This is a series of minor gameplay changes around how biters evolve and increase in difficulty over time.

Features

Spawner Tuning (always on)

Just exposing spawner tuning so you can play with it; I do modify some values by default.
- Spawn cooldown multiplier: how quickly a spawner can send another wave. Lower is faster, higher is slower. Default (0.5) is about double vanilla's spawn speed.
- Max units per spawner multiplier: how many units a spawner can have out at once before it stops replacing losses. Higher means bigger sustained nests; lower means a nest empties out and stays emptier after a fight. Default (1.5) raises vanilla's cap by half.
- Max nearby friends before spawning stops multiplier: how crowded an area can get before a spawner pauses. Default (1) matches vanilla, so it's here to adjust, not because I changed it.

Biter Spawners Use Resources (on by default)

I find killing biter nests frustrating because they just spawn wave after wave ad infinitum. Now every wave you kill depletes the nest's resources, regenerating slowly enough to be noticeable.
- More Resources: multiplier on how big the pool starts out, per spawner. Higher means more kills before throttling actually kicks in.
- More Regen: multiplier on how fast the pool recovers over time. At 0, a depleted pool never recovers on its own.
- Harder Evolution: multiplier on how much higher evolution swells both the pool's size and its regen speed, so a fully-evolved nest is harder to wear down and quicker to bounce back.

Resource Status Display (off by default)

Just so you can see what's going on with the resource pool if you want.

Stop Exploring Planets (on by default, needs Space Age)

This ties the biter evolution to your exploration of planets. Adds a Gargantuan Biter and Spitter. By default, explore 1 new planet (and build the science pack) and you'll unlock Big Biters. 2, Behemoth. 3, Gargantuan. The mechanic is tied to stopping evolution, so you still have to increase Nauvis evolution up to the actual Big Biter etc. level.
- Allow Big Biters before Planets: off by default. Turn it on and Big Biters need no planetary science at all; the first gate becomes Behemoth (unlocked at 1 planet) then Gargantuan (2 planets) instead.
- Planets per evolution-cap tier: how many distinct planets' worth of science need producing, cumulatively, before the next threat tier unlocks. Default (1) means one planet per tier; set it to 2 and it takes two planets' worth of science per tier instead.

Spawners Evolve On Pollution Consumption (on by default)

It drives me nuts that the vanilla Pollution Evolution modifier triggers evolution when pollution is produced. With this enabled, pollution only triggers evolution when the biters get exposed to said evolution. It's balanced against vanilla settings, and always forces the vanilla Pollution Evolution factor to 0 so it doesn't stack with vanilla's own term.
- Evolution per Pollution: how much evolution an attack's pollution cost adds. Default (9) is calibrated to match vanilla's own pollution-evolution rate, just applied to consumed pollution instead of produced pollution.

Compatibility

• Space Age is optional. Without it, Stop Exploring Planets disables itself automatically; every other feature works fine standalone.
• Compatible with other biter-roster mods, I think it's fine as it doesn't use exact names.
• Localized into Chinese (Simplified), French, Spanish, German, Russian, Arabic, and Portuguese (European and Brazilian), besides English.

AI Disclosure

Absolutely leaning into AI over here.

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