[MOD 0.18] Robot Army. v0.4.4

[RemTM]

Liking the concept so far (using the dev build), but once the enemies get powerful enough you will eventually need A LOT of these guys to actually do any damage to any bases even with the terminators before the squad gets wiped (I play with Natural Evolution and Swarm. The volume of biters just gets out of hand so quickly... the horror )

Is there an ETA on even stronger robots? Or alternatively, exposing the HP, resistance and damage values of the robots themselves in the config file?

[MtnDew]

I have the same problem when using Bob's mod. I can send out 75 soldiers and they get wiped before killing even one spawner. Looking forward to upgraded soldiers.

[Alukat]

good idea!! plaese more tanks! and aircraft! army!!

this

and since we have a rocket silo, let there be orbital warfare and what about ships?

RTS factorio gets me really excited *.*

is it dytech compatible?

[kyranzor]

This mod works with mods like Bob's mods and Yuoki industries etc, because my mod does not change anything that would affect them. There is no inclusion of special mod's ores or special recipes based on other selected mods, sorry. I know some mods do this. I could auto-scale the performance of the droids to help match the higher difficulty enemy mods but i'd prefer to just add a scalar value to the configs, see below.

Liking the concept so far (using the dev build), but once the enemies get powerful enough you will eventually need A LOT of these guys to actually do any damage to any bases even with the terminators before the squad gets wiped (I play with Natural Evolution and Swarm. The volume of biters just gets out of hand so quickly... the horror )

Is there an ETA on even stronger robots? Or alternatively, exposing the HP, resistance and damage values of the robots themselves in the config file?

Thanks for trying out the dev build. please post here if you have any bug reports for the in-progress stuff. Stronger robots are planned, the terminators are just the first wave of end-game droids. I may make a lot more config parameters with scalars/multipliers that you guys can use to self-balance to your own taste, things like droid health and damage-per-shot. They will default to 1.0 and if you play with some of the more crazy combat mods that make the enemies harder, you could certainly crank up the droid's damage or health to help balance it yourself to a level you are happy with. I cannot hope to include integrated balance changes for each possible combat mod you guys might have, so i'll balance it for vanilla Factorio enemies and supply you guys with more config options to play with.

MtnDew: Are you using the standard 0.1.3 version with only the SMG battle droids? In the current dev branch i've got rifle bots, rocket bots, and "terminators" with dual shoulder mounted laserguns. The terminators can survive a very long time against anything but behemoths, in groups of 20+, using vanilla enemies on a deathworld max biter setting.


So guys, the upcoming Factorio 0.13 release will have some cool additions to the circuit network so i'm going to delay the robot combinator feature and just push forward with releasing 0.1.4 stable for people to get the early-game rifle robot and the lategame terminators. There is some code back-end changes to make the droids based on Force not Player's name as well, so that logistic-bot placed buildings can spawn units properly. The next thing is 0.13 of Factorio also has a much improved pathfinding system so hopefully squads will not destroy FPS so much - in the meantime use the work-around provided in some earlier posts, changing the minimum squad size to 1 and the squad distance check to 0 or -1. This makes each droid their own squad and you have like 500+ droids active without FPS issues.

edit: btw, I'm travelling England for a week, nothing will get done until next week

[AlexTheNotsogreat]

So, how do these compare to the already present Destroyer drones?

[kyranzor]

So, how do these compare to the already present Destroyer drones?

This is a good question. I've never done a comparison. Not even a qualitative one. I can make a quick table to show relevant values in their data like health, resistances, damage per second (damage per tick based on fire rate and then into seconds) and range etc. Also comparing their cost and raw materials. This is a good idea in general for my own balancing efforts so thanks.

To make a vague guess I'd say the SMG battle droids are weaker than destroyer drones and you'd need maybe 4-5 droids to match the same output in battle. It's a bit different because the droids can target more enemies and deal with swarms better. The SMG droids are mid-game though whereas in my opinion the destroyer drones are late-game very powerful defence drones. The development version of my mod has "terminators" which I would say are equal to or better than a destroyer drone in terms of damage but is much more survive-able.

[AlexTheNotsogreat]

So, how do these compare to the already present Destroyer drones?

This is a good question. I've never done a comparison. Not even a qualitative one. I can make a quick table to show relevant values in their data like health, resistances, damage per second (damage per tick based on fire rate and then into seconds) and range etc. Also comparing their cost and raw materials. This is a good idea in general for my own balancing efforts so thanks.

To make a vague guess I'd say the SMG battle droids are weaker than destroyer drones and you'd need maybe 4-5 droids to match the same output in battle. It's a bit different because the droids can target more enemies and deal with swarms better. The SMG droids are mid-game though whereas in my opinion the destroyer drones are late-game very powerful defence drones. The development version of my mod has "terminators" which I would say are equal to or better than a destroyer drone in terms of damage but is much more survive-able.

Thanks for the explanation, wasn's sure what this would be for.

[kyranzor]

Thanks for the explanation, wasn's sure what this would be for.

Well the point of the mod is for you to produce troops and have them fight the biters for you - the destroyer drones from vanilla game are merely personal defence. You have to be there to deploy them and make sure they do what they're meant to. My battle droids will form groups and go fight the nearest enemies - meaning if you can produce and deploy enough troops fast enough, you can destroy all biter life! Yay!

[jorgenRe]

How !
Got to see how it was done !
Awesome mod!

[kunkka]

Is there a way to "kill/delete all droids" ? A console command maybe?

I think I placed to many Battle Droids. I leaved them somewhere and they stuck because there is no more enemy near so they think too much before the next hunt and my fps dying. ~20 min and they still stuck somewhere.
I can't find them to manually pick up every soldier... and I don't want to reload the prev save too many things happened.

EDIT: I found it:

Count of your battle droids alive // replace the "droid-smg" if you want the other type of soldiers: "droid_rifle", "droid_rocket", "terminator"

Code: Select all

/c game.local_player.print(game.forces['player'].get_entity_count("droid-smg"))

Kill all player controlled units (save before you do this)

Code: Select all

/c game.forces['player'].kill_all_units()

[kyranzor]

Is there a way to "kill/delete all droids" ? A console command maybe?

I think I placed to many Battle Droids. I leaved them somewhere and they stuck because there is no more enemy near so they think too much before the next hunt and my fps dying. ~20 min and they still stuck somewhere.
I can't find them to manually pick up every soldier... and I don't want to reload the prev save too many things happened.

EDIT: I found it:

Count of your battle droids alive // replace the "droid-smg" if you want the other type of soldiers: "droid_rifle", "droid_rocket", "terminator"

Code: Select all

/c game.local_player.print(game.forces['player'].get_entity_count("droid-smg"))

Kill all player controlled units (save before you do this)

Code: Select all

/c game.forces['player'].kill_all_units()

some handy commands there! Thanks for that.

You must have cleaned out a large area, the radius for checking nearby enemies is 5000 tiles. I suppose I can add some more logic for delaying another attempt at finding nearest enemy again for x seconds if they cannot find any on the first try. Basically just a re-try state loop.

[kunkka]

some handy commands there! Thanks for that.

You must have cleaned out a large area, the radius for checking nearby enemies is 5000 tiles. I suppose I can add some more logic for delaying another attempt at finding nearest enemy again for x seconds if they cannot find any on the first try. Basically just a re-try state loop.

Map

Yeah, i discovered a large area because I want to build a huge train system + a lot of outposts so i wanted to get rid of the biters for a while. But this should be not an issue, because i drop them near the enemy. I can't release them in my base, because 10-15+ min until 25 droid can find target and i have 15-20 fps under this time, so I can't do this sadly.

If i drop them in aggro range to the enemy, i can drop 300-400 and they instantly attack and i still have 40+ fps. They keep the fps, until they can find target even if they have to move to an other relatively close base, but if they can't find more, fps drops and they stop moving, start thinking. Droid 1. found target, he goes hunt, the others near him still thinking. Droid 2. found target too, but Droid 1. died in a solo rambo mission because the others still thinking.. the same happens with droid 2, 3, 4 etc.. but this is a lot of time and until all gone RIP fps. (And imagine what happens when they can't find any target).

An other solution, if the robots can't find more target in a few sec, they should go home to a "rally point" like a Train stop and there we can pick them up or a droid assembler / inserter can place them back:
- This way we can reuse them. Don't have to kill them via console and we dont waste resources
- The more important thing they dont eat the fps
- Really need the ability to pick them up by construction bots / deconstruction planner (now its right click only one by one)
- By using the train stop mechanic we can see the Rally Point on the map + we can name it like "Northern Military Base" etc.
- If we have more rally point the soldiers should go back to the nearest.
- Construction robots can repair them (it was great to see when i followed them in fight and the bots from the personal roboport repaired them)

Features if the fps problem gone:
- Maybe we can add to each "base" a max. attack / fighting range, if they cleared the area they have to come back home so they can live to fight an other day (now they fight until they die and usually the last squads are wasted because 25-50 droid can't clear a very large base. They just die pointless, because they fall before they can reach the spawners.)
- Repair and fill the squads and we can add more soldiers to the "squad"
- They can guard mining outposts
- Split the forces between other bases with logistic system / combinators
- We can build a "fortress" around the Base, with wall / gate / turrets
- Experience system ??? (Maybe this should be a squad thing not single droids.)

So much potential!

An other note:
14 hours fresh gameplay, and biter evo is 98%+, so the droids are useless the blue/green biters eat them really easy.. The Terminators can handle them, but i am really far away to build them... Now I play with a modified "entity.lua" droid-msg: 180 hp, 12 dmg, now they can handle the enemy, before they die.

The Droids shines with early / mid evolution ( <50% ), Terminators with max, but there is nothing between in these two. More soldier types maybe overkill, research upgrades would be nice like "Droid Health Point Upgrade lvl 1-2-3-4-5" +25 hp / "Droid Damage Upgrade lvl 1-2-3-4-5" +1.5 dmg. Maybe these numbers are overpowered if we build and place 1000+, but now it is not possible so we have to buff them so 250 can be strong as 1000 from the normal.

I can't wait the future updates!

[kyranzor]

Yeah, i discovered a large area because I want to build a huge train system + a lot of outposts so i wanted to get rid of the biters for a while. But this should be not an issue, because i drop them near the enemy. I can't release them in my base, because 10-15+ min until 25 droid can find target and i have 15-20 fps under this time, so I can't do this sadly.

If i drop them in aggro range to the enemy, i can drop 300-400 and they instantly attack and i still have 40+ fps. They keep the fps, until they can find target even if they have to move to an other relatively close base, but if they can't find more, fps drops and they stop moving, start thinking. Droid 1. found target, he goes hunt, the others near him still thinking. Droid 2. found target too, but Droid 1. died in a solo rambo mission because the others still thinking.. the same happens with droid 2, 3, 4 etc.. but this is a lot of time and until all gone RIP fps. (And imagine what happens when they can't find any target).

An other solution, if the robots can't find more target in a few sec, they should go home to a "rally point" like a Train stop and there we can pick them up or a droid assembler / inserter can place them back:
- This way we can reuse them. Don't have to kill them via console and we dont waste resources
- The more important thing they dont eat the fps
- Really need the ability to pick them up by construction bots / deconstruction planner (now its right click only one by one)
- By using the train stop mechanic we can see the Rally Point on the map + we can name it like "Northern Military Base" etc.
- If we have more rally point the soldiers should go back to the nearest.
- Construction robots can repair them (it was great to see when i followed them in fight and the bots from the personal roboport repaired them)

Features if the fps problem gone:
- Maybe we can add to each "base" a max. attack / fighting range, if they cleared the area they have to come back home so they can live to fight an other day (now they fight until they die and usually the last squads are wasted because 25-50 droid can't clear a very large base. They just die pointless, because they fall before they can reach the spawners.)
- Repair and fill the squads and we can add more soldiers to the "squad"
- They can guard mining outposts
- Split the forces between other bases with logistic system / combinators
- We can build a "fortress" around the Base, with wall / gate / turrets
- Experience system ??? (Maybe this should be a squad thing not single droids.)

So much potential!

An other note:
14 hours fresh gameplay, and biter evo is 98%+, so the droids are useless the blue/green biters eat them really easy.. The Terminators can handle them, but i am really far away to build them... Now I play with a modified "entity.lua" droid-msg: 180 hp, 12 dmg, now they can handle the enemy, before they die.

The Droids shines with early / mid evolution ( <50% ), Terminators with max, but there is nothing between in these two. More soldier types maybe overkill, research upgrades would be nice like "Droid Health Point Upgrade lvl 1-2-3-4-5" +25 hp / "Droid Damage Upgrade lvl 1-2-3-4-5" +1.5 dmg. Maybe these numbers are overpowered if we build and place 1000+, but now it is not possible so we have to buff them so 250 can be strong as 1000 from the normal.

I can't wait the future updates!

Hey thanks for your feedback!

I'm envisioning a train stop (for now, due to lack of API for other objects with names and uniqueness to them) which if it contains the word "military" will act as a rally point for squads that are below-strength or troops with no nearby targets to gather around and go into "idle" mode until they see a target or get reinforced. Squads below strength (set in config file as a discrete value) will retreat from battle and move to nearest "military" rally point. Squads with no valid targets will move to nearest "military" rally point.

I will attempt to add effects of upgrades for "Combat robot damage", which if you do all of them, gives a full 100% total damage bonus. This should make the mid-late game droids very powerful. I will also be putting a scale-factor in the config.lua so people with various warfare mods that find my robot army units are not properly scaled, can just modify the scale factor to increase damage/health of all robot army droid units.

For example, the Natural Evolution mod makes the biters and the spawners very strong, so you might use a DROID_HEALTH = 1.50 modifier, and a DROID_DAMAGE = 1.50 modifier. This will change the entity definitions themselves so don't expect to be changing this all the time, mid-game. The combat robot upgrade research will still work in addition to this, this would be a way to increase the base health and damage of the droids.

Also, have you tried the rocket droids? They are very good additions to the SMG droids, if you have mixed squads. like 5-10 rocket droids for every 20 SMG droids, means they can take on large biters and large spitters pretty well. The point of the rocket droid was high damage to single targets like large biters/spitters and worms and spawners, while the SMG droids take on smaller faster enemies.

EDIT:

I'd also like to mention that Klonan has given me permission to use/integrate his Combat Robots mod, which will be a good way to flesh out the idea of "guard" drones that chill out near your bases as well as my original war droids that go out to kill bugs. I will be able to integrate these to the squad system pretty easily, so i'll think about this as a way of have defensive and offensive robot types. Might make the player control of things a little easier, if they just have different options to manufacture rather than a complex method of controlling a single unit type/set of units.

[kyranzor]

PSA: I was just reading the changes proposed to the mod API for 0.13 release of Factorio (ETA very very soon), and it will possibly break a few minor things in the mod. I will put a hotfix .zip on here once it's all identified, but my progress to 0.1.4 is going well enough that in a week or two it should be ready for mainstream release.

[dragonsteincole]

I apologise, it's going to be one of those posts, but with 0.13 + dev branch, I'm having some difficulty with spawning and hunting ability. I've read through and as far as I understand only the 'droid-smg' will be spawned by the Assembler (which is the droid i've been testing with), but in both a new game and existing save, it will 'process' one droid but get hung up on actually spawning it.

And the other problem is a common one, in that when any number (5 in my test case) are manually spawned, the droids will not seek out any targets, and just spaz out on the spot, dropping my fps significantly. They will only attack and move if something comes to attack them, once they've dealt with that they slowly move back to where they spawned (only a few feet away) and resume dancing.

These problems only exist with the files from the dev branch added to the existing 0.13 mod folder. Without them, these problems disappear (although the problem with fps drops remains).

I apologise if the obvious answer is staring me in the face, or has already been answered here. But after reading through the topic and double-checking my install, I'm still not sure what to do.

[kyranzor]

I wilL update the Dev branch today which has fixed droid spawning of all types, and the Droid Assembler can now spawn in the direction the building is placed in. The way the droids spas out is still an interesting anomaly that appeared during development. They didn't always do that. I am going to have a closer look at the state they are in when doing that. I can probably fix it by forcing them to wander until they get a successful target with find-nearest-enemy.

[dragonsteincole]

I wilL update the Dev branch today which has fixed droid spawning of all types, and the Droid Assembler can now spawn in the direction the building is placed in. The way the droids spas out is still an interesting anomaly that appeared during development. They didn't always do that. I am going to have a closer look at the state they are in when doing that. I can probably fix it by forcing them to wander until they get a successful target with find-nearest-enemy.

If this helps, the only other information I can offer is that rarely, spawning another set of 5 will make this new 5 go off and search for biters/bases (and I'm doing this within 50 tiles so i'm not in the middle of nowhere when spawning them), occasionally the original 5 will follow them, but more times than not I'll be stuck with 10 dancing robots and a very low fps.

For a suggestion, is there any way to link the direction of the Assembler to this idea of you forcing them to wander? Like "the Assembler is pointing North, so I want to walk North until I find something to fight."

Edit 05/06/16: (Sorry, I have only just registered so I cannot reply or send Private Messages.) For minor compass directions, I know from looking that straight rails have the tag "building-direction-8-way", which could help. And depending on the final graphics for the Assembler, there could be a total of 8 lights on the roof of the building, with one illuminated to indicate what direction is selected. Apologies if this is vague, i'm not a modder of Factorio, but I've modded a few other games, so I know where to poke around to find stuff.

[kyranzor]

Hey guys, massive update to the dev branch. It's getting really good, I am quite satisfied with the stability of the core aspects of the mod. https://github.com/kyranf/robotarmyfact ... evelopment

zip of current state of dev branch, to make it easier for you.. https://github.com/kyranf/robotarmyfact ... opment.zip

The "dancing" robot effect has been fixed - turns out it was a strange effect caused by left-over code for when squads were spawned by hand only, and followed the player. I used the spawning-player's position. I've changed that now to use the newly spawned entity that didn't find a nearby squad and has triggered the creation of a new squad. The Droid assembler can spawn units in the direction it's pipe arrows are facing, and you can spawn all 4 droid types now.

Changelist for today's commit are:

-Droid Assemblers now spawn all types of droids
-Droid Assemblers now spawn based on their facing.
-Droid SMG damage increased slightly.
-added Clockwork Riflebot, an early-game slow firing medium-long range bot.
-Terminator ammo category changed to combat-robot-laser to take advantage of robot damage upgrade tree
-Clockwork rifle bot and SMG bot use the player's gun damage and shooting speed upgrades ammo category (not changed, just noted)
-massive performance improvements, fixed droids "dancing"

Please get this dev branch, overwrite all files in your robotarmy0.1.3 folders

[miturion]

Hey guys, massive update to the dev branch. It's getting really good, I am quite satisfied with the stability of the core aspects of the mod.

Good to hear. Great work.

[dragonsteincole]

I have to report that almost all the issues I was reporting have vanished with this update. Assembler rotation is fine, droids spawn and will search for targets now. They still exhibit 'dancing' tendancies near to walls, but seem to sort themselves out quicker.

And the revelation of the weapons following the research tree is quite a smart idea.

All in all a great update, thank you.