[MOD 0.13.17+] Rampant

[Betep3akata]

Thanks, Veden, daniel34,

I have already removed this local reference for safety from the desync magic. And now I thoughtfully look at the local variables outside functions .

[Ranakastrasz]

Is there any way to prevent Enemies from being permitted to attack a certain type of entity? I like the mod, but the inability to have disconnected outposts or railroads without walls makes it not fun. Setting Hp to zero breaks the game if you mine the entity again, and setting destructable to false doesn't stop enemies from attacking.

[Veden]

Do you happen to have any ideas on a mechanic that could allow for easier times with outposts aside from removing certain entities as targets?

Regardless,
The code below is something I had written for the Natural Evolution Mods to fix the rail targeting and pole destroying issues.

Code: Select all

    local autoRepair = { 
        "straight-rail" = true, 
        "curved-rail" = true,
        "electric-pole" = true
    }

-- this code would be in the onDeath event. Auto repair things like rails, and signals. Also by destroying the entity the enemy retargets.
    if (event.force == game.forces.enemy) and autoRepair[event.entity.name] then
        local repairPosition = event.entity.position
        local repairName = event.entity.name
        local repairForce = event.entity.force
        local repairDirection = event.entity.direction
        event.entity.destroy()
        local entityRepaired = game.surfaces[1].create_entity({position=repairPosition,
                                                               name=repairName,
                                                               direction=repairDirection,
                                                               force=repairForce})
        -- forces enemy to disperse 
        local enemies = game.surfaces[1].find_entities_filtered({area = {{x=repairPosition.x-20, y=repairPosition.y-20},
                                                                         {x=repairPosition.x+20, y=repairPosition.y+20}},
                                                                 type = "unit",
                                                                 force = game.forces.enemy})
        for i=1, #enemies do
            local enemy = enemies[i]
            enemy.set_command({type=defines.command.wander,
                               distraction=defines.distraction.by_enemy})
        end
    end

[Nerchio]

Hello, I started using your mod and the behaviour of the biters was really satisfying but at some point my UPS started dropping quite quickly (I am far from having a megabase). My UPS came back to 59/60 after disabling the mod. The only annoying part for me was killing the biter bases and help they got every single time no matter how far were other nests but that's not my point right now. A lot of biters stay on the map forever doing nothing after you kill some of the bases and they might be lowering the UPS heavily. Any thoughts?

Alien Biomes
Angels (Silos, pressure tanks, warehouses(?), Bio Processing, Petro, Refining, Smelting)
Arumba Lights
Autofill
Bobs(Adjustable inserters, assembling machines, config, electronics, enemies, functions, greenhouse, logistics, metals&chemicals, Mining, Modules, Ores, Power, Revamp, Tech, Vehicle Eq, Warfare)
Bottleneck(Tried turning it off)
Crafting Speed Research
Enhanced Map Colors
Evo GUI
Long Reach Research
Natural Evolution Enemies
Natural Evolution Expansion
Rail Tanker
Rampant AI
RSO
SpaceX
Squeak Through
Water Fix
What is this used for?
Radarplus



Edit: I turned RampantAI off, played 1 minute of the game and turned it on again. UPS is back to 60(at least for now, I assume it forgot all the biters that it was controling)

[Veden]

Were you doing anything when the UPS dropped?

I have seen images of the biter hoards, I think it is a side effect of the unit groups after to many failed move attempts being disbanded by the game engine at which point they join nearby nests.
I imagine there is a UPS penalty, but I don't know if that is what is causing it to drop so much.
I haven't looked into trying to fix this yet, and am unsure of how difficult it would be to correct.

The reinforcements should be able to only form near spawners within 4 chunks of the player or 3 chunks around the death of a biter.

Natural Evolution Enemies though has:
- causes everything nearby to flood to the killed biter base, which also can drop UPS due to how it is handled.
- causes destroying trees to bring biters from around, which can also drop UPS.
- building a rocket silo will cause periodic waves of everything in a long range to be summoned to the rocket silo, which can also drop UPS.
- the scorched earth setting when killing lots of biter will lag when it does lots of tile replacements

[Nerchio]

No, the UPS was lower all the time and would sometimes drop to 30 without me doing anything. I didn't build a silo yet, didn't kill trees, scorched earth is not the problem here I believe etc. What I didn't realise is that NE Enemies also causes everything nearby to flood to the killed biter base, couldn't find any information. If you are saying that in Rampant it only works 3-4 chunks away then it is a much better solution.
Sometimes biters set up closer to my base and when I go clean it up, some of the hives further away are still coming to defend it even if they are far away. I wonder if Rampant AI is still trying to control these groups anyway. My workaround so far was to play 1 minute without RampantAI and UPS would go back to normal. Then I would turn it on again and continue playing with your mod at stable 59/60 UPS until it starts lagging again which happens at some point.

http://imgur.com/a/JhIyJ

[Veden]

Would you be willing to share your save for the sake of mod improvement?

[Nerchio]

Would you be willing to share your save for the sake of mod improvement?

sent you a PM

[Veden]

The latest build should correct your issue to be at least 58 UPS or higher.

Factorio starts to have issues when biter groups get bigger than 2500 units, I have added some logic to prevent this in the future and disband any groups it finds bigger than this.

Otherwise those giant clumps, which are an artifact of the game engine, will slightly slow down anything that does an entity search on those chunks, which Rampant does, so I need to come up with a solution for the clumps (last two points UPS points are this).

I'm thinking the giant clumps forming into a base of some kind.

[Nerchio]

You are right, after I updated the mod it works smoothly most of the time so no problems anymore.

On the other hand I am at 90% evolution and biter attacks still seem somewhat weak. 1 line of sniper turrets MK2 can easily hold off everything(or sniper turrets from Bob's are just OP?). Before I walled off my base it was hard and the mod was working as intented, had quite some trouble with biters dodging the defenses. Maybe Natural Evolution and your mod doesn't really work together? It feels like at this point there should be huge attacks coming my way.

As you could see there is a few gigantic groups of biters on the map which you called "an artifact of the game engine". It seems that maybe instead of sending attack waves they are joining big groups instead.

[Veden]

I'm actually using your save to tune the frequency of attacks towards endgame, so there should be in update here shortly.

As you could see there is a few gigantic groups of biters on the map which you called "an artifact of the game engine". It seems that maybe instead of sending attack waves they are joining big groups instead

The short version is yes. If you are interested in the long answer I can type that up.

[Nerchio]

I'm actually using your save to tune the frequency of attacks towards endgame, so there should be in update here shortly.

As you could see there is a few gigantic groups of biters on the map which you called "an artifact of the game engine". It seems that maybe instead of sending attack waves they are joining big groups instead

The short version is yes. If you are interested in the long answer I can type that up.

If you have time then feel free to talk about it. The most interesting part to me, is it easy to fix?

[Bizobinator]

Excellent mod! It's definitely keeping me on my toes.

A question: Right now, I'm playing With Natural Evolution (all mods), which is making the aliens spread like kudzu all over the map. Does Rampant do that as well? In my next game, I want Rampant's difficulty, but I don't want to insane level of base expansion; it's just become tedious whenever I have to expand to new resource patches .

[Veden]

If you have time then feel free to talk about it. The most interesting part to me, is it easy to fix?

The biggest thing about your save game is the buildups already exist, and I haven't added anything to wipe all biters out.
The changes in version 0.14.12 should help with the buildups, but I will need to come up with a more robust solution overall.

Excellent mod! It's definitely keeping me on my toes.

A question: Right now, I'm playing With Natural Evolution (all mods), which is making the aliens spread like kudzu all over the map. Does Rampant do that as well? In my next game, I want Rampant's difficulty, but I don't want to insane level of base expansion; it's just become tedious whenever I have to expand to new resource patches .

Thanks glad you are enjoying it, currently Rampant does not change the expansion mechanics from vanilla.

[Bizobinator]

I do have a small question about the biter behaviors: So, periodically, some of the aliens will zoom at incredibly fast speeds towards their destination. This has lead to a few.... interesting.... experiences . Is this something that's intended? Is it other mods interacting with Rampant?

[Veden]

I do have a small question about the biter behaviors: So, periodically, some of the aliens will zoom at incredibly fast speeds towards their destination. This has lead to a few.... interesting.... experiences . Is this something that's intended? Is it other mods interacting with Rampant?

Nope, not intended. It is just the vanilla game trying to get a unit to speed up to catch to the actual unit group, sometimes it glitches out and the units going flying across the screen.

[Peter34]

I really liked the "horror aspect" of the Scary Nights mod, that caused the planet's natives to primarily attack during the night. But that mod is no longer getting updated, so can't be used with 0.15, and it had some problems with massive CPU usage anyway.

But... I like the idea. Is there any chance that a functionality, somewhat similar to that, can be added to this mod?

[Veden]

I really liked the "horror aspect" of the Scary Nights mod, that caused the planet's natives to primarily attack during the night. But that mod is no longer getting updated, so can't be used with 0.15, and it had some problems with massive CPU usage anyway.

But... I like the idea. Is there any chance that a functionality, somewhat similar to that, can be added to this mod?

So currently the ai only switches between two states randomly and random intervals and those are peace and aggressive.
I could add a third option nocturnal, which night becomes the primary attack period with maybe some increased frequency.

Thoughts?

The hard part usually is balance.

[Peter34]

That sounds like a good idea. One thing for you to keep in mind is that some of the people using your mod's Nocturnal Mode, probably not just me, will be using another mod that extends the duration of the day/night cycle so that each day and night are 2, 3, 4 or 5 times as long as in vanilla. So your Nocturnal mode should be based on the in-game state, not on assumptions about what time it is.

As for balance, Factorio really isn't the kind of game that requires a very precise balancing. The planet's natives are there to provide a degree of "pressure" onto the player's or players' base, and as long as this pressure falls within certain reasonoble paraemeters it will be a good play experience. If the pressure is very low, the natives will quickly become irrelevant, while if the pressure is too high then the players end up having to focus 98% of their efforts on defence and never actually get to do any other kind of base building progress (if the pressure is even higher, the base is simply ground down and eventually destroyed), but I do believe there is a wide span in between these two extremes, a wide "goldilocks zone" of fun play.

As I see it, it's a question of taking the same "mass" of natives and native attacks as in the vanilla game, but distributing it differently, so that instead of being spread throughout the solar cycle, they're more concentrated within the brief part of the cycle that is the night. And then maybe subtracting 10% or even 25% because time-concentrated attacks are more harmful than attacks that are spread out over time.

But I hope you'll try to implement something like that. I'm planning to start a new weekly Grand Multi-Player Co-Op game, maybe in the middle of next month, so if you have your mod ready by then, that'd be a good opportunity to playtest it.

[Shin]

Just one question: Is there a way do enable biter homing shots again via code or something? If yes, how?