11 Combat Improvement Ideas

[opiemonster]

1) Give turrets an activation animation of a few seconds once built, so you can't easily kill alien bases with turret creep.

2) Aliens will evolve next to the player based on how many buildings are in the area, so you cant just place 1 small object to stop aliens spawning.

3) Walls are easier to take down, at the moment its a pain to destroy them and move them somewhere else, so you end up just not building them till you have a lot of space.

4) Exploring out in the field and taking alien bases has more rewards. Unique modules and power armor items can be dropped. Possibly multiple alien artifact types which tie into other item creation.

5) Consumables such as health potions, defense buffs, shield generators,

6) Laser fences that kills aliens when they walk through them, they have a low threat priority of course.

7) Late game flying aliens which swarm the base and can fly over buildings, the player can build wide area SAM turrets which use missiles to take them down.

8) Aliens have a new unit called queens which create eggs, and the eggs create aliens. Queens have a chance to spawn a new queen which will migrate to a new base, replacing the old form of alien base creation.

9) Worm bases, which spawn tunneling worms that can invade your base. They can be countered by laying stone or concrete.

10) Radars have a camera which can spawn a mini alert screen when aliens attack the area.

11) You can equip trains with "gun carriages".

[ratchetfreak]

quite a few suggestions here

number 3 has a work around with the roboport and construction robots which don't need to mine structures

[opiemonster]

quite a few suggestions here

number 3 has a work around with the roboport and construction robots which don't need to mine structures

Yea deconstruction plan is great and all, but the problem is in the early game you don't have robots yet, which is kinda when you want to build lots of walls.

[bobingabout]

Just a random thought that popped into my mind reading over your new enemy type ideas... can Spawners spawn entities other than the standard mobile enemies "unit" class, like Spitters and Biters?

I'm just getting the crazy idea of a worm spawner, that spawns worms in a manner similar to how normal spawners spawn biters and spitters.
Or worse, as the evolution level rises, spawners have a chance to spawn other spawners too, so in a rather late game, the enemy bases just grow and spread quite noticeably.

But the question here is... Can spawners actually spawn these things, or are they hardcoded to only spawn unit class?

[bobingabout]

But the question here is... Can spawners actually spawn these things, or are they hardcoded to only spawn unit class?

The answer is no. You CAN define other entities on this list, and the game will load just fine, but when someone actually tries to spawn, the game crashs.

[ske]

1: Oh no! But interesting idea. Easy to implement and test. They could take the time to charge up batteries.

2: Meh.

3: Deconstruction planner. Some inconvenience is good.

4: Aliens don't have technology. Multiple alien artefacts is interesting but adds items. A change in the artefact thing at some point would be good IMHO.

5: Combat robots are consumables. What you mention is magic.

6: Not necessary or useful with current towers and aliens.

7: You played too much tower defens, didn't you?

8: This would be mostly cosmetic but makes a lot of sense. The spawning and migration of aliens needs to be revamped IMHO.

9: Interesting, should/could be tested with a mod.

10: Radars already do place icons on the map - that's what radars can do. You need satellites or camera towers for your idea.

11: Yess, the shooting train is what we need. Like having tracks through enemy territory and shooting your way through to hold them back. I think this has been suggested a lot, before.


Now you should read the rules. Pick one idea, think really hard about it and post it again here, this post might get deleted.

[Supercheese]

9) Worm bases, which spawn tunneling worms that can invade your base. They can be countered by laying stone or concrete.

I'll just leave this here: viewtopic.php?f=93&t=22790

[tobsimon]

1) Give turrets an activation animation of a few seconds once built, so you can't easily kill alien bases with turret creep.

When I go for a turret creep, I build new turrets in the area protect by the previous line of turrets. While this suggestion will slow down the strategy, it does nothing to prevent it.

I think the best way to make combat more interesting is to make the enemy more interesting. E.g. Fear inducing alien behavior, previous topic of mine.