[MOD 0.18] Robot Army. v0.4.4

[kyranzor]

When I do the next update for autofill should I add in guard stations to the autofill list?

No because the recipe has to be set, I could force it like I did way back in the day for the droid assembler in 0.1.3 but what would it be set to? 4 droids available now.

I am working on trying a recipe-independent way of spawning and when that works you could indeed add a way to autofill but it's not really something people would use because a guard station needs a bit of love and care and time to set up lol.

Whacking down some turrets to defend the guard station from attack needs the good old auto fill though

[Nexela]

Oh yeah totally forgot about the setting of recipes for the guard station...........

[MatthewGP]

Hi, I have been enjoying your mod very much still. Thank you again.

I have three things I wanted to mention, the first has to do with the retreat setting. I presently am deploying groups of twenty droids and have retreat set to 10 droids remaining. When they get down to 10 droids, the retreat method will work and I have had groups arrive back at a spawner. However, if the group gets knocked down to 9 droids, they will just stand around in a group and not go anywhere anymore. The second thing is regarding the groups that do arrive back at a spawner with 10 droids. I have the droid spawners spawn 30 at a time. The idea was that a group would get back, pick up 10 fresh recruits and head out again. It appears that the mechanic doesn't function that way presently. Maybe I misunderstood how the retreat function would work when arriving back at the spawner?

The third thing was an idea I had regarding Guard mode or possibly a patrol mode. Since the droids operate based on biter code maybe there could be a method to have the droids patrol the edge of the pollution cloud. Have them move along where pollution exists, but is under x%.

Anyways, I am excitedly looking forward to your next release. Cheers!

[kyranzor]

Hi, I have been enjoying your mod very much still. Thank you again.

I have three things I wanted to mention, the first has to do with the retreat setting. I presently am deploying groups of twenty droids and have retreat set to 10 droids remaining. When they get down to 10 droids, the retreat method will work and I have had groups arrive back at a spawner. However, if the group gets knocked down to 9 droids, they will just stand around in a group and not go anywhere anymore. The second thing is regarding the groups that do arrive back at a spawner with 10 droids. I have the droid spawners spawn 30 at a time. The idea was that a group would get back, pick up 10 fresh recruits and head out again. It appears that the mechanic doesn't function that way presently. Maybe I misunderstood how the retreat function would work when arriving back at the spawner?

The third thing was an idea I had regarding Guard mode or possibly a patrol mode. Since the droids operate based on biter code maybe there could be a method to have the droids patrol the edge of the pollution cloud. Have them move along where pollution exists, but is under x%.

Anyways, I am excitedly looking forward to your next release. Cheers!

1. I will investigate, maybe the retreat code is only firing when the group size is exactly equal to the number set as the retreat number. This shouldn't be the case, it should be <= retreat setting. Can you confirm what your settings are for min squad size for hunting, and the retreat setting (i know you said it was 10, just double check pls). Also can you confirm that the same situation was true for the 9 and the 10 man retreat situations, regarding the presence of a droid assembler? If there is no droid assembler they cannot retreat (but I don't think this was your issue).

2. The squad that retreats should move to the nearest droid assembler, (to the place where a droid would normally be spawned, hopefully) and they will wait there. When their squad size becomes large enough they will (should!) go back out to hunt again. If what you say is true, then am I correct in saying that "when a retreated squad returns to nearest assembler and is reinforced to be equal to or above the min size to hunt, the squad does NOT move away and begin hunting"?

3. The droids use "biter ai" only as far as their most basic behaviour, like how the wander around, how to move from A-B (when my scripts tell them to), how to engage nearby enemies (reacting to threats), and the basic "unit group" clustering and moving in formation. The rest of the behaviours like attacking enemies way off in the distance, and the way they join "squads" on creation, I have implemented myself in lua code. I'm adding more behaviours like patrolling nearby patrol poles and whatnot. I could do a 'border patrol' style thing following the boundaries of the pollution cloud, that's a great idea.

[Mystery]

Here is a German translation for your mod:

Code: Select all

[item-name]
droid-smg = Kampfdroide (nicht eingesetzt)
droid-smg-dummy = Kampfdroide (einsetzbar)
droid-rocket = Raketendroide (nicht eingesetzt)
droid-rocket-dummy = Raketendroide (einsetzbar)
droid-rifle = Uhrwerk Gewehrroboter (nicht eingesetzt)
droid-rifle-dummy = Uhrwerk Gewehrroboter (einsetzbar)
droid-assembling-machine = Robotmontagemaschine
terminator = Terminator
terminator-dummy = Terminator (einsetzbar)
droid-counter = Roboter Aktivitätsmodul
loot-chest = Armee Beutekiste
droid-guard-station = Roboterwachstation
rally-beacon = Robotertreffpunkt

[entity-name]
droid-smg = Battle Droid
droid-rocket = Rocket Droid
droid-rifle = Uhrwerk Gewehrroboter
droid-assembling-machine = Robotmontagemaschine
terminator = Terminator
droid-counter = Roboter Aktivitätsmodul
loot-chest = Armee Beutekiste
droid-guard-station = Roboterwachstation
rally-beacon = Robotertreffpunkt

[recipe-name]
droid-smg = Kampfdroide (nicht eingesetzt)
droid-rocket = Raketendroide (nicht eingesetzt)
droid-smg-deploy = Kampfdroide (eingesetzt)
droid-rifle = Uhrwerk Gewehrroboter (nicht eingesetzt)
droid-rifle-deploy = Uhrwerk Gewehrroboter (eingesetzt)
droid-rocket-deploy = Raketendroide (eingesetzt)
terminator = Terminator (nicht eingesetzt)
terminator-deploy = Terminator (eingesetzt)
droid-counter = Roboter Aktivitätsmodul
loot-chest = Armee Beutekiste
droid-guard-station = Roboterwachstation
rally-beacon = Robotertreffpunkt

[virtual-signal-name]
signal-droid-alive-count = Anzahl aktiver Roboter

[kyranzor]

Here is a German translation for your mod

Sehr gut, danke!

[MatthewGP]

Hi again.

1) Confirmed it is set to 10. There are two droid assemblers next to each other for the scenario I am giving you. When I described my problem earlier, all of those droids had come from single droid assemblers that are still in place.

2) I am not positive, but I think this happened once where a retreat squad was near a different assembler than they spawned at. When I added droids to the assembler to bring them up to 20+ again, they never left. I tried this several times, so it appears that they do not reinforce.

3) Awesome, I look forward to seeing what you come up with. When I get back in the mood to code again, I may poke through your code and see what your doing. Too tired after playing factorio to code

Here is a link to dropbox where I have save my game and placed all the mods I am using, including yours. I have also put screenshots in there. You should be able to easily find 5 or 6 idle squads. There are 2 squads that retrreated to the assemblers. Then there are several active squads. Let me know if you have any other questions. I figure the save game would allow you to see what I am seeing the easiest https://www.dropbox.com/sh/t7h65es8f10s ... LHE0a?dl=0

[kyranzor]

Hey MatthewGP, I tested your save with the mods you gave.

I noticed a few things - at the two droid assemblers where the two "retreated" squads were waiting, that area is too far away from the nearest enemy. This means any new squad (spawned by droid assembler, or spawned by hand), or the retreated squads that are waiting for reinforcement, will never be within range of biters to leave and go hunting. If you pick up those guys and move them further away and place them down to a squad of 20+ they will go off hunting.

I noticed a few squads to the south which were somehow undersized but not in either "retreat" or "hunt" mode, rather they seem to be small groups placed by hand (meaning they are in "assembling" mode)?

I followed some action of the squads to the south, and saw squads of between 8 and 10 retreating properly.

I'm not sure about the issue where you had a group get down to say 9, but instead of retreating just stand around - that might have been an issue with one of the members being stuck and never getting to the "form up" point prior to starting the retreat, but it's hard to tell. As mentioned above I saw at least 3 groups of various sizes (8, 9, and 10 droids) properly retreat back to those 2 droid assemblers at the droid drop-off point. So maybe it was a pathfinding glitch or a "waiting forever" issue, but it's hard to check that because i couldn't find a squad that was actively having this issue in the save.

When those various squads retreated properly back to the droid assemblers, and with the initial two squads who were there at the point that you gave me the save file, none of them will go back to hunting when the squad is 20+ because they are too far from the nearest enemy to find a target.

I can't identify any code fixes out of this testing yet, all I can do is ask that you move your droid deployment area much deeper into enemy territory to the west.

[MatthewGP]

Hiya,

The groups that you saw that were not in hunting or retreating mode were originally 20 strong. All of the groups you saw had been spawned by those two assemblers. There had been a lot more aliens around there when i put the assemblers down . You can understand why I like your mod so much. I had really tired of going out and cleaning up all the biters with Laser Creep, flame thrower, Rockets, etc... No I just have all the components for terminators automated (expensive blue circuits, yeesh!) and have logistics droids place them in a chest, then delivered by train, then deployed. Yes! This is what factorio is about

I see you have some kind of bot cleanup code that runs every so often. Does that just delete the droids that are standing around doing nothing?

Thanks for checking out the save though, even though you didn't find anything.

Best
Matthew

[kyranzor]

I haven't fully implemented the cleanup code yet but the intent is that every 5-10 minutes or so, the cleanup script will find droids without squads (rare/impossible, so basically a bug cleanup) and squads which maybe have been without a change of orders for a very long time (configurable) will be removed and the Droid items will be reimbursed to the player by placing the droids into the loot chest. If a loot chest doesn't exist then I'll just default it to placing them into the player's inventory. If that fails then they'll just spew out onto the ground lol.


edit:

Hey, check out the current state of the Firebot, https://youtu.be/HQS8OsCE7qc

[Dezzoris]

Hi love the mod and have a great time with it but im having a continuing problem with one aspect of it. Ok so I have created assembly machines for 3 different types of bots (Rifle, Battle and terminator) The rifle and battle build and deploy no problem. But for some reason the terminator will not fill the assembly machine with all the items needed. It seems to just pull a few item out of the logistic chest i have setup with a fast inserter and then just stop. If i manually add the rest of the ingredients it will build fine but after they run out the problem continues. I am using an assembly machine 3. Any ideas why this is happening? Thanks

[kyranzor]

Can you provide a screenshot with the icons showing (press alt) and with the Assembler inventory open? Which item is not inserting?

[Dezzoris]

Sure, here's a few shots. Let me know if you need more. Its seems to be random which items it decides to not insert. Ive picked it all up and reset it back down and it will add a few items and just stop. Sometimes it will be the steel that it wont add and sometimes other items. Like i said if i manually add the items into the machine it will make the terminator but when those items run out it will not fill the machine back up with everything. Ive tried it with fast inserters, stack inserters. Also I set the squad size in the config.lua file to 20 but they are still deploying at only 5.

[MtnDew]

I had the same problem. I had to set the armor to use its own inserter and requester. The arm tries to insert more then one but it will only take one at a time so it sits there with one in its arm waiting for it to be made.

[kyranzor]

I had the same problem. I had to set the armor to use its own inserter and requester. The arm tries to insert more then one but it will only take one at a time so it sits there with one in its arm waiting for it to be made.

Haha wow, this is an interesting condition. So the game mechanic for stack inserter size bonus means the inserter gets "blocked" by holding the armour and doesn't add anything else because it's still holding armour..

Dezzoris, please do what MtnDew said where the armour has its own inserter (and requester chest) dedicated to inserting modular armour into the terminator assembler. Sorry about this awkward situation with the game mechanics and my mod's unit recipe, if it makes you feel better, I have plans to add new items which are "robot parts" and you make these, and then make the robots, rather than just making robots from raw materials or vanilla game items.

[Dezzoris]

Ahhh ok i see. Thanks alot for the help guys. I will go set that up now. The robot parts idea sounds great Kyranzor, looking forward to it.

[kyranzor]

If you'd like, I am open to suggestions. Keep discussion on this github issue: https://github.com/kyranf/robotarmyfactorio/issues/36

[kyranzor]

here's a brief demonstration of the patrol waypoints..

https://youtu.be/ds4Z2zUlXIs

You string patrol posts together in sequences using green electrical wire. The endpoint needs to be very close to the guard station you want the patrolling squad to originate from/belong to.

[MatthewGP]

Okay, yes, I like. Very nifty.

I had another idea too. The droid barracks can be upgraded. The different levels of the barracks allow different distances that the droids will go.

But really, whatever you do is awesome. I am happy right now

[Mattyrogue]

Okay, yes, I like. Very nifty.

I had another idea too. The droid barracks can be upgraded. The different levels of the barracks allow different distances that the droids will go.

But really, whatever you do is awesome. I am happy right now

Being able to configure the Assembler with a 'hunt distance' would definitely be a nice feature with a constant value for the chunk distance (so it could be anywhere between 1-1000 chunks of the assembler)

It'd be a nice way to set perimeters actually besides the patrol posts. Just have assemblers dotted around filled with droids, whenever a nest pops up in range it'll send the droids out to attack.