Friday Facts #169 - Combat revisit 2

[Divus101]

i would suggest to let everyone play their own way, why should someone have a problem with it when i decide to use turret creep?
it is my savegame, not yours, if you dont like it just dont use it ^^
turret creep is not a problem, just add more ways to fight and the players will find their playstyle they like to.

[MeduSalem]

On the matter of the Tower defense mode... I like the general idea. I always thought Factorio fits the theme quite well and has room to go that direction.

Though I would make it so that the player starts off in the middle of the map and the Biters may come from all directions flowing towards the silo in the middle... so the player has protect each side equally and not only wall off one side (which is kinda cheap).


You guys should really pick up "Harvest: Massive Encounter" (it's available on steam for 8€ and its worth it) and you might even plain copy some of their ideas for their several game modes because they work quite well. No need to re-invent the wheel from scratch if something is time-proven.

At least there exists a game mode that it is roughly what you are trying to achieve... basically building a defense line while the enemies keep on coming in increasingly difficult waves from all 4 edges of the map... and you can look how long you last before the waves start to overwhelm your defense.

[OkariDraconis]

i would suggest to let everyone play their own way, why should someone have a problem with it when i decide to use turret creep?
it is my savegame, not yours, if you dont like it just dont use it ^^
turret creep is not a problem, just add more ways to fight and the players will find their playstyle they like to.

I don't think there is a problem with the play style, I think the main problem is that it is very effective, usuauly more effective than all other weapons in the game, and unbalanced. The turrets need to be powerful so that defending your bases isn't so annoying, but the play style itself should not be so powerful that it just steam rolls everything especially compared to its costs.

[Rythe]

To throw in my two cents:

I still like the idea of a power-on or calibration delay before a turret starts firing upon placement. It won't stop turret creep, but I imagine it would make it slightly less obscene than plopping down a couple laser turrets and everything around you dies near instantly. Would likely improve PvP too.

And I'm a special sort of indifferent to Factorio Wave Defense. Factorio's problem there is you've three towers, roughly two types of towers, walls & mines, repair logistics, and that's it to work with on defense. For the waves, there's just two types of biters. I'm sure there'll be a niche group who'll enjoy it, but it's a mode you don't have the in-game tools to support for any great length unless you balance the waves out by the need to expand and grab more resources to keep going. The problem with having to expand is you can't work the defensive walls at the same time. It's a bit much for a single player to keep track of and manage if the waves are coming fast and thick.

But mostly, the engagement curve there dies on the limits of what you can do on the defense. I mean, once you build a wall of laser turrets roughly six deep and the robot swarms to keep them repaired, there's really nothing left to do. You could make laser turrets obscenely expensive, which is a good idea for the game mode, but that means the player is just making a wall of normal turrets with maybe a few flamers five deep and slowly replacing them with lasers... Then there's the problem of land mines coming with a significant replacement cost. The other big problem is the lack of mazing. Either your simple wall of turrets shreds the biters, or the biters shred/maul the turrets and then require replacement/repair/you lose. You can't create a depth and variety of defenses to any great degree, so you either hold the thin line or it's game over.

It's a nice novelty idea, but there's no real legs there given Factorio's current state. Adding engagement and balance to the mode would mean increasing turret variety and upgrade options, creating more biter varieties to play off new turrets or at least tiering health and resistances a lot, completely changing the balance of power between biters and turrets, completely changing turret and ammo costs, and/or trying to tune things to the razor edge of forcing the player to engage some of the waves themselves rather than just leave it to the walls of turrets.

It's going to be a tall order to succeed beyond a niche, temporary appeal, and success will come from reimagining and maybe even inverting many of the balance dynamics that the base game relies on.

[IronCartographer]

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.

My hope is that the Artillery Train functions this way, adding new modding-enabled projectile mechanics.

[density]

I don't see how building blocking zerg creep/corruption is inelegant or why it feels like cheating. It worked in starcraft. It would need to spread pretty far from the hives to prevent the player from safely sniping the hives with rockets from their little turret base.

Build times won't stop turret crawling because the back row of turrets will protect the vulnerable front one.

[fregate84]

I think reach some tech to add more range on defence should also be a good option.

[psihius]

I would add to the balancing, that looking at defender, distractor and destroyer capsules is a good idea. Damage wise, probably not a whole lot of adjustment is needed, BUT, the deployment speed at top level (when you have 134 avaliable) is slowing down combat a lot regarding destroyer capsules. Distractor capsules maybe need a slight nudge - too much can be overkill. But anyway, it warrants a look.

[LCCX]

Looks great!

In the end maybe your ingenuity and effort of building all those electric poles should be rewarded; If the player wants to do it that way, why not let him?

I do not feel that turret creep is such a problem and would not worry about it.

Still I am interested if any of you (the community members) had any different ideas about a 'Tower defense esque' level for the game.

What if the plot/cell/square of the map a biter died on had its resource remaining count increased (and a mineable resource generated if there had been none) and biters spawned and attacked from the edge of the explored map instead of from spawners? Players would need to move their mining equipment progressively over each new kill zone, but doing so explores and reveals more map creating more map boundary perimeter and increasing the number of biters spawned each wave. The player(s) would start with a few chests of resources and 5-10 minutes of setup time to prepare for the first wave. Worms and oil patches would be spawned as normal (making exploring for additional oil and defending any outposts extra challenging, and making using radar outright dangerous early on).

[factoriouzr]

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

Very disappointing

I hope this is coming very soon as it is very sorely needed.

Look at all the comments, suggestions and requests for improving the combat, adding more biter varieties and interesting things beyond just tweaking the numbers.

[J0hnnoe_2618]

I think turret creep should be removed. Everyone's so worried about it being removed that they don't understand that all the weapons are probably going to be buffed. Yes, in the current game it would be terrible, but with all the changes, turret creep wouldn't be needed anymore and its just adding something to make the game easy.

What I like about factorio is the difficulty and the problem solving needed to progress in the game. And if players think biters and worms to hard to defend without turret creep then they can go into peaceful mode.

[Matthias_Wlkp]

I don't see how building blocking zerg creep/corruption is inelegant or why it feels like cheating. It worked in starcraft. It would need to spread pretty far from the hives to prevent the player from safely sniping the hives with rockets from their little turret base.

Build times won't stop turret crawling because the back row of turrets will protect the vulnerable front one.

I second this.

Speaking of StarCraft, it would be nice to have a sort of a weapon, that would work like the Ghost's nuke - go to an enemy base, point the laser at it, survive, BOOM!

[Glitterspin]

I'm happy that some weapons are getting buffed, and that turrets are receiving an (indirect) nerf from the big worm buffs.

I still think that something like a setup time would make a lot of sense, especially for laser turrets. They already have a charge mechanic- maybe just slow down the rate at which they charge?

I played a game a couple days ago, where I went out with a buddy to kill biter bases. He used flamethrower, I used laser turrets and bots. The combination was super fun and interesting.


I see a lot of people requesting an overhaul to combat, but not a lot of concrete actionable suggestions.
Here's a couple, just to get the ball rolling.

1. "seasons"
I wish I remembered what mod this was from- but it had "passive season- biters won't attack." I think using a Endless Legend style summer/winter mechanic could work super well for this. If we're super frosty (lol), we could even make it so the maximum solar panel power during winter is lower, maybe 30 or 40 instead of 60. And/or shorter days and longer nights- I don't know how moddable the day/night cycle etc is, I only started playing recently

2. more health on biters, less biters, bigger behemoths. Longer spawn times.
Especially longer spawn times. I feel like biters that are harder to kill will definitely help make the game more interesitng.

3.more about anti-turret creep
someone suggested using zerg-style creep around biter bases to prevent turret creep. I love this idea! I also love that it provides a more natural reason to take out biter bases, since at some point creep would prevent expansion.

[MrGrim]

I would add to the balancing, that looking at defender, distractor and destroyer capsules is a good idea. Damage wise, probably not a whole lot of adjustment is needed, BUT, the deployment speed at top level (when you have 134 avaliable) is slowing down combat a lot regarding destroyer capsules. Distractor capsules maybe need a slight nudge - too much can be overkill. But anyway, it warrants a look.

Agreed. I don't use many mods, but for this reason I do use the Auto Deploy Destroyers mod. It works well, and you have to sacrifice a 2x2 part of your armor grid to use it. Manually managing destroyer count becomes fussy and annoying, especially by hour 2 of mass extermination.

[Atox]

How about a difficulty setting, easy/medium/hard/extreme on map generation?

This way you can choose how much time you want to spend on combat. Plus extreme could be a fun new challenge for veteran players.

[vipm23]

I second the notions re: new mechanics required, Artillery turrets and worm variants, and other new enemy types.

Adding to chemical warfare, for me, would be a nice addition. Instead of poison capsules leaving a stationary killzone, poison gas should drift with the wind(reducing effectiveness against worms and increasing effectiveness against mobile biters), and there should be turret, artillery, and mobile means of dispensing it.

Would also like to know status of vanilla support for vehicle grids, and garner feedback on modular vehicle turrets(for example, the stationary gun turret could mount on a special slot on the tank or the cargo wagon. The tank cannon would become a new turret that could be slotted into the tank.)

[Marconos]

I really like these changes but something that may be getting over looked is a more difficult change for those that enjoy the harder combat.

My suggestion here is to modify the startup, so players can "dial in" the difficulty in the biters that they have. The current density setting could be used just also increase the health / resistance of the biters as the player increase the biter difficulty.

To me this is a nice way to let players have what they want and allow players who want it really easy to turn it down while others turn it up.

[FreezyExp]

In order to avoid turret creep, make placing and removing of turrets a little slower.
Also give resistances to advanced bases against the damage types.

Avoid making siege turrets that can deal significant amount of damage to a base.
This way it will still be prudent to turret creep to keep the mob population in check, but the taking down of the base requires a tank or lots of explosives.

Since you need to take your tank along anyways, you might like to switch back to the drive large circles picking off one base at a time.
Or use turret creep for a bit more time efficient, but tedious and careful turret placements.

[Drury]

Your research on combat mechanics sounds really good on paper here, I'm impressed. I don't agree with absolutely everything but I'll see how it winds up working out, I suppose since you're playtesting you know what you're doing better than me with my assumptions.

On turret creep - Factorio isn't the only game with this problem. It's a tactic that I know at least crazy Red Alert 3 players use in multiplayer and it can be devastating. Note that of the three factions in the game, only the Allied side can pull this off effectively because their buildings deploy instantly, much like in Factorio. Soviet turrets are built on the spot in real time and the Japanese ones drive themselves to their designated spot before deploying, making them vulnerable before deployment.

So for the solution in Factorio, I'm leaning towards long power-up times, somewhere in the 10-20 second range. I mean when you're setting up your base defenses it's probably not going to hinder you much, and when you're turret creeping and being clever about it, you can defend the turrets for a bit while they're deploying and be rewarded with the massive frontline firepower that they provide.

EDIT:

Build times won't stop turret crawling because the back row of turrets will protect the vulnerable front one.

That's actually a valid concern, I forgot you can build a thousand turrets at once.

Maybe a combination of the two? Building closer to the center of the hive increases power up time.

[Supercheese]

I second this.

Speaking of StarCraft, it would be nice to have a sort of a weapon, that would work like the Ghost's nuke - go to an enemy base, point the laser at it, survive, BOOM!

Doo dee doo...