode = true

It will turn off attack behavior for new biters so you might get some attacks after it.
You can set it to false later so newly spawned biters will be aggresive again.

Yeah okay, that's already known to me, my question is: How can one disable expansion without turning on peaceful mode?

[Oxyd]

You'll need to use a command so as mentioned above achievements will be disabled.
Command is:

Code: Select all

/c game.player.surface.peaceful_mode = true

It will turn off attack behavior for new biters so you might get some attacks after it.
You can set it to false later so newly spawned biters will be aggresive again.

Yeah okay, that's already known to me, my question is: How can one disable expansion without turning on peaceful mode?

Code: Select all

/c game.map_settings.enemy_expansion.enabled = false