Factorio Forums

Hello there,

I find that enemies become less and less of a nuisance as you progress towards Laser turrets and eventually artillery and train artillery.

My idea is to introduce an additional enemy type, with the same evolution tiers as the current monsters, but REALLY FAST, low/medium HP, that only evolves late game.

By really fast, I mean fast enough that potentially not even lasers move fast enough to hit. Regular gun turrets would be able to still hit them, and obviously flames still hurt them.

These critters only evolve later on in the game, after Large Biters or something. They spawn in MUCH larger groups of 20-30 per base.

The purpose of these are to keep you updating your defenses as you can't EASILY get to a point where you never have to worry about defenses, and also to use "older" turret types in your defenses.

What do you think?

iRperson wrote:By really fast, I mean fast enough that potentially not even lasers move fast enough to hit.

I know this is a game, but faster than light living organism is a bit too extreme for my temporary disbelief suspension.

With the coming graphical laser turret update, they're changing lasers to act less like pew pew star wars blasters and more like laser beam lasers.
An enemy that moves "too fast" for lasers would make even less sense then and giant piles of 1hp enemies aren't very performance friendly.

What if, instead of speed, the improved enemies could take 20-50 laser turret shots? Or what if they could fly and set up a base in your factory in unrendered chunks? That would make the game substantially harder for late game if you have a mega-factory and don't have turrets everywhere..?

Well. Instead of super fast enemies, why not tunnelers? Ones that dont trip turrets until they start attacking. They will hit the wall and start attacking, distracting the turrets from the stronger enemies on the way in. Making players consider building layers of defense, instead of just a wall lined with turrets.

n7m6e7 wrote:Well. Instead of super fast enemies, why not tunnelers? Ones that dont trip turrets until they start attacking. They will hit the wall and start attacking, distracting the turrets from the stronger enemies on the way in. Making players consider building layers of defense, instead of just a wall lined with turrets.

Great.
Now imagine you have a base so large, it takes 5-10 minutes to get to the other end of it.
Your "guaranteed to get a hit in" enemies constantly attack from all sides. How does that sound? Fun?

A potential way to counter the digging enemies could be to add reusable mines to the game, which may explode or at least give the player a warning.

n7m6e7 wrote:Well. Instead of super fast enemies, why not tunnelers? Ones that dont trip turrets until they start attacking. They will hit the wall and start attacking, distracting the turrets from the stronger enemies on the way in. Making players consider building layers of defense, instead of just a wall lined with turrets.

So then you're either forced to use repair bots, or constantly repair your turrets. No thanks.

dood wrote:
Great.
Now imagine you have a base so large, it takes 5-10 minutes to get to the other end of it.
Your "guaranteed to get a hit in" enemies constantly attack from all sides. How does that sound? Fun?

Jap2.0 wrote:
So then you're either forced to use repair bots, or constantly repair your turrets. No thanks.

Uuh, thanks to spitters you already have to deal with these problems. They attack before they get shot. So you currently are attacked on all sides currently, and must repair walls and turrets with repair bots currently.

Burrowers would simply act like biters that are invisible until they attack. They would not burrow under walls, and would not be ignored by mines.

n7m6e7 wrote:Uuh, thanks to spitters you already have to deal with these problems. They attack before they get shot.

Not really. Not even with biters to tank for them.
Not even against gun turrets with their lower than laser range.

Nothing is *guaranteed* to get a hit in.

dood wrote:

n7m6e7 wrote:Uuh, thanks to spitters you already have to deal with these problems. They attack before they get shot.

Not really. Not even with biters to tank for them.
Not even against gun turrets with their lower than laser range.

Nothing is *guaranteed* to get a hit in.

Well i did a quick wiki check, lasers range is 24, spitters is 13-16

So true, you have 8 tiles where they cannot attack. But in every game ive ever played, spitters damage walls and turrets, as the turrets are distracted by behemoth biters.

While nothing is *garanteed*, realistically it happens, and if you dont have systems to auto repair your massive base... Then make some. Part of building a massive base is maintainence.

All that aside. I believe "Burrowers" would have a similar gameplay effect as "Speedy Biters" without breaking the system with insanely fast biters.

n7m6e7 wrote:While nothing is *garanteed*, realistically it happens, and if you dont have systems to auto repair your massive base... Then make some. Part of building a massive base is maintainence.

I don't think you realize what would be going on if all those yellow exclamation marks were red in 100% of attacks rather than, like, 10%.

MC_Cobalt_Ninja wrote:What if, instead of speed, the improved enemies could take 20-50 laser turret shots? Or what if they could fly and set up a base in your factory in unrendered chunks? That would make the game substantially harder for late game if you have a mega-factory and don't have turrets everywhere..?

Would it be hard in interesting way? In my opinion no. It would mean more boring work and less interesting planning and choosing of defense strategies. Instead, enemies able to go through walls would take away only little defense choices from game. Then only defense strategy would be to spam turrets (possible variety of different types) everywhere player build something.