Friday Facts #166 - Combat Revisit

[Axios]

Exploration is penalized by lack of reward plus extreme enemy density.

I think the lead designer said not too long ago he doesn't want to encourage exploration, which might very well be why their approach to combat is unsatisfactory to some of us.

On March 2016 they talked about exploration: https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-129

Resource generation tweaks:
Resource generation would be tweaked, so the richness of the mining sites would grow the further you are from the center of the map, the same way the size of enemy bases grows. This would actually add a lot of strategy to the game, as it would always be questionable, whether it is better to use the nearby mines, or whether to expand deep into enemy territory, and create a defensive position of the mine that will last for a very long time. This would also open new possibilities for difficulty settings, as higher difficulty settings could decrease the starting richness of the mines, but it wouldn't imply the need to just tinker with lot of small mines. This would just mean that you need to go deeper into enemy territory compared to easy settings, to get the same amount of resources.

Long term mining drills
These would be unlocked by late game research, with a high resource cost. Their advantage would be that, in the long run they would be able to squeeze much more resources from the mining site compared to the normal mining drills, mining some kind of "dirty ore". They would get X times dirty compared to the normal mining. The dirty ore would have to be additionally processed in your base, so it would add infrastructure and logistic challenges if one wants to go this way. In the long run, you could go much further with the scale of the factory, as the complexity is moved from the temporary mine to a long term facility in your base.

With these two combined, the local logistic network with robots, repair packs, walls and turrets that would be re-supplied by a special train from time to time would make sense, as keeping the mine alive would be a long term task that is worth the automation and the bottleneck will be something else other than just the speed of building new mines in the very late game.

[Atox]

I would really love to see automated biter nest clearing for the (post) endgame. Rocket turrets or combat roboports come to mind.

[mngrif]

Overall I like the combat as it is. I enjoy having to go mow the lawn from time to time, and building the infrastructure to supply my outposts so they can defend themselves.

But here's what I would change. The primary problem I have with the combat is that it is (and always has been) extremely boring. I very much enjoy the defense aspect of biters, though. Wall designs are an art.

• Artillery, and I mean fixed artillery that can bombard new nests at high ammo/energy cost to prevent attacks entirely. Should an attack come they should participate as the attack is incoming.
• New enemies. Diggers, fliers, swimmers, swarmers, exploders. Radars could reveal diggers, rockets could get turrets to deal with fliers, and so on.
• New enemy turrets. An EMP turret that disables player turrets or that hurts shields. Flak turrets that target destroyer/distractor/defender bots.
• Overhaul the expansion mechanic a bit. Rather than nests sending a 'colonization party', a new enemy building ("Overmind") that appears rarely is what generates the colonization party. The idea is to slow down biter expansion by making the trigger for it occur less frequently, by being further away from the pollution. I like mowing the lawn and I like building walls, but as soon as you hit the post-end-game, all of your time is spent doing it because that pollution cloud just grows and grows. Natural choke points are only so useful.
• Either landmine research to allow for more damage, or research to allow for different kinds of landmines (poison landmines, fire landmines, slowdown landmines, no real need to stray from the existing capsules but a new mechanic is always nice such as confusion where they attack each other for a bit). Even though they were buffed in 0.13, landmines are still mostly just for fun and aren't very effective. Their current cost is just fine for how much damage they do, however. That is already balanced.
• Forest fires (caused by the flamethrower) should be a death sentence to the player, unless they grenade out those trees before it spreads, they should get swarmed and have to save scum. Surviving an attack caused by a forest fire should be considered a bug.
• Remove the pistol from the game and just start with the AR. It serves no purpose other than to destroy chests before you get a real weapon.

The big big big things on my wishlist are the 1st three. Artillery, new enemy units, new enemy turrets. I think that is the solution to combat being boring.

As always, thank you for such an amazing game <3

[Andrzejef]

I would really love to see automated biter nest clearing for the (post) endgame. Rocket turrets or combat roboports come to mind.

Yes, you can't go much further in automated offense than combat roboport
However that would require some basic scripting options for robos. Like you know, make some hunter drones that automatically scour the land searching for nests, some other react just when something comes in their range.

[bman212121]

Just curious for the modders out there, will your tool be available for everyone to use at some point? Just throwing it out there as it might be something useful that modders would like to play around with to rebalance things to their liking.

[Xterminator]

I was wondering if/when anything combat related was going to be looked at.
First off, I think the Steam awards thing is great and I already voted for Factorio in the 5 more minutes section. It definitely deserves it!

As for the combat tweaks. While I completely agree that some of the weapons need some changes as suggested, I think a lot of the issues lie in the enemies themselves. Now this is just my opinion but I think the enemy types and behavior is a large part of the combat issue. Regardless of the weapon you use, I feel the combat and enemies in general get boring pretty quickly after you have fought them several times.
Obviously the combat is not the main focus of the game, nor should it be. However, I think that it becomes too trivial and even easy once you get late game. If you have power armor, some combat capsules and a flamer, you pretty much roll over the biters. This seems to make it feel more like a chore you have to do rather than a fun challenge.

I of course look forward to the weapon changes, but I think that is only part of the issue.

On a side note: That video is truly amazing. I can't even imagine setting something like that up myself. Will be a long time before that is topped I think. xD

[tanelorn]

I have felt from the beginning the enemies need to be slower but tougher. When they can all rocket across your screen so quickly it ruins the fun of defense. They can avoid your obstacles with ease. Everything happens so fast you can't really even watch it happen and react.

Please consider slowing down the pace of combat but keep them a challenge by buffing them in other ways.

[tanelorn]

I also STRONGLY feel that we need to put the MG turrets much farther down the tech tree. Give us some weaker starting turrets. The current MG turret is way OP considering its cheapness to build, its early access, and its energy independence.

The Fallout turrets are a great example of good starter turrets. Feed em some coal and let the steampunk defense protect you. Or better yet, give us the coal generator (currently in a mod) and make the turrets run on electricity.

[ili]

Hello,the hopefully final 0.14 version was recently released

So... 0.15 experimental?

[astamite]

There should be a type of turret that has a deployment delay, similar to how building of structures works in most RTS games. That would make them less powerful as offensive weapons while allowing them to be stronger as defensive structures.

It would also allow for a higher tier of defensive turrets that take more time to deploy and cost more resources, and that pulls long range aggro while deploying. That way, the player would have to maintain territory control while building it, but would be rewarded with a stronger defense if successful.

[Alessandro]

Greeting factorio comunnity:

Seeing this FFF and this forum thread has filled me with ideas to change combat, as usual some will be great, others will be meh and others will terrible in implementation or in concept, but I want to share it anyways:

-As many has already mentioned, the weapons has to have a specilization more than a balance:
* The flamethrower for small creatures, with the "on fire" effect that already has.
* The rocket launcher for nests, only this weapon has the penetration power to damage realistically the nests.
* And some kind of "Bolter gun" with explosive ammo for the big ones, just beacuse it will be a waste of expensive ammo use it on the smaller ones.
* The SMG and the shotgun will fill a the role while you can get the specialized weapond, excelling in long and short range respectively.

-Make the stats of the enemies unknow until certain tech, dodad or gizmo is present. You don't have the slightest idea what those creatures are until you study them. Of course, this only get interesting with randomingly resistences for the bugs (as with the random range of spitter), maybe your game has fire resistant spitter and some kind of bitter almost inmune to laser but vulnerable to normal ammo, not piercing ammo, just normal ammo. and those change each game.

-In the same line the enemies can be "color coded" (every size have x variants) with random resistances (not always the red one is fire inmune-resistant) the game rotates the ratios of production of the colored bugs, to counter the kill count of the turrets.

-Maybe some risky way to "capture them alive" is the only way to get weapons upgrades/researchs past certain point, because the artifacts (a.k.a. shotgun shredded samples) can only help you so far.

-"Evolution means Evolution": this ideas is tricky to implement since evolution is permanent and it can broke the late game. But the alien can use the evolution factor/polution to "research" more ingenious ways to kill you, al making the enemy a bit more organic, having some kind of reaction to your actions. But if its permanent the mega-factories will be crushed eventually and I'm not too confortable with this idea, If it is temporal, but not powerful enough or last long enough it will only reduce the evolution factor without being a issue. in this regards it can "upgrade":
* Range, Damage, spawn rate, speed, health, regen rate, % resistance, damage mitigation, etc.
* Change focus of the enemy, it will prioritize factories, drillers, inserters, belts, energy poles, energy generator or chests only.
* Coordinate attacks from multiple angles, swarming you.
* Create a group of bunker busting bug, with some bonus to destroy walls, to let the rest of the swarm pass to your factory, additionaly it can turn into some kind of "creep tumor" where it was placed the wall, preventing the replacing from the roboport network.
* new spitter attack with acid/bile/parasites/fungi, those attack in turn damage over time / reduce you turret resistances / make others turrets atttack the parasited entity / reduce or stop the firerate or production rate of the structure.
* Make the bitter or spitter jump or fly rendering your walls useless for X time.

[Mylon]

The most annoying factor of combat is how stupidly strong biters are on defense. Clearing nests feels like a chore. Biters should be stronger on offense and weaker on defense to make designing a biter-proof base an interesting challenge without making claiming land to do it a chore. I too use Robot Army to automate the biter clearing process.

[inick]

For me one of the biggest disappointment in this game was when I first researched combat robotics and instead of cool robots that semi-automatically kick biters asses I got some shitty drones flying with me. I don't want to run around spawners with machinegun and drones or siege them with turrets, that's boring. I want to send my robot army to clear area while I am continue to build base.

I like this idea a lot. Well phrased, thank you for posting.

[bigbob82]

I'd really like to see combat robots, similar to the logistics and contraction robots we have today.
that way they would be stored in roboports and automatically respond to threats as needed.
If you want to keep them from being over powered - you can make it so that they'll need ammo just like the contraction robots need repair packs.

[mdqp]

On March 2016 they talked about exploration: https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-129

Yeah, that barely has anything to do with actual exploration (if it's just resource gathering, I have a hard time calling it exploration). Plus, this is what kovarex had to say about exploration when asked:

I actually don't want the people to explore much. It just makes the map huge and this game is not about exploration, it is about building a Factory.

I believe that is a clear declaration of intent to not do anything about exploration that isn't a minor tweak to what's already in there. To be honest, I remember it because it was a big disappointment for me, it's the one area I believe could actually use a lot of work, and would add much needed relief from the more repetitive parts of the game.

[mdqp]

I would like some monsters like the old, cheesy movie Tremors. They would have to be a rare occurance, and you should get an early warning as you "register" their underground movement and general direction. Maybe mine fields would be useful to do some early damage before they come out from underground, and they would only come out for short periods, making it hard to nail them. They would also go straight for the player at all times, unlike other monsters, since you can't hide from them as they travel underground, that might make things more interesting. They should also be able to destroy structures they path through, giving an incentive to fight them solo, instead of letting the turrets deal with them for you like any other monster.

[Vinnie_NL]

Nice FFF. In my current game I focused more and more on exploring and building remote outposts to find the precious oil. But killing all the aliens is now the least favorite part of this exploration. It isn't that difficult with a MK2 armor filled with shields and batteries, and a mix of cluster grenades and destroyer capsules (I actually haven't tried the flamethrower yet but it's on my to do list). But it becomes a bit too repetitive now.

Decent scientific combat graph by the way, but forgot to add the grenades? I like the cluster grenades because throwing range is quite good and area of effect too. They're far more powerful than explosive rockets and I prefer using these over destroyer capsules if I can clear out a small biter base with just one or two 'walk-by-throwings'.

Of course I nominated Factorio for the just 5 more minutes award, and I would have chosen Factorio for a few more awards too if you could give multiple nominations to the same game. But the level of addiction in this game is something I have yet to see in another game. Other games I really liked I would be totally obsessed with playing them but after a few weeks my interest dropped to regular levels so I could look for another game to look into too. But with this there's every time something new to try out, another problem to solve. I had to install this program called Workrave (it was recommended on the Factorio wiki) to remind me to take a at set intervals. And to make it easier to stop I have a to-do list in Google Keep to save some things I want to work on, instead of completing just this last thing before going to bed when it's already 02:00 and I have to work the next day. Now I just realized, that this post is a bit longer than I originally planned but I even love writing about Factorio

[vanatteveldt]

One other thing about combat is the interface.

The double function of the Q key is very annoying, as when you switch weapons you no longer have your grenade/capsule in hand. Also, it is extremely annoying the scroll through multiple weapons in a tense fight. I used nuclear rockets for a while (nucular mod), and a mistake in switching weapons could be deadly as you launch 3 nukes at the behemoth next to you instead of grilling him with a flamethrower

What I think is needed is:
- multiple ways to switch weapons, e.g. using 1-4 or ZXCV and scroll wheel
- a very clear indicator of which weapon is selected, e.g. different reticle, color, whatever
- a way to have a primary and secondary weapon selected, e.g. firing grenadres/rockets with the right mouse button
- maybe a 'combat mode', where logibots stop working and left mouse click shoots the primary weapon (e.g. press a button to draw your weapons, and you can't build stuff with weapons drawn since you don't have your hands free)
- stop having to launch combat drones manually, it's annoying and just distracts. For distractors it makes sense as these are more of an AoE weapon / decoy, but follower bots should just launch themselves somehow.

An earlier poster suggested using roboports and a stack of drones (that will presumably deploy automatically when enemies are near), I think that makes perfect sense. Allowing combat drones in normal (ground-based) roboports would also be a fun addition, I think.

Against turret creep, I liked the suggestion of build time. I think every building could use a build time, and you 'designate' rather than build, and you have a supply of building bots (e.g. use some sort lower-powered blueprint+conbot earlier, maybe a ground based conbot?), in a sense more like Dune/c&c

A propos dune . I would love to see some sort of uber enemy like sandworms, that don't attack you unless you come too close, won't attack your base unless provoked, but are practically impossible to destroy. Maybe having to research a 'repellent' device to protect new outposts.

[aober93]

Perhaps make the destroyer capsules easier to use. Killing alien nests is boring, spawning the capsules is as well.

Using capsules prevents using tanks at the same time, because you are occupied. You should be able to throw everything you got, or have robots that do.

Then killing aliens nests would be faster cause this just sux.

[Grimakar]

A propos dune . I would love to see some sort of uber enemy like sandworms, that don't attack you unless you come too close, won't attack your base unless provoked, but are practically impossible to destroy. Maybe having to research a 'repellent' device to protect new outposts.

That is an awesome idea. And they only can come out of "normal" earth. So if you build concrete etc you are safe from attacks on that ground from sandworms.