Tactical Biters

[Deathmage]

Currently biters are more brute force than espionage, but i've thought of a addition that wouldn't be that difficult to add. So no radar: you know turrets are firing, but not where. Current radar: know that laser turrets are firing and where, but not if damaging anything. New radar: 80% chance that if something is being damaged but not where. Uber radar: tells you everything :p. Just an idea but would make biters less of a brute force enemy. Feel free to post your thoughts on this.

[Sedado77]

I REALLY like the idea. I think it would add a lot to gameplay!!
MAYBE tell you anyways if the turrets are firing and items getting destroyed, but if no radar => don't show in the map WHERE it is happening

[Deathmage]

I REALLY like the idea. I think it would add a lot to gameplay!!
MAYBE tell you anyways if the turrets are firing and items getting destroyed, but if no radar => don't show in the map WHERE it is happening

similar to what I was thinking but before radar you can see all your factory, but the normal radar not showing ALL the time would make the biters better. Or having the radar seeing damage in only a (relatively) small area, maybe 150-200 block range. Would save the new entities and art work.

[Coolthulhu]

I hate the idea and consider it the worst direction Factorio could take. It's only a step above ideas like randomly destroying buildings and not telling the player.
IMO enemies with bad AI should not be fixed by bringing the player down closer to their level, but by upping theirs.

Making biters prefer attacking areas with less turrets (they'd prefer zero turrets, of course) would be next to trivial to implement (simple pathfinding adjustment), as would be making them attack at night to exploit lower solar power or synchronize their attacks to occur at dusk, dawn or other arbitrary time phase. For a bit harder adjustments: making them focus badly placed electric poles to turn off entire arrays of laser turrets, wait for friends just outside turrets' range, form a semi-circle before attacking to give turrets less time to retaliate, attack factories while player isn't looking and run away when he gets close (and coming back as soon as it's safe to harass), coming through a gap in turret defense but not attacking - just waiting for more friends inside player's base, etc.

Those would make the biters more tactical. Making the player more blind would not make biters less brute force - it would make the player more brute force (dropping turrets all over the place). They'd still be same old "zombies", except more invisible.

[Sedado77]

I hate the idea and consider it the worst direction Factorio could take. It's only a step above ideas like randomly destroying buildings and not telling the player.
IMO enemies with bad AI should not be fixed by bringing the player down closer to their level, but by upping theirs.

Making biters prefer attacking areas with less turrets (they'd prefer zero turrets, of course) would be next to trivial to implement (simple pathfinding adjustment), as would be making them attack at night to exploit lower solar power or synchronize their attacks to occur at dusk, dawn or other arbitrary time phase. For a bit harder adjustments: making them focus badly placed electric poles to turn off entire arrays of laser turrets, wait for friends just outside turrets' range, form a semi-circle before attacking to give turrets less time to retaliate, attack factories while player isn't looking and run away when he gets close (and coming back as soon as it's safe to harass), coming through a gap in turret defense but not attacking - just waiting for more friends inside player's base, etc.

Those would make the biters more tactical. Making the player more blind would not make biters less brute force - it would make the player more brute force (dropping turrets all over the place). They'd still be same old "zombies", except more invisible.

IMO the bitters ARE a brute force. They play as ZERG, by CONSTANTLY HARRASING the player... Making this would make the idea of "i make a fortress and sit to relax" less viable, as you WOULD HAVE to circle your base to discover if there is any new hole, or something wrong.
As it is, once you close your base with turrets and walls, you're good to go (doesn't matter as long as you have enough bullets or Lassers...). I also think it would be better if this was something That you can CHOOSE TO USE, so you can enable or disable it at the start.

The pathfinding looking for more vulnerable, less tower dense spots and the waiting outside VIEW range (not turret range) before an attack, i like...

[Coolthulhu]

The problem with the whole blinding the player is that it adds a lot of tedium and manual agency in a game that already has too much of both. Running around is already as rewarding as it needs to - player is the only entity that can reliably kite, instantly replace masses of buildings, pick up tons of items etc. Adding a necessity to mouseover all turrets for bullet count/damage counter changes reminds me more of Farmville or Plants vs Zombies than OpenTTD, Spacechem or even Minecraft.

It also doesn't make sense from a "realism" perspective. Sending radio waves is pre-WW2 technology. Having each turret (batch of turrets?) send a signal when attacking wouldn't require any more AI than making it target things. Since turrets don't move, it can be assumed player character sets their coordinates when placing them. Same for all buildings that require electric circuits and "I'm being attacked" signal. For "destroyed" signals it would be just player's handheld computer (I recall them having one) listening to "OK, I'm no longer attacked" signals and warning if one never comes.
Only stone walls kinda stand out, because they're the most commonly attacked building and the most passive one in the game.

Nothing wrong with biters using turret range + some arbitrary number for waiting distance. Turret's limited range is relatively obvious, even to a bad observer. Having a mix of careful small biters overestimating the range and angry big biters risking early engagement would spice things up a bit. As for view distance: you mean biters stopping running as soon as they notice (ie. get within a range that would make them charge now) a turret? It would kinda make sense, even if it would make them overly cowardly.

I hate the idea of replacing clearly presented information (energy/production charts, attacking turret counter, turret stats) with player being forced to gather all that information manually. It's tedious, boring and adds a need to build more safety nets around everything.
If anything, I see that as a great incentive to make smaller, more compact and fortified "comfy" fortresses instead of sprawling machines of pollution and destruction of natural habitat. With all the time spent circling around, where's the time for designing efficient patterns or expansion? Smaller bases take less time to circle around.

[Sedado77]

The problem with the whole blinding the player is that it adds a lot of tedium and manual agency in a game that already has too much of both. Running around is already as rewarding as it needs to - player is the only entity that can reliably kite, instantly replace masses of buildings, pick up tons of items etc. Adding a necessity to mouseover all turrets for bullet count/damage counter changes reminds me more of Farmville or Plants vs Zombies than OpenTTD, Spacechem or even Minecraft.

Cool, please don't take it the wrong way: I think you are missunderstanding my point :S I didn't say to cut out the warning signs, only to make you HAVE a radar to have warnings, or better yet, a "Defense Status/Notifications" Research. Rather that have all the advices from start, makes you, whether you like it or not, to have to construct a radar, having to place it, power it up (wich is not SO easy at early-game), and upgrade it. It rewards the player for automating the defense system, and doesn't make you kite all the base anymore than you have now, because the kiting for ammo resuply is already there. It Just gives you a reason to START WITH A VERY SMALL BASE, and not to start with a BIG walled place that you don't defend untill you get atacked and just THEN you place the turrets behind the wall... If you're gonna do that, better do it in your line of sight, or get f**ed from behind xD

It also doesn't make sense from a "realism" perspective. Sending radio waves is pre-WW2 technology. Having each turret (batch of turrets?) send a signal when attacking wouldn't require any more AI than making it target things. Since turrets don't move, it can be assumed player character sets their coordinates when placing them. Same for all buildings that require electric circuits and "I'm being attacked" signal. For "destroyed" signals it would be just player's handheld computer (I recall them having one) listening to "OK, I'm no longer attacked" signals and warning if one never comes.

And landing in an alien world is? And having advanced tecnology to operate a spaceship, but still power things with wood, coal and petrol instead of fission or whatevs?
Gameplay > Realism (if it doesn't break the game)

Only stone walls kinda stand out, because they're the most commonly attacked building and the most passive one in the game.

I think (this is compleatly another issue) that walls need to change their HP bars, and put them smaller and vertical, because I can never know if a wall is damaged or not :S

Nothing wrong with biters using turret range + some arbitrary number for waiting distance. Turret's limited range is relatively obvious, even to a bad observer. Having a mix of careful small biters overestimating the range and angry big biters risking early engagement would spice things up a bit. As for view distance: you mean biters stopping running as soon as they notice (ie. get within a range that would make them charge now) a turret? It would kinda make sense, even if it would make them overly cowardly.

I meant they stop and gather OUTSIDE YOUR VIEW RANGE, so you can't see a group of dots in the minimap and be ready for them
But what you say is also viable, and even better IMO.

I hate the idea of replacing clearly presented information (energy/production charts, attacking turret counter, turret stats) with player being forced to gather all that information manually. It's tedious, boring and adds a need to build more safety nets around everything.
If anything, I see that as a great incentive to make smaller, more compact and fortified "comfy" fortresses instead of sprawling machines of pollution and destruction of natural habitat.

The energy/production and turret stats I agree, Energy Generating buildings shoud have a bar showing the available performance, and so should acumulators.
On the other hand I think turrets should have something of the following:
-a small number when the ammo inside it is lower than X number, so you can see by passing next to the tower a little "5"..."4"... etc. and know how much bullets they have
-An ammo bar. Like the HP one, but for ammo.

With all the time spent circling around, where's the time for designing efficient patterns or expansion? Smaller bases take less time to circle around.

Smaller bases take less time to circle, but if you know factorio, you know that small bases are OUTGROWN REALLY Q1UICK. As soon as you need Science Packs 3, your base gets LARGE. VERY LARGE. You HAVE to expand, like it or not, so why not make it harder and make you be more wary of how and where you expand, and more importantly, it will make you wonder: "Can I afford to expand this way? Where do I put the towers? I need to plan this better!"

Again, this is IMHO, I would like to know what you think about my ideas, Coolthulhu, so lets debate!!! The only winners will be the Devs and players if any good idea gets implemented!!

[Deathmage]

Yea all these points are true, but all i can say is although biters are brute-force they don't come enough to make them a great risk. As soon as you have robo-ports and turrets the biters will always fail to get through. But if they came more often in bigger gropes they would be a larger problem.

[Coolthulhu]

Cool, please don't take it the wrong way: I think you are missunderstanding my point :S I didn't say to cut out the warning signs, only to make you HAVE a radar to have warnings, or better yet, a "Defense Status/Notifications" Research. Rather that have all the advices from start, makes you, whether you like it or not, to have to construct a radar, having to place it, power it up (wich is not SO easy at early-game), and upgrade it. It rewards the player for automating the defense system, and doesn't make you kite all the base anymore than you have now, because the kiting for ammo resuply is already there. It Just gives you a reason to START WITH A VERY SMALL BASE, and not to start with a BIG walled place that you don't defend untill you get atacked and just THEN you place the turrets behind the wall... If you're gonna do that, better do it in your line of sight, or get f**ed from behind xD

Early game is already tedious as it is, especially if you set resource quantity at lower than "medium". Having to minimize every single resource outpost, defend it with "enough" (you never know how many) turrets or deal with almost-random property destruction sounds like anti-fun to me.

I think (this is compleatly another issue) that walls need to change their HP bars, and put them smaller and vertical, because I can never know if a wall is damaged or not :S

Walls need quite a bit of changes IMO. Removing a section of damaged walls results in clogged inventory, can't see when thick walls are damaged etc, thick walls look ugly etc. I think they deserve own thread.

The energy/production and turret stats I agree, Energy Generating buildings shoud have a bar showing the available performance, and so should acumulators.
On the other hand I think turrets should have something of the following:
-a small number when the ammo inside it is lower than X number, so you can see by passing next to the tower a little "5"..."4"... etc. and know how much bullets they have
-An ammo bar. Like the HP one, but for ammo.

This could be useful, but it would need to accommodate both inserter-fed maximum ammo (10?) and player cramming 100 into every important turret.

Smaller bases take less time to circle, but if you know factorio, you know that small bases are OUTGROWN REALLY Q1UICK. As soon as you need Science Packs 3, your base gets LARGE. VERY LARGE. You HAVE to expand, like it or not, so why not make it harder and make you be more wary of how and where you expand, and more importantly, it will make you wonder: "Can I afford to expand this way? Where do I put the towers? I need to plan this better!"

Again, this is IMHO, I would like to know what you think about my ideas, Coolthulhu, so lets debate!!! The only winners will be the Devs and players if any good idea gets implemented!!

I recently played a game with enemy bases set to "rich" and "frequent". My base was a clusterfuck of pipes, belts, underground belts, splitters, underground pipes. By the time I needed blues, I noticed it would require too much redesigning to connect all this stuff with belts, so I carried stacks of batteries, inserters, circuits and steel by hand, until I got logistic network up.
My base was tiny, because anything smellier or louder than an electric furnace with 2 efficiency modules would attract attention, so it had to be defended from frequent horde (~15) attacks.
It's doable, but it's a pain and I wouldn't want to force anyone to play like this.
If there were mini-roboports with no logistic ability (or logistic ability limited to refilling turrets) or other methods of automatic repairs, it would be doable without hardcore tedium, but we don't have those.

[Alfdaur]

In my honest opinion, I don't think removing the radar and adding it as something you'll need to research would add anything to the game. In my games I used a system of four turrets that are being loaded by a central crate filled with ammo (by inserters). It was quite easy checking these boxes and their associated walls, so I don't know what the loss of radar would change for me.

also, on the notion of more stealthy biters, does it change anything to the fact that you just need to wall up? Just to be clear, variety would be awesome. But personaly I would add some spitters that have a greater range than laser or bullet turrets, so that you have to use rockets. But does that even add any dept tot the game? Aquatic biters could be cool.

For me, biters are just a reason to make cool forts out of my factories and mines.

I recently played a game with enemy bases set to "rich" and "frequent". My base was a clusterfuck of pipes, belts, underground belts, splitters, underground pipes. By the time I needed blues, I noticed it would require too much redesigning to connect all this stuff with belts, so I carried stacks of batteries, inserters, circuits and steel by hand, until I got logistic network up.
My base was tiny, because anything smellier or louder than an electric furnace with 2 efficiency modules would attract attention, so it had to be defended from frequent horde (~15) attacks.
It's doable, but it's a pain and I wouldn't want to force anyone to play like this.

Didn't you have any forests in your starting area? Because I also used the rich and frequent setting for the biters in my last game and I didn't have many problems getting to Mk-2 armour. The biggest pain is clearing the 50+ nests of spawners, not because the difficulty but because it's a drag...

[Coolthulhu]

Didn't you have any forests in your starting area? Because I also used the rich and frequent setting for the biters in my last game and I didn't have many problems getting to Mk-2 armour. The biggest pain is clearing the 50+ nests of spawners, not because the difficulty but because it's a drag...

I had forests, it's just that they weren't dense enough to stop the pollution.
It may be because I set low starting area size. That may be important.

[Alfdaur]

It may be because I set low starting area size. That may be important.

I think this is what made the differance between us, maybe I'll try that out some time. Altough a desert start with rich and frequent biters could be nice too.

[Sedado77]

It may be because I set low starting area size. That may be important.

I think this is what made the differance between us, maybe I'll try that out some time. Altough a desert start with rich and frequent biters could be nice too.

Starting area is the setting that IMO, changes difficulty rating the most!!! the diference between small and med is HUGE!