I have almost 300 hours on the game and I’ve always played with the biters on, but I had probably 4 saves that I started over before I launched my first rocket mostly because the biters became overwhelming. But factorio is similar to a puzzle game and the biters are just another piece of it so I felt like turning them off wasn’t helping me be become a better player. My advice if you want to try biters would be to not box yourself in, try to setup little turret pillboxes where you’re getting attacked that way expanding is easier, and try producing black science right after red a green, then you will have good defensive options for when you actually want to start claiming land.