Volodymyr wrote: Sat Jun 27, 2026 2:13 pm "Balancing: Reworked enemy expansion planner to reduce expansions in already infested areas."

I built a few walls on each "enemy-expansion-candidate-chunk" and it seems to have completely disabled all attempts for the biters to expand. Is this a bug or a feature?

GregoriusT wrote: Sat Jun 27, 2026 2:52 pm Judging by the Title. the intention was to have Biter Bases not overcrowd themselves, while player stuff merely reduces the chance, am I seeing that correctly?

GregoriusT wrote: Sat Jun 27, 2026 3:12 pm So placing stuff as the player in those expansion chunks will still prevent them from expanding to there? As long as there is enough Player Stuff there that is.

Or did you finally manage to get rid of the trick where you just spam eight pipes in a chunk to reduce expansion rates to near zero?

Because the way expansion works now, it would be a good idea to get rid of that trick since now Biter Bases themselves can prevent the further away Ore Patches from being directly settled on.

Klonan wrote: Sat Jun 27, 2026 2:59 pm

GregoriusT wrote: Sat Jun 27, 2026 2:52 pm Judging by the Title. the intention was to have Biter Bases not overcrowd themselves, while player stuff merely reduces the chance, am I seeing that correctly?

One major part of the rework and fixing for 2.1 was trying to ensure that the nests don't over crowd in explored but otherwise untouched areas,

in 2.0, if a player would explore around a lot, it would generate a lot of chunks, many of which were expansion candidates,
And then those randomly explored chunks (far away from the player base) would get expanded to

In 2.1, the expansion should be more consistently targeted to open areas and places where the player has been clearing nests,
And the 'natural environment' of the untouched areas shouldn't experience much expansion

This before/after shows the aim of the changes (independent of expansion group size balancing changes)

2.0 expansion candidates

06-27-2026, 16-58-30.png

2.1 expansion candidates

06-27-2026, 16-58-48.png

Additionally, since now the expansion planner has to chonk through significantly fewer candidates, the whole system should have a much lower performance impact

Erfar wrote: Sat Jun 27, 2026 4:03 pm Are that change was made with considered how it will change balance? Especially for new players who already struggled with bitters in 2.0?
Before with expansion like 1/hour and lot of expansion candidates player had like 5+ hours of bitters not expanding on their face. Now it look like every bitter expansion would go straight in player direction increasing player stress and reducing ability to concentrate on understanding how game works

Klonan wrote: Sat Jun 27, 2026 2:59 pm

GregoriusT wrote: Sat Jun 27, 2026 2:52 pm Judging by the Title. the intention was to have Biter Bases not overcrowd themselves, while player stuff merely reduces the chance, am I seeing that correctly?

One major part of the rework and fixing for 2.1 was trying to ensure that the nests don't over crowd in explored but otherwise untouched areas,

in 2.0, if a player would explore around a lot, it would generate a lot of chunks, many of which were expansion candidates,
And then those randomly explored chunks (far away from the player base) would get expanded to

In 2.1, the expansion should be more consistently targeted to open areas and places where the player has been clearing nests,
And the 'natural environment' of the untouched areas shouldn't experience much expansion

This before/after shows the aim of the changes (independent of expansion group size balancing changes)

2.0 expansion candidates

06-27-2026, 16-58-30.png

2.1 expansion candidates

06-27-2026, 16-58-48.png

Additionally, since now the expansion planner has to chonk through significantly fewer candidates, the whole system should have a much lower performance impact

JohnMeister wrote: Sun Jun 28, 2026 12:29 pm So after a while the expansion just stops completely? This doesn't seem right.