Enemies +

[AlphaStrike]

TL;DR
Currently enemies (biters) are negligible. I would love to see more variation and harder enemies.

What?
Enemies within Factorio seem more of a side-note than an actual game feature/mechanic. Within the first 15-30 minutes of the game (as soon as you can build turrets) enemies become no threat whatsoever. I have yet to see a Behemoth in any of my games. For people that want harder enemies not just behemoths. Not having just more/larger waves which can be somewhat done through settings. Having them have more to their colonies like their own production, workers, ect.

[Koub]

I think it's more or less included in

Factorio 0.17
Planned:[...]
Final game balancing.

Source

[AlphaStrike]

I think it's more or less included in

Factorio 0.17
Planned:[...]
Final game balancing.

Source

Uh... where? Don't see that listed anywhere in 0.17 features.

Somewhat disappointed after reading all the 'countless hours' posts for this game and getting bored after about 30. Simply building a bigger base.. just to build a bigger base doesn't make me want to play more. Increasing difficulty would.

[eradicator]

Try https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Rampant which makes enemies quite a bit more annoying, by having them use guerilla tactics and hitting your weak spots. If you don't enjoy the base building part that probably won't help much though.

[Jap2.0]

I think it's more or less included in

Factorio 0.17
Planned:[...]
Final game balancing.

Source

Uh... where? Don't see that listed anywhere in 0.17 features.

Somewhat disappointed after reading all the 'countless hours' posts for this game and getting bored after about 30. Simply building a bigger base.. just to build a bigger base doesn't make me want to play more. Increasing difficulty would.

Source

[4xel]

Have you tried death world? marathon deathworld? or even harder custom settings? PvP servers?

Also, bear in mind this is a sandbox game about automation, not a RPG about combat. It is normal for monsters to be a problem you can automate away (and thus normal that they are harder at the beginning than at the end.

It is also normal for the emphasis of the game, or of most players thus most MP server, to be on building a factory. So if after trying harder than death world setting you find it challenging but not particularly diverse and intreresting, Mods are probably a better solution than asking for a great tower defense experience from a factory sandbox game (but tower defense like custom map can be really interesting).

[bobucles]

Try https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Rampant which makes enemies quite a bit more annoying, by having them use guerilla tactics and hitting your weak spots. If you don't enjoy the base building part that probably won't help much though.

Great mod, just don't try it on marathon. That early game armor scaling hits HARD.

[natetate7]

I feel like biters should be tougher end game because they don't really pose a threat in the late game stage. All you have to do is set up a wall with laser turrets and they can't easily get through. My idea is that there should be higher tiers of Biter evolution past the Behemoth biters. Another Idea is that biters could learn how to increase their defenses against you. They could slowly develop alien weapons/armor to counter your attacks. Also, there could be an alien tech tree that unlocks after the biters reach the stage of creating alien weapons so you can research the tech that they developed. The Ailen science packs could be brought back into the game this way and can be utilized to unlock their alien tech.

[Koub]

[Koub] Merged into older topic with similar suggestion.

[voddan]

I don't think we need more types of enemies, however they would improve by having a less dumb AI.
Could Factorio potentially have several enemy AI algorithms build in as a game setting, including the current one and the one from the mode?
My ideal enemies are peaceful when I don't touch them, but smart and ferocious when I try to kill them. I don't think anybody likes dumb annoying enemies.

[Cribbit]

I don't think we need more types of enemies, however they would improve by having a less dumb AI.
Could Factorio potentially have several enemy AI algorithms build in as a game setting, including the current one and the one from the mode?
My ideal enemies are peaceful when I don't touch them, but smart and ferocious when I try to kill them. I don't think anybody likes dumb annoying enemies.

You can set enemies to never attack first and increase their difficulty level.

[Cribbit]

I view enemies in the game right now as a good baseline. There are mods that make them much more difficult if you want that. There are also plenty of players that turn enemies off entirely. I think the devs are correct to focus more of their time on normal gameplay than enemies. Enemies exist so that pollution is a factor you have to think about. If you want it more complex than that, mod it.

[Hannu]

I feel like biters should be tougher end game because they don't really pose a threat in the late game stage. All you have to do is set up a wall with laser turrets and they can't easily get through.

I disagree. It feels very natural development than you have to struggle enemies at midgame but when you get higher tech they become more annoyance and resource sink. Then player needs much room for massive structures and much time and thinking to build them and can handle enemies with larger strategic decisions about defense lines instead of actual fighting. Continuous breaks are very distracting and begin to annoy.

However, I would likely see more naturally behaving enemies. They could have strategies, tactics and behave like natural animals (for example flee when they get too much damage or face too overwhelming force) instead crazy masses of running stubbornly against wall until they die. Even ants do not have so stupid strategy in real life. Not necessarily more difficult (of course it would be great option to choose) but more natural. Devs use thousands of man hours to polish graphics but current behavior of enemies and many other natural aspect would be better in line with black squares on white background level graphics.

[voddan]

Even ants do not have so stupid strategy in real life

So true!

[Cribbit]

What strategy should they have then?

At a certain point in the game players will just build dozens of laser turrets at every possible edge. There's no strategy from either side.

[Ghoulish]

What strategy should they have then?

How about something a little more complex than seeing the enemy player and charging at them, or soaking up pollution and charging at the source? Because that's all we have currently.

At a certain point in the game players will just build dozens of laser turrets at every possible edge. There's no strategy from either side.

And therein lies the problem, double thickness wall and double laser line and you're basically safe. Add in some roboports for repair, job done. Even on the toughest of current game settings this will basically see you through with little need for player intervention. Now if I add in flamethrowers, the biters have less than zero chance of ever managing a meaningful attack, and if I don't want them to even have a chance of licking the outermost wall I'll drop in a few gun turrets to totally shred the 1 in 100 behemoth biter that managed to walk through flame whilst being lasered from around 20 different sources and actually get to the wall.

I saw a meme the other week which made me stop for a moment as I realised the truth of it. Compare the graphics in say doom (1993) With the near photo realism you can now get in some games. Chalk and cheese, it's nothing short of amazing how graphics have changed. Now compare the AI, has the AI really changed that much in the past 25 years? Well shit, no it hasn't! We still have the same basic see enemy player charge at enemy player mechanic we've had since day one of gaming. Sure some games might have a duck behind cover mechanic, but it truly doesn't get much more interesting.

Here's a thought: Pac-Man was released 38 years ago. That game had 4 different enemies, only 1 of which had the charge at player mechanic. The other 3 had their own rules. Almost 40 years later and we have less enemy variety in Factorio than we had in Pac-Man..

I say Wube can do better.

But let's say we wake up tomorrow and we have a load of different biter types, some of which use specific strategy to break into your base or kill the player... How would that improve the game in the light of artillery or nukes? A hell of a lot of time could be invested by the devs in upping the biters, but to what end when they can be killed from the other side of the map? Having said that, I personally feel the way forward is more biter variety, so at least things are interesting until the end game. Biters with resistances to flame or laser, burrowing or flying types, perhaps biters which spit goo and slow the player down, how about artillery biters? You lay siege to them and they'll return the favour to take out your artillery and then go ham on your base, maybe you should now think twice before putting up that artillery turret?

In my games (lots of biters, small area) There's a short space of time before I have red ammo in any great amount where the game feels balanced and almost on edge. Yellow ammo doesn't really cut it even if you upgrade it and the gun turrets (you can't really upgrade it that much before military science anyway). So I have to be careful with what I kill and how I expand whilst always watching pollution range and where the closest biter nests are.. This very early point in the game feels proportional in the player vs. biter war, but as soon as I have red ammo in any amount, I'm in the ascendency, and by the time I've sorted out oil and have my batteries for lasers.. It's game over for biters.. And then you can add on nukes and artillery... And the biters are frankly meaningless. I guess what I'm saying here is balance, which I know will be addressed in 0.17.. The biters should be more of a threat for a greater proportion of the game, that edgy feeling I have in the early game where I have to think about what, where and how I do something needs to be expanded on into the end game, biters should have parity with the players arsenal into the end game, and if the player chooses to have lots of biters then I'm A-OK with new mechanics being added that might wipe out my base should I push too far or hard too soon.. Make it interesting devs, for those of us who like the biters! Breed the little buggers and give us new types and better AI to boot. And for those who don't like biters, that's fine Keep doing what you're doing!

https://factorio.com/job/3D-artist

"This is the opportunity for you to craft the visual side of Factorio. Model new objects, create new terrain or extend the enemy race".

Maybe..?..?

[Hannu]

What strategy should they have then?

It is more tactics, but at least they should make some kind of estimate of player power vs. their attack groups power and adapt to that. Think about small military unit, which try to make some kind of sabotage and see couple of machine gun turrets on their way to objective. What is the thing they never do? Run straight against turrets and die. The try to hide, go around and find weaker spot to achieve their objective or way to eliminate the turret. If they can not find one they cancel their attack and give information to commanders that objective is impossible with power and resources they have. Commanders then decide if they scrap their plans or send heavier forces. There is no point to run into certain death without any damage to enemy.

Biters should also attack preferably to critical targets, like real small military units behind lines of strong enemy. Power poles, long belt or pipe lines and railways instead of single most polluting entity far behind defense lines which they can never reach or random entities on their path. In that case number of biters could be significantly smaller and if single biter would take more CPU performance smaller numbers would balance it at least partially. Ans also, in my opinion, more interesting game mechanics is more important objective than possibility to make insanely massive megabases by just copying simple elements. I know that many players and especially devs disagree, unfortunately.

At a certain point in the game players will just build dozens of laser turrets at every possible edge. There's no strategy from either side.

Yes, of course. In my opinion it should be intention of automation game. Automated defense which operates without player intervention if player can produce enough resources. But at beginning and midgame more natural behavior would be more interesting and give better immersion to game world. And at endgame, when biters see that player have extremely strong defense lines without weak spots, they could collect huge attack group and try to break through at single spot instead of sending smallish groups to certain death without ability to really damage anything.

[darkfrei]

At a certain point in the game players will just build dozens of laser turrets at every possible edge. There's no strategy from either side.

If you have enemies with very high laser damage resistance, then you need not only laser turrets. https://mods.factorio.com/mod/BadBiters

[Hannu]

At a certain point in the game players will just build dozens of laser turrets at every possible edge. There's no strategy from either side.

If you have enemies with very high laser damage resistance, then you need not only laser turrets. https://mods.factorio.com/mod/BadBiters

If different biters were randomly mixed, like for example Bob's strange biters seems to be, trivial solution would be to put lasers and machine guns in blueprint. Not very interesting strategic choice, in my opinion. Actually it would take away the choice between lasers and machine guns, player must have both.

But if there was significantly different probabilities of enemy variations at different quite large biomes, player should explore areas before expansion and decide which would be more economic direction to expand the base in current production situation. That would give an interesting strategic choice. It is sad that biomes or other zonal variation has not been used in Factorio.

[Cribbit]

It sounds good on paper that biters should be smarter about where they attack. If you have a far away base connected via rail/power lines, they should probe to attack the undefended sections. It sounds good on paper that biters should form larger groups to have an overwhelming attack.

However, all this does is force players to build more military before building other things. If you want enemies of mixed types of resistance, then the player just builds different types of turrets.

Biters exist to balance pollution. This isn't an RTS game. In an RTS both sides have the same resources and must choose between attacking and defending. In factorio you already have that decision - attack and clear biters back beyond your pollution cloud, or put up more defenses and weather the attacks. And you even have a third choice, reduce your pollution cloud.

It is meant to be a relatively binary engagement - either you've built too much production with too few defenses and biters punish your pollution, or you do have enough defenses but have spent the material to do so.

Mods can extend on this gameplay and many do. For the sort of game factorio is trying to be combat is in a pretty good spot.