Peace with Aliens

[Stragemque]

Not sure if this has been proposed as an idea but what if the biters all started as innocent non violent aliens. That you can walk up and walk around no problem. When the pollution reaches them they then mutate and become aggressive, more pollution more aggressive. Kind of like how the game never throws the super deadly biters at you first but in a more fluid manner they get harder as the get further along.
This also leaves all kinds of trading open because there will always be another non violent not mutated biter camp, with which trade can be set up.
As the bitters do not seem like a sentient species neither coherent nor organised, other wise as soon as contact with them was made they should all be attacking at once. I also feel that since the game has been so original so far they should not adopt a clan system of abstract trading that is in so many other games. Diplomacy should be not possible with the current non intelligent reacting to stimulus bugs.

But a trade off where its just a case of deliver a good the aliens want, food or some stimulus, and they will crap out the artifact.
This would basically make them part of the factorio machine, adding them into your base and a specialized type of fabricator that is delicate and difficult to deal with and can be destroyed very easily.

Its just my two cents and i have been pretty obnoxious and not read all the pages so please ignore if its a repeat.

[xnmo]

Peace with aliens? Nah more like aliens to pieces, bring me more guns and a tank. Tank and big gun is best foreign policy negotiator with aliens.

This, who needs peace when you have TANK?


Maybe there should be a new building in the game. A giant grinder that you can feed the aliens into to turn them into fuel. Who needs solar when you've got biodiesel?

[-root]

Maybe there should be a new building in the game. A giant grinder that you can feed the aliens into to turn them into fuel. Who needs solar when you've got biodiesel?

I'm not going to sleep tonight...

[n9103]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQNEkQOzxic

[Dracohouston]

This is something we have been thinking about for quite some time. There are many ideas about this in the Ideas & Suggestions section, but since it is quite a big topic we feel it belongs to Dev proposals as well.

What is going on: Now the alien race behavior is kind of straightforward. They generally don't like you. You come close, they attack you. You make too much pollution, they get angry and send an attack against the pollution source. Maybe there should be more intermediate states involved. When you behave nice and don't make too much pollution / don't attack them they tolerate you walking around. You could be able to somehow measure their general mood towards - like friendly, neutral, enemies. With enough research you could even setup a trading station with them to get the alien artifacts without wiping them out off the screen.

This would nicely solve the problem for people who want to play without fighting (now they just switch on the peaceful mode). There would be strategies for them how to finish the game. They wouldn't go for full scale destroy-all-nature dirty automation but instead would focus on the alien communication branch of the tech tree to get to know them better and maybe settle down in mutual cooperation. They would opt for more expensive, but greener technologies (and wouldn't have to bother too much with the military researches).

Anyway, it is not something we are working on right now, but rather something we actively consider.

I've been playing this a lot since 0.9 and the more I think about alien interaction the more I don't think it'd fit the game.

Factorio, though I'm not sure you were aiming for it, features a really brutal kind of colonialism. All it needs is some sheep farms to lay down after I've massacred the aliens and planed the land flat and it could be an Australian Colonisation Simulator. I get that people might find that aspect of the game distasteful, but not only are the natives bug alien things, they are in a videogame. It's just plain fun to be this Dark Industrialist planing the land and natives flat, stripping the land to feed your machines. It also gives you the perfect excuse to be making a giant factory, reasons to make it productive and keep seeking to scale up. I like that you don't go for the whole Games As Art thing about how awful it is you're massacring the aliens. I hope the game continues to play this straight, don't go making the monstrous factory guy suddenly feel bad about spewing pollution everywhere. Doesn't need a spec ops: the line ending where the horrible player character is confronted with the horror of it all, players should be allowed to have that moment when they realise they're playing mega-hitler.

It isn't in the aliens interests to cooperate with you either because you and the future colonists threaten their very existence. If anything I'd like the war to escalate after the rocket defense goes down or evolution factor maxes. This could tie into some of your other ideas. Instead of rocket defense, you could be making a combination landing pad/command center. To get the colony ship to land you'd have to clear out alien bases, which could have a giant worm in some of them, which is defenseless on the ground but big enough to shoot down ships. once your landing zone has none of those in range it can accept colonists, which want consumer goods like food and clothing. Maybe you have to build housing and other infrastructure for them. Could have the types of needs expand as population increases and make the endgame anno but with trains. The command center could act as the proposed throne room, enabling the RTS mode. Aliens could start attacking more often and in greater numbers (nearby bases combine forces for raids?) and without needing to be in a polluted sector.

[mward]

I love the idea of being able to develop in two different directions: war with the aliens or peace and co-operation.

For the peaceful direction some suggested additions:

New buildings for "soaking up" pollution: in the initial stages you inevitably create pollution, but later get the technology to "clean up" after yourself.

New modules which can be added to buildings to reduce or even eliminate pollution.

New research "Alien communication" which allows you to tell whether the aliens are hostile, neutral or peaceful.

New research "Alien trading" which allows trading with aliens, eg exchanging circuits or electric motors for alien artifacts. The better your relationship, the better prices you get and higher tiers of alien technology will be unlocked after a certain number of peaceful trades. Build a "trading station" next to an alien nest, which works like a factory (takes your offered goods and returns the aliens' trades).

There should be unique items which are only available by trading with aliens, and only offered when you have a good relationship.

The "endgame goal" for the peaceful route could be "planetary peace treaty", since there is no longer any need for a missile defence.

[mward]

A note about alien intelligence: I think that the aliens are a kind of "Hive Mind" where there is a single intelligence covering the whole planet (or at least, a fairly large area). See the discussion about the "intelligent ant colony" in Hofstadter's "Godel Escher Bach" for an example.

Killing a bug is like a small pinprick to a human. Not a problem by itself, but if you keep on killing bugs over and over again, it will get annoyed with you!

[Ichigoshollow]

Having peace with aliens makes the game completely boring. It would be like playing an RPG and all enemies being your friend. The game would lose all meaning due to no resistance.

[TBog]

Having peace with aliens makes the game completely boring. It would be like playing an RPG and all enemies being your friend. The game would lose all meaning due to no resistance.

Maybe if there were two alien races on the planet. Either make friends with one or the other ... or neither

[ssilk]

Exactly: 2 races; human and native inhabitants. What could be more interesting?

[aRatNamedSammy]

Having peace with aliens makes the game completely boring. It would be like playing an RPG and all enemies being your friend. The game would lose all meaning due to no resistance.

in a case of war/peace choice, the choice will be yours .. this wont never get the game boring, cause YOU decided which way you go.. peace or war ! industrialist or ecologist!!
it only open a different way to play the game

[Kokelvogel]

Peaceful mode (aka equal cohabitation):

What about the amount of space you need for your base?

What to do with a biter nest that is sitting in a prime spot? Depending on your map you might end up with so many occupied spots that your own base gets massively disrupted.

Truth be told, I guess I'd start killing after all if the aliens were placed too inconveniently -.-


So, I prefer the idea of farming - and if we get a bio-farming option I might even feel pretty righteous As you have to get some kind of basic stock to start farming, you'd have to catch a couple of wild specimen anyway. Later on you could use that tactic to relocate "wild nests".

But this would have to go hand in hand with some sort of protection dome (as has been already proposed) since otherwise you'd end up spending energy on farming AND warfare against attacking feral aliens.

[Afforess]

I think a lot of the suggestions and comments here raise good points. I'm a relative newcomer to factorio, but from what I have observed, a lot of gameplay dynamics revolve around the fact that "the player is their own worst enemy". Mistakes made in design or building tend to be bigger than anything the background environment throws as you.

I think in keeping with this idea, biters should stay as is, in the early stages of player interaction. However, as pollution really increases, it causes biters to become more aggressive, and also forces biters to centralize authority to deal with the player. Biters are 'swarm' like insect-type creatures, so it makes sense that they might have a 'queen' of some sort, which would organize the various biter groups into more effective fighting forces and expand biter territory more intelligently.

Basically biters would grow to be a threat equal to the threat posed by the pollution created by the player. The 'queen' could focus on expanding biter colonies and coordinate between multiple colonies in a certain area to launch more massive attacks. If these attacks still prove insufficient, the biter 'queen' could spawn and raise new queens who could expand biter territory further and coordinate attacks between multiple biter territories. Maybe emphasize on smarter biter tactics would improve things as well, if queen-led biters avoided turrets and also attacked vulnerable infrastructure like rail lines and electric poles. Maybe even forcing biters to swim across water to attack, or encircling the player's bases with biters so any further expansion would be attacked immediately. More advanced tactics and organization, with the same existing mechanics that already exist, would make pollution a more serious problem for players.

I really like the way pollution & biter mechanics work now, but right now, it is straightfoward for players to use turrets to keep even the strongest biters from being a real threat. Biters are unorganized and this disunity makes them easier to defeat than if they were properly organized.

I think peace with biters should only be achieved when either the biters or the player wipes out the other.

[Sambony]

Personally, of the ideas posted I like the ones for another race of aliens that seems more open to trade (because the Biters just look very feral) or a beehive sort of thing involving an artificial hive. The artificial hive would still leave you open to attacks and everything, not really changing the overall behavior much, but maybe have a chance when destroying a spawner by a certain method (different methods giving different chances) to have a sort of "queen" drop that could be used to create an artificial hive that would still be hostile unless approached in a certain manner.

[Chewbit]

The question for me is: is it possible to get alien artefacts without a fight?

Ok, our hero has researched lasers,fusion,robotic technology and in the future spaceships and got knows what, so terraforming could be reasonable assumption.
While researching and testing he discovers that areas of terraformed land is totally unsuitable for our hero but all nearby bugs think its bug heaven and make a beeline for it.

Armed with this info he proceeds to build an armoured train to transport his transformer and does a pied piper using small areas of terraformed land as bait.
When all bugs are well out of they way of his base he then proceeds to make a bug utopia. `Quote` Bugs don`t bite the hand that feeds them `Unquote`, bugs allow collection of artefacts...harmony for all.

Me, being a human and all, would just concoct a sleeping gas canister, fire it using a small rocket or mortar, rig the hive with explosives and blow the lot to hell. Who needs fancy weapons, armour or artefacts.

[Malawi]

I would like to see some kind of pollution-cleaner and keeping aliens for farming.

To "tame" a colony, they may not have been polluted at all.
They will be angry at first, and attack your walls etc, but you cannot shoot them(only keep repairing), because if you kill one, they become hostile. You would have to give them a feeding-station for some time to reduce aggression, then possibly fence them in, and finally get some kind of harvest.

This means that you would have to go a fair distance away from your base to find suitable colonies. It might even only be possible with fresh colonies that have only one nest. The feeding/harvesting could be done with some kind of machine that does not pollute or upset them(something slow and electric). You would need some kind of sound-barrier-wall between this machine and transport belts, and no trains etc. for a certain distance.

[wwdragon]

I REALLY like the idea of peaceful co-existance with the aliens.

I think that if we choose to research alien communication and build the radar device to do it, we should have a very simple communication system consisting of proposals from the aliens.

For instance, if we build a huge mining factory, which pisses them off, they offer an alien equivalent via ui flashing mail icon or something(maybe 15 minute timout).
These machines (mining hives hybrids ), while more expensive, is equal or more efficient and produces no pollution, thus making the aliens happy and opening the way to future tech swap.

[Boefjim]

Ok, the thing that the aliens could become friendly would be nice, because I generally try to keep everyone happy, as much as in a game as in real life, so this would be quite cool.

But if this wouldn't get added, maybe it would be a cool idea to allow the player to play as an alien?
Because the human "side" is more of a technical playstyle, but the alien "side" could be more of a combat playstyle. Like managing your troops, setting up attacks and building enough mutation chambers or something.

The only problem would be to impliment a proper AI for the human in singleplayer, which I believe would be really, really difficult. In multiplayer however, that wouldn't be much of a problem, as the humans are controlled by other players.

[TuckJohn]

I don't know if someone mentioned him already, but go Check out "mangled pork gaming" on YouTube; he has a nearly-50 episode series; and has never killed a biter even though he nearly lives inside their bases.

[Airat9000]

This is something we have been thinking about for quite some time. There are many ideas about this in the Ideas & Suggestions section, but since it is quite a big topic we feel it belongs to Dev proposals as well.

What is going on: Now the alien race behavior is kind of straightforward. They generally don't like you. You come close, they attack you. You make too much pollution, they get angry and send an attack against the pollution source. Maybe there should be more intermediate states involved. When you behave nice and don't make too much pollution / don't attack them they tolerate you walking around. You could be able to somehow measure their general mood towards - like friendly, neutral, enemies. With enough research you could even setup a trading station with them to get the alien artifacts without wiping them out off the screen.

This would nicely solve the problem for people who want to play without fighting (now they just switch on the peaceful mode). There would be strategies for them how to finish the game. They wouldn't go for full scale destroy-all-nature dirty automation but instead would focus on the alien communication branch of the tech tree to get to know them better and maybe settle down in mutual cooperation. They would opt for more expensive, but greener technologies (and wouldn't have to bother too much with the military researches).

Anyway, it is not something we are working on right now, but rather something we actively consider.

ENG
A good idea is to create the conditions
1. To have a station on Trade - approve
2. What would be neutral, evil aliens and peace - is also a good idea.

I have an idea:
1. Let's do what some Marines who guarded the base and to fight with the enemy, ie, what if you need to, ran into the enemy base and destroy everything. and collected artifacts
Tanks, soldiers, and the army would be cool.

2. Make the aliens that have been allies and fought together against the evil aliens. As an option to do so would have been an option 3
Aliens allies, the army and the power of 3, which is not like anyone. Type as our wild animals.


оригинал РУС (что бы было яснее)
Хорошая идея создать такие условия
1. Чтобы была станция по торговле - одобряю
2. Что бы были нейтральные, злобные и мирные инопланетяне - тоже хорошая идея.

Есть идея:
1. Допустим сделать каких нибудь десантников, которые бы охраняли базу и дрались с врагами, тоесть, что бы если надо, бегали на вражеские базы и уничтожали там все. и собирали артефакты
Танки, солдат и армия было бы круто.

2. Сделать что бы инопланетяне были союзниками и вместе боролись против злобных пришельцев. Как вариант сделать так что бы и 3 было вариант
Инопланетяне союзники, армия, и 3 сила, которая не любит никого. Типа как у нас дикие животные.