Devastation as a new environmental indicator?

[Junion]

So this is a long one, and probably a touch complicated to explain but I'm going to give it a try.

It should be noted this was mostly thought up in response to solar power feeling too powerful, with too little to work against it. This is mostly 'yet another way' to fix that..perhaps with other ideas.

The general idea is thus, instead of aliens going after sources of pollution, they go after sources of devastation. Anything that produces pollution can have it renamed..or pollution can somehow figure into the surrounding devastation figures (X pollution = Y devastation).

The new name is to merely to cause less cognitive dissonance.

Beyond this I would suggest ways to combat causes of devastation. Maybe 'fixer' plants to combat pollution (suck it in and clean it out...add in the ability to reduce it to an item that people might wish to use if you wanna go with some high tech recycling), and clean the area to reduce attraction of aliens. Figure out some other good sources and ways to reduce it as well. Heck I'd make destroying trees a small source of devastation, that only matters when its done in massive numbers. Put in tree farms, conserves...or something similar to work against deforestation.

In essence, I'm suggesting a more in depth method of figuring biter aggressiveness. Based on multiple factors, and call the overall attraction devastation. Then allow people to combat the various factors to reduce the devastation through things I'll just name as 'fixers' for ease of future reference. And to keep in mind just because you reduce one source of devastation, you may be raising another source of devastation. I think it'd give a good way to balance various facilities, as well as open up variations of current facilities. Differing sort of mines, that change how they remove resources (causing one source of devastation or another), differing power production. Assembly plants, and so on. Allowing for a few more lateral choices in build, perhaps some not even suitable because you're in the wrong area.

I'd feel it would give a decent balancing act that could be fun to work around, and would give more ways to balance certain techs with biter attacks.

[ssilk]

https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... ilit=smell

Look for pheromone based pathfinding. I don't see much difference between pollution, smell and devastation, technically it can be computed with the same code.

[Junion]

Yeah but at that point it goes from source of enragement to a much more complicated AI..much more than my original idea suggested.

Though given my druthers..I'd rather they went with the more complicated AI and folded in the devastation idea into it. It'd still be able to work in a similar way at least, and would lead to more interesting AI overall.

Heck could even give the player ways to make pheromones, or get rid of certain ones. And probably include into the mod API ways to make your own 'scents' that change AI behavior..as well as what makes them....

[ssilk]

I don't think, that it would be much more complex. You can just do simple stuff like: if there is "death smell" the pathfinder should multiply it's intensity by 10 and add it to the path length. So you can guarantee that biters will run around "death" but only, if there is another way in reach. How could it be simper?

And what are druthers?

[Junion]

Wow I use that word so much just from context and know what it means from that....

Then again need to remember this board is probably international. Anyway looked it up to get exact meaning .

a person's preference in a matter.
"if I had my druthers, I would prefer to be a writer"


And I just keep thinking of more complicated things heh. I had read the whole post you linked..so the entire thing of making pheramones to change AI behavior, and all. It just does look more complicated, but very neat too .