Factorio Forums

TL;DR

Wall-E Robot dogs on Fulgora that chase the lightning. Settling in for sucking your accumulators dry. and maybe occasionally nibbling on a miner, but they generally have what they need in the scrap and the buildings they have once destroyed. generally neutral(tm).

isn't there a mod?

now I wanna start of by saying: yes I know there is a mod, but it seem to rather similar in behaviour to regular biters and what I'm suggesting is sort of a non-threat, meant to give some life to the planet, that can perhaps be dealt with with cleaver wiring and an addition to power grids that may be beyond the scope of a mod(more on that later)

What?

Spawning at the outskirts of your explored area, perhaps once a day, a packleader with about 4-6 scout/scavanger robot dogs come running across the plains, chasing lightning storms. they may be aimed near your highest concentration of buildings but with a chance to miss. they prefer running in the oil sands, but on occasion stops by scrap fields before heading onwards. what they truly need is the power.

if the circling scout dogs find your buildings they will try and get close, fill up their capacitors and run back to inform the packleader (think of this as a factory strider in Helldivers or AT-AT in Starwars.) this massive robot will then get a bit closer, and lie down as wires are run by the scouts out to connect to your buildings(maybe just outside of a rocket-turrets range) filling it's powers and allowing it to produce more scouts/scavanger units. slowly taking up more and more power the more units under its command. the scouts just hovering around your buildings, keeping themselves topped up and "gathering scrap"(animation only) or just walking scrap to the packleader.

Hostilities

The robots although not hostile towards structures, could go after the player(depending on what the devs think on the lore of how the Fulgorans died out. maybe it was the environment and the robots are just remaining peaceful costodians and not Terminators) but depending then on if the player shoots at the robodogs or a turret does so, the scouts will only seek to retreat, inform the factory strider and have it start making reinforcements. After gathering a group of now armed robodogs (suggestion could be mini-gun wearing ones. perhaps one with a mortar on its back, maybe even a tankier one.) They then go in a group to the location and starts attacking whatever is there that may have caused them harm. if no turret or player is there? well they may still blow up a miner and two and head back home. these aren't your stressfull enemy type that has you worry about loosing it all (unless you have tonnes of turrets everywhere)

Ultimately, trying to kill the factory strider is the hard part. he will send his scouts to attack you. a wailing claxon sounding as it tries to get away(slowly), while firing on you. spawning units as fast as it can to cover its retreat of the map and increasing your "evolution" on Fulgora by say 10%. those early ones? they are the scrappier ones, the ones more degraded and rusted, soon more powerful, pristine robo dogs will come. Packleaders with more armour still on, as they have heard the news of a juicy accumolator field where there are still people able to shoot at them, to resist their rule over Fulgora. This makes meeting the higher tiered robots a challange you almost will have to seek out to get, as the robots move on once the power is drained and you don't HAVE to fight them.

I'd say about 2-3 rail-cannon shots might do the job, on tier 1 packleaders, as they are ofcourse immune to electric damage(maybe even healing from it?). but the packleader tries to stay far of buildable areas, which can make it hard and worth having a large artillery battery.

it's the tier 3 ones, with some capability to generate its own power still(a functioning generator) and utilizing lighning captors of it's own that will truely besiege your settlement for all that prime scrap. sending in its more armoured units to clear out any resistance and then just remain permanently.

Power thingie

I would say this would call for maybe some ability for us to get information on power-consumption from the network and make circuit conditions according to those readings. perhaps another combinator that outputs a selected number from a connected powerpole? you put it down and connect a copper wire to its input. it would make power switches a whole lot more relevant, which would be fun, to try and isolate areas the dogs are draining untill it's dry and they move on.

Why?

I think there are alot of people, maybe like me, that found there being 2 planets with nothing really going on as far as outside of the player constructing things abit sad. I was so curious what that floating squid thing was in the FFF and and if there was going to be something happening with these Vaults on Fulgora. so I heard there were more updates planned and figured maybe I can throw in my idea for an enemy but one that isn't too stressful(because I get it, alot of people just want to build the factory) but I definately enjoy the combat aspects and would welcome a slight challange. send those tier 3, fully armoured robo dogs my way and let me fortify the cliffs of fulgora!

but ofcourse it would still be a challange for peaceful players as they definately don't attack the player in that mode but are still a power-problem to solve. think of it as a power disease, to ofset the otherwise abundant power, but also something that fills out the world and gives it (artificial) life.

happy to hear any feedback and questions as this is my first forum post, please let me know if I did anything wrong <3