Kill Biters in new and exciting ways using Factorio's four energy systems: burner, electric, steam, and heat. Burner weapons do the most damage but also consume the most resources. Electric weapons are convenient and ecologically friendly. Steam weapons focus on the cycle of rebirth - like how water turns to steam and back to water. They are complicated to use but do good damage for the amount of resources spent. Heat weapons are simple and brutal. They use a good deal of basic resources. Each faction will eventually have an early game turret that represents a basic understanding of the energy type, a mid game turret that uses it more effectively, and a late game artillery that demonstrates mastery.
This mod was inspired by Barron Factions, which lets you build factories based on the four energy systems. However it has not been tested for compatibility (yet) and is still missing several turrets before they should be used together.
Factions
The Burner faction is the closest to vanilla. The other factions are balanced around the vanilla's gun turret.
Gun Turret
Unchanged from vanilla
Flamethrower Turret
The flamethrower has always felt overpowered to me. It uses very little fuel and yet it can single-handedly defend chokepoints from hoards of biters.
- Reduced damage by 40%
- Greatly increased fuel usage from 3 per second to 50 per second, or 1 barrel per second
Cannon Turret
An automated tank turret. There is a mod option for disabling friendly fire. Friendly fire is enabled by default for greater mod compatibility.
Rocket Turret
Fires long range rockets. This also has a mod option to disable friendly fire.
Artillery Turret
How can you improve on perfection?
Unchanged from vanilla.
Rocket Buggy
Fast moving car with a high speed rocket launcher on top. It's perfect for hit and run tactics against biter bases.
Mastodon Tank
Powerful end-game tank that can crush large biter bases.
Electric turrets trade off damage and efficiency for convenience. You will need large fields of solar panels to power these defenses.
Taser
A personal weapon that stuns biters, base worms, and spawners.
Tesla Turret
Early-game electric turret that shoots lightning at enemies. Has short range but relatively high DPS. Consumes a great deal of power.
Use the newly added Capacitor Bank to keep the lights from flickering when the Tesla Turret shoots.
Thor Turret
Late-game Tesla Turret that does AOE and slows enemies. Does more damage than Tesla Turrets, has longer range, and uses even more power. You'll need nuclear power for these monsters.
Laser Turret
I felt like the Tesla Turret and vanilla Laser Turret had too much overlap. I decided to make the Laser Turret focus more on long-range damage. I did the math and increasing the range mostly makes up for lower DPS by allowing more turrets to engage the target.
- Increased Range from 21 to 30
- Reduced Damage from 20 to 12
Storm Artillery
Creates lightning storms over biter nests using high power microwaves. It only needs electricity to fire so it is logistically easier to use than traditional artillery, however, it has lower range and DPS. Storm ammo is built in "Storm Chargers."
Steampunk weapons are elaborate and partially reusable. They have comparable DPS to Burner tech with lower material costs.
Pneumatic Rifle Turret
Skewers biters with iron sticks that can penetrate multiple enemies per shot. The gun discharges an empty steel barrel with every shot.
Upgrades with physical projectile technologies
Clockwork Garrison
Dispatches Clockwork Defenders. Spent defenders can be refurbished and sent back to the front.
Functionally complete, still working on art
Pneumatic Cannon
Mid-game artillery that shoots shrapnel bombs and clockwork drones.
Blender Turret
Slices nearby biters to pieces using a steam-powered spinning blade. It is about as sturdy as a stone wall, which is good, because it has melee range.
Lawnmower
A very study tank armed with a blender and pneumatic rifle. This thing can take a beating while mowing down biters.
Heat weapons are very easy to set up, have higher DPS than electric, however use a great deal of basic resources. They taint the land with a layer of metal that can be harvested as raw ore. All weapons use a new molten metal crafting process.
Molten Metal Crafting
Iron, copper, and steel can be turned into an intermediate liquid form. This allows furnaces to run slightly faster by specializing on certain steps of the process, however, it does not increase the overall yield of the recipe.
You now need to manually set furnace recipes
Superheated Slag Slinger
Drenches nearby enemies in molten metal. A very powerful early-game defense.
There are several copies of this turret, one for each molten metal. This is to work around limitations of the modding API.
Each shot has a low percent chance of spawning raw ore. Don't expect it to change immediately.
Molten Metal Mortar
Launches molten metal on enemies, leaving a puddle that damages and slows over time.
There are several copies of this turret, one for each molten metal. This is to work around limitations of the modding API.
Each shot has a low percent chance of spawning raw ore. Don't expect it to change immediately.
Misc Vanilla Changes
- Biters & Spitters - Movement speed now affected by tiles
- Biter base defense worms (Optional, disabled by default)
- Increased range by ^1.15: small 25→41, medium 30→50, big 38→66, behemoth 48→86
- Increased projectile velocity proportionally to range: small 0.3375→0.5535, behemoth 0.3375→0.6047
- All furnaces converted to assembly machines and given pipe connections
- Fluid Handling Technology
- Moved 'Pump' recipe from 'Fluid Handling' to 'Engine'
- Removed 'Engine' technology prerequisite from 'Fluid Handling',
- Replaced 'Fluid Handling' technology prerequisite with 'Engine' in 'Flamethrower' technology
- Weapons tab is organized by ammo type (Optional, but basically required)
