Source
r/factorio•
error_logic

Do victory poles seem broken to you?

tl;dr: More realistic spawn placement and biter aggression makes the game more interesting.

Reading about victory poles right before playing through my first freeplay game inspired me to go around placing them everywhere I could, even between biter bases fairly far from my factory.

Once I finally got around to clearing those spawns, this left me with a huge area free from spawns and thus a complete end of attacks--present and future. Victory poles allow you to create a permanent, virtual bubble around your factory (larger than the pollution cloud) and that just feels wrong. Spawners don't creep in, and since biters won't attack from afar unless pollution hits them, it's a cheap yet inevitably tempting tactic.

Wooden boxes and power poles shouldn't keep your base protected to the end of time. Since when do biters listen to No Trespassing signs?! :-)

Instead of the simple, huge, multi-chunk(?) radius around man-made objects, let's make it a bit more dynamic:

  • Player (Large spawn-blocking radius; same old aggro radius)

  • Buildings (Tiny blocking radius; same old aggro radius)

  • Optional: Clustered Buildings (Radius that grows with building density so factories have a decent perimeter (maybe shrinking again if spawn density gets higher nearby?))

  • Optional: Connected Power lines (Small blocking; small aggro radius)

  • Walls/path-finding distance (Must be near existing spawn && No quantum tunneling!)

  • Passing trains (Medium-yet-decaying-slowly-over-time-since-last-train blocking around the rails (enough to keep them from settling near actively used tracks); moderately increased aggro radius (Trains might need turrets, with big biters being drawn in from just outside the no-spawn area by those noisy trains...!)

  • New Building: Thumpers (Very Large blocking, Extremely Large periodic aggro radius)

Yes, this is a Half-Life 2 reference. Except instead of scaring the biters, it blocks nearby creation of spawns while drawing in attacks from existing ones further away.

This would mean:

  • Early game safety due to player's buffer zone
  • Realism: Spawners don't randomly appear while you are nearby...
  • Realism: ...but aren't blocked over a huge area by a random power pole in the woods.
  • Realism: They can settle near anything you've built and decide it's in their way, if you don't stop them...or keep them fearing/chasing random trains so they avoid the tracks.... :)
  • Later on, preventing spawns from getting closer to you and your base would require active measures.
  • These active measures would attract attacks from distant, existing spawns, and actually draw some fire away from other (noise pollution, anyone?) pollution centers. It's similar to how turrets are currently attacked first, but on a much larger scale.
  • Clearing spawns around your base would buy you some time as it always has.
  • A mining base without a thumper would attract the same attention as before (more or less, depending on train effects...) but without a thumper, spawns might creep in, increasing attacks.
  • Thumpers would lead to more predictable (every 15 minutes perhaps, disabling random times for affected spawns), larger attacks, giving you a more proactive role in defending your base mid-game while keeping the area clear for easy expansion

My questions are:

  1. Can this currently be done with a mod? It seems like many of the modifications to the AI and maybe even spawn placement might be too integrated with the engine, but I haven't dug in deep just yet.

  2. Any other related ideas/thoughts/changes for biter spawn/threat behavior?

  3. Would you use this if it were a mod?

  4. Would you like to see something like this in the base game, or keep victory poles waving in defiance of all realism? :)

Posted Apr 13, 2016, 7:29 AM UTC · edited

1650
Rouilleur•

Don't place victory poles : fixed !

27
cascade_olympus•

Best solution!

3
theFroh•

Afaik spawners don't appear out of thin air, a separate group of biters gather and run to their desired spawning spot, die and create a spawner, so I'd assume pathing already plays into this.

Good ideas, though. I'd be a fan of a thumper. Could be balanced by having thumpers contribute to the evolution factor comparatively significantly, and/or cause larger swarms on average to be sent after it.

And yeah, not a fan of victory poles.

15
error_logicOP•

I'm not sure it would need evolution balancing, unless you mean from the reduction in absorption (is it absorption or emission that increases evolution?).

Larger, more regular swarms would be a natural consequence due to the increased area of a larger circle. But it would keep the inner circle clear until you were ready to expand into it!

1
RedditNamesAreShort•

Unfortunately it is global pollution emission that increases evolution. Absorbtion only spawns attack groups.

2
Bliejk•

Nope. It's easy enough to just do an occasional sweep of your borders and collect any new alien artifact deposits which have spawned.

But the Misanthrope mod does a lot of what you want. It's still pre-alpha but certainly victory poles will avail you none.

Btw nice reference to halflife 2. I always like to say "outbreak outbreak outbreak!" when the bugs break through my defenses.

7
error_logicOP•

alien artifact deposits

Wow, someone left their power armor goggles on! :-)

Thanks for the mention of Misanthope. That combined with some other mentions of thumper mods makes it sound like this might be doable.

Glad you liked the reference. Yours made me want to actually go back and play Half-Life 2 again!

2
TheTastyPeon•

Noob here, what's a victory pole?

7
XsNR•

You can enable, in the dev overlay (F4 iirc) showing spawnable chunks, you use this in conjunction with seeing the pollution overlay to ensure that no spawners are in range of your pollution before it dissipates, thus making sure that you never get attacked, because of the way spawners only spawn when they absorb pollution, and biters only attack when their congregation point overflows.

The victory pole itself is a way of using how the safety mechanisms work to prevent a spawner being set up too close to anything player owned, to your advantage, as it has no bearing on exactly what is used to prevent it, so you can use something cheap and mostly unneeded to trigger the safety area around it. A pole is usually used as it requires some of the least useful mid game ingredients, but a box either wood or iron can be easily substituted if copper or wood are particularly valuable, as a "victory stash" so to speak.

7
error_logicOP•

It's an object (commonly a power pole) placed by the player to prevent alien spawn points from appearing nearby. So-named due to the convenience of placing them on the locations you've just destroyed old spawns and declared victory!

3
cfiggis•

I use wooden boxes because there's always wood lying around I can make a box out of, and I'm stingy with metal-derived objects.

2
[deleted]•

[deleted]

1
kann_•

Isn't the core problem of victory poles this:

  • Every building blocks spawn.
  • Biters only aggro on pollution/military buildings.

Thus, a change that only pollution/military buildings block spawn would solve quite a bit of the unbalance.
Granted biters should not just spread towards train lines as well, so it needs some more adjustments.

7
onebit•

Victory turrets?

5
P8zvli•

Nothing says "go away" quite like a gatling gun

3
edclancer001•

That would also give you an indication of where biters are looking to set-up shop again.

1
pshendry•

Why not?

  • Theme-wise, I don't see how tracks ought to scare aliens away from spreading nearby;

  • Trains move fast enough to splatter anything in their way, so as long as they get repaired, aliens near the track pose no serious risk;

  • It opens up the possibility of a turret railcar (or engine) for rail, to clear tracks of nearby aliens. This opens up decisions for the player: use them or not? Put a turret railcar/engine on every train to be safe (but slower and pricier), or load up one train with heavy guns and have it patrol the network?

In general I think the solution is not to limit alien encroachment, but rather to give the player more tools to automate and simplify their defense. I'd love to see a laser turret + solar + accumulator combo for example, so that late-game defenses can be placed effortlessly. Give players the means to scare aliens away from an area, but make it come at a very steep tech/material/power cost.

2
MercDawg•

It should be an option or a mod, but not forced unless they provide of better methods of handling biters. That is what it comes down to.

If you try to redo how they spawn, they become uncontrollable and a major pain. It will be a lot more difficult to maintain megabases or large factories.

I tried misanthrope, which redoes their mechanics. It really is a ton of fun, but in the end, it lagged my game during the attack phases on a death world and realized there isn't enough tools to truly handle that type of gameplay. Spending hours slowly turret creeping isn't that fun.

Basically, a player has in mind how they want to play. Changing the biting spawner mechanics and AI without additional tools forces a lot of players to play more defensively the entire game, which they may not want to do. Being on the defensive makes it more difficult to progress.

7
Rseding91Developer•

"Do victory poles seem broken to you?": yes.

If I was allowed I would delete that entire section of logic from the game's code.

5
error_logicOP•

Hey, thanks for reading, and all the work you've done on the game!

3
scwizard•

Who or what is stopping you?

1
Rseding91Developer•

I work for Wube :) Kovarex and Tomas are the ones in charge.

2
Whiplash72•

yes please suggest this

1
scwizard•

I hope you've at least told them your thoughts :)

What sort of bug AI would you like to see?

1
DedlySpyder•

Personally, I use the RSO option that turns off biter expansion, because u don't find fighting them all that fun. If I want to play a map with holding them off then I wouldn't victory pole. Is it that hard to not be tempted by it if you don't like it?

5
TimmPure•

I personally find biter management more of a hassle than enjoyable gameplay in the late-game anyways. I'm in it for the logistics, so I'm happy with the current arrangement, but I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to complicating things a little. There are enough mods around that eliminate or soften biter interaction anyways, if I'd get really fed up.

3
roy777•

I think the Mithanthrope mod does change biter spawn behavior some.

2
__redruM•

Late game bitter mechanics could use an update. Once I have laser turrets and walls bitters become trivial. More so with repair bots. An all out bitter attack when the rocket pad is placed would make things more interesting.

2
healer56•

even though i never use victory poles i find your ideas really good !

1
hapes•

I don't use them either. I tend to destroy bases and take over the land.

2
XsNR•

  • Buildings (Tiny blocking radius; same old aggro radius)

  • Optional: Clustered Buildings (Radius that grows with building density so factories have a decent perimeter (maybe shrinking again if spawn density gets higher nearby?))

You could simply have an additive effect on buildings, base range 5 squares, each square used +1, probably with some division method to reduce the range of hyper-clustered mining bases.

1
alexander_q•

Can we just turn off spawn blocking altogether? Would that be terrible?

1
scyth3s•

Yeah, when hives pop up in the middle of your base while you're on the opposite side of the map.

3
error_logicOP•

There's a mod for that. Worms.

1
Rseding91Developer•

Turrets solve those issues before they happen.

1
scyth3s•

If I want to waste turrets :/ the middle of my base because of a broken spawning mechanicmechanic...

Turrets are for the ever changing frontier!

1
When_thelightsgodown•

My impression is that a new spawn is produced by existing aliens setting up a base, so unless the biters can reach a point on foot, they can't set up a base there. If there was no blocking, they still could not set up inside your wall as they have no way to get there.

3
Larszx•

My suggestion would be to make biters patrol more and farther away from spawners, patrol back and forth between spawners. They would destroy victory poles. And then plant their own victory pole. It would add some interaction that isn't combat. Make a real Flag Pole(s) that you craft.

1
LastLifeLost•

And custom flags to put on those poles, maybe?

1
GoobyPlees•

I already thought about armored trains and having a wagon stuffed with machinegun turrets sounds super nice to me. Though they should of course be super heavy and slow the train a bit

1
error_logicOP•

Yeah that part has been done. Lots of options out there. Looks like many of the things I mentioned exist already in one form or another!

1
Daktush•

I think the native mechanics should be reviewed. I can't expand anywhere interesting without turret creeping half an hour in any direction.

In my opinion bases should be less frequent, have a bigger aggro range and become better defended as evolution factor increases. Taking a base down should be a strategic investment and not a brainless grind forwards.

  1. Make minimum spacing between native bases

  2. Natives aggro at sound sources even if pollution doesn't hit them

  3. Possibilities to take down a heavily established and evolved Hive: Artillery or Mechanized troops (If you arti them you will create a really big source of sound)

  4. Natives should not be reduced to two states (either being in base or rushing forwards). Make scouts spawn to patrol territory and destroy player-made objects.

I too think victory poles should go. Instead make bases spawn 3-4 chunks away from sources of pollution or sound (so the least complicated victory pole would be 2 t2 assemblers barrelling and unbarreling oil and powered by solar panels, but that would aggro any biters nearby).

1
error_logicOP•

Definitely agree about the bases being overly numerous and dense aesthetically speaking. It almost looks like they grow from carbon in the air, like plants......wait a second. ;-)

Still, a more rugged base that replaces 3-4 regular spawns would be excellent.

2
Daktush•

Or 1 hivemind that spawns 3 or 4 outposts nearby when it feels threatened, clear the hivemind clear the area

1
error_logicOP•

Maybe... The main issue I see is that spawns are annoyingly numerous yet so low in health compared to behemoths. Much less clutter to put it all in one building, much the way the behemoths themselves were a replacement for huge numbers of smaller creatures.

2
ayylmao31•

I agree it's certainly in need of fixing, but I doubt we'll see a creative solution any time soon. Imo it seems like a low priority problem. The workaround is that the player... just not do it.

1
saqqara13•

Yeah as funny as the "victory pole" term is, it's a little silly - I'd imagine they'd consider that a bug.

1
SuprcheeseIon Cannon Ready•

Yes, victory poles are very overpowered and the devs have stated they want to remove the victory pole mechanic.

1
TruePikachuTechnician Electrician•

I'd modify the system so that instead of having the enemy expansion chunks be represented as a boolean of sorts (as it is right now), it would instead be a probability which varies based on the distance from the nearest "structure chunk" (a chunk with a player-built structure or an enemy base; probability is zero in these chunks) and pollution (with greater pollution resulting in a lesser probability). This probability would probably vary logramithically with distance (approaching one as distance approaches infinity), and have pollution subtract from the probability (not add, not multiply, not divide).

My reasoning for the subtraction is to reduce the number of nearby new spawns for heavy pollution (since said pollution already will cause a greater area of bases to attack the player), while relatively increasing it for clean factories (to compensate for their lesser contribution to aggravating enemies).

The effects of this would change things so that victory poles are much less effective (since they only prevent formation in their own chunk, while discouraging it nearby instead of preventing it there), and would probably form a new "exploit" of using pollution generators to try to reduce the formation in a greater area -- something which already has the effect of making a larger area of enemy bases become aggressive.

A lot of this would need to be balanced to be optimal, but it is a good start for a new system's design.

1