Biters are tools of aliens (Overhaul/Campaign concept)

[thelordodin]

I'm playing Factorio for years, since 0.11 at least.
Since then I feel enemies are dumb and have very low variation.
I played some mods that try to fix this but in the end I keep asking myself - how can this be done in more interesting and visual pleasing way?

And I came to conclusion that biters have to be "Alien Factory" - i.e. biters are tools of some foreign civilization to harvest some biological resource.

So I suggest we discuss and dream up ways to make enemies more interesting, both in terms of game mechanics and visuals. Can you also share your ideas and thoughts?

This one sentence idea can be expanded into much more interesting and visually appealing change to how biters are designed.

This is likely isn't a fully-finished idea that one can just implement right away, instead I think we should discuss it here and make it wider, deeper and maybe also more modders would like it and expand it, so it'll first become more mature and only then - be implemented.

Here are some details/sub ideas:
- There is no global evolution factor at all. Biters evolution is based on geography
- Biters near map center is weaker than ones away from map center, on all planets
- Biters on resource patches are a bit more numerous and can be stronger
- ? There is no normal biter expansion at all ?
- Some new alien force that breed biters and expand their nests.
- Biters are used by aliens as a tool to gather some resources
- Biters are kind-of farm for aliens
- Aliens do not control biters directly they use "control nodes" or "overminds" to control them
- Control nodes have two major role for aliens
- They control local population of biters, their expansion and evolution
- They serve as local hub for transporting resources locally
- Control nodes are smarter than biters, can for example control attacks in a bit smarter way, but are quite dump still - not like aliens
- Planetary level "control nodes" - basically the same but on planetary level. Smarter than local control nodes.
- They eat ?Grass, trees, vitaminealge, something? producing vitalic acid - that is then extracted by some means by alien ships in bulk - with some tech stuff.
- Biters might want to get closer to resource patches - this gives them and aliens:
- Flavor to what they produce = more valuable end product
- Evolution - as Aliens want these biters to produce end product faster and in more quantities
- Aliens feed biters some mutagen so they "evolve" - locally
- Biter may differ from planet to planet because they evolve in different conditions and gather different resources
- Why resource that is gathered by aliens through this big chain of biters control is useless to player but is precious to Aliens?! Because it's veeery sparse! One planet barely produce very small amount of it, so this is why they had to make area of biters (and pentapods) so big.
- Basically there are 2 resource types for biters: biological - that let's them live and build their buildings - that is produced by biomaterial they gather - trees, plants, etc.
- And there is another very sparse and very valuable resource, to gather that one you really have to control big amounts of biters

Game progression stages, gameplay ideas:
- Unnoticed by biters - no pollution, no attacks
- Noticed by biters, but not by control nodes - pollution based aggression - vanilla playstyle - player produce pollution - biters react with attacks
- Control nodes kick in - trying to eliminate threat to biter colonies
- Player do researches and captures control of several local nodes
- Planetary control nodes kick in - trying to eliminate threat to biter colonies
- Player destroys a planetary control node (or captures it)
- Aliens notice player and fight him
- More than two possible outcomes
- War with aliens / overtake of biters (obvious)
- Peace with aliens (obvious)
- There can be fractions of aliens - some smugglers and/or pirates - so you can "trade" with some of them while fighting other.
- There can be some "Greenpeace" fraction of aliens that dislike biters exploitation

This progressions stages solve the main problem: developers can't just make enemy smart - this will totally ruin early game - player just won't be able to handle smart enemies early. But on later progression stages - enemies just become boring... They attack straight and can't cross water - they just won't ever surprise you. But this new approach can and will surprise - just because enemies become smarter each next level. Also very precious part to me is elimination of time factor from progression. When I played Factorio for the first 3-6 month - I always got overrun by over evolved biters. Just because I was too slow building my factory - because I didn't know back than that they evolve over time no matter what. Also this feeling that something for unknown reason pushes me to do fast decisions when I build my factory, even if it's pure-green, no emissions (all absorbed by forest near me) - it's strange, unnatural to me.

Biter's visual improvements that can be made... Just imagine:
- While local nests near map start might be the same as Vanilla or Space Exploration offer...
- Biters force is antipode to player's force, this can be seen in following
- Local nodes of resources and planetary nodes of biters can have much more complex bio-based production chains. With:
- Some building that produce resources
- Transfer resources between buildings, but while player usually use belts, and mostly use items, biters on contrary focus on fluids and gases that are transferred with bio-pipes - imagine some "Intestine" to transfer that fluids.
- Biters base should not feel very organized, instead it's kind of tumor with resource-vessels in it.
- Biters force can do some it's own isolated life - it can gather or even farm/grow some resources on it's own - likely those resources are of biological type (some plant like Vitamelange from Space Exploration) - there can be different type of those resources that biters gather and they are mostly useless to players.
- Resources that biters gather are mostly renewable or infinite
- Oil, gas is in the middle between biters and player's force - can be used by any of them
- Uranium and other radioactive resources can play very special role in biter's force: they don't eat it, but they have some advantages or requirements to build near it.
- Biters have to carry resources to their control nodes so there will be some bigger variants to carry it. Maybe demolisher style maybe some Leviathan like from Starcraft. Some caravans.
- Control nodes can have some better spray like defense turrets - like flamethrowers but with acid.
And of course analogy from Starcraft: biters are zergs and aliens can be like protoss.

Events:
I think Factorio have is very slow gameplay, compared to Starcraft. Game session in Starcraft 2 is about 15-25 minutes, while Factorio play can go for days and weeks. This is why classical approach to do just timed events can't and won't work in Factorio.

So I think the following principles can be applied:
- Big events come from specific and very offensive action of player: he destroys or captures local control node, or planetary node. This should not happen time-based or because you killed 100500 biters with your turrets.
- But player is still slowly and softly forced to enter this events because: 1) he emit pollution, 2) he need new resource patches that are covered with biters
and 3) local control node might want to recapture that precious Uranium deposit or Oil patch you have just taken away.
- There still can be some time based events in mid and late game, but they have to be quite sparse: 1 event in 2 hours - some resource carrier from a control node get's lost and comes to your base. Maybe even from underground. Control node of course will try to get back those resource. And if player defends he can extract them and get some interesting bio-based research completed. This event can be triggered manually - just attack a local control node, then find and kill carrier there...
- The same applies to entering end game: aliens wouldn't even notice that biters on half of planet was killed by you. But when you kill planetary control node - they will. And you are forced to kill it, because the more biter nests are destroyed the more fierce and intelligent attacks from control node should be and less intervals between attacks. It can even trigger annoying events like demolisher in the middle of your base or biter egg dropped from artillery like turret in the middle of you base. Again - this should only happen if your factory is mature enough to destroy say 10 local control nodes. And also it's stoppable - if planetary control node gets back it's lost local control node - it stops doing those annoying events. Or... you can just kill it, but then you have to deal with aliens.


Can you also share your ideas and thoughts?