Friday Facts #169 - Combat revisit 2

[Klonan]

https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-169

[IronCartographer]

In the end maybe your ingenuity and effort of building all those electric poles should be rewarded; If the player wants to do it that way, why not let him?

Turret creeping is clunky and will be avoided if there are better solutions. It sounds like things are well on their way to such a situation.

[malecord]

In the end maybe your ingenuity and effort of building all those electric poles should be rewarded; If the player wants to do it that way, why not let him?

This method is very powerful and usually doesn't cost anything.

[prg]

Still I am interested if any of you (the community members) had any different ideas about a 'Tower defense esque' level for the game.

[MOD 0.12.26] Tower Defense

[malecord]

On a side note: what is that yellow patch on bottom-right?

[IronCartographer]

On a side note: what is that yellow patch on bottom-right?

Check out the 'after' video: https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comme ... on_speeds/

[Snowf4ll]

Looks juicy <3

[malecord]

On a side note: what is that yellow patch on bottom-right?

Check out the 'after' video: https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comme ... on_speeds/

[Rhamphoryncus]

Sounds like you've got everything in hand! My only concern is it might be too easy to specialize your research and skip right to the end game, especially if you don't need to get any new materials (such as uranium ore).

[Rakshasa]

So near the end game, a rocket launcher will be better than the machine gun.

What is the definition of 'better'?

If you have plenty of oil then a rocket launcher is better, if you have very little oil then anything that is effective yet does not consume petroleum products is better.

[WBS]

I personally enjoy the turret creep strategy, so I don't think taking it out would be good idea. However, I understand that is a bit OP, but I think that is just because there seems to be only one dimension to the combat. Perhaps if you made a new alien type that was slower but had really long range, like an artillery unit. Then on the flip side, you can give the player the ability to create artillery towers too. That way if we try to creep up with turrets we have to keep the artillery units in mind.

[Savi-]

One idea to remove turret creep:

When picking up a tower, you get back the raw materials instead of the turret. That way you can't turret creep forever since you will run out of towers and have to construct them again in your inventory
This change won't affect your base defense that much unless you constantly want to switch places on turrets.

To balance this, build time of turrets can be adjusted.

The percentage of returned materials could also be adjusted. For example getting back 90% of the material cost would make base defense still viable but turret creep will now have an actual cost. The percentage of returned materials could be balanced to match the cost of ammo and combat bots.

[Mooncat]

Discharge defense equipment pushes back, stuns

New moddable API incoming!

There is also one thing that we always talked about trying to remove: turret-creep (destroying biters base building turrets closer and closer). This method is very powerful and usually doesn't cost anything. So far I believe that we did not find a simple, fun and fair solution.

I would vote for long turret activation time as mentioned in FFF #160, if it means the time after a turret is placed and before it can search for enemy and fire, not every time before it starts firing. In that case, this shouldn't affect normal base defense because the turrets are already there for some time and have been activated.
Implementing this behaviour will also allow modders to add super powerful turrets with extremely long activation time, like the super weapons in C&C games.

[Armentia]

When picking up a tower, you get back the raw materials instead of the turret.

That would probably just make early game more annoying, and lategame just carry more turrets.

I know it's not a number tweak, but my random idea would be adding a new mob/adding functionality to existing mobs. What if large worms could spawn new small worms as a combat tactic? Have a graphic on the ground showing the soil breaking up as a new worm is digging its way up, and then if there's anything on top when it breaks through it causes substantial damage? The player could walk off of it quickly enough, but turrets may get destroyed.

[viveks711]

May the one way to nerf turret creeping is to change the bitter attack AI.

If the biters AI figures that they are being attacked by turret creeping, take out the electric poles that is out of the range of laser turrets before attacking them.

I do agree that you should not change the base gameplay because of this attack mechanism:

[MrGrim]

I kind of like the idea of worms having an anti turret aspect. Immediately the Starcraft Lurker comes to mind..

0.15 can't come soon enough.. you folks are knocking it out of the park with this one!

[IronCartographer]

I personally enjoy the turret creep strategy, so I don't think taking it out would be good idea. However, I understand that is a bit OP, but I think that is just because there seems to be only one dimension to the combat. Perhaps if you made a new alien type that was slower but had really long range, like an artillery unit. Then on the flip side, you can give the player the ability to create artillery towers too. That way if we try to creep up with turrets we have to keep the artillery units in mind.

Maybe this is intended to address that:

Increased the damage, range and health of biters worms.

[malecord]

Maybe this is intended to address that:

Increased the damage, range and health of biters worms.

It could work if range is greatly increased (30-50%) and with an attack that one shots building

[chakrit]

So we'll be mining Uranium in 0.15?

[souel]

I suggest to add electric resistance to electric pole (or some kind of consumption). The further you go with the line, the more expansive is to do turret creeping with laser turrets.

Doing turret creeping with the other kinds of turret is difficult.

Another idea, a kind of mortar worm with a crazy range but the projectiles are slow. Easy to avoid by foot, but you have to remove the turrets to save them. Big damage, big splash area, it should be possible.

Rising the big worm range is a good idea, I suggest to make the turrets as priority targets so the player won't try to shield the damage with a fully upgraded armor.

Last thing. I find too easy to move around enemy bases with 5 exoskeleton upgrades. Making traps, or walls, or something to make the walk more challenging will be appreciated.