[MOD 0.18] Robot Army. v0.4.4

[kyranzor]

Hi,
I just installed your mod in Factorio 13, and Droid Assembler is not working.
In log output there is whole lot of entries:
03:08:36: WARNING: global droidassemblers list does not exist!
What I did is I started fresh game in Factorio 13, and after some time I added your mod - so it wasn't there since game start, may it be the reason?

Hi, that's some leftover debug code. It will print that into the log once every 2 seconds if nobody in the game has placed a droid assembler yet.

As soon as you place one, that should stop. Please tell me if it doesn't.


edit:

Hey guys, there is a known issue that is pretty annoying, the clockwork riflebot "deploy" recipe is disabled every time you load a save game, I will be fixing this one and releasing a new patch version 0.1.42 in the next two days, after i've found any more bugs. Please see how to fix this issue on your end here: https://github.com/kyranf/robotarmyfact ... own-Issues

[yay101]

Loving the mod so far, its a real choice now early game whether you choose attack or defence as your defence. The bots are adequately/ prohibitively expensive.

I noticed if you are producing bots slowly say 1 every 2 minutes the deployer puts them all in individual squads that never venture out because they want more units.

The lack of explanation of why they do things in game is somewhat annoying, I don't want them to get stuck on red belts then decide to just loiter around my base, perhaps a patrol mode where they just draw lines using structure density x distance so they walk to outposts etc instead of chilling in the base?

[kyranzor]

Loving the mod so far, its a real choice now early game whether you choose attack or defence as your defence. The bots are adequately/ prohibitively expensive.

I noticed if you are producing bots slowly say 1 every 2 minutes the deployer puts them all in individual squads that never venture out because they want more units.

The lack of explanation of why they do things in game is somewhat annoying, I don't want them to get stuck on red belts then decide to just loiter around my base, perhaps a patrol mode where they just draw lines using structure density x distance so they walk to outposts etc instead of chilling in the base?

The time taken to deploy shouldn't matter, the wander radius vs the squad joining radius should allow the newly spawned bots to join that squad and eventually (10 mins if 1 every 2 mins) the squad should move out. What are your config.lua settings for squad radius and squad join check distance?

[yay101]

The time taken to deploy shouldn't matter, the wander radius vs the squad joining radius should allow the newly spawned bots to join that squad and eventually (10 mins if 1 every 2 mins) the squad should move out. What are your config.lua settings for squad radius and squad join check distance?

Will check when I am home again, basically the first 14 I built were belted to a deployer that then created 14 squads and sat around. I could tell that because when I picked them up again it posted as each squad was wiped out/ each not was picked up.

As soon as I manually deployed them they headed off through a nearby forest and went after some biters as expected.

[kyranzor]

The time taken to deploy shouldn't matter, the wander radius vs the squad joining radius should allow the newly spawned bots to join that squad and eventually (10 mins if 1 every 2 mins) the squad should move out. What are your config.lua settings for squad radius and squad join check distance?

That sounds like an older version bug, which is the result of the squad radius being to high (the squad entity wanders too far from the spawn point) and new droids are then out of range and make their own squad, which then has enough time to wander as well, causing the same problem

Will check when I am home again, basically the first 14 I built were belted to a deployer that then created 14 squads and sat around. I could tell that because when I picked them up again it posted as each squad was wiped out/ each not was picked up.

As soon as I manually deployed them they headed off through a nearby forest and went after some biters as expected.

That sounds like an older version bug, where the squad radius and the squad join distance were equal, so what would happen is the squad is started by the first droid, and then before the next droid spawns, the "representation" of the squad wanders out to the max radius value allowable, and when the next droid spawns and the distance between it and the "representation" of the nearby squad is actually off in la-la land, it fails to join and makes it's own squad. Which then wanders off too far away before the next droid spawns, causing you to have lots of single-droid squads sitting around. If you press F5 or F6 you can see the squad circles floating around.

[yay101]

Interesting, well I haven't changed anything from the zip I grabbed from here yesterday so whatever settings it has are what settings I have currently.

[atehxx]

Hey guys, there is a known issue that is pretty annoying, the clockwork riflebot "deploy" recipe is disabled every time you load a save game, I will be fixing this one and releasing a new patch version 0.1.42 in the next two days, after i've found any more bugs. Please see how to fix this issue on your end here: https://github.com/kyranf/robotarmyfact ... own-Issues

After fixing this typo it works now
Wouldn't it take you less time to just fix it on your side and deploy new version instead of creating this whole lot of text on Known Issues page?

[kyranzor]

Hey guys, there is a known issue that is pretty annoying, the clockwork riflebot "deploy" recipe is disabled every time you load a save game, I will be fixing this one and releasing a new patch version 0.1.42 in the next two days, after i've found any more bugs. Please see how to fix this issue on your end here: https://github.com/kyranf/robotarmyfact ... own-Issues

After fixing this typo it works now
Wouldn't it take you less time to just fix it on your side and deploy new version instead of creating this whole lot of text on Known Issues page?

Every time I deploy a new version takes a lot of time and 3 places to update. Depending how severe the bug, depends if an immediate fix can be provided or if a new patch should be deployed. I would like to try and find/hear about more bugs before I release the fix to the recipe problem.

[kyranzor]

Just letting you all know that I have implemented alien artifact gathering. For my testing they just appear in my inventory but I'll have them appear in a special structure inventory. I have also implemented a new behaviour for under-strength squads returning to nearest droid assembler for reinforcements if they lose some guys in battle and get below the squad size required to send them hunting.

[Qon]

Just letting you all know that I have implemented alien artifact gathering. For my testing they just appear in my inventory but I'll have them appear in a special structure inventory. I have also implemented a new behaviour for under-strength squads returning to nearest droid assembler for reinforcements if they lose some guys in battle and get below the squad size required to send them hunting.

That's awesome!

But if they return once they get below the number of units required for starting to hunt then they will return every time a single one of them dies just to pick up one more unit. Seems like a waste of time. The attack and retreat numbers should be different.

[kyranzor]

Just letting you all know that I have implemented alien artifact gathering. For my testing they just appear in my inventory but I'll have them appear in a special structure inventory. I have also implemented a new behaviour for under-strength squads returning to nearest droid assembler for reinforcements if they lose some guys in battle and get below the squad size required to send them hunting.

That's awesome!

But if they return once they get below the number of units required for starting to hunt then they will return every time a single one of them dies just to pick up one more unit. Seems like a waste of time. The attack and retreat numbers should be different.

I can deal with this either by way of a second config parameter called something like "min size to retreat" or I can have a % based approach like "retreat when < 30% normal squad size". Would you prefer a integer or a percentage to control that?

Also, if it's an integer then it will be easier to make the dynamic config combinators I plan on adding which are a combinator you connect a constant combinator to and it uses that to set the squad sizes in-game without config file changes.

Also, the retreat behaviour is really not going to be used often but I am using it to help prevent small squads being left out in the middle of nowhere after battle and not getting any new orders because their squad is now too small. The next part of I was to handle the case when units get too far from their group and get kicked from the squad, I will try to periodically "clean up" by ordering them to nearest droid assemblers and upon arriving, join nearest squad or make a new one and wait.

[Qon]

I can deal with this either by way of a second config parameter called something like "min size to retreat" or I can have a % based approach like "retreat when < 30% normal squad size". Would you prefer a integer or a percentage to control that?

No preference, both works. I can calculate one from the other either way.

[kyranzor]

I can deal with this either by way of a second config parameter called something like "min size to retreat" or I can have a % based approach like "retreat when < 30% normal squad size". Would you prefer a integer or a percentage to control that?

No preference, both works. I can calculate one from the other either way.

I just realized, I can make use of the "command" variable that I made all squads have but is unused at the moment. When I send squads out to hunt i set their command to hunt. I can use this to just keep sending squads with command = hunt until they die and not worry about retreat mechanic.

[Qon]

Can you use that to make all units retreat also? So that I can get rid of all units from the map in case I need my computrons back for production.

[kyranzor]

Can you use that to make all units retreat also? So that I can get rid of all units from the map in case I need my computrons back for production.

Yes I can have a way to set all squads to "retreat" and send them to nearest droid assembler but that'll get messy lol.

[stoa]

all i really want is this nasty bug, where every robot opens his own squad to be fixed.
its so annoying :/

anyways, do you have any idea when you're gonna release the next version?

[kyranzor]

all i really want is this nasty bug, where every robot opens his own squad to be fixed.
its so annoying :/

anyways, do you have any idea when you're gonna release the next version?

Right now I'm playing with flamethrower soldiers but I should probably release a fix for the squad and recipe issues.. I'll clean up my code and stop playing with fire and send out an update today (next few hours).

[stoa]

flamethrower guys? dear god.
i'm in!

that would be absolutely great!

its still really wierd tho, cant really see why they keep doing this. it feels like its just totally random

[kyranzor]

its still really wierd tho, cant really see why they keep doing this. it feels like its just totally random

The squad bug? it's related to the player's position. If you stand next to the spawning zone it will all work fine. If you walk away it will fuck up. It has to do with how I merged the spawning functions for both player and droid assembler based spawning scenarios, but I didn't change the fact that it used the player's position for finding nearest squad to join. Not sure how all that happened, maybe I had version skew at one point in my development.

You can also "hide" the problem by just setting the min squad size to hunt parameter in config.lua to 1, so even a single-man squad will just go out and hunt.

I'm pretty confident i've fixed all that on my end now, so when I release this update you shouldn't have the problem.

[stoa]

well, i just did that for now, at least i dont have to deal with the wierdness of the bug, and the robots still do great.
probably not when i get to 50% tho.

also deactivated the message when a squad died for this because really, i dont want to hear who of my 500 clockwork robots just died :')