#Enemy overhaul idea & feedback

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naive wagon
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thread here

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  1. Increase the horror and tower-defense aspects. Enemies attack in the dark, so it’s bright/day 90% of the time, but maybe there’s a regular eclipse that occurs - making biters attacks a scheduled occurrence the player must prepare for. Add elements of being watched/plotted against, such as you can see them in the day but they’re unapproachable and the swarm skitters away if you try to approach. To heighten tower defense elements, have a couple heavy pollution centers which the bugs will try to go for (or otherwise, they’d scatter through and attack the entire base), which make predictable paths which you can line with defenses. Also, reduce lighting, so that even at night the bugs are only illuminated by the light of machines, gunfire, flames, electricity, etc. As for integration with the factory at large, you could build invasion analytics machines which collect data on the invasions about strength of biters in previous invasions and projected strength in the next one. Also machines such as an armory which uses the remains of dead enemies as research material (maybe after combination with other resources) to improve weapons, traps, equipment, walls, maybe various skill trees, etc.,
    I know these ideas are extremely broad and would take a very long time to implement but I love imagining a day when Factorio combat could be made one of the highlights of the game (if only through a mod), rather than one of its downsides
rich ravine
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The part about biters protecting resources is possible, and sounds good, but what do you mean by "biological resources"? What would it even add to gameplay?
Making the game darker at night is simple and there are lots of mods that do it already. Attacking mostly in the dark sounds also doable.
"Armory" to make stuff from alien remains would basically be the same as adding an ingredient to miltary science, in one way or another. This used to be part of base game long time ago, and mods such as krastorio explored this concept as well (biter creep).
Making centers that enemies attack first instead of the whole base is something i did in Biter Attractors mod.

So overall it sounds doable as most things already exist or can be used as reference, but i also think its not enough to achieve the goals listed.

naive wagon
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Hey, thanks for taking the time to respond! An example of 'Biological resources' would basically be something like copper, but infested with worms/maggots, and the surrounding environment/biters would thematically match that infested resource area. As far as what it would add to gameplay, it would be nice to add different sets of enemies depending on what resource is in question, although I would settle for something akin to other mods with different damage/defensive categories (fire, lightning, poision, etc.) Again, requiring the player to use a particular set of equipment to deal with the threat, or adapt in some other way.

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Can you namely exactly where you think these ideas couldn't be expanded to meet the goals I listed?

rich ravine
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I assume by resources you mean ores, adding one step to process some % of ores that are "infested" would be meningless and annoying if that's all there is to it.
You can for example have a kind of biters that only appears on copper ore, but that does not need to affect the ores themselves.

naive wagon
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Also just to be clear these ideas are completely seperate. I would implement one or the other but not both (not to say you couldn't apply appealing elements of one to the other)

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If you (or anyone else) have any other ideas they think would be cool I'd love to hear them

rich ravine
# naive wagon Can you namely exactly where you think these ideas couldn't be expanded to meet ...
  • Integrate with overall goal of factory improvement (rewards for engaging in the challenge/has multiple interactions with factory)
    What you described so far is that fighting enemies unlocks better ways of fightng enemies. This does not add much interaction with the factory as most of the factory is not focused on fighting enemies.
  • Make combat encounters different each time (less monotonous/boring solutions to fights)
    I dont see anything that would change that fron what you listed so far.
  • Make enemy conflict something that is exciting (players look forward to it), rather than feeling like a chore
    This is a hard one. Just adding rewards to fighting enemies would not fix that. It also needs the previous point to be effective, as if its not varied, it will be a chore eventually.
    The main issue i see with biters right now is that they distract you from the main flow of the game. Making enemies passive and only defend resources would help assuming the progression is balanced correctly. But it won't be enough if you were just forced to fight every once in a while when you start needing more resources. But i don't have concrete ideas to what would need to change to make players look forward to it.
  • Balanced and scales well from early-to-late game
    Depends on implementation details of course
naive wagon
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That all makes sense. Thanks for the feedback! I'll do some thinking and research into how both ideas might be fleshed out to achieve the main goals I listed

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Do you like the sound of the first or second idea better? Just whatever picture comes to mind

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I've also toyed with the idea of making combat more player-focused, which would help the second and third points, but I think would heavily detract from the first...

rich ravine
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I thought two ideas were part of the same thing. And they could be.
But both have a place on their own.

deft knot
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Clockwork did your second idea more or less in 1.1

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Minus the polution centers

near forum
naive wagon
deft knot
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Ye, just download the mod. It's a 1.1 mod so not everything works the same but its a good start

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Unzip it and its all there

naive wagon
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oh duh xD

naive wagon
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Ok, I've thought about this a bit more and kind of thrown out the previous ideas I wrote about. If anyone could give feedback on which of the following ideas are appealing AND feasible, that'd be great

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Revamped idea:

Right now, the main issue with enemies is the limited options in how to deal with them. I think even the framework that they’re ‘enemies’ rather than ‘aliens’ or ‘mobs’ restricts the scope of gameplay. So I’ve come up with a few different ways they could be ‘handled’ by the player during the course of their playthrough. Note that these options are all meant to be automated in one form or another.

  1. Aliens are docile/non-interactive to start with (new planet), and the player has the option to completely ignore them. As a reminder of their existence, they will creep-to/patrol the edges of the factory/pollution cloud or player settlements to just curiously investigate what’s happening, but if the player tries to approach them, they’ll skitter away.

  2. The player has the option to trap, cultivate, and breed aliens for a continuous supply of special materials. Some examples might be:

Cream/blood, which ensures higher quality items are produced (say, 5x base chance of improvement from white→green and green→blue)

Eggs, which when dissolved into a liquid form can be pumped into labs to improve research efficiency/speed (or can be made into food)

Scales, which can be used to machine parts with improved performance (larger storage in tanks, trains, chests, faster concrete, burnable fuel for faster vehicles)

Players would have access to a breeding system which increases the effects of one of these drops at the cost of the others.