Peace with Aliens

[DaBibo]

What about a system, basing on scents ?
Biters are like insects and many insects work with scents.

Like "getting hurt" drops agggressive and fear scents on the ground.
So they run away when getting hurt and take their aggression with them which leads to bigger biters.
Full kill a attack wave would be better for your base

By taking some items from the death / run away bitters you should be able to invent scent towers, scent remove bits, a scent view goggle, trail markers, ... to manipulate the scent system (leading them to a hard defended point, avoid trainlines and small stations, ...)

So flooding your base with a "friendly scent" could lead to a coexistence by keeping them a little bit drugged

[Darinth]

There are lots of options. As one of those people who has generally preferred to create more eco-friendly bases, I like the idea of at least being able to be on neutral terms with the aliens still. If you didn't attack them and kept pollution levels low enough, they'd leave you alone.

The problem comes in that
A: Mining is inherently a very dirty activity. Even with the max 80% reduction on mining drills, biters still come and attack and you can still put out a lot of pollution from larger patches.

B: When they setup a base directly on top of an ore patch, you'd need some way to move them out of the way without attacking them. Maybe pheromones that can temporarily render them docile and some method of get them to move their nests.

Unfortunately, with the hope being that 0.17 will become 1.0, I doubt we'll get this before release and I have no clue what Wube's intentions are for long-term support of factorio post-release.

I do really like the potential for more extensive relationships as well. Assuming they're more animalistic (which seems to be the case), 'trade' doesn't make a whole lot of sense. But befriending them, and developing biotechnology based on their capabilities sounds like a whole lot of fun.

[Oktokolo]

Unfortunately, with the hope being that 0.17 will become 1.0, I doubt we'll get this before release and I have no clue what Wube's intentions are for long-term support of factorio post-release.

I don't expect Wube to add much to the biters before or after release. For them, they are just a mechanic to sink some resources and make the player build defenses.
But you can always make a mod. Also, the scent idea has been implemented by Rampant already. Maybe, that mod could be extended to implement the biter drugging mechanic.

[dx4]

The problem with aliens don't just remain at you producing pollution. Even if you literally produce 0 pollution you still are not safe, not even close. Why? Aliens like to expand on their own so eventually will expand right into your base. A variety of mechanics need to be introduces for friendly aliens to work. My view on this is as follows:

First, a player-alien relationship value going from let's say -100 to 100 with -100 being enemies, 0 neutral, 100 friendly. The relationship would deteriorate when killing them and when they absorb pollution, otherwise it would increase (given time). When neutral aliens could behave like the current "peaceful mode" settings.

Secondly, a definition of player territory, an easy way would be to define player territory by the revealed map from radars. While friendly the aliens should refrain from expanding on that area.

Taking into account how "friendly" you are with them they should be able to "sell" you territory, meaning removing their bases from player territory. This way the player should be able to expand their base without killing aliens and therefore greatly reducing his relation to them.

As for the trading, now that there are no alien artifacts (maybe re-introduce them to make it more interesting to interact with aliens) you can also introduce a friendly spawner. The player should be able to request from the aliens a spawner that won't produce any aliens but will help with pollution reduction since they absorb great amount of pollution.

Any request could cost relationship status (for example requesting a friendly spawner while having 100 relationship with aliens would reduce it to 70) or have a cooldown before being able to request something from them again.

[AyleeJenn]

oh wow, that is a really cool idea dx4 Requesting a spawner from the aliens to reduce pollutions once you achieved good relations feels like a very compelling concept for gameplay variety, provided that sort of route is added to the game at all in the end

[SpaghettiCrazy]

I like this idea. You are the kind of alien colonist in this world and real natives usually don't have a guilty until proven innocent policy. In fact the aliens treat you as guilty, period. I think it would be nice to be able to have a relationship with the aliens. I also think that there should be more starting power opportunities than just the heavily polluting steam power. Maybe some sort of low power giving short lasting geothermal vent that is only really useful early game. Or maybe sticking with steam some sort of similar steam geyser. Also being able to do nice things like replant trees and grow grass would be nice.

[mudcrabempire]

The main problem with the "peace with aliens" path is that you still are playing factorio. You want to build a factory, the bigger the better. So you need to expand a lot. So you are taking a lot of space away from the biters. Most species don't just walk off their home turf and walk into overpopulated concentration camps at the edge of your territory, just because you asked them nicely.

So as I see it, the "peace with aliens" path can very easily turn into what would basically be a weapon of deception. And then, when you freely teched up, secured a perimeter and got them all rounded up nicely, you drop the nukes.

Just be aware of this.

[Oktokolo]

And then, when you freely teched up, secured a perimeter and got them all rounded up nicely, you drop the nukes.
Just be aware of this.

That's the plan. Do you hate nukes or are you just a communist bug hugger?

[mudcrabempire]

Um, no. I would probably do it. My moral issues about biter-genocide aren't particularly notable. But I had the impression that lots of the people who favor the "peace with biters" thing where honest about the "peace" part, so I figured it would be a good idea to point out it's abusability.

[Oktokolo]

Um, no. I would probably do it. My moral issues about biter-genocide aren't particularly notable. But I had the impression that lots of the people who favor the "peace with biters" thing where honest about the "peace" part, so I figured it would be a good idea to point out it's abusability.

If they choose to not nuke the biters the biters will indeed chew on them eventually. But that's okay. Bug huggers deserve to be eaten alive by their bug friends. They should know better than believing in peace with the natives anyway.

[catma]

You need alien leaders of some sort. And if there is enough intellect for trading, there is probably enough intellect for a merchant or political class that isn't just some HUUUUGE monster bossing regular biters around because huge monsters would imply "consider just stomping it" is its first reaction to the unknown, "send minions" the 2nd, and basically no evolutionary pressure to develop a 3rd option.

BONUS IDEA:
Not knowing what the local leaders personalities are, and having to take chances and scout ahead for a more convenient type if the nearest one isn't convenient (warmonger; isolationist; too greedy; refuses to produce certain goods; already trading capped; tries to impose laws on you like "no uranium", ETC) would definitely add +200 hours of worthy gameplay to the game. If you can't make it, MAKE SURE MODDERS CAN!

[catma]

2014 YIKES i'm late.

[disentius]

How about implementing a sort of "zones" or regions?
Thinking about something like this:

Native zones
If player builds anything there its WAR!:)

Neutral zones
players and natives can coexist and build here until "Native hostility" value: is above a treshold value.

Player zones
Natives are not interested in these parts. Players can do what they like here.

[thereaverofdarkness]

How about implementing a sort of "zones" or regions?

That's a super cool idea! The player could start within such an abandoned area, and could find more such regions throughout exploring. Those regions would be poor in whatever resources the biters want, and so they would have no presence throughout the region. If you're careful not to let your pollution spread to adjacent regions, the biters will let you be.

But most areas would be neutral, with some biters. You'd generally have to contend with them and share space (or drive them out of their home). Your resources wouldn't necessarily correlate with biter resources, so you might find great things with low biter population for a long ways around, but it's going to be luck of the draw and usually you won't.

In the areas with the most biter resources, they will have huge colony systems. Most of the time, you can easily avoid these places, or use them for late-game bug-stomping fun. But alternatively if you happen to be seeking the same resources they want, you'll know where to get said resources.

-

Resource distribution could have sort of a "heat map" over large areas, such that as you explore, you'll find the rate of a given resource gradually changes. You might come across a region that is rich in iron but poor in copper, for example. The starting region should have moderately high values for iron, copper, stone, and coal, but particularly low values for oil or uranium--so you have to explore outside the starting area before you're likely to find a good deposit.

There could be special resources that the biters are interested in, which are also potentially useful to the player but which you can ignore without problem. It could be part of a new gameplay avenue--do you:
A.) make peace with the aliens and attempt to trade for the resources
B.) take the resources by force
C.) ignore the resources

[Tekillaa]

Hi,

I like the idea of peace, there's my suggestion which is a melting pot of lot of ideas:

- Each alien nest is like a camp, it needs like a trade building where we can have an input and an output, the "request" of the building depends on the actual pollution on the nest (the more there pollution, the higher is the request). It asks some raws materials they are use to eat like stone or coal, even iron or copper ore. The longer we filled the request, the longer the peace exist. Or we can kill the whole camp.
- If we keep the peace with them by sustaining the request, they allow a new kind of ressources/science pack available in the "trade buildind" of the camp, related to the peace with alien, it allows research like a new kind of module : reduction of pollution, maybe a building like a pollution absorber, a research improving the pollution absorption of each bitters camp, a research for a slight up of the solar panel efficiency etc.. (aliens teach us how to live with them and the planet)
- the entire process is an alternative choice to the military research, because it becomes obsolet if the peace is here.

Thank you for the game, best regards.

[phi Seeker]

So I just read last 3 pages of this topic and it seems there are lot of people interested in some peace with aliens, there is of course the peaceful mode and there are lot of map options (which I use) like reducing biter nests sizes and their frequency and slowing the evolution to make biters less of an annoyance. Then I think with biters being bug/animal like creatures with no real cooperation the peace with them is just nonsense.
HOWEVER it would be maybe kind of cool to have some kind of mechanic to deal with biters without much fiddling with these settings:

1) So lets say you could mine dead biters with some special robot(not necessarily flying) or what to produce some kind of biter specimen and then with lets say filter inserters and maybe something else you would produce some alien science. So for example when you build automated defend walls you would make belts also on the biters side to get all the bodies automatically and then process it like any other stuff. If the robots would mine them they would put it on a belt or if the robots were flying they would just fly over the walls for to grab it.

So the results of this alien science would be strictly applied to some alien related things:
- Pollution Absorber - this would be special kind of biotech building that would absorb some amount of pollution/time, something like biters nest but built by player- So in order to make balance with the choice to fighting aliens further, this pollution absorber should be really expensive either to research and/or to build. Also this could be made in such a way that this absorber would be made more effective with the research. When it would be expensive enough, probably only people who would bother with it would play peaceful anyways

- Radar Mk2 - I have come to this on my own but the idea of this I found in this thread already posted - this would work as normal radar, but it would additionaly prevent biters to make new bases in the area covered by this radar. This would of course work as well with killing the biters in the area, so it could be cleared of biters, probably forever just like in disabled enemy expansion mode. This solution would be proportionally expensive to the absorber, since it is just another method of getting rid of attacks around the base, but cheaper since it would also mean to actually clear the nets

2) Planting trees - this I think found in this thread also mentioned - I would be pretty simple mechanic, just have some new special kind of building like Tree farm which would grab for example landfill and water and will slowly produce some amount of lets say random trees which the player could plant anywhere on the map. This way around the perimeter of the base could be planted massive forests which would in combination with efficiency modules stop spreading the pollution to biter nests. Although Im not entirely sure that even massive trees would be able to consume enough pollution of small sized base, I can say that random forest dont cut it because there are always some in the way and need to be chopped down or destroyed and then there are spaces which could be filled with them.

-Genetically engineered Trees - there could be some research which could make some trees, lets say with addition of uranium ore no I mean seriously which would be more expensive to produce and eat up more pollution and more importantly they wont die from consuming too much pollution

Lastly there are of course multiple other ways these things could be implemented like, alien science made of trees, or probably efficiency modules, trees produced in regular assembling machine etc.

[Ranger_Aurelien]

The Alpha Centauri setting wrestled with this in a few ways. Some technologies were more damaging to the planet, and researching "greener" ways lowered natural creature attacks, and eventually they ignored your forces. (The "Green" tree had near end game a "voice of the planet" interface where the "gaia" could explain some things...)

RTS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sid_Meier ... a_Centauri
RPG http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/alphacentauri/
https://alphacentauri.gamepedia.com/Factions
http://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/Factions
http://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/PLANET (Economic path)

As mentioned, the balanced Vanilla has the Biters as another resource "cost" of doing business, so any peaceful alternative would require resources as well.

Consider an expensive (par with nuclear grenade) "spawner bomb" that did not technically "kill" biters or their spawners, but just removed the spawner from the map and the units retreated to the next camp farther from the player base.

Perhaps the anti-expander radar mk2 runs on nuclear fuel to protect an area of the same range as a radar, with each cell lasting 200s...

I suggest the idea of a "tree seeder" that is fed water and landfill and will randomly populate trees in a certain radius around it, perhaps mostly downwind.

A "Xenotech" tree could start with some sort of towers to make nearby buildings/players invisible, slow enemies nearby, lower accuracy of spitters, , increasing bullet damage to them a little, increased move speed in biter-mod land, moving up to pollution-absorbing buildings , a personal invisibility module for suits (broken if you attack, like peacefulmode now), that repeller bomb, the antisettler radarmk2 (better than a pave-the-earth salt to keep them from settling), and perhaps a "mesmeriser" module for armour that (if you don't attack biters), they will follow and protect you from enemies unless you run out of range...

(FYI I have not deliberately lifted any of these technologies from the reference I mentioned...)

[Ranger_Aurelien]

Factorio = Order/Control, Critters = Entropy

Further thought to the meta-"why?" of Biters in Factorio made me realise they are one of only two mechanisms that have any randomness at all (I saw in a post the devs can't easily parallelize the logistics robots as they are all deterministic). The biters have randomness in their spawn times and sizes which provides one of the regular factors that keeps Factorio worlds "organic" (the other smaller "random" mechanism is uranium enrichment).


Any "Peaceful" mechanism would have to capture that similar purpose (Perhaps changing the trade good demands / escalating the numbers/Increasing delivery points at the same interval range as the map-set spawn event (default random range of 3-60 minutes, I seem to recall).

Just a few thoughts.

[phi Seeker]

Maybe a bit of randomness and distraction from perfectionism isnt a bad thing. For me it provides a welcome change of thoughts from excessive building when I go kill some biter nests around the pollution cloud perimeter. But I mostly play with expansion disabled.
That said I am for some mechanic, that would allow more ecological playthrough without killing biters, but what mechanic should it actually be?
It should be balanced and shouldnt throw military completely off and also I think the bigger you go with your factory the lesser chance there should be to maintain the ecological way. This goes along the lines of mentioning the Alpha Centauri(which I am a fan too), where above some mineral production per base, even with all the reductions I know the ecological damage will be significant, so you either stay green or grow big, which lot of factorio players do.

One interesting idea of such mechanic is the Next Gen Evolution https://mods.factorio.com/mod/NextGenEvolution mod, which if I am understanding correctly increases evolution only if the pollution cloud actually touches a nest, which creates possibility with some managing of the pollution to stay low on evolution, especially with other mod which let you absorb pollution either via building or maybe excessive tree planting, and after my last post in this thread I realized there are lot of such mods, so everyone interested in green mechanic should probably try these mods.

As for including such mechanics in the vanilla game I dont see it very likely, since you can generate map without biters and now there is option in these mods too.

[zOldBulldog]

The closest I ever came to peace with aliens while keeping some degree of realism was:

- Air Filters mod by Schorty. To control my pollution cloud. Consumes a lot of coal but it works.

- Next Gen Evolution mod, combined with setting the Tme and Pollution evolution factors in New Game settings to zero so that the mod takes over control of evolution due to pollution. Result: Aliens evolve only when the pollution cloud TOUCHES their nests.

- Railworld preset or manually turn off Expansion.

- Optionally, you can increase the starting area size.

All of the above will achieve a significant degree of peace with aliens IF YOU CONTROL YOUR POLLUTION CLOUD. The only combat and evolution will happen when you need to destroy nests to reach new ore deposits or need space to build.

---

Even without any of the above, you can launch a rocket without ever fighting an alien if you build small and use No Expansion, max the Starting Area size, and max the deposit richness settings. These kinds of settings are typically used by people attempting the No Spoon achievement.

---

Still, it would be nice if true peace, diplomacy and cooperation were possible with the aliens.