BicycleEater wrote: ↑Sat Aug 26, 2023 11:23 pm
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Maybe nerf artillery, and allow the unlocking of, idk, missile silos? which have super high range and damage. Then make artillery relatively short range, low damage, or such. Not enough to be crippling, but enough to make defence a continuing challenge even with it.
Then when you get missile silos, you really solve the problem.
We are quite likely to see them, IIRC missile turrets were promised in the Factorio crowdfunding, just like the space platform endgame was ?
Similar could be done with cliffs, maybe having rarer steep cliffs, requiring more advanced destroying (and landfill potentially, adding 'ocean' as well as 'deep water', so *most* of the solutions are found on nauvis, but a better version is available off-world).
That would seem to tread the line, by mitigating aggressive enemy expansion on nauvis, without completely 'solving' it, thus incentivising the player to go off world and find a full solution (all the more so, as they are 'teased' with a partial solution).
What about rail bridges/tunnels, but for cliffs/water only ?
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yert527 wrote: ↑Sun Aug 27, 2023 2:36 am
I have extreme mixed feelings about this, I was expecting something worthy of a actual expansion when they promised that it would be worth the $20, not a re-hash of already made mods. This is just a mod rip off into a to full "$20 expansion". Earendel made Space Exploration, sure, but just ripping your own past mod-work to make his work "official" doesn't make it right. It's not even adding AS MUCH CONTENT. If it's a "light" version of your mod, it's a money grab. This is some Bethesda level mod-scam. I feel cheated as a fan of both Factorio and Erendel's Space Exploration mod. If this was actually Space Exploration 2.0 I would have actually supported it. If this was the mod integration into the game, and then added content to the mod (not just re-hashing and even stripping it), that I could have got excited for.
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Did you not read the relevant FFFs or something ??
First, not sure where you got the $20, it's going to cost as much as the base game, so $35 (or maybe $30 because that's how much Factorio cost when that price was announced). And it's going to cost that much because the goal is to have as much new content as there is already in the base game, meaning that we have only seen a
tiny fraction of it (remember how we have ~52 FFFs to go before release ?).
2nd, the overwhelming majority of players that would want to buy a Factorio expansion (remember, the median player has never placed a locomotive) would never want to play something as deep/long/grindy/complex as Space Exploration.
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sarge945 wrote: ↑Sun Aug 27, 2023 4:38 am
This post is probably going to make everyone hate me, but...
Not sure what is the point of this introduction ?
Factorio in general seems to be stuck in this weird contradictory middle-point between automation/puzzle game and tower defence game. The long, slow factory building gameplay somewhat contradicts with the need to constantly defend yourself, and I feel like these mechanics sort of undermine each other a little bit.
Biters are here as another way to limit your scaling : both in area by having to get rid of nests, and in intensity - by having to be careful about pollution. IMHO the game becomes boring without them. (Also shooting them is fun.
)
It doesn't have the quick, ease of creation of towers that your average tower defence game has, setting up a working factory is a VERY long process in comparison, and the emphasis is mostly on automation rather than setting up a good defensive line and managing resources. It also lacks a lot of tower variety and strategy, usually it's just a case of setting up turrets along a wall and building some artillery and you're essentially all done. The AI is rather simplistic for a tower defence game and the biters really aren't anywhere near as much of a threat as they should be, especially on default settings, compared to how much the player can pump out defensively in the mid to late game. Turrets are essentially unlimited eventually, and with auto restocking basically become an unstoppable kill-wall.
Turret defense games are quite different in that you don't ever lose your turrets there because enemies do not directly attack them, this makes for quite different game dynamics than a wave defense scenario or freeplay Factorio.
That unstoppable kill wall can still run out of ammunition, at least while you are still on gun turrets : depleting your ore spots before you're able to expand / get to oil is a real (the only so far ?) challenge.
I feel like in some ways trying to do both things at the same time makes the game worse.
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Personally I like biters in concept, and I am interested in having more interesting combat gameplay, but I understand if most players just want to build cool factories. I would hate to see them go
So which one is it ? Also there's always the option to put them on peaceful / disable pollution / turn them off.
Biters Off and Death World are two very different game modes, and yes, it's harder for Wube to balance both of them, but they're hardly the only game that has several game modes. (And we haven't even mentioned
PvP(vBiters), which is quite fun (at least as an MMO), but *desperately* needs either a balance mod or a balance pass.)
Either artillery is something you get quickly, which nullifies the biters to the point where they may as well not exist, or it's something that takes AGES to get (which is being proposed)
Atraps003 already covered it, but to second them :
Uh, artillery *already* takes AGES to get, it's one of the most expensive techs in the game, to the point where I personally usually consider it (with atom bomb and spidertron) to be the win condition : messing around with these OP weapons is IMHO a much better payoff than the (relatively) anticlimatic one of the rocket launch.
A longstanding issue in Factorio biter balance is that it's the *flame turret* (and getting oil to fuel it) which is that thing which nullifies biters (even behemoths !), which is quite an issue since it's available by early-mid game, and I'm pretty sure that a lot of people are impatient to see the expansion shaking off that OP-ness one way or another.
*A bunch of suggestions*
Almost all of these are already implemented in mods, it's questionable how much the expansion pack will want to step on those toes (compared to adding engine support for even wilder mods).
which drain significant amounts of power, which is interesting because losing power means all your turrets go down. Factorio has nothing like this, turrets are mostly self sufficient forever as long as they are stocked with ammo/fuel
Uh, Factorio has exactly this with laser turrets (with the caveat that flame turrets are earlier and mostly superior)
with no real risk of making yourself vulnerable unless you really screw up
that's not «no real risk», that's kind of the point
Survival : dying in Factorio is punished by lost time, during which biters can destroy more stuff and keep evolving. Mods can also turn on breakable armor again, though sadly not depleting pickaxe any more. Fish to heal is also a limited resource.
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sarge945 wrote: ↑Sun Aug 27, 2023 10:41 am
aka13 wrote: ↑Sun Aug 27, 2023 7:58 am
BIters are a "solvable" event, where with logistics and a ton of research there exists an equilibrium, where they pose a threat, but can not overwhelm you, if you do the necessary precations. It gives a nice feeling of "I made it, I am the boss here, I dictate where I can expand, and where you can (or cannot).
I am okay with this, especially at the endgame, I guess my main issue is that biters are almost always very passive already - as long as you don't pollute them they will never attack you, and when they do attack you the combat part of the game tends to be very boring.
I feel like if the combat part of the game was more engaging and interesting, and setting up the perfect "kill wall" was a lot harder than it is now, it would feel more rewarding, and automating away the biters would be a good challenge to overcome after fighting them for so long.
At the moment, you can not see biters for multiple hours at a time if you don't pollute. They need to be more active participants in the game.
I feel like them going on "raiding runs" every 2-3 ingame days, regardless of pollution, would already be a good step in the right direction. It would force the player on the defensive more.
Sounds like you might be playing with too easy biters ? After all, default settings are designed for Factorio newbies, not players with several games under their belt !
«as long as you don't pollute them they will never attack you» is not strictly true, because they send settling parties, which, as we discussed recently, eventually settle right next to your walls.
Agreed about potentially making them more diverse and smarter... maybe not on the level of Rampant in the base game ? (Also, smarter biters sadly comes with a performance cost.)
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serhatozgel wrote: ↑Sun Aug 27, 2023 11:37 am
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I would definitely not want needing to strategically place turrets or making hard choices for how to use my limited resources. Factorio is not that game.
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Both of these are already the case if you play on harder settings.
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p03t13 wrote: ↑Sun Aug 27, 2023 12:10 pm
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I'm talking about early game, I've got a decent amount of space, i lay down a couple belts of copper iron bricks etc, start building science inserters etc off the bus, expand half a screen to the east, 3 walls of cliffs directly in the way of my nice neat line, I can either spaghetti around it temporarily until I get cliff explosives, or turn the whole damn bus 90⁰ ruining the layout I had planned. I understand that it's part of the challenge of the game, and I've seen some AMAZING spaghetti bases. My brain just doesn't work that way. I intentionally leave the cliffs on, but I get the explosives as soon as feasible
No, this is just Factorio punishing you for not doing the bare minimum of scouting (which you will quickly need to find oil anyway) !
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Tertius wrote: ↑Sun Aug 27, 2023 12:54 pm
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It kills creativity except on the top players who always try to "cheat" around the way that was designed, because this is their challenge
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Limitations breed creativity, and you too can be a hacker if you let go of this elitist idea that you can't figure them out by yourself.
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Everybody else just copies the most efficient way.
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You can't prevent people from looking up the solution to a puzzle, but that's on them.