Fight

[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.

[DrBladeSTEEL]

Depleted Uranium Clips

With the introduction of Uranium in .15, U 238 could be used to create a third tier of bullet magazine.

[lizard2547]

New elements are always cool. I enjoy all types of games, so I don't have a preference to where the combat should go. However, I will tell you that it is lacking in complexity. Good RTS mechanics that help with coordinating attacks is very necessary for single player, and even more modular armor type stuff would also be cool. However, here are some of the problems that I have noticed with the games current combat/combat items:

1. More types of armor. There are many more concepts of armor that could be used at less than power armor tech levels, such as mechanically assisted armor or simply using better alloys.
2. Gun's aren't that hard to make. Compared to almost anything players might be building in a game, they are mechanically simple. A modern assault weapon is less complex than a decent steam powered generator. They should be unlocked quicker.
3. More types of weapons. There a many, many weapons concepts out there. My friend and I worked on a very powerful Gauss gun for while, and it turned out well. There are various types of electric and chemical lasers, and many larger, heavier or just generally better ordinary guns that could be in this game.
4. Most normal guns are created equal. This ties into idea 2. Players should unlock a variety of niche weapons as well as typical ones, simply because they are about as hard to build. There could be snipers for taking out enemy turrets, grenade launchers (Or giant slug throwers!) for massive damage and so on. The tech tree should quickly move on to more advanced, better weapons. That way, an energy shielded juggernaut from the future won't have to use a combat shotgun from 1960.

I suppose that the important thing about this game is that you have to build things from the bottom up. If you have great RTS or third person shooter mechanics, it still seem underdone if there are only a few weapons/armor manufacturing options than can be used in the armies or personal equipment you might want. So, give the player more options and then focus on using those options. You can't really improve what really isn't there, so add more first.

[Kazuar]

I, too, agree that the combat/biter part doesn't feel quite there yet.

And I don't think that this is something that can be "fixed" by tweaking numbers, or adding to the already existing catalouge of weapon systems.
I feel that there is a lack of a sense of what I'd call "interactive escalation". Yes, despite the whole evolution factor thing - evolution only ever makes it so that the enemy "keeps up" with you as you inrease your capabilites of dealing with the enemy, although sometimes you outpace them, sometimes, they outpace you -whatever.
The point is that the whole thing runs by itself - the influence of pollution on the evolution factor isn't easily noticable, and the whole process doesn't feel very interactive as a result.

And although making the spread of pollution a prerequisite to the activation of an enemy outcropping is, technically, an interaction, it doesn't feel quite like I'm interacting with a threat that exists within the game world so much as it feels that I'm, and I'm using the term very liberally here, being "punished" for building. And no, this isn't about the difficutly of the enemy - it's about the whole conflict having only 2, binary extremes - "peaceful coexistance driven by mutual disregard" and "kill absolutely everything that ever existed everywhere with no regard to your own survival".

I feel that there should be more than just waves of enemies crashing against the factory. A bit of a "back and forth" between player and enviroment, not for difficulty, or challenge, or even for the sake of adding more combat to a building game, but for the sake of variety and interaction.

And personally, I've become fond of the idea of having something that is clearly detrimental to the player, but not destructive - let's just assume the biters and spitters we have got the destructiveness covered. And while one can certainly come up with many mechanics that can be described as "nondestructive detriments", two ideas that stuck in my head specifically, for those interested, are these:

Counter-pollution
As an enemy base becomes polluted, it emanates a "counter-pollution" that is in some proportion to the pollution suffered (this could be explained/handwaved as some kind of spore mucus created by an allergic reaction, if you'd care). This "counter-pollution" spreads, and becomes absorbed, just as regular pollution does. Man made entities that reside in chunks that suffer "counter-pollution" become "clogged": crafting speed drops, inserters and belts turn and move slower, and turrets suffer increased cooldown between shots. As the magnitude of the "clogging" is directly dependant on the amount of pollution created, as well as the distance of the next enemy base, the "clogging" effect is directly and somewhat exclusively (sans enemy expansions) resulting from the players actions.


Flying thieves
Let there be a new type of creature that may or may not be related to biters/spitters; this type of creature may be tiny and, importantly, non-threatening by itself. Due to inate migratory behaviour, or simply queued expansion, some of these creature fly toward the biggest source of pollution they can find. From there, they start snatching items from belts, inserters, and containers, to use them in the construction of their own nests from which they breed and accelerate the problem. Whether purging these nests reimburses those items stolen is a seperate thing to consider. Another option is to have this creatures come into existance only through a small chance of spawning it, whenever a tree goes into the "killed by pollution" state.

[chridder]

I see Factorio more in a Tower defense style.

I don't really like to fight, really prefer a peacefull game (see also the thread "Peace with Aliens" viewtopic.php?f=9&t=3762) , but I see the need for aliens on the map to keep some challange.

In a Tower Defense style, you could add kind of machines integrated into your factory.

- Fire towers which need to get filled with a oil product.
- autonomous mechs operating aroung a base, where they get refueled (early version with coal) / recharged (later versions with energy)
- traps which must be maintained by bots
- water trenchs which must be filled (and permanently refilled) by pumps
- etc.

but on the other side, more options to reduce pollution would be great, to avoid any agressness by aliens.

[Factory Lobster]

End-game needs automated drone strikes. Could be another branch of bot research. Success of such strikes would depend largely on your general speed of bots and perhaps other techs like battery life, so it's not really exploitable until you are regularly launching rockets anyway.

[BlackKnight]

I'm quite fond of the tower defense type being integrated further into Factorio. Already we have a strong RTS style with many aspects of the game.

The next logical steps would be to refine the tower defense rules further. Stronger walls, much more resistant aliens... and AI pathfinding so they route to your base core via walls/obstacles. This would make a great scenario game mode!

[kovarex]

Hello, this topic is way too old (one of the first topics on the forums) and broad to be useful at this moment, so I'm locking it, sorry.