Factorio Forums

I know this is probably premature since the upcoming military balance changes will hopefully fix some of what is wrong with combat, but I had an idea that might make combat more entertaining. I was wondering if making biters avoid attacking walls might cause them instead to run to gaps in the wall or attack only gates, which would allow construction of kill zones and defenses in depth that you might find in RTS games. Of course if no gaps exist could they then be allowed to attack the walls? To add to this could a new type of alien be added that appears more rarely but is allowed to attack the walls?

Just some spitballing...

I think you would trivialize defense too much by doing this. Today as I expand my base, I have to grow my defenses as well. If biters could be made only to attack certain points instead, then once those kill zones exist I could expand my perimeter walls as much as I wanted without having to defend them. This is a game about automation. You are not supposed to build a completely impenetrable defense and be done; instead you should use automation with roboports to set up automatic repair, rearm, and replacement of defenses. If you want to be able to run your factory without biter interference, there is already a peaceful mode option for this.

Secondly, the biters' logic helps to keep performance manageable. Limiting how far out of their way biters are willing to walk also limits the amount of processing needed for pathfinding.