Source
r/factorio•
hyperhopper

Is there a way to make biters fun?

Discussion

I want to do some overhaul mods like space exploration + krastrio, but I don't know what to do about biters.

When mods make you make even larger bases, its so annoying to just have to stop what you're doing to mow down biter nest after biter nest, which usually isn't even that engaging or difficulty with good strategy, but gets boring and repetitive.

However, removing the biters would make the game 'easier' and also make all the military tech useless.

How do you guys make biters fun or interesting without turning them off?

Posted Dec 30, 2022, 10:28 PM UTC

2937
Rubik_Mind:productivity-module1:•

I like to swap strategies often of how to kill the nests. So far i tried personal laser turrets, defenders, handfeeding turrets, rockets, tank, landmines. Change helps to keep the hunt fresh.

You can also build better defences and automate supplying it with ammo and repair packs.

27
Nexatic•

Rampant.

It’s a lot harder but in my experience it’s a lot of fun.

20
thewaywardgamer•

How is rampant when you have no other mods? Just rampant and vanilla or would you recommend adding mods to the game with rampant.

1
Ok-Bluejay-9773•

You can tone it down as much as you want but rampant arsenal is a must IMO if you plan to go megabase or SE with rampant. Also choose a good map to start and disable nuclears biters cause fuck em.
Also normally they limited to lvl 7 biters at around 3.5k hp biters. You can bump it up to 10 and now at 9 in my SE run the biters have 15k hp each with atleast 1 type of immunity. Will be 30k on max evolution. Half my factory is building defense items. And I iterated like 12 wall designs they all fall. But I am getting close to a good design and its fun and engaging.
PS I got a good huuge peninsula map with a smaaal entrance. Defending that alone costs 4-10 GW electricity while my factory consumes around 0.4 GW total otherwise.

13
Borkido•

According to the wiki using rampant for the new enemy types causes crashes later on. Have you encountered any?

1
Ok-Bluejay-9773•

I use ‘rampant, fixed’ mod that is a fork of the original rampant to my understanding. No crashes in SE+~100 other various mods in about 200h save.

1
Ok-Bluejay-9773•

Oooh I know what it means. Somewhat of a big spoiler I havent gotten to that. >! It is the pyramids that hve biters inside I assume that have some spawner that might ‘bug’ out(hehe)!< No clue I will deal with it when I get to that. Bit sad. The game can be beaten avoiding that if that is indeed the scenario though.

1
LowMental5202•

Could you tell me how to Disable the nuclear biters? Last time they killed my SE run

1
Ok-Bluejay-9773•

In the mod settings there is an option for every type of biter. You can change them before loading into the map. Also I did check and there are some options about not changing spawners for other mods, the info implies without spoiling it is for SE crash. So I would look over them in detail as those can only be changed at the start of the game.

1
MrTopHatMan90:inserter:•

I've turned off expansion. There is still large nests but nothing too stressful or difficult. Military science has uses because I cant wipe out large bases without it.

Makes them more of a hazard that requires a solution but not a constant threat.

14
EyeSeeWhyYouAre•

I edit resources on space exploration default so they are like Rail World, then turn off expansion and turn time evolution factor down to 2.

This is what I settled on after a few attempts where I soft locked my progress by getting to a point where I had to spend more than half of my time dealing with biters and couldn't expand to get more resources without making it worse.

These settings let me play without needing to build walls and without worrying about progressing too slowly.
Military science and biters are still relevant because you need to expand quite far with the railworld settings.

1
AngryCephalopod2020•

Space exploration is a great time to turn off biters. Biters will still be a threat on other planets where you’ll need to gather resources. But you can do your whole early and mid game on Nauvis in peace. I did find in SE+K2 that I was locked out of Mil science because biter creep only happens on Nauvis where there were no biters. So I used console commands to give me enough Mil science to research the facility that grows creep. Other than that it’s been great.

13
Heinarc•

Assuming I'm playing a challenging mod and don't want having to spend hours dealing with biters:

-set the expansion sliders to the max

- set the base frequency to the minimum

This way, you won't be annoyed as much and can explore freely, but you'll still have to deal with them once your pollution cloud reaches them. And military tech will come useful at this point.

11
xenapan•

just turn them off for SE as the biter settings only affect navius. You still have to contend with them on other planets/moons and there are biter meteors which will keep you plenty busy without you feeling like it's a cakewalk.

4
greatstarguy•

Try rail worlds. You’ll still have to destroy bases to advance, and making too much pollution will trigger attacks, but there’s no expansion pressure from biters, so once your pollution is in a steady state, there’s no biter pressure at all. I played K2 and once I reached a certain tech level, clearing biter bases was a quick, fun task that I could do once every 5 hours or so to break up the monotony and satisfy my urge to break things. It’s also much easier to defend your pollution cloud as your base is more distributed, and once you clear a geographical region, you don’t have to worry about biters coming back.

Automating biter clearing is also a worthy idea. Spidertron armies are often locked behind significant tech gates, but with automated rocket production, you can kill biters without leaving home. Otherwise, big fat AOEs like nukes will make things faster. K2 also has virus capsules that kill bases and downgrade evolution, and SE has the glaive beam and plague rockets to kill biters on a wider scale.

4
DanGimeno•

Use a mod to put party hats on them?

3
HippoGreat•

One of the best overhaul mods imho

2
Exotic-Tooth8166•

I haven’t tried pumping oil directly into flamethrowers yet but it seemed neat.

I have so many laser turrets my entire base brownouts.

It’s very fun to drive full speed tanks into Biters and then repair a mile away.

2
bucketofmonkeys•

Flame turrets absolutely destroy the biters and they don’t require electricity. Highly recommended.

3
Few-Judgment3122•

Flame turrets are crazy strong. I recommend using heavy oil though cause it’s otherwise useless and it’s more efficient

1
Bonsine•

You could just lower them without disabling them. Increased starting area, lower population, no expansion, like the rail world settings. Plus SE base map settings lower biter difficulty anyways

2
Illiander•

The factorio way: automate artillery.

2
NadirPointing•

Automate the whole military. Feed your turrets, have robots build your walls.

2
Illiander•

I kinda assumed that bit. Oops.

1
hyperhopperOP•

A good way! Though you don't get that till very late in the game.

1
nielsrobin•

Well.. in Space Exploration that’s considered early. Due to the extended late game :)

1
Few-Judgment3122•

I recently actually researched artillery for the first time, and made sure I had a massive backlog before letting the logistics system have them to unleash carnage all at once. There was too much going on to really watch many shots flying to the bases but just watching the red on the map fade away and the kills spike massively in the stats. Also cured the annoying beeps every time the biters break like one wall

1
jdl_uk•

I generally tweak the expansion and evolution factors, and set the starting area size to max. This means I can get defenses set up before the biters get to my base

1
Zakalwe_•

turn off expansion, tweak other attributes to make their evolution slower (FYI SE comes with its own starting preset that will do it for you), increase starting area, research nukes etc.

1
Vakulum•

Give the biters little party hats

1
EarthyFeet:inserterfast:•

Space exploration is challenging enough without /much/ biters, so you can safely turn them down a bit.

1
CodyGetsNoDinner•

Add rampent. Makes it dwarf fortress fun.

1
freebit•

I jack the tech cost to 100x and turn off the biters. Slower pace and effectively megabase from day 1.

1
Evan_Underscore•

For me it's the same question as "how to make copper fun?". They don't meant to cause joy besides the satisfaction of knowing you dealt with the task. It's just another logistic concern.

1
Ncling•

Try different WMD mod. So far i tried True Nukes, Rampant Arsenal, K2 arsenal, SE arsenal, some KingJo vehicles.

For the rampant Arsenal i built a Arty Train that has 1 arty wagon for each type of artillery ammo(base, HE, incendiary, toxic, gas, nuke) in one single train.

SE has multiple late game arsenal ranging from CME rays, weapon delivery cannon arrays, plague rocket, or you can just build a spaceship capable of bombarding the surface with cannons on board.

Try testing to automate army maintainance with AAi with different vehicles, the combination are limitless. (Airbase that launches aircraft loaded with incendiary from Rampant Arsenal, as well as equipped with shields, pdl.)

1
glassfrogger•

I don't know what kind of fun you're after, but... you can make them into kittens if that's your thing.

-2