I think I’d enjoy, if the enemies came after me in a more systematic fashion, at least in one scenario. I think the Hunted is a great idea, but it has potential for much more. Now the fun is over after you kill a single, not too difficult, enemy.
As it is, getting stable i.e. having the skills and supplies to survive indefinitely is pretty easy. Once you get past the first couple of hours of a new run, the only way you can really die is if you go raiding high danger areas recklessly. A bit later you can waltz through them too and not die unless you really try to.
I would really like the idea of constantly being targeted and attacked with waves of enemies ever increasing in power. A bit like in Rimworld. That’d force you to actually struggle to stay ahead of the curve instead of just sitting on your ass surviving. There’d be some real motivation to go get the high level gear.
Optimally there’d be a base where the enemy attacks are originating - maybe even an extraplanar one. You could end the targeted attacks by destroying the base, but it should require an absurdly imbalanced amount of power available only to dirty minmaxers =)
That might be OK as an option, but some people are more interested in e.g. exploration and base building than constantly tethering on the brink of destruction struggling to stay alive, so it would not be a good thing to push onto everyone.
However, the game is currently intended to be unwinnable, so a way to actually win would have to be implemented in a mod.
I wish you can have your base get attacked too. But honestly NPC companions might not be up to the task at the moment, NPC attackers like bandits too even. If its gonna be bandits then I think they should have monster AI so there won’t be much lag if we get to the point where we’d be fighting a horde of them. Or we could be fighting more eldritch threats, migos makes sense to me not sure about triffids or fungals though considering how they change terrains.
Oh, and we could just let the player to destroy the one base that’s attacking specifically them. That’d basically restore the game to the current default state, but wouldn’t really be “winning”, so it wouldn’t have to be an ethical problem =)
The benefit of implementhing something like this would be to give a more active challenge (maybe as a scenario) and thus extra motivation, but still not really changing anything fundamental. I guess I’ve already said this too many times, but I’d really like to find a relevant use case for laser cannons and grenade launchers.
The game is already a weird mix-and-match roulette of a few hundred other games. Making it a tower defense game would drive people away from playing. Some people already seem annoyed by the fact they are forced to play with Portal Storms on - a feature that is just, essentially, an artificial way to prevent player progression and (in my opinion) adds nothing but tedium.
Adding more mandatory tedium to the game would most likely get a lot of people to stop playing it entirely - especially given the fact that some people seem to be against implementing mods / toggles for people to remove these things.
I think it should be noted here, that in both of my messages I specifically wrote about adding a scenario. I fail to see how having such an option (which apparently appeals to other people besides me) would in any way make the game less good for anyone.
Also, having active threats seeking you out doesn’t equal tower defense in my opinion. Rather this kind of content would address the problem of not having anything worthwhile to use good gear for. I find myself unwilling to start new runs too often, since they all end in the downer moment when you realize there’s no use for all the stuff and skills you’ve worked so hard to get.
Reminds me of 7 days to die every 7th night was horde night and they’d all unleash hell on your base, id definitely love this, as pre static spawn days i lost a base to a horde that spawned outside due to the noise i was making, was one of my favorite runs.
There’s already plenty of discussion on the github about a ‘faction’ mode that is likely more in line with this desire, as your faction base is supposed to draw attention, and danger can be significantly ramped up as the player is no longer limited to a single permadeath character. Part of this project includes improvements to NPC’s for defensive purposes, and the various options for attackers. Its definitely a longer term project, and hasn’t seen much attention in a while though. It seems like the initiative might have shifted to ‘proving’ it out so to speak in a rebuild of Defense Mode first. Both rely on finishing the decoupling of ‘player’ from ‘single character’ and improving NPC’s to be less dumb, and AI work is a particularly difficult, finicky, and thankless space when you want to move past the most basic of behaviors.
In the short term, have you tried playing with wandering hordes enabled? They’re not down to systemic scheduled attacks, but they are large groups that’ll converge on you if your doing loud shit, or just pass through if you’re unlucky… Been a while since I played with them myself to be honest so I’m not sure how much development they’ve gotten.
It’s good to hear something like this is in the works.
As for the hordes, they don’t really cut it. They’re not very strong or determined. Any advanced character will cut through them like butter.
But let’s hope people get back to working with these types of faction improvement. Having a faction base under attack by another faction sounds pretty much in line with my original idea.
We could simply add a more difficult version of the hunted scenario. Something like:
Doomed:
“Ever since the sky broke you have been hunted by something. You don’t know what it is but you have seen it rip though the undead and unspeakable horrors alike. You have managed to lose it but you feel as if it can still see you. And now that things have calmed down you are sure that NOTHING will get between you and it.”
It should spawn some kind of monster that is much stronger than the relentless hulk and will tunnel through solid rock to get to you.
You can also have it start out with a relatively weak monster and spawn increasingly stonger monsters as you kill the previous one or you can make the creature respawn between one hour and 3 months after it is killed for extra masocism.
I actually really like this particular idea - Both as a single nightmare monster at a time, but also the idea of a scenario where you just attract hordes from a distance, or even one where a bandit group has it out for you - Imagine a CDDA run where you sign up to be chased by people with guns. Definitely too evil for a normal run, but would make a really fun challenge run. These are challenges that you don’t really ‘grow out of’. No matter your power level, having to constantly defend against major hordes, or a major monster, or risk your life in every gun fight will keep the tension up.
