NAC: PSI Emitters

[Engimage]

This thread is a part of series which I call "New Age Combat (NAC)" and I want to post them all hoping that 0.16 will be a patch dedicated to reworking combat and endgame.

PSI Emitter is a device which emits specific waves to repel biters from your bases without need of combat. This emission should negate the effect of pollution which drives biters toward your bases so the more pollution you produce the more emitters you will need. The emission also prevents biters from nesting inside emission area kinda like victory poles did in the past. Emitters consume power however the total amount of power consumed should be much lower compared to laser turret wall. Generally I see it like we currently do a radar outpost - autonomous installation with emitter surrounded by a few solar panels and accumulators.

To prevent this techlology from making things trivial it should require some kind of alien artifact-like stuff to research. For example every kind of biter can drop its tissue sample and researching this particular biter type will make it succeptible to PSI emitters by adding a certain wavelengths to it. Gathering samples from nests and researching them will prevent nesting. Also if you are overpolluting area signal strength might become not enough to prevent biter attacks however it will still prevent biters from nesting around.

To gather such a big load of tissue samples I will add a certain topic inside a thread dedicated to logistic bots. But you get the idea - construction bots can automaticly gather those if you got a requester chest around.

[Deadly-Bagel]

So would this be an alternative to setting up walls and turrets? Because if you don't set up turrets and you break the threshold and trigger an attack, your base is dead. As you need to research the types to dissuade them you are forced to build the regular defences anyway, so in the end what's really the point? If you're going to have the defences anyway then all you're doing is reducing the frequency of the attacks but ammo is cheap.

IMO there should be two means of dealing with biters, either setting up solid defences and letting them die on your walls or taking the fight to them and clearing them out. We already have efficiency modules to reduce pollution and defences are pretty basic but they work, what we need now is a better way to deal with them in large numbers. Hoping they'll put the vehicle equipment grid into vanilla so we can have a tank that is actually worth something in the later stages of the game, but the ability to launch long range attacks would be good too. Preferably both.

[Engimage]

You might change some aspects of this for sure. But I want to propose some kind of a peaceful alternative to hold biters back. You know this is a major issue for a large scale bases - to provide the base with a fully functional perimeter defences. Repelling biters to a certain range from your base will severely reduce the amount of defences you should put in up to removing that need at all.

[Deadly-Bagel]

The only way I can see that working is the 'beacon' prevents expansion within a large area, and biters also won't approach that area. As pollution increases, they will slowly start getting closer so you can see this happening and deal with it accordingly. However this makes no sense, why would they start building nests closer to the evil pollution AND the signal they can't stand to be around?

The best way I see this happening is in a little pole, basically a victory pole. They repel biters and thus expansion within a short radius but ONLY if there is little to no pollution. So if you do start triggering attacks the poles will become a target and you'll have enough time to set up defences or whatever because you'll see them being destroyed on the way to your base.

HOWEVER this becomes unmanageable for larger factories as manually placing these over large areas is just blegh. One suggestion might be a structure that you provide with poles and it shoots them to where they need to be, expanding in a spiral. Would have a mild reload time, later when it's insufficient to expand you would set up another one.

[ssilk]

Added to viewtopic.php?f=80&t=14640 New Weapons / New Defenses & Armor / Combat / Turrets