[MOD 0.13.x] Alien Farm - Catch em, breed em, destroy!

[Versepelles]

Type: Mod
Name: Alien Farm
Description: Adds systems to capture, breed, train, and command aliens.
License: Creative Commons
Version: 1.1.1
Original Release: 2016-06-03
Tested-With-Factorio-Version: 0.13.1
Mod Portal: https://mods.factorio.com/mods/Versepel ... sAlienFarm

Long description

Alien Farm adds a number of buildings, structures, and items that allow the player to capture aliens, breed them in incubation chambers, harvest them as a new source of alien artifacts, and finally train them to fight enemies.

Check out the demo video here!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wg6IA18NgIw

Tutorial

How to build an alien farm!

To get started, you will need to research the "Capture Capsules" and "Alien Breeding" technologies, and eventually the "Command Capsules" tech.



The first thing to do after this is craft a capture capsule of any quality- these can be found in the Alien Farm tab of crafting, as well as most other supplies.



Now comes the tricky part- acquiring an alien specimen! I suggest clearing a hive until a single spawner remains, then capture a spawned unit (like a small biter) by throwing the capture capsule at it.



The next step is to build an incubator and artificial spawner, then start creating aliens. For this you will need some alien artifacts! Alien artifacts can be converted to "alien ovum" in the artificial spawner, and vice versa. To start creating aliens, you must place a filled capsule (the alien you caught earlier) and some alien ovum into the incubator.



Here is a simple setup. The incubator will spawn aliens within a 5x5 grid, so blocking some of those areas with stone walls will force the alien to spawn on the reinforced transport belt, pulling it down to the harvester turret. The harvester turret marks the alien to be harvested, and any friendly turrets will help harvest the alien at this point. Beware, though as the alien will now become aggressive! The red inserter on the right then pulls out alien artifacts that may drop from harvested specimen, which then travel back up to the artificial spawner to be turned into alien ovum. These alien ovum are then moved by the inserters back to the incubator to start the process over again.



When incubating some aliens, they have a small chance to evolve into a larger, more powerful alien. I suggest a breeding pen for this purpose. Note, though, that behemoth aliens can only be captured by master capture capsules!



After you have a sufficient supply of alien capsules, you may want to take them out to fight other aliens. To do this, you will need "train capsules" and "goto capsules". Train a group by throwing a capsule at them (you can use multiple), then command them to go to an area by throwing a goto capsule. Take them to your target hive and watch them go!







Good luck!

License

License

Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0).
View the text here: creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0

Version history

Version History

Version 1.0.0 (3 June 2016): Release
Version 1.1.0 (28 June 2016): Updated to 0.13.0 and added support for Bob's Enemies
Version 1.1.1 (29 June 2016): Removed hard dependency from Bob's Enemies

Compatibility and Known Issues

Compatibility

• This mod will not work in multiplayer.
• This mod should work with most other mods, whether adding to an existing game or starting a new one.
• This mod will not account for new enemies added by other mods. I will add support for other mods by request (request in comments, please!)
• Works with Bob's Enemies [0.13.0]. All of Bob's enemies require a master capture capsule and can be incubated.

Known Issues

• Sometimes units will despawn seemingly randomly. This is due to a pathfinding "feature" of factorio which I cannot fix.

[Sedar]

Hello. Very interesting idea of the mod, thank you.
Can you add the compatibility with Natural Evolution mod? It would be great.

[Versepelles]

Hello. Very interesting idea of the mod, thank you.
Can you add the compatibility with Natural Evolution mod? It would be great.

That one will be a bit tough, I think, but I'll work on it. Unfortunately, I'll be out of town for a couple of weeks, so along with the release of 0.13 pending, it may be a little while. I'll let you know, though.

[reddutton]

bug on multiplayer
when trying to catch on a sucsessful catch on peacefull mode the following error is sent with crash of server using low tier catcher on small biters
from consol log
MultiplayerManager.ccp:110: MultiplayerManager failed: "Error while running the event handler: __VerspellesAlienFarm__/control.lua:176: Map dosen't contain 1 player, this function can't be used"
used on linux headless mode with headed client on ubuntu desktop factorio version 12.33

[Versepelles]

bug on multiplayer
when trying to catch on a sucsessful catch on peacefull mode the following error is sent with crash of server using low tier catcher on small biters
from consol log
MultiplayerManager.ccp:110: MultiplayerManager failed: "Error while running the event handler: __VerspellesAlienFarm__/control.lua:176: Map dosen't contain 1 player, this function can't be used"
used on linux headless mode with headed client on ubuntu desktop factorio version 12.33

Unfortunately, as is stated in the mod description, Alien Farm does not currently support multiplayer. It's on my "maybe" list, though.

[Versepelles]

Updated to 0.13, and added cursory support for Bob's Enemies (all of Bob's enemies require the master capture capsule and can be incubated).

[Mooncat]

Hi Versepelles, this mod seems to have a hard dependency to Bob's mod (due to the last update?). Would you mind changing it to optional so I can play it?

[Versepelles]

Hi Versepelles, this mod seems to have a hard dependency to Bob's mod (due to the last update?). Would you mind changing it to optional so I can play it?

Thanks for letting me know! The hard dependency was removed, but please keep me informed of any other bugs. Appreciated!

[Mooncat]

Hi Versepelles, this mod seems to have a hard dependency to Bob's mod (due to the last update?). Would you mind changing it to optional so I can play it?

Thanks for letting me know! The hard dependency was removed, but please keep me informed of any other bugs. Appreciated!

Wow, that was fast. It is working now. Thanks!

[vedrit]

Facto'Mon, anyone? (Factorio version of Poke'Mon)

[Critical]

Hi Versepelles i have a problem that i dont know if it is meant to happen but whenever my friend captures a biter it goes into the hosts inventory (mine). is this meant to happen or is it a bug?

[Versepelles]

Hi Versepelles i have a problem that i dont know if it is meant to happen but whenever my friend captures a biter it goes into the hosts inventory (mine). is this meant to happen or is it a bug?

Ah, I don't think that multiplayer is supported, so it's a bug.

[Lutz_Scheiter]

Hey Versepelles,

really nice mod u did there! Thank you for this

[Versepelles]

Hey Versepelles,

really nice mod u did there! Thank you for this

Glad you enjoyed it!

[Mooncat]

Hi Versepelles, may I have your permission to use the graphics of artificial spawner for the new entity in Creative Mode? It will be tinted to purple to avoid confusion.

[Versepelles]

Hi Versepelles, may I have your permission to use the graphics of artificial spawner for the new entity in Creative Mode? It will be tinted to purple to avoid confusion.

Ya, have at it!

[Mooncat]

Hi Versepelles, may I have your permission to use the graphics of artificial spawner for the new entity in Creative Mode? It will be tinted to purple to avoid confusion.

Ya, have at it!

Thanks a lot!

[bror89dk]

great fashion you're doing ... Versailles' Alien Farm.
but it
It does not work the same with bob fashion Bob's Enemies can only caught it small or 4 that I have here at pictures .. can not get all Enemies from Bob's Enemies ?

[JREwing]

Hello. Iam trying to figure out, how to rapidly increase production of artefacts. I have tried to place full stack of alien capsule into the incubator with no visible increase of production. I have check the code and I think, that number of capsules has no role in decision of hatching egg. Same effect - no visible - has free space around incubator. Algorhytm only check capsule included, spawn rate of this kind of alien and then randomly spawn on free space, if any.
Is that right? If yes, production can be inceased only by adding more incubators. Correct?

What kind of alien has most effective ratio spawntime/probability of artefact?

EDIT1:from the config file it seems the most effective is to breed small bitter/spitters.

EDIT2:In my previous post, I have not calculated ovum/artefact consumption to the final result. Now, I have it in the nice table:

Table of calculations

table.png (12.81 KiB) Viewed 12943 times

This shows, that for example medium class is absolutly pointless to breed. It would be nice to somehow include the ammount of capsules into the spawn calculation. Now for higher rate of production is needed really huge infrastructure.

For me, the best is to breed big ones - it can possibly spawn behemon. Bigs are much easier to catch for massive production (huge ammount is needed), make less dmg and are way easier to kill. But if someone will stick with small ones, there is no much need to upgrade for bigger ones. The progression is too low to invest energy and resources. I think, progression may be much better, if one is going to chatch behemons.

[sbadkins4@yahoo.com]

Hoping this mod gets updated to .15 fairly soon.