[MOD 0.14] AAI Programmable Vehicles

[Berkys32]

I appologize if this question has already been answered. I just checked the first page.

In the examples, why are you multiplied X and Y by 1? That seems like a pointless operation to me.

I didnt get it too at first, but if you dont do it, one signal get through and no others. It would be stuck giving first signal it get all time (thats what happens if you dont multiply it by 1)

[ggroulx]

hi earendel

quick question for you. is it possible for you to post an example (with a picture or a diagram) about how to use the vehicle deployer unit data and vehicle depot exchange data. this could be quite useful as i am still trying to understand how to program a hauler correctly. at the moment, the hauler behaves correctly and will collect ressources from the miner as long as it does not come out of the deployer.

thanks a lot!

ghislain

[mlem]

My haulers only pull coal from the Miners, nothing else. Is there a way to give the miner a signal of -1 copper? I tried the unit controller, but that didn't work

[ggroulx]

hi mlem,

in my case, the hauler works perfectly and will take whatever is inside the miner's trunk if i use the blueprint provided by earendel (with minor changes to fit my needs). but it works only if i manually put the hauler on the ground and use its id to match the miner. the hauler will not work correctly if it comes out from a vehicle deployer. so, if the hauler is either destroyed or removed, the next hauler to take its id from the deployer will not behave correctly.

so until someone can tell us how to correctly use the vehicle deployer unit data (and vehicle depot exchange data), i suggest you to simply put a hauler on the ground and use its id in your combinator to collect the ore from a miner as it works well. the only downside doing this is that hauler becomes specialized to that specific miner.

[GoliathMrk1]

Hi Earendel, Hi Everyone

Love the mod and the support around it, great job Earendel.

Just a quick question for someone who just started using combinators,

How or when do you use the Output options of the combinators? (1 or input count) especially in conjunction with your layouts.

Also what do you think is the possibility of rewriting the bitter's path finding?


Thanks for an awesome mod

[scatterlogical]

Absolutely amazed by this mod and all the other AAI mods! Spent quite a few late nights playing with them now .

Having one problem tho - gates. Firstly they don't open for automated vehicles, which, while solvable with some convoluted circuitry, should be much simpler. Trains can do it. But it's useless anyway since when I finally got that figured out, the vehicles won't even navigate thru the gates! I'm wondering if this is just down to them using biter AI, and if it's possible to fix?

[Afroman]

(Noob alert)
Hi
This mod looks very promising!

Just ome question, when I install it. The mod name is shown in red. Apparently(I guess) some of it's dependencies are not available?
what do I do?

[Cyrlynx]

Hi Earendel,
Amazing work so far, thank you very much!
I just gave a look to your new addition the vehicle depot and I wondering if you have an idea about automatic vehicle grid filling?
I think it's the ultimate step to potent the automatic vehicle combat.
I read that the lua code is available to do insert equipement.

I think that another building may be usefull to configure the template of the equipement grid we want to insert.

I have no idea about the complexity of this though.

Do you think you can?

Thanks

[scatterlogical]

EDIT: So this doesn't quite work properly. Has some timing issues that I'm try to work out. If anyone more magely than me wants to try and fix it, feel free.
EDIT 2: OK fixed now! Updated image and blueprint

Absolutely loving these AAI mods! Here's a little something I've spent the past few hours working on:



It's an automatic zone manager that can manage up to six zones.
It cycles through each of the zones, removing zoning that no longer contains resources, then automatically jumps to the next zone.
Configure your resources per zone in each of the six decider combinators to the right.

Here's the blueprint string:

Code: Select all

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[Mobius1]

Hello white tiger

First of all I'd like to say congratz on this amazing hard-to-make-it-work mod! Lol

I'm trying to make an automatic mining stuff like the Harvesters from C&C, but I stumbled on 2 main issues:
1- The miner doesn't drop its stuff in the vehicle depot even if the depot signal is super high.
2- The hauler doesn't pick up stuff from the miner / the miner is selfish and doesn't wanna give away his stuff.

These problems I encountered by trying to make the miner and hauler play along with Saphirite Ore from Angel's Ores (with bob's mods and angel's petrochem).

Vanilla resources works just fine I think, tested it with that bp you posted in the first topic and it worked for coal mining. But that same thing didn't work for Saphirite mining :'(

Is there a way to fix this issue? What should I do?

[Rock999]

Hello! First of all I gotta say, you did an awesome work with this mod! If I understand what this mod is really about, it has tremendous potential.

Second of all, it was pretty difficult to understand the setups and all that at first but later I got the hang of it and started building my own custom "command centers" controlling tons of vehicles around and inside my base. It definitely looks more "alive" now.

My question though is that whether it possible that the vehicles lose their "act as a turret" ability when this mod is used alongside Hardcorio: SC2, another cool mod? I see that the patrols I set around my base while playing with Hardcorio: SC2 seem to not act as a turret.

Or maybe I am doing something wrong.

This is also a question for other players here who use Hardcorio: SC2 along with AAI Programmable Vehicles.

Thank you for your help!

[Earendel]

I have been unable to respond for a while so I will try and go through all the new comments. Sorry if I miss someone.

Ok, count me in for any help I can provide - can translate to Silesian and Polish.

Thanks, I will try to contact you when I get to that stage.

I am thinking of such a scenario:

Start with a miner, hauler, a few chaingunners, depo. Hauler could actually hold in it's trunk some resources, maybe assemblers etc. No hand crafting could be nice.
Make each of these units more fragile and much more costly, meaning you basically cannot replace them for a long while if they get destroyed.
So lots of iron and gears needed to make an unit. Not 5 gears, more like 500 - miner is a big beast. And loads of engines, similar to what locomotive requires.
In case of hauler - well, its a huge truck, it should need big engine, too. And loads of iron, gears, steel.

Having a dedicated vehicles campaign with a tutorial and some missions would be a great way to tech new players.

Hi,
But i have found a bug while playing around with the Unit Controller.
When you set a negative speed with a combinator the vehicle will go that fast.. so -1000 lets it fly away like a bullet
Watch the hauler in the bottom right:
https://youtu.be/kJFA4pGQF3o

Lol. Ok, I'll fix that.

Also I noticed the guides do not explain what the resource counts are when using a decider combinator. The output "1" or "input count". It's very vague, and I noticed I need to enable it a bunch of time and turn some of to even get things going. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It's hard to figure out what that's for and what it does.

Also it would be awesome to have a video showcase if you or someone else could make one to explain the basics of getting started. I absolutely love how this mod works and what it does. Just wish it was less difficult to get going.

I will update the images to specify the output count. A tutorial video is planned but I need to buy a microphone and figure out how to make that sort of video first. However if anyone else wants to make a tutorial video I would be happy to use that instead and link to it in the mod description. It might be a good opportunity for a youtuber?

In the examples, why are you multiplied X and Y by 1? That seems like a pointless operation to me.

When a combinator does a calculation the result appears on the output 1 frame later. That means that if you use combinators to filter signals then the output of those will be one frame behind the source. If you mix the filtered signals with the source it might be mixing signals of 2 different vehicles. Multiplying X and Y by 1 means that they are also 1 frame behind so all the signals are kept to the same frame delay and don't mix different vehicles signals.

hi earendel

quick question for you. is it possible for you to post an example (with a picture or a diagram) about how to use the vehicle deployer unit data and vehicle depot exchange data. this could be quite useful as i am still trying to understand how to program a hauler correctly. at the moment, the hauler behaves correctly and will collect ressources from the miner as long as it does not come out of the deployer.

Yes I will do that.

My haulers only pull coal from the Miners, nothing else. Is there a way to give the miner a signal of -1 copper? I tried the unit controller, but that didn't work

You can use the Unit Data Controller, or the Vehicle Deployer.

Also what do you think is the possibility of rewriting the bitter's path finding?


Thanks for an awesome mod

Someone recommended I use Rampant AI's biter pathfinding alterations. I was talking to Veden about it and Rampant basically steers biter groups based on large chunks with pheremones levels, there is no per-unit pathfinding change so that is not an option. Even if it did have a per-unit navigator, it would be following pheromone maps wich use useful for attacking a base and avoiding threats but not useful to get to a specific destination which is what I'd need.

I have considered writing an A* pathfinding mod that can support collision masks, bias based on tile friction modifiers and different sized vehicles (greater than 1 tile). There are a number of large hurdles in order to do something like this, the biggest one being performance, the 2nd being reliably and quickly detecting the viability of tiles. If I could make calls to Factorio's internal pathfinder then that would be a much better solution so I have made a mod interface request here: viewtopic.php?f=28&t=39896

Having one problem tho - gates. Firstly they don't open for automated vehicles, which, while solvable with some convoluted circuitry, should be much simpler. Trains can do it. But it's useless anyway since when I finally got that figured out, the vehicles won't even navigate thru the gates! I'm wondering if this is just down to them using biter AI, and if it's possible to fix?

I think gates only react to trains and characters. I could try creating dummy characters to put in the vehicles but I think that would slow the game down a lot based on the Devs comments about some of the mass multiplayer sessions. Also, even IF I did that the vehicles would not try and path through a gate unless it is already open unless I built a custom pathfinder that ignores gates.

Just ome question, when I install it. The mod name is shown in red. Apparently(I guess) some of it's dependencies are not available?
what do I do?

You have to find and download the required dependencies. They are listed on the first post, not all have the AAI prefix. I wish the mod Factorio mod interface had an option to auto-downloaded dependencies.

Hello white tiger

First of all I'd like to say congratz on this amazing hard-to-make-it-work mod! Lol

I'm trying to make an automatic mining stuff like the Harvesters from C&C, but I stumbled on 2 main issues:
1- The miner doesn't drop its stuff in the vehicle depot even if the depot signal is super high.
2- The hauler doesn't pick up stuff from the miner / the miner is selfish and doesn't wanna give away his stuff.

These problems I encountered by trying to make the miner and hauler play along with Saphirite Ore from Angel's Ores (with bob's mods and angel's petrochem).

Vanilla resources works just fine I think, tested it with that bp you posted in the first topic and it worked for coal mining. But that same thing didn't work for Saphirite mining :'(

Is there a way to fix this issue? What should I do?

The mod 'should' work with other ore types but I will do a test with angels ores to make sure. Either way you can fix it by modifying the Unit Data on the Miner / Hauler / Depot. I will be adding more instructions for the depot shortly.

Hello! First of all I gotta say, you did an awesome work with this mod! If I understand what this mod is really about, it has tremendous potential.

Second of all, it was pretty difficult to understand the setups and all that at first but later I got the hang of it and started building my own custom "command centers" controlling tons of vehicles around and inside my base. It definitely looks more "alive" now.

My question though is that whether it possible that the vehicles lose their "act as a turret" ability when this mod is used alongside Hardcorio: SC2, another cool mod? I see that the patrols I set around my base while playing with Hardcorio: SC2 seem to not act as a turret.

Or maybe I am doing something wrong.

This is also a question for other players here who use Hardcorio: SC2 along with AAI Programmable Vehicles.

Thank you for your help!

I have not used Hardcorio, it might cause problems if it changes the format of how vehicle guns work too much. I'm guessing you've checked that the vehicles have ammo? I'll try to take a look at this issue but it will be lower priority than the others.

[Earendel]

EDIT: So this doesn't quite work properly. Has some timing issues that I'm try to work out. If anyone more magely than me wants to try and fix it, feel free.
EDIT 2: OK fixed now! Updated image and blueprint

Absolutely loving these AAI mods! Here's a little something I've spent the past few hours working on:



It's an automatic zone manager that can manage up to six zones.
It cycles through each of the zones, removing zoning that no longer contains resources, then automatically jumps to the next zone.
Configure your resources per zone in each of the six decider combinators to the right.

Here's the blueprint string:

Code: Select all

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Very nice

[Rock999]

I have not used Hardcorio, it might cause problems if it changes the format of how vehicle guns work too much. I'm guessing you've checked that the vehicles have ammo? I'll try to take a look at this issue but it will be lower priority than the others.

Thanks for the quick reply Earendel. And yes, they had ammo. Later though I figured that only the aircraft from the Aircraft mod and a unit from Hardcorio: SC2 do not act as a turret. Or I am doing sth wrong there. That's fine though. I have the awesome chaingunners anyway!! They remind me of the Gattling Tank from C&C Generals.

Now a simple question: how do you deploy the vehicles from the Vehicle Deployer? I gave it some signals and messed around a bit but I couldn't get it to deploy the vehicle I put in it.

Thank you very much!

[Cyrlynx]

It seems i'm part of the missing answer
What about the vehicle equipement grid?

Hi Earendel,
Amazing work so far, thank you very much!
I just gave a look to your new addition the vehicle depot and I wondering if you have an idea about automatic vehicle grid filling?
I think it's the ultimate step to potent the automatic vehicle combat.
I read that the lua code is available to do insert equipement.

I think that another building may be usefull to configure the template of the equipement grid we want to insert.

I have no idea about the complexity of this though.

[Veden]

Someone recommended I use Rampant AI's biter pathfinding alterations. I was talking to Veden about it and Rampant basically steers biter groups based on large chunks with pheremones levels, there is no per-unit pathfinding change so that is not an option. Even if it did have a per-unit navigator, it would be following pheromone maps wich use useful for attacking a base and avoiding threats but not useful to get to a specific destination which is what I'd need.

Pheromone maps/Potential fields can absolutely be used for specific destinations. The precision really depends on the granularity of the region size (i.e. tile vs chunk vs ...).

Also pheromone maps can be used to represent anything. Potential fields come down to defining what you want to be an attractive region or avoidance region. The complex behavior stems from the interaction of these fields.

[Earendel]

It seems i'm part of the missing answer
What about the vehicle equipement grid?

Hi Earendel,
Amazing work so far, thank you very much!
I just gave a look to your new addition the vehicle depot and I wondering if you have an idea about automatic vehicle grid filling?
I think it's the ultimate step to potent the automatic vehicle combat.
I read that the lua code is available to do insert equipement.

I think that another building may be usefull to configure the template of the equipement grid we want to insert.

I have no idea about the complexity of this though.

It is possible but there would need to be some kind of new equipment depot building that inserts equipment into vehicles. The difficulty is to actually fill the equipment grid in a sensible way. How would you define what goes where and prevent the equipment grid from having a certain type of equipment and nothing else?

Someone recommended I use Rampant AI's biter pathfinding alterations. I was talking to Veden about it and Rampant basically steers biter groups based on large chunks with pheremones levels, there is no per-unit pathfinding change so that is not an option. Even if it did have a per-unit navigator, it would be following pheromone maps wich use useful for attacking a base and avoiding threats but not useful to get to a specific destination which is what I'd need.

Pheromone maps/Potential fields can absolutely be used for specific destinations. The precision really depends on the granularity of the region size (i.e. tile vs chunk vs ...).

Also pheromone maps can be used to represent anything. Potential fields come down to defining what you want to be an attractive region or avoidance region. The complex behavior stems from the interaction of these fields.

I know it 'can'. You could even argue that most pathfinding algorithms make temporary pheromone maps in order to find a path. Pheromone maps/Potential fields can be very useful, it's just not the right solution for the specific situations where I actually need improved pathfinding.

[Nexela]

After finally getting a chance to play with this here are some thoughts I had for the starting of the game!

#1 A liquid truck and filling station. Same concept as the hauler but only loads/unloads liquids at filling stations

#2 Miners 3-5 should be hidden behind tech (engines at least since they require them)

#3 Can't remember right now! but it was something!

The miner and haulers are VERY op at the beginning of the game so here are a couple of more suggestions

#4 Miner-1 should have a lot less inventory space, Possibly slightly slower mining speed also.

#5 Miner 1 and hauler 1 recipes unlocked after automation. (the initial free miner is still acceptable!)

#6 Hauler Add a second Hauler unlocked after tech (engines?) and nerf Hauler 1 to half the speed and inventory size currently.

Those are some of my thoughts, let me know what you think!

[Earendel]

After finally getting a chance to play with this here are some thoughts I had for the starting of the game!

#1 A liquid truck and filling station. Same concept as the hauler but only loads/unloads liquids at filling stations

#2 Miners 3-5 should be hidden behind tech (engines at least since they require them)

#3 Can't remember right now! but it was something!

The miner and haulers are VERY op at the beginning of the game so here are a couple of more suggestions

#4 Miner-1 should have a lot less inventory space, Possibly slightly slower mining speed also.

#5 Miner 1 and hauler 1 recipes unlocked after automation. (the initial free miner is still acceptable!)

#6 Hauler Add a second Hauler unlocked after tech (engines?) and nerf Hauler 1 to half the speed and inventory size currently.

Those are some of my thoughts, let me know what you think!

Agreed on all points. #3 sounds awesome

[Earendel]

I have clarified the combinator diagrams with Input Count where that is required. I've also added some Unit Data, Exchange Data, Vehicle Depot, and Vehicle Deployer examples to the first post.