[MOD 0.18] Robot Army. v0.4.4

[Nexela]

on_entity_died returns the entity which should hold a unique unit_number.
Using a metatable SquadsByUnitID = {[entity.unit_number], squadID} could give you instant access to the squad without iterating over every entity in every squad.

Thanks Optera! That's handy info. Now I might be able to replace droids killed "unofficially" by the game cleanup script.

You're very welcome.
I hope modded biters have a unit_number. If not now seems to be a good time to ask for api enhancements.

unit entities have a unit_number

however I don't know if de-spawning units raise on_entity_died

[kyranzor]

on_entity_died returns the entity which should hold a unique unit_number.
Using a metatable SquadsByUnitID = {[entity.unit_number], squadID} could give you instant access to the squad without iterating over every entity in every squad.

Thanks Optera! That's handy info. Now I might be able to replace droids killed "unofficially" by the game cleanup script.

You're very welcome.
I hope modded biters have a unit_number. If not now seems to be a good time to ask for api enhancements.

unit entities have a unit_number

however I don't know if de-spawning units raise on_entity_died

That's the point, if they dont I'll be able to use the fact that if they despawn I can see when a droid is found as invalid not as part of my death-handler then it was a game cleanup

[Albravo]

Installed this late endgame to cutdown on my rampage trips. Really enjoying it. I especially like how the squad seems to only move as fast as the slowest droid. It prevents suicides and lost droids. If you hang with the lead unit with a personal roboport and some repair packs you become the combat medic though I would love to see a specialized droid just for that purpose. I have seen the flamebots rush to melee range on either side of a behemoth and flame each other in crossfire too. A 'spawn post' that you could place near a guard post would be nice also. So you could direct the spawns just over a wall so you could keep the guard post protected. And when you say 1 army loot chest for your force. Does that mean per squad or entire army?

[kyranzor]

Installed this late endgame to cutdown on my rampage trips. Really enjoying it. I especially like how the squad seems to only move as fast as the slowest droid. It prevents suicides and lost droids. If you hang with the lead unit with a personal roboport and some repair packs you become the combat medic though I would love to see a specialized droid just for that purpose. I have seen the flamebots rush to melee range on either side of a behemoth and flame each other in crossfire too. A 'spawn post' that you could place near a guard post would be nice also. So you could direct the spawns just over a wall so you could keep the guard post protected. And when you say 1 army loot chest for your force. Does that mean per squad or entire army?

1 per "force", that means for an entire army, and all players on the same team share the chest.

Thanks for using my mod, i'm glad you are enjoying it!

Flame bots are immune to fire, so they are the only droid where it's okay they are flaming eachother lol.

[Mylon]

Been a while since I looked at this mod. Have you thought about using cars (ala AAI programmable vehicles) to add functionality like inventory and roboports for combat medic functionality or victory outposts?

[kyranzor]

Mylon,
Yes I have plans to make a programmable vehicle act as a troop transporter with vehicle equipment based defensive weapons. Some scripts for loading/unloading troops for combat etc.. no time at the moment though, development has basically halted for now

[NewSwiss]

Quick question: which research (if any) can be done to increase terminator attack speed and damage? If it matters, I'm playing with Bob's Mods and Late Upgrades.

Also, rocket droids with 5+ levels of rocket shooting speed and damage are really awesome. Their increased range over terminators allows them to take much less damage from worms and spitters.

[kyranzor]

Quick question: which research (if any) can be done to increase terminator attack speed and damage? If it matters, I'm playing with Bob's Mods and Late Upgrades.

Also, rocket droids with 5+ levels of rocket shooting speed and damage are really awesome. Their increased range over terminators allows them to take much less damage from worms and spitters.

Hey,

Combat robot damage and/or laser turret damage upgrades affect the terminators. Bullet damage and bullet speed upgrades affect the clockwork riflebots and the battle droids.

Edit:the rocket droids, I've never tested them with lots of rocket damage/speed upgrades before.. sounds fun! The rocket droids are squishy but they can snipe most targets from far away to keep safe.. and in huge blobs they have safety in numbers.

It's up to you if you want to go down that route, the high alpha-strike damage they do means a swarm of weak units should be able to beat them because the damage is wasted on a weak unit. The increase in firing rate kind of ruins the balance though. My next update is meant to include research for each robot type specifically and will maybe stop this balance issue (by not making them affected by player upgrades)

[NewSwiss]

Combat robot damage and/or laser turret damage upgrades affect the terminators

Wait, do these stack? IE, could I research both and get double benefits?

Combat robot damage and/or laser turret damage upgrades affect the terminators.
The increase in firing rate kind of ruins the balance though. My next update is meant to include research for each robot type specifically and will maybe stop this balance issue (by not making them affected by player upgrades)

I wouldn't go so far as to say that they're imbalanced, they just become viable again in the late game with lots of upgrades. IMO, the balance comes in the tons of resources required to research the upgrades. If you do add specific research(s) for each droid type, then I would like it if you used the same formula as Late Upgrades, where if you have tons of resources you can upgrade them to stupid-OP levels in the end-game.

[kyranzor]

no, combat robot damage and laser turret damage doesn't stack, i just said that because i couldn't remember which was the correct one. I'm fairly certain it's just combat robot damage that affects terminator damage.

I'll consider using that formula, for balance etc. I only really want 2-3 upgrades at most per unit type.

[brokenshakles]

I love this mod, but I do have a few bits of constructive criticism:

I totally get the cheezy 80's reference for the robot's appearance, but the large square base is what is making moving them thru forests difficult, you may want to switch over to a more humanlike form for them to alleviate this problem.
The fire rate for the clockwork riflebot is perfect, but increasing the rate for subsequent models ruins the effect, I would rather have more damage per shot than higher rates of fre.
The current system for command is entirely inadequate. Not the modmakers fault at all, we need an API for Command & Conquer/RTS style unit command interfacing. A facility for assigning arbitrary attributes to combatants would be useful for further modding as well.

Of the things I mentioned, the command interface seems the most pressing, and would have the most benefit, but would require action on the part of the actual factorio devs. Anyone in for a petition?

[mikedubayou]

Ive been playing with this mod for awhile, to assist me in my RSO/Natural Evo/SpaceEx game run. So far Im almost at 2 days of playtime, and biter evo is at 95%. I started having to increase the hunting squad size, because 40 just wasnt even making a dent in the enemy bases. I increased it to 100, and I dono it seems I somehow broke it :/ Droid assemblers keep spawning droids until it just has no more room to spawn em, but they never go hunting. I decreased the squad size to 40 again, but still nothing. Do I have to replace the droids after changing this setting? These droids arent even responding to a rally post :/

[kyranzor]

Hey everyone - i've just finished moving to England, and i'll have some more time to crank out some updates I hope. I agree with brokenshakles that the most pressing issue is being able to command units. I saw that the Automated AI Vehicles mod has the abillity to select and command units, I will see how they did it. I am getting really far behind in my knowledge of the modding API, i think there have been some changes that might help me quickly implement the selection methods without long-winded hacks like I am/was planning.

Or maybe the hacks have just been proven enough by other modders that I can hack together something for Robot Army quick enough.

As for the "Johnny 5" reference for the robots, yes it's funny, and the main reason was my artist YuokiTani was less comfortable with humanoid robot forms - and honestly that's fine, i mean the tracked robots to me are more realistic and also fit the theme of Factorio a bit better. The super advanced robots can surely have humanoid form - in that instance I may just give them the player model again like I originally started out with. Basically power-armoured soldier things with plasma rifles (fancy blue balls?).

I am also considering a "human" mercenary faction mod where you recruit player-model units with various guns from a little GUI, and use the in-game factorio coin objects as the currency. There are lots of mods out there that use these coins, i'll have a look at costs/conversions.. might be more annoying than it needs to be though. You guys have any thoughts on this? The mercenaries might simply just follow you around like permanent "defender" bots. You can just recruit a squad and go on a rampage, or use them as bodyguards. The issue of using trains/vehicles would be annoying to deal with. I can detect when a player enters a vehicle and "despawn" the guards and when the player gets out, attempt to respawn them (just a simple list is maintained to keep track of this).


As for the faster fire rate of the SMG battle droid, I kind of liked the "machine gun" effect and all the bullet shells coming out. Especially with max fire-rate upgrades, it's neat. The DPS increase is good too. The idea of the clockwork riflebots is that they were high alpha-strike snipers, and into the late-game are still viable with enough upgrades. Especially if you have a mod that allows ever-increasing bullet damage/speed upgrades. The riflebot is also disgustingly cheap. Can throw them around like Russian conscripts.

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Ive been playing with this mod for awhile, to assist me in my RSO/Natural Evo/SpaceEx game run. So far Im almost at 2 days of playtime, and biter evo is at 95%. I started having to increase the hunting squad size, because 40 just wasnt even making a dent in the enemy bases. I increased it to 100, and I dono it seems I somehow broke it :/ Droid assemblers keep spawning droids until it just has no more room to spawn em, but they never go hunting. I decreased the squad size to 40 again, but still nothing. Do I have to replace the droids after changing this setting? These droids arent even responding to a rally post :/

Remove all rally posts, go find your droid settings module, and set (all) the signals to reasonable values again. See the config.lua file in the mod folder for what defaults were. Not sure what is going wrong, but it seems your droid hunting logic has broken. The squads themselves, or some condition/rally point is breaking it. You will probably have to pick up all the broken droids to remove/reset their squads. How far away are the enemies? If they are too far away, or you accidentally set the hunt radius too low, you could also have this issue.

[cciacona]

mikedubayou wrote:
Ive been playing with this mod for awhile, to assist me in my RSO/Natural Evo/SpaceEx game run. So far Im almost at 2 days of playtime, and biter evo is at 95%. I started having to increase the hunting squad size, because 40 just wasnt even making a dent in the enemy bases. I increased it to 100, and I dono it seems I somehow broke it :/ Droid assemblers keep spawning droids until it just has no more room to spawn em, but they never go hunting. I decreased the squad size to 40 again, but still nothing. Do I have to replace the droids after changing this setting? These droids arent even responding to a rally post :/

I have the same problem except they respond to rally posts and my squad size is 20. I've tried tweaking settings, picking the droids back up, and placing them down again. I have even tried resetting the whole mod completely in my savegame and it still persists. Even If I place them right next to enemy bases they won't hunt. The only think that might be affecting this is a bug with rally posts messing up the AI (since this is where I think it started to happen) or the mod mod Victory Turrets for Robot Army that I have installed. Help?

[kyranzor]

It's possible that the victory turrets mod is doing it, but I doubt it. That mod mod doesn't really change much.

The next thing could be a rally point is hidden somewhere on your map. If you remove the mod half-way through the save it will wipe out all robot army objects including the rally point. If you add the mod back in and continue on, everything should work... keep back-up saves though, in case that breaks something permanently.

Another thing you could do is use a console command to kill all rally points in the map, let me know if you need help making the console command to do it.

The next thing that could be a problem is your settings in the droid settings module - can you tell me what they are?

[cciacona]

It's possible that the victory turrets mod is doing it, but I doubt it. That mod mod doesn't really change much.

The next thing could be a rally point is hidden somewhere on your map. If you remove the mod half-way through the save it will wipe out all robot army objects including the rally point. If you add the mod back in and continue on, everything should work... keep back-up saves though, in case that breaks something permanently.

Another thing you could do is use a console command to kill all rally points in the map, let me know if you need help making the console command to do it.

The next thing that could be a problem is your settings in the droid settings module - can you tell me what they are?

I already removed the mod half-way through though the problem still exists. My settings are 10,000 tile range for hunting, 10 the minimum for squads and the rest are default. But I have started to see something else too, After 45 mins or so, 5 of my 10 robot in the squad have disappeared out of thin air. They couldn't have attacked bases or gotten attacked since I never got an alert. I have checked the activity module and it says I have 5 robots. I don't know what is going on.

[kyranzor]

robots disappearing is a known bug in Factorio, supposedly related to pathfinding but I've seen it happen when there clearly is no issues with paths. I'm sorry for your loss.

If you can provide any screenshots which might help, could be handy. Screenshots of where your squads are who arent hunting, and then a screenshot of the map to give some context. The next thing you could do is to get the Github "development" branch and try using that. It has some significant improvements on these sorts of problems where squads get stuck/dont know what to do.

[hyspeed]

Hi,

I have been using this mod for a while and I love it. I thought of a new feature that would improve it.

Could you create a tool like the Deconstruction Planner that would let the player click and drag to pickup robots?

This would help when i have a group of robots deployed and they are moving - I wouldn't have to chase them through the trees or hold right click while moving.

thanks,
jon

[kyranzor]

Good idea hyspeed! Will add to my list

[kyranzor]

So, I have successfully implemented squad-based selection and ordering (it just overrides their current order) using a clicking tool. It's inspired and partial code-copying from the AAI Programmable Vehicles mod by Earendel (with permission).

It's quite cool. I'm going to add features to allow the squad to be set to guard the location you give it (rather than just attack-move there and then look around for new hunting targets)

I'm also going to add a 'follow' button/key-press as well, which will make the selected squad follow the player.

I am also adding an area-select box tool to 'pick up all droids in area' for quickly picking up naughty squads, as suggested by Hyspeed.