The Colonists: An End Game Proposal

[xmakina]

I appreciate one of the rules here is "keep it small" but as I can't find *anything* about the proposed end game outside of "This will be more exciting soon." so this needs to be farily wordy just to get started. My proposal continues to focus on production and automation as the main aim of the game, rather than combat or colony management. It also requires fairly low demands on the developers, the only massive new feature would be "Build things in the required zone", even the Colony Entrances could use the same code as the Crates if desired, but a Magic Tunnel would look better.

Goal: Stretch the players ability to automate and extract resources to their extreme, eventually consuming the resources of the entire planet and requiring the player character to be re-deployed to a new world.

Rocket Defense built: Map size locks to (8?) times wider and (2?) times higher. Left and Right edges join. Rocket Defence becomes Prime Meridian (centre of map).

Colonists select large (several hundred) area for colonisation. Requires construction of Colony Walls around perimiter. Once built, cannot be removed. Must be clear or all enemies. Colony walls which are part of a colony are immune to biter attacks.

New colony forms in centre of area, generating random Colony Buildings? (Or colony is roofed over to save computer/developer resources). Colony begins demanding resources. Player must provide these through Colony Entrances which are attachments/add-ons to the Colony Wall. These entrances can be breached by Biters and must be protected. Biters in the colony are very bad (possible loss condition?). Colony Entrances can be single tile (for a Transport Belt) or able to take a train (which will be returned facing the other way). Biters will always prioritise the Colony Entrance over other buildings for attack.

The colony will demand resources that are only usable by the colony (e.g. consumer items, decorative items etc.)

The colony has a Satisfaction score. Satisfaction increases when a good demanded good is consumed. Satisfaction decreases when a demanded good is not available. Satisfaction could be global (every consumed/missed item = 1), weighted (some consumed/missed items are worth more than others) or per resource. Power should also be considered a demand.

As satisfaction is maintained, new colonists will arrive, increasing demand on existing items and creating new demands.

Once the colony has peaked with a maximum population and demand, a new colony will be created elsewhere on the map (no closer than x hundred tiles to the existing colony) and the process begins again, with the player having to ensure the existing colony continues to be satisfied while setting up the new one.

Continue until either:

A colony, which could be the first one, cannot have it's demands met (Time To Move On)
Or
There is no more room on the planet for a new colony (Utopia)

Time To Move On
When any colony has reached a terminally low level in Satisfaction (perhaps through a luxury being completely unsupplied for a long time, or an essential item not being supplied in a short amount of time) the Colonists decide the planet cannot meet their demands and they must move on. The player is scored, and then redeployed to a new planet.

Utopia
Once there is no more room on the planet for a new colony, and all colonies are at maximum population, we begin the Utopia Timer. The player must ensure no colonies go unsatisfied for x minutes/hours. Once this timer completes, the Colonists declare the planet a Utopia. The player is retired, the score from their previous planets totalled up and a large multiplier is added to give a Final Score.

[The Colonist]

I like your thinking, but it changes the game mechanics too much:

There is a good reason the map is infinite, its for players who want to continue playing without restarting because they ran out of resources. Factorio is more of a game where you score yourself, you look at your work and admire or hate it. Like i said lots of people keep playing even after they get most of the technologies so just ending the game could ruin it for some players. Personally, Factorio doesn't really need an ending. If anything all it needs is more little details to make the game more enjoyable. This game lets your creativity run wild, no need to end the game and stop all the fun just to do it all over again.

[Mangledpork]

Factorio is a game that goes "Here are some tools. You can do about 2000 different things with them, so go nuts. There is an endgame but that's just there in case you want one. any questions? Right, well shout me if you need anything." And I think that's part of why it's so awesome. There's a freedom to find your own goal and make it there any way you want, and I don't know if putting in this sort of ending would really fit that. It's a sudden flip from freedom to having a very specific, predetermined thing to do, and that's not necessarily what attracted players in the first place. By all means make it a mod, but maybe not the actual ending.
I would much prefer that the game didn't end. Maybe there's some big milestone like the Ender Dragon of Minecraft, but then the game just keeps going. Maybe there's a bunch more science that could be added to let you build turbo versions of everything and some really cool big buildings.
Or maybe you go to a new planet with some really big differences of some description.
But I don't like the idea of the colonists actually arriving, I think the loneliness is an important part of the game.

[IOScream]

Agree with MangledPork, there should be no definitive "end" to your world.

For late-game I wouldn't mind colonists arriving (Perhaps you could build 3x3 landing pads which turn into hovels and then houses, etc) and having the challenge of producing things for them (renewables such as clothing, food and entertainment (Electronics/Books) as well as supplying their hovels with electricity

They could follow the same pattern as other content already in the game and just extend the need to build outwards.

To make it worthwhile the output could be a higher level of science required to produce better armour/weapons/energy production/transport which in turn could be required for exploring underground, making it a harder place to explore and not really an option until extremely late game (but necessary as it provides more abundant resources)

Perhaps one of the harder underground enemies could be giant dune worms, being a parent to the "big worms" of the overworld.

I'm talkin' dune worms.

[DerivePi]

... but as I can't find *anything* about the proposed end game outside of "This will be more exciting soon." ...

Do a search on "Launchpad" for some previous discussions on the Launchpad idea. Also "endgame" will provide some good reads as well.

Here is one of my favorite links so far - https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... ame#p31063

There is also a discussion on supplying a colony ship until you have secured a landing zone. Can't put my finger on it right now though.

[NeilN]

Old thread but I'd like to revive it with some ideas of my own, influenced by the brilliant space science addition in 0.15 and fleshing out Factorio's backstory.

A swarm of meteors was detected on a direct collision course for Earth. Humanity had no choice but to evacuate the planet. A ship the size of the Moon was built and the interior packed with billions of people in hibernation and millions of different pre-programmed packages of nanobots. A small group of engineers was tasked to prepare the target planet for colonization once the destination was reached.

Fast-forward to the present. Due to an accident, you are the only engineer (and a group of your colleagues in a multi-player game) who survived the trip. You work hard and get the infrastructure ready to shoot off rockets. Now you need to choose what the return payload for each rocket will be. Your choices:

• Space science
• A package of pre-programmed nanobots
• Colonists

There'll be fifteen to twenty different types of nanobot packages, resulting in fifteen to twenty different types of colony tiles of different sizes when combined with existing resources (steel, copper, gas, circuit boards, etc.) in a factory. The smallest tile (say, a residential block) would require as much resources as a nuclear power plant. The largest tiles (e.g., skyscrapers) would require the resources of a couple rockets. Parks, stadiums, shopping malls, transportation buildings, government facilities, etc. would be included in the fifteen to twenty different types of tiles which the player would place on the world.

To be clear, I'm not looking for anything like SimCity. These tiles would be static and "non-functional", perhaps having a population value. Given that the current Factorio buildings have a "used and worn" aesthetic, the colony tiles should have glossy and high-tech buildings. Ideally they should be able to "fit together" with each other so the colony has a cohesive look. Both the tile recipes and tiles should be moddable, allowing modders and artists to change the recipes of standard tiles (glass, anyone?) and create new tiles (expandability is then almost limitless).

I think this is a natural fit for Factorio's core gameplay and the open-ended nature of the game. Thoughts?

[featherwinglove]

I think this is a natural fit for Factorio's core gameplay and the open-ended nature of the game. Thoughts?

Plenty!