Friday Facts #169 - Combat revisit 2

[aober93]

Out of all gameplay features in tower defense, fast repeating linear progression is the least fun. Beat enemy, get upgrade, beat harder enemy, get better upgrade etcetc. Arcade style. On the other side and looking at the history of tower defense right into C&C and stuff like that, you dont need a selection of towers for it to be a fun experience.

[webkilla]

I have nothing against turret creeping: it is a huge investment of ressources, can easily go wrong, and requires a buttload of micro-managing. This takes attention away from other places and other defences.

Also tank shell dmg and firing speed research - cool. Hope that doesn't mean that the starting firing rate and dmg isn't nerfed at the same time.


Oh and really nice to see land mines being made useful - perhaps add research to make them do more dmg and have longer explosive range? other kinds of mines? Like an incendiary mine that just splashes its AOE with flame-thrower fire.

if I can supplement my turrets with easy to replace land mines, then I'll be quite happy


for the Fire Mine, the mats should be a tank of flamethrower fuel + 1 steel = 4 fire mines

[bobucles]

Spawners also have infinite ammo of bitters/spliters that can spawn out of thin air.

Infinite spawning isn't the worst thing in the world. The only way to keep biters an ever present threat is to have them come from SOMEWHERE. Spawns makes that possible.

What I'm talking about is more related to how much damage the enemy CAN do. A wave of 10 biters rolling through your base will keep on chomping and chomping and it can end up catastrophic. But if they say get zapped after chomping 3 assemblers then you only lose three assemblers. Sure it's better to not lose stuff at all but we only have one player and he can not guard every place at once.

Higher level biters will have no problem brute forcing through this low level damage since aliens scale far more lethally than the size of your base. A baby biter might only crush a few belts and poles before getting ground up in the gears, while a behemoth will tear down a huge chunk of your base and ask for more.

[aober93]

So if you promote landmines, pls get rid of the destroyed alert on landmines. This is annoying because its permanent. Should be only when they break thru.

[IronCartographer]

I see nothing wrong with turret creeping.

Taking it out of the game just limits the players, and reduces the various options to choose from to achieve the goal of clearing bases, which I have to point out is a bit of a chore and a tedious thing to do anyway. If that's how I or anyone else chooses to clear bases.. Well where is the problem? For me the OP nature of flamethrowers should be nerfed long before turret creeping (And yet there's going to be a stacking feature on them?!). There should be a fast simple way for players to kill enemy bases, and the more variety and choice left to the player in this regard, the better. I feel it should NOT ba a case of our way or the highway, please leave turret creeping in as no one is forced to use it after all. If players want to just clear bases ASAP and have a minimal combat experience - well let them. And if a player wants a deeper more micro orientated play style - well let them have that too! Besides you're adding an artillery train soon, which seems to me to be an even bigger click-and-forget system of killing biters than turret creeping is!

Combat in general needs more than a rebalance however. There should be other types of biters, both mobile and static, combat just feels very flat to me currently with only having 2 types of biter. Add swarming biters, burrowing biters, heavily armoured slow moving behemoths (that'll crawl into your base forcing additional defensive systems!) Or artillery biters, just a little more variety.

It does sadden me that an automation aspect of biter killing isn't being added (like Robot Army) This would fit Factorio down to the ground.

Agreed on all points, though the flamethrower stacking is a really cool idea as long as it's balanced. Making spawners fire resistant may be all it takes.

[Commander Gizmo]

I think by far the least tedious and most fun way to take out enemy bases I've ever tried is the Orbital Ion Cannons mod. I recently tried it for the first time and I have to say it takes the tedious out of the xenos and gives me a great use for all those rocket parts I've been making. The second level of research to have it autofire looks downright perfect for very late game. I'm looking forward to finishing my satellite network. Just make this stock and add a land based tower that is available earlier in the game that does the same thing at quarter damage and I'd be happy with combat and have a new toy to have to feed materials into.

[bobucles]

I enjoy how biters were originally some kind of statement about reckless industry and pollution, but players could only fight the biters by being more industrious and more polluting. Ultimately the player can only end the war against the biters through xenocide, and some of the more popular mods are just super weapons to kill more biters.

Whoops! I guess something got lost in the translation.

[factoriouzr]

The combat in this game needs way more attention then just tweaking the damage of guns and other combat number tweaking.

I was so excited when I heard the combat is finally being revisited. This game has needed a combat overhaul for a long time (many majour versions ago). The last few Friday facts didn't say anything about limiting this revisit to just small tweaks of existing stuff. Then this Friday facts comes along and pretty much the first comment in it, is that the combat is only going to be tweaked. Needless to say, I, and it looks like many other players were extremely disappointed in this revelation. The combat is a great aspect of this game that I really love. It has a lot of potential. I like the challenge the biters pose, it just needs to be improved. Please consider the following options for 0.15.

Here are the more important things that need to be improved when it comes to combat:

1) More varieties/types of biters with unique abilities, eg different attacks, perhaps flight but avoid cheap biter types that can just bypass defences easily such as burrowing biters.
2) better biter AI, eg. biters that explore in a fixed area around their base or migrate from base to base, or try to find a slightly better way to attack, and in general just add more interesting behaviours to biters and add personalities. Perhaps different biters behave differently
3) biters should only build new bases by sending a colonization biter that literally walks to where it wants to start the new base. This way the player can prevent spawns and the biter nests don't just appear in the middle of your base if you don't have buildings nearby. This would fix this issue
4) add lots of customization options on game creation and allow tweaking As many of them as possible after game creation for biter difficulty. Eg. base size, base strength, number of biters in waves, how the waves increase over time, how quickly the biters evolve. Add toggles for each different biter type (more useful when more biter types are added), how quickly concurrent biter wave attacks increase. Add an option for almost constant attacks, etc.
5) add more types of guns
6) add more types of vehicles
7) add more types of items that can be used in vehicle equpment grids and player equipment grids
8) add more unique weapon types like guns, capsules, lighting defence, etc. Ie. more unique categories of weapons
9) better balance between weapons, vehicles and biters
10) add automated ways to kill biters and destroy bases. Add support for things like bot patrols or things like robot army. Things you can set up, supply with goods and the building will send out waves of units when they are ready to defeat the biters in the given area and keep the whole area safe

[factoriouzr]

I have nothing against turret creeping: it is a huge investment of ressources, can easily go wrong, and requires a buttload of micro-managing. This takes attention away from other places and other defences.

Also tank shell dmg and firing speed research - cool. Hope that doesn't mean that the starting firing rate and dmg isn't nerfed at the same time.


Oh and really nice to see land mines being made useful - perhaps add research to make them do more dmg and have longer explosive range? other kinds of mines? Like an incendiary mine that just splashes its AOE with flame-thrower fire.

if I can supplement my turrets with easy to replace land mines, then I'll be quite happy


for the Fire Mine, the mats should be a tank of flamethrower fuel + 1 steel = 4 fire mines

I hope the devs will buff bots and properly balance how the lingering AOE damage like fire, and how spitters will work with bots replacing landmines. If the fire is still there while the bots are coming to replace mines and they get blown up, or if the mines are near where spitters are (eg. a new base spawned near the landmines or biters are rallying to near the landmines) and the spitters shoot down the bots, it will be very annoying. It will make using landmines not cost effective if you are losing bots that go to replace them. This is especially bad as you have no control over where biters rally and where their bases spawn (aside from denying land from them, which you then have to defend anyway, so it's the same issue). Landmines aren't really useful to manually maintain as that's not automation. So aside from one off special cases, the main way to use mines is with bots replacing them. So this has to be given attention so bots aren't lost easily while going to replace the mines.

[Kazaanh]

The same mission as above with support help from turrets

20161217175052_1.jpg

In my opinion the real problem with overpowered turrets is that other options sucks.
Bitters will swarm you, block you and works will kill you in like two-four shots.

Armors: Modular armor works only for having first construction bots. If you account batteries and shields then power armor is much more economic.

Personal laser: It does nothing. Doesn't prevent being swarmed/blocked end die in process.

Tank: can't call it from another location like train, ammunition is kinda expensive and from forum i think it will be even easier swarmed away than i on foot.

So what alternatives to turrets we have? None.
In end game: Sure, power armor 2, two fusion, four mk2 shields and lots of destroyer bots. But before alternatives simply sucks.

Maybe the problem is with the military tech branch itself?

Tank feels meh in late game, weapons are not satisfying to use. Its not FUN when a horde of range biters ( aka spitters ) are one shotting you as soon as you get into their range, happened many times to me. Their projectile shouldn't be auto-aimed at targets, should be dodgeable. Unless you wear plenty of shields you are gonna die.

Something like Modular Tanks where you could build one in very early game and slowly upgrade it to the mid/late game and still keep it as effective as it was. With armor plates, speed boosts, different weapons like gatling, rockets, flamer etc. Some mortar weps? Plasma grenades? Tank shields?

More ammo types variety would be nice too to counter X type of biter.

[R3vo]

Any chance the way resistances are displayed could be changed?

Right now it looks the following for the Modular Armour:

5/30% Acid
10/30% Explo.
0/60% Fire
6/30% Physical


Does that mean I have 5% of a maximum of 30% resistance against Acid? If yes, how do I increase it to 30%? Or is 30% the maximum possible in the game?

That has always kinda confused me. I'd rather see a simple value for each resistance:

5 Acid
10 Explo.
0 Fire
6 Physical

For the tank in would then look like this..

10 Acid
15 Explo.
50 Fire
15 Physical

instead of:

10/30% Acid
15/30% Explo.
50/60% Fire
15/30% Physical

That way it's easier to compare resistances.

Let me know what you think.



Furthermore, about weapon balancing.

Would't it make more sense to give each weapon it's own purpose?

If I understand the Friday Fact correctly, the Rocket Launcher will be the most powerful weapon in the late game. Rendering all other weapons useless?
I would rather see the Rocket Launcher being the perfect weapon against Worms because of its high range. Flamethrower against Nests and the Machine Gun and Shotgun against moving targets. The MG deals great DMG to single targets, whereas the Shotgun is very effective against many smaller enemies.

Against, let me know what you think.

[Sigma1]

Any chance the way resistances are displayed could be changed?

Right now it looks the following for the Modular Armour:

5/30% Acid
10/30% Explo.
0/60% Fire
6/30% Physical


Does that mean I have 5% of a maximum of 30% resistance against Acid? If yes, how do I increase it to 30%? Or is 30% the maximum possible in the game?

That has always kinda confused me. I'd rather see a simple value for each resistance:

5 Acid
10 Explo.
0 Fire
6 Physical

I think this would be an awesome little change. I actually still don't quite understand the resistances meanings.

[Xeanoa]

Any chance the way resistances are displayed could be changed?

Right now it looks the following for the Modular Armour:

5/30% Acid
10/30% Explo.
0/60% Fire
6/30% Physical


Does that mean I have 5% of a maximum of 30% resistance against Acid? If yes, how do I increase it to 30%? Or is 30% the maximum possible in the game?

That has always kinda confused me. I'd rather see a simple value for each resistance:

5 Acid
10 Explo.
0 Fire
6 Physical

I think this would be an awesome little change. I actually still don't quite understand the resistances meanings.

But that change would make the display WRONG. The armour absorbs, for example, 30% PLUS 6 fixed physical damage per hit. So, an attack that does 20 damage nominally would do 20*0.7-6 = 8 damage to you.

[R3vo]

Any chance the way resistances are displayed could be changed?

Right now it looks the following for the Modular Armour:

5/30% Acid
10/30% Explo.
0/60% Fire
6/30% Physical


Does that mean I have 5% of a maximum of 30% resistance against Acid? If yes, how do I increase it to 30%? Or is 30% the maximum possible in the game?

That has always kinda confused me. I'd rather see a simple value for each resistance:

5 Acid
10 Explo.
0 Fire
6 Physical

I think this would be an awesome little change. I actually still don't quite understand the resistances meanings.

But that change would make the display WRONG. The armour absorbs, for example, 30% PLUS 6 fixed physical damage per hit. So, an attack that does 20 damage nominally would do 20*0.7-6 = 8 damage to you.

Well, you see. I didn't know about that, and many others do not know about that too I am sure. So there is definitely space for improvements.

The question here is, does the player need to know all this? For us it's only important to know a resistance value so we can compare different items with each other. How it's calculated in the end, that's something for the wiki.

[Xeanoa]

Any chance the way resistances are displayed could be changed?

Right now it looks the following for the Modular Armour:

5/30% Acid
10/30% Explo.
0/60% Fire
6/30% Physical


Does that mean I have 5% of a maximum of 30% resistance against Acid? If yes, how do I increase it to 30%? Or is 30% the maximum possible in the game?

That has always kinda confused me. I'd rather see a simple value for each resistance:

5 Acid
10 Explo.
0 Fire
6 Physical

I think this would be an awesome little change. I actually still don't quite understand the resistances meanings.

But that change would make the display WRONG. The armour absorbs, for example, 30% PLUS 6 fixed physical damage per hit. So, an attack that does 20 damage nominally would do 20*0.7-6 = 8 damage to you.

Well, you see. I didn't know about that, and many others do not know about that too I am sure. So there is definitely space for improvements.

The question here is, does the player need to know all this? For us it's only important to know a resistance value so we can compare different items with each other. How it's calculated in the end, that's something for the wiki.

And the tooltip provides the neccesary information, as both parts of the resistance are important to do a proper comparison. If you skip one part, then you don't have the means to see which is better. The calculations can indeed be found on the wiki.

[Mylon]

Spawners also have infinite ammo of bitters/spliters that can spawn out of thin air.

Infinite spawning isn't the worst thing in the world. The only way to keep biters an ever present threat is to have them come from SOMEWHERE. Spawns makes that possible.

What I'm talking about is more related to how much damage the enemy CAN do. A wave of 10 biters rolling through your base will keep on chomping and chomping and it can end up catastrophic. But if they say get zapped after chomping 3 assemblers then you only lose three assemblers. Sure it's better to not lose stuff at all but we only have one player and he can not guard every place at once.

Higher level biters will have no problem brute forcing through this low level damage since aliens scale far more lethally than the size of your base. A baby biter might only crush a few belts and poles before getting ground up in the gears, while a behemoth will tear down a huge chunk of your base and ask for more.

This is what we call leaks. In a TD game, barring the higher difficulties, leaks generally aren't a big deal. They have a discrete cost and that's that.

Factorio is quite a bit different and I think the high damage potential of leaks helps to emphasize the need for layered defense. A needed feature is a mobile defense force, like a logistics network but for combat robots, as this better fits the theme of Factorio.

[Mythoss]

I think the turret creep issue stems from not having enough bitter types. Flying bitters that only anti air turrets could hit. Or long range artillery bitters. You could have armored bitters that evolve to be resistant to laser fire so a mixed turret system is ideal.

I love the thrower defense mode. A good tower defense game needs a lot of upgrades and paths to choose. I think it would be more fun If each player got to specialize sperately. Then you have good team play with everyone working together to specialize differently. Limited resources that ramp up towards the final waves so that building defenses is still fun but not overpowering.

[Chymor]

My suggestions would be a rather large re-balance that simply makes turrets unsuitable to attacks.

The easiest way to do this is to change tower hp to 50, and wall hp to >1000. This makes placing towers near biters just result in destroyed towers. I suggest making walls much quicker to mine in this case, since you will need to both deploy and move them as the game progresses.

But I have more suggestions that I think will make the defense better. All of it is meant to make "tower walls" harder, by requiring more infrastructure:
1) Gun turrets have a inventory that can only hold 5 ammo => gun turrets must be deployed with ammo infra structure (chests or belts) => infrastructure needs makes them unsuitable for tower creep.
2) Laser turrets are turned into "fire rarely but instant-kill weapons", for example fire rate 1shot/4s, 1000 dmg => unsuitable for tower creep, can't deal with swarms of normal biters
2b) Behemoths are rebalanced so that gun turrets are ineffective against them => laser or flame turrets are needed as well, a single turret type tower wall won't work.

Other suggestion: Deployed buildings (or just towers) starts with "low hp" and "construct/heal up" to full hp over 5-30s.

This creates a defense that cannot be used offensively in an effective manner, so you also need to buff the tank and armor so going out personally in the late game can reasonably easy clear up bases. Or add other good ways of clearing biters (squads of offensive drones?). In general I think it would be good for late game if you both angered biters further away (so you could never really stop attack on your base), but also could clean them out easily if you attack personally. (to make them less of a grind)

[RaviorMetal]

I just read the part about the Waves-Gamemode on the FFF;

What about having this when you finally launch the rocket in the main game when you set the rocket to launch? So that you have to survive a large number of waves first? To be honest, a friend of mine and I thought that something like them storming would happen then, we where a little disappointed when nothing really did happen ^^

I think that would be pretty cool...

[sidun04]

Personally, I like to use turret creeping and build walls around myself in the early stages of the game to make some space for later on. I find it frustrating to destroy the spawners once the biters have started evolving, because in my opinion, there isn't really a "tool" in the game which allows me to make offensive moves. I mean... what are your possibilities once you are facing blue and green biters? As far as I can see, there are basically 2 types of weapons that can be used against them:

- Tanks: Well... you can go on and pick apart the biters slowly, but tanks aren't really useful when you are facing a massive amount of these guys. Once you are near the spawners they just keep spawning faster than you can kill them, not to mention that there are worms, too. Although it is manageable to get rid of them using tanks, for me this is too slow and annoying.
- Power armour/Capsule combo: quick, effective, even against behemoths. The only problem with this is that it's only useable within the late stage of the game, as it requires loads of resources to research and use. (and if I remember correctly, this needs artifacts to research?) So... this basically brings you back to the problem: find an effective/fun way to destroy the spawners.

For the rest of the weapons, I think they are pretty much useless (mines, rockets, ...) apart from the combat shotgun when fully upgraded. If I find myself in the awkward situation of not being able to use any of the options above (such as: tanks aren't enough any more because they are too weak / haven't researched capsules) then the quickest way is just to place my turrets along the way.

I don't think there is anything to do in connection with turret creeping. If there is a better way to fight the biters (or maybe just rebalancing combat), then players will probably choose another method over turrets. Setting up a line of posts and destroying them a minute later is tiring.

I personally like the new proposed changes, rebalancing tanks and behemoths is a must.
Keep up the good work!