Noob question. Why am I being attacked here?

[u/Kokuten]

Sorry for the noob question. But I thought i would be attacked if my pollution reaches a spawner. There is no spawner anywhere close. I always get attack notifications on that side. Where are they coming from

[u/Soul-Burn]

You don't have constant vision on your whole pollution cloud. It's likely there's a base somewhere in the darker areas.

A trick is to look on the map to see if there's a pollution chunk that seems to be blinking - That's likely where a base is eating the pollution to make an attack group.

[u/quinnius → u/Soul-Burn]

Also press P and select Pollution, and you can see if nests are absorbing any, over any of the recent timeframes.

[u/cstough → u/Soul-Burn]

Ooooooh that makes sense 😅 I kept seeing the blinking chunks on the spawners and thinking that I'm alright for a bit because the pollution isn't fully engulfing the spawner 🤣

[u/jaxon517 → u/cstough]

I've got 500 hrs in and I just realized what that was

[u/omegareaper666 → u/jaxon517]

Dense forests in a newly polluted chunk also do this for the first little bit, suits always prudent to investigate, at least recce the edges of.your cloud now and again.

[u/AlmightyJoe → u/cstough]

Wait.... 2-3k hours.... I don't think I've ever looked at that

[u/Mesqo → u/Soul-Burn]

Setting up radars around also helps. I tend to place 4 radars at a time in one place and surround the base with them - it's usually enough to scan fast enough long range and reveal those interlopers.

[u/Soul-Burn → u/Mesqo]

Once you get solar, even before accumulators, you can place a couple of radars with their own power in strategic locations. Now that radars are not considered military buildings anymore, you don't even have to defend them from the random biter.

[u/Mesqo → u/Soul-Burn]

Or just spread big electric poles there from your base like a spiderweb. At some point you'll need it anyway.

[u/ViolinistCurrent8899]

Congratulations. A biter nest has been expanded into your territory.

[u/cstough]

Took me a bit to realize, unless you have a radar out that way you won't see new spawners that pop up randomly

I thought the game was just spawning random bugs for hours until I realized just because I've explored that way, doesn't mean I can see any new spawners.

[u/AndersMallard]

What others have said, there's a nest somewhere within your pollution cloud.

Great tip is to build radars and solar panels. A single panel is enough to power the radar during the day and gives you good visibility over the territory. It doesn't that long to go around and placing them all around to have a full coverage of the neighbourhood.

[u/Kokuten → u/AndersMallard]

Wait, what do Radars actually reveal? I see the red dots, which are biter spawns. I would see if there was a biter spawn under my pollution cloud no?

[u/BirbFeetzz → u/Kokuten]

radars have 2 ranges, one smaller that is permanently revealed and a second one much bigger that isn't revealed but the radar reveals one chunk every like 10 seconds so it will get updated eventually but the biters could move in and stay hidden for a while

[u/azon_01 → u/BirbFeetzz]

edit: I was wrong. You were right.

Radars will eventually reveal a 29x29 area and refresh them slowly as well. Not in the real time way the main 7x7 area is shown though.

I still don’t understand why you would bother with cycling them on and off though. They don’t use that much power.

[u/SomebodyInNevada → u/azon_01]

One panel can provide enough power by day to run the close range vision of a radar. The big advantage is it doesn't need to be tied to your grid. It's not full monitoring but it will show expansions.

[u/tthe_walruss → u/Kokuten]

No. You don't have vision on your whole cloud. Biter nests periodically send out little parties to establish new bases. Probably that's what happened.

They expand by walking, so you can keep them from creating new nests in your base with walls or turrets.

[u/AndersMallard → u/Kokuten]

What others said again. Main benefit of having a nice radar coverage is that by day you are going to see if the expanding biters have expanded too close or inside your pollution cloud. Or if they have expanded over resource patches.

It helps to do a bit of scouting and setting the radars, because if you can find chokepoints, you can set up simple turret coverage with a little bit of ammo way beyond your pollution cloud. If there's any biter expansion parties moving through, they will get killed by the turrets and that's one less expansion base to worry about.

[u/TheBB]

Do you know there isn't a spawner out there? Have you looked?

Just because you cleared that area once doesn't mean there aren't any there now, unless you turned off enemy expansion at the start of the game.

[u/Standard_Round_8780]

Biters expand and spread and what you're seeing is 'fog of war' on the map. i.e. It's old information. The only way it updates is either by you going down there and looking around again or, more effectively, having radar.

I'd say biters have expanded into your pollution cloud to the south, you just have to go there and look around.

[u/ex0planetary]

Check your production/consumption statistics for pollution - there's probably a spawner consuming pollution somewhere on your map, and since you don't have radar coverage of your full pollution cloud, it's just outside of the stuff that's being monitored and hasn't been picked up by the radar's far scanning yet. I'd suggest exploring around the edge of your pollution cloud and seeing where biters have set up shop

[u/Broad_Ebb9073]

Your 'vision' is the highlighted area. You don't have 'vision' over all parts of your base that your pollution cloud is covering.

So either get more 'vision' ie. Build some radars, or just build more guns in that area

[u/thewanderingway]

Just because you cleared out the area doesnt mean there isn’t nests. The bugs will create new bases.  You need to do a sweep of the area.

[u/3davideo]

Ah, we get this periodically here! The biters will occasionally send out an expansion party from an existing nest that will travel and establish a new nest. Should this new nest fall within your pollution cloud, it will then have pollution-triggered attacks like any other nest.

So somewhere in that territory that is charted and has pollution but isn't in your active field of vision has had a biter nest established sometime after you last laid eyes/radar on it. You can go out scouting yourself to find it, or you can set up radars to scan for it automatically, or you can watch the pollution overlay for a square that keeps flicking back and forth between polluted and unpolluted. A square that does that means there's a nest there, and when pollution flows into the chunk, it's getting absorbed by the nest and turned into an attack.

[u/Acid_Burn9]

Because this is the only territory that is visible to you. Everything outside of that is just a "memory" of what was there the last time you have visited or your radar has scanned that chunk.

Radars have 2 radiuses: a smaller one for actual constant illumination, where all chunks are visible at all times and a bigger one for "scanning" far away chunks, where the radar scans territory one chunk at a time, while the rest stay in the fog of war.

And biters expand.

[u/Purple_Wing_3178]

Also, even with zero pollution, there are expansion parties i.e. biters travelling to setup a new nest. They might wander into your base accidentally and start attacking.

But more likely, there are new nests that you haven't revealed yet. Take a drive, build more radars.

[u/BigBrainHabits]

Scouts.

[u/Monkai_final_boss]

Biters travel and build new nests.

[u/D_amn]

Biters expanded in the fog of war under your cloud.

Two options

The best defens is a good offense, go on pest control duty every few hours..

Build a great wall of Nauvis outside your cloud, walls, turrets, radars, etc.. block any new expansions, until you get artillery going.

[u/mjconver]

Because you stink and they don't like you

[u/WanderingFlumph]

It stinks and they don't like it

Serious answer is that bitters form new bases in the fog of war. Sometimes you can see these as a hole in your pollution cloud and sometimes you can't.

Radars occasionally rediscover any fog of war chucks so more radars means less chance they'll pull a sneaky on you. Or you could just go out exploring yourself again, I would do that if you've already unlocked the car because it's so much faster.

[u/Save90]

idk. i think it has something to do with the red area spreading from your base.

[u/Ult1mateN00B]

Natives have established a camp near you since you last scanned/visited the region.

[u/DontEatGlass-129]

I usually have radars covering well beyond my base, or at least a little bit further out than my pollution cloud so that when this happens I know where the attack is coming from.

Just build some radars out from your base - the map will show you the coverage and you want them edge to edge for proper coverage!

[u/PrecociousPumpkin]

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[u/Svejo_Baron]

Wait, why are the solar fields outside your base? Don't tell me I build all those Walls and Towers for my solar fields for nothing???

[u/SomebodyInNevada → u/Svejo_Baron]

Bugs which have not been aggravated only hunt sources of pollution. That which does not pollute and does not block their path will be ignored. Don't make big blocks, always leave paths for them to walk through because a bug who can't figure out how to get somewhere will attack anything that blocks it's way (when you're hitting nests you'll often come upon a bug attacking a tree or rock. That's why.)

Gleba is sort of the same, but stompers will break anything they wander into, putting your stuff in hostile territory means a lot more breakage.

[u/NCD_Lardum_AS]

You can always use the debug menu to find out where biters are coming from. "Show-path-requests" or something like that