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Koub wrote:You're not on that planet to massacre its natives...

Blasphemy.

Call me old-fashioned but my continued survival, infestion free real-estates and millions of raw resources are kinda enough of a "reward" for me.

I do feel like they're merely a nuisance now. They are very predictable and it's not hard to stay ahead of them in all phases of the game (unless you crank up their rate, I guess).

Picking up the purple orbs were annoying - but what if we had a scavenger bot that worked within the construction range of roboports. They could pick up the alien corpses for .... processinging ... in a new 'biomass' building. There would be new strategies for farming the alien spawners and maximizing the biomass production. A bit morbid, perhaps.

what the point if killing biter, didnt give you anything ?

i rather have them disabled.

i miss old system that purple science can be obtained by killing enemy.

I think it is not good to be forced to kill biters because not automated, but maybe a new kind of resource mutated aliens that loot a bit of ore could be fun, but I don't think it should be more than a mod, I like how the base game is right now.

Mineral Goo mod: on death of enemy you get a little patch of resources.
https://mods.factorio.com/mods/darkfrei/MineralGoo

Hellatze wrote:what the point if killing biter, didnt give you anything ?

Have them enabled and try not killing any of them - you will soon find out. Imho you should overthink your affinity towards immediate rewards - I too am someone who is affected by instant rewards everywhere - it is not a good thing.

Hellatze wrote:i rather have them disabled.

Noone is stopping you.

PS: I very often play without biters. Mostly because i find them terribly boring after tanks are researched though - they do not add any real depth afterwards (at least if you don't use biter mods and/or biter settings vastly different from default - even deathworld alone is mostly overhead and no real additional depth). A global biter AI that somewhat makes long term decisions would be nice, e.g. directing large biter groups towards the least defended area or sieging a base by placing lots of worms just outside of turret range, maybe adding low-damage-far-range biters that then actually hit the turrets (the options are only limited by ups cost, but if this AI doesn't make tick based but more long term decisions, it could most likely even do a lot of the harder decision making on another thread). There is an old mod that did parts of this, but iirc it wasn't updated and did some parts i didn't agree with.

The reward is space.

dood wrote:The reward is space.

"Disable biter"

Hellatze wrote:"Disable biter"

Isn't that what peaceful mode is? They don't attack unless you do?

In any case, I think the game could become quite interesting if biter evolution and expansion was purely based on the pollution cloud (and maybe the destruction of nests).

It would open up the possibility of completely opposite playstyles:

- Control your pollution, minimize combat and grow carefully and gradually... and you would be able to launch your rocket with almost no battle.

- Ignore pollution and destroy the surrounding nests... and you can have as much warfare as you like.

Being able to choose should satisfy all types of players.

zOldBulldog wrote:

Hellatze wrote:"Disable biter"

Isn't that what peaceful mode is? They don't attack unless you do?

Peaceful = Biters are there, but passive unless attacked.
Remove biters = There are no biters on your map.

I have to say biters have been getting on my nerves as well, but I should probably just play without them. I don't because I feel I'm sort of cheating the system.

I just started a new game on a Deathworld and expected to get overrun but I have barely noticed the difference other than an increase evolution rate. If there's no challenge from the biters they are just an annoyance to me.

After I finish this Deathworld, I may forego biters in the future and maybe work on much larger bases. That would be fun.

Escadin wrote:Call me old-fashioned but my continued survival, infestion free real-estates and millions of raw resources are kinda enough of a "reward" for me.

That's a reward for killing them, but it's not a reward for having them turned on in the first place. It also doesn't provide any incentive for actively hunting biters (as opposed to killing them as is necessary in the process of expanding). Neither of those are really necessary (for those who enjoy the added strategic layer of dealing with biters, that enjoyment is its own reward for having them turned on), but could be fun. I guess that pushes it into mod territory, though.

CureSafaia wrote:I think it is not good to be forced to kill biters because not automated, but maybe a new kind of resource mutated aliens that loot a bit of ore could be fun, but I don't think it should be more than a mod, I like how the base game is right now.

Really, there's no reason you couldn't automate killing biters to a certain extent. Put walls around a base, have a bunch of turrets that are just out of range of the bases, and generate enough pollution nearby to trigger an attack. The only barrier I can think of is the inability to automate deconstruction planners, since that would allow you to automate pickup of whatever items they dropped.

Automating the killing of biter bases? That's another issue, and I can't think of any easy solutions there. You could set up an artillery train that circles your perimeter and destroys any bases that have started encroaching on it (provided you've got expansion on), but collecting the spoils of that would be much harder. Of course, if the spoils in question are temporary buffs, as was suggested earlier, it wouldn't necessarily need to be automated. Venturing out into the wilderness every couple hours to kill a dozen bases and restock consumables isn't too bad, especially since it's a natural part of expanding resource collection anyway.

adjl wrote:

Escadin wrote:Call me old-fashioned but my continued survival, infestion free real-estates and millions of raw resources are kinda enough of a "reward" for me.

That's a reward for killing them, but it's not a reward for having them turned on in the first place. It also doesn't provide any incentive for actively hunting biters (as opposed to killing them as is necessary in the process of expanding). Neither of those are really necessary (for those who enjoy the added strategic layer of dealing with biters, that enjoyment is its own reward for having them turned on), but could be fun. I guess that pushes it into mod territory, though.

CureSafaia wrote:I think it is not good to be forced to kill biters because not automated, but maybe a new kind of resource mutated aliens that loot a bit of ore could be fun, but I don't think it should be more than a mod, I like how the base game is right now.

Really, there's no reason you couldn't automate killing biters to a certain extent. Put walls around a base, have a bunch of turrets that are just out of range of the bases, and generate enough pollution nearby to trigger an attack. The only barrier I can think of is the inability to automate deconstruction planners, since that would allow you to automate pickup of whatever items they dropped.

Automating the killing of biter bases? That's another issue, and I can't think of any easy solutions there. You could set up an artillery train that circles your perimeter and destroys any bases that have started encroaching on it (provided you've got expansion on), but collecting the spoils of that would be much harder. Of course, if the spoils in question are temporary buffs, as was suggested earlier, it wouldn't necessarily need to be automated. Venturing out into the wilderness every couple hours to kill a dozen bases and restock consumables isn't too bad, especially since it's a natural part of expanding resource collection anyway.

You put belts around the spawners and turrets just barely out of range of the spawner. A alien spawns, get shot at, maybe spits back, runs towards the turret, dies. The artifacts land on the belt and get transported towards an inserter for pickup. 100% automated.

mrvn wrote:You put belts around the spawners and turrets just barely out of range of the spawner. A alien spawns, get shot at, maybe spits back, runs towards the turret, dies. The artifacts land on the belt and get transported towards an inserter for pickup. 100% automated.

That also works.

Biters should drop raw materials, plates, intermediate products, filled barrels, and various factory components. Bigger biters or biters which are in close proximity to large amounts of other biters should drop better items and in greater quantities Don't ask where they get the loot.

Oh, and by "drop" I really mean "eject". Biters don't give up very peacefully, particularly if they get exploded, so it's kind of silly to expect the loot to be dropped in a neat little square on the ground, rather than scattered across a circle several chunks in diameter.