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

[Afforess]

My only problem so far is that the critters keep spawning until the server uses 100% cputime and grinds to a halt, forcing a console kill all.

Great work thanks!

I'm glad you're enjoying it! I'm looking into ways to have biters de-spawn bases as well as spawn them, because I agree its problematic.

[Swadius]

Hi, enjoying your mod so far. I really like the hastened pace that the biters provide in the latter part of the game.

For FPS issues, maybe lowering the amount of movement calculations for the biters would help free up some resources. In the droidarmy mod there's a setting that controls deviation and movement range, perhaps there's something like that for biters. Another way might be to not spawn any biters, or maybe just a few from each nest during peace and expansion time while also lowering the number required for a new nest. If the trigger is available for the trigger that causes the nest of biters to attack you when they're triggered, making the biters suddenly burst out of their nests could be coupled with the prior idea.

Is there anyway to turn up the hostility and the expansion rate of the biters in higher evo? Where would I look in the files to affect this sort of stuff.

[Kazaanh]

Noticed some bugs which caused heavy FPS loss. It almost lowered my fps x3. We have noticed a very low FPs, at first we thought it was our internet but suddenly my friend has discovered this.

There was TON of biters on top of each other, it took 5 minutes of grenading them until they started to disappear

[Swadius]

Did your FPS improve?

[Kazaanh]

Did your FPS improve?

Yeah its fine now.

[wahming]

So, is there any way to play this with RSO without resorting to 'Great Wall' strategies?

[Ackos]

So, is there any way to play this with RSO without resorting to 'Great Wall' strategies?

I would love to help you, but i am getting mauled right now.

[joshwo69]

trying to edit the code for misantrope to allow for rails to be 0 and not resort to great wall tactics...

[wahming]

trying to edit the code for misantrope to allow for rails to be 0 and not resort to great wall tactics...

You need to add signals and power poles to that too. Ideally, only ignore power poles within 3 tiles of a rail.

[BlakeMW]

So, is there any way to play this with RSO without resorting to 'Great Wall' strategies?

It's simple enough to remove rail (and anything else you like) from "lib/biter_targets.lua"

[wahming]

So, is there any way to play this with RSO without resorting to 'Great Wall' strategies?

It's simple enough to remove rail (and anything else you like) from "lib/biter_targets.lua"

Oh, thanks!

However, I think there might be potential for pairing this mod up with the Robot Soldiers mod (viewtopic.php?f=97&t=23543&start=60). Now the player can start pushing the biters back too, it's 2-way attacks rather than 1-way. Certainly jibes with what Afforess was saying about player agency.

[wahming]

Feedback: Early game appears to be way too easy. By the time I hit 15% evo and have to start worrying about small biter attacks, I've got laser turrets o.O

Maybe instead of having them not attack at all when evo is low, you could ramp the AI difficulty upwards? So at low evo, biters act dumb, always come the same way, etc. As evo increases, start adding new attack strategies for the biters. As it stands now early-mid game is combat-less.

[kyranzor]

With the way Afforess has it now:

"Normal: Biters will expand and attack pollution, the same as vanilla mechanics.
Evolution Factor: 0.15 - 0.30
Passive Aggressive: Biters will expand new bases, but far away from the player.
Evolution Factor: 0.30 - 0.50
Decreases biter evolution while active."

It looks like if you don't really contact with them early on, nothing will really happen. Looks like you need to be the first strike to ramp up the evo until they start finally reacting.

If you have biter settings high enough, or starting area size small enough, you may feel pressure much earlier. You may also be naturally playing a very low pollution technique, with conservative production chains. You can "sneakily" get to laser turrets with a pretty low pollution footprint, it just takes a lot longer time than if you recklessly over-produce and feed the factory beast.

[wahming]

With the way Afforess has it now:

"Normal: Biters will expand and attack pollution, the same as vanilla mechanics.
Evolution Factor: 0.15 - 0.30
Passive Aggressive: Biters will expand new bases, but far away from the player.
Evolution Factor: 0.30 - 0.50
Decreases biter evolution while active."

It looks like if you don't really contact with them early on, nothing will really happen. Looks like you need to be the first strike to ramp up the evo until they start finally reacting.

If you have biter settings high enough, or starting area size small enough, you may feel pressure much earlier. You may also be naturally playing a very low pollution technique, with conservative production chains. You can "sneakily" get to laser turrets with a pretty low pollution footprint, it just takes a lot longer time than if you recklessly over-produce and feed the factory beast.

Low pollution? But but... I over mass produce metals into buffers right from the beginning... and also buffer pretty much every item I produce...

Also, tested misanthrope with robot soldiers mod. Results were utter carnage for the poor, 0% evo biters.

[kyranzor]

With the way Afforess has it now:

"Normal: Biters will expand and attack pollution, the same as vanilla mechanics.
Evolution Factor: 0.15 - 0.30
Passive Aggressive: Biters will expand new bases, but far away from the player.
Evolution Factor: 0.30 - 0.50
Decreases biter evolution while active."

It looks like if you don't really contact with them early on, nothing will really happen. Looks like you need to be the first strike to ramp up the evo until they start finally reacting.

If you have biter settings high enough, or starting area size small enough, you may feel pressure much earlier. You may also be naturally playing a very low pollution technique, with conservative production chains. You can "sneakily" get to laser turrets with a pretty low pollution footprint, it just takes a lot longer time than if you recklessly over-produce and feed the factory beast.

Low pollution? But but... I over mass produce metals into buffers right from the beginning... and also buffer pretty much every item I produce...

Also, tested misanthrope with robot soldiers mod. Results were utter carnage for the poor, 0% evo biters.

Well maybe see what happens if you force evolution factor to 0.5 , using /c game.evolution_factor = 0.5

Also, with Misanthrope they will "recolonize" more aggressively and come back with a vengence

[Afforess]

Low pollution and Low Evolution are effectively peaceful mode in the current release, I agree.

I have been working on a large rewrite of Misanthrope for the last month or so. Anyone interested can download and play it here, but it may eat your saves/base/game: https://github.com/Afforess/Misanthrope ... _0.4.1.zip

A brief outline of the changes:

• Biter bases will not spawn biters unless they have a reason (no more wandering biters, they are a waste of CPU)
  • Approaching a biter base is a reason to spawn biters
  • Attacking a biter base will also cause biters to be spawned in retaliation.
• All biter spawning logic from Factorio is disabled. Biters can only be spawned by Misanthrope.
• All base spreading logic from Factorio is disabled. I have not yet implemented any, so the only bases that will exist are those from the map-generator or existing maps.
• Bases will expand the number of hives they have based on the evolution factor
• Bases will identify the most valuable player targets and send assaults to them, if they are under a player pollution cloud
• All buildings produce 5-8x pollution, to ensure players can not 'go green' or hide from biters.
• Rails are no longer primary biter targets, although I plan on adding solar panels and accumulators to primary targets instead.
• The biter phase system is gone. Evolution rate always increases. Biters are always capable of attack.

The reason for this refactor is that I felt the current release of Misanthrope was extremely limited by relying on the Factorio spawning/expansion biter behavior. Misanthrope always had to be scanning the map to find bases/units and try to keep a second copy of where everything was. This is no longer the case in the rewrite, as Misanthrope is the only source of expansion/spawning. The advantage is a massive performance improvement and increased flexibility in writing complex AI. The expansion phase system, a holdover and relic of Misanthrope's Dynamic-Expansion origin serves no real purpose, and felt forced, so I removed it.

This is by no means a complete/stable release, and a lot of work remains to be done, but I think its far enough along to demo. The results on my saves have been encouraging, previously solid defenses are again being damaged/destroyed.

[wahming]

0.4.0 doesn't seem to work very well with new games. I'm getting this every time I start.

Misanthrope Crash.jpg (831.13 KiB) Viewed 7424 times

[Afforess]

0.4.0 doesn't seem to work very well with new games. I'm getting this every time I start.

Yep. I seem to always forget to test new starts. I've since fixed this in 0.4.1: https://github.com/Afforess/Misanthrope ... _0.4.1.zip

0.4.1 is still a pre-release alpha, but it is a bit farther along. Biter bases can spread now, and the AI is a bit more cleaned up. I have some more work left, but I estimate I am 75% of the way for a new release. I'll probably debut the new stable release when 0.13 drops.

[wahming]

You mentioned ignoring rails. What about large power poles and rail signals?

And hopefully lights

[Afforess]

You mentioned ignoring rails. What about large power poles and rail signals?

And hopefully lights

Rail signals are not targetted. Large power poles still are. The list for 0.4.x is here: https://github.com/Afforess/Misanthrope ... argets.lua