Peace with Aliens

[Marconos]

The question for me is: is it possible to get alien artifacts without fight?

Yes you can, kill them while they sleep ... they don't fight back that way

[ssilk]

Errrmmm. Not what I meant.

[Creedless82]

I see the current alien artifacts as something - a placeholder - which is a gameplay element: all you wanted is to try to avoid contact with the natives, but then you are forced to. You need to reasearch them, study their behavior and so on.
The question for me is: is it possible to get alien artifacts without fight?

Not in base game at the moment, as you already might know. Atleast not without using mods like i.e. Alien-Science (craft Alien-Science Packs from the other 3 packs) or Yuoki Industries (washing them out of dirt), and that's the point.
You have to go out and exterminate loads of Alien Bases in order to "research" them, and there is no other option within the base game. I don't know, imho thats not how researching works or how it should be done.

And that's where a second option has to be implemented, in some way whatsoever.

So i quote myself, because i think, that's one way, how it could be done and both sides stay satisfied without losing something:

Remove Alien Artifacts, completely. Change the recipes of the science packs accordingly, may be involve some more of the products to make up for the lost challenge of needing to fight Biters.
Bring in the "green technology" arc to give the player the option between cheap, dirty and thus attractive to Biters (and so have to spend lots of ressources towards military stuff) or clean and expensive but Biters won't harm you (at the expense having to spend more resources to research and build clean technology, of course). Additionally, Biters could drop some sort of remnants that, once enough collected and researched, could be used to fortify players armor and weapons against them. That way, players who like the fighting aspect of Factorio still are being rewarded while those Bug-hugging Carebears like me don't miss anything.

Or may be instead of that remnant research stuff just some sort of experience/kill counter system for the Killers among us. The more Biters you kill, the more experienced you get and thus get some passive bonuses on resistances of your armor or damage on your weapons.

[bulldog98]

I'd like to have an option to get along with the aliens, without killing them. Since I think factorio is about building a factory not about killing the aliens.

[aRatNamedSammy]

i agree with the idea of different way to deal with bitters.. reducing pollution may make em happier, so better chance to accept an offer/peace/trade
taming bitter too, as alternative way to gather artifact (slow generation rate, with few tamed bitter) , need to keep em in behind an electric fence, and if you lack power for any reason, pow, they break fences and attack
as well as a mind controled device, if lack of power, they attack back after a cool-down (confused a bit for a short time because the mind controller is off)
more tamed bitters behind fences become more risky, bigger bitter may "try" the fences occasionnaly, getting damaged, and if it get destroyed after a while, it open a breach

laser turret is very good , but i could see an other turret, more energy eater, an Electric Discharge Turret, slow fire, medium/large range, will affect every living things, include yourself, but paralyse temporary the target. A turret that so need power (but can receive only 1 efficiency module), it could only be used as defensive device, which if you dont put enough capacitors, may overheat your boilers/power generators temporarly. need a cool-down before giving power again. this way, a huge wave may block your power prodution if your not aware of it, and destroy your so nice defense line/wall

[sonic]

How about training biters to act something like a bee colony but produce artifacts instead of honey?

It would need something along these lines:

- A way to gather fish - Maybe this is already possible, I haven't bothered to look!

- Smoke bombs to keep biters pacified within a specific area, allowing you to build your fish depot without fear of attack. Smoke bombs should only work if biters aren't already attacking something and they also shouldn't prevent attack if you wander too near a non-pacified biter nest.

- Fish generate pollution over time (on a bell curve) which attracts nearby biters. (This would also useful for misdirecting biters, leading them towards laser batteries or away from your walls.) Eventually fish decay and disappear. Biters eat fish if they're on the ground; otherwise, after a short period of time they destroy the container the fish is in and then eat the fish.

- Biters become less aggressive after consuming fish, eventually turning peaceful. Once enough biters are peaceful (x percent of that colony) the entire colony becomes peaceful. This wears out over time (immediately if any biters or nests are attacked) so fish delivery must remain constant.

- Biters from fully pacified colonies very occasionally poop out alien artifacts near their new food source.

- A 'smart bot' capable of picking up the artifacts within a defined area of the ground (new blueprint type or else the orange area by a roboport) This would also be extremely useful for the inevitable time when you deconstruct a full chest in the middle of your factory floor and realize (too late!) that you don't have enough room in your inventory. Never worry again about those four pieces of iron stuck under an assembler!

[jakobeng1303]

It's a great idea! Maybe Aliens make alliances and than move togetheer and you could say there is no polllution and I don't kill you, so you don't kill me

[ssilk]

Hm. With bees it works so, that they accept an artificial hive. Why not also with an artificial biter nest? They lay the eggs into it and belts move it outside... To us.

[Rekhyt]

I like that idea, but for it, there must have a green solution for each pollutive industry.

Actually, converting oil to anything creates pollution. For the Roleplay, it seems necessary to allow the player to do everything in green (more expensive, but more challenge!)

[Manti]

The pheromones aren't such a bad idea, but let's not go too far with it. Having biters go for a drink and a bite of a fruit tree doesn't bring much to the game. It is a feature that doesn't expand the game and just wastes resources and development time.

On the other hand, using pheromone-commands based on chunks (also, pollution chunks could get a bit smaller) sounds like a great addition. A few examples already on my mind :

Avoid - attack group killed without dealing any damage could mark a chunk as "Avoid if group smaller than insert-previous-group-size-plus-three-here"

Reinforce - attack group still alive and getting some damage dealt on buildings marks chunk as "Trigger biters in surrounding bases to attack here right now"

Defend - obviously used for when biters nests are attacked, so their neighbours could help

Reclaim - after a base is destroyed, surrouding bases would simultaneously send bigger forces to restore the base and replant lost nests.

Well, you probably get what my idea for this is by now, so I'll stop myself.


PS: With smaller pollution chunks, wind could get implemented nicely. That would make biter attacks more random, as moving pollution would trigger/untrigger different bases.

[generalmek]

nice idea. but if i get flame tank this will be no matter )))

[tecxx]

i also put my vote for the idea of some kind of peaceful/diplomatic mode.
not that i dislike fighting/shooting games. but the concept "build base->kill everything" is already so dull and abused, an optional different approach (or a combination) would be welcome.
i'm just thinking - i am stranded on a remote planet, is killing the natives my only option? couldn't they just coexist with me - maybe even help me in some way?

that said, finding a good solution will be quite a challenge. may i reference the very awesome game "BANISHED" here - it's an incredibly well designed and entertaining piece of software.
but altough i was at first very positive about the complete lack of enemies / aggressors, allowing me to focus on city building only, somewhere halfway through the game i lost interest.
there was no real incentive to advance and "do more", because, for what reason? steam achievement "you built 1000 houses" ? no thanks
i want my resources to go somewhere and be put to good use - ammunition as a "resource sink" is just a simple example for that.

wouldn't it be fun (just one example) to produce ammunition, which you then supply to the natives, who in turn do the fighting for you - against third party aggressors or whatever?
anyway, +1 for peaceful mode.
cheers!

[YotaXP]

I like the idea of a third party. Two sorts of natives to the planet. One who seeks peace, and another that thrives for war. Building an resource hungry pollution factory is a very different experience from building an efficient and eco-friendly factory, and that provides a good level of replayability. The former allows faster military progression, while the latter is usually more difficult. It would be nice if the peaceful natives could serve as bodyguards for your clean factory, and also double as a second enemy for dirty ones. In either case, there would still be conflict with the warmongers.

[ssilk]

Remembers me to something? Yes, Anno 2070... And maybe some more... Too foreseeable?

[TheMrAndyn0]

This is something we have been thinking about for quite some time. There are many ideas about this in the Ideas & Suggestions section, but since it is quite a big topic we feel it belongs to Dev proposals as well.

What is going on: Now the alien race behavior is kind of straightforward. They generally don't like you. You come close, they attack you. You make too much pollution, they get angry and send an attack against the pollution source. Maybe there should be more intermediate states involved. When you behave nice and don't make too much pollution / don't attack them they tolerate you walking around. You could be able to somehow measure their general mood towards - like friendly, neutral, enemies. With enough research you could even setup a trading station with them to get the alien artifacts without wiping them out off the screen.

This would nicely solve the problem for people who want to play without fighting (now they just switch on the peaceful mode). There would be strategies for them how to finish the game. They wouldn't go for full scale destroy-all-nature dirty automation but instead would focus on the alien communication branch of the tech tree to get to know them better and maybe settle down in mutual cooperation. They would opt for more expensive, but greener technologies (and wouldn't have to bother too much with the military researches).

Anyway, it is not something we are working on right now, but rather something we actively consider.

One problem with this : Biters clearly aren't "sentient" or "intelligent" life-forms. I highly doubt this would be possible without completely changing their appearance and behaviour and in games with diplomacy vs war, people only don't like war if it is forced on them. Maybe if you could make "fake tree's" which reduced pollution to stop biter attacks or to implement a technology that allows you to extra alien tech without attacking the aliens, such as the idea I posted on "alien diplomacy". Maybe you can possibly find biter spawner eggs which when put into an incubator, will grow and when the user research alien technology, it will allow them to add extras to the incubator which will research and extract alien tech, This means users no longer need to fight biters, and will allow them to easily reduce the chances of them being attacked

[TheMrAndyn0]

I was always for that. That brings in the big questions, about death, about fighting or not fighting. That brings players, which want to sink in deep into the game...

They are the natives of this planet, good damn! Do we have a right to kill them?!


Well. I let it open. This is successfully just a game and I want to point to an idea, which I really, really like:

Introduce pheromones and smell...

https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... f=6&t=3440

The biters are a bit like insects - ants - which follow pheromones. That makes their behavior more plausible. And the biters are then no longer an enemy. They are the natives.
The idea is great, because if you are able to "see" those layers of different pheromones, you can see their "mood". And then you have a chance to understand their behavior - this is the key.

Are they angry? Look at the "angriness"-pheromone!
Do I need to switch off the factory? Construct an "angriness-pheromone-detector", which controls over the circuit network the power for parts of your factory and switches off, if it gets too high.
They fight always at the same paths and get always killed? Too easy! The dead biters have a smell and the next wave tries to avoid them and find a better place.
They search for food and mark the way to it with pheromones. Ever looked at ants following a path? Interesting...

And so on. The idea is in my eyes absolutely cool, are there some games outside, which tried that kind of deepness in simulating another species ever?

Please discuss details to that idea in the mentioned thread!

Massive problem with this. Your trying to be realistic, so I will also try to get realistic. Human nature dictates that if they are in land we want, and they are technologically weaker than us, then destroy them. We would only bother to consider peace or researching them after we have nearly forced them into extinction.
Also another problem. How do we discover these pheromones? We clearly can't get close enough to them, and the only way humans have ever been able to research anything is by killing it first, looking at its body, seeing how it works and THEN observing how they use this. This means that in the end, we still have to kill them.
One final...well, when I say final I mean I can't be bothered to point out the rest, problem. Do you know WHY other games haven't tried this? Do you know how difficult pathing is? In an RTS game, you tend to find that there are barely any objects or that all objects don't count as entities. That's because if they did, the game would have incredible difficulty deciding which way to go just because of a tree meaning you'd end up with soldiers going in 29 different directions. This is going to be even harder with this game which is full of tree's. The biters will attack in one place, they will go through the tree's to reach another but then end up going passed all the other turrets that the first lot did the first time anyway. This means that the AI will have to take into account every single detail such as turret positioning, tree's, walls, factory's... They would end up going in circles. The pheromones and behaviour of ants are also complex. They use a sort of "democracy". One ant will find a source of food, take from it, then place pheromones on its way back. Another one will go and take more food and place more pheromones and so on and so forth until the scent of the pheromones is a lot stronger, meaning the ants follow that route. This means the moment you spawn, it will be chaos as hundreds of biters will be trying to place down paths, which will have to be saved somewhere...meaning it would overload and most likely crash. Basically, the idea is "good" but for this game, it is "terrible".
It also adds basically nothing to ease the task of dealing with biters of the player, as it just creates another graph the player has to constantly watch

[timefool]

Making it a late-game option I think works best. Treat alien artifacts as a passive way of learning about the biters, and once enough are collected the ability to communicate with them opens up. Take the movie Avatar as an example. The humans go to another planet, set up a factory, and the natives attack. The humans learn more about the natives and develop a way to communicate with them.

[The Colonist]

If "Peace with Aliens" is considered i suggest putting a more intelligent species in the game, I mean Biters don't seem appealing enough to trade or ally with.
Even if this topic is tossed (which i hope it is not) intelligent creatures would be an interesting addition to the game.



(Seriously, imagine a massive inter-species war with creatures as intelligent as you are)

[ludsoe]

If "Peace with Aliens" is considered i suggest putting a more intelligent species in the game, I mean Biters don't seem appealing enough to trade or ally with.
Even if this topic is tossed (which i hope it is not) intelligent creatures would be an interesting addition to the game.



(Seriously, imagine a massive inter-species war with creatures as intelligent as you are)

And the biters are just in the way?

[cpy]

Peace with aliens? Nah more like aliens to pieces, bring me more guns and a tank. Tank and big gun is best foreign policy negotiator with aliens.