Factorio Forums

TL;DL
Add in Defense upgrades so at least some sort of armor buff can scale with the ever increasing damage upgrades.

This is largely Inspired by PVP and some people may think that is irrelevant to the base game and you are entitled to that opinion. But as it stands PvP is shipped with the game now as a scenario but it is in need of some special attention and balance.

early game each defensive technology unlock is super powerful but as damage and offensive technologies scale every turret and player ends up becoming a Glass cannon capable of Dealing immense damage but unable to take any. This makes encounters last shorter and shorter as time goes on.

But, If a team was able to invest in defensive upgrades that being armor buff or some over shield with unlimited research as well, then there would be some hope for them to scale evenly.

• Building/Turret armor upgrades
  Power armor upgrades
  Vehicle armor upgrades

This is not a Fix all but more a good first step.

I feel like this is something that would be best left to mods. Give players defensive options that are too strong, and the player ends up being invulnerable to biters (which already happens to a certain extent). Buff biter damage to compensate, and players end up having to invest much more time and resources into being able to withstand them. I agree that player defenses don't scale well enough with player damage for PvP to be balanced, but that's a common problem with any game where PvP is an afterthought, and rebalancing the whole combat system around that would be a considerable undertaking.

Meanwhile, a modder can just add higher tiers of armour, turrets, and vehicles that can better withstand higher-tier attacks, and stick a "recommended for PvP only" disclaimer in the description to absolve them of any responsibility to not completely imbalance vanilla. That's a very easy solution. It won't necessarily have the same artistic vision that an official solution would, which is a downside, but I think it's good enough.

One thing I would appreciate is a way for the Gun Turrets to get some more hitpoints. A few farts from a behemot spitter and they keel over.
They are early tech, so yea, they are weak initially. But it sadly stays that way.

As for PvP... is that really what Factorio's about? Heck, even cooperative multiplayer was an afterthought if I've read the old FFFs right. But I can attest that it is loads of fun!

Aeternus wrote:One thing I would appreciate is a way for the Gun Turrets to get some more hitpoints. A few farts from a behemot spitter and they keel over.
They are early tech, so yea, they are weak initially. But it sadly stays that way.

As for PvP... is that really what Factorio's about? Heck, even cooperative multiplayer was an afterthought if I've read the old FFFs right. But I can attest that it is loads of fun!

From the work that I and a few others have done on a mod, increasing the health of entities is impossible without removing the weaker entity and replacing it with an entity with higher health. It can be done discreetly so players don't notice, but ammo may cause additional issues to contend with.

A "MK2" version that replaces the weaker original (with better range, fire rate, more health or combination thereof) is fine. The way Bob's mods handle defenses is quite neat I think. Autoreplacement isn't needed - it's just that something better must become available by the time biters become beefier.

There is a mod that adds recharging shields to turrets. It's almost like more HP!

I don't like how players have more gun range than gun turrets. I think turrets could use a few bits of range research, at the very least.