[MOD 0.13.17+] Rampant

[Light]

I'm going to go a bit off topic for a moment to ask a question to the community in general. (Veden too.)

For those of you who play with Rampant biters, do you prefer them to Bob's enemies? Are they a strong challenge in comparison?

I'm asking since I'm going very biter intensive in 0.17 and don't have much time to really test them thoroughly at the moment. Bob's biters are challenging early/mid but are very easily defeated late game with a light perimeter of laser turrets + uranium ammo snipers for leviathans. I'm hoping Rampant biters can prove to be more resilient by putting a lot of strain on your defenses unless they're dense, well varied (Laser + Gun + Flame + Sniper), and utilize various types of ammo to deal critical damage to the weaknesses.

Probably my biggest disappointment is how Bob's warfare adds all these interesting ammo types yet biters die to high physical or laser damage, thus targeting weaknesses with special ammo means nothing. Tough biters with a lot of punch but a strong elemental weakness would make mixed ammo types useful and pretty cool to set up.

[BlueTemplar]

Hmm, what do you call early/mid ?
In my experience, Bob's biters/spitters don't even appear until like 60% evolution...
I hope it's different with Rampant's ?

There's also Rampant's Arsenal to consider - it was my understanding that the two were supposed to be used together ?

[Veden]

I'm going to go a bit off topic for a moment to ask a question to the community in general. (Veden too.)

For those of you who play with Rampant biters, do you prefer them to Bob's enemies? Are they a strong challenge in comparison?

I'm asking since I'm going very biter intensive in 0.17 and don't have much time to really test them thoroughly at the moment. Bob's biters are challenging early/mid but are very easily defeated late game with a light perimeter of laser turrets + uranium ammo snipers for leviathans. I'm hoping Rampant biters can prove to be more resilient by putting a lot of strain on your defenses unless they're dense, well varied (Laser + Gun + Flame + Sniper), and utilize various types of ammo to deal critical damage to the weaknesses.

Probably my biggest disappointment is how Bob's warfare adds all these interesting ammo types yet biters die to high physical or laser damage, thus targeting weaknesses with special ammo means nothing. Tough biters with a lot of punch but a strong elemental weakness would make mixed ammo types useful and pretty cool to set up.

I dont play with bobs enemies.
I would say that Rampant allows you to tailor more using both the enemy level and the scaler settings in the mod settings to get the stats to be at whatever level you desire.

I don't have anything that gets to the bobs-leviathan, if you have a craving for something with 100000 hitpoints and resistances ranging from 50% to 90% for everything than Rampant will be a let down.

How many bobs-Leviathans are in the groups attacking you?

Rampant factions try to be more specialized in the resistances and damage types, occasionally RND gods bless biters with full immunities to particular types of damages. Each faction has different attack types.

The next version of Rampant is going to be adding a couple new factions and some resistance balancing to the current factions to help with the need different weapons for different factions feel.

One thing that Rampant does, is it creates regions that are specific types of biters. In the next release, I have improved the mutation of these regions to change based on evolution. The mutations will cause biter types to mix, but only a couple different types can be active at time. The selective mixing is in contrast to bobs that uses a couple different spawner types and mixes all the different flavors of biters all the time.

Rampant enemies can also be used with bobs enemies, Rampant treats all of bobs spawner types as a single faction.

I have thought about adding some of the Armageddon type game events that may have something on the order of a bobs-leviathan, but it currently doesn't exist.

Hmm, what do you call early/mid ?
In my experience, Bob's biters/spitters don't even appear until like 60% evolution...
I hope it's different with Rampant's ?

There's also Rampant's Arsenal to consider - it was my understanding that the two were supposed to be used together ?

Rampant biters start appearing from the beginning.

Rampant Arsenal is my take on the player combat component to allow the player to solve the logistical challenges of adapting to the newly introduced factions and how the evolve. Many player combat mods can be viable including bobs, however, they potentially wont cater to Rampant enemies.

Should there be many types of walls to cater to specific resistance groups?

[Light]

How many bobs-Leviathans are in the groups attacking you?

Usually 7-12 per squad.
The trick for them is to use sniper turrets which have vastly increased single target damage for taking chunks of HP, while gun/laser/flame turrets deal repeated damage over time. It will take some time, but they will fall eventually.

Rampant enemies can also be used with bobs enemies, Rampant treats all of bobs spawner types as a single faction.

I didn't know this, so I started a new map and took a look at how 100% evolution worked out. While Bob's is clearly the bigger threat at that point, I do like the idea of slightly stronger biters right from the start.

Perhaps I'll combine the two and perk up the scaling so the two are more complementary. I'm currently in the prep phase for mods to use during 0.17, so since there's still time, I'll be able to find a nice balance.

[Veden]

How many bobs-Leviathans are in the groups attacking you?

Usually 7-12 per squad.
The trick for them is to use sniper turrets which have vastly increased single target damage for taking chunks of HP, while gun/laser/flame turrets deal repeated damage over time. It will take some time, but they will fall eventually.

Rampant enemies can also be used with bobs enemies, Rampant treats all of bobs spawner types as a single faction.

I didn't know this, so I started a new map and took a look at how 100% evolution worked out. While Bob's is clearly the bigger threat at that point, I do like the idea of slightly stronger biters right from the start.

Perhaps I'll combine the two and perk up the scaling so the two are more complementary. I'm currently in the prep phase for mods to use during 0.17, so since there's still time, I'll be able to find a nice balance.

Be sure to up the enemy level before using the scalers.

[GeeMan]

I have a map that will crap Rampant any time it loads. I've attached the map so you can debug it. I've disabled all plugins but rampant and it worked. Once I enabled Rampant Factorio Freezes.

[Zombie_Pony]

Hey there

I've found a bug in RAmpant where the map'll crash when running an arithmetic operation a '?' Field.

Error while running event Rampant::on_nth_tick(41) __Rampant__/libs/SquadAttack.lua:96: attempt to perform arithmetic on field '?' (a nil value)

[Veden]

Hey there

I've found a bug in RAmpant where the map'll crash when running an arithmetic operation a '?' Field.

Error while running event Rampant::on_nth_tick(41) __Rampant__/libs/SquadAttack.lua:96: attempt to perform arithmetic on field '?' (a nil value)

This should be fixed in the latest

[TheTom]

Unable to load save game.

Error while running event
Rampant::on_nth_tick(41)
__Rampant__/libs/SquadAttach.lua:86
attempt to compare number with nil



Comes short time (quarter second or so) after loading save. Ruins my sunday fun And it is NOT fixed. Or - the latest is not available via mod portal. I use 0.16.39 and updates do not offer me a new version. It shows the same version as current and does not offer an update.

[Veden]

Unable to load save game.

Error while running event
Rampant::on_nth_tick(41)
__Rampant__/libs/SquadAttach.lua:86
attempt to compare number with nil



Comes short time (quarter second or so) after loading save. Ruins my sunday fun And it is NOT fixed. Or - the latest is not available via mod portal. I use 0.16.39 and updates do not offer me a new version. It shows the same version as current and does not offer an update.

Give .40 a try

[TheTom]

Just downloaded the update

[pato]

my base got overwhelmed by energy thief biters. Was this a ninja update??
their range and damage is very imbalanced especially because they attack all targets in a very big area and one shot everything and convert it to energy pylons or drain pylons. Please bring them back in line with other biters.

And please make it possible to deconstruct these things with blue prints or something else because i need to shoot these pylons to get rid off.

this is a very annoying addition

[Veden]

my base got overwhelmed by energy thief biters. Was this a ninja update??
their range and damage is very imbalanced especially because they attack all targets in a very big area and one shot everything and convert it to energy pylons or drain pylons. Please bring them back in line with other biters.

And please make it possible to deconstruct these things with blue prints or something else because i need to shoot these pylons to get rid off.

this is a very annoying addition

The update was in the changelog.

Are you playing with any weapon mods? What level do you have the enemies set at? Even if the pylons were deconstructible I don't believe you can affect enemy buildings.

[pato]

i play with vanilla weapons only and nerfed spitter range to 0.7 and disabled inferno spitters.
I am able to defend against all biters without too much damage on arround 92% evolution factor, max biter tier, attack difficulty set to 5 with 200 wave size.

But once energy thief biters are in the mix they directly overwhelm the whole base without any chance to stop them.

They have the same range as spitters (arent they a meele unit?) and with a single attack they one shot large chunks of walls and then turrets with another 2 shots. They are able to destroy huge defense walls when there are a few biters in front which tank the damage.

Even a 200 wave of inferno spitters have done less damage to my base then a few of these new biters

[Veden]

i play with vanilla weapons only and nerfed spitter range to 0.7 and disabled inferno spitters.
I am able to defend against all biters without too much damage on arround 92% evolution factor, max biter tier, attack difficulty set to 5 with 200 wave size.

But once energy thief biters are in the mix they directly overwhelm the whole base without any chance to stop them.

They have the same range as spitters (arent they a meele unit?) and with a single attack they one shot large chunks of walls and then turrets with another 2 shots. They are able to destroy huge defense walls when there are a few biters in front which tank the damage.

Even a 200 wave of inferno spitters have done less damage to my base then a few of these new biters

They have roughly the same stats as the electric faction, have you played against them? I can look into reducing their range alittle more, but they already have a reduced range compared to spitters.

[pato]

i have no problem with the electric biters and they seem much weaker ingame.
The main problem are the pylons because they hinder bots to replace poles, they are placed in a way that it sometimes deletes ghost entities from destroyed buildings and my artileries fire on them while destroying my base additionally.

Imo they should either keep their damage and make no pylons or their damage should be reduced by 50% and they make pylons but turrets should be able to kill the pylons. The AOE is pretty harsh tho when it targets 10 or more entities with a single shot.

I usually dont get overrun by biters and if it happens (when some nuke biters make it to the walls) then i can repair it, but against the stealer biters i have to run from base to base all the time and kill the pylons with manual aim (usually the bases are allready destroyed by 50%) which makes it really not fun.

i can post some screenshots if it helps you

[Veden]

i have no problem with the electric biters and they seem much weaker ingame.
The main problem are the pylons because they hinder bots to replace poles, they are placed in a way that it sometimes deletes ghost entities from destroyed buildings and my artileries fire on them while destroying my base additionally.

Imo they should either keep their damage and make no pylons or their damage should be reduced by 50% and they make pylons but turrets should be able to kill the pylons. The AOE is pretty harsh tho when it targets 10 or more entities with a single shot.

I usually dont get overrun by biters and if it happens (when some nuke biters make it to the walls) then i can repair it, but against the stealer biters i have to run from base to base all the time and kill the pylons with manual aim (usually the bases are allready destroyed by 50%) which makes it really not fun.

i can post some screenshots if it helps you

If they don't make pylons then the electric grid is pulled from the draining crystals and they stop functioning.

I can look into the turrets attacking the pylons, however, I haven't set anything on them specially to prevent turret attacks.

Rampant generates enemies using a normal distribution, so sometimes the same factions may be weaker or stronger based on the Rampant enemy seed in the mod settings.

Saves are usually more effective than screenshots, if you are willing to spare and your map doesn't have hundreds of mods.

[pato]

i have only

essential:
rampant
rampant arsenal (not useing beside Napalm and some new artilery shells)
bobs enemies

not essential:
alien loot economy
armageddon
some shall mods which are not needed
evo gui

gfx only:
bullet trails
laser beam turrets

so basically 3 mods only

savegame
https://ufile.io/hidkj

rampant settings
spitter range 0.7, wasp damage 0.5
army size 200 difficulty 5
disable inferno faction

[Veden]

i have only

essential:
rampant
rampant arsenal (not useing beside Napalm and some new artilery shells)
bobs enemies

not essential:
alien loot economy
armageddon
some shall mods which are not needed
evo gui

gfx only:
bullet trails
laser beam turrets

so basically 3 mods only

savegame
https://ufile.io/hidkj

rampant settings
spitter range 0.7, wasp damage 0.5
army size 200 difficulty 5
disable inferno faction

What is your enemy level start and end level?

[pato]

1-10