Combat and Alien Rework

[unobtanium]

Hey,

i recently had the idea of a complete combat overhaul. I know this would require a quite drastic change, but hear me out, because i believe this would elevate the combat part to new heights.

What we currently have:
The combat in Factorio is cool. You can equip yourself with cool weapons, bots and armor equipment and kill aliens in a cool way. But that's about it.
You macro-manage your equipment before heading into battle and then just kill what comes close or when it comes to killing alien bases, prioritizing the alien bases. Every now and then, taking a step back to let your shields recharge.
For a few hours this makes fun, but after a few dozen hours, this system feels dull and in some of my maps, knowing that i need to expanding my base soon has made me quit once or twice before. New armor for more equipment slots just makes you feel more powerful and may speed things up, but in the end you pretty much still do the same like before.

What combat could look like:
I would like to see a big shift from macro-managing (before the fight) to mirco-managing (in the fight). Instead of just running around or doing turret creeping, the player would have to put more thought into his action while fighting, creating the need for decision making and more interaction. This would lead to potentionally more fun and longevity.

How such a system could look like:
The changes would require reworks for the armor system and aliens plus alien bases.
When the player starts out and crash lands on the planet, he has his armor already equipped from the start. This armor is very basic, but already highly advanced. It has connection ports for a simple weapon and has basic resistance values.
However, instead of having a grid to equip gear, i suggest a more of a RPG type of character gearing. You have different slots for different type of equipment. You have one slot for your power production, another one for a weapon and yet another one for defense/utility mechanics (e.g. a shield). On spawning, the player has basic starter items already placed into these slots, but those can later be replaced with new, craftable ones.
In the course of the game, the player will still be able to unlock new technologies for the armor through researching. This includes new different technology for power production (from coal and steam over to nuclear and fusion reactor), different weapons (pistol, machine gun, laser gun, rocket launcher) and a defense mechanic (e.g. shields, robots and roboports). In the course of the game, the player could either research new armor with more slots for weapons, defense and utility equipment or just be able to upgrade the armor itself directly. A new building could be introduces: the armory/arsenal. When the player enters the building, a menu pops up and the player can change his armor and equipment in the armor. The building could have an animation in which the player is lifted up and robot arms with tools are changing or repairing the armor (imagine sparks flying off for more eye candy). Depending on much the player has changed on his armor, the player appearance could also change: From a light weight armor to an exoskelet to a full blown armor covering everything.
You might say "This is all cool, but that is still a lot of macro-management. Didnt you want to get rid of that?" and you would be right. This would add a different kind of complexity while creating your armor, but we wouldnt have to play tetris anymore to equip ourselfs.

And Instead we could "program" our armor to have different offensive and defensive stances. In each stances, power is put into different equpiment, empowering those and making them available for the player to use. This could also mean that the player is changing offensive weapons and defensive systems independently on the fly. This would eliminate the need to switch armor sets from the inventory while in combat, the player could cylce between them via button presses. We already have everything already on us, we just tell our armor what we currently need. Of course the amount of stances available could also be researched and increased in the course of the game.

For example our armor has a Nuclear reactor as our power source.
For our offensive slots we have equipped:
Stance A: Shotgun
Stance B: Laser gun
Stance C: Rockets
Stance D: Ion Cannon

For our defensive slots we have equipped:
Stance A: Shield against toxic attacks
Stance B: Shield against physical attacks
Stance C: Defensive Robots (these robots would be quite different from what we have now. they could have their own shields and would fly back to the player once they have taken a lot of damage, allow for a "repair" instead of requiring a replacement.)
Stance D: No defense, but empowers the weapon with more damage and higher shooting speed.


Now, if we fight, we can press a button to cycle or switch through these stances in order to select a different weapon and defense. Why would we do this? Because aliens and alien bases would have different varity. To quickly differentiate between these types, each alien type could have a different color. The green aliens spit long ranged toxic slime, therefore selecting a stance with a good shield against toxic attacks is ideal. The red aliens are fast melee ones, which dont deal a lot of damage alone, but can swarm the player in big groups, the shotgun would be ideal. The blue ones have defensive worms around their base and the aliens themselves are heavy melee hitters, the rocket launcher is ideal to fight them from a distance, incomming bitters could be distracted by the bots and then dealt with the laser gun. The orange ones are very resistant and therefore would have to be taken out by the ion cannon.
Each alien base would be of a different type, spawing aliens of the same type.
The player could use whatever weapon and defensive system he wants, but if he wants to be efficient he would have to pick accordingly. Using up ammo would also be a good reason to select the right weapon for the right enemy, in order to not waste resources.
This is of course just a few examples and just a first concept of how such a system could play out. But you could extend this system quite easily by adding different weapons, defenses and alien types.
In addition, for more complex aliens, alien types could mashups and the player would have to select accordingly or even switch between weapons and systems midfight. The futher away the player expands, the more difficult aliens get, but the more technology is available to fight them. This would create a more long lasting experience.


TLDR:
- Start the player with an armor which can be tinkered with (in a new arsenal/armory building)
- Let the player select a type of power source (Coal, Nuclear, Fusion)
- Let the player create load-outs for offensive and defensive systems
- Let the player switch between offensive and defensive loadouts independently midfight via button presses
- Aliens have different types. They have different defensive stats, attacks, damage types, and utility
- Bases could spawn aliens of a single type or be a mashup of more types
- Player has to select offensive and defensive systems of their armor depending on the alien offensive and defensive stats.
- Weapons, defensive systems and alien types could be easily expanded on in later updates for even more depth, maybe even small boss fights against King and Queen Aliens.


Thank you for your read. I hope these systems make sense and sound like they could make fun. If you want to elaborate on this idea, please let me know.
unobtanium

[Engimage]

It has been stated that biters (and combat as a whole) is a secondary thing to factory building in Factorio. So the game will never focus on micromanagement in combat.
The game focus is on building factories and automating everything so nothing should *require* player manual intervention.
Yes there will be balancing here and there with possible adding minor features but combat will not forego any major overhauls until maybe Factorio 2.0 happens.

[unobtanium]

That saddens me to hear that. I feel like combat is still the only area that didnt get as much attention as the whole rest of the game even thought a lot of gameplay could be integrated there, espacially for lategame when you are mainly expanding your outposts to supply your base. Combat has so much unused potential even in a game about automation.

[Ifalna]

It has been stated that biters (and combat as a whole) is a secondary thing to factory building in Factorio.

Until you reach endgame in a densely populated map and need to expand. Worse if you have set resources to be scarce.

Then fighting them critters and fighting the constant respawn can easily 60% of your active playtime b/c we cannot automate offensive warfare in any way.

[Engimage]

It has been stated that biters (and combat as a whole) is a secondary thing to factory building in Factorio.

Until you reach endgame in a densely populated map and need to expand. Worse if you have set resources to be scarce.

Then fighting them critters and fighting the constant respawn can easily 60% of your active playtime b/c we cannot automate offensive warfare in any way.

Expanding is an issue yes. And it is being addressed in a form of Artillery Train (expected in 0.16).
You will surely need to intervene for offensive but defence will be fully automated.

Anyways this will not be anything like combat overhaul. This is just adding a missing feature.

And I can't imagine dedicating 60% of play time to combat even for megabases. In endgame you take loads of defender bots + Power armor MK2 + flamethrower (or combat shotgun) and just wreak havoc on poor biters. Then you build defence perimeter using blueprints in no time.

[Hannu]

In my opinion right direction would be the opposite. Player should use less time in actual combat in midgame and practically nothing in endgame. There should be automatic units for dirty stuff and player would just manage production and give general orders which areas should be guarded, defended, scouted or conquered. I know that there are some mods but I am not satisfied to them. Basic functionality of automated warfare should be hard coded in game and then modders could do many interesting units.

There are thousands of different combat games for those who likes to play soldiers. I do not want that Factorio will be one of them. I would prefer the game which have been programmed to be combat game from start.