Is there a mod like this? Wave-based enemies tied to research.

[katastic]

Is there a mod already that makes enemies attack in large waves only when you unlock a new technology, scaling harder as you unlock more?

One of my core issues with Factorio is the enemies and combat feels like an after-thought compared to the rest of the great gameplay, so much so they literally have a "pacifist mode" to just disable their attacks completely. It feels like if you re-arranged enemies to attack in large waves almost like a Tower Defense game, you can fight, win or lose (I guess you'd have to reload if you lose), and then learn from your mistakes and try again.

You could design all you want, and then, when ready, push the GO button and survive and then you're rewarded with a new tech unlocked.

Whereas the current system the biters are basically nerfed because if they DID attack often and in large numbers, it's often while you're trying to learn and design new stuff so high enemy counts/deathworld becomes a "copy and paste the blueprint" because if you're solving "the problem" while fighting it often becomes "panic for 3 hours straight until you finally push out and win" . Whereas on normal setting biters are basically just a nuisance and the closest thing to a "grind" in Factorio. "oh they're attacking again, I guess I gotta go spend 45 minutes blowing up base after base using the exact same strategy every time."

We have econ modules, and pollution, and I don't think I've ever thought "I better reduce my pollution." And the monotonic evolution of biters, you're either ahead of the enemy power curve and they're completely ignorable, or behind the power curve and getting slammed until you spend a couple hours finally making space or better defenses/research. The enemies never get easier because you reduced pollution. (I imagine there's a mod to devolve enemies based on their deaths/kills but not in vanilla IIRC). So the best you can do with pollution, is not even see enemies reduce in rate, but "feel" the derivative of their production (how fast they're getting more powerful) which is a very vague feeling so its not a satisfying metric to conquer.

I mean if we're talking "design a new mod" territory, I wonder if: Can mods trigger saves/loads?

I could design some sort of variation where you decide your tech tree/progression/battles. "Fight fire ants to gain flame turrets OR fight armored biters to unlock red ammo" thing. And other variations of "increase wave count and you get X more [tokens] that let you unlock [upgrade/tech]".

Hmmm... got me thinking now...

[edit] Hmm, I don't think there's a load functionality but game.auto_save() and game.server_save() exist. I wonder if it's possible to "copy" an entire planets surface and entities, to another surface, and then use it to restore the original later, effectively "reloading" your factory. Persistent objects like player characters might have to be "save inventory, restore it" instead of deleting and creating new objects.