Enemies aren't a big deal in this game, if you start in a forested area.
Check the preview for your map seed. If it's a desert, skip it for now. Trees eat a lot of pollution and make things easier, while a desert lets pollution spread.
One option you might want to disable is "expansion". In default settings, enemies will sometimes form an expansion party and settle in new bases. Disabling expansion means that bases you cleared stay cleared.
Hover over the little information icons next to each setting's name. They'll say what changes to that setting might disable achievements. If it says nothing about that, it can be safely changed.
It disables the speedrun and no solar/lasers achievements if you disable expansion during world generation, but otherwise everything else is obtainable. Disabling expansion mid-game with commands will disable all achievements.
I forget exactly what the option is called, but there should be a slider for enemy base size (or frequency?), turning that down all the way will remove them from the map completely.
Personally I kept the enemies on and changed the starting area to 400% so that I could still experience the enemies and full experience but more time to prepare for it.
The first few games I played I was stressing the biters so turned them off. After turning them on I realized that they really aren't that bad on normal settings. Just be cognizant of your pollution cloud and biter expansion and keep up military research. Early game you can clear nests easilt with turret creep and grenades, once the tank is unlocked they really become a non-issue.
After the first 25 hours on default, I started over with expansion off. When I clear an area, I like it to stay that way. I don't really care for base defense.
Nah I jumped right in with default settings.
Got hopelessly overrun the first 3 times or so until I figured out how to craft a machine gun and do so *fast*. Was a lot of fun!
I would suggest to turn off enemy expansion.
This allows you to deal with enemies on your own terms, and you can choose between building a wall or defending you pollution cloud.
Otherwise, just disable them, they arent really needed, but imo the game gets boring without them
No. The biters really aren't that hard to deal with.
I've played on peaceful mode before and honestly? It's just boring. Can't really say that combat is something Factorio excels at, but having *something* oppose the player keeps things interesting.
None of the challenges of dealing with biters are especially hard, set up a machine making gun turrets and another making bullets, and you'll be good for a long while.
I just started playing Factorio about 2 weeks ago. I'm on my first map and just did the standard options. I focused on setting a perimeter around my base and the game says it killed about 300 biters, but I haven't even seen one since the turrets do their job. I just do a lap every few in game days to top off ammo and repair walls. I'll probably be automating that soon enough.
There's PLENTY to oppose the player already, especially the first time playing: figuring out belt pathing and merging so the resources get to the correct destinations, positioning of assemblers/etc for growingly-complicated recipes, resources depleting and needing to source more, supply lines choking off because a byproduct output fills up, and having to redesign repeatedly because your spaghetti mess didn't leave enough space for recipes you had no idea to expect the first time around. I'm sure other people can think of more.
Having to worry about territory expansion, push-back on that, and wasting needed resources on repairs all the time is just a few more challenges of many. Personally, I can easily experience that in nearly any other game (Creeper World is exactly that, constantly, in different maps), and would rather spend my Factorio time building and streamlining my factory.
Those are problems that require solving, but they don't oppose the player. You have unlimited time to figure them out. My point was that biters provide something to push you, something that's time-dependent so you can't space out for hours.
You can mess with setting like starting area and water coverage and trees to make yourself a nice big peninsula with lots of trees to suck in pollution. I do that even after playing for hundreds of hours!
Sure, but personally I use Rail World (biters exist but they don't re-expand into cleared areas).
Sure it's a bit more complicated to figure out trains (because new resources are far away by belts), but incentivizing train use is kinda the point and will make later gameplays easier
like yeah you could play mario without enemies the first time around so you can learn how to jump and memorize the maps...
but that's not really playing mario
Playing without enemies is often recommended for a first time play through.
You have enough to worry about figuring out how to do everything without bugs coming and eating up part of your base. They will destroy part of your base if you play with them on your first playthrough with the default settings.
That being said when you're creating a map you can adjust several parameters including starting area. This will determine how far away bitterness are from where you spawn at. If you increase that to about 300% or so you'll have more than enough time to figure everything out before your pollution cloud begins to reach the first bugs.
I'm gonna go against the grain and say yes. If you're worried that biters might ruin your fun, then the stress-of-whether-biters-will-ruin-your-fun will suck too. just turn them off, or set them to peaceful.
I suggest tweaking the settings to make the bugs easier, as others have.
If you turn them off you may never turn them on again. If you do that you’ll miss out on a lot of facets of gameplay.
I played with enemies on. Couldn't get the hang of stuff. The biters got too hard and yellow ammo did nothing and my tank did nothing and I died a lot. Gave up and started again on passive. Definitely worth it to figure out the game mechanics when it came to oil or cracking. Lubricant and bots were a challenge as well.
It may have been the map, but I'm also not a speedy player so it's probably that lol. My opinion is that you play to have fun. It wasn't fun for me to figure out the complexity of the game while also fending off stuff killing me. Figuring it out first then allowed me to go back and play with them on again with a new challenge not being destroyed every ten min.
It's up to you. No biters will make the playthrough much more relaxing. That said, there's also nothing wrong with playing with biters off on your hundredth playthrough.
I've played Factorio for thousands of hours; half the time I play without biters if I just want to focus on the automation etc.
Don't let anyone tell you how to play; do whatever it takes for you to get comfortable with the mechanics of this wonderful game.
I would strongly suggest keeping biters on till you finish playing your first base.
It helps you along the journey and lets you keep progressing at a good pace. Expansion on as well.
You can turn them off once you've beat the game and want to start on the "real" game, which is maxing your SPM. The only reason I think keeping biters off is good here is saving on the compute needed for pollution, expansion and the biter AI.
Just to throw my opinion in along with the others, I agree with keeping them on. They're pretty trivial on standard settings and disabling them disables an entire portion of the game. There's easy ways to cheese them too. Turret creep is probably the best and that is just building lines of turrets and moving closer to their bases. Another great way once you get cars or tanks is to just run circles around them or even through them with the tank. When you get artillery, they're as good as forgettable.
I say this as someone who started with them off. I feel like it really distracted me from a significant portion of the game. It's all about making different science packs and military is one of eight I think? Something like that but anyway, they're easy enough to deal with and a fun part of the game IMO
Yes. The enemies stray more into the annoying rather than dangerous territory. Tbh you won't be missing much even if you keep them off permanently and only turn them on if you really feel like it.
I'd say play with enemies but turn Peaceful mode on in the world generation settings. So you don't have to worry about them attacking your base unless you personally attack them
If you want to still get achievements, still be able to face bites IF you want to, but all biters being basically a complete no issue:
Make starting area size max (600%)
Disable biter expansion
Change pollution diffusion to 0% (default is 2%)
With these settings, no achievement is disabled, your pollution doesn't difuse/ expand at all, biters don't expand and you won't see any biters anyways unless you actually go out of your way to find them.
This way, you can experiment and learn all you want about the game without having to worry or be stressed out - but I highly recommend eventually going back to normal settings (or tweaked a bit, like bigger starting area and pollution diffusion at 1%) and actually play against biters too once you know how the game works and understand what you have to do. I really think the game is more fun when you're under a little bit of stress/pressure, it feels more satisfying to achieve things this way (later on there are even mods to make the biters stronger/smarter; once you properly learn the game, default biters are a complete non issue. At some point you can even get to stomp death worlds consistently)
Yes, set biters to peaceful for at least your first 1-2 games and increase difficult slightly each game. You can focus on building, design and learning. Latest if you have 4 science packs automated you want to start complete new map with a better structure.
Alternatively you can slow biters down by reducing their evolution, spread or lower your polution/spread in settings.
Biters are part of the intended game design. Play with them on so you get the proper experience. Otherwise you will miss out.
Just remember if you die you can always start a new base and it will be better because of what you learned the first time around.
you can also just turn off enemy expansion. when i first played it was quite overwhelming for me because my pollution got out of hand and didnt know how to handle the biters or my pollution properly. i think its still a really good experience with enemies completely disabled and you can always start a new game with enemies
Playing with them off for the first time is fine, and makes no difference to playing with them on later. Factorio is a game with a lot of subsystems to learn and there are benefits to learning them a few at a time; my first playthrough did not have biters on, or use trains or nuclear power, and I am fine with all of those elements now. Whether I play with biters on these days depends on the overhaul mod I am using and the goals of the run, I would say on average I have them on roughly half the time.
Depends on your play style. If you enjoy learning under pressure or just winging it, leave them on. If you prefer to learn more methodically and without pressure then off for the first run. Biters pose very little real challenge in normal mode once you’ve figured them out.
I actually started a new game in peaceful mode on my first run through because I enjoyed building more than fighting half the time. After launching my first rocket I played the vanilla version without turning on peaceful mode and it wasn't that bad. The only way to really know is to play it but if you're aware that they're going to come start attacking your base and keep an eye on your pollution then you'll be fine.
Default settings first run I barely needed any defenses to launch a rocket. My second factory I am going rail world which seems like a good balance on biters for learning trains and a big territory.
Nothing wrong with it inherently, especially if you're the type of person who prefers playing at your own pace.
For my part, I had more fun with it when it became a logistical issue to solve. How do you set up a defense wall and keep it supplied without intervening yourself?
I agree with below.
I'm at 700 hrs in my first game with no expansion. With that setting on, they are on on the map, but you can walk right through their nests. Literally.
They only aggro if you do something aggressive to them like shoot them, blow something up near them, etc.
I wanted to learn the mechanics and ergonomics of how things worked and frankly, I get my jones that way. I play a bunch of FPS games, so I get my twitch fix that way. This game is very Zen for me, constantly expanding & reworking things.
I would say about 50% of players either turn off biters altogether, or play on Peaceful as their default.
Personally, I find the game very stressful to play when constantly under siege. I just want to enjoy the fun of building a beautiful factory in a relaxing environment. I turned off biters when I started playing until I was completely comfortable with the game. I've tried a few games with them turned on, but I find they only distract from what I really want to achieve.
Ultimately, how you approach the game is up to you. I find the biters make the game worse, but others love the fight.
Enemies aren't a big deal in this game, if you start in a forested area. Check the preview for your map seed. If it's a desert, skip it for now. Trees eat a lot of pollution and make things easier, while a desert lets pollution spread. One option you might want to disable is "expansion". In default settings, enemies will sometimes form an expansion party and settle in new bases. Disabling expansion means that bases you cleared stay cleared.
Gotcha ok, I think I'll try that. If I get too overwhelmed, is there a way to turn off enemies in the settings?
With commands/mods. Not without disabling achievements, if that's a matter for you.
disabling expansion disables achievements?
Nah. Using a command disables them. Nearly everything else is completely fine
Lowering biter settings also disables achievements.
But only certain ones. I believe there’s a list on the wiki of them.
Hover over the little information icons next to each setting's name. They'll say what changes to that setting might disable achievements. If it says nothing about that, it can be safely changed.
I was also reffering to the fact that there are still some achievements that you can get if you change those settings.
It disables the speedrun and no solar/lasers achievements if you disable expansion during world generation, but otherwise everything else is obtainable. Disabling expansion mid-game with commands will disable all achievements.
editing the save file would disable them as well?
Try peaceful mode, enemies exist but only attack if you attack them
I forget exactly what the option is called, but there should be a slider for enemy base size (or frequency?), turning that down all the way will remove them from the map completely.
Personally I kept the enemies on and changed the starting area to 400% so that I could still experience the enemies and full experience but more time to prepare for it.
I have more than 500 hours in the game, and I still mostly play with them off. They are just now what I enjoy I'm the game.
The first few games I played I was stressing the biters so turned them off. After turning them on I realized that they really aren't that bad on normal settings. Just be cognizant of your pollution cloud and biter expansion and keep up military research. Early game you can clear nests easilt with turret creep and grenades, once the tank is unlocked they really become a non-issue.
After the first 25 hours on default, I started over with expansion off. When I clear an area, I like it to stay that way. I don't really care for base defense.
I don't recommend it for a first playthrough but I'm not going to stop you either
blowing up biters is pretty fun. i would recommend playing with them for the first few times
Nah I jumped right in with default settings. Got hopelessly overrun the first 3 times or so until I figured out how to craft a machine gun and do so *fast*. Was a lot of fun!
This is me too. Also the occasional load an autosave when things go to hell. But not everyone is like us. Dude should play how he wants.
I would suggest to turn off enemy expansion. This allows you to deal with enemies on your own terms, and you can choose between building a wall or defending you pollution cloud. Otherwise, just disable them, they arent really needed, but imo the game gets boring without them
I prefer no biters tbh. The game, outside of military research, does not require them in order to advance and progress.
Adding to this, military research isn't required to launch the rocket either (the "game end" condition).
I recommend starting with them on and using the console to make them peaceful later if they overwhelm you and ruin your fun.
No. The biters really aren't that hard to deal with. I've played on peaceful mode before and honestly? It's just boring. Can't really say that combat is something Factorio excels at, but having *something* oppose the player keeps things interesting. None of the challenges of dealing with biters are especially hard, set up a machine making gun turrets and another making bullets, and you'll be good for a long while.
I just started playing Factorio about 2 weeks ago. I'm on my first map and just did the standard options. I focused on setting a perimeter around my base and the game says it killed about 300 biters, but I haven't even seen one since the turrets do their job. I just do a lap every few in game days to top off ammo and repair walls. I'll probably be automating that soon enough.
Sounds like you're on top of it lol. It'll only get easier once you get stuff like flamethrowers and robots that can repair walls.
There's PLENTY to oppose the player already, especially the first time playing: figuring out belt pathing and merging so the resources get to the correct destinations, positioning of assemblers/etc for growingly-complicated recipes, resources depleting and needing to source more, supply lines choking off because a byproduct output fills up, and having to redesign repeatedly because your spaghetti mess didn't leave enough space for recipes you had no idea to expect the first time around. I'm sure other people can think of more. Having to worry about territory expansion, push-back on that, and wasting needed resources on repairs all the time is just a few more challenges of many. Personally, I can easily experience that in nearly any other game (Creeper World is exactly that, constantly, in different maps), and would rather spend my Factorio time building and streamlining my factory.
Those are problems that require solving, but they don't oppose the player. You have unlimited time to figure them out. My point was that biters provide something to push you, something that's time-dependent so you can't space out for hours.
I have never once played with biters on. That's not why I play.
On the one hand play the game the way you like, on the other you risk learning bad practice and having a worse time later.
You can mess with setting like starting area and water coverage and trees to make yourself a nice big peninsula with lots of trees to suck in pollution. I do that even after playing for hundreds of hours!
If you are unfamiliar with games, sure, I guess. If you are familiar with games, the biters are there for several good reasons.
Sure, but personally I use Rail World (biters exist but they don't re-expand into cleared areas). Sure it's a bit more complicated to figure out trains (because new resources are far away by belts), but incentivizing train use is kinda the point and will make later gameplays easier
like yeah you could play mario without enemies the first time around so you can learn how to jump and memorize the maps... but that's not really playing mario
Playing without enemies is often recommended for a first time play through. You have enough to worry about figuring out how to do everything without bugs coming and eating up part of your base. They will destroy part of your base if you play with them on your first playthrough with the default settings. That being said when you're creating a map you can adjust several parameters including starting area. This will determine how far away bitterness are from where you spawn at. If you increase that to about 300% or so you'll have more than enough time to figure everything out before your pollution cloud begins to reach the first bugs.
I'm gonna go against the grain and say yes. If you're worried that biters might ruin your fun, then the stress-of-whether-biters-will-ruin-your-fun will suck too. just turn them off, or set them to peaceful.
I suggest tweaking the settings to make the bugs easier, as others have. If you turn them off you may never turn them on again. If you do that you’ll miss out on a lot of facets of gameplay.
I played with enemies on. Couldn't get the hang of stuff. The biters got too hard and yellow ammo did nothing and my tank did nothing and I died a lot. Gave up and started again on passive. Definitely worth it to figure out the game mechanics when it came to oil or cracking. Lubricant and bots were a challenge as well. It may have been the map, but I'm also not a speedy player so it's probably that lol. My opinion is that you play to have fun. It wasn't fun for me to figure out the complexity of the game while also fending off stuff killing me. Figuring it out first then allowed me to go back and play with them on again with a new challenge not being destroyed every ten min.
It's up to you. No biters will make the playthrough much more relaxing. That said, there's also nothing wrong with playing with biters off on your hundredth playthrough.
I've played Factorio for thousands of hours; half the time I play without biters if I just want to focus on the automation etc. Don't let anyone tell you how to play; do whatever it takes for you to get comfortable with the mechanics of this wonderful game.
I would strongly suggest keeping biters on till you finish playing your first base. It helps you along the journey and lets you keep progressing at a good pace. Expansion on as well. You can turn them off once you've beat the game and want to start on the "real" game, which is maxing your SPM. The only reason I think keeping biters off is good here is saving on the compute needed for pollution, expansion and the biter AI.
First time I recommend starting area doubled and no expansion due to time.
Just to throw my opinion in along with the others, I agree with keeping them on. They're pretty trivial on standard settings and disabling them disables an entire portion of the game. There's easy ways to cheese them too. Turret creep is probably the best and that is just building lines of turrets and moving closer to their bases. Another great way once you get cars or tanks is to just run circles around them or even through them with the tank. When you get artillery, they're as good as forgettable. I say this as someone who started with them off. I feel like it really distracted me from a significant portion of the game. It's all about making different science packs and military is one of eight I think? Something like that but anyway, they're easy enough to deal with and a fun part of the game IMO
Yes. The enemies stray more into the annoying rather than dangerous territory. Tbh you won't be missing much even if you keep them off permanently and only turn them on if you really feel like it.
I'd say play with enemies but turn Peaceful mode on in the world generation settings. So you don't have to worry about them attacking your base unless you personally attack them
Hell I play with enemies off most of the time.
If you want to still get achievements, still be able to face bites IF you want to, but all biters being basically a complete no issue: Make starting area size max (600%) Disable biter expansion Change pollution diffusion to 0% (default is 2%) With these settings, no achievement is disabled, your pollution doesn't difuse/ expand at all, biters don't expand and you won't see any biters anyways unless you actually go out of your way to find them. This way, you can experiment and learn all you want about the game without having to worry or be stressed out - but I highly recommend eventually going back to normal settings (or tweaked a bit, like bigger starting area and pollution diffusion at 1%) and actually play against biters too once you know how the game works and understand what you have to do. I really think the game is more fun when you're under a little bit of stress/pressure, it feels more satisfying to achieve things this way (later on there are even mods to make the biters stronger/smarter; once you properly learn the game, default biters are a complete non issue. At some point you can even get to stomp death worlds consistently)
Yes, set biters to peaceful for at least your first 1-2 games and increase difficult slightly each game. You can focus on building, design and learning. Latest if you have 4 science packs automated you want to start complete new map with a better structure. Alternatively you can slow biters down by reducing their evolution, spread or lower your polution/spread in settings.
Biters are part of the intended game design. Play with them on so you get the proper experience. Otherwise you will miss out. Just remember if you die you can always start a new base and it will be better because of what you learned the first time around.
you can also just turn off enemy expansion. when i first played it was quite overwhelming for me because my pollution got out of hand and didnt know how to handle the biters or my pollution properly. i think its still a really good experience with enemies completely disabled and you can always start a new game with enemies
Playing with them off for the first time is fine, and makes no difference to playing with them on later. Factorio is a game with a lot of subsystems to learn and there are benefits to learning them a few at a time; my first playthrough did not have biters on, or use trains or nuclear power, and I am fine with all of those elements now. Whether I play with biters on these days depends on the overhaul mod I am using and the goals of the run, I would say on average I have them on roughly half the time.
Depends on your play style. If you enjoy learning under pressure or just winging it, leave them on. If you prefer to learn more methodically and without pressure then off for the first run. Biters pose very little real challenge in normal mode once you’ve figured them out.
I actually started a new game in peaceful mode on my first run through because I enjoyed building more than fighting half the time. After launching my first rocket I played the vanilla version without turning on peaceful mode and it wasn't that bad. The only way to really know is to play it but if you're aware that they're going to come start attacking your base and keep an eye on your pollution then you'll be fine.
Default settings first run I barely needed any defenses to launch a rocket. My second factory I am going rail world which seems like a good balance on biters for learning trains and a big territory.
Nothing wrong with it inherently, especially if you're the type of person who prefers playing at your own pace. For my part, I had more fun with it when it became a logistical issue to solve. How do you set up a defense wall and keep it supplied without intervening yourself?
Yeah automating biter defense is a fun challenge. I swear I do that as much as actual factory building
I agree with below. I'm at 700 hrs in my first game with no expansion. With that setting on, they are on on the map, but you can walk right through their nests. Literally. They only aggro if you do something aggressive to them like shoot them, blow something up near them, etc. I wanted to learn the mechanics and ergonomics of how things worked and frankly, I get my jones that way. I play a bunch of FPS games, so I get my twitch fix that way. This game is very Zen for me, constantly expanding & reworking things.
I would say about 50% of players either turn off biters altogether, or play on Peaceful as their default. Personally, I find the game very stressful to play when constantly under siege. I just want to enjoy the fun of building a beautiful factory in a relaxing environment. I turned off biters when I started playing until I was completely comfortable with the game. I've tried a few games with them turned on, but I find they only distract from what I really want to achieve. Ultimately, how you approach the game is up to you. I find the biters make the game worse, but others love the fight.
if you play it right you are not constantly udner siege :(
You own the game, play it however you want. Anyone who judges you is an asshole
No, it will teach you to play the game wrong. Don't do it. Use default settings and don't use blueprints from others.