Evolving biter armor/resistance values.

[rk84]

I'm wondering how well it would play, if biters could evolve their resistances based on what type of damage kills them. This could make usage of one type weapon (laser turrets) less beneficial over long time.

• When biters get certain amount deaths via one type of damage source. The next generation would get stronger against in that type, but also weaker against other types of damage.
• Evolution should not be too fast or begin of game might get too hard.
• Resistances given in prototype definition could work as permanent(/natural) resistances.
• Max resistance cap could depend on level of difficulty.
• To add variation in gameplay. Mayby only some biter types would have this ability.

What you think?

[ssilk]

Hm. I could imagine this:
The dead bodies of the biters are used to let the next generation learn. Sound a bit like "Zombie", but why shouldn't some creature (new kind of worms?) not "eat" the dead biters and so they learn and give back this wisdom...?

[rk84]

Hm. I could imagine this:
The dead bodies of the biters are used to let the next generation learn. Sound a bit like "Zombie", but why shouldn't some creature (new kind of worms?) not "eat" the dead biters and so they learn and give back this wisdom...?

I was just thinking some natures selection type system that is not visibles in game. But that's interesting.
Should the eating affect only eater itself or others too or next generation that spawns?

[ssilk]

They smell the dead bodies (depends on wind). And when not attacked for a while, they dig to them, take it with them and return. In that time they do not protect the spawner.
After returning, they make some kind of ritual! I think this is very important to show that they are more or less intelligent. After this ritual, the next generation is advanced. Some worms will bring then the information to the other nests and with the time they all have it.

Hm. There is a good sf-book which describes that the idea of using the memories of the dead bodies, but I don't remember the name yet, because it is at home. It was about a world, which was a jungle.

[TGS]

Sounds like an awesome idea, but for it to work we would really need an overhaul on the current defensive combat system. Currently there are only two types of turrets. So only two types of damage. Lasers vastly outstripping the gun turrets. So if you ended up with a situation where you used laser turrets heavily and the biters evolved to a high resistance to it, leaving your only choice to switch to gun turrets which aren't as effective anyway you'd face being overrun simply because the new turrets, while doing significant damage more than the old ones still don't do as much as the old ones originally did. Just gets really tricky with balance. For this to work I think you'd need a turret/weapon type of each damage type. So that the player could adapt with multiple avenues.

It's a very slippery slope with balance not to make the biters flat out overpowered. I mean they can already be quite powerful, you don't want to make them so powerful that you need a massively complex defense grid system because x damage type is losing 80% of it's damage to resists.

[ssilk]

Ah, well, currently they evolve with the pollution.

I don't like that so much, because you cannot see it. I think the evolution can follow the above idea - in the first implementation it replaces just the current evolution trigger.

And when you spoke from the weapons: the gun turret can shoot into the earth. That would keep the worms away from the bodies. Lasers can't, they smelt the earth a bit or are reflected by the sand, only gun turrets can protect the bodies.

And to make it more sure, we can get the bodies and burry them into safe places. Or we can research them instead.

I think it is an very important point (and already explained it some month ago) how we are manage the dead. This is, what intelligent life forms obviously distincts from non-intelligent.

[SilverWarior]

I can see one big problem with OP suggestion.
If you are evolving armor type based on the weapon type biters are killed you need to have athleast some controll to limit how much could their armor against certain weapons evolve othervise you could end up with biters having their armor so powerfull that certain weapons have no efect after some time.
Now you will probably say that this was the OP point so that you are forced to swap weapon types every so often.
But lets say you have reached the point when biters have evolved their armor to be barely afected by gun turrets and you then switch to laser turets. Now biters will be evolving their armor to become more resistant to laser with time.
Will this make them also more resistant to gun turets with time? If not you will quickly end up with biters heavily resistant to both turet types. If yes then you only have to use combination of both turet types at same time and this doesn'e bring much to game. It only becomes nusiance.


So instead I would recomend different solution.
First implement three damage types into game:
- physical damage caused by bulets, and explosive shocks
- heat damage caused by lasers, explosions and flamethrowers
- poison damage caused by poison grenades and poisoned bulets (these cause both physical and poison damage)
Then you make that different biters have different resistance to diferent damage types. For instance:
- some have thick metal armor which gives them high physical resistance but makes them vulnerable to heat damage (you can cook them in their armor )
- some have heat resistant sking but are quite vurnable to physical damage
- some have high poison resistance so you must cause
. some might be vulnerable to only one damage type so you are forced to use specific weapon to kill them.

Best thing abozut my solution is that it is much easier implementable and as far as I know game already has portion of the code needed for this to work.

[rk84]

Sounds like an awesome idea, but for it to work we would really need an overhaul on the current defensive combat system. Currently there are only two types of turrets. So only two types of damage...

There is also land-mines, but yes it would be good to have more defensive installations. I kind of ignored this and assumed in future there will be more weapons.

Code: Select all

current damage-types: physical, poison, explosion, fire, laser and acid

I can see one big problem with OP suggestion.
If you are evolving armor type based on the weapon type biters are killed you need to have athleast some controll to limit how much could their armor against certain weapons evolve othervise you could end up with biters having their armor so powerfull that certain weapons have no efect after some time.

I agree. As I said, there could be max cap based on difficulty level.

Now you will probably say that this was the OP point so that you are forced to swap weapon types every so often.
But lets say you have reached the point when biters have evolved their armor to be barely afected by gun turrets and you then switch to laser turets. Now biters will be evolving their armor to become more resistant to laser with time.
Will this make them also more resistant to gun turets with time? If not you will quickly end up with biters heavily resistant to both turet types. If yes then you only have to use combination of both turet types at same time and this doesn'e bring much to game. It only becomes nusiance.

I agree with this too. As for clarification to max cap, what I imagined. When one resistance goes up to max, others would go down to base value. And if cap were high enough, that could cause biter absorbing damage totally and getting stronger. (Difficulty level: Kovarex)

I dunno if this system would be worth for one biter type, but find it interesting though if there were kind of wildcard in mids of other biters.