[Idea] Biter slaves? Much like logistic robots.

[darkshadow1809]

So my previous mod. Evolution. which has now grown into Natural evolution and taken over by someone else whom did a fantastic job
I'd now like to propose something more.. odd? perhaps..

Instead of just turning them into fighting slaves for you. Maybe they could help around at the factory too? Retrieve items, repair, load up chests, mine etc
Now the only way is ... how? I hope you guys have some guidelines as to what may be possible in this area to make it work. as ofcourse the ai in factorio is a bit limited.

What I am thinking is just making a "logistics robot" and basically remove the ability to fly over objects. and make them able to navigate through the base and put a biter texture on it. Those can be defined as either "construction biters" "RepairSpitters" or "Biterminers" You know.. have them each do an individual job. As ofcourse logistic robots are for logistics. construction robots are for construction and so on The biterminers come from the logistics mining mod which floats around somewhere.

Now these are all just vague idea's but if anyone see's potential here or has an idea to how this might work in code. please do feel free to write comments below and make this mod a reality;)! because as much as we want a mod that makes you able to have biters fight for you.. maybe make them into your slaves as well and do all your dirty work for you? right? I mean it definitely cant hurt

Let me know what you think!

[kyranzor]

Sounds good! do it. prepare a minimum viable product and something testable, even at the lamest of stages, and let us test it. Don't spend huge amounts of time making a fully featured mod and find that nobody wants it.

[Adil]

Don't spend huge amounts of time making a fully featured mod and find that nobody wants it.

That's the way I always do it.

[morganismad1]

I saw a mod like this but it was on an outdated edition of Factorio. I was really annoyed because i thought the idea of this would be amazing. If you do this for the latest edition i for one will definitely be getting it!

[Darloth]

I'd really like non-flying helper logic.

I'm not so fussed about them being biters - in fact, I'd like them to be the little legged robots we see (saw?) on the robotics tech. I keep feeling a short range, cheaper to build, construct only, maybe even green science only walker construction robot would be ideal for midgame auto-repair and helping in outpost defense.

I also remember a mod where someone used the biter logic but gave them tank sprites, so you could send off little squads of mini-tanks to go harrass the biters, and that was fun. Not sure what became of it, can't find it now. Possibly unrelated.

[bammalar]

something that might need a creative solution is how to get ground based robots or friendly biters to play nice with trains. It would be unfortunate if your rail network squished them.

[Darloth]

Don't put them near trains and they won't get squashed? If they're fairly short ranged (the helper robots) that would work nicely.

It could be a problem for the biter-AI things, yeah.

[TheSAguy]

LOL, cool idea.
Small biters could carry 1 resource, medium 3 and large 6 or something like that.

Make them scouts! Have them map out resource fields. Let other biters not attack them, since they are non-hostile.