Iron/Steel/Wood Walls?

[Digital_Cake_]

How about stone walls plated with iron or steel, or maybe a wood wall for early game? As most people find out later in the game,stone walls are weak and often need to be layered 3, maybe 4 times over... But imagine being able to spend some of those iron and steel plates you have laying around to make those walls stronger? Or say you've just started out and don't want to waste fuel and cause that extra pollution you currently can't afford gaining. You could always cut down some trees and raise some wooden walls as a temporary defense while you get your production of everything up and running.

[Tekky]

I really like your idea.

However, I'm not sure if the term "plated" is appropriate. I think the term "reinforced" would be better. See this Wikipedia article about steel reinforced concrete for further information.

[Digital_Cake_]

I guess plated would be a incorrect term, reinforce is a better term for it, thanks.

[Nich]

love the idea especially wood walls

[dyf123]

Interesting. Maybe There have a concrete wall which withstand higner damage from combustion and corrosion, except the damage of cannon. The wood wall is the minimum protection. The stone wall is the middle protection. The steel wall is the maximum protection, except combustion and corrosion.

It seems a mod can do it. Just make a new recipe and some new entities like the config of the stone wall in the original game file.

[Digital_Cake_]

I understand a mod can do it, but I'd rather like it in the base game. Also that's what I'm going for, that way you have a variety of walls to choose from, as almost everything else can be upgraded except walls or gates, both would enjoy this upgrade.

[Engimage]

I am up for wall diversity.
Wood/Stone/Concrete/Steel reinforced

[fwyrl]

I'd be interested in this, certainly. I've noticed that walls aren't really strong enough to cut it at end game, and it's annoying to have to layer them 3 deep and provide a steady stream or replacements for large, combat-prone walls. Stone was good for the first 2/3 of the game, but once the enemies reach evolution factor 1, they become obsolete really fast.

[Digital_Cake_]

I completely agree, as I find myself wasting time building the walls 3 to 4 thick.

[ssilk]

I never use such big walls.

[redlabel]

The wood/iron walls I would see it more for a mod.

I do think that steel reinforced walls with a resistance of twice a regular wall would be apt to be included in vanilla factorio. Perhaps require 5 stone + 2/3 steel?

It would be interesting if they worked a bit like regular ammo and piercing ammo. So regular stone works well for small and medium biters but you eventually need reinforced walls to defend against bigger biters..

[Digital_Cake_]

True, but I'd like to see all of these variations in the base game, giving people a variety of walls to choose from.

[Tekky]

I also would like to see at least 3 different wall types in vanilla: Wood, Stone and Steel/Concrete

[Deadly-Bagel]

I completely agree, as I find myself wasting time building the walls 3 to 4 thick.

There is almost no sense in doing this. Typically the only things munching on your walls are Big Biters, and later Behemoths, which attack in a small AoE (last I checked) so stacked walls doesn't really provide any extra defence. Typically if anything is munching on your walls, your turrets will be focusing them meaning the spitters in the back will have more than enough time to blow up all your towers regardless of how many layers of walls you have. With no towers, the biters will eventually munch their way through any wall.

Therefore having multiple layered walls is totally pointless.

[ssilk]

These are MY walls:

Screen Shot 2017-03-06 at 19.49.55.png (1.94 MiB) Viewed 8142 times

(I took the wrong save, in some other save the pollution is much bigger and they attacked in half-minute-cycle, but that is not problem with these strategy).

BTW: This is one of my biggest reasons why I would like to have more intelligent enemies, cause they can be tricked out so easy.

See also viewtopic.php?f=80&t=3440 What do biters do in their spare time? (Pheromone pathfind)
For example: Dead biters can exhale a smell, that either let's enemies retreat/choose another path, or if it is unavoidable then to run through the fire, instead of fireing to the source (until they die).

[Deadly-Bagel]

On the other hand they're stupid bugs, and designed to be more of a nuisance than anything. I think raiding nests could be made more interesting by having an initial wave spawn to defend but then leaving the nests vulnerable once that and any worms are dealt with.

[Jon8RFC]

I like the idea of stronger walls, and wood walls seems like a good use for leftovers.

However, since they're implementing the new exponentially-scaling (cost-wise) technology feature in .15 (I believe), they could also make "wall strength" a new technology to research and make incrementally stronger. It could retroactively apply to existing walls as technology does to existing inserters, to keep it simple and allow for ever-increasing strength without too much work. But, if that's the case, then maybe it's too easy, and they could do the same with belts, which wouldn't be a good idea. Maybe it's a bad idea to do it this way, but it's another option.

[FatMcK]

One aspect I like about factorio is that there are not dozens of alternatives about everything. I mean it would be pretty easy to implement lots of things like different walls, but it would unnecessary fill up the production tabs with things that are mostly not used after a while. Stone walls are already easy to make, so wooden walls would be obsolete very fast. Economists would skip all kinds of wall and would probably rush to end tier walls.

But I support the idea of steel reinforced concrete walls as kind of end tier wall. But please make the reciept for it have include actual walls .. it would make my heart bleeding to not be able to upgrade hundreds if not thousands of walls and let them rot in a chests.

[Digital_Cake_]

Like I've said before, the wood walls could be used early on as a main defense, while later on it can be a early warning device. Hopefully being used by many, I bet people can find a use for all of them.

[Stakhanov]

TL;DR

A second tier of walls with more hit points to better protect against behemoth biters.

The concept :

This is something that people have talked about a long time ago , but never produced its own suggestion thread for some reason.
Current walls are available extremely early , and are fairly cheap , but never upgrade. They work well to stall small and medium biters , but beyond that tend to get crushed if your defense does not destroy the opposition in a timely fashion. It would make sense to unlock another tier of walls late in the game , to make use of the extensive resources of your factory for defensive purposes. Refined concrete is a good ingredient candidate , altho it could also require a bunch of steel plates on top. Something that makes it a non-trivial investment. This would justify greatly improved stats (at least twice the hp of a brick wall ?) that would allow your defenses to hold against stronger attack waves.

Reasoning

Right now , end game defenses are a bit all or nothing. Players tend to stack turrets of various types until enemies cannot touch the walls. If they don't , walls are destroyed in short order and turrets fall shortly after. With uranium rounds , a few gun turrets slaughter behemoths long before they reach walls. This is without even considering infinite damage upgrades. Artillery shelling has no meaningful cost when attack waves of arbitrary size can be cut down in seconds. This is to the point that roboports become optional.

Ramping up difficulty poses a problem : it could go from trivial to unmanageable very fast. In order to have a defense effectiveness gradient similar to the early game , upgraded walls would buy the player time and avoid catastrophic damage to the factory when defenses are slightly outmatched. This would create tension , walls and turrets having to be repaired over sustained fights with much more threatening biters. It would be much riskier to send a lengthy artillery train to shell 5 megahives at the same time. Such walls would need more than just ammo to remain functional - repair packs , spare turrets and misc items , and extra construction drones to replace those that die in combat. Perhaps promoting usage of other resources like landmines. More logistics to account for.