Friday Facts #268 - The modern Biter

[5thHorseman]

they don't expand to starting area, but they will still attack it, when pollution hit's them, unless you turn aggression off.

So if you start the most ruthless game you possibly can and then stand still forever, you'll never die?

[mexmer]

they don't expand to starting area, but they will still attack it, when pollution hit's them, unless you turn aggression off.

So if you start the most ruthless game you possibly can and then stand still forever, you'll never die?

if you start ruthless game, you will die, because they will eventually overrun your base.

by not "expanding" into start area is only meant, they will not build nest there (ground worms will also not spawn inside start area), but pollution always triggers aggression and you presence near them too.

also mind, while they will not make nest inside start area, migration path still might be trough start area, so even if you just sit there, doing nothing (and making no pollution), they will eventually pass by and attack you.

[eradicator]

they don't expand to starting area, but they will still attack it, when pollution hit's them, unless you turn aggression off.

So if you start the most ruthless game you possibly can and then stand still forever, you'll never die?

That is corret. As long as no pollution ever reaches them - i.e. by not building a factory - they will never attack you. I confirmed this by cranking all settings up to 11 and then using /c game.speed = 1000. After 30 hours i was still standing still.

[mexmer]

they don't expand to starting area, but they will still attack it, when pollution hit's them, unless you turn aggression off.

So if you start the most ruthless game you possibly can and then stand still forever, you'll never die?

That is corret. As long as no pollution ever reaches them - i.e. by not building a factory - they will never attack you. I confirmed this by cranking all settings up to 11 and then using /c game.speed = 1000. After 30 hours i was still standing still.

Thanks for correction, i always thought they still can path trough (never checked with debug )

[Adil]

About those sidelegs. Does an entity that occurs in thousands need that much visual noise around itself? The blue biter running really fast on the gif image doesn't look nice.
As game currently plays, biters often end up bunching together in tight globs. Did you test how those crowds would look with new animations?
What about the renderer load? In some previous report you've been talking about how overlaid sprites are bad for performance. I would bet that these new legs will be overlaid by other biters all the time and they do look like they'd take up more pixels than old ones.

New face and the art picture looks nice though.

Random thought: they're called Biters, but their attack animation looks more like the mantis shrimp attack than the process of biting.

[GlorifiedToaster]

Am I the only one who wants to see more enemies than just biters? I mean, I understand that It would be difficult to add a few extra species, but when you think about it, biters currently are the dominant species wherever the player happens to be. They have no competition, which if you look into nature, isn't something that would naturally occur cause that shows intelligence that could rival a human, which I don't think would be seen in a biter. I get it, we should fix what we have before we get more, but when the day when you guys say the biters are completely finished, might you add a new species to see some more variation? Thank you for your time.

[Sir3n]

I think the biter looks unbalanced.

Based on body shape, its weight should be more towards the front, so it would look more natural with the legs positioned more towards the front.

[Koub]

Am I the only one who wants to see more enemies than just biters? I mean, I understand that It would be difficult to add a few extra species, but when you think about it, biters currently are the dominant species wherever the player happens to be. They have no competition, which if you look into nature, isn't something that would naturally occur cause that shows intelligence that could rival a human, which I don't think would be seen in a biter. I get it, we should fix what we have before we get more, but when the day when you guys say the biters are completely finished, might you add a new species to see some more variation? Thank you for your time.

Don't forget that this is not a survival game, or an ecosystem simulator. The biters are just there to provide an antagonist mechanism to the player's factory expansion.

[dood]

Am I the only one who wants to see more enemies than just biters?

Like what for example?
How would that change the interaction with enemies in a game in which they are mainly just warning messages, blips on the radar and in which it can take you 10 minutes to reach the point that has been attacked?

[mexmer]

Am I the only one who wants to see more enemies than just biters? I mean, I understand that It would be difficult to add a few extra species, but when you think about it, biters currently are the dominant species wherever the player happens to be. They have no competition, which if you look into nature, isn't something that would naturally occur cause that shows intelligence that could rival a human, which I don't think would be seen in a biter. I get it, we should fix what we have before we get more, but when the day when you guys say the biters are completely finished, might you add a new species to see some more variation? Thank you for your time.

yes, you are only one. if i wanted survival game i would play something else. for me bitters are just part of eco that is here to limit speed of your expansion. i play half time without bitters, when i have complex builds with complex mod and want to focus on actual building and not want to spent resources or time on dealing with those creatures.

[Deadly-Bagel]

Yeah, the basics are there. Tough melee brawlers, feeble ranged %&$!ers, slowly get more powerful until there's also a damage sponge.

I guess you could also add a "hunter" that doesn't care about pollution but that will try to kill the player on sight, but it would just make the game more annoying to play. Maybe if it only comes out at night? That way wandering at night without proper equipment would be more dangerous and you'd have to be more aware of the day-night cycle.

Other than that, enemy factions with some way of teasing them to attack each other instead of you, but that seems outside the game's scope.

Lastly, some kind of "boss" monster(s). Maybe one that wanders around the map aimlessly but is practically impossible to kill and destroys everything it happens to walk over (so is more like a natural disaster), might create some interesting puzzles. Some kind of "raid" that you have to fight your way through and then kill a big thing for... an endless mine or something? Nothing is really that valuable at endgame.

Overall, none of this really adds much to the game of "Factorio" which is focused on your factory. At best it gives you a better reason for having the factory, but munitions are (still) unbalanced and pretty cheap. Best done in mods and/or scenarios that rework the idea of the game to more survival/military based. Forget the artillery train, the only way to deploy (useful) turrets against one of these guys is via orbital drop.

It will be really cool to see what modders come up with after release.

[Tesse11ation]

Naturally, the more detailed any insect model gets, the more disturbing it's going to look. You can't really avoid that.

You are missing the part - despite quoting it - where I mentioned that real insects rarely bother me. Being more realistic is not likely to be the problem here.

We're getting into semantics now. My wording was detail, not realism. If you zoom in enough on any bug (even the cute ones), it will look more disturbing IMO.

On a side note, realism would be pretty subjective for a game like Factorio. It would depend entirely on the player's suspension of disbelief.

I hate to be that guy and say this, but I suppose if it REALLY bothers you that much, you could probably just turn biters off.

They are a core part of the gameplay. "Just turn them off" is actively unhelpful as a recommendation.

Yes, I agree, that was a stupid thing for me to say. On the other hand, maybe the devs will keep around low-res sprites for players who find the high-res biters disturbing, although that wouldn't be much of a solution either. Come to think of it, someone may have to mod less disturbing models in or something.

[ske]

Yes, I agree, that was a stupid thing for me to say. On the other hand, maybe the devs will keep around low-res sprites for players who find the high-res biters disturbing, although that wouldn't be much of a solution either. Come to think of it, someone may have to mod less disturbing models in or something.

There should be a mod that pixelates the icky bits.

[ttapada]

About those sidelegs. Does an entity that occurs in thousands need that much visual noise around itself? The blue biter running really fast on the gif image doesn't look nice.
As game currently plays, biters often end up bunching together in tight globs. Did you test how those crowds would look with new animations?
What about the renderer load? In some previous report you've been talking about how overlaid sprites are bad for performance. I would bet that these new legs will be overlaid by other biters all the time and they do look like they'd take up more pixels than old ones.

New face and the art picture looks nice though.

Random thought: they're called Biters, but their attack animation looks more like the mantis shrimp attack than the process of biting.

I thought of that too, worried that I am that my average grade laptop will soon run out of juice to cope with all of these visuals.

[ttapada]

Am I the only one who wants to see more enemies than just biters? I mean, I understand that It would be difficult to add a few extra species, but when you think about it, biters currently are the dominant species wherever the player happens to be. They have no competition, which if you look into nature, isn't something that would naturally occur cause that shows intelligence that could rival a human, which I don't think would be seen in a biter. I get it, we should fix what we have before we get more, but when the day when you guys say the biters are completely finished, might you add a new species to see some more variation? Thank you for your time.

Cool idea. +1 for that

[Creepopolous]

I hope they get idle animations. If you're really far away and see them in their natural habitat...
they do absolutely nothing. They stand completely still. Even them simply breathing or bobbing would be preferable to being statues.

[eradicator]

I hope they get idle animations. If you're really far away and see them in their natural habitat...
they do absolutely nothing. They stand completely still. Even them simply breathing or bobbing would be preferable to being statues.

I think that particular part of their lifecycle has been slaughtered on the sacrificial altar in honor of his majesty Yuu Peyes the Alaccellerating.

[Oktokolo]

I think that particular part of their lifecycle has been slaughtered on the sacrificial altar in honor of his majesty Yuu Peyes the Alaccellerating.

Of course would AI cost CPU time - but AI is relatively easy to parallelize and Factorio can't currently fully utilize 8 hyperthreads / 4 cores (wich i consider to be mainstream now). So additional biter AI could come for free (almost as Factorio still needs to get events to the AI and results to the renderer).
The reason to not improve biter AI for 0.17 is probably a todo list overflow.

[ratchetfreak]

I think that particular part of their lifecycle has been slaughtered on the sacrificial altar in honor of his majesty Yuu Peyes the Alaccellerating.

Of course would AI cost CPU time - but AI is relatively easy to parallelize and Factorio can't currently fully utilize 8 hyperthreads / 4 cores (wich i consider to be mainstream now). So additional biter AI could come for free (almost as Factorio still needs to get events to the AI and results to the renderer).
The reason to not improve biter AI for 0.17 is probably a todo list overflow.

You are forgetting the memory cost of accessing large swaths of the map to make your complex AI decisions.

Factorio is memory access bound.

[Philip017]

I still want to be able to make peace with them.

would be very interesting if we could make friends and have peace treaties with them so i could have some of their land and would use eff modules to keep pollution down, it would also be nice if i could plant trees and keep pollution down further to not disturb the locals. this way i am not destroying them to get them out of my way.

but, this really does seem like something for a mod scenario instead of vanilla.