So I've been playing factorio for a while (not well or efficiently, ~200 hrs, only ever launched one rocket, back in 0.15) and I've almost always played on peaceful mode. With 0.17 I wanted to try and play normally, with biters being a threat. I'm finding it difficult however to even establish a foothold before the biters attack. I'll get one or two burner drills on each patch, and set up one gear and red science assembler feeding a single lab, and my drills are already being attacked. Sure, it's only two or so baby biters I can kill easy with my starting pistol and ammo, but if I'm not right next to them when they attack they'll likely have destroyed at least one drill by the time I get there. What's worse is there's usually two or three biter bases very close, meaning I can get attacked from multiple sides, and don't have the resources yet to set up decent turret coverage or walls.

I didn't remember having this kind of difficulty when I dabbled with biters before, so I reverted back to 0.16 to check the differences in map generation. I realized that the default starting area in 0.16 is nearly twice as large as the default in 0.17, which is why I never had this issue before.

I'm fine with just increasing the starting area to 150% or 200%, but I wanted to gather other people's thoughts and see if I'm in the minority on this. Do you think the default starting area is too small? Too big? Just right? Do I just need to git gud? (yes)