Add chooseable difficulty level

[Peter34]

The whole "starting area" thing is grossly insufficient, in terms of tuning the challenge level of the game. Even more so with multiplayer, since it's my expectation that 2 players cooperating can achieve a lot more faster than a single player, making the game a lot easier. If nothing else then by virtue of being able to be 2 places at once.

Therefore, the game needs to have a choice of difficulty level, perhaps 7 in total:

Very Easy
Easy
Slightly Easy
Normal
Slightly Hard
Hard
Very Hard


Normal is as now.

Slightly Easy gives the mobs 5% fewer HP, makes them do 5% less damage, makes them spawn 5% more slowly, and gives the player character 5% more HP and 5% more HP regeneration. Also the thresholds for when the mobs begin to react to Pollution are raised by 5%.

Easy is the same, except 10%.

Very Easy 20%.

Slightly Hard is as Slightly Easy, but reversed signs. Same with Hard and Very Hard. I realize that in some cases, a 5% difference may round to nothing, e.g. the HP of weak mobs, and even more so the damage done by mobs. I'd be OK with that.

It's a simple and efficient way to enable players to tune the difficulty of the game.



For a more elaborate implementation, the Pollution Threshold values should be modified by 15%/30%/60% instead of 5%/10%/20%, i.e. triple the percentages, and at Easy the player character starts knowing a couple of the basic inventions: Automation and Armor Crafting. At Very Easy he gets those 2 plus Logistics and Turrets and Military (the equivalent of about 60 red science packs - on Very Easy).

[ssilk]

Peter, the problem with this suggestion is, that it shows us now, how you would like to play it. But there are throusands of other players and a million more types.

Some want to play it hard, but without Aliens.
And now?

Some want to play Factorio without robots. Is that hard?

Some don't like water at all. They want only so much water, that they can built a steam engine. Others want to live on an island.

Is it hard, if we have millions of resources in the map, but none within 200 tiles?

Some don't like trees. It's too hard for them to cut them.
And now?

There are a lot of suggestions about world generator; the way I want to go is explained about here: https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... f=6&t=4692

In short: there is no map generator, instead we can choose the mod, we are using to play. Special mods, which change the way, how the map is generated. Mods, that promise and try to fulfill a special type of gameplay, but are tested to behave "right".

[SirRichie]

I agree mostly with ssilk that most of the behavior you describe can be solved with mods.
I think that the fine-granular options we already have are good to keep. I think it might be worthwhile for a steam release version to probably add in default settings that correspond to certain difficulties.

[Peter34]

I agree mostly with ssilk that most of the behavior you describe can be solved with mods.
I think that the fine-granular options we already have are good to keep. I think it might be worthwhile for a steam release version to probably add in default settings that correspond to certain difficulties.

What already-existing fine-granular options are you talking about?

[bobingabout]

I agree mostly with ssilk that most of the behavior you describe can be solved with mods.
I think that the fine-granular options we already have are good to keep. I think it might be worthwhile for a steam release version to probably add in default settings that correspond to certain difficulties.

What already-existing fine-granular options are you talking about?

I think he's talking about the map generation options. One of the options can already help determine if biter clusters exist with a low density (ranging from as few as 1 or 2 nests and worms, to maybe a dozon) to high density (I've seen this result in an enemy base so dense that pretty much everything outside of the starting area is a field of red covered by biter nests). Other things that effect difficulty being richness of resources etc.

There's also the pracital side of it, how do you determine what entities have a stat boost or penalty? This would most likely be force(side/faction, whatever) related, so Easy may be that your stuff is better, rather than the enemies stuff being worse.


Also, 7 is a fair few, it's rare I see a game with more than 3 (easy, normal and hard)