[0.17.45] passive biters outside player range mess up train game flow

[Mithaldu]

I don't know if biters are supposed to act like this, but if i look at the map biters outside of the immediate player range mostly just sit around and *very* rarely attack anything, even when expanding.

Particularly they entirely ignore trains going past.

However if the player for whatever reason takes a trip to an outpost, biters are extremely likely to pick up on that and attack the train, destroying the rails.

Now, thanks to expansion, i've found many situations where i found biters expanded quietly in large masses right up to the rails, making it near impossible to handle the situation, especially if it's a situation where going to the outpost was prompted by a shortage of materials.

If biters were activated by trains at all times there would at least be some small amount of early warning of their encroachment while they are still managable. Edit: Making biters ignore trains at all times regardless of player presence would also be perfectly fine and maybe even preferrable.

[eradicator]

If biters were activated by trains at all times there would at least be some small amount of early warning of their encroachment while they are still managable.

That would make train expansion ridiculously difficult. And probably eat some performance in the process. I'd prefer if they never attack trains that are just driving by, even with players inside. Wild animals don't attack noisy machines.

[Mithaldu]

I'd be happy with that too. Maybe make it an option.

My initial thought there was based around the idea that aggressiveness there would be intended.

[Rseding91]

Thanks for the report however none of this is a bug. I'm moving this to ideas and suggestions.

[Mithaldu]

Thanks for the report however none of this is a bug. I'm moving this to ideas and suggestions.

It's a bug insofar it appears to be a regression from .16 to .17.

[Oxyd]

Thanks for the report however none of this is a bug. I'm moving this to ideas and suggestions.

It's a bug insofar it appears to be a regression from .16 to .17.

What's the regression? It worked like you described in .16 as well.

[Mithaldu]

Maybe it's related to something else then. In .16 i had near constant biter attack activity and didn't have to wonder which of my infrastructure needed hardening. Once i upgraded to .17 biter activity across the board became *extremely* reduced ... except for expansion.

[Oxyd]

Now I'm even more confused. What does that have to do with trains?

If you could post the save, I can take a look if there's anything wrong with the biters.

[Mithaldu]

Bit of a big download, 415MB, due to mods: https://www.dropbox.com/s/v9s4upuv9oahb ... ve.7z?dl=1 You'll start off in a helicopter. If you fly south east and follow the train tracks and go back and forth between the first set of two mines, and the iron mine, you'll set off a number of biters that would otherwise do nothing at all. There are none there right now, but i've had a lot of pain from the very big worms with 38 range spitting on train tracks after i drove past.

With very aggressive biters they'd be moving around a lot and attack train infrastructure on the way to attacking other things, thus giving me warning that they've expanded closer to things.

With low aggression they just sit there and occasionally expand, without attacking anything ever, which gives me no warning that they've come closer until i ride by and they spit on the train tracks.

Attacks on train infrastructure may not have been *intentional*, but were a very useful emergent side effect before, when biter aggressiveness matched their expansion behavior. Now that aggressiveness changed to be lower, but expansion is still the same, the side effect disappeared.

(This also caused me to start using the Bio_Industries tree bombs to block biter expansion.)

(On a sidenote, saving that map takes quite long. Would it be worth opening another topic on?)

[Oxyd]

Well, the vast majority of the biters are outside your pollution cloud, so they have no reason to attack you. And those that do get any pollution at all seem to be staging attacks against the factory, so everything seems to be in order here.

Maybe you could play with the pollution setting so that it spreads further.

[Mithaldu]

Given that pollution does indeed seem to be the root cause of change here, can you tell me what would be 0.16-equivalent settings? I can work out how to apply them on my own, but i'd rather not figure them out through guesswork.