Factorio Forums

I am a modder myself (most notably KMOD for Company of Heroes), and because the art, animations, and obviously an ability to spawn things and have basic AI - I suggest that the player model be spawnable with simple AI (controllable or stationary/Spitter AI will work) to make robotic soldiers, perhaps using power armour style ingredients and very expensive in terms of processing units etc.

What I propose is - craftable robotic humanoid soldiers.

With perhaps the following features:

-inventory for you to load them out with guns/ammo of your choice. Maybe they use Alien Artifacts as a fuel, and slowly burn through it. An interface/inventory like a tank.

-follower robots versus "distractor" style ones, which are stationary guards. These two types are enough to make a useful army/defence force, without complex scripting for control and rally points etc.

-all the art and animation are in-game already, as with spawning other player models for multiplayer etc. Dytech has mutant biters for the player to use offensively, so I bet this would be easy enough to implement.

-custom colour masks may allow different coloured soldiers too, perhaps some can be pre-fabbed with certain equipment.

What do you guys think? I will look into the feasibility of this some time soon, but other modder with Factorio experience might be much faster at the implementation.

Perfect use-case for this mod is people who play singleplayer, but have freaking massive biter bases that you really just need some help to conquer in the end-game. Mid-game can be handled reasonably well with combat drones and beefing up the player with gear, but I foresee an almost RTS style soldier-factory and launching raids on nearby biter bases.

Another use for this in multiplayer is having each player's robot soldiers attack other players and soldiers..

Unless 0.11 broke it in some way, you already can spawn additional player characters. You would have to script their AI yourself (and I'm not sure if you can make them shoot). or you can just use a unit, kind of like a reskinned spitter with different parameters. Those already have an AI, you would just have to give it orders; it doesn't have an inventory to accept items, though.

Yes I think giving them spitter AI (because they are already doing ranged attacks) but with the player model would be best. The drone AI might work too, just they wont be floating..