Friday Facts #169 - Combat revisit 2

[OkariDraconis]

I think part of the reason why people turret creep is because its was the most effective form of clearing out bases, especially when you are pushing out your main wall.
I will say, since the flame thrower came out, and tank modules, etc, I find myself doing less turret creep.

However, I still do find myself doing it because its just a really easy way to push the wall out. Generally speaking I make a generic wall blueprint, (Power, laser turrets etc), and just basically grab a large section of the map, by placing walls, and having them bulldoze / destroy anything in my way. This mid/late game strategy works very well since now that I've walled off an area, no more bitter nests re-spawn. This means I can keep my evolution rate much lower than constantly going out and destroying nests to keep my base aggro down.

Additionally the Area gained, and ease of not worrying about bitters is far greater than the Perimeter maintenance / Defense costs.

One option would be to have a 2ndary evolution... If hives Die to turrets vs something else, maybe they can evolve more specialized anti-turret defenses?
Maybe they evolve a locust like response, and release groups of Swam Bitters they look like 20-30 small flies in a group. They have 20-30 health (1 per fly), but only take 1 damage from Lasers, and bullets. But, take full damage from Fire, and explosive. They ignore walls, and can critically damage buildings, meaning they disable them (not destroy).
These locusts would only ever evolve if they player turret creeps

Idea posted Here:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=38686#p231382

[Delwack]

In general, I'd prefer not to turret creep. But I do like it as an option. In fact, I see turret creeping as a pain and is definitely not free. You have to massively over-invested in power infrastructure to be able to afford to provide the both the huge immediate spike and overall supply demands in energy of mass laser turret being thrown down to combat angry waves of aliens. And if you are bothering to set up logistics for gun/flame outside of biter bases, so be it. I'd keep it there as an option if the player wants to engage in it. If you want to risk shorting power of your base (or else hugely overbuilding power) and then take the time and effort and energy to run power poles down, I think it's still a fine option.

Personally, If given better mobile weapons, I would definitely prefer to use them in general. With improvements to tank shells and rockets, it sounds like there will be more tools to fill the siege gaps, where before bots (and final power armor) the only way to make significant progress against the nests themselves was to turret creep (or occasionally hit and run with flamethrower, assuming you could get close enough to the nests without getting swarmed under.) With better siege tools to take fortified and defended biter nests out in the 'pre final drone' gap, the less I'll use turret creep.

By endgame I'm just using destroyer drones, a shotgun and a flamethrower, and it's much smoother than turret creeping. For me, turret creep is only the solution right now because there aren't good enough siege tools to assist when you can't reach nests with the flamethrower before being swarmed under before you get to the final stage of power armor and Destroyer robotics.


With respect to the wave defense, sounds like a cool idea. Beyond the scenario, and this may be too immersion breaking, I'd like to also see an option to toggle 'persistent wave attacks' in the main game. Basically, a take your time to set up your base, production and logistics, and see how long you can handle increasingly larger waves (until you turn it off). Will your defense systems eventually be overwhelmed? For this toggle in the main game, I probably wouldn't touch evolution factor with this, but just simple send larger and larger waves at the current in-game evolution factor as more and more time passes.

[Sigma1]

Discharge defense equipment pushes back, stuns

New moddable API incoming!

Yes! New APIs!

[GuiltyBystander]

I feel like turret creep is a problem, not because turrets are too strong, but because player damage is too weak. Players simply do not have the tools to take on a base.

With assemblers, early game 1 player = 2 assembler. With turrets, it's completely reversed 2 players = 1 turret. Conservation of ammo alone is enough of a reason to only use turrets. They effectively have 10x Productivity 3 modules in them and 3x Speed 3 modules to make up for the speed. Players are basically forces to use turrets because the player is so weak and it's so costly.

[malecord]

Honestly I disagree with people saying that currently is hard to clear nests before end game techs and they need turret creeping. I used to think that way as well but then I tried not to use it.

With defender capsules, a 3-4 robot follower tech, machine gun oand heavy armor one can easily clear nests with 3-4 worms early game. With poison one can clear also nests with worm clusters. With some extra care is also possible to clear with medium biters around. But I see that the Twinsen tweaks on player health pool and regen addresses this so I expect that it will be doable with carefree in 0.15. And all of this is green techs: with blue comes flamethrower and tank and you can basically you are ready for bigs.

The reason why people prefers turret creep is that is not just cheap: is absolutely free of any cost and requires no production line at all (since 2 assemblers on piercing bullets can hardly be called production line). As opposed to capsules which do their job but have a respectable cost. This kills off a interesting chunk of techs and production tasks. And I say it after I played a lot of games without even trying capsules since turrets were so convenient and everybody on the forum always agreed that it was the only way to do the job that I was never remotely compelled to try defender capsules. It's a waste: it removes a lot from the game. yet in doing that I'm just being inefficient: I spend more resources, more time, more brain using the dedicated techs than just re using over and over those 6 turrets I crafted in the first 10 minutes.

Devs can do what they want but imho is just nonsense to invest their time in adjusting and balancing all those weapons and techs (which I agree needs some rebalancing) when they mechanically puts you at disadvantage when you use them. At this point is better to forget weapons entirely and spend your time on some other useful and fun mechanic.

[roy7]

An idea I saw on reddit would be if turrets don't fire at spawners/bases/buildings. Then you still have to kill the bases yourself even if you creep to protect yourself from the actual enemy units.

[Gergely]

Does anyone have any idea on what is that yellow patch on the map? My best guess is that it is aurum.

[wwdragon]

Nothing wrong with turret creep.

Let players do what we want and just keep providing alternative options!

[KatherineOfSky]

Wow! Wonderful changes! Thank you so much for all the tweaks, they sound amazing -- finally so many more weapons will be useful to us! woohoo!

Factorio TD -- a totally awesome concept. I just have visions of Factorio taking over every genre in the game market eventually! haha! Can't wait to try it!

[IronCartographer]

An idea I saw on reddit would be if turrets don't fire at spawners/bases/buildings. Then you still have to kill the bases yourself even if you creep to protect yourself from the actual enemy units.

Some people might not like that, but it would simplify the creation of biter zoo pollution sinks.

Does anyone have any idea on what is that yellow patch on the map? My best guess is that it is aurum.

Aurum, the Latin word for gold

Interesting guess, but nope.

Uranium ore: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VsX35TBkrY

[ske]

What is that yellow ore patch on the map?

[Unprove]

I had an idea to reduce turret creep methods of taking out biter bases. Around the biter base there should be a zone of acidic slime that hurts any of our buildings. It's a little like the Zerg in Starcraft, but instead of completely blocking the buildings construction it would just hurt them over time. Once the biter bases are killed off, the slime will fade away and we'll be able build whatever we want there like normal.

What do you guys think?

[Vinnie_NL]

I don't know if it is intended or not but as far as I know it is not possible to repair your armor. I have multiple MK2 power armors for different situations. Sometimes I have my construction armor with exoskeletons and personal roboports but no shields, then I decide to attack some biters and forget to switch to my combat armor with personal laser defenses and shields. And then suddenly my armor is damaged, but a replacement isn't needed yet because it's still 19900/20000. Of course I like to keep my equipment in perfect condition so I load the latest autosave.

Because of this I also have an all-round armor with some construction and combat upgrades, which is ok for most times. But I'm still wondering if it can change in the future.
And as always very interesting FFF

[Unvic]

Hello Everyone.
I'm barely new in factorio, (and english isn't my main language, so sorry for bad english) i had played my frist round and spent over 100 hours until i have all technologys and all the production i need it for automaticly resource myself, so my experience is that turret creep is a need in the early game, cause the bitters overhelm too fast with only the machine gun, and poison shells are too expensive for doing it at mass, so, meanwhile i reach the tank, i used the turret creep only to expand territory, when i reach the tank the turret creep is indeed unncesesary, and bored, so i do not like the idea of nerfing the turret creep, just give better tanks and improve the main health (what they allready did)

About the uranium ores, i'd expected that they will be hidden until you reach the technology for use it, cause if you can farm from the begining, and maybe you will have to re order all you fabric just to give de nuclear a spot.

Pd: Rocket launcher is annoining for me really too expensive
Pd 2: sorry again for bad english

[UnrealDiego]

First, to not bring the hopes of everyone up too much, this did not mean a combat overhaul.

You know that the combat sucks when you have to write something like this. No offense.

[lancar]

Well...
We got poison capsules to use against the aliens... why couldn't the aliens have poison (or any Damage Over Time effect) to use on us?
Especially if it's an AoE splash effect that comes to rest on the ground, then it would be very effective against buildings but not that effective against a moving target that can just step out of the goop. It would also make general combat more interesting as the aliens would have an area-denial ability to use against us.

[fidgetwidget]

I don't understand how adding a "build time" to placing defensive structures (and maybe other structures too) would negatively impact base defence. It's a simple solution, and wouldn't change much else mechanically.

Another option would be to make laser turrets require batteries be placed in them in order to "activate", and add a delay time on that instead of a build time delay. This way you use the existing mechanic of turrets requiring ammo, only in this case, the ammo won't be consumed on attack, but consumed as an activation cost. When you remove the turret and place it again, you need to use another battery, adding a cost to using them for attacks that helps balance them when compared to other options.

[OkariDraconis]

... reason why people prefers turret creep is that is not just cheap: is absolutely free of any cost and requires no production line at all (since 2 assemblers on piercing bullets can hardly be called production line). As opposed to capsules which do their job but have a respectable cost. This kills off a interesting chunk of techs and production tasks. And I say it after I played a lot of games without even trying capsules since turrets were so convenient and everybody on the forum always agreed that it was the only way to do the job that I was never remotely compelled to try defender capsules. It's a waste: it removes a lot from the game. yet in doing that I'm just being inefficient: I spend more resources, more time, more brain using the dedicated techs than just re using over and over those 6 turrets I crafted in the first 10 minutes.

This is kind of what I was trying to say, but malecord put it much better.

I think turret creep is a valid way to take out early hives, during Red / Green era but before major science automation. (IE: your still moving object around manually a lot, or pre oil). A Shotgun and a few turrets with regular ammo and I can take out a small biter hive or two with little concern, and we should stop this.

I think the main problem is mid game and alter that turret creep remains very effective..and cheap compared to other combat methods (which I didn't even think about before). And I think nerfing turrets in some way would be a mistake.

Hense my idea below.

[MeduSalem]

I like how at least 3 people now asked for the yellow ore patch... even if it should be quite obvious that it is Uranium Ore ever since several FFFs showed that the Nuclear Stuff is going to be in 0.15.



About the Turret Creep:

I think that the worms should have something like double-function... for close range attacks they behave like they do now with a fast low damage attack... but they gain an additional long range attack with charging up... then they can throw their "stuff" much, much further and have splash damage too... though at a slower projectile speed, much like a ballistic bomb or so. The range could also depend on Biter evolution so they can throw further and further the closer they get to max evolution... eventually far outclassing any turret range you have.

So the player can outrun it easily, but your turrets can't and if they are hit by the splash that's it for them.

[spiff_21]

I don’t think turret creep as a problem, but it is OP. I also think that if we had another reliable way of getting rid of the biter bases we would actually use this.

Just some ideas.

• You could be to lower the health of constructions bots, his way they could more easily be shot down, or stunned, making the use of constructions bot more expensive to use for the turret creep.

• If possible, make it so the biters can detect the creep maybe they could swing around you and attack the power poles supplying the creep.

• Adding more health to the tank is a good alternative. Another problem with the tank is that it quickly becomes swarmed and is unable to move or get away. I think if the biters did not stop the tank in the same way they do, and you could build the tank earlier, and the tank was more effective, I think the tank could actually be a good alternative to the turret creep.