Dev blog #12

Let's talk about grabbers.

Grabbers are heavily inspired by factorio's inserters. They look the same and they behave (mostly) the same. They work great and they get the job done, i.e. transfer an item from an entity to another. It's a basic but core mechanic of the game.

However, there is a big problem. It's not swarmy enough. And this game is supposed to be all about swarms.

When I was in the design stages of the game, I pictured the equivalent of factorio's inserters to a stationary worker that simply grabs an item and rotates it 180* degrees. It would've been a sort of crab with a hard shell and a pincer. But then I realized that it wouldn't make sense for it to be a worker since it's stationary. It can't burrow, it can't fly or walk. So what makes it a worker other than the sprite? It would functionally still just be an inserter with a different sprite. And therein lies the same problem that some people today suggest as an alternative to the current grabber: an appendage, or a tentacle or something 'more living'. But that doesn't solve the root issue of being mechanically the same entity as an inserter. I couldn't find a solution for this at the time. So I chose instead to go for something visually similar to the inserter so that at least factorio players brains can easily associate the 2 together and transfer their inserter skills into this game.

But today, some players say that it's too mechanical and not organic enough. Some say it's not insecty or swarmy enough. And not as many people say the opposite.

So let's fix that.

Enter the Snatcher. These are going to be an alternative (not a replacement) to the grabbers. Functionally, their purpose is similar i.e. load/unload stuff. But mechanically and visually, they will be radically different.

What are snatchers? They are cute little flying insects that work at almost any entity that has an inventory. They can be created at a molder from larva, and controlled via worker bays or auto distribution, just like any other worker.

In this gif we have a few forges and a snatcher. A forge has an input slot, an output slot and a fuel slot. Normally grabbers would take care of filling the forge or emptying its output. But let's say you hate that mechanical abomination that is just an inserter with tendrils. What if instead, you can assign a snatcher to the forge to acquire all the needed resources and output them onto movers? In the gif above, you'll see a snatcher depositing iron ore directly onto movers from the depot. You'll also notice each forge has a snatcher. The middle forge snatcher is taking fuel from the forge on the right, which takes its own from the chest. So with snatchers you can create these sort of feeding chains.

In the gif above, you can see how to define the cells that snatchers 'working' at that jumper can take from. This is called 'Tab mode' and it allows you to set input, output and mixed (you can set a cell as both input and output if you really want to get spaghetti) cells depending on the entities.

Different buildings will have different area sizes and different base amounts of snatchers that can work there. Both the range and the amount can scale via genetic codes, and the snatchers themselves will come in 3 different flavors. They also scale in the amount of stuff they can grab, ahem, snatch, at a time, as well as their speed.

'But Mitchy, why would I use these complicated bugs when I could just slap down a grabber and call it a day? I have to set up a whole new worker production line, plus control their distribution via worker bays!'

Well, are you a Swarm engineer or a Human engineer?! What other reason do you want other than doing it for the Swarm and creating jobs?!

Actually, there are pros and cons to snatchers and grabbers and it's going to depend on your style of gameplay.

Grabber pros:

1. Easy and familiar to set up

2. No distribution involved

3. Some higher level grabbers can be configured to use a whitelist/blacklist

4. May deposit into an output slot

Grabber cons:

1. Not the Swarm way

2. Costs energy to upkeep

3. Cannot grab from a fuel slot

Snatcher pros:

1. Swarm approved way

2. No energy usage, one time cost at production time

3. Doesn't block cells around the building, unlike grabbers

4. Can potentially reach farther than even the long grabber

5. Shouldn't result in as much spaghetti because it can take/output from/to multiple cells at the same time. Same can be accomplished with multiple grabbers but not quite on the same scale.

6. Can grab from fuel slots. This is useful for some entities like forges. It also allows you to set up a mining outpost without having to bring power and the whole firefly infrastructure that comes with it to the outpost.

Snatcher cons

1. Harder to set up. You'd need worker bays for fine grained worker distribution later in the game instead of relying on just auto distribution.

2. Doesn't have filtering capability and can't deposit into output slots.

3. Can't be used by chests and movers, which means chest-mover interaction has to be done vis grabber only. Chest-anything else and mover-anything else works.

So that's about it for this blog. Next one I want to talk about the technicals of implementing such a mechanic without burning down your pc.