TL;DR
A visually interesting and automated way to clear the map of biters.What ?
I love Factorio to death, the building, the designing, all of it.One thing i always point to as one of Factorio's strong points is it's QoL and attention to detail concerning all implemented systems.
(Ex. The depth of the blueprint system and all it's "extra" features, or the rail system)
And the freedom to choose a preferred way of dealing with things.
(Ex. You want bots? use bots! You want belts or trains? do that! All three? Spaghet or modular? Mama mia!)
That being said, there's a huge gaping hole staring at me every time i contemplate doing another run.
The inability to automate combat.
As far as I'm aware it is one of the few systems in place that does not follow the "manual --> semi manual --> automated" progression.
You might be stuffing the early furnaces by hand, but you're sure as hell not doing that after 10 hrs.
Furthermore the whole combat robot tree is criminally underused, the short lived capsules are a horrible implementation of a neat idea.
As this is THE main reason i dread playing another round of Factorio I would love to see this issue addressed.
I have looked around for mods to solve the issue and have found a measure of success.
The closest i have found is the "Robot army mod" by Kyranzor.
You essentially build dormant robots that you "wake up" near a mustering structure, once they hit the squad max size, the go off in that cardinal direction.
There's multiple tiers of robots, so they don't overwhelm the biters out of the gate, and as biter density goes up, the material cost to replace your army becomes a noteworthy reason to expand or up the production amounts.
The good:
Furthermore they explore the fog of war as they go allowing for some deep scouting and enjoyable carnage during the pondering awe moments of "down time" managing the factory.
the simple bot instructions also make it so the footprint on gam resources does not spiral out of control.
The bad:
This mod predates the move to high resolution textures however and the models stick out like a sore thumb.
The pathing is also pretty lackluster and bot groups regularly get "stuck" or unresponsive.
I'm aware there's other mods doing something similar, but cpu overhead is way too big for it's intended purpose. (AAI vehicles etc)
My suggestion:
Expand upon the groundwork already done by the vanilla devs and the work of the mod builder.
Either make new sleek looking Factorio ground army assets and use the fact the bots have to walk as a way to limit their usefulness balance wise.
OR
Rework the combat robotics to be usable in this context.
Maybe instead of a timer killing them, just make them live forever but also move forever away from the player... they will die eventually.
Maybe use this combat robotic rework as an opportunity to add defense and offense versions.
Defense to operate like the already present flying bots and offense to go scour the map.
Why ?
Automate EVERYTHING!Yes at some point you have artillery, but they are limited to the rail network, and are a really big hammer in situations where a broom would suffice.
Yes at some point you have spidertrons, but at that point in the game your armor allows you to decimate nests too... but there are soooo many of them. pls lemme automate the majority of it, and only get involved if it's a particularly tough grouping the bots can't handle.
The robot army would fit in perfectly as multiple tiers would allow you to expand comfortably when needed but aren't a permanent solution as they require tech to keep being relevant.
The material cost might add a level of interesting tactical depth.
Weighing the benefits of producing bots vs pollution and subsequently more need (and losses) of bots, negating the material gains the land gains might yield.
Sounds like a nice game of "which tool would fits best here" which IMO really vibes with the core essence of Factorio.
TL:DR - Clearing biter nests gets boring, gimme a visually interesting automated way of dealing with it. o7
