Friday Facts #166 - Combat Revisit

[ChurchOrganist]

IMO: Don't be too quick to nerf/limit turrets, make other options more attractive.

Currently laser creep is one of the two options which are effective in killing Behemoth biters, so nerfing them is going to affect late game combat adversely.

I agree that they are far too OP when you first get access to them, but surely that could be achieved by changing their research requirements so they are accessed and upgraded later in the game.

See my comments on Kovarex's FFF when he first mentioned this idea....

viewtopic.php?f=38&t=34319&start=160#p215808

Personally I prefer using destroyer bots, but there are a lot of players who use laser creep for endgame biter clearance.

[DeathMers]

When your factory gets bigger, like late-game-3GW-consumption bigger, you cannot regulate polution any more, its everywhere, there are green bitters and nests everywhere around factory perimeter, and its pain in the ass to clean up all nests from polution cloud reach, tank is useless, car, guns, shields, everything. Only thing that works is fast player with shields, 134 destroyer bots, and combination of cluster grenades with flamethrower, and running in circles if possible. And even if u clean up all the nests on one side of barricade, new respawn somewhere else. Only thing that could deal with this situation is long long 3-8 thick wall with concentrated line of laser turrets supported by flamethrower turrets creating defence perimeter. Combat revisit must deal with all aspects of game combat, cause "just nerfing turrets" as it is mentioned only fuck up the game and all perimetral defence of your current factory.

[Deadly-Bagel]

Whew. And here I thought I was being ignored ^^

Each weapon needs a purpose. The SMG should be excellent single-target damage at decent range, or the Combat Shotgun for waves, should pierce and only be more damage than SMG when hitting 5+ biters, or perhaps a little more if most or all pellets hit.

Explosives should fall into a separate category, ideally spawners would have high resistance to physical and laser damage but nothing against explosive and fire damage. This forces a weapon diversity, grenades are required to clear spawners early and later you can choose to stick with cluster grenades, or go to the flamethrower or rockets. Cluster grenades might be the most cost efficient option, you've already got research in them and their cost should be lower. Rockets should have excellent range for sniping worms and large bases (perhaps research affects range and AoE instead of damage?) and the flamethrower is also effective against big and behemoth biters, something you would normally need armour piercing ammo for (that should actually pierce armour).

Yes having a long range rocket opens up the possibility of setting up some turrets then sniping the spawners with rockets, but you're an engineer. Why wouldn't you do that =D

Perhaps another strategy to target turret creeping would be to modify the way biters spawn. Their endlessness is a real drag when trying to deal with nests, you just have to ignore them as they spawn faster than you can kill them. Perhaps each nest should have a buffer of biters, scaling with evolution, that it can release when threatened. Eg a spawner can store 20 biters but only spawns one every 30 seconds, so once you deal with the 20 (from each spawner) you only have to deal with one every 20 seconds. This gives an advantage to the rocket in that if a spawner is killed immediately its stored biters perish with it. Also perhaps if the spawner is on fire, any spawned biters should also be on fire.

Combat at one points needs to be significantly harder. Seriously.

No. This game isn't CoD, we're not fighting generic baddies for the challenge, we're doing it out of necessity as a SMALL part of a greater game. Mods exist for this reason, if you want harder combat you can have it without messing up everyone else's games who are more interested in the automation.

[malecord]

Nerf turret creeping
Yes please. This should never have been a thing it just makes all other weapons in the game useless.

Generally make the mid-game combat better
Combat should be better pretty much all game long. Then I dunno what you mean with mid game. Imho mid game the most obvious this to fix is tank: when you unlock it you go from "Run for Your Life" to "God" mode. I guess you already know from your graph: weapons and upgrades should make a smoother power curve.

Bring things more in line with one another in terms of damage and utility
This calls for some weapon specialization (and turrets alike). Behemoths should be vulnerable to late game weapons and late game weapons should be less effective vs small/mediums. If you don't want weapons to become obsolete but remain relevant (which imho is a good thing, because this mean the player has to maintain and scale up the production lines for those weapons which is the theme of the game) this is the way. Make weapons complement each other. E.f.: lasers could be good vs big and behemoths (they are a beam: the more they stay on a target the more damage they do). Flamethrower could be good vs lot of small/medium biters but not very effective vs big ones (ofc this requires the game to still spawn miggest hordes of small biters late game). machine guns could be strong vs spitters since they don't have armor.

Make the biters less of an irritant, but still a threat
This is unclear. You plan to make them so less attacks but more powerful? I agree that constant attacks may be annoying. But is important that biters punish a player that does not invest in the necessary countermeasures or that doesn't plan its expansion/tech routes taking into account the environment around him.

Then Ihmo they also need smoother transitions between evo levels, same issue weapons have. At the same time like weapons they also need more specialization. Flying biters, underground biters, etc. Each strain should encourage you to field the optimal weapon. Then in order to make specialization meaningful you also need to granularize the enemy distribution. If all strains are everywhere I will just deploy all turrets types everywhere. Same with player weapons. Instead (just example here) if flying biters are only coming from southern nests and only northern nests are spawning hordes of small medium biters, I will have gun turrets on the south and flamethrowers on north. A similar choice I will have to make depending if I want to liberate an iron patch locate south or north.


Apart form that I, like many others, feel like we need some automated clearing method for the late game. Artillery turrets/trains may help keep nests far from walls. But honestly what we expect is some sort of attack drones (mg drones, rocket drones, laser drone etc) that can "autonomously" clear a zone. Because (let's say it) drones are cool. But armed drones are super cool.

[Boogieman14]

The way I see it, turret creep isn't the problem, it's the symptom: the least tedious way to deal with a tedious task (at least until you get destroyer bots - then it's still boring though). Take the tediousness out of combat and turret creep isn't considered a necessity anymore.

I'll add my 2 cents to the combat automation bucket. In a game that's all about automation, it's does seem odd that late game combat involves running around the map (for what feels like hours) to clear your way to the next mining spot. Late game needs autonomous combat robots. Mark an area (with the Destruction planner! ) and robots go in to clear the area of all biters, nests and worms. Tie this in with radar, so robots have a way of knowing where to go (having to build roboports first kinda defeats the purpose).

[malecord]

The way I see it, turret creep isn't the problem, it's the symptom: the least tedious way to deal with a tedious task (at least until you get destroyer bots - then it's still boring though). Take the tediousness out of combat and turret creep isn't considered a necessity anymore.

I say that Turret Creep is indeed the problem because it is made with defensive weapons which are cheaper (can be re used) and more powerful than offensive weapons.

It doesn't matter if offensive weapons becomes better if turret creep is in the game. It will always be more convenient to reuse those 10 turrets instead of putting together a production line for capsules, bombs and ammo.

If turret creep has to remain in game then turrets should be made non minable entities and a little moew expensive. That's the best way to ensure a player pays the proper cost for clearing a zone.

[Deadly-Bagel]

Non-minable entities is a poor direction for Factorio to take, the whole game is about optimisaton and progress, what do you do when you need to expand your base into where your defences are? Shoot them down? What if you place a turret a tile off so your ammo feed doesn't reach it, or its up against the wall (thus takes damage from larger biters)?

To turret creep you still need a supply of ammo, and besides a trickle ammo supply is easy to set up and doesn't eat too many resources. For the price of a little bit of setup beforehand (and let's face it, this game is 45/45/10 percent production / logistics / misc) you should have rockets or grenades or whatever that you can just run around blowing stuff up with. Why would you even bother turret creeping? Just set up a few turrets to fall back to if you need the insurance.

I agree with the Boogieman in that turret creeping is a symptom, not the problem, and that with suitable alternatives it would become an obscure technique used by some who are just determined not to change.

Also yes, automated biter clearing. Make it slow and expensive but I don't care it will be a late game resource sink that allows you to focus on just building outposts and expansion.

[TheTom]

Combat at one points needs to be significantly harder. Seriously.

No. This game isn't CoD, we're not fighting generic baddies for the challenge, we're doing it out of necessity as a SMALL part of a greater game. Mods exist for this reason, if you want harder combat you can have it without messing up everyone else's games who are more interested in the automation.

Not sure I ruin anything here. Not once, vanilla or bobs mod, ever, have Biters been something I was loosing machines to once the wall is in place. RARELY do I loose a tower. And I am not even using lasers.

I do not want to make it hard to be a real threat. I want it hard enough that it makes sense to ahve 2 walls because yes, sometimes the first one gets broken through. Hard enough that i run out of ammunition in an outpost unless I ship them in by car at later stages (and not a car every 10 hours playing).

There are 2 extremey - running a hard game and them being a useless nuisane, and right now for me they are the later.

* I need to wall off an outpost because hey, otherwise it is just too dangerous.
* Once I wall them off, the cost of putting in a LOT of turrets is minimal (and no, I do not even use laser).
* Threat over. Oh, and yes, once in a very long while I loose some ammunion to them.

That is too little. I never had to rush to an outpost. I never had to rebuild a minim outpost because I misjudged the amount of supplies it needs, or that i rather need 3 layers of walls there. They are like ants, seriously.

[IronCartographer]

Combat at one points needs to be significantly harder. Seriously.

No. This game isn't CoD, we're not fighting generic baddies for the challenge, we're doing it out of necessity as a SMALL part of a greater game. Mods exist for this reason, if you want harder combat you can have it without messing up everyone else's games who are more interested in the automation.

Not sure I ruin anything here. Not once, vanilla or bobs mod, ever, have Biters been something I was loosing machines to once the wall is in place. RARELY do I loose a tower. And I am not even using lasers.

I do not want to make it hard to be a real threat. I want it hard enough that it makes sense to ahve 2 walls because yes, sometimes the first one gets broken through. Hard enough that i run out of ammunition in an outpost unless I ship them in by car at later stages (and not a car every 10 hours playing).

There are 2 extremey - running a hard game and them being a useless nuisane, and right now for me they are the later.

* I need to wall off an outpost because hey, otherwise it is just too dangerous.
* Once I wall them off, the cost of putting in a LOT of turrets is minimal (and no, I do not even use laser).
* Threat over. Oh, and yes, once in a very long while I loose some ammunion to them.

That is too little. I never had to rush to an outpost. I never had to rebuild a minim outpost because I misjudged the amount of supplies it needs, or that i rather need 3 layers of walls there. They are like ants, seriously.

You should try mods like Armageddon, Natural Evolution, Misanthrope, and/or RampantAI... Those might give you a fix.

Meanwhile, vanilla is about determinism--set it up / resupply it properly and it will Just Work so you can move on with your ever-increasily-automated life on Nauvis.

[malecord]

Non-minable entities is a poor direction for Factorio to take

I didn't write that because I want it in game. My opinion is that Turret Creep has to be removed because it is the problem (use cheap defensive stuff to replace expensive offense stuff). Remove that and you have no more issues.

I just said that if turret creep has to remain in the game then for balance the defensive stuff has to be made as expensive as the offensive stuff when used in that role. And one obvious way is to make those weapons non reusable like capsules or grenades.

Like you said the game is about production. There is a reason if offensive weapons are consumable and defensive are not. to force the player build a production line dedicated to "liberate additional space" and spend some resources every time he needs to use it.
Defense is pay once and defend (a space) forever. Which works fine. Offense must be pay once to liberate some space. Not pay once to liberate all space in the map.

After that it doesn't even have to necessarily be tanks, weapons and ammo. I personally wouldn't like it but if people really like turret creep so much then just replace all that stuff with some offensive turrets that self destroy after X seconds. The mechanics are secondary. What matters the most in this game is production and the associated resource cost. Liberating space must have an associated cost and turret creep currently negates that cost.

[Deadly-Bagel]

Depends on the amount of pollution you're generating. My last main game I installed efficiency mods in my furnaces and basically stopped getting attacked and the evolution factor died. If you pump out a lot of pollution, cut or burn down all the trees the evolution and aggression spikes and you get a difficult game.

Currently playing Bob's Mods and having to take it a bit slow due to it being my first modded game and also I went for a new approach (modular) and I've lost quite a few machines. Don't actually have walls yet due to boundaries constantly shifting as I add and optimise (plus I've been lazy with it) but once they managed to breach my reasonable defences and destroy a number of machines and a chest with ~4,000 Silicone in it that I'd mined from a tiny spot miles away and carried back (valuable stuff at that point as other deposits were distant and covered in spawners).

Actually come to think of it my last vanilla playthrough had biters breaching walls and destroying turrets all the time. I had to put a production of towers and walls on the network because they occasionally got broken through. At outposts they weren't big enough to trigger massive attacks but spitters would sometimes destroy the turrets so had to put a stock in a storage chest.

The problem is there's a tricky line to balance here, you're speaking as an experienced player who can throw up defences early and you know what you're dealing with, so yeah they'll be easy. A more novice player will have more trouble and may want a more casual game without switching it to peaceful.

If anything I'd recommend the option of setting your starting biome which would influence difficulty. For example starting in a desert with no huge forests to absorb pollution you will get constant attacks early in the game and evolution will grow much faster. Also don't forget research is more difficult and slower in 0.15 so all that bullet damage and shooting speed research isn't going to be as easy to get.

[Apxumekmop]

Hello everyone, nice updates!
I personally would like to see weapon leveling like that
1) small arms
2) small arms + low armor
3) bigger guns + low armor
4) bigger guns + medium armor
5) heavy weapons + medium armor
6) heavy weapons + modular armor
7) tank
8) tank with modules
9) artillery?
(here I would like to see combat drones removed and instead of drones you will have like stationary robot "nest" where you could place produced robots ( current robots changed into role robots - poison drone = suicide AoE robot , distraction drone = "tank" robot , plus some long range dps , healer, melee dps etc.) and form a party to go raid on nests , something like in WoW garrison or something but where you could actually look how they doing. It would be even cooler if enemy bases could have different types of aliens in them and different types of turrets so you will need to make party accordingly , like base with only flying enemy units you will need only range dps and heal robot. If there a lot of small hp beasts with high damage you will need suicide robots, tank , healer and some long range robots. Or base with alot of high hp bosses you need a lot of melee assassins or something like that )
10) Small robot party
11) Upgrade for robot base to form bigger party
12) Upgrade for robot base to form huge raid to take down huge nests and bosses.
Thats my ideas thanks for the game it is awesome

[Apxumekmop]

Actually I just got a better idea! What about if there will be only one combat robot and you will have to arm him?!
It will make all weapons usable again and there will be point in mass production of guns!
What if you could , again, form party and set targets for each combat robot in party ( attack only worms / attack only bitters / attack only bases , etc) and you weaponize them accordingly, rocket launchers and flamethrowers for base destroyers , smg for spitter killers, shotguns for bitters... and pistols for da real boyz on hood !
It will be costly but im sure it will be damn fun! ХD sorry if somebody else told this idea before, I dont browse through forums often. Thanks for your attention!

[MalcolmCooks]

To build on what other people have been saying:

The problems with combat in factorio is that
1) There is no automation of offensive combat. The automation of defence is very good in my opinion, although it coud be improved with adding more spice to the relatively simplistic way the biters act. Self-driving tanks or better combat robots would be a good addition. I don't really like the combat drones as they are, although they are useful. I would take some ideas from Total Annihilation: you have combat robots who can be given fairly basic orders - they can guard you the way combat drones do already, they can patrol a specific path you lay out, or they can go to an area you designate and kill everything on the way. I don't think it would be necessary to make it too RTS-like - as long as you could set waypoints from the map screen, nothing about the core gameplay really needs to change for this to be possible. You should also be able to research better robots: starting out with the combat drones already in the game, fast but very vulnerable to worms, moving on to self-driving tanks, which are slow and vulnerable to biters but very good against worms and nests, and then a final advanced mech-type robot, which is good all-around, but can still benefit from being supported by the drones and tanks.
2) There is no skill involved in personal combat. This is one of the most annoying things about clearing out biter bases - defeating enemies is all about what technology you have available. You should be able to at least dodge worm attacks. Having actual aiming, instead of just auto-hitting the closest enemy would also probably help. I don't think there is really a need to nerf turret creeping, because if the personal combat is made more skillful and interesting, then people will choose to engage in it because it's fun, instead of just taking the least effort approach.

Actually I just got a better idea! What about if there will be only one combat robot and you will have to arm him?!
It will make all weapons usable again and there will be point in mass production of guns!

such a good idea actually. a single mech that can hold any gun you want, has an inventory for ammo. It would effectively add a wide variety of combat robots but with only having to include one new thing

[hi_impact]

Excellent topic with many ideas. I feel very strongly about this revamp and I hope I can toss my 2 cents into the pile. I have played 300 hours since 0.12.

Current Combat Observations:
+ Weapon variety is great
+ First few expansions and map exploration is fun
+ Progression and introduction of new combat tech "feels" correct
- Securing late game borders is a huge nuisance due to high biter expansion rate
- Late game all offense become obsolete except Flamethrower, Destroyer Capsules, and Laser Turret creep
- Rocket Launcher, Tank Shells, Land Mines, Defender Capsules, Slowdown Capsules, Distraction Capsules, Personal Laser Defense, Discharge Defense absolutely useless at any moment in game.

Defining Factorio style, spirit, and combat:

• Automation should, in my opinion, play a larger role in the combat section of game. It can be based with defense, offense, or both.
• I disagree with some of the posters comments about adding more things to explore. This is not a game about exploration of the planet. Adding ruins, doodads, survivors, and more z-layers is a pointless task that does not contribute to the core concept of the game. Hidden ores with high level technology is more in step with Factorio.
• The player should eventually become a combat god. I believe this phase hits a little too early in the game and that is why the combat feels so tedious. There are many excellent suggestions in this thread about addressing this.
• With the removal of alien artifacts, the role of alien bases can be freed from the concept of a resource that must be readily available. Spawners can be placed more strategically and with more sense. I fully support the idea of larger, sparser, more dangerous biter bases. They can prefer to be placed on resources (but not always). Once pollution touches one of these bigger bases, the entire base comes alive to attack you with waves.

Application of ideas and future suggestions:

• Automated Perimeter Defense: There absolutely needs to be a way in the current combat system to automatically prevent biter forward expansion in the late game. A good concept would be an expensive immobile artillery that automatically shoots any biter base in a huge radius slowly, but eventually destroys them. The artillery itself and its shells can be an expensive resource sink, but it will provide a solution to the nuisance that is keeping your borders clean, with automation (keeping it supplied).
• Weapon Rebalance: This is already happening, and I cannot stress how exciting it is to see it being noticed. I believe there cannot be reasonable work done on the combat before looking at the existing systems, and defining why they are weak, annoying to use, or too strong. I do believe turrets need an arming time, but this can only come if other options open up. If Uranium gets added to the base game, this will provide a new resource to add an additional tier to existing weapons.
• Enemy diversity: Many good suggestions in this thread. Notables include varying biter resistances, and new enemy types. This is a huge balancing act and it lies with the developers to determine how to add biter diversity without it being meaningless. If more resistance variance means spamming Q to change weapons often but with identical gameplay, I do not welcome the change. There needs to be a deliberate, fun, but not overpowering touch in creating more enemy types. Varying dmg resistance and some well-balanced new enemy types seem like a good step in the right direction.
• Larger, more difficult biter bases: I think this is a good way to make biter attacks more meaningful and allow the use of more specialized enemies. Not a requirement, but it seems like a logical way to organize more complicated threats from a central bigger base where a developer can add more certainties.
• Superweapons: I think the huge success of the Orbital Ion Cannon mod is a good indication to add more end-game weapons and encourage more rocket launches or alternative usage of rocket fuel, low-density structures, and control panels.
• Automated Offense: This seems like a large task in terms of coding and pathfinding, but the success of the Robot Army mod proves it can be done. I think this will only add to the game and there are tons of avenues to take with this, if there is room for it.

[CindyTroll]

Good to see you guys know the weapons are really all over the place in power and cost.
Lots of good points about how combat is not the root of the issue. I think there needs to be a better variety of enemies and enemy buildings. Other people have said it, I'll say it too; Turret creep is only used because the other ways of clearing out bases is difficult at best and in some cases impossible until late game. Having an option of not losing all your items would be nice. Teleport to base on death?
How about some type of detector/radar that gives the player a timer until next attack or at least the direction of the next attack?

Two ways of solving the biters eating half the base before you can get to them:

1) Biters are electrocuted when eating structures. They take damage the more they eat and eventually die.
2) Biters should have a goal when eating the base. They could be trying things like storing resources(Iron, copper, stone, coal, steel) to bring back to their hive and make it stronger. At the very least have them only destroy a percent of the entire base before retreating.

Thank you for working on this amazing game <3

[krux02]

Balancing:

I think combat could be a lot better, when it wouldn't work like those endless MMO treadmill, where the aliens become stronger and then the player gets a bigger gun and so on. Instead of making a bigger weapon and a bigger alien I would like combat to be a bit more tactical. So every weapon should have it's own use case in late game. For example fire is good against the heavy biters, guns better against less armored biters. But also on the alien side non armored biters should not become an irrelevant thread.


Variation:

Currently all types of aliens are everywhere, meaning that if there are different types of weapons in the game, you need all of them everywhere. I do not think this is fun at all. I think it would be much more interesting, if scouting the aliens would become important. For example that you don't build defence against aliens that are not there. Also on the other side, you should take a look in your choice of weapons depending on what kind of enemy base you want to attack. Certain bases should require different equipment. I am thinking here of an alien base that is without biters.

Also currently the aliens are not very diverse at all. I would really like to see some type of enemy bases that are not just spawners. How about tunnel exits instead of spawneres. And then enemies are not spawned, but send to a base from the
neighboring bases. Also there are a lot of options for alien design never touched at all. I give a quick list of aliens not in the game:

* water alien
* flying alien
* jumping alien (jump over walls)
* worm (that actually moves to attack your base)
* reflective alien (immute to lasers)

Nerfing turrets:
I really think turrets should be nerfed, but not by making them weaker. The turrets need to be strong in order to be a useful defence weapon. But turrets should not be useful for attacking the enemy. I think placing a lot of turrets and moving the turrets towards the alien base should not be valid tactics. I think the best solution here would be to distinguish between military buildings (walls turrets), and factory components. I think that fortifications should not be able to tear down quickly and put somewhere else. It doesn't make at lot of sense to me that you can simply move a fortification wall, because it is a fortification. Guns should have some initialization time, so that when you place them they are not instantly usable. I don't think that this time should require some player interaction, but it should prevent that quickly placing a laser turret could save you from anything. Last but not least I think laser turrets should be weaker than gun turrets, because they have an easier setup.

RTS direction:
It was discussed already very early as an idea for factorio but I would like to bring it up again. I would really like it, if later in the game combat would be less manual. I really would like to see programmable cars and tanks. I don't think vehicles should become smart, but I think it could become a lot of fun, if you could control of group of tanks at the same time. Then mass producing tanks would become important, and thinking of how much ammo and fuel you put in becomes a complicated question.

Alien live matters:
Currently aliens are simply spawed. There is no economy simulated on the alien side. You can't poison alien water source. You can't drain alien resource supply. I would really like, if aliens would be more dangerous idividually, but then much less of them.
Fewer bases. Fewer aliens. No respawning. And aliens that actually value their own life.

Heavier weapons:
Like there is a Tank, I would like to have a train with a gun mounted on it. I really like the idea of managing military logistics. Currently only normal turrets need ammo supply. But I am thinking of Bigger weapons that need more complex logistic setup to keep them supplied. The stronger the turret, the more complex it should be to keep the turret ready to fire. And with very complicated setups it should be possible to have very strong weapons. I think the best thing would be if there is a system in the game that allows you to be as strong as you want, as long as you can supply it, so that fighting is more about base building than fighting. But I can't really go into detail here, because I do not have I concrete solution for that in mind.

Ok, I've said a lot, but I think that the combat part is the part that factorio is lacking the most right now. There are players that don't like combat in factorio at all and just play on peaceful. But I think it's not that they don't like combat it has much more to do with the fact, that combat in the current factorio is just not well implemented. I think the combat needs some heavy rethinking, and I really hope this could help.

PS:
It has been a long time since I played Factorio, so my current knowledge about combat might be not on the newest stand.

[tehroach]

I start my games with Enemy Bases set to Very High freq. + Very big size, with very small starting area. I love the feeling of imminent danger and I feel cozy in my "castle".

I think the feeling of imminent danger is a great element for a game to have and I really hope the Wube can balance it right for Factorio.
I like those enemy settings, however, I do start with a larger starting area, all resources on very low and water set to very large, so trains are a necessity and having that extra space means that I won't justs end up abandoning my first base later on, because base planning is also very important else you will run out of space and paint (build) yourself into a corner.

I'm big turret creeper and I don't like it, but I can't resist - if the game allows, it's no cheating.

It is definitely not cheating, in fact, without MOD's sometimes it is the only way, especially when you have had to kill one (or fifty) too many biter spawners and they have out-evolved your tech. (I think that this aspect of Factorio is the basis for this thread).
For me, I definitely CHEAT, lol, MODs, MODs and more MODs, but then maybe "if the game allows, it's no cheating"
I created a MOD which basically allows me to control the biter evolution factor, I MODed the Rocket Launcher so it is effective against the Big Worms, however, I have all of BOB's MODs installed, so Giant and Behemoth Worms still create "NO GO" zones for me.

As I find that my favorite time for combat in Factorio is around evolution factor 0.5 - 0.6 (with BOB's Enemies MOD installer) because there is still a lot of small biters, a good number of Medium biters with the occasional Big Bitter.
I then limit my equipment-carry to non-modular armor, machine gun, rocket launcher and basic grenades only and drive the car (because it is faster than the tank, lol).

At this point, I find the combat can be quite a lot of fun.

The biters only have to hit me a few times to kill me, except Giant and Behemoth worms they one shot me, so I have to pay attention to my position and approach, you need to constantly swap weapons, hence micro-management of the character is very important and a slip up can mean imminent death.

For me, this approach to combat is quite satisfying not only because I know I can win, but also because I know if I stuff up I will lose, hence I really think that the idea of "imminent danger", with and achievable outcome is crucial to the combat aspects of Factorio and to "feel cozy in my castle" adds a nice relief period and allows my brain to focus on the more complex task of setting up the factory.

In the late game (20 hrs+) I go with big poles and 8-12 laser turrets, it's no competition and feels more like a job, than fun. I'm thinking that laser turrets deals way too much damage, in reality (like ATHENA by Lockheed Martin) it is a single beam that does damage gradually over time and long distance. Also, researching more damage should affect electricity consumption of the turret.

While I would have to agree with you on this point, I also agree with what I feel is the general consensus of this topic at this point.
That simply NERFing Turrets is NOT the way to solve the combat problem, however, I do believe that the damage and ranges of the turret types, is somewhat "ar5e about duck", hence would welcome with open arms, a re-shuffeling of Turret damages, ranges and HP.

The idea of a mini-gun being out-ranged by a flame-thrower is somewhat laughable, considering that a flame thrower has a similar range to a paintball gun and even the smallest .22's out-range a paintball gun considerably. However, alongside that note of "realistic", I do believe Laser Weapons should lie somewhere in the realm of Sci-fi and that game-balance should always trump "realistic".

As while the ATHENA type single beam is more realistic, I did grow up watching Star Wars and the pew-pew laser weaponry has always appealed to me.

But IMO I see no reason why we shouldn't have both and in this case, I believe more is better. Rather than take a simple DPS approach to combat the Combat problem I think a more "Paper, Rock & Scissors" approach is needed, where all turret types (IMO all weaponry) have their strengths and weaknesses. Making effective "land denial" base defense require a heterogeneous mixture of turrets rather than the current homogeneous line of same-same.

ideas

• Turret Types
• Mini-Gun - Basically as the base turret is now and has the fastest fire rate and target acquisition of all turret types.
• Laser - Two Types
  First - similar range to now, single constant beam, where DPS increases with duration of the shot and proximity to turret, the turret itself is fragile and suffers from a slow target acquisition rate.
  Second - basically the ones we have now but has shorter range and fire rate than the Mini-Gun.
• Cannon - Uses tank cannon ammo, has a decent fire rate (faster than the first laser type, but much slower than the second), targets ground and will oneshot small and medium biters it hits with their surrounding friends being thrown and stunned, big and behemoth biters will sustain sizable wounds on a direct hit and big biters will be stopped in their tracks, while behemoth's will be slowed down.
• Rocket - Uses Rocket ammo (obviously, lol), has the longest range of all turrets, similar damage to the cannon, but unable to acquire a lock on the fast moving tiny target that the small biters represent.
• Flame Thrower - Shortest range of all turrets, cooks small biters almost instantly and breeds fear in the eyes of the larger ones, biters on fire will attempt to flee combat if they are not immediately able to attack and all will flee once they have sustained a critical point of damage.

I quite like the "queen" idea, in that case pollution might affect the queen only, which will lay mutated eggs as a result. Queen can be like a "boss", with tough fight, but some nice reward - like alien artifacts (you wrote something about re-imagine their use, this way they may be quite precious). So bases will be like villages, with queens in the center, queen under attack may call for help nearby creeps from other villages.

More evolved creeps may get some more intelligence or just viciousness - attacking poles, trying to go around turrets or something like that - like humans have in their DNA that spiders are dangerous, they may know that turrets are bad (M'kay?)

Yes, I think something like the queen idea would really help improve combat as I believe that the central problems with combat in Factorio ATM, lies heavily with the biters themselves, having a queen would give the player a target of opportunity, that could be used to cripple the biters expansion for a period of time, giving the player breathing room to get back to building, while the biters regroup and elect a new queen.

[InsaneFox]

The reason why turret creep is so popular is because it's the only way to deal with biters that is scalable without the need for more advanced technology. Since players have a factory to produce as many turrets as they need, any nerf you put on turrets aimed at preventing turret creep (short of nerfs that will severely determent the use of turrets as purely defensive fortifications) will just be circumvented by just using more turrets or creeping slightly slower.

As others have said on this thread, we don't need a nerf against turret creep, we need another viable option for clearing them out besides personal weapons and equipment. As others have said as well, a good solution to this problem would be to let players build robot armies to attack biters with. While the combat drones do exist in the game, they still have the same problem as every other piece of personal equipment in the game: their offensive capabilities don't scale with production.

And one more thing that I've seen on this thread that I agree with: The core of the game's combat should reflect the ability to automate tasks that the rest of Factorio is based around.

[Engimage]

I have completed my suggestions in these few posts:
PSI Emitters for those who like peaceful ways
Weaponry mainly to rebalance existing weapons and add artillery
Combat drones and bots rework to make combat drones a separate class of bots which use roboports