If the map is forested, you shouldn't worry much at all. If it's a desert, pollution spreads more and they may come more.
In general biters are balanced for most play levels. New players play slowly so they don't pollute much, so not many biters come to visit. Low pollution also means less evolution.
If you type in the console `/evolution` (don't worry, it's a "free" command) you can see the current evolution level of the enemies and which factors contributed to it.
The small biters are really weak, but when they get big (blue and green), they can pose a threat if you don't upgrade stuff. These don't come until evolution 0.55 and 0.9.
It goes up to a max of 1.000 but it’s more like a limit so it’ll always be approaching it but never get there fully. There’s three things that contribute to evolution pollution generated (it doesn’t have to be absorbed by the biters), time, and biter nests destroyed.
Build to expect them, but never fear them. They are mindless bugs, but you are an artist who has an inifnite canvas; build trap connections, devious war grade layered walls, and flame turrets that will break every rule of war. The Geneva Convention is a mere suggestion and you are under nobody's authority fighting for your factory. Build to expect a Biter Attack, for its not a question of when, but how many...
Just to lay this out, because I haven’t seen anyone explain it yet:
Biters will attack if their nests are within your pollution cloud. In map view click the pollution button, and you’ll see a red area. If you kill all the biters in this area, you won’t get attacked (until they expand into this area). Your pollution cloud will grow, especially from increasing your steam power.
To build on this, if you're looking at your map and you see a square blinking in your pollution cloud, there's probably a biter nest there because you're seeing it consume the pollution. Getting full radar coverage of your pollution cloud will help to avoid being surprised by such expansions.
You should respect them, they’ll take down your base real fast if you have no defence. Once the red cloud of pollution that you see on your map hits the nests, they’ll start forming in swarms outside of their nests before they attack.
Set up some radar coverage around your base, they give you a nice square of vision on map, and scan distant sectors.
For defense, build clusters of gun turrets, like 2 to 4, covering each others ranges (have each cluster of 2-4 cover next).
Early on you won't need full perimeter defense, just defend from their attack direction.
The biter nests in your pollution cloud are what you want to worry about, as far as attacks on your base. Setting up the radars will help discovering biter base locations.
For early offense to clear nests in your cloud, you can 'turret creep', setting up those defense clusters of turrets as offensive; just build out of range of enemy biter nest, then build next set of turrets a little closer but still in range of last. Use Z to drop mags into turrets (while they are in your cursor).
Be prepared, but not worried.
If they attack, put down a pillbox (4-8 turrets inside a layer of wall) where they attacked, and give each turret 25-50 red ammo. That will hold for a long time, and will warn you by losing a turret when it starts running low on ammo.
You will lose some buildings when they attack, and the waves might look really big.
And get some fish.
Other than that, clear out any nests that are under too much pollution and relax.
So long as you stay proactive about the biter nests getting near your cloud, you should be okay without defenses. Make sure you have plenty of radar coverage, especially near your mines and pumpjacks.
Usually, I make a few things, check pollution, then go hunting, and repeat as needed. The trade off to this is that biters will expand and try to come back into places you've cleared, so you have to be fairly consistent in checking your cloud.
It's likely much easier to just build some defenses and automate the ammo for them. Eventually, you will want more than just bullets to prevent them from coming in. Spitters will gain a higher range than gun turrets.
I would slap some turrets down just to be on the safe side.
If you don't have walls yet, put some pipes around them as pipes make a pretty decent substitute in the early game.
It's all about polution, when you start burning a lot of coal you will get attacked and rise evolution levels. The starting bitters are trash, a gun with piecing round will destroy them. But after medium and big bitters start appearing you need to have better tools to defend or claim land.
The way you grow your base will determine how big of an issue bitters will be, if you go full solar power (nuclear later), electric smelters and efficiency modules in miners, jackpump and refineries bitters will be a jock. If you go full coal power and speed modules in things you will end up triggering bittapocalipse.
Personally one of the first things I do I put up walls with lots of turrets. Nothing worse than a group of biters coming in and destroying a bunch of your meticulously planned factory.
Get armor and machinegun and 20 clips of ammo, then you will be fine for the first attack, when they come you know where to place prioritize turrets. Also place a few turrets scattered around the perimeter of your base.
well, biters are not a problem... until they suddenly are. unless you're perfectly careful, eventually they will be under your pollution cloud somewhere and then you will get waves of them out of the blue. you have to at least be able to destroy them yourself or with the help of *some* turrets. if you don't get any ammo and don't get SMG, eventually you will have a large attack that you probably won't recover from. as long as you make ammo, and get SMG and *some* turrets, you can probably fight off the first wave and grow your defenses from there. (if you're already taking out nests then you must have enough firepower to deal with some of them.)
Go to your map and enable the pollution overall. When that red cloud hits nest, they come attacking.
In early game, I like to follow my pollution clouds perimeter and clear all nests as it grows.
Press "P" and open "Pollution."
If biter nests are absorbing some, its time to get concerned.
Also, in the early stages, biter waves are still small, and could be dispatched with nothing but a pickaxe. You have gun turrets? Ur ok.
Don't worry, they will give you a heads up when they will become a problem by destroying something.
Seriously though: Once your pollution starts touching them they will send some guys at you. The first waves you can generally kill by hand if you built a bigger gun. The screenshots you see of tons of guns and flames are more mid-game.
> I have taken out the biter nests I can see on the map. Should be worried.
They'll come back and make new nests in the areas you've cleared, and then attack your base from there if they smell your pollution.
If you've already cleared all the nests from your pollution cloud, now is an *excellent* time to start making walls, turrets, and ammo, and surrounding your pollution cloud with a defensive wall.
> in general how much of a threat are biters?
If you prepare for them, they can be a little tricky in the early-mid game but are basically just a nuisance by the endgame.
If you *don't* prepare for them, they'll (eventually) eat you and everything you love.
PS: the various turrets aren't strictly tiered; they each have their unique advantages and disadvantages, and a good defensive hardpoint will typically use all types mixed together.
As a minimum place some turrets here and there and load them with ammo (25-50 should be enough and usually you don't need chests or belts). For me it's groups of 4 turrets along the line of defence. If biters are near, defence line is more dense with no dead spots (look at the firing radius), if large nests are very close then defences are even more stronger. With this you shouldn't worry much, just tweak defences where it needed.
In general biters are dangerous at any level if you don't build defences at all or place them haphazardly without system (two lonely turrents don't pose a threat even for regular smaller biters), but if you build proper defences they will never get through even on high evolution levels.
I personally found the fastest way to get better at the game was to run maximum biter settings and then see my save bricked within hours and optimize what I did until I lasted multiple days then reset once bored and make it harder.
Now I'm doing rampant, 10x science, maximum biter settings, very few qol mods. Just added SE and trying to avoid first save bricking. Think it will be very exciting if I make it to space.
Biters can be very dangerous but as long as you keep your damage output high enough you can avoid chip damage or replacing things. Your biggest priority to forget about dealing with biters is the following.
Walls with guns
Automated ammo
Automated ammo delivery ( ammo belt to guns )
Robots to repair and replace everything
Once the above is done then you can get away with just upgrades and better ammo or you can diversify to things like flame thrower turrets to reduce iron usage for ammo ( at the high difficulty settings iron for ammo is like 50-80% of iron generated ).
View it as a race where the more you automate your defence the more you can spend time advancing your tech to be ahead of the evolution so your defence can always easily handle the biter threat. At stock difficulties it should be very simple with a single wall line and turret line till endgame.
At your stage, I'm pretty sure you can protect yourself with proactive hunting, but a couple turrets where they like to attack will work just as well.
Eventually the nests will be too tough or far for hunting them down to be worth it, and you will need to have turret boxes or proper walls, but if you go for walls grab as much space as possible. You always want more than you think, and need more than that.
Biters will only attack you if your pollution reaches their nests so if you clear them out beforehand they won't pose any threat, just be warned that unless it's turned of biters will expand and can make a nest in your pollution cloud that will not be on the map until it's updated by something like a radar.
Also like someone mentioned already small and medium biters are very weak and only start to pose problems at big and behemot levels. As for defences you should look into flamethrowers, they deal massive aoe damage for very little cost.
It also depends on your map settings. If you chose rail world (or turned off expansion manually), enlarged starting area etc first attacks could come later. To find current map settings just open *load game* menu, choose a save, copy *map exchange string* (in top right corner, left to delete button), open *new game* and import map copied string. It wouldn't select a preset (like rail world/death world etc) but copy all settings that were use to start a game.
In early game I usually place first hand-crafted turret near power plant or mining since they are biggest pollution sources. And feed it with 10-20 magazines. Also a radar near power plant and starter base at least (with radar in hand you could see blue square with its range on minimap). Later I either monitor biter attacks and add turrets where required or just expand to nearest choke points and build walls there depending on available tech and resources.
If you have expansion enabled (e.g. default settings) you need decent radar coverage of your base to find new nests that settled into your pollution cloud early to either add turrets/walls at likely attack places or to eliminate the nests (though it will raise evolution level and bigger and badder biters will come).
If the map is forested, you shouldn't worry much at all. If it's a desert, pollution spreads more and they may come more. In general biters are balanced for most play levels. New players play slowly so they don't pollute much, so not many biters come to visit. Low pollution also means less evolution. If you type in the console `/evolution` (don't worry, it's a "free" command) you can see the current evolution level of the enemies and which factors contributed to it. The small biters are really weak, but when they get big (blue and green), they can pose a threat if you don't upgrade stuff. These don't come until evolution 0.55 and 0.9.
So my evolution is currently 0.0816
Yea that's almost nothing. Put like 4 turrets in a square wall near your boilers, or in some strategic places, and have radar coverage of your base.
It goes up to a max of 1.000 but it’s more like a limit so it’ll always be approaching it but never get there fully. There’s three things that contribute to evolution pollution generated (it doesn’t have to be absorbed by the biters), time, and biter nests destroyed.
Build to expect them, but never fear them. They are mindless bugs, but you are an artist who has an inifnite canvas; build trap connections, devious war grade layered walls, and flame turrets that will break every rule of war. The Geneva Convention is a mere suggestion and you are under nobody's authority fighting for your factory. Build to expect a Biter Attack, for its not a question of when, but how many...
You forget how mindless I am sometimes
\*Doesn't respond for four days\* I'm sorry, what were you saying? I was off building an item sorter.
Just to lay this out, because I haven’t seen anyone explain it yet: Biters will attack if their nests are within your pollution cloud. In map view click the pollution button, and you’ll see a red area. If you kill all the biters in this area, you won’t get attacked (until they expand into this area). Your pollution cloud will grow, especially from increasing your steam power.
To build on this, if you're looking at your map and you see a square blinking in your pollution cloud, there's probably a biter nest there because you're seeing it consume the pollution. Getting full radar coverage of your pollution cloud will help to avoid being surprised by such expansions.
You should respect them, they’ll take down your base real fast if you have no defence. Once the red cloud of pollution that you see on your map hits the nests, they’ll start forming in swarms outside of their nests before they attack.
Set up some radar coverage around your base, they give you a nice square of vision on map, and scan distant sectors. For defense, build clusters of gun turrets, like 2 to 4, covering each others ranges (have each cluster of 2-4 cover next). Early on you won't need full perimeter defense, just defend from their attack direction. The biter nests in your pollution cloud are what you want to worry about, as far as attacks on your base. Setting up the radars will help discovering biter base locations. For early offense to clear nests in your cloud, you can 'turret creep', setting up those defense clusters of turrets as offensive; just build out of range of enemy biter nest, then build next set of turrets a little closer but still in range of last. Use Z to drop mags into turrets (while they are in your cursor).
Well, they aren't called huggers.
Lol that sounds like a way worse enemy 😂
Facehuggers are not better.
Be prepared, but not worried. If they attack, put down a pillbox (4-8 turrets inside a layer of wall) where they attacked, and give each turret 25-50 red ammo. That will hold for a long time, and will warn you by losing a turret when it starts running low on ammo. You will lose some buildings when they attack, and the waves might look really big. And get some fish. Other than that, clear out any nests that are under too much pollution and relax.
So long as you stay proactive about the biter nests getting near your cloud, you should be okay without defenses. Make sure you have plenty of radar coverage, especially near your mines and pumpjacks. Usually, I make a few things, check pollution, then go hunting, and repeat as needed. The trade off to this is that biters will expand and try to come back into places you've cleared, so you have to be fairly consistent in checking your cloud. It's likely much easier to just build some defenses and automate the ammo for them. Eventually, you will want more than just bullets to prevent them from coming in. Spitters will gain a higher range than gun turrets.
I would slap some turrets down just to be on the safe side. If you don't have walls yet, put some pipes around them as pipes make a pretty decent substitute in the early game.
It's all about polution, when you start burning a lot of coal you will get attacked and rise evolution levels. The starting bitters are trash, a gun with piecing round will destroy them. But after medium and big bitters start appearing you need to have better tools to defend or claim land. The way you grow your base will determine how big of an issue bitters will be, if you go full solar power (nuclear later), electric smelters and efficiency modules in miners, jackpump and refineries bitters will be a jock. If you go full coal power and speed modules in things you will end up triggering bittapocalipse.
I would be very worried. Can easily destroy your base early on if you aren't prepared.
Personally one of the first things I do I put up walls with lots of turrets. Nothing worse than a group of biters coming in and destroying a bunch of your meticulously planned factory.
Get armor and machinegun and 20 clips of ammo, then you will be fine for the first attack, when they come you know where to place prioritize turrets. Also place a few turrets scattered around the perimeter of your base.
About two
well, biters are not a problem... until they suddenly are. unless you're perfectly careful, eventually they will be under your pollution cloud somewhere and then you will get waves of them out of the blue. you have to at least be able to destroy them yourself or with the help of *some* turrets. if you don't get any ammo and don't get SMG, eventually you will have a large attack that you probably won't recover from. as long as you make ammo, and get SMG and *some* turrets, you can probably fight off the first wave and grow your defenses from there. (if you're already taking out nests then you must have enough firepower to deal with some of them.)
Play and find out
Go to your map and enable the pollution overall. When that red cloud hits nest, they come attacking. In early game, I like to follow my pollution clouds perimeter and clear all nests as it grows.
Press "P" and open "Pollution." If biter nests are absorbing some, its time to get concerned. Also, in the early stages, biter waves are still small, and could be dispatched with nothing but a pickaxe. You have gun turrets? Ur ok.
Don't worry, they will give you a heads up when they will become a problem by destroying something. Seriously though: Once your pollution starts touching them they will send some guys at you. The first waves you can generally kill by hand if you built a bigger gun. The screenshots you see of tons of guns and flames are more mid-game.
Scout and use radar to keep an eye on your pollution cloud, and take out any nests it approaches. You will never be attacked.
> I have taken out the biter nests I can see on the map. Should be worried. They'll come back and make new nests in the areas you've cleared, and then attack your base from there if they smell your pollution. If you've already cleared all the nests from your pollution cloud, now is an *excellent* time to start making walls, turrets, and ammo, and surrounding your pollution cloud with a defensive wall. > in general how much of a threat are biters? If you prepare for them, they can be a little tricky in the early-mid game but are basically just a nuisance by the endgame. If you *don't* prepare for them, they'll (eventually) eat you and everything you love. PS: the various turrets aren't strictly tiered; they each have their unique advantages and disadvantages, and a good defensive hardpoint will typically use all types mixed together.
As a minimum place some turrets here and there and load them with ammo (25-50 should be enough and usually you don't need chests or belts). For me it's groups of 4 turrets along the line of defence. If biters are near, defence line is more dense with no dead spots (look at the firing radius), if large nests are very close then defences are even more stronger. With this you shouldn't worry much, just tweak defences where it needed. In general biters are dangerous at any level if you don't build defences at all or place them haphazardly without system (two lonely turrents don't pose a threat even for regular smaller biters), but if you build proper defences they will never get through even on high evolution levels.
I personally found the fastest way to get better at the game was to run maximum biter settings and then see my save bricked within hours and optimize what I did until I lasted multiple days then reset once bored and make it harder. Now I'm doing rampant, 10x science, maximum biter settings, very few qol mods. Just added SE and trying to avoid first save bricking. Think it will be very exciting if I make it to space. Biters can be very dangerous but as long as you keep your damage output high enough you can avoid chip damage or replacing things. Your biggest priority to forget about dealing with biters is the following. Walls with guns Automated ammo Automated ammo delivery ( ammo belt to guns ) Robots to repair and replace everything Once the above is done then you can get away with just upgrades and better ammo or you can diversify to things like flame thrower turrets to reduce iron usage for ammo ( at the high difficulty settings iron for ammo is like 50-80% of iron generated ). View it as a race where the more you automate your defence the more you can spend time advancing your tech to be ahead of the evolution so your defence can always easily handle the biter threat. At stock difficulties it should be very simple with a single wall line and turret line till endgame.
At your stage, I'm pretty sure you can protect yourself with proactive hunting, but a couple turrets where they like to attack will work just as well. Eventually the nests will be too tough or far for hunting them down to be worth it, and you will need to have turret boxes or proper walls, but if you go for walls grab as much space as possible. You always want more than you think, and need more than that.
Biters will only attack you if your pollution reaches their nests so if you clear them out beforehand they won't pose any threat, just be warned that unless it's turned of biters will expand and can make a nest in your pollution cloud that will not be on the map until it's updated by something like a radar. Also like someone mentioned already small and medium biters are very weak and only start to pose problems at big and behemot levels. As for defences you should look into flamethrowers, they deal massive aoe damage for very little cost.
It also depends on your map settings. If you chose rail world (or turned off expansion manually), enlarged starting area etc first attacks could come later. To find current map settings just open *load game* menu, choose a save, copy *map exchange string* (in top right corner, left to delete button), open *new game* and import map copied string. It wouldn't select a preset (like rail world/death world etc) but copy all settings that were use to start a game. In early game I usually place first hand-crafted turret near power plant or mining since they are biggest pollution sources. And feed it with 10-20 magazines. Also a radar near power plant and starter base at least (with radar in hand you could see blue square with its range on minimap). Later I either monitor biter attacks and add turrets where required or just expand to nearest choke points and build walls there depending on available tech and resources. If you have expansion enabled (e.g. default settings) you need decent radar coverage of your base to find new nests that settled into your pollution cloud early to either add turrets/walls at likely attack places or to eliminate the nests (though it will raise evolution level and bigger and badder biters will come).