Friday Facts #166 - Combat Revisit

[Avezo]

Why there are no rocket turrets anyway?

[Tekky]

I also have nominited Factorio for the "5 more minutes" nomination.

I am very pleased that the weapons are being rebalanced, because some weapons do indeed feel unbalanced.

However, anothing thing that has always disturbed me about combat is the respawn time of biters when attacking their nests.

When I first started playing Factorio (which was version 0.12, shortly after the Steam release), I tried to defeat biter bases in the early game by killing the defending biters with my car mounted machine gun while driving away from them with my car. However, this tactic did not work very well, because, by the time I had killed all the biters and had driven back to the biter base in order to attack its structures (worms and spawners), most of the biters had respawned already and I had to start all over again.

Therefore, I had the impression that I was not fighting the biters themselves, but rather their respawn time. This did not feel very immersive.

In my experience, the only way for me to effectively destroy biter bases is to outgun (and out-armor) the biters so much that you can attack their base directly and attack the spawners first. Due to the high respawn time, it does not make sense to attack the biters first. This is one of the (very few) things that I do not like about Factorio.

For this reason, I believe it may be appropriate to reduce the respawn time of biters, so that you can also destroy biter bases by killing all the biters first and only afterwards destroying the spawners. That way, a player would also not be so dependant on raw weapon and armor power. Instead, weapon and armor power would just make the job simpler.

Just my two cents.....

[Slayn25]

Things I like about the combat system:

• Tank combat in desert biome before Behemoth biters (Best stage IMO)
• Weapon variety (even if only some are viable)

Things I don't like about the combat system:

• Behemoth biters (I don't want them removed but they need to be tweaked. They are almost impossible to deal with without turrets or destroyer capsules)
• Destroyer bots have a self destruct timer
• Spawners spawn too quickly (No point in targeting biters/spitters 1st, must kite them and target spawners or worms then clean up later)
• No late game vehicular combat option
• Exploration is penalized by lack of reward plus extreme enemy density.

Suggestions:

• Nix combat bot capsules, just make them a class of bots like logistic or construction. (Can be used in roboports/personal roboports)
• MK2 & 3 Car & Tank. Vehicle modules.
• Make spawners harder to kill but spawn less frequently. They could house biters/spitters and when you attack an enemy base, enemies flood out until they are empty. (War of attrition actually viable option)
• Reduce enemy density and add rewards for exploration such as salvageable wrecks or survivors.
• Capsules more geared for utility than damage (Stun, Slow, Knockback, Zoning, Taunt)
• Weapons, ammo, & damage types/modifiers need rebalancing. (Obvious and vague I know but that topic requires a separate post.)

[mdqp]

Exploration is penalized by lack of reward plus extreme enemy density.

I think the lead designer said not too long ago he doesn't want to encourage exploration, which might very well be why their approach to combat is unsatisfactory to some of us.

[Undermind]

For me one of the biggest disappointment in this game was when I first researched combat robotics and instead of cool robots that semi-automatically kick biters asses I got some shitty drones flying with me. I don't want to run around spawners with machinegun and drones or siege them with turrets, that's boring. I want to send my robot army to clear area while I am continue to build base.

[Tekky]

I agree with many of Slayn25's suggestions on improving the combat system.

However, I'm not sure how easy they would be to implement. Does a mod maybe already exist that implements some of these suggestions?

[IronCartographer]

• No late game vehicular combat option
• Exploration is penalized by lack of reward plus extreme enemy density.

• Vehicle equipment grid support has been added and will no doubt be used in the base game.
• Exploration *is* rewarded if you establish distant, long-lasting (rich) resource outposts.

Nix combat bot capsules, just make them a class of bots like logistic or construction. (Can be used in roboports/personal roboports)

Combat bots have their own power source and do not interact with personal roboports or repair bots. They have much greater mobility in combat without burdening the player with their energy demands and the mess that automated repair would cause. Gameplay-wise, they make sense as consumables, though *adding* a higher-power/cost roboport combat unit (on par with a mobile turret; repairable) would be interesting, especially if players/modders wanted to/could implement flying/tunneling enemies (those masochists... ).

I want to send my robot army to clear area while I am continue to build base.

Agreed!

[bobingabout]

I was just thinking.... Finally, a news post that isn't telling me I have more work to do with me mods... then I realised. Combat reballance, I'll probably have to edit all the values of my ammos and weapons to reballance them too.

So... I'm saying it now. Bob's mods will take WEEKS to update to version 15, unlike the between "A couple of hours" to "A week" like previous updates. Some of them that have quite a lot of changes in could take a week just for that one mod.

[Andrzejef]

"turret creeping" = you don't bring guns and ammo, instead, you only bring laser turrets to destroy alien spawners.

(...)

thanks for clearing it up for me
In that case I can think of one good solution - object construction/deconstruction (as it shouldn't be limited to only construction time - that would be silly.) time (items take time to be placed and functional). That way you can't place turrets instantly, and so you'd be rendered defenseless for a duration, eye-deep in biters and their tender loving care
That could also work with other objects, eg. destroyed and reconstructed with robos

As for biters, I don't really fight them. Hell, if they want to cross my railroads at rush hours (so during almost entire time, really ), they are more than welcome
Unless they destroy my train. That would mean war.

I was just thinking.... Finally, a news post that isn't telling me I have more work to do with me mods... then I realised. Combat reballance, I'll probably have to edit all the values of my ammos and weapons to reballance them too.

Heh, tough luck

[marginoferror]

I think that while balancing weapons isn't a bad idea, it's not really top priority for me as I feel the bigger problem is that combat is repetitive and not interesting. Clearing bases can be fun the first few times but quickly becomes a chore. Building defenses, not as bad, but the attacks are repetitive and you have to build thin coverage of vast areas more or less manually if you need to expand your territory a lot.

I think there should be mechanisms to focus on decisive battles where the player is strongly encouraged to be present and active, and the AI will actively work to undermine defenses.

Trying to organize my thoughts on this, I came up with these ideas, though I know not everything is immediately feasible:

- Bases much more sparse, but tougher. Big waves very infrequent but stronger
- AI punishes carelessness with small scouting parties but won't test serious defenses, so less rote attrition and ignored alerts. (or if defenses are tested, maybe have weak construction robots earlier in the game so walls etc. can be maintained automatically)
- Player is encouraged to actively participate in big pushes (infrequent and less random -- for instance, a response to a major expansion, pollution spike, etc.). Pushes are dangerous unless the player is aware of them, so radar spots big pushes and alerts on them. Both player and AI have interesting tools to proactively deal with defenses throughout the game
- Alerts in general are smarter at warning the player when things are getting out of hand, but not bothering the player if things are totally under control
- Spawning at bases slows after attrition, and defenses (worms) are organized. So clearing bases becomes three distinct steps: deal with the biters and spitters. Deal with the worms. And then mop up (easy). For a really hard twist, the biters and spitters can stay in reserve and use the worms as cover.
- A way in early midgame (before robots) to bring industrial might to bear on clearing bases, if not via turret creep.

[vanatteveldt]

Here are my 2 eurocents:

- I think balancing hand weapons and drones are important, and each weapon should ideally have a role. In my latest games, I think I've only used bots and flamethrower on max biter settings.

- However, for me this is not primarily a combat game, so expanding and automating defenses should be less tedious. I got so bored with expansion and wall building that I just switched off biters in my current games. I think two mods offer some great ideas for this: ion cannons and robot armies. Some sort of 'pest control' like thumpers or repellants would also be great.

- Artillery trains with long range work great as a stand-in for ion cannons: if you set-up an 'artillery train' to visit your outposts, shell the new expansions, and come back to reload, that would be a great way to deal with biters while staying in the 'steam punk' vibe. Expanding while bot-building rails from an armoured train with artillery behind you also sounds like it would be fun

[- Nothing to do with combat, but a better way to automate outpost building would also be nice. You can blueprint rails and stations, but the ore patches have odd shapes, you need to balance/merge the ore, and you need to run belts from the ores to the station. The alternative is bot-based mining, but it feels like there should be a way to automate belt-based mining as well, or have some sort of dune-style harvester. Maybe a way to automatically route N-wide belts from point a to point B and/or a solution to balancing (like warehouses) would solve a lot of the tedium? ]

[IronCartographer]

Bases much more sparse, but tougher. Big waves very infrequent but stronger

Large attack waves are already limited by pathing system update time caps. You can see on a heavily polluted map when a large group will approach, then filter in gradually while the rest linger outside turret range. This may or may not change if they improve pathfinding efficiency.

Alerts in general are smarter at warning the player when things are getting out of hand, but not bothering the player if things are totally under control

It would be very nice if we could somehow see health bars of the entities being damaged in alerts! Plus some kind of log view...

Spawning at bases slows after attrition...

Several people have brought up this mechanic change, with spawners being less of an endless-stream of biters after they're depleted. Behemoth spawn rate during defensive phases was decreased in 0.13 because their high health pools made them such annoying damage sinks. I'm not sure if any tweaking is needed, but I agree with *consideration* of such tweaks...

[Drury]

To reiterate the point I've made several times before - you have to have different scenarios suitable for different weapons, not just balance the weapons relative to each other. There is no point in having 50 different weapons in the game that are all used the exact same way. Flamethrower is already kinda halfway there - it's decent for general combat, amazing for destroying spawners and worms. Keep it that way and perhaps make it a bit worse for direct combat, let the machine gun shine there. The player does have multiple gun slots, make it actually tactical to switch between them.

[Andrzejef]

To reiterate the point I've made several times before - you have to have different scenarios suitable for different weapons, not just balance the weapons relative to each other. There is no point in having 50 different weapons in the game that are all used the exact same way. Flamethrower is already kinda halfway there - it's decent for general combat, amazing for destroying spawners and worms. Keep it that way and perhaps make it a bit worse for direct combat, let the machine gun shine there. The player does have multiple gun slots, make it actually tactical to switch between them.

Second this - machine gun for general range, shotgun for close and personal situations, flamethrower for ereasing "stuff", rocket launchers for long-range high damage. And pistol and smg as the "decent, but not shining anywhere"

[gepwin]

With nuclear power coming to the game I would like to see a late game nuke, eater hand held missile type weapon or something you launch like the rocket. Late game I want to have the option of using a large amount of recesses to make something that can take out large biter nests with almost no effort. If you spent the time and production you should be able to make super weapons.

[Malachite]

I haven't played with biters in hundreds of hours, instead using a mod that gives me alien artifacts separately. Even if combat was changed / balanced, I don't see any reason why I would play with them anyway. The fact is, there's no automated way of dealing damage to biters offensively.

Gimme a mortar / long range rockets / artillery and make the ammo expensive and i'd be all for it.

[Stevepunk]

Turret creeping is currently a required strategy if you play on the hardest difficulty and there is a giant worm on top of every oil source. You don't have access to lasers, tanks, auto shotguns or armor piercing shotgun shells. The only method I've discovered to deal with endgame worms pre-oil is to turret creep with machine gun turrets, and a belt supplying armor piercing ammo.

Every other tactic I tried was ineffective and the worms could destroy me in 2-3 hits with the armor that was available at that point in the game (and their missiles unfairly home in non you even if you were out of range when they struck). All weapons are useless. Grenades are useless.

Even laser turret creeping is a good midgame strategy but it can't beat the endgame strategy of stacking robot legs and shields and running circles around enemies with the combat shotgun and armor piercing ammo. This is the real endgame, not laser turrets (though sometimes one will need to retreat with a train of mobs and turrets still do come in handy then).

As far as enemy spawning goes I want a constant stream of enemies from the beginning that ramps up over time (perhaps even with larger attacks at night).
I tried making some youtube videos but I had to cut out a lot of the start because there were no attacks for the first hour or so even on the hardest difficulty. The biter nests were just too far away even though I set the starting area to Tiny.

It should be like the story missions where you get 1 weak one at the start, then 2-3, a few times then 5-6, etc. If people want peace for the first hour they can change the options to spawn enemies further away but for those of us that want to have an exciting game there should be an option to have constant battles from the beginning.

Even in minecraft there's potential to die on the first day from a creeper or on the first night from zombies and skeletons. Why is minecraft a harder game than Factorio?


However, there is a deeper issue. Combat is not fun. There are exactly 2 enemy types and they both spawn from nests which both die from a couple of shotgun bursts each. It's fun for the first 5 mins to run circles around the enemies and destroy their nests in a couple of hits but them becomes really tedious.


Also, the only reason you need to clear them out is for more resources which is part of a larger problem again. Exploration is just not interesting. There are no points of interest, only coal, iron, copper and oil (and water). Where are the ruins of past outposts or other junk that has crash landed on this planet? Where are the rival races that have set up here to mine x resource exclusive/abundant on this planet. Where are the religious zealots that have been here for a million years protecting x resource or worshipping the biters as their gods?
Where are the different biomes that have different resources? (instead of desert that just has a tree retexture)
Where are the rare resources that are small in supply but give special bonuses and are unique to a particular biome?
Where is the ancient technology?
Where are the neutral research stations that will update your map and possibly give you 50% progress towards an early tech? (you also need to remember tech research progress which you currently don't do - this is especially true on multiplayer where people will change techs frequently)
Or how about the bases of a ruthless AI that uses the flying bots and laser turrets against you?

If there was a reason behind combat and a varied set of targets, locations and resources beside clearing out biter nests from the 166th copper field then the combat would be much more exciting. For the most part you can work with what you've got to create enemy/neutral bases and ruined outposts as the game already includes all of the required infrastructure (including wreckage).

But a few extra biomes and special limited resources as well as other points of interest would go a long way to giving players a reason to explore this infinite world as its currently going to waste.

It is infinite but it's also very empty and shallow.

[Xuerian]

Things I like about the combat system:

Great post.

Game progression separate from combat

I don't play on peaceful, but I know plenty of people do. I think Aliens should drop useful things (What exactly could be the subject of another big thread), but it shouldn't be core to launching the rocket.
Apparently this is already addressed in 0.15, but now they just don't drop anything, which makes them even less meaningful.

Issues in combat arising from technical limitations

I think pathing is the elephant in the room here, leading to lame-feeling attacks by enemies.

It seems like spawning enemies the way the game does is necessary to make attacks feel threatening with this problem. Figuring out a solution that lets aliens attack together or more intelligently could go a long ways toward improving this without making them do any more damage.

An example of this: https://mods.factorio.com/mods/Veden/Rampant

A separate issue here is the lack of latency compensation on vehicle movement and combat actions. I know this is a very hard subject, but it's an unfortunate reality and needs to be dealt with for multiplayer.
A lot of the game has been improved here since 0.12, and I look forward to any improvements.

Arbitrary evolution progression

There's no good way without mods for someone (like me) who wants excess combat to primarily be a consequence of sloppy gameplay, since evolution only goes up, and since time makes it go up, even if pollution is kept away from any alien bases and no exterminatus conducted. Mods can address this, and that's fine with me, but it does seem like an area where the base game can improve.

Clearing nests on resources

This is probably the biggest driver of "Turret creep", and I'd rather address the cause than the symptom. Something like fragile artillery with a slightly longer range than any spitter (including Bob's behemoths) that attracts any nearby aliens when fired and uses relatively expensive ammo could be an improvement to this situation by providing a moderately involved way to tackle the same issue. It's also a common suggestion already.

[Pe334]

I was just thinking.... Finally, a news post that isn't telling me I have more work to do with me mods... then I realised. Combat reballance, I'll probably have to edit all the values of my ammos and weapons to reballance them too.

So... I'm saying it now. Bob's mods will take WEEKS to update to version 15, unlike the between "A couple of hours" to "A week" like previous updates. Some of them that have quite a lot of changes in could take a week just for that one mod.

If you need 3 month than take this time.
For me your together with Angle-Mods it tooks me 120h of gameplay, 120h I like to Play this game, 120h of the best gameplay I have had (I'm 50 years old ) and I have played a lot of games in my life!

I think it is hard to be a Modder in a game that is in development, but the mod-scene keeps such a game alive when you have finished it 3 or 10 times in vanilla (like me).

I'm not the best Player or the fastest Player, but I love your mod and the work that is behind it !!!

Please keep on Bob, I love the changes in the game that will come and I like to play your Mod, this combination is the best I ever played!

Pe334 (sorry for my english if you don't understand it )

[Andrzejef]

(...) The fact is, there's no automated way of dealing damage to biters offensively.

Gimme a mortar / long range rockets / artillery and make the ammo expensive and i'd be all for it.

The point is, mortars/artillery/LRMs only increase the range, and other than that they don't differ from ordinary turrets. In longer run, that would change nothing.
Super weapons, on the other hand - I've said it too many times, the rocket silo is gathering dust being useless, it's a time long past due to change that
They however should only be launched manually, possibly from convienent button on HUD display, or maybe via map, so you can estimate the aftermath on the fly.