We need alien tech back!

Post your ideas and suggestions how to improve the game.

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Rush
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Re: Have biter nests be more usefull

Post by Rush »

Not bad ideas, but I have ajusted the idea I had to try and apease the people that think we shouldn’t have biters, or spitters drop items, because that can be farmed. If their spawners , and worms droped something, that couldnt be farmed so it would be a factory. My last idea, only requires the player to defeat 1 nest, and can be farmed without enemies.

Aeternus
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Re: Have biter nests be more usefull

Post by Aeternus »

Another option that could be a "reward" for defeating biter nests (and one that could potentially make players -want- biters to repopulate abandoned areas) is if defeating a biter nest would cause a resource patch to spawn. Small ones, mainly copper and iron. That way biters would become "farmable" - you let them recolonize an area... shell the living crap out of them, build a temporary mine and harvest the resources, then deconstruct the mine... rinse repeat. Wouldn't be much trouble with that UPS wise since resource patches aren't that UPS intensive. I'm not sure if you can spawn resources at runtime though.

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Re: Have biter nests be more usefull

Post by mrvn »

As for bringing back alien artefacts there are mods that do that already.

Collecting is also already automated by mods although not at the range of the artillery.

But here is another idea to counteract alien artefacts collecting in the millions around your base: Have bitters be attracted to alien artefacts, pick them up and carry them back to their spawner where they disappear, improve spawning or cause evolution.

For the spawning idea the mechanics could be this: A spawner breeds alien artefacts at a constant rate up to a limit. When it doesn't have enough aliens around it it uses one of the artefacts to spawn an alien. When bitters bring it alien artefacts that means it can spawn new aliens faster. So If you kill nests with artillery at a distance without cleaning up then the alien swarms attacking you come faster and are bigger.

Similar for the evolution effect. If you keep killing the aliens without collecting the artifacts then they get smarter. Think of the artifacts as evidence of what happened. By inspecting the artefacts the aliens learn what killed their brethren. If you collect them you remove that evidence.

rldml
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Re: Have biter nests be more usefull

Post by rldml »

Is it possible to have two different recipes for the same item?

Perhaps it would be an easy solution, if the pink alien parts just reduce the ressource needs of some science pack types in an alternative recipe, that is also available.

Another use case for alien stuff would be the ability to boost some entities in the base - assemblers, miners, something else (e.g. a production or speed boost for a short period of time).

Both variants have the advantage, that you don't need to kill aliens to build your base, but you can profit more from it than now.

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Re: Have biter nests be more usefull

Post by Hannu »

rldml wrote:Is it possible to have two different recipes for the same item?
It is possible. Many mods have two or more (even more than 10) ways to make some products and even vanilla game have 3 separate recipes to make oil products.

In my opinion it would make game more interesting if you could choose recipes to fit your game style. Alien loot would be good candidate to alternative recipes because you would not be forced to fight against biters but you would get benefits if you like it.

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Re: Put the Alien Orbs back in the Game.

Post by Hedning1390 »

Rush wrote:Come on guys, cant we think of something better than dead biter babies as the ore. Im sure we could come up with something better for the devs.
How about aliens drop bio mass (rich in carbon) which decompose over time and eventually vanish on the ground.

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Re: Have biter nests be more usefull

Post by Tekky »

Hannu wrote:In my opinion it would make game more interesting if you could choose recipes to fit your game style. Alien loot would be good candidate to alternative recipes because you would not be forced to fight against biters but you would get benefits if you like it.
I fully agree.

Rush
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Re: Have biter nests be more usefull

Post by Rush »

This works, as long as the rewards come from the nest drops, instead of the biter drops.

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ap6601
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Alien Artifacts

Post by ap6601 »

i'd really like it if alien artifacts, or something else, were dropped from nests again. It really adds more of a reason to kill nests. It doesn't have to be for research specifically, maybe for food, or health items. Or even possibly aesthetic items.
(BTW I noticed before alien artifacts were removed, they got a new icon)

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Re: Alien Artifacts

Post by CJ5Boss »

That would be cool, however, there are already many mods that do this, so I'm not sure the devs would add something like that to the game.
Health items would be nice.
Food would be obsolete because the game is not supposed to have that aspect, however there is a mod that introduces this concept. If I can find it I will post it here.

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Re: Alien Artifacts

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Linkzell
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Alien artifacts

Post by Linkzell »

Bring back alien artifacts. Make them a weapon ingredent.

Examples
Granade+a.a.=plasma granade
Ammo+a.a.= plasma ammo
Etc.

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bobingabout
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Re: Alien artifacts

Post by bobingabout »

Have you tried bob's enemies and bob's warfare mods?
Creator of Bob's mods. Expanding your gameplay since version 0.9.8.
I also have a Patreon.

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The struggle is real..

Post by inick »

Devs -

After thinking on this for well more than I should, and after putting on my fire retardant suit, I think it's time to make a suggestion I may hate myself later for voicing.

I am among several others on Facebook for a Factorio group, and there's been often enough polls, posts, or comments regarding the alien bugs and current preference of gameplay. I tend to voice my own on each one that shows up -- if not only to throw my vote in, but to have others who feel the same can agree with me, or fact check me. And the results of these threads reveal I'm not the only one bug free -- there may be several reasons, but the bugs are now unwanted. They're useless.

I tend to play most games where I will do everything I can to out-tech my enemies, upgrade as fsat as I can to have better gear than my opponents. Because my gameplay places research as essentially #1, the changes that began with a much earlier version of Factorio where the alien goop they dropped when killed to be used in the purple science packs that was ultimately the top tier research and easier to launch the rocket! Removing the goop did one major thing -- completely made the aliens a resource sink.. Think about it - they come periodically to attack your factory or walls, and you spend resources to repair or replace the items destroyed. All right, defense is good and they're not actually causing damage anymore now, and you should go out to clear nests if not for the purpose of expanding, but maybe to reduce the attacks that might be taxing power or time or resources. No matter what it is, the aliens are nothing more than a resource sink with nothing in return to gain from their death. It's now just an annoyance and will compound costs again and again.

If the alien bugs are nothing but a resource sink, I'll turn them off (thank you for the option!). Not peaceful mode -- OFF. Now a piece of the game is missing. Not that I had cared for the bugs in the first place. they're going to die.

Then after the purple science got a rewrite and you added the other sciences, tweaking their recipes more times than I can count -- the pace to launch that first rocket in the save has been extended far more than I used to play. My before bases were easily contained, researched, and finished with what can be seen at full zoom-out. Now it's.. well, massive, in my eyes -- and I haven't done a mega-factory yet to date.


I've come to the realization that I want the alien goop back. Make killing the bugs help me and advance. Here's the thing -- a 100% drop rate for the goop was *easy* to finish up a save, move on to the next random seed or task (ribbon world, island, seablock, you name it)..

Here's what I want - specific numbers aren't all that important. Bring back the goop, but at some 33-40% drop rate (I would suggest the drops are from nests and maybe worms only, not the militant bugs that keep coming at you), somewhere in there. Make it part of purple or yellow science, and put a meaning to defeating the little alien scum back to the game. I would also recommend a slower, possibly algae-based way to obtain the same resource if one chooses to play without bugs.


Alright, with my flame retardant suit on, I'll sit in the corner and check replies. The struggle is real to find the bugs anything more than a resource sink over and over again currently.

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Deadlock989
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Re: The struggle is real..

Post by Deadlock989 »

No, that's a horrible idea.

I don't even play with bugs on 75% of the time. Not because they have no point, but because clearing biter nests is dull as fuck.

Other people play this game too, y'know.

There are mods for that kind of retro thing if you want it. Don't impose it on the rest of us.
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DanGio
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Re: The struggle is real..

Post by DanGio »

If you remove enemies from base game, is PvP scenario alone enough for keeping ammo/turrets/military science/artillery in the base game ? That would lead to a massive loss of interest in a large part of vanilla IMO.

Edit : although, no one should fear to suggest anything for improving the game, even if it's rejected. That's the point of this forum's section.

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Re: We need alien tech back!

Post by Koub »

[Koub] Merged some "Give us the alien artifacts back" topics.
Also on a more personal note
Koub - Please consider English is not my native language.

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Re: We need alien tech back!

Post by 5thHorseman »

Removal of alien science is among the very best changes to the game.

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Re: We need alien tech back!

Post by MassiveDynamic »

I agree that the biters and their friends serve only as an annoying distraction from base building. Killing them is somewhat entertaining using the various means available but neither option, removing them entirely or requiring their destruction, is particularly appealing to me. It’s a strange paradox. On the one hand encountering life on a strange planet is interesting, appealing, compelling, and satisfying while on the other hand the required destruction of all unfamiliar life can be fun yet somehow wrong.
Therefore if we are required to kill them it seems right that we should somehow get something useful from them. Their exoskeleton could be useful. Their meat? Their acid glands? Their legs? Their bases pulsate, do they store or create energy? What about their pupae? What else is inside those bases that might be useful? How do worms negotiate the hard soil? Surely we can learn something from these creatures!
However calling them aliens when we are in fact the invasive species seems a bit xenophobic.

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Re: The struggle is real..

Post by Honktown »

inick wrote:
Sat Feb 08, 2020 6:06 am
...
Interesting viewpoint. I started playing .16, so I never played with the alien stuff.

I always think more, if I'm not playing with biters, what the hell am I doing? The only thing would be to A) see what a mod has to offer and more importantly, B) chasing the number dragon (in reference to "chasing the dragon"). I need a loss condition to make me feel like I'm doing anything, and without biters, there's no way to lose. Maybe someone could make a mod where there is (a mobile-factory variant where everything around you gets damaged over time, even resources... haven't tried stacktorio). The difficulty would be making it dynamic and, to use the word, fun.

More on-topic, I'd gladly play with a mod that required alien stuff for something, but then I'd feel it needs to be made more interesting: special nests/"missions", I don't know. In a mod that's "objective" based, killing a certain count of enemies, or killing a special enemy, or maybe even "taming" a certain enemy would be a goal. At the moment, all the enemies are the same so the main mechanic is trying to out-pace their evolution and/or slow it down so you can more easily stay ahead of them.
I have mods! I guess!
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