Suggestions to increase threat potential of late game biters

[Overread]

So at present Biters, once a player has a functional factory up and running with walls, towers and automated ammo production, become rather insignificant. This is further increased if the play builds a roboport and sets it up to auto-repair the surrounding area; thus meaning that the player hasn't even got to patrol the walls every so often to fix up points which have slowly taken damage over time.

This tends to result in Biters simply being a target for attacks, where they do hold up decently well; but with the tank and the use of blueprints to build way-bases with lasers and walls its again a point where they are mostly just there in the mid to late game to harvest resources from. They don't actually threaten the factory itself which; I feel, is something that they should be capable of doing.

Thus a few suggestions expanded upon from the news-thread post I made earlier:

1) Queens.
The concept of a queen in a general sense is to provide a threat which remains within the Biter controlled areas (either in a specific nest or roaming between them) but which increases the threat level of those Biter nests significantly. Thus creating a threat which must be identified (found) and then taken out by the player least they face a massive mounting threat from that flank against their factory - or at the very least forces the player to develop a much more hefty defensive setup - increasing the resource investment.

Ideas as to how the queen can increase the threat level could include:
a) Area control over Biters. Doesn't need to be advanced, but if the Queen were to have a control area around her which would allow her to link-up the attacks (Biters) of multiple hives so that they mount a much heavier assault upon a base in one go. The idea being that with a queen present she should be creating a much more "focused" attack upon a specific point - maybe calling the Biters to her location first then sending them in a huge single wave at a single destination.

b) Increased production/growth of Biter nests. Either limited to only the nest she is within or within the control circle around her. Whilst nests do grow quicker as the game progresses, the use of a queen increases this growth significantly. Thus further increasing the threat and also protecting the queen more so from attack by the player (harder to defend - harder to attack - and forcing the player to be more aware of Biter nests around their base to spot queens before their nest fully grows)

c) Growth of new nests - this could be done via the queen moving or by her simply having the capacity to increase nest formation within a control area around her. The latter is likely the better option as a mobile queen would expose itself to high risk rather than building up a heavy defence around itself.

d) Expanding control area. The control area idea suggested above, if used, could also feature it growing over time; representing the queen establishing more and more control over the Biters around her. This, if left unchecked, would result in a massive threat to the player.

Of course all this sounds nice in theory, however I suspect that Queen birth initially would have to be affected by pollution levels and distance to the high areas of pollution/player built structures. Ergo queens shouldn't be forming far out in the unexplored areas - or at least if they do they should be more rare and, like nests, less rapid in growth. This prevents the game reaching a point where the player is too heavily beset upon and where expansion is too high an investment to be fun for the player (of course such parameters could be tweaked by the game-start-up to scale threat to player desires).



2) Siege Biter. The concept behind this Biter is that currently most biters die to defensive fire from turrets and mines. As such a player only needs establish enough guns to counter an attack, plus provide some repair and Biters are held at bay. A double thickness wall also provides a huge time sink that simply eats up Biter pace and leaves them open to being shot to bits.
Thus the idea of a Siege biter is one that can't take damage from standard guns - or which has directional weakness so that its "front" end is impervious and only its rear can take damage. Thus it is basically a battering ram - the Bitcher charging up and smashing into walls/buildings and, rather like the tank going through trees, takes damage from the impacts more so. As a result it creates a biter which can potentially "punch" through a defensive position and thus either cause more damage within the factory or at the very least allow other Biters to follow after it. Thus forcing the player to invest more into a stronger defence and also introducing the need to rebuild/repair defensive areas under heavy attack form such Biters.

3) Biter "Walls". If the player gets them no reason the Biters shouldn't have some wall structures of their own. Might be too powerful considering how many of the static worms they can establish in a larger nest (considering that the player represents a single focal point for attack when going on the offensive).

4) Flying Biters. Like it says on the tin and clearly a Biter which represents significant threat since it would have the ability to ignore natural land features, mostly large bodies of water, which otherwise protect areas of a base from regular Biter attack. Furthermore means that walls no longer have a protecting effect and thus puts more risk to the players defensive structures going down.
Linking up ground and air attacks would be interesting but in my mind would revolve around a single choice - either allowing combined arms of ground and air at once and having air Biters tied to follow the general direction of ground biters (so that they hit the same spot; rather than have terrain cause the two types to split up); or focusing on single arms and having more air-biters produced so that when they attack on their own they represent a significant threat in their own right.
A further way to increase their threat level would be to have regular towers unable to attack them; thus requiring a new "anti air" tower building and/or an upgrade (research) to existing towers to target air Biters. Another concept would be "Radar" towers which would convey air attack capabilities to towers within their control radius.



That's just a few ideas to try and get mid to late game Biters become more of a threat so that the game has to include the combat element (least on default settings - players could of course weaken/disable/strengthen biters in game setup).



EDIT - along with making Biters more difficult and more of a threat I also feel (upon further thinking on this topic) that Biters also need to be less of a threat should they penetrate defensive lines. This essentially means building Biters so that they can punch through a defence - damage a factory, but at the same time also not be so powerful that should they enter the factory itself they tear the whole thing apart. Such could quickly crash a players enjoyment.

Thus I would propose a system where by the more Biters destroy the players buildings the less aggressive they become. The idea being that they charge in full of energy, but as they collectively destroy more and more they wear out - get tired and thus slow their advance. I would tie this to the destruction of non-military buildings so that the Biters would retain full aggression whilst attacking the defences (increased adrenalin from direct attack etc...); but would slow once they've taken out a portion of buildings within the factory.
This leaves more time for the player to respond to an attack personally - especially for larger factories. It means that a small out-post could be significantly damaged, but a much larger factory should be hurt but not totally destroyed by biter activity.

Of course this is a balance question really and could be countered by players building turrets within the base proper as well - so there's a bit of push and shove as to if this would be needed or not based on testing how well increased Biter threat goes.

[ssilk]

Hm. I link back: https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... 69#p111333

This direction is "dangerous" in the sense, that if the natives become more and more a thread, many players will loose fun.
So I created a strategy "against" this threat (not against your idea): We need then automated artillery.
See this thread: https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... =6&t=16804

[Overread]

Aye such ideas would need some balance to ensure that they do not become too powerful. At present I feel that Biters are just not dangerous enough. Once the player has a basic base up and running they really only need a few walls, some automated ammo and energy and turrets and they are pretty safe from most Biter attacks. Even big Biter attacks are mostly decimated - it only tends to be a risk if the Biters find a weak-point; which currently is really only where trains enter/leave a base. Otherwise a player can totally fortify themselves against biter incursion.


So I do feel that the Biters need some more "Bite" to them.

My ideas are mostly about increasing threat without increasing the players arsenal of weapons too much, in fact the only weapon I suggested as anti-air turrets if air-biters are introduced.

Artillery is a great idea, esp for late game where Biters are more likely to have more nests; indeed the Queen would fit in well increasing Biter growth and putting more demand upon Artillery to counter the rapid increase in Biter populations against an ever bigger factory spewing out more and more pollution. The trick is to ensure that any new weapons only hold at bay at best.


Personally I think that players are coming from two broad fronts (very basic).

1) They are optimisers and the biggest fun for them is building the most efficient factory ever.

2) They are survival players.

The former group is more likely to lower the aggression of Biters pre-game.For them the combat is secondary and beyond getting alien orbs for research they are not as interested in combat. So for them harder biters is indeed a detracting element; but with pre-game setup they can control that aspect.

The latter group is the one I feel needs more attention in the form of harder Biters. This group will build good factories; but for them they also want the combat threat. They want Biters to be a risk - to attack and do damage because its in the battle/moment that they are "surviving" on the world. Certainly this group won't have fun if the Biters tear the whole place apart; hence my point on the Biters needing a rough "per attack wave" endurance modifier so that the more non-military structures they destroy the slower/less aggressive they become.

[Ranakastrasz]

Queen sounds interesting. An organized, active threat, rather than passive, mostly predictable waves. So long as it is a rare occurance, perhaps with a visible/audable warning when it shows up, say, on radar.


Siege biter seems like a bad idea. It would be entirely immune to turrets by it's effects, meaning that, unless excessiely rare or only part of, say, a queen-sent wave, (which you would be intervening in anyway) it would just be too powerful and make it less fun for players.


Walls could be interesting. Would make shotguns weaker, and rockets/SMG would be relatively more powerful, which is generally a good idea.


Fliers could be fun. However, the only real obsticals are water, which until the player has the ability to, say, build on water, or transport over water, giving the biters that ability seems a bit of a bad idea.

Momentum and loss of energy seems interesting, not sure what else to say on that one.

[Overread]

Rana - the flying biters give a reason for a player not to leave a flank on their base undefended. Ergo whilst early game building next to a large body of water might give them one half or even two halves of their base defended from attack the mid to late game those areas would open up as vulnerable to air-attacks. Of course the player doesn't have to be able to build on water to be able to protect them; but it will require adjustment of how they harvest water for power and also how they build or rebuild those areas of the base to have defences.

The siege Biter I see purely as way to allow the Biters to actually penetrate a players defence; as it stands even with increasing attack wave sizes, the player simply builds a few walls and turrets and then happily sits behind them. The Biters are, at that stage, only a threat if the player wants to leave the base for any reason.

A rare siege Biter allows the Biters to "punch" through a wall and turret setup so that the regular close combat Biters have more chance to actually make it into combat and do some damage. Another option would be to:

1) Give the Biters a form of mobile short range Artillery or static long ranged artillery - the idea being to allow them to take out defences. However its my experience that most RTS AI is not all that capable with the effective use of artillery (ergo holding units back and shelling a location and then invading); plus we have to consider the quick building aspect of the game means that long ranged artillery would be an annoyance and threat; but wouldn't have lasting damage with a player/roboport in operation nearby - plus in my view its trying to push the game more toward RTS than it needs to be.

2) Give the Biters a heavily armoured transport bug - ergo one which charges up; attacks the walls and then dies to fire and releases a wave of Biters upon death. Although again this is still your regular Biters going down so its still only going to wear away slowly at walls. This isn't viable as mid to late game the player/roboports can repair pretty quick. This is why I favoured the idea of a battering ram approach in the siege Biter. It does instant damage and takes out structures - leaving a vulnerability in the base.
Considering that it would likely only take out a single line which would likely only be a handful of wall sections and maybe one or two turrets its not a massive hit - but enough to make a hole in need of fixing and through which Biters can at least charge through. Essentially getting around the problem that in most battles Biters meet the walls and start eating them up only to die to incoming fire whilst they do so.






Note another option would be to introduce a new Biter which can simply walk over walls - thus something which can directly move back to reach turrets. This is better than artillery as it means that the game isn't just moving into a war of weapons where player and Biter are continually trying to out-range each other; since it would be coming right into range of the weapons; but it does mean that the wall isn't a risk. A couple of those could puch a hole in the gun-line - leaving regular biters time to eat the wall.

[Ranakastrasz]

Rana - the flying biters give a reason for a player not to leave a flank on their base undefended. Ergo whilst early game building next to a large body of water might give them one half or even two halves of their base defended from attack the mid to late game those areas would open up as vulnerable to air-attacks. Of course the player doesn't have to be able to build on water to be able to protect them; but it will require adjustment of how they harvest water for power and also how they build or rebuild those areas of the base to have defences.

Good point. As long as it is late game. Still, I generally always build my walls such that water ends up being the endpoints of each wall section.

The siege Biter I see purely as way to allow the Biters to actually penetrate a players defence; as it stands even with increasing attack wave sizes, the player simply builds a few walls and turrets and then happily sits behind them. The Biters are, at that stage, only a threat if the player wants to leave the base for any reason.

Mostly true. I have been planning on making a mod that replaces laser turrets with plasma turrets, which require oil-based fuel to attack. As is, if you need more defence, you add more laser turrets, and generally a few more solar panels or accumulators are enough to deal with any size of wave.
That said, behemoth biters are quite durable. Well, durable in that all 30+ laser turrets in range have to focus fire on it for 2-3 seconds to take it down. And if you have anything lesser, they will pretty much always hit your wall.

A rare siege Biter allows the Biters to "punch" through a wall and turret setup so that the regular close combat Biters have more chance to actually make it into combat and do some damage. Another option would be to:

True enough. Although just making obscenely durable and/or laser resistant might work almost as well. If it can weather any amount of turret fire, and only a player can kill it, it will cause some loss of fun. (Turrets will never be behind it, ever)

1) Give the Biters a form of mobile short range Artillery or static long ranged artillery - the idea being to allow them to take out defences. However its my experience that most RTS AI is not all that capable with the effective use of artillery (ergo holding units back and shelling a location and then invading); plus we have to consider the quick building aspect of the game means that long ranged artillery would be an annoyance and threat; but wouldn't have lasting damage with a player/roboport in operation nearby - plus in my view its trying to push the game more toward RTS than it needs to be.

Outranging static defences requires player intervention. A static type might make sense. It should take like 30+ minutes to grow one, and if radar scans it a warning should show up. That said, it would then require you to kill it.
Also, it might be possible (if possibly expensive computationally) to have the biters, on wanting to launch a wave after massing up, to check if the target-ish's amount of firepower, and if it is high enough, then not immediately attack, waiting for more or for artillery support. Also, you might have artillery require biters near the target location to function, as a spotter, at least for mobile ones.

2) Give the Biters a heavily armoured transport bug - ergo one which charges up; attacks the walls and then dies to fire and releases a wave of Biters upon death. Although again this is still your regular Biters going down so its still only going to wear away slowly at walls. This isn't viable as mid to late game the player/roboports can repair pretty quick. This is why I favoured the idea of a battering ram approach in the siege Biter. It does instant damage and takes out structures - leaving a vulnerability in the base.

An armored transport, or possibly a decoy-damage sink type unit (which either always goes in first, or attracts all turret fire innately) would be cool. If the biters had high tech, an energy shield projector would make sense, but they aren't, so it doesn't. A laser-dampening field from biological tech of some sort might be acceptable.

Considering that it would likely only take out a single line which would likely only be a handful of wall sections and maybe one or two turrets its not a massive hit - but enough to make a hole in need of fixing and through which Biters can at least charge through. Essentially getting around the problem that in most battles Biters meet the walls and start eating them up only to die to incoming fire whilst they do so.

A battering ram type biter, or a full starcraft II rippoff baneling to heavily damage wall would be reasonable and certainly wanted. On the subject of removing walls,I tried a while ago to make spitter projectiles have a chance of impacting walls for massive damage instead of going over them to hit turrets, but the game doesn't really support that without scripting.

Note another option would be to introduce a new Biter which can simply walk over walls - thus something which can directly move back to reach turrets. This is better than artillery as it means that the game isn't just moving into a war of weapons where player and Biter are continually trying to out-range each other; since it would be coming right into range of the weapons; but it does mean that the wall isn't a risk. A couple of those could puch a hole in the gun-line - leaving regular biters time to eat the wall.

Wall bypass would be nifty, but still has to let you get close enough to the wall to actually walk over it.

----
In the video game AI Wars, Fleet command, ships had a shield stat, (which was removed later both when the developers tried to kill all random factors ever in the game, and because it was always getting confused with forcefields) which opposed weapon range, effectively reducing the attacker's range. If they attacked at such range, a large chance of missing would be incurred. That is a way to counter high-ranged units as a mechanic.

Similarly, invisiblity or teleportation are common (and the second would let you bypass walls)

Making laser turrets into ammo-using turrets would make maintaining a massive number of turrets far more expensive. (sort of, you need the same amount of ammo either way) as rather that just using electricty, you would need logistic lines, assemblers, and the raw resources to manufacture the ammo.

As mobile artillery, I could point at a concept in the RTS Supreme commander. There is an air unit, the Mercy, which when it attacks, instantly disintigrates and releases around 6 powerful energy-artillery bolts, dealing horrific damage. The unit itself is really fragile, being a suicide bomber.
If you don't want to risk artillery sitting outside of range and throwing bolts constantly until the player (or rts/automated robots, or your own artillery, or mechanical soldiers or....) deals with them, then having them detonate to attack might make sense.

[lancar]

I think a queen making the hives near it produce & send biters at a near continuous pace would be interesting. Suddenly one of your walls will be under constant attack, with no letting up, drawing ammo (or power) like crazy, making it a threat you HAVE to deal with fairly soon or your supply systems might not be able to keep up.

Like a bite-sized (pun not intended) version of a deathworld setting.

[Kobrar]

A long range attacker which would sit back and fire would be too strong, but this can be solved by having him move forward to his death inbetween shots.
Also, it would be very interesting, if his shots would disable buildings for some time instead of dealing damage. A disabled transbelt can halt entire facility for instance. Deconstruction of disabled building could be impossible. There could be a mechanic where bugs could disable the ground for a time making it impossible to build on[possibly on death?]. A lot of possibility here.

Biters could also be able to burrow[and unborrow with next wave or whenever] starcraft-style, which would make another use of radar.

There could be a [tanky/low prio turret target?] leech bug which would drain energy from the system. Probably not an issue for multi-GW facility.

Biters could get stronger during night.

There could be that fat thing that would spit a few biters at a larger range behind walls and once its out of ammo act like a normal biter.

Another option is have another target for biters that you can't defend as well as yourself, but for that I will gather my thoughts and search the forum some more.

EDIT: EMP spitters that would disable laser turrets would make gun turrets a viable defensive structure late game.

[bobucles]

Biters can only become so powerful before they turn into base flattening monsters. If they can puncture your defenses they can definitely destroy all the defenseless stuff inside. Along this line I think it's important to include more passive, "lossy" forms of defense. For example electric systems can deal retaliatory shock damage to melee biters, miners are just dangerous to stick claws into, and destroyed assemblers can crash down dealing a small explosion of damage. That way biters who pierce your defenses don't gain automatic impunity to destroy all everything.

Waterways currently act like walls against the enemy. Swimming biters would be a good start to get them past those moats.

Tunneling biters would be amazing. They burrow under defenses and hit directly in the middle of your base. Brutal. Potentially vulnerable to land mines.

Allah Ackbar biters would be another creature along the line of "high chance to succeed, low follow through". They rush in and explode, perhaps literally or by releasing a caustic agent that melts stuff. Obviously after they succeed they won't present any more danger beyond that.

[Linosaurus]

As a general comment, I am opposed to anything the biters can do that requires *repeated* player intervention in the late game. I am not actually sure how many of the suggestions here would lead to that.

I want every new type of biter to have a reliable static defence. However. Perhaps the reliable defence is late in the tech tree and also expensive. So for a while you need manual intervention before you can research and afford the automatic ones. You already have to upgrade your defences sometimes, adding more turrets as biters get stronger, so having to add new special turrets or a second line of defence to deal with burrowers would be ok for me.

I think that it is very good for the game that you have access to ammo-free turrets before blue science, so you can be defended while you figure that out. Adding ammo to them would make the game tedious. But on the other hand, I was a bit disappointed my first games on default difficulty where my base wasn't attacked until I had lasers.

[bobingabout]

I have a few ideas for changes in the way enemies work in the game too...

For starters, in the early stages with low polution, only small worms should exist in the world.

As the polution level rises, bigger worms are allowed to spawn in the world, just as bigger biters spawn from nests.

On top of multiple tiers of Biter/Spitter and Worm, there should also be a higher tier of nest. These higher tier nests are mostly just tougher to kill.

And the key point... Worms, Biters, Spitters and Nests EVOLVE over time. A small worm can turn into a medium worm, a small biter into a medium biter, etc.
A nest created at the start of the game consisting only of small worms, basic nests and biters, if visited near endgame during the highest evolution factor would likely have big worms, behemoth biters and spitters and reinforced nests.

On top of all this... current logic works that enemy expansion will go and create a new base... how about also expanding an existing base? so if a base only has 5 nests.... several hours later it could have expanded and grown, and connected with other small bases to be just one big base with over 500 nests, just as many big worms, and an ocean of behemoth biters weaving between the nests.


Note: I barely actually read anything in this thread, I just saw it was about biters, so posted my opinion on the subject.

[UberWaffe]

....

I'd like to throw my considerable fat squishy weight behind this.
Evolving nests and entities that can change into other types of entities if pollution / evolution breaches a certain point would be a great boon for making biters scale better.
And I suspect it would be less development effort than entirely new mechanics (i.e. entirely new forms of aliens and alien behavior).

That said, other types of aliens and alien behavior would be good as well.

[Simn]

I don't think the threat to a defended factory should be increased. It's part of the whole automation idea: You automate your defense so you can forget about it and focus on other things. That's a core mechanic of Factorio.

The additional end-game challenge (which I agree is necessary) should instead come from making it harder to expand, as well as making expansion necessary in the first place.