Friday Facts #234 - Office pictures

[bobucles]

1. Mines can not be placed on building to attack

Mines explode and hurt things around them, it'd be strange if they didn't. I did notice that mines will arm and trigger on biter nests so not triggering on structures would be nice. It'd mean you can't just splatter mines and have it auto detonate to flatten a whole base.

2. Mines can be detected and become visible by a radar,

Very simple and effective idea that solves 95% of aggressive mine issues. You can place them on the attack but players can counter them super easy (shoot or grenade), thus they are ineffective on offense. It also means if a player taps into the enemy's power grid they can use radar to detect enemy mines. Devilishly delightful!

3. Don't allow Mine placing from inside vehicles

Tough to enforce because mines are structures and any structure can be hand placed at will. One option is to have mines trigger on all vehicles, therefore you can't simply ride a tank while bathing in mines. I do think that radar detection will solve most of the problem because aggressive mines will simply be super easy to counter.

Keep in mind that attacking is superior over defense currently, so buffing defense in crucial. By making landmines visible to attackers, you do the opposite!

This discussion goes very deep into game design. If defense is superior then there is little incentive to attack. In a game like Factorio you'd LOSE by attacking since you wouldn't be scoring points for building a base. If attack is superior then the best way to defend a well equipped player is with another well equipped player. That makes the most exciting games.

After seeing some of the game, Anti scored a massive lead by simply being better equipped than his opponents. When they were using tanks or fighting on foot he was launching a one man army with tanks, loads of cannon shells, loaded personal lasers and repair bots. Being better equipped is a HUGE indicator of skill since building things is the most important theme in Factorio.

Edit: What if radar long range reveal automatically targeted players or structures? Would such a thing be too cheesy or would it be a great asset in finding hidden bases? The default vision is pretty decent if you have radars at all corners of your base.

[ikiris]

I think blocking personal interaction and personal modules other than placing blueprints while inside a vehicle would solve a lot of the balance issues I saw.

Agree power grids should be per force.

And yeah, there needs to be a way to find landmines, although I'm not sure I like this current solution since it impacts their ability to act as defense significantly.

[SuicideJunkie]

After watching that whole video, I think I agree.
Player armor should have some laser resistance, since that would make sense with combat against other humans(?) historically as the tech was developed, and PLD should be weaker than big stationary laser turrets.
Radar detection of land mines would be pretty nice, presuming that allows your turrets to shoot them; a scattered set of turrets could slowly but efficiently sweep for mines in your own base, after rebuilding the turrets of course.

Might be good for stationary buildings to be resistant to mines, since they seem too much more effective than conventional weapons for that.

[AntiElitz]

Adding to the PLD discussion:
PLD's are not OP. But they are in vehicles like tanks.
If you use PLD's without a Tank you are very squishy and have to decide weather you get some shields for defense, or PLD's for damage. Without Shields you get one shot by another tank.
With a Tank, you can just go full PLD without shield and that's where they become op, because you get both, damage and HP.

Simply deactivating PLD's when in a Tank will balance them.
Also robots shouldn't repair vehicles, especially when sitting inside them.

[MeduSalem]

Server room, Twinsens 3d printer

I almost laughed at that one... Initially I read "Server room, Twinsens 3rd prison".

Would have fit with that small room.

[Rakshasa]

What, looks like you guys have plenty of room!

/me works for a small company in tokyo.

[Engimage]

Adding to the PLD discussion:
PLD's are not OP. But they are in vehicles like tanks.
If you use PLD's without a Tank you are very squishy and have to decide weather you get some shields for defense, or PLD's for damage. Without Shields you get one shot by another tank.
With a Tank, you can just go full PLD without shield and that's where they become op, because you get both, damage and HP.

Simply deactivating PLD's when in a Tank will balance them.
Also robots shouldn't repair vehicles, especially when sitting inside them.

This! The problem arises namely when you are using personal modules while inside vehicle. Equipping 5 PLD makes your character extremely squishy as you won't use shields instead so you should be pretty vulnerable. But then you get inside a tank with repair bots. This is too powerful.

As a result of this test I think you could finally move forward with vehicle grids:

• Disable offensive personal modules while inside vehicle as well as personal roboport. However those poor robots were easily destroyed by AOE effects of rocket launchers and grenades making them marginally useful so this is kinda questionable. Also disabling personal roboport in a vehicle will definitely hurt single player. And there is no sense in disabling generators, shields and batteries as well so its only about offense.
• To compensate there is a sense on enabling vehicle grids so you could add offensive modules to vehicles as well as roboports. Vehicle roboports should also be able to access player inventory if one is inside it.

Regarding mines there are some options around:

• Make radars detect and mark mines. However if radar is disabled or destroyed mines will go invisible again.
• Sure thing mines should not detonate on buildings. Only on living entities be it a biter or a player/vehicle. I find it also waay OP in a single player to spam mines in a biter next to destroy it within 2 seconds.
• Mines have waay to high initial damage so they should definitely join existing damage tech like grenade damage with their base damage reduced. You can rename it like Explosives Damage and make it effect Grenades, Mines, Explosive Shells, Explosive Rockets

Regarding tanks I think Rocket Launchers with piercing shells should do significant damage on those. Looking ar the rate at which Lasers melt tanks (which is against sense) it is rediculous that several players with rocket launchers can't focus one down.

[bobucles]

Regarding tanks I think Rocket Launchers with piercing shells should do significant damage on those. Looking ar the rate at which Lasers melt tanks (which is against sense) it is rediculous that several players with rocket launchers can't focus one down.

This is because of the Tank's resistances:

Code: Select all

Acid: 15/50%
Explosion: 15/70%
Fire: 15/60%
Impact: 50/80%
Physical: 15/60%

It has no laser resistance (much like everything else) so those 2000 HP simply melt against lasers. On the other hand the explosion resistance gives it at LEAST over 6600HP against explosives. Woah! The explosion resistance was originally intended to protect the tank against its own cannon shells, which would wreck the tank with absurd levels of friendly fire. A lot of combat stats were implemented solely with PvE in mind. This might be fixed by using an "Anti biter" damage type instead, so cannons still deal huge damage against biters but less damage in a PvP environment. Also cannons might deal less friendly fire or self hurt damage so they don't cause tanks to kill themselves.

The tank's wild physical resistance renders it completely IMMUNE to red bullets. That kind of resistance isn't much against blue and green biters but we're seeing PvE stats affect PvP balance in weird ways.

As a result of this test I think you could finally move forward with vehicle grids:
Disable offensive personal modules while inside vehicle as well as personal roboport. However those poor robots were easily destroyed by AOE effects of rocket launchers and grenades making them marginally useful so this is kinda questionable. Also disabling personal roboport in a vehicle will definitely hurt single player. And there is no sense in disabling generators, shields and batteries as well so its only about offense.
To compensate there is a sense on enabling vehicle grids so you could add offensive modules to vehicles as well as roboports. Vehicle roboports should also be able to access player inventory if one is inside it.

No! Not my tank lasers!
It's clear that PvP balance gets pretty silly when mostly everything is built with PvE balance in mind. In the PvE environment the player needs to deal huge amounts of DPS (over 200 easily) and have huge amounts of resistances to deal with the regeneration of biters and nests. Such high damage simply melts players who start with 150HP and cap out at 2K in a tank. The damage values to kill a player in PvP are simply much lower than clearing biters in PvE, and there's not much that can be done in one environment without seriously messing up the other.

One option is to change the damage:HP scale between players and biters. If player assets get 10xHP and biters deal 10x damage, the net result is that player weapons end up 1/10th as powerful against players. That's just an extreme example of course, but it highlights how both environments can be tweaked against each other without resorting to "magic resistances".

I do think that PvE balance is more important because that's going to be the biggest experience for players. I'd like to see it kept mostly intact when PvP changes hit the field.

recipe costs

In PvE the cost of items is largely irrelevant. Players will use what they like best and that's it. In PvP the cost of firepower becomes VERY important because players are in an arms race against each other. In this respect we learned that:
- dirt cheap recipes get the most use. this means land mines and cannon shells give top value for the dollar. Bullets are too ineffective (can't hurt tanks) to see much use.
- Costly recipes like capsules don't get used. While the total damage potential over time may be huge, long term damage just doesn't work when everyone is a glass cannon.

It does seem that weapon recipes need to be tweaked to be more in line with each other. Cluster grenades are nightmarishly expensive. Drone capsules could also use some cost reductions to use less ingredients, craft faster, and produce more products. Their costs have always seemed relatively high even for PvE. I know 5 destroyers are nice but 200+ iron, 200+ copper and over 500 seconds crafting time is just. God damn. I think I'll stick with 50 cannon shells or over 200 land mines, thanks.

[Dev-iL]

My 2c about mines:
I think mines should become visible when the player is at about 2x the mine range, the logic here is that how manually clearing minefields works IRL, you walk slowly and clear the mines one by one.

I'm not sure if it makes sense that mines stay detected after the player leaves, maybe yes maybe no, this should depend on playtesting and which option makes the game more fun / challenging.

One of the suggestions I saw was limiting construction from within vehicles in PvP games. This somewhat makes sense.

[Sander_Bouwhuis]

PVP?
I didn't even know there was PVP. I'll have to check the video, but I don't know why anyone would want to play in PVP. Wouldn't the other team simply constantly destroy your buildings and harass you?

[UnifiedSleepers]

Should land mines kill players on foot? These land mines were added to the game to balance use of tanks, if you made the land mines only trigger when a large weight was applied, such as a vehicle, you'd still counter the power of tanks without ganking the on-foot player.

[Gergely]

PVP?
I didn't even know there was PVP. I'll have to check the video, but I don't know why anyone would want to play in PVP. Wouldn't the other team simply constantly destroy your buildings and harass you?

They wouldn't.

They have no idea where you are.

[sixthugger]

Should land mines kill players on foot? These land mines were added to the game to balance use of tanks, if you made the land mines only trigger when a large weight was applied, such as a vehicle, you'd still counter the power of tanks without ganking the on-foot player.

This is correct There are two types of mines anti-personal and anti-vehicle, The AP mines are too weak to damage an armored vehicle (still enough to take off your leg), and AV mines are massive overkill for personal and so have a trigger that can only be set off by a massive amount of weight.
So my proposal for balance is to make mines AV, meaning that players and small/medium biters do NOT trigger mines, only the car/tank and large/behemoth biters trigger an explosion.
I never used mines before because the materials was more than I was willing to spend to kill the smaller biters but if I was guaranteed that they would only hit the big guys then I believe I would use them liberally.

[Dev-iL]

Should land mines kill players on foot? These land mines were added to the game to balance use of tanks, if you made the land mines only trigger when a large weight was applied, such as a vehicle, you'd still counter the power of tanks without ganking the on-foot player.

So my proposal for balance is to make mines AV, meaning that players and small/medium biters do NOT trigger mines, only the car/tank and large/behemoth biters trigger an explosion.

That doesn't really accomplish much, since a player could get out of the tank, "put it in his pocket", cross the minefield and then get back in the tank afterwards.

On a different topic - stealing power:
How about introducing a new entity only for pvp - "power siphon", which acts like a relay station (maybe with a smaller radius) but can connect to other teams' power grids? This idea can be extended to pumps/inserters.

[Lubricus]

I think attacking was a little bit to strong and it is a little bit to hard to defend.
Nerfing the landmines would make it harder to defend, the problem was when they filled the enemy factory with landmines.
So my suggestion is to disable the possibility to put down entities in others home area. Then you can't put down laser-turrets and landmines deep insides enemy factories and it would be easier to rebuild and catch up after an attack.

The PDL is powerful but first you have to research and build it and also recharge the batteries (It's to hard to get fusion reactors in time)
Then if you die the enemies can loot and take over the PDL so in a way it is Anti's building speed and tactics that is OP not the PDL.

[Sander_Bouwhuis]

PVP?
I didn't even know there was PVP. I'll have to check the video, but I don't know why anyone would want to play in PVP. Wouldn't the other team simply constantly destroy your buildings and harass you?

They wouldn't.

They have no idea where you are.

Really? So everyone start very far apart?
Ok, I'll check the video when I come home from work.

[UnifiedSleepers]

That doesn't really accomplish much, since a player could get out of the tank, "put it in his pocket", cross the minefield and then get back in the tank afterwards.

I agree; however you miss my point entirely, if the land mines only affected heavy entities like tanks and not the player (forgetting that the player probably should weigh more than a whale at this point) that the PvP problem of land mines in the base will now only affect the enemy (of the land mine) tanks not the on-foot players. Also getting out of a tank whilst crossing a perimeter, no matter how shallow, it is worse then not getting out.

It would be cool if our factories could produce heavy, complex machinery like tanks that were delivered to the factory floor and not some chest. That way there would be no need to allow such things to enter ones pocket in the first place.

[Richard Erickson]

Do Combat Robots trip Mines or otherwise attack them? Having them be a counter to the mines would be a great newfound utility for an otherwise never touched on feature of the game. Does the Discharge defense blow up mines? Maybe it could blow up mines in a larger radius than normal. Maybe construction bots could be able to deconstruct enemy mines within radar distance?

If Personal shields provided some extra armor against laser hits they would help balance PvP without effecting PvE while encouraging a choice between them and PLDs. It seems as though most things don't provide armor against laser attacks though so that may be oversight anyway.

[bobucles]

I definitely think that laser resistance needs to be the first priority before considering other balance factors. Other resistance settings should also be considered, since that's the primary leverage you have to set up a Rock/Paper/Scissors set of counters. Granted not everything needs to "hard counter" this or "totally defeat" that. But when an anti-heavy weapon like the rocket launcher struggles to deal any damage to heavy tanks, it's probably not working right.

Once the resistances feel good (A healthy simple mix of anti armor, anti personnel and anti structure, without hurting anti-biter too much) then it's time to think about what items are too expensive or too cheap for their role.

An item that is good but overly expensive is rarely going to see the light of day. Sorry capsules. Similarly an item that is normally cheap but has a really involved recipe chain will be FAR more difficult to build. Complex recipes reward player skill as they can set them up over players who struggle to tie everything together. An expensive item that uses very simple production steps (like bullets or grenades for example) may still be popular across all skill levels because there's a low difficulty in setup.

I'm not a fan of the mine solution. Forcing eye strain on your players is generally a bad game mechanic. Other players have been very helpful in providing good ideas to keep mines useful in their assumed defensive role, while keeping them from dominating outside that role.

[Dev-iL]

... if the land mines only affected heavy entities like tanks and not the player that the PvP problem of land mines in the base will now only affect the enemy (of the land mine) tanks not the on-foot players.

I don't disagree with you, it's just that not being able to get into a vehicle inside your own base doesn't sound like a very good solution to me. I think Klonan's solution of disallowing buildings in enemy bases is probably good enough™.

It would be cool if our factories could produce heavy, complex machinery like tanks that were delivered to the factory floor and not some chest. That way there would be no need to allow such things to enter ones pocket in the first place.

Well, we know that constructed tanks/cars can move on belts, so perhaps it's worth adding an output belt to assemblers that produce vehicles (in the same way assemblers that interact with fluids get a pipe), to get something like this:

...and of course disallowing the picking-up of cars/tanks and their manual crafting.

Does the Discharge defense blow up mines? Maybe it could blow up mines in a larger radius than normal.

What if discharge defense allows you to take control of enemy mines?
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On a side note, I don't know exactly what direction Factorio PvP should evolve in... Clearly many ideas are influenced by RTS, yet Factorio is supposed to be a logistics simulation.