More ideas for Alien Types, Evolution, & Artifact Use

[Slayn25]

From some of the combat mods, I like the concept of the aliens dropping the artifacts upon death making them farmable as this offers a solution to the automation issue. However, it looks like alien artifacts are going away since even if automated they still conflict with peaceful playthroughs. I'd like to suggest a couple of ideas as an alternative:

• Artifacts are still used for research/production, but only for things that are purely combat related (no conflict for peaceful playthroughs)
• Aliens have a small chance to drop artifacts when killed
• When artifacts are dropped, nearby aliens will attempt to recover them and deliver them to spawners
• When artifacts are delivered to spawners, evolution progresses
• Spawners take time to convert artifacts into evolution progress. Prevent evolution by killing spawners promptly after delivery
• When artifacts are fully processed by spawners, evolution progress normally and also in special ways depending on how the alien who dropped the artifact died
• Alien died while attacking a wall? Progress towards spitter > digger > flier type aliens
• Alien died from bullets? Progress towards physical resistance
• Alien died from flamethrower or laser tower? Progress towards heat resistance
• Alien died from explosive? Find a better weapon
• Artifact collection can be automated by belts or roboports

[Deadly-Bagel]

I think the decision to remove them is final. Which is good, if you've basically ignored military until much later in the game suddenly your huge iron deposit is running out and you need endgame weapons but you never bothered to get artefacts and now you can't research the weapons without killing spawners which you can't do without endgame weapons. They are retaining support for mods to do this so you can keep playing like this with your combat mods if you wish.

Additionally I suspect having biters look for artefacts would greatly impact CPU so also probably won't happen.

The evolution depending on how they die is interesting but is a separate idea which they prefer to be in a separate topic so they don't have nested ideas.

[Slayn25]

if you've basically ignored military until much later in the game suddenly your huge iron deposit is running out and you need endgame weapons but you never bothered to get artefacts and now you can't research the weapons without killing spawners which you can't do without endgame weapons.

This is another reason why I would make artifacts drop from the aliens and not the spawners.

Additionally I suspect having biters look for artefacts would greatly impact CPU so also probably won't happen.

True

The evolution depending on how they die is interesting but is a separate idea which they prefer to be in a separate topic so they don't have nested ideas.

Also true though I think the two concepts together are more than the sum of their parts.

[Deadly-Bagel]

I've been playing Bob's Mods since that post, aliens do drop artefacts (smaller ones that I think can be crafted into regular ones?) and it's very annoying. I'll roll around in the tank and take out 20-30 spawners and there's just artefacts everywhere. Do I pick them up? This takes time due to the area they're spread over. Or do I leave them and have them passively enter my inventory and possibly end up blocking belts when I then build over that area?

[Hannu]

Or do I leave them and have them passively enter my inventory and possibly end up blocking belts when I then build over that area?

I prefer this even artifacts laying around are annoying. If cleared area is not at immediate vicinity of your base you will probably have a personal roboport when you build the area. In my opinion it would have been better to get a normal artifact with certain probability instead of many small ones which must be combined to normal before use.

[Deadly-Bagel]

Roboport isn't a solution, I don't want my inventory filling up with trees nor do I wish to remove the natural pollution cleansers. Tempted to go for a mod I noticed that adds a chest to automatically pick up artefacts, but I don't know how it works.

[Hannu]

Roboport isn't a solution,

OK. If you can not get working mod, how about removing small artefacts by editing prototype files of Bob's warfare mod?

[Hannu]

I would like if aliens were like an insect society which have limited resources (depending on size of colony and evolution factor) and which react to threats with reasonable ways. So that if player used always the same tactics and same weapons, aliens would develop excellent resistance against them.

But I agree with dev's decision to remove artifacts. They are more annoying than fun. Free area and resources is a good reward from fighting. I do not also like an idea in which you can steal some organic stuff (eggs?) from insect like aliens with very primitive colonies (ants are much more intelligent and better organized) and low intelligence and use them to develop high tech weapons. Maybe they could be ingredients in some chemical or biologic weapons but not in technical devices.

In my opinion Factorio should not move from building to fighting game. But probably it would be a good idea to keep it possible to mod fighting diversely to fulfill more war oriented players' needs.