Factorio Forums

Hello,

I am actually developing a mod for factorio. One thing that I dont like about factorio is the warfare in multiplayer. You can only attack with your tank and your power armor and run against your opponent with his tons of turrets.
So I came up with the idea of "Alien Warfare" where I am actually working on. Because I am new to modding for factorio and because I dont have a good overview about the existing mods, this topic shall be about my idea. I want to clarify the following questions:

- is the idea any good?
- will it be fun?
- is it difficult to develope (where will be the main problems?)?
- are there similar mods already? If not - why?
- any new ideas for the mod?

So lets talk about the main idea behind the mod:

I want a PvP mod where players can build spawner buildings where the spawning aliens will atomatically attack the enemy player. So the idea is a bit like a tower wars game. You build your defenses while you also have to plan your attacks. A bood balance between defense and attack is important.

What I have reached so far:
I can build spawner buildings (4 for biters and 4 for spitters) which need individual ingredients. Each one spawns biters in a specific size (small, medium, big, behemoth). Right now, the buildings and spawning aliens belong to the enemy team only. That means, that the aliens will attack your own base as well if you place them too close to your base. So actually you should move to your enemy base and place them there.

What I would like to do:
Make the buildings belong to the player (I can do that already) and attack the enemy base independantly from the pollution level.
I think setting the "pollution_to_join_attack = 0" could do the trick, but I am not sure. Will the biters automatically attack the enemy then?
Another solution could be to increase the "vision_distance = 10000000" so they simply can see the enemy base at any time. This would also mean that they will instantly attack the player walking on the map what sounds too crazy. Will this break the performance?
What is the best way to do this?

Additional questions I have:
- Will biters belonging to different teams attack each other? So that your wave of biters attacks the biters of your enemy? If not, can this be modded and how? I had no time to test this already.
- Will the game engine support this idea or will it desync?

MrFactorio wrote: I think setting the "pollution_to_join_attack = 0" could do the trick, but I am not sure. Will the biters automatically attack the enemy then?

No, use scripting to attack sent them to attack the enemy:
https://lua-api.factorio.com/latest/Lua ... et_command

MrFactorio wrote: Another solution could be to increase the "vision_distance = 10000000" so they simply can see the enemy base at any time. This would also mean that they will instantly attack the player walking on the map what sounds too crazy. Will this break the performance?

The max distance is 100, and it would not be great for performance.

MrFactorio wrote: What is the best way to do this?

Using scripting to tell the biters to go attack,
(Look at wave defense for inspiration)

MrFactorio wrote: - Will biters belonging to different teams attack each other? So that your wave of biters attacks the biters of your enemy? If not, can this be modded and how? I had no time to test this already.

Yes, they will attack biters on other teams.

MrFactorio wrote: - Will the game engine support this idea or will it desync?

Its fine, if you find something that desyncs we can fix it (unless you caused it)