New Enemies

[Avi0627]

Biters.. More biters

Some people prefer more challenge and this fits vanilla gameplay.

What ?

Bisper + Bisper Nest
Flying biter that spit from (pistol range) distance. These creatures attack in 1 - 4 pack by default. Can cross waters, does not trigger mines. Optional enemy in
easy/normal game. Locked in hard game. They should appear only after 15 mins ingame.

Infiter + Infiter Nest
(Non Combat Biter) Biter that can infect locomotives, ribbons, automated buildings. Infiter can spit on any production building, inserter, Locomotive etc that has any type of speed
that gets slowed for 5 min by 75%. This should be 3x3 area. Player can disinfect it with a repair kit. IF the infiter remains near 5x5 area of an automated
building that is getting slowed and the debuff hits 5 min counter, the building should become an infiter spawner nest. Biters should not attack infested
buildings. If a rail gets infected, the locomotive going through the infection gets infected as well.

Mole Biter + Mole Biter Nest
(Non Combat Biter)
Mole Biter is not an aggressive type of biter. This biter cannot do damage. The point of this biter is to corrupt the economy system of the player. This biter
spawns in a nest with the others. But, this can "build" itself a mole hole every game day. (Limit the mole holes for 1 hole every 9 chunk). If a mole makes a hole
near the player's base where items are, then it gets out of the nearest hole, walks to the chests or ribbons, then takes some of the items. If the player can kill it
before it returns to it's hole then the player gets the items back. otherwise the items are lost. (50 blocks from the point of things to be stolen), can cross water.
Has higher armor since it does no damage. Moles cannot make molehole on concrete base and if killed, all molehole in 20x20 chunks gets destroyed. (Moleholes should be destroyable individually as well, but that does not stop the biters.) - Additionally.. these could allow other biters to tunnel into the player base? (if walled in)

Why ?

More biters, more strategy, more options, more survival sense needed. It adds to the vanilla game where brainless biters just rush on you.

[ssilk]

I need to point to the dozens of other suggestions about new enemies:

viewtopic.php?f=80&t=139 Enemy Variations / Enemy Variety / New Enemies / Boss

And some threads, that are not listed there but can be found by searching for new enemy/enemies/biter...

Not that the idea is bad, but only the spitters where added. And there was no other implementation of new enemies since 2013.

[Avi0627]

Why is that?

[Koub]

Because combat is not the main focus of the game. The main focus as initially intended by the devs is growing the factory. The combat is only there to add some pressure on the resource consumption.
However, the game is versatile enough and moddable enough so that people who prefer the combat aspect can make the enemy arbitrarily difficult.

[Avi0627]

I understand. I had an idea where competitions could be made by allowing multiplayer to have 2 faction control (leave the planet before the biters(player controlled) can overwhelm you.. but in this case I don't see it as a viable thing. I wonder if others may want to do that.. Or simply play a singleplayer where your thing is to defeat the humans invading your planets. (I can completely imagine a full game expansion with all the buter structures, logistics.. like having very tiny biters to transfer items like a belt.. belt made of ant like biters..), biological structures that extract ores.. different logistic production than humans.. maggot fuels.. etc..

[Avi0627]

btw.. I'm 100% sure this would catch CLASSIC RTS gamers in ALL age and wastly increase player numbers.. (and your income as well)

[Koub]

btw.. I'm 100% sure this would catch CLASSIC RTS gamers in ALL age and wastly increase player numbers.. (and your income as well)

I highly doubt this would increase my income, as I'm not a employee of Wube, just a moderator of the forum - and an old and passionate member of Factorio's community.
Moreover, one can't please everyone. Pleasing the RTS community might end up unpleasing part of the multi-million community that loves Factorio as it is.

[Qon]

btw.. I'm 100% sure this would catch CLASSIC RTS gamers in ALL age and wastly increase player numbers.. (and your income as well)

RTS is dead and no-one plays it. Why try to attract "CLASSIC RTS gamers in ALL age" when that population is tiny?

And why would you risk alienating the crafting/building community that this game is basically the gold standard for and the factory/automation genre that this game made and popularized and is completely dominating?

Is this really something you would bet on against infinite odds?

[Hetakin]

I up this idea. Late game rts could be a good news. Introducing for the first time the concept of industrial RTS. As you can see in the good AAI mod that would give you an idea of the possibility in this game

I don t think that this challenge will loose the community if it can be set up.

On the contrary, it will attract another community to this genre.
Probably this addition, if well thought out, with the possibility of breeding friendly species to protect themselves, could be of interest to both automation fans and RTS fans.
For me, the good starting point on this track would be to add a logic of extension to the biters and to extend the local flora

Anyway, I don't see a whole lot of other possibilities for development. At least, if we exclude the excellent mods like krastorio, angel and space exploration, which are in themselves the quality of a DLC. I don't think that developper can do better without leading to a too complex game for beginners. Krastorio is already challenging about automation.

SO the RTS like feature with a campaign seems to be the only possibility to add a real DLC that would increase the interest for the game.

Obviously this affects a niche community, that of the RTS. This is a genre with very few new games (almost dead, only IRON HARVEST has been released lately to my knowledge). But this style is no longer in fashion because of publishers, not communities. the communities still exist, they did not fly away.

[Balthazar]

btw.. I'm 100% sure this would catch CLASSIC RTS gamers in ALL age and wastly increase player numbers.. (and your income as well)

RTS is dead and no-one plays it. Why try to attract "CLASSIC RTS gamers in ALL age" when that population is tiny?

We're absolutely not, everyone stopped making RTS games because they're awful for microtransactions and games as a service. People still play supreme commander, starcraft and homeworld.

The main problem with this suggestion and these ideas in general is just piling on more enemy types doesn't matter; the solution to everything here is just spam more laser turrets. Nothing changes from the player's perspective. It's also a huge performance hog in a game where performance is extremely critical. If they were to add something like fortresscraft's hive minds / cryoplasm that could be awesome but more biters really isn't interesting at all.