I'm interested to see what settings people come up with to get their preferred difficulty curves. If you find a combination of settings that you like, please post them here as an example for others. Or, if you enjoyed the experience with purely default settings, you could post that too, so I know they don't necessarily need to be tweaked.

I used this mod on a near endgame save to see what its like and man. It spawned SO MANY BITERS. Game started lagging pretty bad. I love the swarms and feel this is how the game SHOULD be but my CPU taking a hit. Not sure what settings to change to lower the amount of bugs per spawn OR lessen the number of spawns? Seems pretty legit so far!

Oh shoot do I have to tweak setting before I made the game or can you adjust them after? I want to add demolishers too. Kinda lame they don't come back. I killed only 2 small ones and that was enough to get me to end game easily. I also think the base game needs to adjust their health. Should be higher base health and much lower regen and possibly a flat damage decrease like asteroids so you cant just turret spam. NO idea how to do any of that though....

You can change most settings on a game in progress, and they'll update in real-time. If you want to change the safe tiles you need to restart your client, but anything else you can change on the fly.

I haven't tested on endgame bases yet, so try out changing some stuff and tell us what works!

If you want less but stronger units, try increasing the "Evolution weight for unit selection" setting.

Messing around now. I figured out how to change the parameters in a "new game" then mod settings? Seems like a weird way but only way i've found. Also I broke the mod if I change the Demolisher settings. I tried pasting exactly what you have and also modifying it with "," after Gleba and a 3rd } to cap it off at the end. Not sure what i'm doing wrong. But I guess I can figure it out later. I'll keep messing with the biter settings and let you know. I also don't have the best CPU in the world. Its a Ryzen 7 1700X if thats at all helpful for a benchmark.

You don't need to do a new game... mod settings are in the regular pause menu. Then in the mod settings menu there are 3 tabs; you want the map settings tab.

By "broke the mod" do you mean it crashed the game, or just that it didn't work? If it was a crash, then the error message would likely give you some insight into what went wrong. As for the demolisher settings, I just tested them as working. The full settings after adding demolishers were like this...

Spawn definitions
{nauvis = {"biter", "spitter"}, gleba={"wriggler", "strafer", "stomper"}, vulcanus={"demolisher"}}

Evolution thresholds
{biter = {{name="small-biter", threshold=0.00}, {name="medium-biter", threshold=0.20}, {name="big-biter", threshold=0.50}, {name="behemoth-biter", threshold=0.90}}, spitter = {{name="small-spitter", threshold=0.25}, {name="medium-spitter", threshold=0.40}, {name="big-spitter", threshold=0.50}, {name="behemoth-spitter", threshold=0.90}}, wriggler = {{name="small-wriggler-pentapod", threshold=0.00},{name="medium-wriggler-pentapod", threshold=0.35},{name="big-wriggler-pentapod", threshold=0.65}}, strafer = {{name="small-strafer-pentapod", threshold=0.10},{name="medium-strafer-pentapod", threshold=0.40},{name="big-strafer-pentapod", threshold=0.70}}, stomper = {{name="small-stomper-pentapod", threshold=0.15},{name="medium-stomper-pentapod", threshold=0.45},{name="big-stomper-pentapod", threshold=0.75}}, demolisher={{name="small-demolisher", threshold=0.95, pollution=3000},{name="medium-demolisher", threshold=0.98, pollution=6000}}}

Don't forget that the small demolisher has threshold set to 0.95, so even with everything set up correctly you're not going to see any demolisher spawns until your evolution on Vulcanus is that high.

Ok that worked. I had an extra "}" this is why I don't code haha.

Now that I've been playing a bit here is some feedback. Bugs tend to spawn in the same dozen or so spots, which is fine I was just expecting it to be more random. They sometimes spawn in areas I would think should be too bright. It's almost full light, or at least looks like it. They USUALLY ignore tracks and power poles but not always. I can't figure it out. It seems like when they aggro to something in the base then get distracted by poles/tracks. So far its pretty fun. Definitely more engaging than the base game.

The light level of the surface is used to determine when the bugs spawn, but they don't actually care about how much light is in a given tile, just what's on the floor. Also, they pick a random player building to target, and then spawn on the closest bit of open ground (roughly); that might be why you're seeing a lot of spawns in the same areas. I've considered adding more randomness to the spawn locations, but I would probably have to do my own scanning for a location in that case, which might be a performance loss compared to using the game's built in location finding functions.

As for what they attack, they don't pick power poles or tracks to be their main target, but they're ordered to attack anything within 100 tiles of the target position. I guess if they choose a target close to the edge of your base, that 100 tile radius will include the tracks and poles nearby.

Thanks for the feedback. I'm glad you're enjoying the mod.

I'm using these settings to have Gleba enemies spawn on Nauvis. Will need to test further but messing around in the editor the progression seems to be good. It's incredible watching a swarm of biters and pentapods get vaporized by lasers and tesla turrets.

I have "Surface spawn definitions" set to:
"{nauvis = {"biter", "spitter", "wriggler", "strafer", "stomper"}, gleba={"wriggler", "strafer", "stomper"}}"

and "Evolution threshholds for spawn" set to:
"{biter = {{name="small-biter", threshold=0.00}, {name="medium-biter", threshold=0.20}, {name="big-biter", threshold=0.50}, {name="behemoth-biter", threshold=0.90}}, spitter = {{name="small-spitter", threshold=0.25}, {name="medium-spitter", threshold=0.40}, {name="big-spitter", threshold=0.50}, {name="behemoth-spitter", threshold=0.90}}, wriggler = {{name="small-wriggler-pentapod", threshold=0.3},{name="medium-wriggler-pentapod", threshold=0.45},{name="big-wriggler-pentapod", threshold=0.6}}, strafer = {{name="small-strafer-pentapod", threshold=0.6},{name="medium-strafer-pentapod", threshold=0.8},{name="big-strafer-pentapod", threshold=0.95}}, stomper = {{name="small-stomper-pentapod", threshold=0.88},{name="medium-stomper-pentapod", threshold=0.95},{name="big-stomper-pentapod", threshold=0.99}},}"

and "Evolution weight for unit selection" set to:
(0.5 + 0.5*math.random())