Factorio Forums

Since 0.18, it seems that biters won't attack neutral entities like the rocks as well anymore.
A few special scenarios do not work as well anymore in 0.18.

The screenshots show a group of units that want to go to a location, occupied by rock entities.
But they keep being stuck running back and forth forever and won't attack them.

The command type is "defines.command.attack_area".

Okay, so I managed to make one observation, and then confirmed it in vanilla editor map without any scripts.

I made simple map, basically opened editor and spammed bunch of rocks around. Placed one nest in the middle of rocks.

First part of observation is, that biters that belong to spawner, DO dig rocks on their route. I spawned few biters around the rocks, and as loose biters they got bound to the nest. Once they pathfinded to the nest, they started digging rocks towards it. Picture 1 : Blue biter spawned binds to the nest and starts digging towards it. Picture 2 : Blue biter left dug out route

Second part of observation is, that I spawned some machines to create pollution and to make biters create unit group to attack the pollution source (vanilla mechanic). Once those biters gathered enough and pathfinded to the pollution source, they get stuck within rocks. Picture 3 : Unit group fails to dig towards target and just disbands in a moment.

Steps to reproduce:
1) start an editor from menu
2) place rocks around, place spawner
3) place a biter somewhere not in direct range of spawner. Biter gets bound to nest and pathfinds to it to be in "defense range"
4) create machines outside rocks to create pollution to trigger unit group attack, that will fail to do so.

So, there definitely is something going on with unit groups.

This seems to be the same problem as this one which will be fixed in 1.1.0.