Biter attack pattern rewrite (Akin to They are Billions)

[Daktush]

TAB uses an enemy attack pattern which I find to be way more engaging and giving of a sense of urgency than Factorio

It works like this:

The player starts with an initial area clear of enemies with the resources he needs for a quick base, the rest of the map is covered in enemies, the nearest are weak and as you expand they become stronger. Enemies cleared this way do not respawn

Every so often (depending entirely on game time and difficulty) the game will warn the player that a horde is approaching, the player will be told the direction the main force will approach and has a little bit of time to set up his defences while this music plays:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQT2olIRZzk

The wave then spawns at the edge the player was warned about when it would spawn and the music switches with varying tracks depending on severity

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHyb-JN7jgU

or, for example

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YvKB9Y6Zj4

As the game progresses each wave gets stronger and attacks can happen from multiple angles (Main attack comes from the North for example but you might also get attacked from the east) and as well individual enemies get stronger

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It seems to me that that attack pattern gives players a much stronger looming sense of inevitability and risk, all in all it makes the game more fun.

I propose:

Adding free roaming biters, the further away from the starting point the stronger, which will not respawn.

Removing 95% of biter nests, removing or severely hampering biter expansion and removing the ability of nests to chug pollution and spawn units

Adding waves of increasing difficulty (Waves can always be the same amount of biters but time between them can be shortened/elongated by total pollution produced) - this also has the advantage of being able to remove the CPU intensive pollution cloud

Adding a warning which will point to the nest where the wave will spawn in, adding the music to go with the warning and later the spawn of the wave until the wave is cleared

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Is it doable? Seems like it would increase my enjoyment of Factorio a lot and I have no idea how to do it myself

[Ranakastrasz]

Sounds modable. I dont know too much about the api for biters but i have seen Rampant AI in action. So you can probably do it.

[Caia]

I second this idea, hopefully someone can make it happen!

[Ranakastrasz]

The player starts with an initial area clear of enemies with the resources he needs for a quick base, the rest of the map is covered in enemies, the nearest are weak and as you expand they become stronger. Enemies cleared this way do not respawn

Aside from figuring out what causes units to Despawn, that sounds easy. Just do an OnChunkCreate (or whatver the event is) which drops some random biters in the area.
Idle AI-controlled units (including friendly biters, for example) despawn under some situations. I think its a psudo-fix for Pathing getting stuck sometimes.

That said, might be better to abstract it somewhat: Have Spawners as bases, which explode into some number of enemies when you get close/pollution/presence gets close enough.
Unlike that game, Factorio might not be sufficiently optimized to have that many active units. (Given the cap from spawners and the enemies charging your base)

Every so often (depending entirely on game time and difficulty) the game will warn the player that a horde is approaching, the player will be told the direction the main force will approach and has a little bit of time to set up his defences while this music plays:

Given Rampant AI, I don't see an issue here. Create units at the whatever location, issue an attack order towards.... Your Base? How is that defined? Probably an area with higher pollution. Center of pollution maybe? Some random group of buildings? Best to avoid pointing them at the player itself though.

The wave then spawns at the edge the player was warned about when it would spawn and the music switches with varying tracks depending on severity

This WOULD interfere with infinite maps. Maybe have small hive clusters in areas, (highly resiliant, but in a small, localized area) and the closest one in that rough direction is where they spawn

Spawners would, overall, not have spawning behavior as normal. Might need to be fully scripted actually.

As the game progresses each wave gets stronger and attacks can happen from multiple angles (Main attack comes from the North for example but you might also get attacked from the east) and as well individual enemies get stronger

More/Stronger varients of biters, easy. Multiple Angles, also pretty easy given previous steps.
Probably use a function to spawn waves from a direction, with a strength number, and it finds a hive to spawn them from and launches the attack. Multiwaves just call it more than once, with the secondary wave having lower strength.

Adding free roaming biters, the further away from the starting point the stronger, which will not respawn.

Same as above.

Removing 95% of biter nests, removing or severely hampering biter expansion and removing the ability of nests to chug pollution and spawn units

Replacing them with Hive clusters would probably work great here. That, and preventing them from expanding.

Adding waves of increasing difficulty (Waves can always be the same amount of biters but time between them can be shortened/elongated by total pollution produced) - this also has the advantage of being able to remove the CPU intensive pollution cloud

I don't think its THAT intensive.

Adding a warning which will point to the nest where the wave will spawn in, adding the music to go with the warning and later the spawn of the wave until the wave is cleared

If its all scripted, easy enough.

Given that there is data on how much pollution launches a wave, it is probably possible to suppress that behavior entirely. As such, you should be also able to script the waves and set off said alert.


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If I had more free time, I might consider doing it myself. However, it requires me to investigate several new game modules, So would not be fast by any means.
AI mechanics, Unit Orders, Chunk Generation, Pollution-Biter interaction, etc

Mostly I mess with recipes, items, entities, and modular armor.

[Omnifarious]

I don't know that this would work for Factorio for a variety of reasons. Partly because it isn't the same game as "They Are Billions".

One thing that I do think would be interesting would be to give biters a value system affecting their pathing that causes them to avoid defenses in favor of targets considered to be 'high value'. Or maybe even to go for tactics like using behemoths to distract defenses while the rest of the biters run past to a high value target.

You want to be careful there. There's a game called "Triple-Town" that's basically a game about being a colonialist and subjugating or killing off the equivalently capable natives. The thing that prevents Factorio from being such a game is the limited agency possessed by biters. They're basically animals and no negotiation is possible. Having them start to act too intelligently (one sacrificing itself for the others for example) might start making them sympathetic in a way that's sort of disturbing and negatively affect Factorio's entertainment value.