[MOD 0.12.20+] Misanthrope 0.3.7 -- Better Biter Mechanics

[Gammro]

Thanks, I removed WaiTex to cut down on filesize but I dont think that should be too much of a problem.

(please dont judge that they almost immediately destroy my rail network. it worked fine in 0.2.4 )

File available here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/169 ... 2Bmods.zip

I found in my game it has some peaks to a lot higher than 0.1 update time:

updatetime

[Afforess]

Thanks, I removed WaiTex to cut down on filesize but I dont think that should be too much of a problem.

(please dont judge that they almost immediately destroy my rail network. it worked fine in 0.2.4 )

File available here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/169 ... 2Bmods.zip

For I found in my game it has some peaks to a lot higher than 0.1 update time:

updatetime

Okay, thanks. Yeah, peaking at 2 is not acceptable. I will look into this.

[Supercheese]

Thanks, I removed WaiTex to cut down on filesize but I dont think that should be too much of a problem.

(please dont judge that they almost immediately destroy my rail network. it worked fine in 0.2.4 )

File available here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/169 ... 2Bmods.zip

I found in my game it has some peaks to a lot higher than 0.1 update time:

updatetime

How is your pollution cloud on your minimap white and not red?

[Gammro]

Thanks, I removed WaiTex to cut down on filesize but I dont think that should be too much of a problem.

(please dont judge that they almost immediately destroy my rail network. it worked fine in 0.2.4 )

File available here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/169 ... 2Bmods.zip

I found in my game it has some peaks to a lot higher than 0.1 update time:

updatetime

How is your pollution cloud on your minimap white and not red?

Instructions:

Better visibility pollution
Courtesy of Ragnaman:

Save this image to [Factorio install location]\data\core\graphics and rename to pollution-visualization.png :


Preview(without colorblind ores): http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/f ... =653751086

Probably doesnt work nice with MP

[Afforess]

Thanks, I removed WaiTex to cut down on filesize but I dont think that should be too much of a problem.

(please dont judge that they almost immediately destroy my rail network. it worked fine in 0.2.4 )

File available here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/169 ... 2Bmods.zip

I found in my game it has some peaks to a lot higher than 0.1 update time:

updatetime

Try out version 0.3.2.

It's still not perfect, but the peak script usage I saw on your save was 0.5, (vs 3-4 at certain points), and usually much lower. I will keep working on this, but I wanted to get some easier, big improvements out quickly. Let me know what you think.

[BlakeMW]

The main problem with Misanthrope 0.3 can be summed up as:

Pre Great Wall:

Ow Ow Ow Ow Stop biting me dammit!

Post Great Wall:

Biters make awesome neighbors


Unfortunately they are such a nuisance walling them out completely is the only recourse (nuisances including attacking through gaps, and expanding extremely aggressively into un-occupied territory, they even seem to plop down spawners while I'm killing a nest such that the nest rebuilds itself just behind my tank). There is little incentive to do any other strategy other than walling in a big rectangle encompassing all of your territory. The relationship between circumference and area means there is little reason to try and protect supply lines or outposts - just expand the big rectangle, it results in less surface area to defend and the larger your rectangle the cheaper it is per tile encompassed.

[Afforess]

The main problem with Misanthrope 0.3 can be summed up as:

Pre Great Wall:

Ow Ow Ow Ow Stop biting me dammit!

Post Great Wall:

Biters make awesome neighbors


Unfortunately they are such a nuisance walling them out completely is the only recourse (nuisances including attacking through gaps, and expanding extremely aggressively into un-occupied territory, they even seem to plop down spawners while I'm killing a nest such that the nest rebuilds itself just behind my tank). There is little incentive to do any other strategy other than walling in a big rectangle encompassing all of your territory. The relationship between circumference and area means there is little reason to try and protect supply lines or outposts - just expand the big rectangle, it results in less surface area to defend and the larger your rectangle the cheaper it is per tile encompassed.

What outcomes, other than the 'Great Wall' would you like to see?

The problem I see is that the 'Great Wall', as you say, it the most economical strategy. It minimizes the surface area and maximizes the defended 'safe' area. So I have trouble imagining an alternate strategy that is not in some way even worse than this.

I think the major flaw with Factorio defense is that there is zero mobile defensive structures. If you look at real life, and how say, kingdoms or nation-states defend themselves, they have a mobile army or navy of some kind that can move to intercept an approaching enemy, and not a Great Wall. What needs to be added maybe, is AI-controlled vehicles, so a group of AI-Tanks could intercept biters before they did damage.

Other thoughts? No promises on fixing this. Mobile units have been on my mind for a while but I think more thought is needed.

[BlakeMW]

Well I can think of a few things.

The most straightforward one is making the biters know when they've had the stuffing knocked out of them. Its not fun to clear a hive and just have the biters immediately replace it. Since biter resources are infinite it means the only recourse is to wall them out of the territory where you don't want them building. The simple solution would be to not permit rebuilding within the vicinity of a destroyed hive for some number of ticks (maybe 30 minutes - but it could depend on what mode they are in) so you could knock them back for a while.

In general it's obviously not easy to reduce reliance on a Great Wall (or at least, to make a Great Wall a less essential strategy) without dramatically changing the general biter attack patterns. One way might be to make biters less aggressive during the peaceful phase (or as I call it "super aggressive", which is followed by "ultra aggressive" and "hyper aggressive"). Lets say on peaceful phase the biters don't really bother your main factory at all. To keep peaceful phase interesting, from time to time there could be a harassment or "containment" intermission, during this harassment they attack your supply lines and extremities (i.e. power lines, railways, poorly defended mining outposts and such) but avoid more built up sectors, basically they attack areas of your factory with low machine density, and find the areas with a lot of stuff and high pollution too "scary" to attack whether or not it is well defended (that's not to say that biter scouts wont occasionally wander in, just that they wont constantly launch large suicide sieges). It'd be nice if sometimes in harassment phase they run away when you start shooting them.

Along with the harassment or containment phase could also be a "denial" phase, in this phase they deliberately attack resource patches you've occupied (Again focusing on ones outside your main factory), if they successfully dislodge you they build a large nest there, this would make concentrating defenses at resource patches effective.

Perhaps depending on how well their campaign of containment and resource-denial goes, they then move more aggressively towards exterminating you (i.e. success make them bolder).

Another useful phase would be an "evolving" phase for if you wall them out. If you simply provide them with no opportunities to attack or harass you without getting obliterated by a wall of turrets they decide they can't do you any harm, so stop trying and focus on evolving stronger warriors, this would create some incentive to actively engage with the biters rather than just walling them out. The flipside is if they feel they are successfully fighting you evolution stagnates. This would make for some tough choices.

More aggressive phases, particularly ones where they make an earnest effort to exterminate you, could be triggered in a number of ways, one way would be if you kill a lot of nests in a short time they launch a large retaliatory attack against your factory. A large increase in pollution could also trigger an effort to destroy you, as would the mere passage of time (maybe every hour or two they decide to take a shot at wiping you out). It would be nice to move away from an "infinite biters" model, towards one where they can rally a large force only occasionally.

So the summary is:
1) More focus on attacking extremities and supply lines than wiping out your core (at least before the late game)
2) Actively trying to capture resource patches, again in favor of attacking your core.
3) Evolving faster if you deny them the opportunity to fight, but otherwise slower.
4) Launching determined attacks to destroy you in response mainly to player actions.

[Afforess]

@BlakeMW, There are a lot of really interesting ideas in your post... I will attempt to respond to each, but I also think you in a half-groping-in-the-dark way touched on a point which I've been missing:

Factorio is about the Player. Biters should react to the Player actions.

The vanilla Factorio game works this way to some extent. Biters attack the player when the player's pollution cloud spreads over biter bases. You have a Player action (Pollution) and a Biter reaction (attack).

Misanthrope decouples this, biters can attack even if the Player does nothing in particular. This may be the core problem, which you did not name outright, but for which you suggested a bunch of solutions.

Misanthrope should focus on making Biters react more intelligently to player actions. Biters should not be the main actor who causes actions, Biters should be a secondary actor who reacts to player actions.

Okay, now that this distinction, which Misanthrope lacks, is clarified, let's go on to your ideas...

You suggest re-doing the phases to have phases be distinct types of biter 'Reactions' to Player strategies. I am currently frustrated and unhappy with the existing Misanthrope phases, so your redo suggestion here strikes a chord of agreement with myself. The idea that Biters react to player strategies fits in perfectly with the above point about Biters needing to be a secondary actor. I like your different phase suggestions, so let me briefly outline (because I like lists better than walls of text) what they are, and see if you agree:

• Peaceful Phase
  • Biters will only attack to defend themselves, they will not send attack parties or expand bases
• Normal Phase
  • Biters will expand bases, and Biters under the player's pollution cloud will send attack parties to fight the player
• Harassment Phase
  • Biters will attack lightly or undefended structures
• Resource Denial Phase
  • Biters will expand to occupy resource fields, and prevent the Player from easy access to resources
• Aggression Phase
  • Many biter bases that are able, will send attack parties against the player
• Evolving Phase
  • Biters will cease sending attack parties and raise their evolution rate quickly to the next tier, to create stronger units
• Retaliation Phase
  • Triggered when the Player destroys several nests in quick succession, All biter bases that are able, will send attack parties against the player
• End-Game Phase? (Not sure if I like/want this...Maybe.)
  • Triggered when the Player builds the rocket silo, biter evolution locks to 100%, All biter bases that are able to will send attack parties against the player

I'm not sold on the idea of the last phase, I'm not sure Biters should be aware of 'victory conditions'. Phase selection is also not 100% clear to me, but seems solvable.

[seronis]

I like that list except for the locked 100% thing. Maybe offer that as a 'hard mode option' in some gui toggle. But not default and not without explicit player choice

[Koub]

I find the phasing you just described very ineresting, it feels a lot more what I'd expect natives to do if I was to invade them, pillage their environment, and throwing at their face tons of pollution. As for end-game phase, I would suggest, as you mentionned it, not a reaction to something they can't be knowing (the player building the rocket silo), but to something they should/could notice, which could be anything from cumulated pollution produced, cumulated aggression from the player, ... Like "Now, this has been too much, please die".

[Kazaanh]

I like that list except for the locked 100% thing. Maybe offer that as a 'hard mode option' in some gui toggle. But not default and not without explicit player choice

Not everyone likes building walls of turrets 4 tile thick. . .


Also is this mod compatible *officialy* with the Scary Nights and Swarm ? I use them all together and they seems to work nicely, at least for now. Testing in the MP.

[Afforess]

I like that list except for the locked 100% thing. Maybe offer that as a 'hard mode option' in some gui toggle. But not default and not without explicit player choice

Not everyone likes building walls of turrets 4 tile thick. . .


Also is this mod compatible *officialy* with the Scary Nights and Swarm ? I use them all together and they seems to work nicely, at least for now. Testing in the MP.

Scary Nights, no. Swarm, yes. Scary Nights doesn't actually work... I looked at that mod a long time ago and it doesn't really have any effect on biters. It's all placebo.

[Hexicube]

[*]End-Game Phase? (Not sure if I like/want this...Maybe.)

• Triggered when the Player builds the rocket silo, biter evolution locks to 100%, All biter bases that are able to will send attack parties against the player

Perhaps every rocket launched (regardless of payload) increases the minimum evolution by 5% and adds a big chunk to the current evolution, which means the first launch simply sees a response to the fact a giant cloud of smoke is everywhere (coupled with a loud sound and shockwave) and repeat launchings are something they would rather not see continue at all.

[seronis]

[*]End-Game Phase? (Not sure if I like/want this...Maybe.)

• Triggered when the Player builds the rocket silo, biter evolution locks to 100%, All biter bases that are able to will send attack parties against the player

Perhaps every rocket launched (regardless of payload) increases the minimum evolution by 5% and adds a big chunk to the current evolution, which means the first launch simply sees a response to the fact a giant cloud of smoke is everywhere (coupled with a loud sound and shockwave) and repeat launchings are something they would rather not see continue at all.

Still unrealistic enough it would ruin my entire sense of immersion. If you calculate the amt of pollution you want and just spawn that with a rocket launch then normal mechanics will handle it appropriately. Random forcing of evo factor has no basis since insects are not aware of things in orbit

[Afforess]

Misanthrope 0.3.5 is released. None of the above suggested changes are in yet, still a lot of cleanup and prep work that had to be done.

[lamesnow]

After playing the 3.5 version for a while (we're suddenly getting attacked everywhere, our current defenses weren't nearly enough!), I got the following error:
Error on tick "__Misanthrope__/libs/region/biter_scents.lua:126 attemt to index field 'values' (a nil value)"

I'm playing multiplayer with multiple mods, but previously (version 2.4) we had no problems.

[Afforess]

After playing the 3.5 version for a while (we're suddenly getting attacked everywhere, our current defenses weren't nearly enough!), I got the following error:
Error on tick "__Misanthrope__/libs/region/biter_scents.lua:126 attemt to index field 'values' (a nil value)"

I'm playing multiplayer with multiple mods, but previously (version 2.4) we had no problems.

Fixed in 0.3.6, thanks for the report. Glad to hear the biters are tough

[BlakeMW]

I noticed no difference at all with the 0.3.5 biters, but that's playing an existing factory with a Great Wall.

My Great Wall has actually attained religious significance for the Biters. They have set up shops and stalls and such to cater to the groups of pilgrims coming to die gloriously at the Great Wall. Traditionally they like to buy a T-Shirt saying "I came, I saw, I died"


Here another group of pilgrims is seen heading to the Great Wall

Occasionally I knock them back but they don't deal any real harm. When the Great Wall only consisted of gun turrets I think the Biters occasionally succeeded in tower-walking with worms. Since I upgraded to the layer of lasers they haven't caused any more trouble.

It is possibly my imagination but it seems the location shown is the favored point for groups of pilgrims to arrive. The Great Wall encloses a vast area of land and my pollution cloud spills on all sides, but they almost completely ignore the east and north sides of the wall. I wonder if that is simply because I haven't scouted in those directions at all? My Great Wall very nearly abuts up against the fog of war. In principle that means no biters even exist in sectors the pollution cloud hasn't reached. And since no biters exist, they can't send attacks.


Kind of funny that just not scouting is an effective way of reducing the intensity of attacks . What you don't know about, literally, cannot hurt you.

Edit: Biters have evolved back down to medium, and right as I was expecting to be facing Behemoths (Been deliberately not using EvoGUI)

[Kazaanh]

Worse is you have a long railways and biters break it every time you rebuild them, with no real ways to defend against its annoying as heck. If we have a wagon gun turrets with wagon-roboports or locomotive-track-fixer it would be nice. There are mods yeah, but not everyone likes to use them, especially when they are more likely to corrupt my game or in the beta stage.

You can't even setup proper guarding outposts because they get overrun quickly. Biter friendly rails mod doesn't work, because even after biters still destroy rails when the setup the new nests on TOP of your railtracks. Also its not blueprintable and they are no longer visible on the map.

I really like the idea of cutting the supply lines but right now with no real ways to defend against its only a burden to the player.

I had a railway from bottom left to top-right and it was destroyed with biter-friendly-rails mod almost instantly. Yea and they builded their own bases there. My railway was exactly in that place where biters are now.


I would really like to see a lite-version, with a bit less agressiv biters that ignore rails. Maybe longer periods of stances? Slower expansions? Because they setup their new base really quick, way too fast imo. Overall this mod is really fanstastic and gives tons of fun but fun can't be tedious, and after a while it gets tedious . . .

Anyways keep up the good work, one of the most interesting biter mods out there.

@also i forget to mention ,whats up with the 30+ groups of spitters? Got 30 big spitters and they were oneshotting everything, even me in my mk2 pa with 3 shields. Does it depends on how many spitter-nests are builded near each other?