Don't Kill the Turtles! (Why Were Victory Poles Removed?)

[🦊 Hermit]

In this game, I'm a proud turtle. I like to wall off a large area of the map for my base, with a nice big buffer zone between my defenses and the local wildlife, so I can concentrate mainly on building and designing rather than battles. I understand it's not everyone's preferred gameplay style, and that's fine, but it's the way I like to play.

Recently in another topic it was brought to my attention that biter AI had been updated, specifically to remove the option of 'Victory Poles', where a player could place a single non-polluting construction like a power pole in a defeated biter nest, to prevent them from recolonising that area. This concerned me, as this is one of my favorite strategies and a totally valid one in terms of game lore and my preferred gameplay style. So I went for a drive in the wilderness beyond my factory walls, and sure enough, discovered that biter bases which I had removed and poled some time ago had begun to respawn.

This is a big blow for my game. Because I was using the pole strategy when creating a buffer zone, I never invested in the infrastructure to wall off and defend such a large area of the map, and now by the time I get to that stage the biters will be at my door. What is more they have now grown into their larger varieties, so my old defenses and tactics will no longer be effective in removing them. I was playing the map on the understanding that my turtle shell was safe, and I could build up to a point where I was ready to make my next move to deal with them - now this is no longer an option, I'm seemingly left in an impossible situation and my only viable choice is to switch the map to peaceful via debug modes.

But there is a bigger problem here, one that concerns me for the future of Factorio overall. This change doesn't just affect my current game, it casts a shadow over the entirety of the turtle gameplay style as a whole. One of the best features of a good game is that it has plenty of options - variety in it's makeup that allows each player to customise, to a degree, the way they play the game. For example, a game like this could cater for the action junkies who like to be under constant attack, as well as the builders and designers for whom the biters are merely a side-element to their preferred gameplay interests.

But removing the option for victory poles - a way to control enemy forces over a very wide area without extreme defense investment and major, prolonged action episodes, seems like building a coffin for this alternate gameplay style and forcing everyone into a single, limited style of play. Rather than leaving options open and catering for a wider audience, it seems like it's shoehorning everyone to adopt a much more action-based strategy, which does not appeal to me nearly as much and rather dampens my enthusiasm for playing the game tbh. If the turtles were killed, the game might well lose a significant section of it's fanbase, and it would certainly be a big disappointment for me to not find this game as fun any more.

Why is this option being removed? And if it has to be, can we have some kind of alternative that would allow for the same sort of gameplay style, to keep the options open and maintain appeal to a wider audience? Wouldn't it be beneficial to the game and the community as a whole to have more and varied gameplay strategies and options, rather than limiting it in such a way?

Please, don't kill the turtles!

[🦊 Hermit]

Targa eredeti hozzászólása:

To quell any future doubt, there's a simple process to see whether or not this mechanic has been changed or removed. In-game, press F4. Scroll down to show_enemy_expansion_candidate_chunks and place an X in the box. Press F4 again to close the menu. Press M to open your map and then press F5. You should now see green circles where biters have a random chance of creating a new base. Walk into one of the green circles (you can close the map view, the green circles will still show on your minimap) and place a small electric pole. You will see the green circles near your current location disappear, confirming that player-owned objects prevent biter expansion.

If at any time in the future this game behavior is patched out or modified, you should be able to use the same method to determine if the green circles are vanishing or not, and/or what type of player-placed objects can cause them to disappear. This should hopefully prevent misinformation from being spread among the community.

Thank you for your response, however with great respect, this is not quite the issue I am highlighting in the OP. I apologise if I didn't explain it in enough detail. The problem is not that victory poles do not prevent base respawns, they certainly still do.

The issue is that biter AI seems to have been adjusted so that they attack and destroy these victory poles, where in the past they used to only attack buildings which caused pollution, or turrets which attacked them (or walls blocking their way to either of the above). And then once the poles are destroyed, they no longer exist to block a respawn point and so biters can recolonise.

This issue came to light in another thread, where somebody complained that when their base was attacked by biters, the enemies ran straight past their polluting steam engines, and instead began attacking the power pylons leading off from them. Others commented that they had also seen this behavior of attacking non-polluting objects such as poles and transport belts, and this rang true for me as well. In fact, I recalled that in my game a short time ago I had heard an 'under attack' alarm go off, but there had been no biters anywhere near my defenses and no icon appearing on the map. Somebody in that thread made the assirtion that the biter AI had been tweaked in a recent update, to make sure that victory poles were destroyed and so biters could respawn.

So I went into my own game where I had cleared out all enemy bases within a large area of my map, and poled the entire space to ensure they could not come back. I had previously used the debug view to make sure that no green circles appeared anywhere within the cleared area, so resapwning was definitely not possible. And yet, when I checked my map again I found that some new green circles had appeared since I last checked, which could only have happened if one or more of my poles had been destroyed. And sure enough, a biter colony had taken advantage of this and moved into the area, setting up another base in a spot which I had previously cleared and poled completely. I can only assume that the 'under attack' alarm was one of my victory poles being destroyed - since it was beyond the range of my radar it may not have shown up on the map, or perhaps because it was taken out quickly and was in the wilds around my base not in the base propper, I didn't see it.

So in my experience this is definitely an issue. The problem, as I say, is not that poles no longer prevent spawns, but that poles can now be destroyed by biters, which renders their AoE for preventing recolonisation null, and allows enemies to move back in.

zytukin eredeti hozzászólása:

If that is a current version picture of poles still working, it really makes me wonder what is going on with the OPs game. Could just be a bug or maybe even a mistake on his part (like he forgot to pole the nest he checked). If he is using mods, maybe one of them stopped them from working.

Wonder if the OP will return to provide insight now.

I never unsubscribed from this thread, still hoping a dev may pop in sometime to say a few words.

I have no mods in my game...I'm relatively new to Factorio and am exploring all it's gameplay completely vanilla before looking into the modding scene. But I can catagorically state that I made sure the area was fully poled, with no green circles anywhere near, when I cleared the place out. But some of my poles were missing when I went to check the second time, presumably destroyed, and some green circles around that area had come back.

After exploring more thoroughly I think that so far only one single biter base had recolonised (although it's a big area so I may not have found others yet)...I've now used turret creep to remove that again, and am in the process of mass-producing walls and laser turrets to cordon off the entire landmass (yes I know I should have done this at first, but with the pole strategy I didn't think it nessecary). It's come at a bad time, because I was right in the middle of tearing my entire factory apart and rebuilding it pretty much from scratch, but I've managed to throw together the most important production lines to keep things running and focus on those defences. I do have strong defenses at my base entrance and around a resource outpost I built in the waste, but the no-man's-land around those two is completely unprotected save for poles...hopefully I won't lose any more of them before I'm done fortifying.

[Qlimax]

if a base spawned after your poles (so the pole is between the new base and your base) they may attack to pole as it is 'in the way' as they sometimes do with tracks

[🦊 Hermit]

Qlimax eredeti hozzászólása:

if a base spawned after your poles (so the pole is between the new base and your base) they may attack to pole as it is 'in the way' as they sometimes do with tracks

But they weren't moving to attack my factory, as my pollution cloud was nowhere near their spawners. When I cleared out the area around my base I pushed a fair way out into the wilds in every direction, with the expressed intent of making sure that no biter bases would be close to my pollution, so no biters would move to attack. The place they recolonised was several chunks away from the edge of my cloud, so they could not have been moving to attack me when they encountered the pole. The only time they would have seen it is if they were scouting for new base locations, or if they deliberately moved to attack it specifically from their home nest.

[The Chaotic Coder]

Regarding the bugs running right past the furnaces to attack belts, after various observations I think I've figured out why.

Instead of "Find the nearest thing that's making a lot of pollution and attack it", the AI seems to say "Go to the center of the pollution cloud (where it's thickest) and attack whatever's nearby." This means that if I have a bunch of boilers on one side of my base and a bunch of furnaces on the other side, the middle of the pollution will be between them -- so even if this space only has some belts and power lines, that's where the biters will go.

[Kazaanh]

They always attack the target that generates the highest pollution or anything that blocks their way to the target. Ie if its walled

Usually military buildings are first priority.

[🦊 Hermit]

jchardin64 eredeti hozzászólása:

Instead of "Find the nearest thing that's making a lot of pollution and attack it", the AI seems to say "Go to the center of the pollution cloud (where it's thickest) and attack whatever's nearby." This means that if I have a bunch of boilers on one side of my base and a bunch of furnaces on the other side, the middle of the pollution will be between them -- so even if this space only has some belts and power lines, that's where the biters will go.

Interesting observation, I'm not sure myself and would have to check with some tests of my own. The Wiki says they home in on sources of pollution, and only break off from that goal for turrets or the player, but that may not have been updated for the latest game versions and any changes they may have brought. Radars are apparently included in the spectrum of 'defenses', as just today I saw a youtube video of a gamer's factory being inundated by biters - they killed the two players, then made a beeline right for the radar and took that out, then moved on to other things nearby.

Quoted from the wiki: https://wiki.factorio.com/index.php?title=Biter

'The attack group will be focused on destroying the source of the pollution, but will change targets as soon as one appears of higher priority, typically by level of pollution, though they target the player or static defense first and foremost. Biters also have the ability to find their way around a defense, to a degree. This can be used to partially control the movement of the biters allowing turrets longer to damage them, but requires the "bait" of this trap be left open. Biters aren't always willing to fall for the bait. Some biters will choose the most direct route and will attack the walls of the trap regardless making them less predictable and more dangerous.'

As I say though, I myself have experienced them destroying power poles outside my base, and this was not part of a sustained attack on my factory because they never came anywhere near my defenses. It seemed to be a separate behavior, perhaps a new part of their colonisation AI.

[Ice Forge]

Ok so read a few pages, and not sure if i missed this or if someone else mentioned it but why not change the way the critters spawn new bases completely?

A good comparison to the aliens here is the zergs which you could borrow mechanics from, why not have new alien bases be built by the aliens themselves by spawning a drone which deploys a new building of random type depending on evolution factor?

Solves the whole problem with aliens cropping up left and right, as long as you have a frontier any ground you have cleared as long as that base building bug is kept out will not be colonized again?

[🦊 Hermit]

Ice Forge eredeti hozzászólása:

Ok so read a few pages, and not sure if i missed this or if someone else mentioned it but why not change the way the critters spawn new bases completely?

A good comparison to the aliens here is the zergs which you could borrow mechanics from, why not have new alien bases be built by the aliens themselves by spawning a drone which deploys a new building of random type depending on evolution factor?

Solves the whole problem with aliens cropping up left and right, as long as you have a frontier any ground you have cleared as long as that base building bug is kept out will not be colonized again?

That's pretty much what happens already. A group of biters/spitters set off from an already established base to a new area, and when they get there, if the site is suitable, they transform into base spawners. They can be kept out, and no bases will spawn within your factory.

The issue, though, is that if they come across your factory defenses in the process of such scouting, they will start attacking, which (before endgame roboports have been researched) diverts the player from building projects in order to repair and maintain said defences. And when this happens extremely frequently, as it does currently, it kinda spoils the fun for those players who are more interested in the building and logistics side of the game over the defense.

Previously this could be remedied with the victory poles, as biters would not attack them due to them not polluting - instead, the scouting party would just turn around and head back home without spawning a base. But now that biters attack poles and destroy them, this effecitvley means that the only way to control biters is to have defenses, which need maintaining.

On a more general note, I have just come off a game session in my world, and I have more proof that poles can now be destroyed. I took a screenshot this time to show what I'm talking about:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=660941039

I'm currently building defenses to hem in that 'no-man's-land' which I cleared around my pollution cloud with victory poles. You can see the defense line over to the east, that long blue wall. The two biter bases which can be seen just to the west of my position are the second and third ones which were recolonised (the first was over to the east, and I removed it again).

Note the green circles throughout that northern area, possible biter base locations. I can state catagorically that those circles were not there when I initially cleared the area. I set up victory poles in that whole section of the map, and was careful to ensure that no recolonisation points could be seen. The fact that the green circles have reappeared, and indeed that some enemy bases have respawned in the area too, means that those poles I set up must have been removed.

[Kazaanh]

Just place radar and 1-4 solar panels to make it run , they don't attack them and dont settle near it. Instead of victory poles. Or even alone radar unpowered to not explore more areas. I placed rads many several hours ago and still they haven't attacked them, they simply ignore them.

This doesn't look that scary I thought you were under attack 24/7 but I barely see any biters.

Look at mine, my factory is far-top-right, they don't really expand that much in the vanilla game. I used mods to force them to be more agressive and expand more and quicker. But most of these biter bases are pre-generated.

bottom left and middle are my friend and brother bases

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=661020569

You can easily bait biters , just place 4 turrets, wall them off but leave 1 open hole in the wall. Biters will walk around the wall to get the turret inside the wall.

Remeber to have a 1 space between wall and turret because blue biters can atak through 2 tiles and destroy both turret and wall. Thats why you need a 1 space between turrets and walls. So you don't need to wall your entire base with the turrets in the early-mid game. Just make few guarding spots like this. To cover your base perimenter, they are also easy for manual replenish and fix. You can also additionaly in the wall-hole place a converyor belt, it slows biters when they step on it a bit and lets your turret to kill them before they reach them.

[Targa]

As far as biters having their AI changed to destroy victory poles (or other non-polluting objects), to my knowledge, the developers have not made any changes in biter attack AI. Biters have a defined distance they can "wander" away from their base. I've seen this behavior many times in my games, where I'll come upon a group of biters/spitters that appear to be "out for a stroll" (and not establishing a new base). When a biter (or a group) wander around, if they encounter player structures (polluting or not), they may attack and destroy such structures. I've experienced this behavior myself when biters randomly attacked a power pole near a railroad line that had been near their base for many, many hours. It was just a single, random attack and didn't happen again after I had replaced the pole.

The solution to your issue is, I feel, an easy and fairly simple one. Rather than plant victory poles, place a turret or two surrounded by a wall. This is also more realistic when it comes to keeping biters from respawning nearby. This way, if biters do happen to wander into the area, they get killed and your turrets continue to prevent new biter bases from being established. This is my standard method. I set up an assembly machine to build turrets, as well as several to produce ammunition. When I have enough, I wait until I'm doing a lot of research or otherwise causing my "max pollution" cloud. I then walk the perimeter of said cloud, wiping out all biters and planting turrets and walls. Any new biter bases that spawn will be well outside my pollution zone.

Edit: Also, I suspect the developers of the game won't have much sympathy for complaints about "victory poles", since I don't think it's how they intended their game to be played. Just like most, if not all, game developers usually patch and remove game exploits, or "quick and easy ways to kill the Boss", etc...

[🦊 Hermit]

Kazaanh eredeti hozzászólása:

Just place radar and 1-4 solar panels to make it run , they don't attack them and dont settle near it. Instead of victory poles. Or even alone radar unpowered to not explore more areas. I placed rads many several hours ago and still they haven't attacked them, they simply ignore them.

Are you sure they don't attack radars? Not meaning to question your experience or anything, if that's what you have seen in your game then I certainly respect that man, but the tutorial missions say that radars are one of the highest priority targets for biters. And as I said above, I watched a Youtube gameplay video just earlier today in which, once the biters overrunning the player's base had taken out both players, they made a beeline straight for the radar first, and only moved on to the rest of the base once that was destroyed. Again, not meaning to challenge you or anything, just curious because I kinda feel I've seen behavior to the contrary...

Kazaanh eredeti hozzászólása:

This doesn't look that scary I thought you were under attack 24/7 but I barely see any biters.

lol that's because I've driven them all back well beyond my pollution cloud. As I said in the op I went around the whole area creating a large buffer zone between my pollution and the biter nests, with the intention of preventing them from attacking me regularly. While I like the potential for attacks as it does add an element of uncertainty and excitement to the mix, I do much prefer them to be more rare so I can focus mainly on building and logistics. And also, learning the enemy AI and devising ways to control them so their attacks are less frequent is almost a logic challenge and a puzzle in itself, and also something I like doing.

Kazaanh eredeti hozzászólása:

You can easily bait biters , just place 4 turrets, wall them off but leave 1 open hole in the wall. Biters will walk around the wall to get the turret inside the wall.

Is this strategy consistent? The wiki which I quoted above suggested that too, however it said that biters will vary, and while some will go around, others will just try to break the wall down instead. And if that happened, it would necessitate my breaking off from other projects to ensure the walls are maintained, which is the thing I'm trying to redeuce if possible...

Targa eredeti hozzászólása:

As far as biters having their AI changed to destroy victory poles (or other non-polluting objects), to my knowledge, the developers have not made any changes in biter attack AI. Biters have a defined distance they can "wander" away from their base. I've seen this behavior many times in my games, where I'll come upon a group of biters/spitters that appear to be "out for a stroll" (and not establishing a new base). When a biter (or a group) wander around, if they encounter player structures (polluting or not), they may attack and destroy such structures. I've experienced this behavior myself when biters randomly attacked a power pole near a railroad line that had been near their base for many, many hours. It was just a single, random attack and didn't happen again after I had replaced the pole.

I have seen them wandering around before, but I haven't seen them attacking anything until just recently, since the latest couple of updates. Did you see them attacking things before then? If that's the case then I suppose it could be just an element of their behavior that was already present, however it would seem strange to me that they didn't do it to my poles before and only started now. And also it would surprise me that in all the discussion of vicory poling I've seen on the net, that potential for them being destroyed has never been mentioned...I would have thought people would warn newbies of this quite often so they didn't trust the strategy to keep them completely safe 100% of the time.

EDIT: Saw your edit and responded ~

Targa eredeti hozzászólása:

Edit: Also, I suspect the developers of the game won't have much sympathy for complaints about "victory poles", since I don't think it's how they intended their game to be played. Just like most, if not all, game developers usually patch and remove game exploits, or "quick and easy ways to kill the Boss", etc...

Eh, I can understand that some might term it an 'exploit' as it perhaps isn't quite the intended method of gameplay the devs were planning. However as I've stated earlier in the topic, the concept of it really makes sense to me on a game lore level, it seems logical and sound. And if it opens up new gameplay options and attracts a new audience to the game to broaden it's appeal and reach, how can that be a bad thing? It doesn't spoil the game for others who do not like it...they could simply choose not to place said poles.

[Kazaanh]

The radar on my screen you see, at the bottom of the map , I placed it 60 hours ago and it still survived.

They really ignore it, and bases around its radius were there before I placed that radar. It was a small test I did and it works.

[Zhardoz]

If you put radar all around they wont settle closeby. They can only spawn 4 chunks away from any of your building. So what i do is make solar panel with radar so they dont spawn in that peremeter also they wont attack beacause it doesnt pollute, keeping a safe peremeter for your main base.

[Nebulorum]

I was upset initially with the AI change. If you look at expansion chunks now you can see that they are always colonizable. So after playing the game under the new rules I think it's not bad at all.

On Vanilla (no Mods) you can lower the biter spawn frequency and that means that you will get very little attacks for at least half of the game. I've been using the following strategy (worked twice, No-crafting challenge and 15 hour speed run):

1) Build the odd turret around polluting spaces on the beginning
2) When you have enough wall production, but not enough to encircle you base, build pillboxes. Four turrets around a box of ammo with inserters to fill them up and a wall around it all.
3) Once you have enough wall, encircle your base. This allows you time to reach the attack, stop it and setup defenses.
4) Go to laser turrets for the rest of the game. If you are not using laser, make us of belt specially in outpost. Make a belt look around the outpost (loop makes sure ammo is always going around). Make turret get ammo from the belt. And have a chest inserting ammo into the loop. If you don't want power poles everywhere, use burner inserters and a mix of ammo and coal.

I actually used this to get the no laser turret achievement.

With mods (specially RSO), you have a much larger perimeter to defend. I haven't played too much on that but I have tested some ideas.

1) Surround your outpost with pillboxes and wall.
2) Setup a train to refill out post (wall, bots, ammos, repair packs)
3) Build a "laser fence".
I create a blue prince with 3 large power poles. The two on the edge have 4 laser turrets. The one in the middle has none. You can't use the maximum distance of the power poles because the pole in the middle will not be in range of the turrets. If you do it right, the pole in the middle will be protect by the tower groups in the each (make sure there is an overlap)
I then make a fence of these segment 4 turrets - big pole - 4 turrets - pole -...

From my experience the bitter colonization party is not strong enough to overwhelm the turrets. If they try to sneak in the middle they get aggroed by the towers on the sides. You don't need a solid wall to avoid colonization, just to kill the parties of colonization bitters. This is a "active victory pole" :) For the 3-4 hours I played with this I have not lost turrets. You could place walls around the turrets, but I did not feel a need.

Also I have been using larger and more frequent water. With the landfill now in the game it is not such a big problem and it creates natural choke points.

[Absolute Horizon]

I would have to agree with a previous poster in the fact that if it is made an optional "feature" of the game people would be inclined to use it whether they wanted to or not. It is the easy way out. I enjoy defending my base against attacks and hate to be interupted while building something in my factory. I have found myself simply placing poles over nests to keep them from respawning. I always have felt this to be cheating though, and personally this cheapens the game experience to me. There is no point in building defenses for a force that will never arrive because you blocked all the spawns. If you really wanted them to not respawn, why would you want them to spawn in the first place. By placing these so called victory poles, you remove the urgency and the desire to build defenses entirely. In fact using this pole "strategy" I have found that I am increasingly unlikely to even build walls at all. Just dot a turret here and there next to a power pole to catch any straglers that trickle in from the very edge of my pollution ring. I have come to conclude that this type of play is very much cheating by nature as it directly affects the intended difficulty of the game and lessens the ability to prepare adequate defenses as your factory expands. So then, I ask, would you be opposed to using console commands to achieve the same thing. Just because you can do the same thing with a placeable item, doesn't really matter what item, does not detract from the intended purpose of the action: to get ahead using a method unintended by game designers (hence the removal). I ask then, why not use console commands? IF the developers reimplement such useage of "victory poles" you can operate under the assumption that their removal was accidental and that the premise is valid. However, until that change is made and I stand corrected, I can only assume that such activity is deemed as against the spirit of the core game.

Long story short, use the console commands, it's also cheating in the same spirit of victory poles and achieves the same effect. I will retract my comment upon being proven wrong by a reversal of this change.