Expanding The Function Of Lights

[saykhia]

From my experience with the game, lights seem to not have much of a role to play in the game other than to improve visibility at night. I have several suggestions:

1. Certain enemy types are especially attracted to light sources. Lights can then act as lightning rods for this enemy type and used as part of base defense. Maybe these enemies have attack ranges longer than turret ranges and thus lights (placed behind turret lines) are necessary to draw the enemy into the turret range.

2. Some enemies only come out at night e.g from Point 1 above.

3. Enemy types which are INSANELY deadly but avoids light sources. Maybe only comes out at night (the movie Pitch Black comes to mind). Will also require new strategy for players attacking enemy bases after dark (spotlights on cars and power armour?).

4. If the ideas above are agreeable, different light sources can be added. For example, directional lighting (e.g spotlight) has longer range but small lighting angle, while diffuse lighting has smaller lighting radius but lights up all around it.

These ideas also inspired by the insect-like design of the aliens.

[ssilk]

Good points. This has been discussed earlier, but this is a nice list. I want to mention that we discussed also, that currently the lights aren't really needed, and that there are many player, which play totally without light.

From the balancing I would like to have the need for light, cause it avoids some really bad creatures (point 3 from above). The night could be a bit longer. More deadly. The natives react a bit different at night...

[Nahon]

Additionally, placing lights makes your game actually viewable on youtube.
Also, it helped if they were turned on a bit longer.

[Rusty]

I was thinking something similar, but about about the logic applications if they sent a 0/1 state to the network. Their inbuilt dusk/dawn sensor would be a far more reliable method of implementing parallel power architecture (solar/steam). So the condition would read (not actual code), "If logicLamp1 = 1, SmartInserter1 = 1,0", or in plain English, if the lamp is on, put the coal in the boiler, otherwise don't do anything.

There's probably some further logic possibilities further down the line depending on what new features are coming (night terrors! OP point 3)

[saykhia]

Well, the devs did talk about revisiting fight mechanics in 0.12. My original suggestions aim to increase the depth of enemy encounter / base defense tactics as well as expand upon the relatively undeveloped (IMO anyway) potential of lights.

Of course, it would also be nice if lights can be integrated into the logic networks and used for a variety of factory monitoring functions e.g as indicator lights for when a train wagon is full.

Or motion sensor lights to provide advance warning of approaching aliens? Perhaps can be programmed to vary in colour depending on size / type of approaching enemies.

[DaveMcW]

It could be as simple as +1 armor to enemies in darkness, to represent the increased difficulty to hit them.

[saykhia]

That may be a stat change which may or may not be noticeable in actual gameplay. I was thinking along the lines of making it noticeably different at night-time versus daytime in terms of defense considerations and enemy behavior.

[FreeER]

+1 to all of this, mainly because of the Pitch Black reference (+10 for that) , jk I personally think that the aliens need to be more diverse, the current biters seem like rather stupid wildlife and more of an annoyance than much else (especially with them being the only source of alien artifacts). More aliens, especially more 'intelligent' ones, would be nice imo.

[StanFear]

Light could also be used to modify how the turrets work,
for instane, turrets could only fire at an enemy if he is in the light

this could also lead to improving the turrets with modules -> infrared detectors that would need to be added to the turret
understaning that, the creepers would most likely chose to attack at night when they will have less losses, or in dark spots

[saykhia]

Light could also be used to modify how the turrets work,
for instane, turrets could only fire at an enemy if he is in the light

this could also lead to improving the turrets with modules -> infrared detectors that would need to be added to the turret
understaning that, the creepers would most likely chose to attack at night when they will have less losses, or in dark spots

That is an interesting suggestion. Perhaps turrets + lighting setup can be "tiered" in such a way:

1. Light and turret are separate entities. Lights have varieties including (a) default lamp which only lights up small area around it; (b) auto roving searchlights with long range which locks on and tracks enemies and "paints" targets for turrets; and (c) floodlights which light up a huge area but consumes an insane amount of energy so maybe only switches on under a big attack.

2. Turrets that come with integrated searchlight. Although it's debatable whether this is needed considering point 1 above.

3. Turrets that have infrared sensors and hence can see in the dark.

[Nemoder]

I've seen a lot of ideas for harder aliens and that makes sense for later in the game but I really think we need easier enemies appearing much earlier.
What I'd like to see is a larval critter that appears every night but avoids light sources. It would be too small to harm your buildings but will attack you if you get too close. It would be easy to kill but still give you a fear of wandering too far at night with low ammo. With enough walls and lights it wouldn't be any threat at all. Perhaps even let us build wooden walls at the start as a small shelter against them if we can't get furnaces and lights up fast enough.

[Artman40]

I feel that aliens should be more dangerous during the daylight. Night+more aliens would be a bit too much.