Factorio Forums

How is evolution factor calculated?
In the wiki the factor for time is given with 0.000004/Tick = 0.00024/second. (1/0.00024 = 4167 seconds = 70 minutes) This would mean, the maximum is reached after approx 70 minutes, which cant be correct.

Same for the number of killing enemy spawner - after 500 the max evolution would be reached.

So how is evolution really calculated?

The percentages are applied on the base of (1 - current_evolution_factor). So for instance destroying the enemy spawner in the beginning of the game results in increase of evolution factor by 0.005 (half a percent) while doing this when the evolution factor is 0.5 the increase is only 0.0025 (quarter a percent).

So the calculation is a little more complicated, more than I'm willing to do with the amount of sleep I've had (or not had as the case is) this week.

But how can 1 be reached at any time? it will only be 0,999999.....

It's an exponential function, theoretically it never reaches 1 (though eventually it may do due to rounding, depends on the code).

Shouldn't ever need to though since biters only start spawning at certain points of evolution. Eg big biters start spawning at 60% as far as I can work out. I don't know if I've ever even seen a behemoth, though there have been cases where my walls have suffered extreme damage where I suspect a behemoth was involved.