[0.15.9] - frozen biters

[drmason13]

Attached is a save where the visible biters are frozen in place on the map.

Symptoms:
biters visible on map view stopped moving
proximity to player unfreezes them (some only temporarily)

Actions beforehand:
Radars and roboports built using zoomed map view (recently added feature), shift-clicking and construction robots

Specs:
Windows 10, HD graphics, running smoothly (8GB RAM, i5 3.2GHz processor, GTX1060 6GB graphics card)
Custom map settings: Biter evolution factor due to pollution increased, possibly other small tweaks (is there a way to review this?), expansion still enabled. Otherwise default.

Full details:
Moving within a certain distance of the frozen biters (close, but not so close they actually attack) with the player will unfreeze them.

Alarmingly, moving away again refreezes them wherever they happened to be - I've actually seen some biters wander slightly away further from the player and then freeze in place.

I also noticed that seemingly frozen biters would move (rotate) slightly when an unfrozen biter moved into them.

Interestingly, not simply distance causes freezing: I moved towards a larger group of biters in the northwest and this caused approximately 2/3 of them to unfreeze.
The unfrozen ones occasionally "nudged" the frozen ones whilst moving around but the frozen ones that got nudged would refreeze after moving slightly.
I attacked the base where this happened, but a small number still refroze afterwards.

A swarm did emerge from a part of the map that lacked radar coverage, so I think not ALL biters are frozen, just the ones I can see.
I actually saw a swarm gather from outside of radar coverage. There were some frozen biters around the newly gathered swarm still frozen in place.

Previously to the save I was laying a lot of roboports as blueprints by shift clicking and having robots within the logistic network place them. I was also placing radar by shift-clicking and having robots build them.
I did all of this from the map view zoomed in, the view updated as radars were placed.

I started the save with custom settings, based off of the default "normal" start. I tweaked the biter settings to evolve more due to pollution. Enemy expansion was still enabled.

Unfortunately I didn't notice when this phenomenon occurred, only that it was after the roboport/radar blueprinting spree
(a lot of logistics networks would have been made and then merged actually come to think of it, I spent a while placing roboports slightly out of connection range but still within construction range.)

I don't have a personal roboport equipped (nor have yet to in this save).

I am running on steam using experimental 0.15.x version when it was 0.15.9. The game was started back with version 0.15.6? ish (hard to keep up!)

Thank you for a great game! I hope this report helps.

[reath]

Hello, wanted to report the same problem.

Problem:
I build a medium size factory in 26 hours in a unmodded game with map tweaks to resources and biter expansion time. At some point all biters and spawners on the visible map went from working as normal, to frozen in place.
Spawners that are absorbing pollution are not generating new biters and there are no biter attacks on pollution sources that reach spawners with their pollution cloud.

Circumstances:
It is not known at which moment exactly this occured and if it was a gradual proces or instantly across the board.
The issue was most obvious when my iron mine in the east was no longer being attacked by the surrounding spawners, which up to that point was nearly constantly under attack.
All i can say is that this issue occured sometime between starting making blue science pack 3, and broke just before i started making high tech science (for which i was expanding my factory rather aggresively).

Speculation: The problem seems related to either increasing factory complexity in some way (amount of entities exceeding some treshold?), the use of roboports and blueprinting via the new map feature or map exploration and having a lot of biter nests visible on the map. Ofcourse, it could just as well be a faulty code to reduce CPU load from biters not in player view.

Running the game smoothly on roughly the same specs as the OP with all settings on high. save game attached.

[Oxyd]

Hi, I can't see anything wrong in either of your saves. There's a lot of inactive biters at the outskirts of the radar coverage – those indeed won't move because they're inactive. And yes, coming closer to them is meant to activate them. The activation is done on a per-chunk basis, which is probably why sometimes you only activate a portion of them when coming close. Biters that are staging an attack are obviously active, so they will move.

It's been like this since forever, you just probably never noticed because you couldn't see them without physically coming close.

[reath]

Hi oxyd,

Thanks for your check, i looked at my save again but the issue persists.

The problem i see is that all biters and nests that are out of range, which is just a few chunks, become completely unresponsive to pollution. Nests will still absorb it, but they will not spawn new biters and no biters will attack my outposts. At this point it is almost as if im playing peacefull mode (which i do not want).

Earlier in the game, this was not the case. I have had a iron mining outpost for many hours that was regularly being attacked, also when i was not nearby, but at some point this changed and all the biter nests outside of view range went inactive and not a single attack occured since that time, even though there is heavy pollution spreading to those nests.

I dont think this is working as intended? I understand existing biters becoming inactive, and thats fine because they are basically guards for if the player gets close. But the nests should still be spawning active attack waves, even if the player is not around, but they are not doing that now.

[Oxyd]

You are completely right. I was so focused on the biters themselves that I didn't even notice the spawners not spawning.

Thanks for letting me know. Fixed in 0.15.15.

[fatefighter]

Just a little warning on this one:

I built a semi big base with long rails etc. and 2 rows of laser turrets. After applying the patch I got kind of rushed and the frequency of attacks rose exponentially. Of course its adding a challenge running around your base fixing holes for two hours but playing a deathworld before and after this patch will MAYBE screw your save. So be sure to keep a backup, secure the base, test the patch. Good luck!

And yeah, I love this game, the many patches, the devs, the biters. Keep it going! Grats to the first million! First one is the hardest

*Edit: Nvm. Has been fixed in 0.15.16. Wow, that was fast!

[realvictorprm]

I have the same problem now in the latest master (0.16.36). Should I make a new post?

[Klonan]

I have the same problem now in the latest master (0.16.36). Should I make a new post?

Yes