Bombardier (Threat to Flying Robots)

[walkerdi]

TL;DR

Stationary long-range enemy that does area-effect damage to flying robots.

What ?

Bombardier would spawn near enemy structures approximately when flying robots become available in the late game. This enemy would do lingering area-of-effect damage to flying robots.

Small Bombardier: ~2x laser turret range scale. Would shoot fast enough to target nearby flying robots and prevent/delay structure airdrops.
Medium Bombardier: ~ radar range scale. Would shoot too slowly to be effective in direct combat, but would do area of effect damage that would threaten dense robots clusters.
Larger Bombardier: ~artillery range scale. Similar to medium bombardier.

Damage, range, etc. would be subject to balance considerations.

Why ?

Logistics robots tend to be much simpler and more effective than belts in the late game. Instead of dealing with this balance issue directly with buffs/debuffs (likely pleasing no one), it would be interesting to introduce a dynamic that just makes logistics robots somewhat more defensively complicated to implement. This would not prevent moderate usage, but it would discourage particularly dense robot clouds without more intensive perimeter management. It would also give artillery a crucial role in the late game.

[bobucles]

I don't think anyone lets biters within a 500 yard radius of their bot network. A new enemy type won't change how a walled off fortress functions.

However a little bit of attacker AoE can definitely change things up. Consider if worms used an AoE attack or had a lingering acid attack. An AoE would deal heavy damage to combat bots that like clumping up and would wreak havoc on clustered construction bots. A lingering acid would be very painful against structures that don't move.

[bobingabout]

I'm not sure why we need this, spitters and worms will already shoot down your construction or logistic robots if they get too close, and even biters if they fly directly overhead of them.

This is the major reason why some people want bot path finding, moving from port to port, rather than point to point. It's because if you have a U shaped base (or L shaped, or even T shaped... anything that isn't a solid square basically), then when the robots fly over the gap, they get shot down.

The solution to the problem... Clear out enemies, and don't build your robot network in a U shape!
With people learning about this base design flaw and actually building solid bases, you hear about the whole bots being shot down issue far less.

Adding a new enemy type that is effectively a worm that specifically targets bots is silly... adding one that can shoot them down at artillery range from outside your radar range would be... annoying to put it mildly... game breaking is more like it (at least from the perspective from someone who'd want to use bots, it basically means you can't use bots at all, because every bot that launches would instantly be shot down by artillery)

However a little bit of attacker AoE can definitely change things up. Consider if worms used an AoE attack or had a lingering acid attack. An AoE would deal heavy damage to combat bots that like clumping up and would wreak havoc on clustered construction bots. A lingering acid would be very painful against structures that don't move.

My enemies mod gives worm's an AOE, and some (fire, poison, and higher tier) spitters a lingering AOE.

[steinio]

I'm always missing some thoughts in suggestions if it meets only the play style of the thread opener or also the play style of all players.

[walkerdi]

I'm always missing some thoughts in suggestions if it meets only the play style of the thread opener or also the play style of all players.

Part of that may be because I accidentally erased my original post by hitting submit after the timeout. The rewrite suffered from the effects of mild aggravation. To answer your question, the bots vs. belts issue actually hasn't affected my play style significantly at this point, but I see that it is an issue that the developers are concerned about, and their reasons are fairly well articulated. Personally I really like how both bots and belts work, so this was an attempt to come up with a solution that influences how people will tend to play without changing the things themselves significantly.

Adding a new enemy type that is effectively a worm that specifically targets bots is silly... adding one that can shoot them down at artillery range from outside your radar range would be... annoying to put it mildly... game breaking is more like it (at least from the perspective from someone who'd want to use bots, it basically means you can't use bots at all, because every bot that launches would instantly be shot down by artillery)

A valid concern, and one of the reasons why I left the specifics of range, damage, and firing speed somewhat open-ended. The point of this enemy type would not necessarily be to change how people play at the ultimate end of the research tree (where bots may always be the optimal solution), but how they play until they reach that point. For example, the small bombardiers may not achieve a whole lot other than increasing the costs of using construction robots w/ turrets as a structure-clearing strategy. Spitters can serve this role too, but because they also do significant damage to the player, it is more difficult to use them to tune what strategies are viable for structure clearing.

The medium/large bombardiers would serve a different role entirely. They could be tuned by the developers to alter the timescales/economics of the implementation of varying degrees of robotization until countermeasures such as artillery are available. For a given density of flying robots, the firing speed/damage/area of effect/range/proliferance of bombardiers could be tweaked to be exactly as destructive as one wished. For low robot utilization, the bombardiers might fire/target slowly enough they cannot hit an individual target or do much collateral damage to a thinly spread robot chain. But if there were very high densities of robots in an area, area targeting would be effective, either causing damage or outright destruction of robots. The ranges and spawning prevalence of medium/large bombardiers could similarly be tweaked to determine exactly how effective impromptu clearing strategies would be, and at what point and to what extent expanded turret/artillery frontiers would be necessary to keep bombardiers from being able to target your supply chains. Finally, it would give artillery a more direct role to play, making it strategically useful even if the player had an otherwise impenetrable defensive setup.

That said, it is difficult to determine whether the introduction of this enemy would make the game more fun. It would probably require them to fire in waves rather than have a continuous annoying presence, and a separate alarm so that it was clear what was happening, where the damage was being done, and where it was coming from. That would be the prompt for the player to decide whether the level of damage is accepted, reliance on robots is reduced (or not increased), or the enemy structures/bombardiers are dealt with directly.

[bobingabout]

Also keep in mind that while spitters and biters spawn higher level depending on evolution factor, big worms are available from the start, and so would any turret based entity.

It is my opinion that this idea is specifically designed as just another "I hate bots, lets make them useless" solution.

Bots are already pretty hard to get started, and also keep in mind that the devs seem to be promoting construction robot usage, it's specifically the logistic robot side that they feel needs a nerf. (I mean, they have already locked the requester chest behind high-tech science, making them useless for anything other than supplying the player until you get this research, though my mods bring this back down to lower levels), making it more annoying to the side of bots that the devs want you to use in the earlier game.

In my opinion, this yellow science limitation is already enough of a limitation. it also means your warfare by this point should also be high level, meaning going out and killing these enemies should be relatively easy.

So... an enemy that specifically targets bots... is not a good idea. it will either have so little impact that it won't make a difference, or be annoying to the bot usage that the devs want to promote... making it a bad idea.