It's basic but, science cost modifier. You don't have to go crazy like the 1000x playthroughs some people are doing, but a 10x, 6x, or even a 4x can vastly change how you play the game. Needing 4x the labs, 4x the production, 4x the miners; or you need to wait 4x as long; it means you spend much longer at each progression stage so you can properly experience them without trying to cobble something basic so you can skip straight to the good techs and "optimal" builds.

You need to start thinking about scale from the beginning, not just when you decide to go infinite with a mega base. If you leave other settings default then you have to start worrying about pollution a lot more, about pushing back biters more, about running out of resources more.

If you don't want to be defending from bitters 10x as much, decrease pollution to 1/10th the default, if you don't care much for resource acquisition, boost patch size and richness. That way you'll still have a 'default' experience for that particular aspect, so it won't feel "cheesy" but it won't be the focus of the run like production scale is.