Friday Facts #427 - Combat Balancing & Space Age LAN

[Ranakastrasz]

The biggest thing I feel is that a more automated combat system, before robots, spidertrons, or artillery is available. The pollution constraining your growth is very good but the combat really should be significantly more hands off.


Also, turrets shouldn't get double bonuses from upgrades.

[Tsuranuki]

I was a bit taken aback by this, but I guess what you're saying is:

• Destroyed rocks won't drop stone.
• But mined rocks (and deconstructed rocks) still will.

This makes sense in the context of the game, as destroyed trees don't drop wood and destroyed cliffs don't drop anything.

Yes exactly, mining them (by hand or with robots) still gives the stone

I can see how not everyone likes the stone poop, however I'd make it a map option instead of just removing it outright. At the same time I'd probably add options for trees dropping wood as well.

Large Rocks are (were?) also the only remaining entity in the base game using the loot system.

[pleegwat]

I was a bit taken aback by this, but I guess what you're saying is:

• Destroyed rocks won't drop stone.
• But mined rocks (and deconstructed rocks) still will.

This makes sense in the context of the game, as destroyed trees don't drop wood and destroyed cliffs don't drop anything.

Yes exactly, mining them (by hand or with robots) still gives the stone

I can see how not everyone likes the stone poop, however I'd make it a map option instead of just removing it outright. At the same time I'd probably add options for trees dropping wood as well.

Only if blown up of course; if they're burned down they should yield ash. </troll>

I'm sure they'll keep the loot system so it can be re-enabled with a mod.

[Chumfactor]

Just one man's [possibly unpopular] opinion:

While the impact is minor ("trivial"?), I thought that boulders dropping stones added a neat bit of personality to the game, and I enjoyed dealing with it in my various factories.

IMO, removing this feature costs the game a teeny-tiny slice of its humanity, its soul.

I'm still buying Space Age, one way or another, but I'll likely enjoy it 0.5% less without the little rock-droppings.

#itsTheLittleThings

[BraveCaperCat]

When you talked about a LAN game, in Space Age with members of the community and fans, I felt left out. Then I realized that it's a LAN game. Then I felt disappointed and left out. Then I remembered that Space Age is coming out in a few weeks, and that didn't change how I felt.

[Byrnorthil]

When you need to clear lots and lots of nests, requiring zero brainpower to use is probably a good thing. I just need land and resources so I can go back to building the base. Factorio, especially at the endgame isn't some riveting combat simulator, it's not even an RTS.

I think that endgame combat should be fairly effortless because nest density goes way up, and amount of land you need also increases drastically. If it requires too much effort, it really just gets in a way of building whatever project you need rather than helping your game experience.

Quite frankly current PLD is not even the best solution for that, as it's still pretty "hands-on" way of clearing nests, unless you build a massive spider army, but at that point I'm not even sure it should be considered that "OP", as it's quite an investment.

I actually don't disagree, endgame combat should be easy, dare I say semi-automated, but that's why we have spidertrons and artillery. The nerf (the whole changelist really) is, I think, targeted much more towards the mid-game (devs mentioned tank combat specifically), when the biters should theoretically still pose some manageable level of challenge. The endgame solutions actually do require some challenge, but it's logistical instead of technical (supplying your stuff), and it lets you approach Negotiation™ in a new and interesting way. 1.1 PLD, in contrast, just invalidates everything else at its tier by letting you do what you were already doing, but for free.

But this is exactly what I want. I want to invest zero brainpower, I just want to shoot enemies for the lulz. For entertainment, because shooting down stuff this way is relaxing and a nice change to the brainwork required for the real Factorio, the base building. I don't see enemies as challenge - they're entertainment. And they are obstacles you need to clean out, like rocks and cliffs and water. The game would be too bland without such things.

For the players who don't find clearing nests in early and mid-game fun (which I perfectly understand, despite enjoying it myself), you always have multiple options to make it easier for yourself. Combat robots, for instance, allow you to steamroll everything in basically the same way as PLD (and sooner too!), but require an actual investment to research and produce. Poison capsules and the rocket launcher can dispatch worms from outside of their range. And you can always just wait to clear nests until you've researched all the damage upgrades for your tier, which generally makes it pretty easy even without a strategy. Of course, there's always the option to tone down or outright remove the biters in the options. I don't think anyone's gonna judge you for not liking biters. I just think the combat system should be as balanced and engaging as possible for those who do want to get into it. Don't underestimate the motivational power of biters for new players, either. My brother and I both pushed through the pain of learning the game for the first time because we wanted cooler ways to kill those pesky biters, not because we wanted to build a huge base or to escape.

[morse]

I was wondering. Just a month and a half has left, not many FFFs before the release, but we never saw anything about this little guy.
What's his story? Did he not make it past the prototyping stage, or is he going to be our secret final boss?

[KeithFromCanada]

I hope y'all really enjoy yourselves this weekend!

Some thoughts:

1. One easy way to make biter nests harder to crack would be to give them primitive static defences around the periphery of the nest. (Thickness increases with size of nest):
   1. Earthen berms - Can be (slowly) climbed/flown over, but direct-fire projectile weapons can't penetrate. Can be fairly easily destroyed with explosives/pickaxe/etc.
   2. Reinforced berms - like earthen berms, but much tougher.
   3. Earthern ramparts - not nearly as tough as reinforced berms, but can't be climbed over.
   4. Stone/chiton ramparts - like earthen ramparts, but much tougher, like the player's stone walls.
2. Add a remote control tool for drones that goes in a weapon slot, so players can direct them to specific locations/targets within a limited range. Players can then choose whether to leave them in guard mode while attacking with regular weapons or use them as their weapon.
3. Add an automatic 'AA' mode to spitters, where they fire much smaller blobs much more often to hit flying targets. The larger the spitter, the slower they fire, the more projectiles they fire, and the more those projectiles spread. i.e. small spitter = MG42, huge spitter = 88mm Flak
4. For the lasers, set them to use double the power of the original, then add a slider to the suit/laser UI to set the power used per shot. (power = damage) Players can then choose for themselves if they want a low-damage laser MG, a constant mid-power beam doing medium DoT, or a high-damage laser rail gun that can only fire every 5(?) seconds.
5. For the combat vehicles, I would strip out the pre-existing weapons and add a grid where regular turrets can be placed. That way, players could fit an MG turret OR laser turret into the 2x3 grid of their car while adding two rocket turrets to their tank. (I would have MG, flamethrower, & laser turrets scaled to be 2x2, while rocket and cannon turrets are 3x3. The additional space could be used for ammo/fuel/energy storage) I would also add other options like a radar turret and drone launcher. (Having both would allow flying drones with much greater range.)

Cheers!

[Jerrybubbles]

What's his story?

bet all my iron gears it's an aquilo enemy

[KeithFromCanada]

The biggest thing I feel is that a more automated combat system, before robots, spidertrons, or artillery is available. The pollution constraining your growth is very good but the combat really should be significantly more hands off.


Also, turrets shouldn't get double bonuses from upgrades.

Have you checked out the 'Robot Army' mod? That works pretty well and sounds like what you want.

[XT-248]

I am going to go through the various changes one by one.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So we have added the feature to spawners that their health will increase as evolution factor goes up:

From 350 health at 0% evolution factor, rising up to 3,500 health at 100% evolution factor. This makes them feel more in-line with the power of the player, and prevents them being entirely too squishy.

Biter Bases were always somewhat squishy. I suppose I can learn to live with this change.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

At the same time we made a few other tweaks related to biter bases:

Spawners - Removed the 15% explosion resistance
Medium/Big/Behemoth Worms - Increased health and laser resistance
Artillery - damage has been doubled.

I occasionally use explosion damage (primarily rocket on the offensive) to clear out biter nests, but I will not notice a difference in a meaningful way.

How much of an increase is there in the worm's health? Compared to the spawner nest (+700%)?

What would be the maximum laser resistance? It matters when combined with reducing base damage for personal laser modules.

I usually only use Artillery if the nest/biter/worm density is too high, not because I need to hit them hard. Doubling the damage per hit artillery round hardly encourages me to use it in a typical game (IE, non-deathworld).

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Combat robots were a little bit too weak, especially given how expensive they were. It is a shame because the automation of the flying combat robots is a fairly interesting set of recipes, so we buffed them a little bit:

Distractor - Doubled health (90 -> 180), increased life time (45s -> 90s)
Destroyer - Increased base damage (10 -> 20), increased range (15 -> 20)

No problem with those changes. Follower Robots always felt a bit underpowered.

I will likely still don't use them once those changes go live. They just don't fit my preferred method of clearing hostile fauna.


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Personal lasers - We found them to be too strong (especially as you can have multiple), so we nerfed their damage by 66%.

Oof. This single line is a spicy change to Personal lasers (PLDs - personal laser defense).


People are right to point out that quality is supposed to be optional in mechanics.

Yet, at the same time, I can't justify a dramatic reduction in damage without utilizing a bigger equipment slot (higher quality version of Spidertron), the new Fusion module that gives out 6.25 MW (from https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-420), and whatever quality bonus is given to PLD modules themselves. The existence of a reduction in laser damage strongly encourages players to 'opt-in' to quality to counter the non-trivial reduction in laser base damage.


I would argue that a softer trade-off approach would land better with the wider Factorio communities. I have talked with many people within the Factorio community who think that laser-turrets/PLDs are already too expensive and not worth it (relative to flamethrower turrets, which needed some form of nerf a decade ago). The changes to PLD baseline damage play right into their mentality, and those people might push the value of laser/energy weapons down to below useless on the offensive. They likely won't use any laser/tesla turrets or PLDs for either defensive or offensive. Especially double when the alternative is cheaper material-wise or less intense energy demand-wise.


IE: Make the personal laser defense module shoot 66% slower but have three 'laser shots' in each firing round, which makes the energy demand harder to sustain. 3x laser shot every 4.5 seconds (baseline) and costs three times more energy to fire (going from 75 kW per second to 225 kW per second baseline). Besides, the laser shooting speed research dramatically impacts the energy needed to fire, which may not be the best solution.

The above is just an alternative balance example for PLD and can undoubtedly be justified due to the existence of a new Fusion Reactor that yields between 2.5 MW (Q1) and 6.25 MW (Q5) in late-game.


In practice, I think a combination* approach is better as opposed to a straight reduction to the base laser damage for a PLD.

Combination* includes but is not limited to increasing the number of laser shots ensuring a higher energy demand, lowering the reduction of laser damage from 66%, increasing the build cost, and expanding the equipment size (from 2 by 2 to 2 by 3, like an exoskeleton walker, tweaking the energy need to fire a single shot, etc.


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Cannon shells - Increased damage and range.

I don't use cannon shells that much.

Increasing the damage and range for cannon shells is not going to change the fact that the vehicle/tank itself is difficult to drive from a Factorio perspective, moves too slow compared to "Armor + Exoskeleton," the fact that "SpiderTron" walking over other objects ensure smooth movement, the tank vehicle itself has too many weapons but only one can be used at once (machine gun, cannon, and flamer), and is only useful as a temporary vehicle in-between Car and late-game options progression wise.


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Shotgun shells - Increased base damage (5 -> 8)

Hmm.

I have to play around with this change before making a decision.

The few occasions I found shotgun useful have almost always been with mods that make the military rifle harder to get in the early game or make shotgun fill a different niche (much like Tesla Turret vs. Laser Turret). Maybe the shotgun will be better in the early game for a bit longer.

I have to play around with it before making a decision.


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Rockets - Accelerate 2x faster

Rockets that move faster are perfect for non-explosive rockets, but not so much when I use a group/squadron of Spidertron and explosive rockets (friendly fire from other Spidertron on biters in melee/point-blank range).


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We also changed a few things with offensive player combat, nothing in particular, just trying to make it more fun:

So there is nothing too groundbreaking, but we hope over time we are moving towards a better place.

I would have to play around a bit more for most of the less impactful tweaks.


The PLD change alone is one of the most impactful changes to my personal offensive player combat preference, adding on top of a non-zero laser resistance for worms and higher worm health. I would have to re-think how I would still use Spidertron and PLDs, if possible, in non-modified Factorio with/without Space Age.

I think it is also possible to have fun making an offensive squadron that emphatically ignores logistics (rockets, etc.) and clears out entire areas of local fauna.


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It is actually, believe it or not, a feature! When a rock is destroyed, it spills some stone on the ground as loot.

Please clean it up (like how a deconstruction planner's option to pick up items on the ground) instead of removing the stones. Make items on the ground be marked for pick up when placing a new blueprint and an opt-in option.

So I can then use excess stones to grow the factory.


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Space Age LAN Party

I am awaiting more details on Space Age content.

[Foeglas]

PLDs are too strong early and midgame, but also mechanically disadvantaged "lategame" (defined here as many hours spent clearing a sea of red to make room for a megabase and its pollution cloud). They lack AoE (area of effect), their damage falls off vs behemoths, and although they technically scale via spidertron armies, rockets steal all their targets. The nerf to early and midgame is deserved, but a lategame buff also feels appropriate (e.g. fixing the target stealing).

Cannons are mechanically disadvantaged all game long. The projectile and tracking speed is so slow that many people cannot hit moving enemies. More range will help with sieging immobile worms and spawners. But aiming will still be the last straw for players who already struggle with WASD keyboard driving in Factorio (viewtopic.php?t=108701). (Controller driving behavior: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/DMV_Direc ... t_Vehicles). Cannons also lack a lategame role since turrets and spidertrons cannot fire them.

Combat robots are weak or unavailable early game, research-dependent midgame, and mechanically disadvantaged lategame. It takes too long for their mandatory upgrades (physical projectile damage, weapon shooting speed, and follower count) to come online. They also lack AoE and cannot be scaled with automation (like gun turrets and non-explosive rocket spidertrons) for lategame. Stat buffs don't address these issues, but the unmentioned Defender could use one (or a higher base follower count), since its main purpose is dealing damage - at a time when players are least likely to have accumulated many upgrades. Their one early advantage is iron efficiency vs actually shooting magazines, but this is invisible during combat. Meanwhile the visibly increased damage of piercing magazines makes them popular despite attracting more enemies via pollution than they kill, because this disadvantage is invisible in the short term.

Shotgun shells really need the damage buff as they feel overly restricted to the role of early game spawner chip damage. This is currently outclassed by Chemical science weapons like explosive rockets and cannon shells that can 1-shot spawners and are effective vs moving enemies. For this reason the unmentioned piercing shotgun shells and combat shotgun currently feel more appropriate for Military science than any later science. Even modded Uranium shotgun shells (https://mods.factorio.com/mod/uranium-s ... ll-tweaked) feel worse than vanilla explosive rockets or cannon shells (compare weapons slot for slot with this mod: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/SpidertronWeaponSwitcher). And like cannons and combat bots, both types of shotgun shells lack a turret or vehicle-mounted weapon for lategame use.

The unmentioned flamethrower turret is cheap, has AoE, and deals enough damage to raise questions. Should the "flame pool" easily kill enemies at every evolution? Should 1 turret type be viable for the entire game (assuming most players don't play to behemoth evolution)? If the answer to either is "no", they could be nerfed by reducing flame pool DoT (damage over time), increasing flamethrower fluid consumption, reducing flamethrower tracking speed (they only really struggle to track behemoths), or even giving turrets the tank flamethrower.

The rock change is very welcome. I've considered installing a loot-gathering mod just for this edge case.

[GregoriusT]

I did notice the Defender Capsules NOT being buffed unlike the other Bots, which strongly indicates the Devs do have some sense of Balance because Defender Capsules are OP as fuck when attacking nests early on, while the Distractor Capsules are decent but not good enough in current Factorio so they definitely needed a buff.

With the Space Expansion and Quality I am no longer worried about the Personal Laser Defense nerf, however I am worried that nerf carries over to the Base Game still.

[JCav]

"Did the little stone poops make the game fun? Is rock droppings a core part of the game design?"

I have not posted in quite some time, and probably will not play again until the DLC comes out and I spend another 1000 hours creating automation.

I would like to comment that I actually appreciated the destroyed rocks giving stone. I found it a convenient way to acquire materials.

[sethbreloom94]

Personal lasers - We found them to be too strong (especially as you can have multiple), so we nerfed their damage by 66%.

I'm sorry, but I just do not like the 66% reduction to Personal Laser Defense. 30%-40% I could tolerate, but 1/3 the old damage? Lasers taking 3x longer to finish off enemies is a HUGE change, and I don't think it solves any problems. Late-game Spidertrons can still stack Laser Defense by building another Spidertron, but Power Armor is made much worse because there's no longer "generalist" armor with 1 PLD and 1 Roboport with a few other gadgets. There's armor with 3-5 lasers, or armor that doesn't help in combat at all.

Imagine if they said "Hey! Roboports now only allow 5 robots per port, but it's okay because you can stack them and Legendary will make it better." People would just give up on Power Armor and wait for Spidertrons to build everything.

If they really want to fix it, they should make a special version of Personal Laser Defense that only works in player armor and not in Spidertrons. That would make it hard to stack while still allowing the player to protect themselves.

During one of our playtestings we actually underestimated them a little bit, and were pleasantly surprised when the mid-game nests were giving our tanks some trouble instead of being steam-rolled like before.

That's understandable, but the tank being able to steamroll nests is part of what made it a solid mid-game option to begin with. With these changes I might just wait for a Spidertron to deal with nests. The car was never really made dealing with nests easier, and the tank falls off once the Spidertron is made. Could we maybe get something that's manual but has some oomph to it, like an upgradeable Tank with equipment modules?

Medium/Big/Behemoth Worms - Increased health and laser resistance

You're buffing Mediums, too? If you're going to do that, can you increase the damage done by poison capsules?
Speaking of which, capsules really could use a good buff, most notably Slowdown Capsules.

[adam_bise]

Shotguns, Cannon shells, rockets, and combat robots have been needing a bump for ages, especially shotguns. Glad to see personal lasers nerfed as well. Thanks for this.

I never did like evolution factor. I wish evolution factor was removed and pollution used instead.

I also think spawners absorb too much pollution by default, and the diffusion ratio is slightly too slow. These cause a situation where only biters in the first ring of nests around your base attack you. And even if you intentionally make rediculous amounts of pollution, it doesn't spread beyond maybe the first one or two ring of nests.

Pretty sure it's working as intended? The number of biters spawned is directly tied to the amount of pollution absorbed; it doesn't matter whether the pollution is absorbed by 1 nest or 10. (Biter bases "spend" pollution to summon biters: https://wiki.factorio.com/Pollution). If spawners absorbed less pollution that'd be strictly better for the player, as each chunk pollution travels also absorbs pollution, but without any biters.

Pollution is part of the evolution factor, just not the main one (in most cases).

I guess what I'm trying to say is, and I could be wrong about this, but there seems to be a ceiling of pollution per chunk. When I tweak map settings to make biter nests as close together as possible, intentionally not destroy surrounding nests, and then intentionally make as much pollution as I can in an effort to try to get overrun while playing with defense wall designs, I've found that the pollution never seems to extend beyond the first one or two ring of biter nests surrounding my base. The result was very underwhelming.

Ideally, I wanted the pollution to spread out much further and attract many times more biters than it was. But when I tried, the pollution always seemed to be sucked right up by the first ring of biter nests and the nests behind them were not contributing to attacks. In my head, I wanted to achieve old school Gauntlet levels of biters around my base where there are literally so many of them that they form a wall of biters around my base lol

How much pollution is absorbed by spawners? Can this be changed in a mod?

Regarding evolution, I mean I wish the tier of biters you get was based on the amount of pollution in a chunk and not the evolution factor. But I don't know how to test this or even if it would be viable or doable via mods

[Byrnorthil]

Shotguns, Cannon shells, rockets, and combat robots have been needing a bump for ages, especially shotguns. Glad to see personal lasers nerfed as well. Thanks for this.

I never did like evolution factor. I wish evolution factor was removed and pollution used instead.

I also think spawners absorb too much pollution by default, and the diffusion ratio is slightly too slow. These cause a situation where only biters in the first ring of nests around your base attack you. And even if you intentionally make rediculous amounts of pollution, it doesn't spread beyond maybe the first one or two ring of nests.

Pretty sure it's working as intended? The number of biters spawned is directly tied to the amount of pollution absorbed; it doesn't matter whether the pollution is absorbed by 1 nest or 10. (Biter bases "spend" pollution to summon biters: https://wiki.factorio.com/Pollution). If spawners absorbed less pollution that'd be strictly better for the player, as each chunk pollution travels also absorbs pollution, but without any biters.

Pollution is part of the evolution factor, just not the main one (in most cases).

I guess what I'm trying to say is, and I could be wrong about this, but there seems to be a ceiling of pollution per chunk. When I tweak map settings to make biter nests as close together as possible, intentionally not destroy surrounding nests, and then intentionally make as much pollution as I can in an effort to try to get overrun while playing with defense wall designs, I've found that the pollution never seems to extend beyond the first one or two ring of biter nests surrounding my base. The result was very underwhelming.

Ideally, I wanted the pollution to spread out much further and attract many times more biters than it was. But when I tried, the pollution always seemed to be sucked right up by the first ring of biter nests and the nests behind them were not contributing to attacks. In my head, I wanted to achieve old school Gauntlet levels of biters around my base where there are literally so many of them that they form a wall of biters around my base lol

How much pollution is absorbed by spawners? Can this be changed in a mod?

Regarding evolution, I mean I wish the tier of biters you get was based on the amount of pollution in a chunk and not the evolution factor. But I don't know how to test this or even if it would be viable or doable via mods

Not necessary to install a mod, just change the "Attack cost modifier" under advanced settings when creating a world, or use console commands. Lower modifier will mean less pollution per biter and therefore more biters. You may also be interesteed in the Deathworld preset.

09-07-2024, 02-09-12.png (130.28 KiB) Viewed 1811 times

[Hantu]

It's been awhile since I've started a map with biters on, but I had been thinking of playing default settings for my first SA factory. While FFFs can't provide a comprehensive view into the expansion, with what we've seen so far these changes sound like they're going to exacerbate everything that motivated me to turn biters off in the first place.

[rdragonrydr]

I'll admit I'm something of a "casual" player... I've got quite a few tiers of infinite research, but it's slow going because my factory expansion is, eh... not so good.
I don't want to turn off biters, they're a part of the game, but this sounds like they're getting a bit too powerful for my playstyle.

I like the stronger spawners, but a good enemy cluster can usually kill me before I can kill them as it is now. That includes my laser defense acting as additional DPS for close up while I carpet bomb with explosive rockets! And I'm using like 8 or 9 shield modules (exact numbers uncertain because Intel and my PC being down for maintenance right now...).

I was also defending my base solely with laser turrets (I'd rather use my oil to fuel space science since my map is a bit low on that), so this is not a friendly change to wake up to.

Well, I *do* like that the combat robots are better, but I'm still not sure they're worth it. They're quite expensive and this doesn't completely fix the issue.

The part I don't like about combat robots is the part where I have to travel between biter bases. Between the deployment time of a good swarm (really, change this and I'd almost be happy, it's more time on both my and their clocks) and all the walking to the next base, I usually see them self-destruct after not very much assisting has happened.

Considering how many construction robots I already (also) go through once spitters start getting through my spiderbot shields (side note: that could use a bit more of a time delay - I can lose a stack of construction robots in a few seconds since they keep deploying every few ticks right into enemy fire when trying to repair it).

Perhaps the combat robots could take damage but not have a life timer?

Or use ammo so they only consume their active time while in combat? The self-destruct could then be either a (self-resetting) minimum time OUT of combat or an explosive dive-bomb onto an enemy when they run out of ammo.

I apologize if I copied someone else's idea by accident, there are way too many posts for me to read most of them already.

[spacedog]

FWIW, I use PLDs for accessibility reasons, as the manually fired weapons are too hard to use.

I totally understand that legendary PLDs in legendary armor would be game-breakingly OP, so something does need to be done about that. But on the flipside, this change basically requires people to go all-in on quality production to get back to the same effectiveness as before. That goes a bit against the whole "quality is optional" promise. Still digesting how I feel about that.

I also understand that PLDs make PvP a lot less interesting.

I'm glad both of these issues are getting some attention, but this feels like a pretty lazy way to solve it.