Peace with Aliens

[Foreros]

I remember that insects can be "tamed", after all. Bees and few kinds of other insects can be trained to act differently with its owner and so you can act similarly with these insect-like aliens.
If you teach them that harm you is worse than interact with you, this will let you a new level of game.

[uliks]

Basically there is nothing to give aliens instead of pollution . If we could create with factories happy environment then meybee it could be other story. But this game is to much straight forward pollutional.

[chridder]

Hi,

I thought of the following idea:
- Biters still get angry by pollution, but you can reduce the angriness by giving them food.
- Biters are living on that world consuming something, for example wood.
- If we destroy the trees and increase pollution, the reaction of the biters is understandable.

So, giving them food, produces somehow from wood would solve two issues:
1. Have another use for wood and maybe a new production line
- Wood farming, for example by setting wood fences up to 20x20 fields with a farming facility at one place at the fence. Bots can manage the farming and deliver the wood to the facility, from where it can be transported via belts to a food production (maybe a new factory type). delivering the food to a specific main builing of the biters keep them happy
2. You do not have to fight against the biters, instead you have to take care of their mood and healthiness. To be save, you can put a wall around their villages.

Next to food, other things could be interesting, e.g. some kind of medicine (or drugs), water, etc.
Their could be a productine line, combining wood and oil products, this would also give oil some other use cases.

Next to that, it could result into a completly different end game. Instead of builing the rocket, user could decide to renaturate the planet again. Maybe with some sort of mega maching, much larger than everything is in the game so far. After player has polluted the planet so much, a kind of oxygen production, CO2 filter (in large scale) can be placed to get the planet green again. Therefore, player has to switch all industries to electricity without burning coal anymore. And he has to pull a lot of material into the new machine to refresh the atmosphare. A map mode or a progress bar shows the progress the user makes in cleaning the atmosphare. Any activity with coal or oil reduces the progress again.

With all said above, user can switch play style at any time, as soon as he starts producing food & co, he can live in peace, if he stops it, he might get attacked folling current pullution rules / hungriness of biters.

Chridder

[Foreros]

Nice idea the wood farming.
You can build trees where needed, for absorb pollution and maybe replace the wood you farm for get building ground.

[Factorie]

Never found the main focus of the game to be the aliens. I mostly play on peaceful because I just see them as a headache right now.

[chridder]

Never found the main focus of the game to be the aliens. I mostly play on peaceful because I just see them as a headache right now.

me too.

But I feel that they could add something to the game even in a more peaceful oriented gameplay. Take care for your "pets" (aliens) and you get no trouble with them.
This might need
- additional planning for your factory: build around their village or build a kind of reservat for them
- additional production lines to feed them: make food out of wood by adding tree farming, wood production, food production: for example use windmills or watermills (in the middle age sense) to produce food
- bring water to their villages
- additional production lines to take medical care of them: for example produce drugs from chemical production lines or add another plant type with healthy ingredients you need to extract
- additional efforts to reduce pollution: maybe some modules for pollution reduction (as some kind of air filters), but with effects on production speed or efficiency or energy consumption


But if you do not care about them at all, and destroy their environment you might get angry animals and run into the same gameplay as right now with aliens.

It would allows both play styles within one game mode adding options for everyone.
For sure, it must be possible to reach relevant researches early enough to stay in peaceful gameplay.

It would solve the issue, that wood is currently only waste in most times of the game.
A village you do not take care of might get angry while others keep peaceful.

Question is: if you have many villages spread over the map, and you need to supply all of them, it could get really much effort, so maybe a central building will take care later on, OR a new type of robot for "Alien Supply", which can land in/on alien houses starting from specific supply roboport which gets delivered with the products mentioned above and has a large range to supply a whole region for example.

[Daz3]

Like others have said the Bitters seem too feral for diplomacy. Though taming/controlling them could be interresting.

A new race might be an option; we have the Biters so how about the 'Writers?' A more civilised group. This leaves a few options;

They could be a bronse age hunter/gather group that are in awe of the players technology.

A industrial age group with similar, if not as advanced, systems.

A high tech group with better tech than the player.

This could then work out several ways depending on game settings; you could try and fight them. Easier with the nomads, hardest with the techies. Trade or even make an alliance (Federation? Can that apply to two species?)

Each group would have it's own needs and wants. Would become hostile in diffrent ways and open diffrent tech for research. (You can't learn the natives super-tech from the primative nomads. But they could teach you how to get stuff from the biters which the techys can't.)

Just a rough idea. Not sure about balance or anything.

[Factory Lobster]

Like others have said the Bitters seem too feral for diplomacy. Though taming/controlling them could be interresting.

A new race might be an option; we have the Biters so how about the 'Writers?' A more civilised group.

The Sci Fi culture usually deals with this by giving mindless hive/swarmy aliens some kind of intelligent queen variant. A master brain that is buried deep behind enemy lines and is orchestrating everything. Some execution of this idea seems appropriate for the game, for example having to seek out a brain or brains which have spawned in random locations in the world, to contact and reason with in order to make peace.

[Daz3]

Like others have said the Bitters seem too feral for diplomacy. Though taming/controlling them could be interresting.

A new race might be an option; we have the Biters so how about the 'Writers?' A more civilised group.

The Sci Fi culture usually deals with this by giving mindless hive/swarmy aliens some kind of intelligent queen variant. A master brain that is buried deep behind enemy lines and is orchestrating everything. Some execution of this idea seems appropriate for the game, for example having to seek out a brain or brains which have spawned in random locations in the world, to contact and reason with in order to make peace.

Imagine finding one of the Queens; you ride up to check out an odd looking spawner on your tamed Biter and have to explain why you're riding around on one of her enslaved children!

[Factory Lobster]

Imagine finding one of the Queens; you ride up to check out an odd looking spawner on your tamed Biter and have to explain why you're riding around on one of her enslaved children!

There are so many directions to take something like this. For example, there could be warring alien factions, and all are hostile to you at the beginning. But you can choose which one(s) to ally with by finding and killing the brain(s) of a faction and taking a special drop from it to a brain of another faction you want to make peace with. Or another example, have a reputation system where killing one faction improves your standing with another, or others.

Something like that could not be required at all, just a side thing to do, and completely customizeable. Build your own scenario. But the cool thing is that you would really have to apply (or not apply) your military tech shrewdly to accomplish your alien peace goals.

[Vladmirangel]

Im pretty glad there is a mode turning off alien aggression. im tired of having to do turret creeps and manually repairing outposts since roboport construction bots only fly straight and sometimes end up suiciding in the enemy base.

[wemdee]

I say we take off and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

[AcolyteOfRocket]

If you want peace with the aliens then we need to stop polluting.

The game could be changed to have pollution created by the recipe, not the machine, which will allow higher level machines to produce less pollution.

You could combine this by refactoring productivity to always be less than 100% and allow productivity modules to move towards this ideal limit on an asymptotic basis, reducing pollution-per-machine as we go.

Then just start the player with polluting low tech stuff to start the war, then as tech increases and base size increases pollution goes down and biters eventually completely stop attacking as the base pollution tends to zero due to pollution control systems you research.

You know.... sort of how we do it in the real world

(Note - this post seriously influence by my playing angel-bobs at the moment).

[Pascali]

Contracts would be nice with high evolution alines.

-to deal resscoures (some offers will be rare some not, not on every map there will be all offers - or the change after a while) -> you can hire them to attack an other player(Multiplayergame). The other player will not know, if you forced them by dealing with them or not. And the won´t kill the whole fabrik. Only 2 or 3 buildings (depending on the loan). You have a decision: To i buy the expensive resources from the alien(maybe per konvoy, spaceship) or do i get it from far away and have to protect the way and invest in the building-time).
-deal with them to stop them attacking you - maybe a pirate alien-race, like in anno. ->In multiplayer the one who is allied with the pirates - will focus them more on the other player(s).
-race who don´t destroys you whole fabric, but some special building - cause they need something from that - or are afraid of that. -> you can spend ressources in expensive buildings again vs. defend them better. So you have a decission.

[a4dd2b88]

Basically there is nothing to give aliens instead of pollution . If we could create with factories happy environment then meybee it could be other story. But this game is to much straight forward pollutional.

Reforestation? Have a tree of research focused specifically on balancing the harmful effects of pollution, with nurseries and greenhouses for large-scale trees replanting, based on the use of Builder Robots.

[Sonik-HSC]

Hello mrs Devs... I have a small idea or at least 30% of idea. If we can catch fish why we can give fish to them to they dont atack us by the polution like a candy.... I dont think he can have peace with aliens because they aren´t an civilizations they are kind of Ants.....

[AcolyteOfRocket]

Instead of considering peace with aliens as equals why not farm them ?

Biters could be farmed for meat and Ivory, and Spitters could be farmed for mucus that might have pharmaceutical benefits. Worms could be planted and harvested too. Fish could be farmed and maybe used as food for other livestock.

This could form the second phase of the invasion that earlier versions of factorio posited as the basis for the game (way back in the days of rocket defence).

Such exploitation of the environment fits in well with the theme of factorio as would also give a reason to control pollution, as polluted farms would produce contaminated products.

Mwaaah ha ha

[olafthecat]

This topic became too old and inherently off-topic, I'm locking it.

I'm amused by this for some reason!
I literally just discovered this area of the forum and immediately discovered that the most necroed topic there: 'electrical energy' had just been locked.
Pretty amused by this, as electricity is pretty much essential in today's factorio!

[Nightshade]

I'm not too fond of this idea and would actually prefer more development on the opposite.
Right now the space shrimps ("shrimps" is what the humans call the aliens in the movie District 9) are no more than a nuisance. Early in the game - and on Death World I should add - they pose a threat. But once you get your laser turrets, flame throwers and a tank, they are just in the way for further expansion.

Instead of doing going for this "peace with aliens path" I would prefer if more work was put into making the shrimps dangerous throughout the entire game - and not just the beginning.

[ttapada]

Instead of doing going for this "peace with aliens path" I would prefer if more work was put into making the shrimps dangerous throughout the entire game - and not just the beginning.

I totally agree! I think this is the thing I would like the most to see done before the final release!