Factorio Forums

Okay. My idea might sound a little crazy but bear with me. I think it has potential to be a great kind of multiplayer gamemode that other games out there do not have...

Everybody loves to be able to play with friends and even strangers. That sometimes makes or breaks a game. On top of that, competition and rivalry also make multiplayer much more fun. Sure you can have players go and make their own bases and defend themselves against the biters, but that would make the game feel like you are playing by yourself. What if there was a option for somebody to play AS the biters? Eh? The factorio builder's job is to get off the planet by polluting the world and killing biter nests for their alien artifacts. What if it was your goal, as the biter, to kill the factorio player? Here's a simple list of what you could do as the biter player:

-Control biter "builders" that make homes to increase the population of your biters
-Research for faster spawn rate, resistance to population, damage, health, armour, etc
-"Queen biter" must be protected at all cost, but gives a huge damage/health bonus to all nearby biters (so it would be good to have it near the factorio player's base, but risky).
-Control attacks on the factorio player's base.
-There are other "races" of biters (different colors or whatever) that live in the world that could potentially attack the factorio player or your own biter group.
-Obviously the biter player's goal is to kill the factorio player
-Biter player starts off not knowing where the factorio player is and must sound out "scouts" or wait for pollution markers
-Pollution severely hurts your "build biters" and the rate at which you reproduce.

I bet the factorio community could add more ideas to my list. This is just something I was discussing with a friend and would be a great addition to multiplayer. Thanks for all your hard work on the game, it is fantastic!

Pollution is helpful to biters though. They grow because of it, evolve because of it, and breed more because of it. Its basically super food. As a biter player you should probably have a very low natural reproduction rate and need to send scouts (biters) to find sources of player pollution in order to absorb it and bring it back to the hive.

I suppose one of the biggest issues with playing as biters, and "not knowing where the player is", is that you likely will easily be able to guess where the player is, the map is "infinite", and only exists around where the player has uncovered it, so assuming you join right at the start of the game, your spawners will likely, not only uncover most of the known map already, but that empty spot in the middle is where the player starts.