Tiberium 2.0

[TigerXtrm]

Last week I searched for some mods and ran into the old Tiberium mod, as well as its fixed version for 0.16. Of course neither works anymore, but I thought the concept was interesting and I began having ideas to revive and improve the basic idea. About three hours of modding tutorials later, and then looking at the original code, I quickly concluded that I really don't have the LUA coding knowledge to pull off the more complex ideas lined out below. So here I am, turning to the much more experienced modding community to hopefully get this idea picked up.

Below is an idea outline I wrote for what the mod is, how it should work and what it would add to the game. Far from final obviously, so feel free to contribute ideas or suggestions of your own that would make the mod more interesting. Also feel free to poke holes in things that are downright impossible. As I said, my modding experience for Factorio is 0, so the idea is purely theoretical in nature.

About Tiberium

Tiberium is an alien substance that functioned as the primary resource in the Command & Conquer RTS game series, as well as being central to the series’ plot. It was sent to Earth by an alien species in 1995 in an attempt to terraform the planet and extract the planet’s resources.

Tiberium most commonly comes in the form of a green crystal. These crystals grow in the ground and spread themselves through underground veins, turning almost any matter it touches into more of itself. The ionizing radiation it gives off is lethal to all carbon based life, though any lifeforms mutated by Tiberium thrive in its presence. It grows by extracting the nutrients and minerals from the soil, leaving it a barren wasteland while the elements it leeches on become part of its crystal form. The minerals, like iron and copper, can be extracted from the Tiberium with a specific chemical process, making it a highly valuable, but also dangerous commodity.Tiberium can also appear in liquid form. While this takes many decades to appear naturally, chemical processing of Tiberium can yield its liquid state as a side product. Liquid Tiberium is highly unstable and can magnify the force of an explosive many times over. It can also function as a power source.

Gameplay design

For the average Factorio player Tiberium should act as both a blessing and a curse. The fact that it damages not only the player, but also any structures or vehicles, means that finding a Tiberium field on the map becomes a problem to be dealt with. Ignoring a Tiberium field for too long will result in being cut off from other resources, or losing room to expand all together. In the long run it has the potential to become even more dangerous than the biters when not adequately dealt with. The only real way to deal with the threat of Tiberium is to harvest it before it can surround you. Luckily there are ways to process Tiberium into something useful.

The industrial process is largely liquid based, and involves reclaiming the various different ores from the crystals, which can then be fed into the regular production chain. The side product, Tiberium Gas, is then used to produce Liquid Tiberium in the more advanced production chain.

Liquid Tiberium can be infused with existing power sources or weaponry to make them more powerful. The weaponry in particular is a double edged sword, as using any of the explosive weapons will seed a new Tiberium field at the point of impact that then has to be dealt with. This makes the weapons a poor choice to clear land for expansion, but a good choice to clear Tiberium Biter nests where Tiberium already exists.

End products always use their respective lower tier as an ingredient, and thus incorporate ore, oil and uranium production chains to get to the highest tier of Tiberium products.

Gameplay mechanics

Tiberium Crystals (ore)

• Ionizing radiation damages almost everything, including trees, biters, player, buildings, etc.
• To stay as true to the original concept as possible, Tiberium would have to be harvested with specialized vehicles from the Programmable Vehicles mod. For players who do not wish to use that mod there should be a setting to prevent Tiberium from damaging miners, belts or power poles. If the Programmable Vehicles mod is installed only those vehicles are immune to Tiberium damage.
• Requires a special type of miner that is built with steel instead of iron.
• Spreads slowly across the map. Each tile of Tiberium that has an empty tile next to it where it can spread has X% chance to spread there every minute. This means that Tiberium fields will grow faster the bigger they become.
• Destroys biter nests by proximity.
• Biters that create a new nest next to or on top of a Tiberium field will be changed to Tiberium Biters, who have more HP, do more damage and are not damaged by Tiberium.
• By default Tiberium will spread around existing resource fields without converting them. An optional setting could allow existing resource fields to be entirely converted for an increase in difficulty.
• The growth of Tiberium fields can be slowed with walls. The walls would first have to be destroyed by the Tiberium before it can grow further. There are no methods of stopping Tiberium spread entirely as that would defeat much of the risk vs reward balance of the mod, and would turn Tiberium into an overpowered super ore.
• Can ore be made to spread underneath an existing miner? If yes, a wall of miners would be a valid containment method. If no, a solution would be needed to prevent players from simply building a wall of miners to stop Tiberium from spreading.

Research & Tech

Basic Tiberium Processing
250 x Automation, Logistic, Chemical
Prereq: Chemical Science Pack

• Unlocks the Tiberium Miner to harvest Tiberium. 5 x Advanced Circuit, 5 x Iron Gear, 10 x Steel. Not damaged by Tiberium.
• Unlocks Basic Tiberium Processing recipe. Tiberium crystals are smelted into Tiberium sludge in a refinery. 100 x Tiberium Crystal + 100 x Steam = 100 x Tiberium Sludge (liquid – bright yellow).
• Unlocks Tiberium Extraction recipe. Tiberium sludge can be used in a Chemical Plant to extract the minerals and gasses. 100 x Tiberium Sludge + 100 x Acid = 40 x Iron Ore, 20 x Copper Ore 10 x Sulfur, 30 x Tiberium Gas (liquid – dark green).

Advanced Tiberium Processing
500 x Automation, Logistic, Chemical
Prereq: Basic Tiberium Processing.
Offers no use for Liquid Tiberium on its own, has to be paired primarily with nuclear tech.

• Unlocks Advanced Tiberium Processing recipe. Tiberium gas is compressed in a chemical plant to produce Liquid Tiberium. 300 x Tiberium Gas = 1 x Liquid Tiberium (liquid – very light green, glowing?).
• Crystal to Liquid ratio = 1000 crystals to make 1 unit Liquid Tiberium.

Liquid Tiberium Fuel
1000 x Automation, Logistic, Chemical, Production
Prereq: Kovarex Enrichment Process, Advanced Tiberium Processing

• Unlocks Liquid Tiberium Fuel. 10 x Liquid Tiberium + 1 Nuclear Fuel = Liquid Tiberium Fuel
• Liquid Tiberium Fuel functions as regular fuel and provides 2.5MJ of energy. 350% vehicle acceleration + 150% top speed.

Liquid Tiberium Fuel Cells
1000 x Automation, Logistic, Chemical, High Tech
Prerq: Uranium Processing, Advanced Tiberium Processing, High Tech science packs

• Unlocks Liquid Tiberium Fuel Cells. 100 x Liquid Tiberium + 10 x steel + 1 x Uranium Fuel Cell = Liquid Tiberium Fuel Cell.
• Liquid Tiberium Fuel Cells can be burned in a reactor and provides 32MJ of energy (burns for 800 seconds). Are there more interesting things to change other than burn time?
• Reactors using Liquid Tiberium Fuel Cells will spawn a small Tiberium field if they are destroyed (radius of 10 tiles).

Tiberium Weapons

Tiberium Ammo
1000 x Automation, Logistic, Military, Chemical, High Tech
Prereq: Uranium Ammo, Advanced Tiberium Processing

• 10 x Uranium Rounds Magazine + 1 x Liquid Tiberium = 10 x Tiberium Rounds Magazine. 56 damage (Explosive).
• 1 x Cannon Shell + 1 x Liquid Tiberium = 1 x Tiberium Cannon Shell. 350 damage (Explosive).
• 1 x Explosive Cannon Shell + 10 x Liquid Tiberium = 1 x Explosive Tiberium Cannon Shell. Has the destructive power of a small nuke. 400 damage (explosion). Area of effect: 20. Spawns a Tiberium field over a 10 tile radius.

Liquid Tiberium Artillery Shell
2000 x Automation, Logistic, Military, Chemical, High Tech
Prereq: Artillery, Advanced Tiberium Processing, Stronger Explosives 4

• 1 x Artillery Shell + 100 x Liquid Tiberium = 1 x Liquid Tiberium Artillery Shell. Exceeds a standard nuke in damage done. 400 damage (explosion). Area of effect: 40. Spawns a Tiberium field over a 30 tile radius.

Liquid Tiberium Missile
10.000 x Automation, Logistic, Military, Chemical, Production, High Tech
Prereq: Atomic Bomb, Advanced Tiberium Processing, Stronger Explosives 5

• 1 x Atomic Bomb + 1000 x Liquid Tiberium = 1 x Liquid Tiberium Missile. Does three times the area of effect damage of a regular nuke. 400 damage (explosion). Area of effect: 105. Spawns a Tiberium Field over an 80 tile radius.

Liquid Tiberium Warhead
10.000 x Automation, Logistic, Military, Chemical, Production, High Tech, Space
Prereq: Atomic Bomb, Advanced Tiberium Processing, Space Science Pack, Stronger Explosives 6

• 1 x Atomic Bomb + 10.000 x Liquid Tiberium = 1 x Liquid Tiberium Warhead.
• To be launched into orbit via rocket instead of satellite. Gives one launch beacon for remote targeting.
• Does ten times the area of effect damage of a regular nuke and seeds a massive field of Tiberium beyond the radius of the blast. 400 damage (explosion). Area of effect: 350. Spawns a Tiberium Field over a 400 tile radius.

That's it! I would love to hear some feedback on the idea and if someone likes it enough to actually make a working mod out of it you'd be amazing. Thanks for reading!

[kingarthur]

hmmmm....

tomorrow

[mrvn]

I'm assuming you can mine tiberium faster than it spreads. But then a wall of miners, assuming you use up all the mined crystals, would be possible. It would be required. How else do you stop tiberium from spreading.

I'm also assuming tiberium spreads inwards as well as outwards. Meaning the concentration in the middle of the field rises over time. This would make the center of a field harder to mine while the borders are quickly mined out.

Does a high concentration of timerium spread/grow faster than a low concentration? This could be used to offset a wall of miners. The crystals outside the miners reach would increase. They would then spread faster under the miner until such a point where the increase in new crystals is more than the miner removes. And if crystals remain below the miner they can spread until they tunneled below the miners. On the other hand this would make it impossible to remove a high enough concentration of tiberium at all. It would grow faster than you can mine it. Once even a single tile reaches that limit it spreads and can't be stopped. And this will happen rather quickly since a lot of ore fields will be outside the players base, even be invisible.

Maybe there should be a growing and a spreading component. You can't mine a heavy concentration of tiberium faster than it grows but you can mine it faster than it spreads. So the goal is to surround all tiberium fields with miners to stop them from spreading. At first fields will have a low enough concentration to be mined completely but further out fields will have reached a high enough concentration to be infinite.

But I fear the result will still be that the player is quickly surrounded by tiberium that can't be mined. Unless tiberium can't reach critical concentration everywhere.

[mmmPI]

I like the ideas, many of the devs have played some command and conquer game as they say in the FFF 300, I wouldn't be suprised if other member of the community share the same references maybe to the point where someone actually sink the time to mod something from it to put it in factorio

My 2 cents on the tiberium spreding comes from terraria, you have an ore there that convert mud into itself namely the chlorophyte, to prevent the world to completely be filled with this ore given very long time, there is a reduction in spread rate near zones that already contain lots of it.

This creates clusters, that when big enough takes so much time to further grows that they look stabilized.

That could be a mechanism to give the player a threat to be completely overrun by tiberium only in the beginning area and a radius around it, and when you reach far enough, the land would be a little easier to reclaim. To balance the fact that they will be more land to cover and give players a little incentive to adapt. The inner zones could be transformed into very fast spreading areas in little squares of miners with 1 tile never being mined in the middle so to "farm" them you would need to wait for the ore to grow and shape the area after it is everywhere.

And this would loose effienciency the further you are from the middle as some sort of inverse of the actual ore richness/size, the ore having a maximum spreading rate the further you are from the middle, you could imagine circle around it where you would need less and less modules in your miners to fight the spreading.

Maybe you woud find it more logical to have it the other around with the lower base spread rate near spawn and having it increase the further you go.

there was this mod at some point in the past : viewtopic.php?f=190&t=12747 maybe it helps

[TigerXtrm]

I'm also assuming tiberium spreads inwards as well as outwards. Meaning the concentration in the middle of the field rises over time. This would make the center of a field harder to mine while the borders are quickly mined out.

Maybe there should be a growing and a spreading component. You can't mine a heavy concentration of tiberium faster than it grows but you can mine it faster than it spreads. So the goal is to surround all tiberium fields with miners to stop them from spreading. At first fields will have a low enough concentration to be mined completely but further out fields will have reached a high enough concentration to be infinite.

I hadn't considered the option of the field growing inward as well, but that could be interesting. I think a single tile of crystals would then have to be hard capped to a certain number, possibly based on how far the field is from the center of the map. So a field near the center could have a tile cap of say 1000 units, but a field far away could have a tile cap of say 10.000. A tile could then be required to reach a certain percentage of its maximum before it is allowed to spread, meaning you can stop it from spreading if you are able to mine it fast enough (and by extension, process it fast enough).

I think it is important to give the player the ability to mine out even the largest of Tiberium fields, so ideally the growth/spread speed should be just slightly lower than the maximum possible mining speed per tile available in the base game. Or a tech to improve the mining speed of Tiberium so that dealing with large fields becomes feasible over time. 'Conquering' Tiberium should definitely be an optional goal in the late game, I think.

My 2 cents on the tiberium spreding comes from terraria, you have an ore there that convert mud into itself namely the chlorophyte, to prevent the world to completely be filled with this ore given very long time, there is a reduction in spread rate near zones that already contain lots of it.

This creates clusters, that when big enough takes so much time to further grows that they look stabilized.

This could be an interesting approach, though ideally two fields should be able to join up so there aren't little pathways between the fields, as that would kind of defeat the danger of the spreading in the first place. On the other hand it would be interesting to be in desperate need of clear land and having to navigate in between existing 'stable' Tiberium fields to expand your base, with the danger of Tiberium just outside the wall. It would entirely depend on how the reduction in spawn rate is balanced.

there was this mod at some point in the past : viewtopic.php?f=190&t=12747 maybe it helps

Damn, I'd almost call that a must have if it can be retrofitted for this mod. Cool!