2.0 Bob's Enemies

[Qatavin]

Just to get this out of the way first, I am not currently working on this mod. As I understand it, @Icecoldmeat is updating it to be functional in 2.0.

This thread is to discuss any plans we might have for the next phase after we get everything basically working. Things like how can we make enemies a bit more interesting? Should we try to create Rampant-style factions for the six elemental types? That sort of thing. Is there any interest in this sort of thing?

Also, I made an upscaled artifact icon, if we happen to want that.

[KiwiHawk]

Enemies has been updated and as far as I can tell, is now working. Nothing new though. I've applied the upscaled icon.

[Qatavin]

It's working okay, but there's a little something off about the tinting on these guys. They're really not meant to look so... vibrant.

[Qatavin]

I've been testing a few things here and there with this, in preparation for making a major revision. There are a few straightforward changes that absolutely must be made to start with, as a result of the updates to vanilla. Namely, the way that spawners now get a health boost from evolution, up to a maximum of +900%. At that level, with the health increase setting enabled, even a nuclear bomb would barely make a dent on a super spawner's 500,000 health. So, that's gonna be coming down to a level more proportional to what it was previously. I will also be creating a map settings config with greatly slowed evolution growth factors.

My overall plan is to implement a pared-down version of what Rampant does with factions. Instead of relying on the build_base_evolution_requirement parameter, when evolution conditions are met (around 0.5 or 0.4 evolution) I should be able to use the on_build_base_arrived and on_biter_base_built events to identify newly created spawners and worms, and remove and replace them. By detecting nearby structures already built, I can bias each base toward a specific element to a greater or lesser degree. Initially, bases would be all of one element, but towards the end that would increase to 2 or 3.

As for the factions, I hope to make them distinct enough to push players towards different approaches to defense and offense. The initial enemies will be extended to still spawn all the way through the endgame, and will have the special trait of all of their ranged attacks inflicting a different sticker. Different stickers can stack, so getting a lot of alien goo on you can really slow you down. At higher levels, their bases will also spawn "Hardened bile" rocks when they are created, in order to throw up obstacles... literally. Nothing too interesting on their own, but could be troublesome to attack in combination with other enemies.

Piercing and electric biters remain the first new ones to appear. Piercing enemies will of course use and be resistant to physical attacks, including impacts, and will speed themselves up when hit with any kind of damage other than electric. Electric enemies will resist lasers and be effectively immune to electric effects, including being stunned by discharge defenses. Electricity will instead speed them up, and their ranged attacks will leave electric pools that will trigger this effect, making them even more important to avoid than usual. And of course, they also resist lasers. So, you have one group of enemies strong against gun turrets and another strong against laser turrets.

As always, explosive and acid enemies come next. Explosive enemies will be fragile, with slow attacks that do high damage. They may also explode on death, and their ranged attacks may cause a delayed second explosion. Not too complicated, but may be a nightmare for bots. And where explosive enemies are all about burst damage, acid enemies will be focused on damage over time, with damage-inflicting stickers and acid pools that last an extended amount of time, but do not become stronger when fueled. Still very damaging, but much easier for bots to deal with. However, low-mobility options like drones and AAI automated vehicles will find this faction very hard to fight.

Taking another page from Rampant's book, poison enemies will use poison to both inflict damage and to heal their allies. I might be able to get 2.0's following-smoke to work with this. Lastly, fire enemies will all about building damage. Attacks will come fast, doing little damage at first, but the damage multiplier on their fire-acid flames will build up rapidly, and the flames will have a limited ability to spread.

All enemies will also have distinctive resistances that should help to push players towards using combat options they might normally overlook, such as flamethrowers.