When playing I encountered no high quality nests and worms despite going quite far away from the center of the world. I did have some quality bases closer to spawn, but seemingly less and less of them the further I went.

I was expanding towards north-west, which turned on a light bulb, so I decided to investigate further. Turns out - the formula for calculating enemy positions is incorrect!
In the file contol.lua, on line 131 you wrote the following:

local chunkDistance = math.max(entity.position.x, entity.position.y) / 32

This is incorrect for negative positions (towards west and north for X and Y, respectively). What should be there is probably more akin to

local chunkDistance = math.max(math.abs(entity.position.x), math.abs(entity.position.y)) / 32

i checked the logic you are absolutely correct, what a derp moment i forgot to normalise the values to positive numbers. I am at work currently ( your post was 3am local time ). i will get a fix out today. Thank you

issue is resolved in 1.3.1 release now.

could this also be the cause of seeing legendary and epic bases quite close to your starting location? in my playthroughs, i usually encouter those really high quality bases really soon tbh.

nah, when they expand towards you they will essentially exponentially tier up.

Uncommon nest's spawn uncommon biters
Uncommon biters "lowest" nest they will spawn will be uncommon, so if they expand towards you and roll rare, the next expansion is rare or above etc

it means if you push them back they expand back higher tier then origionally, it gives you a cost to pay for clearing them out of pollution without taking the land. You gotta make the trade off decision if you deal with constant attacks, push them back and take the land, or push them back for a break and accept they will come back "more entrenched"

I could change the way the math works to make it always roll from base so they are always consistent or make a toggle option for that. But many players have said they like the way it is, so idk.

I checked after the crash issue was resolved and I can confirm, there are quality enemies in all directions now :)

cool awesome, thanks