[MOD 0.13.17+] Rampant

[Veden]

Any of the groups in radar coverage appear static (at least visually). Never tried to see if I can like reveal the map to see what other groups are doing.

Still don't see anything in the radar coverage or outside of it.

[FuryoftheStars]

Is it possible to have the biters avoid running enmass all through a simple line of fire? Not asking for them to be made afraid of it (well, maybe afraid if it’s essentially an inferno)/completely unable to walk through it, but maybe somehow make them less likely to want to path through?

What I’m seeing now is when a large group attacks and some sort of weapon is used that starts fire, they just all continue right through the flames when they should just repath a little around it.

I realize what you can do with the AI may be limited and so this may not be possible, but figured I’d throw the suggestion out there.

[Kaiku]

I have some feedback after having played with this mod for many hours in my current playthrough. First off, it's fantastic. It gives the enemy some much needed variation, and the new weapon options in Rampant Arsenal are all really interesting to play around with and look awesome.

I do wonder how exactly the 'raiding' and 'siege' settings work. Early on in my world I was repeatedly getting attacked by biters from way, way outside the pollution cloud. I had some mixed feelings about that, as, while I enjoyed some of the pressure and lack of safety, I also believe that a small or well defended cloud should be rewarded by fewer biter attacks.

Eventually I turned the 'raiding' and 'siege' settings off, as I believed those were responsible, but I'm still getting attacks from way out there. Is it possible that changing these settings after startup have no effect? Or am I misunderstanding them? I'm also unsure about the 'onslaught' setting. What exactly does it mean, what triggers it, and how often can it happen?

As for the feedback; I find the suicide biters to be incredibly weak, both in health and damage. Their low health is understandable given they ought to be quite dangerous when close, but the damage they deal is very pathetic. They're not even worth the bullets to kill them, as when they explode en-masse on something like a tank, its healthbar doesn't even move. Troll biters are, on the other hand, incredibly tough. They seem to have something like ten times the health of the other types, which feels like a large anomaly. Regardless, they die easily enough to not be a large issue. The only noteworthy other type is the inferno spitter, who one-shots everything they manage to spit at because the fire does ridiculous damage and stays forever.

There are some types I don't think I've seen yet, namely the nuclear and laser biters.

The HE artillery shells seem far better than any of the others (excluding nuclear, although they are comparable) as they have both high damage and a very large AOE. The bio shells are better against the physical biter nests, but since that's the only type they're better against it's not really worth making them. The incendiary shells are by far the weakest as they usually don't even kill nests. Perhaps they could still be interesting if they, for example, had a bigger AOE than HE shells, so as to specialize them in biter killing rather than nests.

I'm not using any of the bullets, as the uranium ones seem better or at least more versatile. The HE ones are pretty good too, except that there are better options than bullets when it comes to dealing AOE damage. I think the same is true for the tank/cannon shells, with the uranium ones being superior.

The cannon and rocket turrets have a nasty habit of blowing up your own defenses when biters attack right at the edge of their semi-circle range and get close. It makes the turret turn almost 90 degree and shoot parallel with the defensive wall, blowing massive holes in it. It caused me a lot of hassle in repairs, (re)placements, until I sadly decided that it would be more convenient to just not use them. I'd probably like them better if their minimum range was even larger and/or attack angle a bit more narrow to prevent such self-destruction. It can be solved somewhat by placing them ahead of the wall in little alcoves/cubicles, but that weakens the entire defense as everything else will be out of range.

The advanced beam turret and advanced laser turret are both very strong and make for very easy, hassle-free, and cheap defenses. Sure, my factory flickers a little when a bunch are shooting at the same time, drawing multiple gigawatts, but that's not really an issue.

That's... about all I can think of right now. For additional biter variation, I have been pondering what a long range, siege-type biter would be like, sitting outside the defense and lobbing long range projectiles at it. They'd have to be rare and do quite low damage (and be inaccurate?) so as to not cause an instant emergency each time, but will require you do deal with it eventually, by either moving out or shooting your own artillery at it. I think it'd be fun, though I could also see it being more of an annoyance than anything else.

Oh, I'm playing with Space Exploration as well, and the other planets have only vanilla biters. I didn't expect such compatibility, of course. Just thought I'd mention it.

[YunoAloe]

I'm having a UPS issue which I described at viewtopic.php?f=49&t=72738 . I'm playing on an entirely forest-biter-covered map. Either the recent patch with the AI tweak, or installing Rampant, seem to have permanently activated a lot of chunks outside my base. When I set Rampant to be more aggressive via various options, more forest fires start (far fire biters shoot at trees when they can't pass through). The problem is, when fires end, it seems that a lot of chunks remain active, even if I uninstall Rampant and Natural Evolution. Could somebody explain to me what is going on, and is there a way to fix this?

[Kiu]

First: Great mod making the game a little bit more "starshirp troopers"

If I remember correctly, Rampart does some spawning stuff. If not, then maybe Alien Binoms or the Base game are to blame, but I have to start somewhere

Some nasty biters are spawning in lakes and walk around in the most up to date version with (reduced list of mods):
- cargo-ships
- alien-biomes
- Rampant

No RSO or Bob-Enemies (AFAIK the other mods like AirFilter should not do anything with the biters)

Or is this some beta stuff of water biters?

[Update]
Tested it with the editor - the base game units cannot be placed in water, but the Rampart versions can.

[pato]

can you add an option to set troll spawner and troll worm regeneration?

my artilleries fire at them forever without dealing any damage. i already set the spawner and worm HP to only 0.1 but even with 1000-1500 hp they regenerate like 1000 hp per second and artilleries dont calculate that regeneration and take another target resulting in an endless loop of target switching

[BlueTemplar]

Sounds like Rampant Arsenal needs bigger guns!

[pato]

nope its not about guns. this is a game mechanic which is broken by the insane hp regeneration which is not calculated by artilleries.
If they would calculate the regeneration i would have no issues at killing them

[BlueTemplar]

They won' be able to regenerate if you one-shot them. :p (like in vanilla)

[pato]

you dont seem to get the point.
I dont want the game to be easy else i would not play with rampant.

The HP regeneration is game breaking for artilleries.
deal with it.

[Veden]

Is it possible to have the biters avoid running enmass all through a simple line of fire? Not asking for them to be made afraid of it (well, maybe afraid if it’s essentially an inferno)/completely unable to walk through it, but maybe somehow make them less likely to want to path through?

What I’m seeing now is when a large group attacks and some sort of weapon is used that starts fire, they just all continue right through the flames when they should just repath a little around it.

I realize what you can do with the AI may be limited and so this may not be possible, but figured I’d throw the suggestion out there.

Is it possible yes, is it cost effective in terms of UPS probably not.

I imagine the fire would need to do a triggerentity on creation of fire for something in the lua code to detect and modify the path costs of the unit groups.

[Veden]

I'm having a UPS issue which I described at viewtopic.php?f=49&t=72738 . I'm playing on an entirely forest-biter-covered map. Either the recent patch with the AI tweak, or installing Rampant, seem to have permanently activated a lot of chunks outside my base. When I set Rampant to be more aggressive via various options, more forest fires start (far fire biters shoot at trees when they can't pass through). The problem is, when fires end, it seems that a lot of chunks remain active, even if I uninstall Rampant and Natural Evolution. Could somebody explain to me what is going on, and is there a way to fix this?

Glad to see you figure out your issue.

[Veden]

First: Great mod making the game a little bit more "starshirp troopers"

If I remember correctly, Rampart does some spawning stuff. If not, then maybe Alien Binoms or the Base game are to blame, but I have to start somewhere

Some nasty biters are spawning in lakes and walk around in the most up to date version with (reduced list of mods):
- cargo-ships
- alien-biomes
- Rampant

No RSO or Bob-Enemies (AFAIK the other mods like AirFilter should not do anything with the biters)

Or is this some beta stuff of water biters?

[Update]
Tested it with the editor - the base game units cannot be placed in water, but the Rampart versions can.

Usually this is something like the hovercraft mod or noxys swimming causing this.

[Veden]

you dont seem to get the point.
I dont want the game to be easy else i would not play with rampant.

The HP regeneration is game breaking for artilleries.
deal with it.

I can add this to the todo list, but I can't promise when it will get implemented.

The incendiary artillery shells in Rampant Arsenal are probably better at killing troll nests.

[DarkyPupu]

Hi Veden,

On new game creation (Factorio 0.17.66, latest version of Rampant) :

The mod Rampant caused a non-recoverable error.
Please report this error to the mod author.

Error while running event Rampant::on_init()
__Rampant__/Upgrade.lua:130: attempt to perform arithmetic on field 'enemySeed' (a nil value)
stack traceback:
__Rampant__/Upgrade.lua:130: in function 'attempt'
__Rampant__/control.lua:442: in function 'prepWorld'
__Rampant__/control.lua:850: in function <__Rampant__/control.lua:841>

Whatever the ennemy seed is 0 or a set number in settings.
Was ok with Rampant previous version - same settings.

[pato]

you dont seem to get the point.
I dont want the game to be easy else i would not play with rampant.

The HP regeneration is game breaking for artilleries.
deal with it.

I can add this to the todo list, but I can't promise when it will get implemented.

The incendiary artillery shells in Rampant Arsenal are probably better at killing troll nests.

they do help against a specific target, but the problem is you can not tell your artillery which ammo it should use against which enemy.

if there are troll and physical biters and you use incendiary you may be able to kill the troll nest, but the physical biter nest absorbs 50 shots or more even with very high damage upgrades. i have set the nest and worm HP to only 0.1! so instead of 45-60k hp they have only like 4500-6000 hp and i struggle even with that.

The only solution to this is having one artillery with every type of ammo at every spot of the map and hope that they dont waste 1000 shots before they get the kill. If there would be an option i would set worm and nest regeneration to 0

[Veden]

Hi Veden,

On new game creation (Factorio 0.17.66, latest version of Rampant) :

The mod Rampant caused a non-recoverable error.
Please report this error to the mod author.

Error while running event Rampant::on_init()
__Rampant__/Upgrade.lua:130: attempt to perform arithmetic on field 'enemySeed' (a nil value)
stack traceback:
__Rampant__/Upgrade.lua:130: in function 'attempt'
__Rampant__/control.lua:442: in function 'prepWorld'
__Rampant__/control.lua:850: in function <__Rampant__/control.lua:841>

Whatever the ennemy seed is 0 or a set number in settings.
Was ok with Rampant previous version - same settings.

Should be fixed in the latest.

[Veden]

I have some feedback after having played with this mod for many hours in my current playthrough. First off, it's fantastic. It gives the enemy some much needed variation, and the new weapon options in Rampant Arsenal are all really interesting to play around with and look awesome.

Glad you like the mod combo.

I do wonder how exactly the 'raiding' and 'siege' settings work. Early on in my world I was repeatedly getting attacked by biters from way, way outside the pollution cloud. I had some mixed feelings about that, as, while I enjoyed some of the pressure and lack of safety, I also believe that a small or well defended cloud should be rewarded by fewer biter attacks.

I would agree with this.
Raiding and Siege are states the AI enter into with a probability during the AI state transition which happens every 7 to 17 minutes.
Raiding allows for unrestricted unit group creations up to the amount of credit the AI stores. Raiding also enables nests outside pollution cloud that are covered by a sufficient level of base pheromone to produce groups.
Siege is the same thing as Raiding except unit groups can also make nests.
Having a better transition function would help with what you are experiencing.

Eventually I turned the 'raiding' and 'siege' settings off, as I believed those were responsible, but I'm still getting attacks from way out there. Is it possible that changing these settings after startup have no effect? Or am I misunderstanding them? I'm also unsure about the 'onslaught' setting. What exactly does it mean, what triggers it, and how often can it happen?

Onslaught is the same as Raiding except when biters destroy player buildings instead of a baseline amount of credits gained for more troops they receive x10 the amount.

As for the feedback; I find the suicide biters to be incredibly weak, both in health and damage. Their low health is understandable given they ought to be quite dangerous when close, but the damage they deal is very pathetic. They're not even worth the bullets to kill them, as when they explode en-masse on something like a tank, its healthbar doesn't even move. Troll biters are, on the other hand, incredibly tough. They seem to have something like ten times the health of the other types, which feels like a large anomaly. Regardless, they die easily enough to not be a large issue. The only noteworthy other type is the inferno spitter, who one-shots everything they manage to spit at because the fire does ridiculous damage and stays forever.

There are some types I don't think I've seen yet, namely the nuclear and laser biters.

Buff suicide biters health and damage.
If the troll biters are not a large issue do they really need changes?
Nerf inferno spitters damage and fire duration/damage.
Balance is hard and I'm happy to add this to the todo list.

The HE artillery shells seem far better than any of the others (excluding nuclear, although they are comparable) as they have both high damage and a very large AOE. The bio shells are better against the physical biter nests, but since that's the only type they're better against it's not really worth making them. The incendiary shells are by far the weakest as they usually don't even kill nests. Perhaps they could still be interesting if they, for example, had a bigger AOE than HE shells, so as to specialize them in biter killing rather than nests.

I can nerf the HE artillery shells and buff the bio and incendiary artillery shells.

I'm not using any of the bullets, as the uranium ones seem better or at least more versatile. The HE ones are pretty good too, except that there are better options than bullets when it comes to dealing AOE damage. I think the same is true for the tank/cannon shells, with the uranium ones being superior.

How much should the HE, Bio, and incendiary bullets compete with uranium ones same for cannon shells?
Currently I assumed that uranium was a step up, but you are right that long term it causes the other types to not matter.

The cannon and rocket turrets have a nasty habit of blowing up your own defenses when biters attack right at the edge of their semi-circle range and get close. It makes the turret turn almost 90 degree and shoot parallel with the defensive wall, blowing massive holes in it. It caused me a lot of hassle in repairs, (re)placements, until I sadly decided that it would be more convenient to just not use them. I'd probably like them better if their minimum range was even larger and/or attack angle a bit more narrow to prevent such self-destruction. It can be solved somewhat by placing them ahead of the wall in little alcoves/cubicles, but that weakens the entire defense as everything else will be out of range.

Relatively easy changes to make for balancing.

The advanced beam turret and advanced laser turret are both very strong and make for very easy, hassle-free, and cheap defenses. Sure, my factory flickers a little when a bunch are shooting at the same time, drawing multiple gigawatts, but that's not really an issue.

Does that mean the costs for those should be higher to offset the easy of use?

That's... about all I can think of right now. For additional biter variation, I have been pondering what a long range, siege-type biter would be like, sitting outside the defense and lobbing long range projectiles at it. They'd have to be rare and do quite low damage (and be inaccurate?) so as to not cause an instant emergency each time, but will require you do deal with it eventually, by either moving out or shooting your own artillery at it. I think it'd be fun, though I could also see it being more of an annoyance than anything else.

I can add it to the list, but I think this would be tough to manage and a potentially tough thing to manage.
This would require additional lua logic to plan how they would get deployed.

Oh, I'm playing with Space Exploration as well, and the other planets have only vanilla biters. I didn't expect such compatibility, of course. Just thought I'd mention it.

I can't promise anything on compatibility.

I really appreciate you taking the time to write this out.

The biggest problem with any of this is that I haven't played a game past green science since 0.16.40+ and this mod as of late just seem like a bunch of extra work that I don't really have time to enjoy. So I cant promise when any of this will happen.

[DarkyPupu]

Hi Veden,

On new game creation (Factorio 0.17.66, latest version of Rampant) :

The mod Rampant caused a non-recoverable error.
Please report this error to the mod author.

Error while running event Rampant::on_init()
__Rampant__/Upgrade.lua:130: attempt to perform arithmetic on field 'enemySeed' (a nil value)
stack traceback:
__Rampant__/Upgrade.lua:130: in function 'attempt'
__Rampant__/control.lua:442: in function 'prepWorld'
__Rampant__/control.lua:850: in function <__Rampant__/control.lua:841>

Whatever the ennemy seed is 0 or a set number in settings.
Was ok with Rampant previous version - same settings.

Should be fixed in the latest.

Yup, many thanks

[Kaiku]

How much should the HE, Bio, and incendiary bullets compete with uranium ones same for cannon shells?
Currently I assumed that uranium was a step up, but you are right that long term it causes the other types to not matter.

I think they absolutely should compete, as uranium ammo isn't exactly all that more difficult to get or set up. Ideally they'd serve different purposes, of course. Like HE (shells) having a larger AOE than uranium but a bit lower damage. Incendiary having the highest damage of all, but only after the flames ran its course. Bio could perhaps shine against some specific/tough biter types, like Troll and Physical. But that may be a bit much to ask as it's a lot of balancing and tuning. You definitely don't want uranium to make all your ammo types obsolete, though.

Does that mean the costs for those should be higher to offset the easy of use?

Maybe the material cost of those beam and laser turrets could be higher, yes. The power cost is already steep enough as it is, and I think that if the cannon and rocket turrets become viable (non self-destructive), they'd compete with the lasers in cost/effectiveness and may even be preferable, at least until late game where you have more than enough power. They could then perhaps be moved higher in the tech tree as well?

I really appreciate you taking the time to write this out.

The biggest problem with any of this is that I haven't played a game past green science since 0.16.40+ and this mod as of late just seem like a bunch of extra work that I don't really have time to enjoy. So I cant promise when any of this will happen.

Very understandable. It's a big and complex mod that already makes the military aspect of the game much more interesting, so this is just some small stuff. Thanks for making and sharing these mods.