End game theory and gameplay ideas

[ssilk]

Time to bring in facts.

http://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-64

The plans for 0.12

Now, when the stable for 0.11 is starting to look possible, we can start to talk about our plans for the 0.12. The main thing planned for 0.12 is something we were referring as "The endgame content" that would replace the current cheap ending of the game. Once the player reaches the corresponding level of technology, he will be able to build rocket bases + rockets. But not those small rockets used for fighting enemies, but huge rockets used to get things into the orbit. Once he gets something on the orbit, he will use the material to build the spaceship there. The building will be similar as in normal game, but the player will first have to build the foundations (space platform) first. The platform will get the more expensive the bigger it gets. The player will then put all the needed machines, engines, and the valuable stuff on the ship. Once he is ready, he will start the ship. The ship will have to survive the trip on itself, it will have to contain small factory setup to process the energy and materials found on the way. It will have to provide the defense from all the asteroids and other dangerous stuff it can encounter. Once it reaches its destination, the valuable cargo can be sold at the local galaxy market. Once the player sells enough of the stuff, he won the game by becoming a rich bastard. No saving of the planet or the race, we decided to go for much more realistic storyline There are other plans for the 0.12 but let's keep it for the future friday facts

http://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-73

... The direction we like the most is, that the player builds his rescue ship on the orbit in similar fashion as in the space run, so it can fly to some rendezvous location where the colonisation ship is waiting in some kind of hibernated state. ....

https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-74

Endgame brainstorming

The ideas for the endgame content are slowly crystalizing. With kovarex, we have spent quite a few tram rides back home in the evening by talking about it. On top of it yesterday we have explained our ideas to everyone in the team and then we all discussed it. I will very briefly (we have talked about it in the past posts) summarize what the plan is as of now. From the story perspective we are building (and sending) a spaceship for civilians rescue mission (they are stuck in a broken ship in space). This will involve:

1. Building a silo on the ground and sending necessary material to the orbit via rocket launches. This will be the production part. The spaceship parts will require a lot of resources and your factory needs to provide them.
2. Building the ship on the orbit. This will be the thinking part. Basically you will need to build a small fully automated factory on a space platform.
3. Running the simulation. This will be the movie part. You can sit back and see whether the ship you built stands the test of rescuing the fellow citizens.

The ship will need to be able to move, generate electricity, get the resources, defend itself and ... (we will see). We will keep you up to date about exact ways of how we plan to do this in the future editions of Friday Facts. Stay tuned

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=8751&p=71603#p71603

In the end he gave me a simple question. "Do you thing that you would enjoy the endgame as we plan it?" (with the space platform and all that kind of stuff). And I said: "Yes, of course. If done well it will be a lot of fun. Same basic concepts and mechanics applied in a new environment." And that is it. He made me realize that we both personally believe it will be a good ending.

I think this is an important posting, cause it explains, why the above is not just a fake or nice words.

And to understand, why it is not already there:
http://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-111 , where they shifted that all to v0.13, because of reasons.

In my honest opinion we see also a v0.14 before this dream comes true.

[sillyfly]

We have been discussing this topic for some time already, and we decided that the plan of the space platform would be too much if we really want to keep aiming for having 1.0 finished in a year.

(from fff#111)

Doesn't this mean none of the above mentioned plans will make it to 1.0? No space platform, no space factory, no colonizers in hibernation, etc.

[ssilk]

No.

See this post: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=18764&p=124377#p125228

... however the topic is still very interesting for us. Hence the most probable option at the moment is to wrap-up the game with the current end goal (launching rocket to space) and expand to space in continuation or data-disk.
...We decided to share our intensions with the understanding that if we need to shift the direction (which is often necessary) then some people will be disappointed.

[Kewlhotrod]

the game could go into multiple directions, all of them couldn't be terrible I like the idea of going of into space and building factorys on other worlds rather than go into the RPG experience, thats not what really factorio is about imo.
edit -- would also help the fix for the always desire to start over because of messy factory heh, just inhabit another world with the technology you've researched.

[brunzenstein]

The end game could be simple. Instead of going into orbit go underground and mine / prepare a shelter for the few survivors society hit by a natural disaster / terror attac
There is a lot involved. Food production, waste management & water supply, heating and med. - you name it.

Sorry to say: In times we live now, a more realistic scenario thought.

[Tepalus]

So, what's about this;

The rocket you launch is a) a way to get away from the planet to discover more planets or b) is a little drone for other survivers. They will arrive after you made the planet or a piece of it lifeable... So you have now a completely new techtree with the endgame and when the survivers arrive (maybe on landingplatforms you must build) they will life in houses you build, go to explore and are a bit like drones but don't work in the factory...

[sillyfly]

No.

See this post: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=18764&p=124377#p125228

... however the topic is still very interesting for us. Hence the most probable option at the moment is to wrap-up the game with the current end goal (launching rocket to space) and expand to space in continuation or data-disk.
...We decided to share our intensions with the understanding that if we need to shift the direction (which is often necessary) then some people will be disappointed.

Err... This only supports my point, that the end-game for Factorio is the current rocket launching (perhaps with some tweaking), and all other plans for space platforms etc. will be either in expansions or new games. At least that's how I understand it, please explain how this can be understood any differently.

[Kazaanh]

End-game? Supporting colonies establishing on the planets? They would request some X resource and you would have to provide them, if not it would slow them down or even fail-colonization attempt. End-game I think should be focused around the natives, like you should be able to capture them, build a prison and test/get dna samples etc
Also biters bodies should be used as a materials too, like for leather or some fancy biter boots.

Trading with other planets/ships/moons? How about building heli-pads for small dropships/small spaceships so they could land and pack/unload resource they requested from you/want to buy. There should be a page with lots of contracts and you should choose which one you want to complete. Ie mass-producing ammo/weapons to support some military or supplying fresh colony with smelted iron/copper etc.

What about rewards? Some new weapon blueprints? Alien artifacts?

About gameplay I would like to see droids, yeah like these from the starwars pm and maybe a driveable trucks? cargo trucks? oil trucks? expanded train system with more wagons? like transporting vehicles, armored wagons? Artillery wagons? I would love to see more combinations like combining a flamethrower and tank or tank + solar panel = mobile power source, tank+radar = mobile radar etc

[SiC]

I haven't reached the endgame myself yet, but if it gets stale later on I might suggest taking a look at Anno 1404 for some inspiration on how to mix it up. In Anno 1404 you can reach a point where everything basically sustains itself, and there's no room left to expand to without going to war/spending ridiculous amounts of money buying out islands from other players. Yet there tend to be micro-goals along the way which mostly come from Diplomacy, where you can take on quests which give rewards, which usually are improvements for your ships, building production, free resources when a certain amount of items gets traded (I managed to get enough glasses for the highest level population through getting them for free while trading, no production required ), etc.

But maybe another way to mix things up is having a bunch of 'side-grades' instead of straight-up upgrades, perhaps involving new resources which would be optional to get, but which could give you benefits to tweak a factory to your playstyle and making it more unique with each playthrough. Maybe adding new biomes with special qualities could be an idea. For example, landing on a lava-planet could give you special uses for lava-rivers and such, giving you the option to use those natural resources for energy instead of having to use steam engines, reducing pollution signatures. Or you could use the heat of the lava in special smelters that make use of it to smelt ore.

Or if you have an ice planet, heating requirements go up, requiring more coal to smelt stuff. But maybe you could find special geysers there, which require high level items/structures to utilize, which will then help you with smelting in the lategame. You wouldn't have to do it, but it would be a side-path to pursue that shakes things up from your regular playthrough.

More terrain variety wouldn't hurt either. Big mountains, canyons, etc. that obstruct your ability to build a 'comfortable' base like you're used to.

[ssilk]

No.

See this post: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=18764&p=124377#p125228

... however the topic is still very interesting for us. Hence the most probable option at the moment is to wrap-up the game with the current end goal (launching rocket to space) and expand to space in continuation or data-disk.
...We decided to share our intensions with the understanding that if we need to shift the direction (which is often necessary) then some people will be disappointed.

Err... This only supports my point, that the end-game for Factorio is the current rocket launching (perhaps with some tweaking), and all other plans for space platforms etc. will be either in expansions or new games. At least that's how I understand it, please explain how this can be understood any differently.

That can be understood as: "We just want to come to version 1.0. And we don't want to promise anything after that, but that was our target and we still want to reach it. But who knows?"

[Shadowcaster]

I'm gonna go out on a limb here, but choice driven gameplay might not be bad.

Think the current tech tree we have now, but sub-divided. We talked about loader's and heavy inserters, and the community response was very mixed. With a choice tech tree logistics 1 could unlock the normal fast inserters, underground belts, and splitter, but logistics 2 could have 2 sub options. Logistics 2: Belts and Logistics 2: Loading
The player would only be allowed to choose one of these in the early game and would have to design there factory with their chosen tech. After launching the rocket the player could then "prestige" and the second choices could be researched at a much higher price (thinking endgame prices with 200 of each pack a minimum base price). In multiplayer the players could have separate individual choices that come as research does. Player 1 unlocks logistics2 and chooses belts while player 2 picks loading. The players must then work together to get the most out of their tech unlocks, or they could choose the same techs and undergo the same prestige as the single player. This could be a toggleable option when creating a new world so that players could simply unlock everything with log 2 like it currently does or to use the split-tree design.

This effectively doubles the amount of research and makes the game more of a challenging puzzle and creates a more diverse resource sink than the infinite follower count.

[Reviire]

Since the map is infinite, things could scale to get harder the further away from your main base you get. Give new endgame content that can only be accessed by going that far out, like I dunno, uranium or advanced ruins. Catastrophic events that have a higher chance of triggering the longer you've been playing, ranging from temporary things like break down of machinery or an alien airstrike (With a warning telling you where), to things that have a very low chance of triggering, but completely change the game. Maybe the planet is unstable and molten lava rises up, replacing all the oceans with hot lava that splashes up over the shores, requiring some sort of wall to stop, which also need maintenance. Aliens fill the sky with spores, making solar panels useless, and other fancy effects. There could be so many things that happen as you get further along, to make the game harder and provide a challenge.

Also, maybe just a bigger alien threat. More expansion, and planned sieges on your base. Expand them so they actually do their own thing, use resources and expand, set up beachheads near your bases to assault them. At the start they could be stupid, but as the game progresses, maybe they suicide on things that are important, to screw your supply lines or power transfer, then send a larger attack. Instead of the current alien progression, actually give them some diversity. Change the Biter sprites and give them extra things, and add entirely new alien types that appear later on, maybe even some early on that have drastic changes as time goes on. Explosive aliens that you first counter around their base as mines, but later start diving your walls.

I'm just waiting for fission/fusion/plasma reactors and plasma cannons, and more tech progression, that takes a lot longer to achieve. Start with your stone furnace, and maybe basic tech like manned ballista, going into primitive firearms, then more advanced ones and later into diverse energy weapons. Different weapon trees at each "era", unlocking when you research some over-arching tech for that era; so when you research something like "basic firearms", you'd also be able to start researching basic flamethrowers. Speaking of tech, maybe more modular construction/research? I'd love to be able to research ballista, then later on research autonomous weapons, being able to upgrade those ballista so they don't need to be manned. Different parts you can put into weapons, to change them in different aspects, sacrificing some things for others, or specializing them.

I'll edit this later, but playing Smite

[bobucles]

So you want a puzzle game where players spend hours meticulously streamlining and building the perfect running base, but also have a wild and frantic race against a death clock with aliens and magic robots?

Where's my simpsons image...

[TerraFirma]

End-game is ... actually fine. It's an excellent design decision to have a goal for the player to work towards. Building a rocket is a good thing.
The problem is that difficulty does not scale properly. There is inadequate oppositional pressure. That is to say, the native forces should become so aggressive and reproduce so quickly such that it becomes impossible for the player to hang on to their beautiful beautiful builds. I don't mean difficult. I mean impossible. Ideally, a player who is in the process of building the rocket should be the subject of relentless attacks. Losses will be sustained. The perfect end-game is this: All production facilities have been destroyed & planet's native species are now encroaching on the last ring of wall keeping them away from the rocket launch pad. It is all that the player can manage to secure a small perimeter around the production of end-game tech. A difficulty setting can increase or decrease aggression for the player who manages this easily, or who has trouble, or simply according to taste.

I think this does belong in the ideas and suggestion forum, but apart from that:
Best case is that you can come up with a self regulating system which gets more and more difficult without stopping. I'd much rather try my hardest to withstand an ever growing alien threat, than to have no challenge at all after some point in the game

---> In short, this, but with a specific end-condition (build a rocket) so that the game isn't simply an exercise in futility.

[ftbreizhbugs]

I did'nt do the campaign, so i dont know what the scenario is exactly, but a temporary/transitionnal end game that could be "cool" would be that the launched satellite discover a rescue ship on our planet (the rescue ship would spawn on an unexplorerd area of the map, far away from starting position -make sure there is a path to it because water!-) and the goal would be to open a path to it through aliens and filled it with a hundred (thousand ?) stack of each item and then taking off. That would mean either build a new base near it or build a rail network to convoy items from our base...

[AutoMcD]

Endless tech tree sounds awfully grindy. Top tier damage things could cost more, maybe even with some unusual things that must be searched out and inserted by hand. But to exponentially cost more for no reason, I don't like the idea that there's no end to it. We do want to get off this rock and go home, yes?

Things becoming easier as you tech up, that is the reward for all the research. Turrets and drones SHOULD be able to keep things handled. An impossibly tough alien that rips your junk off, that should be a fight that you pick because you want something on his turf. Not this "just because it needs to be arbitrarily harder" stuff.

The difficulty should be tied to resources, and to an extent the game is already like this. The farther out you need to push to get raw material, the more dangerous it is. A small tweak to the map generation settings has a huge impact to difficulty.
The mega facilities I've seen you guys post with 60 furnaces feeding 3 saturated express belts into hundreds of assemblers, it's over the top and feeding such a beast should take at least two people working on nothing but prospecting. This would also increase the usefulness of trains. Despite that notion, some sort of top-tier resource solution would be nice. Like a very efficient miner, or using a huge amount of energy to vaporize stone and coal into tiny amounts of other ores. Or an oil conversion of some sort. Maybe a recycler to chuck unused or outdated items into. And all the wood from that forest you cleared 10 hours ago.

If the aliens were particularly attracted to iron and copper it would be more of a struggle. Especially mega-deposits, could feed them into bosses.

I think the sat should do something, like show an anomaly(s) on the map to check out. Most simply some nearby large resource deposits. Maybe it's some relic that slowly but endlessly spits out iron or copper from deep under the surface. Maybe an impossibly tough artillery worm that you can't creep up on with turrets or a hive of flying bastards that think your drones are sexy. Maybe the ship you crashed on planet with, loaded with some tech that can't even be researched or coordinates to get home. Whatever it is, it's very far from where you started and you'll be packing a lunch to get there. Not something you would accidentally find in your typical resourcing effort.. The whole idea is getting you out of your comfort safety zone and discovering just how infested the planet really is. (On that note the tank should probably get some modular armor slots or upgrades).

I have mixed feelings about the building in space concept, I wouldn't want it to be a different game, and I would want the factory I've invested so much time into to be of continued use.

[ArchJudge]

Since 0.13 patch promises a revision to the combat system, how about this as a feature for high level of difficulty setting: a carpet of biomass that is generated by the biter lairs, that slowly starts moving in and sieges the player factory when it detects pollution (like Zerg creep in Starcraft), that isn't a direct threat in the sense that causes damage, but rather slowly makes the robots, assemblers, transport belts move at a slower speed as the biomass builds up. This way the player has to divert resources from the rocket construction (mostly light oil or whatever the new flamethrower turret will use as ammo) to keep the biomass carpet at bay from overwhelming the factory production. This could take the form of stopgap measures where specialized drones are built that automatically deal with detected biomass in roboport range, or flamethrower turrets have a passive ability, even concrete and walls could play a role in the reduction of its spread.

As the map progresses towards the late game, new spore thrower alien siege artillery could add to this new mechanic by launching blobs of goo at the player pollution production, with some accuracy so that it spreads around and has to be cleaned up by your trusty drone crew or just left there until the build-up makes it an emergency to remove.

Other ideas that exist in mods that are very good and could use rebalancing, UI improvements, animations, overall embellishment, official support or integration in the game:

- Artillery (like the Ion Cannon mod but without the need of a rocket so it comes earlier in the game, cost per shell in terms of explosives should limit to only 1 built and targets chosen carefully, also a logistically hungry beast, maybe have its rate of fire limited by need of water to cool down the barrel and reuse the steam to generate electricity)
- Biter corpse processing for useful resources
- Gas processing
- Extended metallurgy
- Warehouses and bigger storage space for items
- Logistic zone expanders and more diverse types of drones
- More stuff that I can't remember right now

Misc things that would be interesting to see added to the game:

- Railgun turrets that fire high velocity rounds at extreme ranges with low rate of fire that uses both ammo and electricity to operate. (Cannot be manually loaded requiring intricate belt system and special inserter maybe?)
- Worms that build tunnels for biters to use wherever there is no stone or concrete path or walls blocking their assault, the tunnels they build could act as renewable source of stone
- Radar Mk II equipped with seismometer to get forward warning of said underground assaults
- 10x10 grid structure that generates electricity in late game, Magnetoplasma reactor that uses high density metal (and water as coolant) to produce 50MW+ that is extremely polluting to mine and can only be found with 3 satellites triangulating position of underground deposits that are mined with a specific yield.
- Hydro dam massive construction project if Magnetoplasma reactor is too experimental tech
- Spotlight/floodlight upgrade tech with specific sound that adds functionality (and damage bonus?) to gun turrets during night attacks if electricity is provided to them
- Tracked bulldozed utility vehicle that can tug other vehicles and lay down rail that suffers no speed penalty when running things over? (Nothing says Factorio more than a bulldozer with someone inside it screaming "MOVE OUT THE WAY BUGS, ENGINEER COMING THROUGH!)

Difficult to implement things that would add to the game but probably best reserved for later/Factorio 2
-Weather specific to biomes that affects how the factory is set up
-Weather changes and events that impact combat
-Random ship crashes and salvaging events

[Reviire]

An endless tech tree would only be needed if there wasn't an actual tech tree. It would be much better to have lots of techs that go well into/after the end game, costing more amounts of science and being stupidly powerful. After laser turrets, why not plasma cannons and artillery. Lets go further and add modules that you can put into turrets, increasing fire rate or adding neat effects to them. Go even further with giant mobile fortresses and fancy, OP, extremely expensive tech with sci-fi names. (Fusion cannon idk).

All that's needed is more research and more research paths to go down. They should do more than just adding new stuff, the new stuff should have strengths and weaknesses, or interact with existing tech in cool ways (like modules), and have to be used with eachother to cover strengths and weaknesses. I my opinion, anyway.

[albatrosv13]

deleted

[ChrisVickers]

I haven't got far enough in to the game to get to the end stages however here's my two cents for good additional end game content.

When you think about it you need a goal. At the moment the goal is to get more resources to build more but my idea is to expand this at a certain point.

The goals would be random.

Huge creatures
The further you get from the base the larger the creatures get. At a certain point you would literally need a full military response against larger targets. The huge creatures would actually eat your factories. Think Godzilla going for your mined resources. This gives you a reason to create large vehicles that require loads of resources, which would be used to defend. Also huge artillery pieces could be created to protect against them.

Oceans
They could add oceans which would need large ships such as carriers or oil tankers as well as huge oil wells. This would make you need huge numbers of resources.

Leaving the planets
- Forget rockets, build a space elevator once enough stuff has been put into orbit that would eventually allow resources to be cheaply put into orbit. At a certain point you would get an intergalactic message. A message you could receive could be that there is a war and you need to help provide resources for the war. You would send resources for the war effort. Whilst you wouldn't be able control them or see them it would be cool to think you had created a fleet to help a bigger picture.

Expeditions
You could equiq expeditions into hazardous new areas. The aim being to provide your expedition with the best equipment possible.