[0.13.20] Biters destroying power poles

[Xeteth]

Ran into an issue earlier today where a group of biters got stuck on a power pole when pathing to attack an outpost and as such they attacked the power pole. I understand that biters will attack objects (trees, rocks, etc) if they are in the way however as you can see in the GIF they shouldn't have been stuck, simply there were too many in the cluster.

The path cache's are turned on in the GIF so you can see that the power pole is obstructing the path.

I think this is worthy of being a bug as with this behaviour it can knock the power out from entire sections of a map and turreting entire railways isn't really viable.

I have no idea of the internal workings but perhaps something like making path cache's move a few tiles away from power poles if there is free space?

GIF

Edit: Happy to upload the save just before this occurs but don't want to share publicly, I'll send a PM with DL link if required

[Loewchen]

There is no rule that forbids biter from doing that, you need to protect your stuff.
NaB.

[Xeteth]

There is no rule that forbids biter from doing that, you need to protect your stuff.
NaB.

I am aware that there is no rule, however simply saying "you need to protect your stuff" is rather ignorant to be honest. Are we meant to turret and wall entire train lines? Sorry but that isn't really viable.

[Klonan]

Sometimes for things like this, if its something that its hard to be sure of, whether its a bug, unintended behavior or some other issue,
Its best to let the dev responsible for that area make the decision

I will move this back to bug reports until oxyd can take a look

[Rseding91]

There is no rule that forbids biter from doing that, you need to protect your stuff.
NaB.

I am aware that there is no rule, however simply saying "you need to protect your stuff" is rather ignorant to be honest. Are we meant to turret and wall entire train lines? Sorry but that isn't really viable.

In this case it's intended behavior. When a biter (or group of biters) tries to path somewhere and one or more of them get stuck because something is in the way they attack it. In this case the electric pole is in the way and the only way forward (because biters are to the left, right, and behind) is to destroy the electric pole.

The biter starts attacking it and the rest keep walking. Once they start attacking they won't switch off attacking unless something else attacks them.

[Xeteth]

In this case it's intended behavior. When a biter (or group of biters) tries to path somewhere and one or more of them get stuck because something is in the way they attack it. In this case the electric pole is in the way and the only way forward (because biters are to the left, right, and behind) is to destroy the electric pole.

The biter starts attacking it and the rest keep walking. Once they start attacking they won't switch off attacking unless something else attacks them.

I understand that and it makes sense under normal circumstances, biter gets stuck and must attack to free itself (or attack walls in the case of not being able to path through obviously). However (and it may not be apparent from the limited view frame of the gif) this power pole is running along a train mainline supplying outposts with power; it is obviously necessary to supply the outpost with power from somewhere and as such there will always be a blockage from a power pole somewhere along the 360 arc around the outpost. This is why I think it's a bug - the intended behaviour is that power lines are left alone and the biters attack the outpost.

[orzelek]

In this case it's intended behavior. When a biter (or group of biters) tries to path somewhere and one or more of them get stuck because something is in the way they attack it. In this case the electric pole is in the way and the only way forward (because biters are to the left, right, and behind) is to destroy the electric pole.

The biter starts attacking it and the rest keep walking. Once they start attacking they won't switch off attacking unless something else attacks them.

I understand that and it makes sense under normal circumstances, biter gets stuck and must attack to free itself (or attack walls in the case of not being able to path through obviously). However (and it may not be apparent from the limited view frame of the gif) this power pole is running along a train mainline supplying outposts with power; it is obviously necessary to supply the outpost with power from somewhere and as such there will always be a blockage from a power pole somewhere along the 360 arc around the outpost. This is why I think it's a bug - the intended behaviour is that power lines are left alone and the biters attack the outpost.

I'm not sure why would you think that it's intended for biters to attack only the outpost. There is no "power pole protection act" coded anywhere in the biter AI.

As described by Rseding91 biters behaved exactly as their AI dictates - so what happened is indeed intended behavior. In this case it accienditally happens that this behavior leads to biters "winning" in a way since they have defenceles outpost to chew on. Thats a nice emergent effect from the AI implementation.

[Rseding91]

Are we meant to turret and wall entire train lines? Sorry but that isn't really viable.

As for this: if you want 100% protection - yes.

The biters don't target electric poles or rails directly but there's nothing in their AI that says they can't attack them - just like trees.

[Oxyd]

In these cases, it's that the biters get stuck on each other and the pole – they're not allowed to attack other biters, so the pole is the only thing they can attack in order to free themselves. It seems that a biter could just wait for the other biters to move away, and then follow it instead of attacking the pole – but I've tried to implement that twice already, and it's always caused other, more serious issues. Maybe one day I'll come up with a way to wait and follow that actually works, but until then, this is how it is.

[Xeteth]

I'm not sure why would you think that it's intended for biters to attack only the outpost. There is no "power pole protection act" coded anywhere in the biter AI.

As described by Rseding91 biters behaved exactly as their AI dictates - so what happened is indeed intended behavior. In this case it accienditally happens that this behavior leads to biters "winning" in a way since they have defenceles outpost to chew on. Thats a nice emergent effect from the AI implementation.

I already acknowledged this, I understand exactly why this situation has occurred with regards to biter AI, I however believe that this has unintended side effects and as such disagree with the outcome or implications of how it works. For example knocking out this power pole not only knocks out the coal outpost but the oil outpost too (and whatever would be beyond that point once I expand that area) as shown in this picture:

Are we meant to turret and wall entire train lines? Sorry but that isn't really viable.

As for this: if you want 100% protection - yes.

The biters don't target electric poles or rails directly but there's nothing in their AI that says they can't attack them - just like trees.

Fair enough, I was unsure if this was the intended consequences of that behaviour or not which was the point of this post. Thanks for clearing it up.

[Adil]

If it's making things hard for you it doesn't mean that it's a bug automatically. Biters already have retarded attack capabilities as it is.
If you don't want to put wall and turrets around all your rails and poles, don't build poles everywhere. Use local power sources, put poles away from biters, have a secondary power line, etc.
Saying "you need to protect your stuff" is not ignorance in my book. Saying "I didn't protect something and now they've eaten it! Pls fix asap!" is.

[Electroid]

I wouldn't consider this to be a bug.
You don't NEED to have power poles connecting everything. Its handy yes.
But you can just as easily set up a solar supply of electricity in that grid. power polls shouldn't be invincible in this game just because it can shut down your outpost.