Quick Combat Update (v14 Base)

[Rythe]

1)In reference to Biters building bases on train tracks issue - the simplest fix is a 'Thumper' aggro structure.

The Thumper structure will aggro biters at something like ~5X laser turret range (125), and aggro biters on pioneer/base building missions at something like ~6-7x laser turret range (150-175). This will make it so defensive outposts and walls have to be built much less frequently, and also won't run into an issue where a biter base gets built right outside of the Thumper's hard aggro range and continually spews critters at the outpost.

2)Fix the belt/spitter semi-exploit.

I ran into this on the forums a long time ago and am assuming it's still viable, but if you place a belt at spitter max range from a turret, it will shove the spitter out of range and break it's attack so that it can never actually attack. Spitters should auto-attack belts at ~5 range from themselves when aggroed, possibly smallest biters should attack belts they directly run over when aggroed too.

Assuming this is still an issue, it needs to be fixed because the natives are already a very boring adversary. Little tricks like this just make it harder for that to change.

3)Make biggest biter 'Armored', make armor piercing ammo armor piercing.
There's a soft version of 'armor' in the game via resistances, but an attribute based version could do a lot to improve vanilla combat.

It would go like this - Armored items take 20-50% (depending on armor level) damage across the board of damage types, unless the attack is armor piercing.

See rework below.

The reason to do this is so the largest biters soak up Laser fire and create a possible need for gun turrets and armor piercing rounds. Would have to retweak resistances on newly armored items, but The interplay here would be worth it for making higher evo level attacks a bit more interesting.

4)Create modules for turrets
The reason this isn't a thing now (beyond mods) is because biters are boring and laser turrets (plus maybe conveyor line) shred them already, but after the natives become more interesting (see #3 to start), modules could become a thing.

And continuing #3, the first module could be to improve armor piercing for gun turrets and laser turrets (the laser turret version lessening the 20-50% drawback against armored targets). Other three modules would be range, damage, and firing speed.

Rather than a piercing mod, flame turrets would have a spread mod for flame coverage.

5)If #3, add laser bolter (or somesuch) turret - An armor piercing laser turret to replace the gun turret because biters are infinite while iron and copper are not. Shorter range (15-17) and much lower rate of fire than a laser turret but higher base damage and rather higher energy demand.

6)If #5, make AP rounds in a gun turret something a bit more impressive than it is currently so the building doesn't become entirely obsolete.

At the least, these suggestions would change defensive setups to a mix of bolter and laser turrets with...mostly range mods and a Thumper building if balanced well. That's something like an improvement to bog standard concrete wall and laser turret forests of v14. The Thumper building would make hard ammo turrets like the flame turret more appealing too.

(I am breaking rule 1, but in my defense, so does the massive multiplayer suggestion thread, and I'm not making 6 topics out of minor/middling tweaks)

[aubergine18]

Thumper immediately makes me think of Dune, which immediately makes me think of it attracting worms, which in Factorio are the last thing you want turning up with season tickets at your train stations, unless you're planning on adding a way to conquer Shai-Hulud and ride those bad boys to your next mining outpost.

[orzelek]

If I'm not mistaken about how biters work thumper should be easy to implement.

You would need to reskin gun or laser turret (depends on if you want it to have ammo or work on power) and make it shoot very far but with very little damage.
Biters that are attacking should get annoyed at the shooter after they are hit and attack the turret.

[Rythe]

3)Make 'Armor Piercing' Damage Attribute

Formula would (basically) be:

Code: Select all

if (Defense.ResistsAttackType){
    if (Attack.ArmorPiercing){
        Damage = Attack.Damage * (1 + Attack.ArmorPiercingModBonus);
        }
    else {
        resistDamage = (Attack.Damage - Defense.Resist# <= 0) ? 1 / (2 + Defense.Resist# - Attack.Damage) * (1 - Defense.Resist%) : (Attack.Damage - Defense.Resist#) * (1 - Defense.Resist%);
        Damage = resistDamage + (Attack.Damage - resistDamage) * Attack.ArmorPiercingModBonus;
        }
     }
else {Damage = Attack.Damage;}

Plus some additional code to increase performance.

And then give the biggest biters resistances to the energy damage type so they soak up laser fire.

Rework of suggestion #3 now that I'm no longer quite as exhausted as I was before. This version is much simpler and cleaner to do, but same end effect.

-

Ehhh, I think having a Thumper structure do actual damage won't work near as well as you think it will, orzelek, mostly because the structure has to tag all biters in range. So would need to create special attack logic to hit everything once when it enters range, and the shot speed would have to be instant and something like no cooldown. That's messier than it needs to be... Also, Thumper structure shouldn't be doing any damage.

[Adil]

Distractions work on group. And you can always give it a splash.

[orzelek]

For some bonus !science! it could be good to check if attack with 0 damage will provoke biters to attack the turret.

As for general idea I can tell you that it works since I'm using it in a bit different circumstances from some time.
With bob's mods you get sniper turrets with quite long range and I'm using "bunker" method to do defensive line with them and it works.

It looks like this:

DefenseLine.jpg (145.14 KiB) Viewed 3206 times

With proper thumper turret it could be much more sparse (depending on range of thumper andhow game would cope with turret that has 100 range for example).

[Adil]

By the way, it appears that TheSAguy has already made thumpers. Based of the radar entity.
I don't know how exactly his mod behaves, but finding enemy units in, say, a chunk per second doesn't sound like ridiculously much work.

Although comparison with efficiency of turret computations really depends on how exactly turrets are done by devs.

[Rythe]

Well, that's convenient.

Because, yeah, the radar entity behavior makes a good base for a Thumper type structure. If I get around to making a mod of this, will steal it from TheSAGuy quick to start. But that's months and months away at best.

Sigh. Such is life. On the other hand, will probably still be needed months from now.