Loving the mod but the infestation spreads way too fast. I don't even have a chance.

The infestation is meant to quickly cover most of the starting area. The trick is to be prepared by building a compact factory and by placing bricks under your buildings to protect them. Or you could, if you are fast enough, cover the initial infestation with bricks to remove it.

My first run with the mod also failed because I hadn't produced bricks before the infestation appeared, allowing it to spread under my machines, gradually destroying everything I had built.

The mod is meant to significantly increase difficulty, but not be unfair. I will keep your opinion in mind.

Even if I had mass amounts of supplies to surround it, I'm not sure I would have had the capacity to capture the infestation in time. The very first biter I killed caused an infestation that literally covered the map in perhaps 2 minutes.

I encourage you to re-work it so the player has at least a chance to learn the rules without being totally overrun in the first few moments. Consider a scaling function that spreads the infestation faster under certain conditions- perhaps the evolution of the biters or the pollution can be used as a way of speeding or slowing the infestation.

Another consideration- an infestation is triggered by killing a biter, but this is something that happens very frequently. Perhaps tie the "trigger" to something else that is less common. As an example, a mod I'm working on allows the user to create very similar "creeping tiles." Users can build a trench/moat/blockage and then place the "creeping tile". Thus, the user has a chance to prepare.

"Even if I had mass amounts of supplies to surround it, I'm not sure I would have had the capacity to capture the infestation in time. The very first biter I killed caused an infestation that literally covered the map in perhaps 2 minutes."

It is kind of meant to do that though... It is meant to cover the starting area in the first 10-15 minutes, and keep on spreading for the entirety of the game.

"I encourage you to re-work it so the player has at least a chance to learn the rules without being totally overrun in the first few moments. Consider a scaling function that spreads the infestation faster under certain conditions- perhaps the evolution of the biters or the pollution can be used as a way of speeding or slowing the infestation."

The spread budget increment already scales with evolution. In the first hour after the first alien death it also receives a 'rush' modifier, meaning spread starts fast and slows down gradually until evolution causes it to speed up again. This is so it can quickly surround the player's factory and the starting area. It probably needs some balancing.

"Another consideration- an infestation is triggered by killing a biter, but this is something that happens very frequently. Perhaps tie the "trigger" to something else that is less common. As an example, a mod I'm working on allows the user to create very similar "creeping tiles." Users can build a trench/moat/blockage and then place the "creeping tile". Thus, the user has a chance to prepare."

The reason I have tied this to alien death, is because it allows the aliens to have a way of destroying the player's infestation defense. When a biter dies on a tile, the tile becomes infestation regardless of what it was. (Currently the only reason the mod removes player tiles.) This requires the player to defend their infestation defense against biters.

What I can do in the future, is add in difficulty settings for spread rate, biter death infestation chance, etc. This way, players can choose how to play with the mod. (It's meant to be difficult, but players should then be able to reduce difficulty to their liking.)

You've chosen to make a super-hard-mode mod, and I respect that, but I think you'll have more adoption if you come at it from another angle- start easy, then ramp up. Instead of making hard the default mode, make easy the default mode and then scale up from there. Of course, allow the user to tweak the configs to make it as hard as they like. But I've just found that in general, if you mod kills the player in moments, it just doesn't get adopted, no matter how cool the idea is.

I see, thanks for the advice.

I think I am going to (temporarily) remove the rush factor in future versions. There are still some issues/bugs I want to solve before I upload a new version.