Fight

[Zourin]

issues with combat currently..

- The pistol seems to be 'for suicide purposes only', despite being ineffectual at even that. it may be able to hold off a couple biters, but isn't suitable for even a single nest if the player needs to move out of a bad starting spot.
- Submachine gun, shotgun, and missile launcher are only viable for small biter nests and/or medium worms, then become wholly obsolete, even with AP ammo. Generally better for tree clearing than combat.
- Land mines, grenades, and flamethrower are pointless wastes of resources. None do enough damage to warrant the expense, and flamethrowers vs nests is suicidal.
- Gun turrets struggle with medium biters, consume material product, and are obsolete in the face of large biters. Gun turrets are also unsupported by the logistics network, despite being a prime candidate for automatic loading.
- The bulk of 'combat' revolves around the player turtling in power armor and speed mods, and throwing down tons of distractor bots, devastator bots, and laser turrets.

The short take:
- Player weaponry is ineffectual for combat
- Projectile weaponry is inneffectual for combat starting midgame.
- Lasers and bots play the game for the player, who contributes nothing to late game combat.

[AlexPhoenix]

thats all logicaly.

player must not be a godlike even in armor.

[Zourin]

thats all logicaly.

player must not be a godlike even in armor.

Sadly, the game eventually becomes a war of partially automated bots and defenses, and the player is just there to watch and run like a bitch 'cause the orbital drones do all the fighting. I wouldn't even bother with rocket launchers if I didn't still need them for some reason for blue packs.

[AlexPhoenix]

thats all logicaly.

player must not be a godlike even in armor.

Sadly, the game eventually becomes a war of partially automated bots and defenses, and the player is just there to watch and run like a bitch 'cause the orbital drones do all the fighting. I wouldn't even bother with rocket launchers if I didn't still need them for some reason for blue packs.

may be i'm wrong, but i like idea that biters are stronger than you.

but may will be good idea to make you possible to destroy smallest nests at mid game and small nests at end game, without support.
but for larger nests you need support from bots.

[Sir Nick]

issues with combat currently..

- The pistol seems to be 'for suicide purposes only', despite being ineffectual at even that. it may be able to hold off a couple biters, but isn't suitable for even a single nest if the player needs to move out of a bad starting spot.
- Submachine gun, shotgun, and missile launcher are only viable for small biter nests and/or medium worms, then become wholly obsolete, even with AP ammo. Generally better for tree clearing than combat.
- Land mines, grenades, and flamethrower are pointless wastes of resources. None do enough damage to warrant the expense, and flamethrowers vs nests is suicidal.
- Gun turrets struggle with medium biters, consume material product, and are obsolete in the face of large biters. Gun turrets are also unsupported by the logistics network, despite being a prime candidate for automatic loading.
- The bulk of 'combat' revolves around the player turtling in power armor and speed mods, and throwing down tons of distractor bots, devastator bots, and laser turrets.

The short take:
- Player weaponry is ineffectual for combat
- Projectile weaponry is inneffectual for combat starting midgame.
- Lasers and bots play the game for the player, who contributes nothing to late game combat.

Don't think you are right here. Let me show it:

Pistol: it is a starting weapon, what is it that you want from it? Enough to shoot a couple of biters in the first wave AND make a player think about defences.
SMG: you CAN actually take a nest out with it and AP bullets. Granted, you'd better have armour, but with a touch of luck you can manage a 2-nest base. Worms are... doubtful. Small worms, ofc.
Shotgun: useless by itself, but if you have a car and a couple levels in shotgun speed, you can drive by nests and blast them. Combat shotgun and AP shells work even better. Worms are still a problem.
Rocket Launcher: this weapon has two downsides. One is that it requires quite a bit of research to make it shoot fast enough for biter combat (nests and worms are fine!). Two, rockets and explosive rockets are expensive, especially with the amount of oil the game currently generates. And also, you need a car. However, once you have all these, you KICK ARSE. I know no other weapon that can dispose of a 100ish biter herd in under a minute.
Land mines: didn't test them in current version, but in the previous ones they were actually good as OFFENSIVE weapon: aggro a load of biters from the nest, _drive_ away while placing mines between yourself and the herd. After a bit of practice you're golden. They do lack the finesse of explosive rockets though.
Grenades: used them in 0.8.8 and was not very impressed. They do all right in clearing away small and medium biters, but big ones require a load of them to kill.
Flamethrower: has its uses, but pales before any of the abovementioned. Not to mention the cost and the fuelhungriness.
Gun turrets: OK while you have smalls and mediums. I do agree that they become useless as soon as big biters appear.

Car: not present in your post, but it is in fact THE most useful combat tech ever.

You sound as if your preferred method of combat is wading into an enemy base with a pair of Big F-ing Guns and blasting everything that moves, contemporary shooter style. IMO, this does not and should not work for Factorio. You have to wear the enemy down, your character is by default weaker than the enemies. The only moment of transition comes in late-late game, when you have power armour MK II, a ton of bots etc, etc. Before that THEY are the masters of the planet, not you.

TL; DR: Weapons are in fact useful, especially the combat shotgun and rocket launcher. Turtling against an enemy base is in most case not neccessary.

[sparr]

The pistol seems to be 'for suicide purposes only', despite being ineffectual at even that. it may be able to hold off a couple biters, but isn't suitable for even a single nest if the player needs to move out of a bad starting spot.

The pistol is fine for dealing with the first wave, or even half dozen waves, of biters if they are simply attacking you because of pollution. Especially if you've crafted some armor.

Submachine gun, shotgun, and missile launcher are only viable for small biter nests and/or medium worms, then become wholly obsolete, even with AP ammo. Generally better for tree clearing than combat.

I've cleared huge nests surrounded by medium worms with the SMG and combat shotgun, while driving the car.

Land mines, grenades, and flamethrower are pointless wastes of resources. None do enough damage to warrant the expense, and flamethrowers vs nests is suicidal.

Land mines are great for base defense, especially within range of a roboport so your construction robots can replace them. The flamethrower is a great weapon for dealing with a mass of biters chasing you (in the car or with a fast exoskeleton).

Gun turrets struggle with medium biters, consume material product, and are obsolete in the face of large biters. Gun turrets are also unsupported by the logistics network, despite being a prime candidate for automatic loading.

I have no problem using robots or conveyors to move ammo to my walls, and then conveyors/inserters to reload the turrets.

The bulk of 'combat' revolves around the player turtling in power armor and speed mods, and throwing down tons of distractor bots, devastator bots, and laser turrets.

I have never resorted to this strategy. I am eager for changes to the game that would make this strategy non-viable (such as reducing the player's ability to drop a line of laser turrets instantly).

[Calico]

The really annoying thing is that most weapons are dead-end research, becoming useless lategame.

A upgraded SMG can be somewhat useful until some point midgame, but why bother with it anyway? Every science pack spend into it, is a science pack that won't help you in the long run... late game even a fully upgraded SMG with AP rounds won't stop Big Biters from eating you alive.

I simply skip all combat techs besides combat shotgun and drones... plus the power armor mk1. I do research the mkII most games, but not because i really need it. Having 3 exosceletons allow for such fast movement inside your base is a convienent thing... for combat one exo usally is sufficient. Throw in a couple of MKII Batteries, Shields and lots of Distractor Bots and you're golden for everything. There are very few nests that survive 50 Distractor bots thrown at them. Eliminate Nests/worms with the combat shotgun while running around spamming those bots... I never really used the car for combat, seems risky at best with all those rocks and trees around.

I'm not saying thats what combat should look like, but with instant respawn rates there isn't a lot of choice involved. It all comes down to destroying the spawners as fast as humanly possible. Doesn't matter if you kill 10, 100 or even 1000 Biters... if you don't destroy the spawner, you accomplished nothing. Right now, combat isn't really rewarding, it's just a race to throw out loads of DPS in a very short time window... no matter if you use Bots Spam, Construction Bot Laser Tower abuse or rocket spamming car.

Fast in, massive dps, ???, profit. Until respawn rates change (and with them the entire combat system), thats the balance we have.

[Sir Nick]

That's a good point made. I also find biter spawn rates ridiculous, but on the other hand, I currently see no other way to counteract a player.

[slpwnd]

Until respawn rates change (and with them the entire combat system), thats the balance we have.

We will revisit the combat system in the future. I think that making less but stronger enemies together with adding different kind of enemies is one possible way to go. Then we could have lower spawning rates and also avoid "getting surrounded by hoardes of enemies" effects.

[Calico]

Just to make this a 100% clear.... i LOVE this game. Just combat isn't the strong side of it. Yet. I totally understand that combat is one of the less "polished" parts of Factorio ALPHA.

I really would like to see the revamped combat or hear your ideas how it might be... but all in good time.

[Cerus]

Until respawn rates change (and with them the entire combat system), thats the balance we have.

We will revisit the combat system in the future. I think that making less but stronger enemies together with adding different kind of enemies is one possible way to go. Then we could have lower spawning rates and also avoid "getting surrounded by hoardes of enemies" effects.

I really like fighting hordes of enemies. I just wish it was a bit more involved. Auto-targeting with the pistol/smg/etc really bugs me.

Giving the user more control and allowing them to improve their performance through practice first and progress second is a huge component of player satisfaction.

If I had to make a list of things I'd like to see:

• No auto-targeting anything unless it's a turret, bot, or weapon that's balanced around auto-targeting with some other drawbacks. (Keeps the player involved in combat, creates room for personal investment in performance, allows for more weapon variety)
• Accuracy and/or damage falloff over range (Rewards planning, allows for more weapon variety)
• Need to reload periodically (Rewards planning, provides tension, allows for more weapon variety)
• Varied enemies with unique abilities, behaviors, and vulnerabilities (Rewards planning, incentive for weapon variety)

I guess my ultimate proposal to the question of "fighting" isn't to add more stuff, it's to create a more satisfying core combat mechanic and grow from there.

[jcdietz03]

Maybe a laser gun that only works in range of a power network would be fun. It's unrealistic to believe a generator powerful enough to operate such a thing could be carried everywhere.

It's already slightly unrealistic to insta-build things like large electric poles. Maybe add a 10-second build time to power distribution things as well as military things like turrets.
For power distribution leave the ghost during this time in case the player is doing power distribution setup.

[leofairlight]

Hm, I find that surrounding outside energy turrets only work well when surrounded by walls. What if one of the bugs (one of the new types) does more damage (like a flat multiplier) just to walls, but doesn't go to far from the spawner that made them?

To me, it fixes the problem that a large horde cant be taken down with just a few walls and tons of turrets, but if you can focus on small groups, its still a viable option, and doesnt take away from groups of people who like this method. It also doesn't effect current power armor/weapon groups. It also wont attack your main base, because they wont get near, and might make it so you dont have to change balance for your base or needing you to make a new type of wall/defense.

[krux02]

What I can say is that I don't like the current fight system. i don't want to build a factory and put tons of metal into one piece of equipment just to make it endgame. This just doesn't feel appropriate. I would like to build something with my factory that is truly big. The game is about automatisation, and not a hack and slash game like diablo. I would like to industrialize the elemination of the aliens. I want techniques to wipe them out that don't involve me to go there manually in the end game.

[Gammro]

I would like to industrialize the elemination of the aliens. I want techniques to wipe them out that don't involve me to go there manually

Wow, back down Adolf

(sorry for going offtopic)

[Drury]

What I can say is that I don't like the current fight system. i don't want to build a factory and put tons of metal into one piece of equipment just to make it endgame. This just doesn't feel appropriate. I would like to build something with my factory that is truly big. The game is about automatisation, and not a hack and slash game like diablo. I would like to industrialize the elemination of the aliens. I want techniques to wipe them out that don't involve me to go there manually in the end game.

And I don't, I feel combat is a personal thing. They didn't put biters in so that they are a minable resource like coal, like you just put up some biter harvesters and they go and kill biters without you even knowing what's happening. Like for defense this approach is fine, you have a factory to manage so you can't fight off every individual biter. But offense can't work this way - as I said, there might as well have not been any biters in the first place.

[gustavoghe]

Well,

Not sure if im too late, but, Id like to see more vehicles. Something like a robotsuit from aliens. I think thats missing in the game.

[strikedragon]

There are some other things that may be useful to add like you could insert Plate armor in to your armor for defense, Instead of shields Plate armor would be cheaper than shielding but would not regenerate.
Also it would be interesting if you could insert combat modifications Into your vehicle, Like auto turrets or extra shielding may be even ramming parts. Also I think in the current version The discharger doesn't work very well.

[Schmendrick]

I would love to see little armor modules (1x1) that increase the armor's defense values. It would make armor feel a lot more customizable.

[krux02]

I would like to industrialize the elemination of the aliens. I want techniques to wipe them out that don't involve me to go there manually

Wow, back down Adolf
(sorry for going offtopic)

Fun fact, I am from Germany . But back to topic. The point is that in factorio automation feels cool, while manually building doesn't. So I would like to have a fight that is less based on reaction time, but on planning. I as a player would like to take strategic decisions instead of pulling the trigger. The pickax is also just for the beginning later you let your robots take down the trees. I would like to have my robots kill for me. It just feels as the right kind of improvement. But not just combat drones. I would like to have some weapons mounted on trains, and a tactical map. So more the RTS direction of the late game.