[MOD 1.1] Natural Evolution - All things Alien!

[TheSAguy]

Did you skip expansion for specific reason?

Done!, was just a matter of having no time. Have not yet played 0.16

[Avloren]

tl;dr: at difficulty 5, spawners are immune to atomic bombs and the new endgame artillery. I'd recommend cutting spawner explosive resistance in half (from 30*difficulty level to 15*difficulty level); I've tried this and it gives good results.

So, I enjoy these mods a great deal and play at the max difficulty the mod recommends (5). The fact that it makes spawners very difficult to kill is my favorite thing about the higher difficulty - it turns biter bases from an annoyance to be cleared out whenever you have a moment, to powerful strongholds that take serious effort and good tech to make any headway against. I'm not complaining about their toughness, in general.

There is a quirk, however - I notice that at difficulty 5, they have 15/150% explosion resistance. Digging into the scripts a little, it looks like this results from the explosion resist percent being 30*difficulty level. So, they're completely immune to explosive damage. This would be the only damage type they're immune to; other types such as acid reach a max of 75%.

So no grenades and rockets, I can live with that. It does reduce the bio cannon damage, but not that much really; the fire effect it leaves behind still does enough to do the job. But I just (finally) survived to later-game techs on my new 0.16 base, and I was somewhat perturbed to find that the new artillery barely scratches spawners (we're talking ~5 damage a shot - regens almost instantly), and atomic bombs do literally nothing to them. Both seem to rely on explosive damage completely (atomic bomb) or almost completely with a tiny bit of physical (artillery).

For myself, I tweaked the spawner explosive resistance to 15*difficulty level, which is in line with other resistances. The result is that they're still nearly immune to small explosives (e.g. grenades), but get oneshot by atomic bombs. The endgame artillery does moderate damage, less than the bio cannon, which is a little disappointing but made up for by the superior range. If I wanted to get more into it, I would probably alter the damage on the artillery and atomic bombs to be less exclusively explosive-based. But simply lowering the spawner resistance has worked out well as a quick fix, and I'd recommend it as something that ought to be in the base mod. It's just a bit jarring to see spawners survive an atomic bomb.

[orzelek]

Bio-cannon could use an upgrade now - it could be changed to reuse artilliery and it wouldn't need a targetting script then.
It might be a lot of work.. I didn't look how complex is artilliery definition.

[TheSAguy]

tl;dr: at difficulty 5, spawners are immune to atomic bombs and the new endgame artillery. I'd recommend cutting spawner explosive resistance in half (from 30*difficulty level to 15*difficulty level); I've tried this and it gives good results.

So, I enjoy these mods a great deal and play at the max difficulty the mod recommends (5). The fact that it makes spawners very difficult to kill is my favorite thing about the higher difficulty - it turns biter bases from an annoyance to be cleared out whenever you have a moment, to powerful strongholds that take serious effort and good tech to make any headway against. I'm not complaining about their toughness, in general.

There is a quirk, however - I notice that at difficulty 5, they have 15/150% explosion resistance. Digging into the scripts a little, it looks like this results from the explosion resist percent being 30*difficulty level. So, they're completely immune to explosive damage. This would be the only damage type they're immune to; other types such as acid reach a max of 75%.

So no grenades and rockets, I can live with that. It does reduce the bio cannon damage, but not that much really; the fire effect it leaves behind still does enough to do the job. But I just (finally) survived to later-game techs on my new 0.16 base, and I was somewhat perturbed to find that the new artillery barely scratches spawners (we're talking ~5 damage a shot - regens almost instantly), and atomic bombs do literally nothing to them. Both seem to rely on explosive damage completely (atomic bomb) or almost completely with a tiny bit of physical (artillery).

For myself, I tweaked the spawner explosive resistance to 15*difficulty level, which is in line with other resistances. The result is that they're still nearly immune to small explosives (e.g. grenades), but get oneshot by atomic bombs. The endgame artillery does moderate damage, less than the bio cannon, which is a little disappointing but made up for by the superior range. If I wanted to get more into it, I would probably alter the damage on the artillery and atomic bombs to be less exclusively explosive-based. But simply lowering the spawner resistance has worked out well as a quick fix, and I'd recommend it as something that ought to be in the base mod. It's just a bit jarring to see spawners survive an atomic bomb.

Thanks for the feedback Avloren!
I've not been able to play at 5 myself, so I appreciate the input. I'll definitely adjust that. Anything else you can think of? (Add/Remove/Tweak )

Bio-cannon could use an upgrade now - it could be changed to reuse artilliery and it wouldn't need a targetting script then.
It might be a lot of work.. I didn't look how complex is artilliery definition.

I was thinking of calling the Bio Cannon the "Artillery Prototype" or something and have it in the tech tree halfway to to Artillery wagon.
Again, I've not yet plated 0.16 so not sure what tweaks to make to make the Bio Cannon still relevant...

Thanks for the feedback guys.

[orzelek]

Bio-cannon could use an upgrade now - it could be changed to reuse artilliery and it wouldn't need a targetting script then.
It might be a lot of work.. I didn't look how complex is artilliery definition.

I was thinking of calling the Bio Cannon the "Artillery Prototype" or something and have it in the tech tree halfway to to Artillery wagon.
Again, I've not yet plated 0.16 so not sure what tweaks to make to make the Bio Cannon still relevant...

You might not be aware then there there is also stationary artilliery in 0.16. It's really far in tech tree while bio cannon is available quite early and it would be useful.

I'm getting attacks of 50+ biters at evo around 15%. I'm not sure what will happen when I get to really big evolution factor. Being able to cull their bases from afar would be useful from much earlier. There is also a chance that something changed in 0.16 so attacks are bigger. They look pretty cool since biters are marching in big column (and path into themsleves a lot just before defense line instead of all attacking at once - that small bug is pretty helpful).

[Avloren]

Thanks for the feedback Avloren!
I've not been able to play at 5 myself, so I appreciate the input. I'll definitely adjust that. Anything else you can think of? (Add/Remove/Tweak )

I'm pretty happy with the overall challenge at difficulty 5. No major complaints, but I can think of a lot of tweaks.

The bio cannon is great, mechanically speaking. It fills a certain niche that nothing else does (early game spawner killing from a semi-safe distance), very different from the new 0.16 artillery which is more of a late endgame ultra-long-range spawner killer. Its damage is perfect, it kills difficulty 5 spawners in about 6-7 shots. Its position in the tech tree vs. its strength feels about right - I think it's pretty important to keep it as a ranged spawner killer available in the early game. Spawners are very resistant to anything that's not a flamethrower or artillery, and your stronger bugs can make it difficult to get into flamethrower range and live to tell about it. I'd really appreciate an intermediate artillery that falls somewhere between the bio cannon and the vanilla artillery (both in terms of tech cost and range/power). Either way, I like your idea of renaming the bio cannon to something like "prototype artillery" to keep it consistent with the new vanilla artillery. I'd actually like it if it borrowed from the vanilla artillery sprites/animations too, which are very cool IMO (maybe a slightly modified version to be visually distinct).

I've come to think the vanilla 0.16 artillery is a bit too weak vs. difficulty 5 spawners, even with the explosive resist nerf. Note that the vanilla artillery is something like 4-5x more expensive per shot than the bio cannon; the extreme range partially justifies that cost, but still it should probably do per-hit damage comparable to the bio cannon (it doesn't come close atm, at least not on difficulty 5). Maybe it could leave flames behind like the bio cannon does? Fire is about the only thing that spawners don't have solid resistance against.

The long range gun turret animations are a little glitchy. It often points in the wrong direction when shooting things - like 90 degrees off to one side. Also sometimes flicks back and forth between which side it points at (left/right/left/etc.). Mechanically, I like how it works: the increased damage/slower fire rate helps it to punch through biter armor, and it arrives just when biter armor has made regular gun turrets almost useless. The animation is the only problem.

Speaking of guns: I love the copper-based ammo, it helps early game at the red/green science level, when iron is perpetually scarce and there isn't a heavy demand for copper yet. The bio ammo is also awesome, maybe a little too much so - thanks to it I don't feel very compelled to upgrade to uranium ammo. I wouldn't say that bio ammo needs a nerf, so much that uranium might need a buff; it falls short compared to all the ultra-physical-resistant bugs that the mod adds, it doesn't feel as strong as an endgame tech using a rare resource should. Maybe it should trade some physical damage for piercing (or anything else that's not physical).

Meanwhile shotguns are not in good shape. They have a window in the early game where they work well enough against the vanilla small bugs, but as soon as NE's bullet-resistant infected/mutated bugs show up, they're obsolete. They could use something to stay relevant in the mid/late game, maybe a variation on bio ammo?

I like the idea of living walls, but in practice I hardly use them for one reason: they're not fire immune. With natural evolution's physical/laser resistant bugs running around, I find flamethrowers to be essential on any borders where serious attacks are expected (and if you're not expecting a serious attack, you can skip walls altogether). I like that the bugs have mixed resists and you can't rely too much on a single turret type, but it does mean anything not fire immune can't be on the front line. I mean, it certainly fits thematically for living walls to be vulnerable to flames, but it makes it hard for me to ever use them practically. In a perfect world, it would be awesome if they could "regrow" after being burned down (not sure if the game mechanics allow that?). Otherwise, they really need at least some fire resist or maybe even full immunity (flamethrowers put out so much damage, I'm afraid anything short of 100% might not be enough). Edit: unless it's intended for them to be a low-maintenance secondary wall, used on lightly defended borders without flamethrowers? They do fill that niche well enough. I just love the idea of a heavy duty regenerating wall that can share the front line with my flamethrowers, and wish I had something like that - maybe as a more expensive living wall upgrade.

Also - hilariously! - if you manage to damage your own living walls with the handheld flamethrower, you can aggro them. If you're standing close enough for them to attack, they will murder your character quite effectively. I'm not even complaining, it's an amazing easter egg that makes perfect sense.

There's a slight hitch with the scaling of enemy difficulty as evolution increases. I find that some of the higher tier vanilla biters/spitters are actually less threatening than their lower tier infected/mutated versions. For example, a mutated medium spitter hits me a lot harder than a regular big spitter, and the big is only slightly tougher to kill. Not sure if that's due to the raw damage output, or because it's a different damage type? Anyway the evolution upgrade feels more like a downgrade sometimes. I mean, it's not necessarily a bad thing to have some tougher to kill/lower damage "tanks" amongst the bugs to soak up bullets - but even if that's the intention, I think the damage on the vanilla bugs is a little lacking. The medium/bigs could definitely use a damage buff, and maybe a slight damage nerf to the infected/mutated versions to compensate. I'm okay with the small vanilla biters/spitters staying weak - you need a little early game breathing room! And I can't comment on behemoths, they might have the same issue but I haven't actually gotten them to spawn yet (been managing to keep the evo at about ~80% with efficiency mods everywhere and those evo-reducing radar things).

The vanilla tank is not really worthwhile, not at difficulty 5. Its main gun just doesn't have enough impact against Natural Evolution's more resistant bugs or spawners. Without a doubt the cannon needs a lot of help, more damage that isn't so easily resisted. The tank's MG (with bio ammo) and flamethrower are in better shape - they still kill things effectively, but it's tricky for the tank to survive getting up close to use them, especially as evolution ramps up into the 50%+ range. You're honestly better off using the handheld versions with shielded power armor. The tank could use a little better survivability (maybe more resistances) if you want it to be effective at using the MG/flamethrower offensively. On the other hand, they would be adequate secondary/defensive weapons as-is if the main gun did its job.

Anyway those are my thoughts on the tools I've gotten to play with so far, there's more this mod offers that I haven't even tried yet (e.g. mind control, friendly spawners, etc.). I'll let you know if I get around to experimenting with those things and have more feedback.

[orzelek]

I looked a bit into using artillery instead of bio-cannon scripted code but it's not easy if graphic would need to stay.
Reusing arty turret and changing it's range and ammo is easily doable.
Arty does have some really specific graphics so someone with lots of grphics experience would be needed to convert bio-cannon to artillery compatible graphics model.

[TheSAguy]

I looked a bit into using artillery instead of bio-cannon scripted code but it's not easy if graphic would need to stay.
Reusing arty turret and changing it's range and ammo is easily doable.
Arty does have some really specific graphics so someone with lots of grphics experience would be needed to convert bio-cannon to artillery compatible graphics model.

Yeah, I saw that... I was playing around with it and got most converted, but then got stuck at the graphics... Will see if YuokiTani could help me out. He did the original for me.

[TheSAguy]

I just released 8.0.2.
I left the Bio Cannon a Turret and did not make it an Artillery yet, since it will need new graphics for that.
You can now, however use the ammo in Artillery guns.

[TheSAguy]

Thanks for the feedback Avloren!
I've not been able to play at 5 myself, so I appreciate the input. I'll definitely adjust that. Anything else you can think of? (Add/Remove/Tweak )

I'm pretty happy with the overall challenge at difficulty 5. No major complaints, but I can think of a lot of tweaks.

The bio cannon is great, mechanically speaking. It fills a certain niche that nothing else does (early game spawner killing from a semi-safe distance), very different from the new 0.16 artillery which is more of a late endgame ultra-long-range spawner killer. Its damage is perfect, it kills difficulty 5 spawners in about 6-7 shots. Its position in the tech tree vs. its strength feels about right - I think it's pretty important to keep it as a ranged spawner killer available in the early game. Spawners are very resistant to anything that's not a flamethrower or artillery, and your stronger bugs can make it difficult to get into flamethrower range and live to tell about it. I'd really appreciate an intermediate artillery that falls somewhere between the bio cannon and the vanilla artillery (both in terms of tech cost and range/power). Either way, I like your idea of renaming the bio cannon to something like "prototype artillery" to keep it consistent with the new vanilla artillery. I'd actually like it if it borrowed from the vanilla artillery sprites/animations too, which are very cool IMO (maybe a slightly modified version to be visually distinct).

I've come to think the vanilla 0.16 artillery is a bit too weak vs. difficulty 5 spawners, even with the explosive resist nerf. Note that the vanilla artillery is something like 4-5x more expensive per shot than the bio cannon; the extreme range partially justifies that cost, but still it should probably do per-hit damage comparable to the bio cannon (it doesn't come close atm, at least not on difficulty 5). Maybe it could leave flames behind like the bio cannon does? Fire is about the only thing that spawners don't have solid resistance against.

The long range gun turret animations are a little glitchy. It often points in the wrong direction when shooting things - like 90 degrees off to one side. Also sometimes flicks back and forth between which side it points at (left/right/left/etc.). Mechanically, I like how it works: the increased damage/slower fire rate helps it to punch through biter armor, and it arrives just when biter armor has made regular gun turrets almost useless. The animation is the only problem.

Speaking of guns: I love the copper-based ammo, it helps early game at the red/green science level, when iron is perpetually scarce and there isn't a heavy demand for copper yet. The bio ammo is also awesome, maybe a little too much so - thanks to it I don't feel very compelled to upgrade to uranium ammo. I wouldn't say that bio ammo needs a nerf, so much that uranium might need a buff; it falls short compared to all the ultra-physical-resistant bugs that the mod adds, it doesn't feel as strong as an endgame tech using a rare resource should. Maybe it should trade some physical damage for piercing (or anything else that's not physical).

Meanwhile shotguns are not in good shape. They have a window in the early game where they work well enough against the vanilla small bugs, but as soon as NE's bullet-resistant infected/mutated bugs show up, they're obsolete. They could use something to stay relevant in the mid/late game, maybe a variation on bio ammo?

I like the idea of living walls, but in practice I hardly use them for one reason: they're not fire immune. With natural evolution's physical/laser resistant bugs running around, I find flamethrowers to be essential on any borders where serious attacks are expected (and if you're not expecting a serious attack, you can skip walls altogether). I like that the bugs have mixed resists and you can't rely too much on a single turret type, but it does mean anything not fire immune can't be on the front line. I mean, it certainly fits thematically for living walls to be vulnerable to flames, but it makes it hard for me to ever use them practically. In a perfect world, it would be awesome if they could "regrow" after being burned down (not sure if the game mechanics allow that?). Otherwise, they really need at least some fire resist or maybe even full immunity (flamethrowers put out so much damage, I'm afraid anything short of 100% might not be enough). Edit: unless it's intended for them to be a low-maintenance secondary wall, used on lightly defended borders without flamethrowers? They do fill that niche well enough. I just love the idea of a heavy duty regenerating wall that can share the front line with my flamethrowers, and wish I had something like that - maybe as a more expensive living wall upgrade.

Also - hilariously! - if you manage to damage your own living walls with the handheld flamethrower, you can aggro them. If you're standing close enough for them to attack, they will murder your character quite effectively. I'm not even complaining, it's an amazing easter egg that makes perfect sense.

There's a slight hitch with the scaling of enemy difficulty as evolution increases. I find that some of the higher tier vanilla biters/spitters are actually less threatening than their lower tier infected/mutated versions. For example, a mutated medium spitter hits me a lot harder than a regular big spitter, and the big is only slightly tougher to kill. Not sure if that's due to the raw damage output, or because it's a different damage type? Anyway the evolution upgrade feels more like a downgrade sometimes. I mean, it's not necessarily a bad thing to have some tougher to kill/lower damage "tanks" amongst the bugs to soak up bullets - but even if that's the intention, I think the damage on the vanilla bugs is a little lacking. The medium/bigs could definitely use a damage buff, and maybe a slight damage nerf to the infected/mutated versions to compensate. I'm okay with the small vanilla biters/spitters staying weak - you need a little early game breathing room! And I can't comment on behemoths, they might have the same issue but I haven't actually gotten them to spawn yet (been managing to keep the evo at about ~80% with efficiency mods everywhere and those evo-reducing radar things).

The vanilla tank is not really worthwhile, not at difficulty 5. Its main gun just doesn't have enough impact against Natural Evolution's more resistant bugs or spawners. Without a doubt the cannon needs a lot of help, more damage that isn't so easily resisted. The tank's MG (with bio ammo) and flamethrower are in better shape - they still kill things effectively, but it's tricky for the tank to survive getting up close to use them, especially as evolution ramps up into the 50%+ range. You're honestly better off using the handheld versions with shielded power armor. The tank could use a little better survivability (maybe more resistances) if you want it to be effective at using the MG/flamethrower offensively. On the other hand, they would be adequate secondary/defensive weapons as-is if the main gun did its job.

Anyway those are my thoughts on the tools I've gotten to play with so far, there's more this mod offers that I haven't even tried yet (e.g. mind control, friendly spawners, etc.). I'll let you know if I get around to experimenting with those things and have more feedback.

Thanks so much for this feedback Avloren!

Tweaked the Bio Cannon slightly, still a turret and not a true artillery, but you can now use the Bio ammo in artillery units and artillery shells in the Bio cannon.

I never use shot-guns, that's why I've never bothered to add/update any of that ammo. Just lazy.

I gave the living walls 100% fire resistances now. Hope that works.

That's it for now

Thanks again!

[Avloren]

Thanks so much for this feedback Avloren!

Tweaked the Bio Cannon slightly, still a turret and not a true artillery, but you can now use the Bio ammo in artillery units and artillery shells in the Bio cannon.

I never use shot-guns, that's why I've never bothered to add/update any of that ammo. Just lazy.

I gave the living walls 100% fire resistances now. Hope that works.

That's it for now

Thanks again!

That will certainly help the endgame artillery and living wall, thank you.

re: shotguns - me neither, honestly. I end up just skipping the things that aren't effective vs. high difficulty NE (shotgun, tank, etc.). Ideally they'd all be viable options, but it's certainly not a major problem if some just aren't. But if you're looking for things to tweak or add, well, there you go.

[Xuerian]

With a slower combat-focused Deathworld/AAII/AB/etc pack I'm finding it a really long trip through unrelated stuff I won't need for a while to get to Alien Understanding for the conversion ammo - which is quite a cool feature but puts it far out of practical reach. I know if I was using Expansion I would have been dead a long time ago at this rate.

How about splitting that out into something like "Adaptive Combat" and placing it under Military 2?

[Reika]

@TheSAGuy

Is there a reason I was never contacted about the terraformer/turret range boost conflict by you or anyone else? Or why you apparently opted to include a "these mods are incompatible" warning, then later change the terraformer to resolve that issue, but not remove the warning, which has now been inapplicable for months, and continues to generate spurious bug reports?

[TheSAguy]

@TheSAGuy

Is there a reason I was never contacted about the terraformer/turret range boost conflict by you or anyone else? Or why you apparently opted to include a "these mods are incompatible" warning, then later change the terraformer to resolve that issue, but not remove the warning, which has now been inapplicable for months, and continues to generate spurious bug reports?

I did, both via PM and Github report. Both times you basically blamed my mod, so I could not fix it. Here was one of the exchanges:

I won't argue that could be a possibility.
But both the Terraformaing Station and Bio Cannon work fine without Endgame Combat installed. Only when it's added do they act weird.

I'd love for you to look at my code and point out any improvements I could make.
Thanks.

My suspicion is that EGCombat is adding range-boosted versions of your "fake" turret, which due to them being technically different entities (objects in the OO programming sense) breaks your caching. There should not be such versions of technical entities to begin with. Does the fake turret drop anything (ie has both minable and a non-null result on said minable)? That is the current test.

I have not tested this since then, since I could not fix it in my mod, I had to give the users a warning.
I just tested it and it does seem like the issues have gone away. There is one remaining. When they build the Terraforming station, your mod drops a logistics container, since I use a turret to display the range of the scan area. Once you mine the station, the container remains:



Anyway you can fix that?

[Reika]

@TheSAGuy

Is there a reason I was never contacted about the terraformer/turret range boost conflict by you or anyone else? Or why you apparently opted to include a "these mods are incompatible" warning, then later change the terraformer to resolve that issue, but not remove the warning, which has now been inapplicable for months, and continues to generate spurious bug reports?

I did, both via PM and Github report. Both times you basically blamed my mod, so I could not fix it. Here was one of the exchanges:

I won't argue that could be a possibility.
But both the Terraformaing Station and Bio Cannon work fine without Endgame Combat installed. Only when it's added do they act weird.

I'd love for you to look at my code and point out any improvements I could make.
Thanks.

My suspicion is that EGCombat is adding range-boosted versions of your "fake" turret, which due to them being technically different entities (objects in the OO programming sense) breaks your caching. There should not be such versions of technical entities to begin with. Does the fake turret drop anything (ie has both minable and a non-null result on said minable)? That is the current test.

That is not me blaming you - that is my saying that this should not be happening as it currently is, and asking a question to confirm that, and indicate whether I need further safeguards. A question that, going through the old message, never got answered.

I have not tested this since then, since I could not fix it in my mod, I had to give the users a warning.
I just tested it and it does seem like the issues have gone away. There is one remaining. When they build the Terraforming station, your mod drops a logistics container, since I use a turret to display the range of the scan area. Once you mine the station, the container remains:



Anyway you can fix that?

The easiest way is the same as would be accomplished with the range-boost: An entity blacklist, since it is not a "real" turret anyways. What is its internal name?

[TheSAguy]

The easiest way is the same as would be accomplished with the range-boost: An entity blacklist, since it is not a "real" turret anyways. What is its internal name?

The internal name is "AlienControlStation_Area"
[/quote]

[Reika]

The easiest way is the same as would be accomplished with the range-boost: An entity blacklist, since it is not a "real" turret anyways. What is its internal name?

The internal name is "AlienControlStation_Area"

[/quote]
Done.

[TheSAguy]

Great! I'll release an updated version of my mod today, removing the warning.

[sp518]

Wow, the bug fix finally. Although I always use the two together anyway. _(:з」∠)_

[Avloren]

I tried out the dart turrets in a new game, I like them - they fill a certain early game niche perfectly. Gun turrets are effective against everything until you start seeing medium biters, who have too much physical resist even for piercing ammo to be practical. Piercing darts do a better job at holding them off until you have lasers, which can take a while on marathon.