[MOD 0.13.17+] Rampant

[Veden]

As an aside, do you know if it is vanilla, NE, or your mod that triggers nest attacks when a tree is chopped down? I can predictably control waves of enemies by avoiding tree hacking.

That is NE.

The retreating is based on the evolution level, so the higher it goes the more killing that is required.

[doktorstick]

Here's a video[1] at 54% evolution with the retreat oscillation. This happened about 15-20 times before I decided to record the video. Eventually they decided to attack but by then their numbers were thinned substantially (you can see the pile of bodies from the previous oscillations).

That swarm attacked from the south. As you can see, I had wiped out a base so there was a lot of death in the area.

[1] The quality my not be too hot. I've never used vid.me before and I don't know how they scale 1080p captures.

[Veden]

Here's a video[1] at 54% evolution with the retreat oscillation. This happened about 15-20 times before I decided to record the video. Eventually they decided to attack but by then their numbers were thinned substantially (you can see the pile of bodies from the previous oscillations).

That swarm attacked from the south. As you can see, I had wiped out a base so there was a lot of death in the area.

[1] The quality my not be too hot. I've never used vid.me before and I don't know how they scale 1080p captures.

No worries on the quality. I'm looking to address this with the next version. I appreciate you taking the time to make a video

[TheSAguy]

Here's a video[1] at 54% evolution with the retreat oscillation. This happened about 15-20 times before I decided to record the video. Eventually they decided to attack but by then their numbers were thinned substantially (you can see the pile of bodies from the previous oscillations).

That swarm attacked from the south. As you can see, I had wiped out a base so there was a lot of death in the area.

[1] The quality my not be too hot. I've never used vid.me before and I don't know how they scale 1080p captures.

No worries on the quality. I'm looking to address this with the next version. I appreciate you taking the time to make a video

In my current game I have a group of probably 200+ that were scared of me after killing a few.
I think you should have a threshold, if the group is a certain size, it gets harder for them to retreat. The threshold to retreat. OR maybe have a random kamikaze where they all out attack, to try an overwhelm one.

[Veden]

In my current game I have a group of probably 200+ that were scared of me after killing a few.
I think you should have a threshold, if the group is a certain size, it gets harder for them to retreat. The threshold to retreat. OR maybe have a random kamikaze where they all out attack, to try an overwhelm one.

I do have some code in there for the kamikaze attacks, but it is triggering off a flat percent instead of scaling with group size or evolution. I will make that adjustment as well.

[_ImPat]

This mod doesn't do anything. No retreat, no nothing. I have disabled all mods and created a new world. I would really like this to work but it doesn't. If I can help in any way please tell me.
Note: Installed from mods.factorio.com(Ingame).

[_ImPat]

This mod doesn't do anything. No retreat, no nothing. I have disabled all mods and created a new world. I would really like this to work but it doesn't. If I can help in any way please tell me.
Note: Installed from mods.factorio.com(Ingame).

Seems to be something with your 0.0.5 version of the mod. I just updated factorio to 0.14.3 and installed your latest version of your mod from mods.factorio.com and it is fully working. You may want to take fixing the old mod into consideration.
Thanks for this amazing mod!

[kyranzor]

Hey, just wanted to say great mod! great code too, I had a look at how you had such responsive movement in your unitgroups for the retreat mechanic (which looks great in-game btw, very responsive and realistic)

It seems you tackled it by making a new unit group and adding all the members back into that new group and issuing the order to the new group, yes?

[_ImPat]

Please take a look at my discussions post on mods.factorio.com I explain what could be changed about the mod. As of right now, I don't enjoy a specific mechanic in your wonderful mod wich kind of ruins it for me.

[TheSAguy]

Please take a look at my discussions post on mods.factorio.com I explain what could be changed about the mod. As of right now, I don't enjoy a specific mechanic in your wonderful mod wich kind of ruins it for me.

Why not just discuss it here... Much easier than the portal.

[Veden]

Hey, just wanted to say great mod! great code too, I had a look at how you had such responsive movement in your unitgroups for the retreat mechanic (which looks great in-game btw, very responsive and realistic)

It seems you tackled it by making a new unit group and adding all the members back into that new group and issuing the order to the new group, yes?

Pretty much, the new unit group has a countdown to when it gets the ability to attack again.
The reassigning group members to a new group was the only way I could get the units to disengage when attacking.

I'm not saying I hate this wonderful mod. But the enemy just knows where you are even if there is no an enemy miles away from the player. You can do whatever you want, even delete all the enemy units and they still know where you are. The "pheromones" should let the aliens allow to call backup but not just show up out of nowhere. This just makes the game tedious and annoying to play.

Another thing. Create a config file for your mod to enable and disable some of your planned features. I don't like the idea of tunnels and fire spitters so I would like the implementation of configs.

I hope you take my suggestions into consideration and improve the general gameplay of your amazing mod. Appreciate your work.

I had planned on adding the config options already. TheSAguy had mentioned that earlier I believe on the mod portal.

As to the knowing where you are, I'm not quite sure what you mean.
Is the behavior you are talking about present in Vanilla without Rampant?

I'll be back to doing some coding on this mod this week.

[Veden]

This mod doesn't do anything. No retreat, no nothing. I have disabled all mods and created a new world. I would really like this to work but it doesn't. If I can help in any way please tell me.
Note: Installed from mods.factorio.com(Ingame).

Seems to be something with your 0.0.5 version of the mod. I just updated factorio to 0.14.3 and installed your latest version of your mod from mods.factorio.com and it is fully working. You may want to take fixing the old mod into consideration.
Thanks for this amazing mod!

The old mod should potentially just require having the version number switched back to 0.13. I will probably do this later in the week.

[kyranzor]

Veden, Oxyd has said in this thread: viewtopic.php?f=28&t=32171 that the members of the unit_group are bugged and are not updating their orders. This will be fixed in 0.14.4 so we shouldn't need to do as much black-magic to get them to do what we want. In theory if the distraction method is set to "none" then they should break off contact and do as commanded (in your case, retreat).

[Veden]

That is awesome, I was noticing that alot when trying to do anything really.

That should clean up some of the logic and make for snappier actions.

[Adil]

Hey, are you completely adamant, that defines.distraction.by_anything is the one that must be in the AI_attack?
I'm generally okay with them cutting down your power lines from time to time but, man, they're constantly gobbling up a fraction of a railway when they wander around.
That's too much even for me.
I've tried altering rail tags to no avail. The only things that work are changing the force that owns rails or setting them indestructible. However, the former comes at the cost of them disappearing from the map. (Wait, maybe there's something that can be done with their prototypes in this case.) The latter method is kind of meh, although the discrepancy from vanilla rail then would not come into play much anyway,

I believe the default attacks use defines.distraction.by_enemy when going in.

[doktorstick]

I would also like to see a change. Random poles and tracks out in the wild get nommed on and it's a bit of a hassle unless you cover every square inch with construction bots.

I did like a bit of emergent gameplay where my laser tower push was cut-off because of the high-death-retreat-logic. They circled around and took out a pole that was fueling my push.

It would nice to have the best of both worlds. Instead, I would suggest defines.distraction.by_enemy as their default (if that is indeed the proper define) and when they encounter attacks/death, they will enter random-attack-mode within some predetermined radius from the source of the event. Eventually they go back to normal distraction logic (either by time or exiting the area or my personal favorite--death).

[TheSAguy]

Hey, are you completely adamant, that defines.distraction.by_anything is the one that must be in the AI_attack?
I'm generally okay with them cutting down your power lines from time to time but, man, they're constantly gobbling up a fraction of a railway when they wander around.
That's too much even for me.
I've tried altering rail tags to no avail. The only things that work are changing the force that owns rails or setting them indestructible. However, the former comes at the cost of them disappearing from the map. (Wait, maybe there's something that can be done with their prototypes in this case.) The latter method is kind of meh, although the discrepancy from vanilla rail then would not come into play much anyway,

I believe the default attacks use defines.distraction.by_enemy when going in.

NE Enemies has a good solution to rail being destroyed and Bio Industries big wood pole acts the same.
Only way for me to make outposts worth while

This is a great mod but cant do large expansive bases without these tweaks for me.

[Veden]

I'm not against making some adjustments, I appreciate feedback.

I'm thinking that the default becoming by_enemy with a small chance of being a by_anything.
For combat they switch over to the by_anything.

The idea being that roaming bands will occasionally destroy everything in there path and while in combat they will frenzy destroying anything around them.

[_ImPat]

Please take a look at my discussions post on mods.factorio.com I explain what could be changed about the mod. As of right now, I don't enjoy a specific mechanic in your wonderful mod wich kind of ruins it for me.

Why not just discuss it here... Much easier than the portal.

Okay, I'll just copy paste it.

I'm not saying I hate this wonderful mod. But the enemy just knows where you are even if there is no an enemy miles away from the player. You can do whatever you want, even delete all the enemy units and they still know where you are. The "pheromones" should let the aliens allow to call backup but not just show up out of nowhere. This just makes the game tedious and annoying to play.

Another thing. Create a config file for your mod to enable and disable some of your planned features. I don't like the idea of tunnels and fire spitters so I would like the implementation of configs.

I hope you take my suggestions into consideration and improve the general gameplay of your amazing mod. Appreciate your work.

[_ImPat]

Forget what I said... After more testing and a click in my mind, I realised that they are tracking the player's scent. Just going far enough away makes them lose you.
Sorry for being completely stupid.
Have a nice day everyone!