Fight

[Ghoulish]

The problem as such with biters and fighting in its current state is that biters are just too weak. When you have 134 destroyer robots following you even 100% evolved green biters die faster than you can sneeze. The players arsenal of weapons far out matches that of biters.(edit: balance issue here tbh devs) And if you do bite off more than you can chew escaping is easy as you can just slow them down, wait for the shields to recharge and go again. The only 'oh shit' scenario I face when dealing with biters is running out of capsules or ammo, an oversight easily avoided.

If you want combat to be more engaging then biters should be given a new set of incisors, perhaps even new forms of biters (ones which could slow the player down, launch huge acid bombs from nearby biter bases, burrowing biters that would try and surround you, just more variety than the current 'I'm gonna suicide run' or 'I'll stand here and spit poison').

But it has to been mentioned that some people may not find it appealing to have more combat in Factorio, a point raised already in this thread. And I have to point out that the beauty of Factorio isn't in combat but in the automation aspect of the game. This is what pulled me in (and I bet you too!).

A hands off RTS system is something I could see working (or at least seems to fit better within the Factorio ethos of automation) However.

Personally, I would love to get an automated system for fighting (on top of the existing system).
This can be seen as a logical consequence of not doing things manually.
Let us have machines we can send out, e.g. by specifying the area of attack on the main map, and do our dirty work for us. If we send too few, they get killed and our base gets massively attacked by incensed aliens.
My reasoning behind this is that apart from having to cut down trees, having to go out and get alien science is - to me - a boring chore. I am not advocating the abolishment of hands on combat as I see that many seem to like it ... I'd just like to have an alternative.

This type of idea I find most appealing, and could tie in well with other topics being proposed for development.

- New tier of heavy inserters, conveyor belts. Specifically for heavy construction.
- New Item - Containers, which have to be filled with 1 type of resource (iron or copper plate, batteries etc)
- Containers could then be moved around on the upgraded belts (containers are too big to be moved by logistic bots or the player)
- New item - robot assembly - Big factory building that produces various robots (could you design the robots? swap out modules so you could upgrade a shield array, or to give more firepower or speed, +1 shield module or +1 damage, not room for both)
- Robot assembly uses the containers to build robots (war tanks, I guess) Different types of robot need different base resource requirements.

I could see the above playing out as some sort of war of attrition, the robot factory makes robots and the biters swarm, and they grind on one another until either the factory is destroyed or your robots succeed in killing the biter base. Perhaps you could even have pre made big biter bases that can only be tickled by the players weapons, yet over a little time robots could assault it, and grab a super alien artifact, a one per base item that could be used to boost research or unlock specific items (you want your new upgraded armor suit - but you need a single super alien artifact to make it.. and the only way to get one is to take down a big big biter base with robots). You could even introduce robots by starting out by making small fast moving robots which would look for these semi-rare big bases, and then evolve the concept to include assault robots.

This sort of automated RTS I feel could fit in well with Factorio. It's adds more layers of tech to research and something to do in the end game other than just build bigger. It's also gives a reason to use conveyor belts in the end game, which is mostly negated by the use of logistic robots. You also have an additional supply chain to worry about, either feeding the robot factory goodies locally, or ensuring the factory is well supplied if away from your main base - if the factory stops producing robots it'll get over run. You could tier the robots too, additional research could improve their speed or hit points, any modifier you wish. +1 damage, +1 speed, +1 shield and so on.

[driver]

I'm a gamepad player and I don't like to use 3 different buttons for attack (C, Space, right mouse click).
There could be an attack mode to switch to combat which simply changes the right/left mouse buttons to attack with autoaim or manual aim.
There are not many good dualstick action games that I know, Hotline Miami is the only one (this kind of action would probably be too intense for factorio, but dual-stick movement is interesting). Autoaim is still necessary, if you don't want to destroy your base.
I don't like flying capsules for combat.
There could be underground levels of biter nests, which reduce the number of biters attacking the player at once. The player could kill the queens or eggs, if he dies, he's getting respawned at the entrance.

[Otterbear]

To start, let me say, I've never liked the fighting aspect of this game..or the avatar for that matter.

I agree fully with what Ghoulish said:

But it has to been mentioned that some people may not find it appealing to have more combat in Factorio, a point raised already in this thread. And I have to point out that the beauty of Factorio isn't in combat but in the automation aspect of the game. This is what pulled me in (and I bet you too!).

This is what drew me to this game, and I hope can keep me enjoying this game for a long time to come.

This silly, time-wasting, bitter attacks, tripping over pipes, and sliding all over on conveyors, does more to detract from what I believe is an awesome idea for a game. The possibilities are endless when it comes to expanding the game.

I believe that development time would be better spent on improving what is already IN-GAME(minus Bitters, and your avatar)

This is a game for thinkers, and creative minds. Please don't turn it into something less than that.

[Stevepunk]

The problem as such with biters and fighting in its current state is that biters are just too weak. When you have 134 destroyer robots following you even 100% evolved green biters die faster than you can sneeze. The players arsenal of weapons far out matches that of biters.(edit: balance issue here tbh devs)..

But it has to been mentioned that some people may not find it appealing to have more combat in Factorio, a point raised already in this thread. And I have to point out that the beauty of Factorio isn't in combat but in the automation aspect of the game. This is what pulled me in (and I bet you too!)..

In terms of automated defences you have the laser and that's it. Bullets are too weak endgame. And I haven't found laser batteries to be too overpowered (they frequently get destroyed even in large numbers).
I'd actually like to see more variety and more powerful defences - after researching rocketry I was disappointed to find no rocket turret.
Even heavy shells can't be used for automated defence.
Flame turrets would be nice too.

Rocket turrets would need restrictions such as not being able to fire at a target within x range of a player/structure so as not to destroy your own base.

Also, defences need a range indicator.
Other games such as Rise of Nations, Civ and even Clash of Clans all have range indicators for defences (I would go as far to say 95% of strategy games have these, so it's mind-boggling that there are none in Factorio but it is alpha I guess).
Just make it the same as the existing range indicator for grenades.
This will be more important when there are more defences of differing ranges.

[Shin]

Yeah the combat really needs some work. Right now it's far too easy to steamroll enemy bases even with cheap weapons. It would be cool if the spawners would evolve and get tougher and also more enemy types would be nice to make combat more intersting.

[Mattyrogue]

You know what would be even cooler than new bugs and even more overpowered ways to defeat them?
More engaging Biter behavior...

At the moment, the bugs feel more like an encroachment on the planet than we do, at least we have the option of whether or not we become the biggest b*stard on the planet, the bugs are just hostile by default. So why not give them new ways to interact with us, the player.

• Biters actually do what their namesake suggests... They bite, they harvest, they become the worker ants of the colony, bringing back various resources like wood, iron, coal, back to their nest, hoarding it or adapting with the player's strategy, reinforcing their nests.
  Spitters start going out to oil fields, depending on player aggression, using said oil to 'mutate' their attacks. Maybe the player is using exo's to get around, their attacks get sticky... Maybe they use a lot of armor, their attacks become corrosive.
  Worms actually burrow and start migrating around... They'll attempt to damage drills from underground or surface in areas of particularly high pollution after a certain evolution factor, both of which can be mitigated by making a stone brick or concrete perimeter.
  A new type of bug that actually seeks out power poles, the Zapper. Instead of focusing on pollution sources, they focus on power sources. Their fairly harmless if left alone but to undefended assets like power poles or solar farms, they'll attempt to 'leech' off the network, the amount they leech corresponds with their size and mutation factor. As a result, they can literally use your own power against you, doing heavy damage to shields. Maybe as a result of this, a new Modular/Power Armor module could be developed; Armor Plating. Raises innate damage resistance but lowers movement speed incrementally.

And give us ways to interact back with the Biters and actually deal with them non-lethally too; Electric Fences, Repulsor Beacons, Repellant Sprayers.

[Shin]

You know what would be even cooler than new bugs and even more overpowered ways to defeat them?
More engaging Biter behavior...

At the moment, the bugs feel more like an encroachment on the planet than we do, at least we have the option of whether or not we become the biggest b*stard on the planet, the bugs are just hostile by default. So why not give them new ways to interact with us, the player.

• Biters actually do what their namesake suggests... They bite, they harvest, they become the worker ants of the colony, bringing back various resources like wood, iron, coal, back to their nest, hoarding it or adapting with the player's strategy, reinforcing their nests.
  Spitters start going out to oil fields, depending on player aggression, using said oil to 'mutate' their attacks. Maybe the player is using exo's to get around, their attacks get sticky... Maybe they use a lot of armor, their attacks become corrosive.
  Worms actually burrow and start migrating around... They'll attempt to damage drills from underground or surface in areas of particularly high pollution after a certain evolution factor, both of which can be mitigated by making a stone brick or concrete perimeter.
  A new type of bug that actually seeks out power poles, the Zapper. Instead of focusing on pollution sources, they focus on power sources. Their fairly harmless if left alone but to undefended assets like power poles or solar farms, they'll attempt to 'leech' off the network, the amount they leech corresponds with their size and mutation factor. As a result, they can literally use your own power against you, doing heavy damage to shields. Maybe as a result of this, a new Modular/Power Armor module could be developed; Armor Plating. Raises innate damage resistance but lowers movement speed incrementally.

And give us ways to interact back with the Biters and actually deal with them non-lethally too; Electric Fences, Repulsor Beacons, Repellant Sprayers.

Now this sounds really cool! You should write that in the suggestions.
I know this might be hard to program but it would make the biters way more interesting to interact with. Maybe this will be something for the future content if all the other stuff is done. I really would love to see more strategy involved.

[BlackKnight]

Like mentioned, this isnt the best place to write this but in response to the last two comments: I very much agree, the biters and spitters have always seemed kind of boring - even their names are generic. And although they dont have to be a big part of the game (there is so much to do without them being the center of the game - which is one reason why the devs I imagine have mainly focused on the mechanics of many other aspects of the games).. Though how mobs are implemented could make a world of difference in terms of creating the sense of an "evolving" world which is missing..

Organic world: IMO, this is really where its at in terms of immersion (Eventually I would really hope for evolving biomes and evolving non aggressive wildlife). It would reallllly give the game a sense of this organic, evolving NON STATIC habitat... >> Currently, its supposed to feel like its evolving with the biters/spitters "evolving" to being killed.. but that feels too simple as well as predictably linear).
I would actually like to see more organic evolution as well to them - and not all mobs evolve at the same time or rate because they all live in separate groupings.. slowly they may share traits but there would be differences in types and levels of evolution between them... and the further from the players influence, the less evolved they would become -- because they wouldn't have encountered the player before. (Which makes me think - just like having rare minerals for example (re viewtopic.php?f=9&t=10), you might also encounter a rarer combination of evolution in some areas that has a particularly unique way of surviving.. or maybe its markings are just really different?).
Oh yeah - and a better mix of mobs. If you are going to spawn a large behemoth biter, make it stronger, slower and take longer to spawn (a bit more godzilla like)... so they dont seem to be Literally popping out like popcorn everytime you kill a wave..

[Nulluhrzehn]

I didn't read all of these posts, so maybe someone suggested this already, but I really think a Starcraft 2 Baneling - type of alien would be cool. It would force the player to always carry a shotgun and keep those aliens at a distance. Flamethrowers, Submachineguns and Rocket Launchers would be less effective against these little rolling acidblobs. I understand why people say, that the game is not about fighting, but rather about being creative and all that, but when I play a video game with friends, I don't always want to be creative! Maybe I was creative for many exhausting hours at my job already and I just want to smash a few aliens and build some tracks and a new mine so my friends have all the copper and iron they need. If people really think this game should have less fighting or less danger, they can always just create a map without aliens and put a trillion alien artifacts in a chest near their spawn in the editor, right? I really enjoy being under stress to a certain degree, like during a game of starcraft, where you can never be fast enough and never be on edge enough and you can never be scouting enough, you always have to be on your guard and stuff. I don't think factorio without combat would interest me. There has to be something that constantly gnaws away your resources, something that forces you to always press onward and want more resources and more advanced technologies. I like to play with very unfrequent and few resources on the map, so it's a struggle to get to the first rocket.

[Mattyrogue]

Now this sounds really cool! You should write that in the suggestions.

Sadly my post contains more than one suggestion and as ssilk will probably chime in, someone's been there and suggested it before.

[ssilk]

Similar yes, but to use your power against you is new and sounds quite cool. I like such ideas.

[Deadly-Bagel]

I don't really mind where the combat is at the moment. Sure, it could use expansion but so could much of the game.

Turrets are enough to ward off attacks to start with but as the game progresses the biters slowly start biting off more and more so you need to add walls then more turrets then perhaps laser turrets and ammo feeders then when that's not enough you set up a roboport to repair everything and eventually stuff gets destroyed in a single wave so you need to have a production of turrets and walls. You don't need that many alien artefacts to require spicing up the combat, and the attacks are just a nuisance with a bunch of automation prospects.

The focus on Factorio is definitely automation and logistics. You want the natives to be a nuisance you can't ignore but nothing more than that, don't want to turn this game into a survival game or anything. Yes, it could definitely use tweaking such as probing ways around defences after a certain evolution level and a -little- more variety, perhaps some interaction with the environment like encouraging trees to grow around their nests (like ants) and preferring certain habitats, such as building on deposits where they gain armour, speed or damage depending on the deposit and perhaps the richness of it. I've seen them wander around and build new nests which is awesome (epecially when on the ghost of a turret protecting the nearby solar farm) - the series Abundant Automation started on 0.12 and in the first few hours he just plonked down a green belt every few chunks meaning biters could only spawn so far away they'd never be in range of pollution, doesn't seem to work in 0.13 (considering this new base was on the same screen as my solar farm, or very close to) so this sort of stuff is being slowly done already.

Some more tweaks could be in order, make nests harder to destroy but stop pumping out biters so quickly so you're not forced to ignore the creeps and go straight for the spawners (especially fun on big bases where currently the only strategy is to run circles around it with a horde of bugs following you) and late-game perhaps some long range but expensive stuff you can launch from a distance to help with the bigger bases.

New stuff is definitely welcome, but I don't think we should remove or severely reduce the effectiveness of the option to just build up an outer line of defence.

[aubergine18]

Have you ever played Mech Warrior? Would love an armour that turns player in to a Mech

It would be a bit like robot army mod, only instead of automated robots, the player would put on a mech suit and tool up. Would be endless possibilities - different mechs, weapons, etc. Things like overheating weapon systems, power drains, etc., would all come in to play... and there'd be lots of tech to research to get more advanced mech gear.

[Hannu]

If people really think this game should have less fighting or less danger, they can always just create a map without aliens and put a trillion alien artifacts in a chest near their spawn in the editor, right? I really enjoy being under stress to a certain degree, like during a game of starcraft, where you can never be fast enough and never be on edge enough and you can never be scouting enough, you always have to be on your guard and stuff. I don't think factorio without combat would interest me.

I think also that Factorio without enemies is boring and I do not like suggestions that play peaceful if I do not want harder enemies. But I think that fighting should not have too significant role and eventually I want to automatize it (like everything). I think that current difficulty and work level is more too much than too low. Because there are very different gamestyles there should be enough options to adjust difficulty, material costs and amount of work that combat needs.

[zebediah49]

I think also that Factorio without enemies is boring and I do not like suggestions that play peaceful if I do not want harder enemies. But I think that fighting should not have too significant role and eventually I want to automatize it (like everything). I think that current difficulty and work level is more too much than too low. Because there are very different gamestyles there should be enough options to adjust difficulty, material costs and amount of work that combat needs.

On the topic of automating defense, I would propose a 3rd type of bot, for defense. Similar to the capsule-bots, or the mod that adds robots that deploy from a specific turret. My preferred version is that of a bot that traverses the "construction range" of the normal roboport, but picks up ammo and shoots biters. The improvement of this version of other ones is the bots being reusable (i.e. they fly back and go back in the roboport when done) and automatically covering the whole logistics system range (so it doesn't have problems with gaps). Given the effectiveness of machine guns late-game it wouldn't be particularly effective as a primary defensive measure, but it would be nice as a supplement.

[raidho36]

Thermite grenade lanuncher.

Thermite is a metal powder mix, the most common mix is aluminium and iron oxide but also works well with copper oxide. Reaction produces extreme heat and splatters brilliant-white-hot molten metal all over the place. Thermite also doubles as solid fuel because it doesn't explode, but extreme burning temperatures may make it unusable for boilers and trains and whatnot. Then again, there are portable fusion reactors which you don't even have to fuel i.e. realism was outside the window to begin with, so what the hell, might as well use thermite to fuel inserters.

Making explosives and solid fuel out of metals may come extremely handy on maps nearly devoid of oil.

[Hannu]

On the topic of automating defense, I would propose a 3rd type of bot, for defense. Similar to the capsule-bots, or the mod that adds robots that deploy from a specific turret. My preferred version is that of a bot that traverses the "construction range" of the normal roboport, but picks up ammo and shoots biters. The improvement of this version of other ones is the bots being reusable (i.e. they fly back and go back in the roboport when done) and automatically covering the whole logistics system range (so it doesn't have problems with gaps). Given the effectiveness of machine guns late-game it wouldn't be particularly effective as a primary defensive measure, but it would be nice as a supplement.

That would be interesting. I have thought that there could be also bots like distractors but much more heavily armored and armed. They would also wait in roboports. If some object would be damaged in construction area, the bot would be called and it would fly on the place of the damaged (or destroyed) object and begin to defend against nearby enemies. I thought that they would be expendable like distractors but maybe survived bots could even go back to the nearest roboport and use repair tools to fix themselves when they have not detected enemies in firing range in some time.

[Hannu]

I am sorry if this have been suggested already (there is no clear list of suggested things). My suggestion is an artillery. It would be an expensive but very effective weapon system in late game when player send several rockets per hour and need large areas for resource gathering. Cannons would be like turrets but have an attack radius of hundred meters. They would attack only against spawners. They would be intended to keep some safety area around defense walls. Cannons would need at least ten thousand raw materials in highly refined form (steel, processing units, electric engines etc.) and more complex production chain than just put things to an assembler and get a cannon. Ammunitions would be made from separate casings, explosive projectiles and explosives which gives an initial velocity (I do not know what it is called in English). They would also be expensive and complex and slow to manufacture so that we could build interesting ammunition production cells.

There is possibility to abuse artillery like turret creep, but I think that it is not a big difference if almost invincible player runs over the enemy bases with power armor 2, top equipment, flamethrower, distractors and hundred destroyers which barbeque the swarm of enemies in seconds. Artillery should be so late game thing that clearing of the enemies is in any case boring routine stuff instead of interesting challenge. The research should take 1000 science bottles of all kind.

[Deadly-Bagel]

Perhaps around 1,000 iron, 300 gear wheels, some t3 speed and efficiency modules, maybe 200 concrete, and 50 processing units. moderate energy drain (for scanning and targeting), expensive cannon shells (like 10-15 explosives), only attacks visible targets (so either a sector just scanned by a radar or that is otherwise spotted), minimum range, research for accuracy and damage to one-shot spawners, and yeah that would be really cool.

Main problem is if you run up to a base and discover it, what's to stop it blowing you up? Perhaps a target reticule showing the target and roughly the impact area would be a good idea.

[derberherbert]

I propose some quality of life changes to Power Armours.

- Ability to colour code the item. If you have a fighting armour and a building armour (with many personal roboports) it's confusing to swap them around with inventory sorting on.

- Enable/Disable personal roboports with a hotkey or click on the armour. Nothing more frustrating to get your personal robots deliver you 20k iron ore.

- Always/never build with personal roboport when possible. If you plant a blueprint now in range of the real robo network it's random what buildings are built by the network robots or by your personal roboport.