[0.18.37] Biters still do not group before attack
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[0.18.37] Biters still do not group before attack
During artillery firing, Pathfinder goes to 10ms and I end up with sub 10 FPS and get dropped. When an arty upgrade happens, Pathfinder goes to 100 (!!!) ms. I get sub-1 FPS and get dropped. Here is a screenshot illustrating what is going on. This is just a manual assault but the same happens in auto as well. I've only targeted one nest and the game because unplayable for everyone on the server:
Re: [0.18.37] Biters still do not group before attack
Post a link to the save please.
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Re: [0.18.37] Biters still do not group before attack
https://gofile.io/d/gEz6zc
I was able to recreate this from a blank map. I used /cheat and /editor and /command to advance artillery to absurd levels (though this is just to recreate what we normally build in a week on AssemblyStorm's weekly reset. The goal there is to launch as many rockets as possible in a week and we kill the server by day 3 and spend the rest of the week UPS hunting (which mostly involves conquest to clear pollution cloud and build solar). When artillery upgrades, the exact same thing happens as in these test maps.
Pathfinder has completely lost it Strings of units (view from map) Strings of units (with debug) Strings of units in plain view Pathfinder usage before `/c game.forces['enemy'].kill_all_units()` Pathfinder usage after `/c game.forces['enemy'].kill_all_units()` (though it quickly rises from sub 1ms to multiple milliseconds in mere seconds)
Please fix this! I've been playing the game in this play-style for 2 years and 0.18.30something broke this and has made end-game literally impossible to play. There have always been lazy unit groups which is also a major problem and probably a contributing factor to this because you can see many of the path requests just go unserviced and stack and stack and stack until the simulation can't even run. Artillery upgrades are literal server suicide. The only fix is to kill all units, but the problem immediately returns! Even conservative use of artillery can cause one large nest to elicit this problem. I don't know what the answer is, but I'm not willing to spam unit kill commands or turn biters off just because it's end game. It should be the time at which there's the most bug killing of all!
Re: [0.18.37] Biters still do not group before attack
Yeah, I was just fixing this. We were trying some changes, but now went back to the pre-.36 way, so it should work just as it did before.
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Re: [0.18.37] Biters still do not group before attack
Thank you kindly! I assume you mean .39 will have it fixed? Because the save and analysis I did was in .38...
I've been quite depressed with the performance/behavior of the biters since then. Are you floating any ideas for how to keep biters moving rather than sitting idle waiting for a turn with the pathfinder (pre-.36 behavior)? I understand the computational challenge and balance between "making biters attack aggressively enough" and "making all biters attack at once."
Are there commands we can run to increase the pathfinder work queue size or the path cache size? I wonder what the tradeoffs between memory/cpu and churn would look like. Perhaps the pathfinder could afford to be more aggressive in order to increase challenge and work off more biters. This has been a constant problem for me for 2 years now (as described as my, and *many* others', playstyle above). Is there any way I could get more insight into how this works and/or how to change settings in this regard? It would be very cool if vanilla just needed some already-exposed parameter modification to square this up.
Re: [0.18.37] Biters still do not group before attack
Yeah, looks like @Oxyd typed out his reply after .38 was already released. I can confirm that the behaviour remains in .38. I put up another comparison video showing the pathfinding differences between .35 and .38:Thank you kindly! I assume you mean .39 will have it fixed? Because the save and analysis I did was in .38...
https://youtu.be/SRbpJmQvsMk
Also, did artillery automatic targeting change too? I just noticed that the firing pattern in my example has also changed, despite both starting at the same tick with the same game save. Artillery only cares about worms and nests, right? Not about where biters/spitters are?
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Re: [0.18.37] Biters still do not group before attack
Beautiful. I love your side-by-side. It's incredible!traycer wrote: ↑Fri Jul 31, 2020 2:47 amYeah, looks like @Oxyd typed out his reply after .38 was already released. I can confirm that the behaviour remains in .38. I put up another comparison video showing the pathfinding differences between .35 and .38:Thank you kindly! I assume you mean .39 will have it fixed? Because the save and analysis I did was in .38...
https://youtu.be/SRbpJmQvsMk
Also, did artillery automatic targeting change too? I just noticed that the firing pattern in my example has also changed, despite both starting at the same tick with the same game save. Artillery only cares about worms and nests, right? Not about where biters/spitters are?
Re: [0.18.37] Biters still do not group before attack
Thankfully Factorio is a nice, compact game so it doesn't take long to switch from one version to another.Beautiful. I love your side-by-side. It's incredible!
Re: [0.18.37] Biters still do not group before attack
Yep, the fix will be in .39.darklich14 wrote: ↑Thu Jul 30, 2020 5:43 pmThank you kindly! I assume you mean .39 will have it fixed? Because the save and analysis I did was in .38...
Well, they'll form groups again, which means they only need to find their way to the group (which is usually not a problem), and then the entire group needs to find only a single path. This reduces the workload on the pathfinder a lot.darklich14 wrote: ↑Thu Jul 30, 2020 5:43 pmI've been quite depressed with the performance/behavior of the biters since then. Are you floating any ideas for how to keep biters moving rather than sitting idle waiting for a turn with the pathfinder (pre-.36 behavior)? I understand the computational challenge and balance between "making biters attack aggressively enough" and "making all biters attack at once."
Which is how it was intended to be after .36 as well, but we played with maximum distraction distance – currently there's a hard limit on how far a unit in a group can see and be distracted by entities like turrets. So we wanted to remove that limit, but then biters started being distracted by artillery turrets and tried to go for them individually. The fix is to just put the hard limit back in.
darklich14 wrote: ↑Thu Jul 30, 2020 5:43 pmAre there commands we can run to increase the pathfinder work queue size or the path cache size? I wonder what the tradeoffs between memory/cpu and churn would look like. Perhaps the pathfinder could afford to be more aggressive in order to increase challenge and work off more biters. This has been a constant problem for me for 2 years now (as described as my, and *many* others', playstyle above). Is there any way I could get more insight into how this works and/or how to change settings in this regard? It would be very cool if vanilla just needed some already-exposed parameter modification to square this up.
Code: Select all
/c game.map_settings.path_finder.max_work_done_per_tick = 8000
You can also turn on show-detailed-info in the F4 menu to see the current pathfinder usage.
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Re: [0.18.37] Biters still do not group before attack
Oxyd, thank you for all the clarification and suggestions. For (my) future reference, here is the documentation for other pathfinder options: https://wiki.factorio.com/Prototype/Map ... ath_finder
You guys have a lot going on trying to get to 1.0 so thank you for taking the time to make sure that these regressions are fixed! As always, thank you for all you do. You guys are an example to the world of how to develop software.
You guys have a lot going on trying to get to 1.0 so thank you for taking the time to make sure that these regressions are fixed! As always, thank you for all you do. You guys are an example to the world of how to develop software.
Re: [0.18.37] Biters still do not group before attack
Quick first impression with 0.18.40 (0.18.39 had a show-stopper bug in the Windows installer): looks like the attack rallying behaviour has been restored. My test scenario does not quite behave exactly the same as in 0.18.35 and earlier, but that may be due to other changes in the meantime. I have not tested the effect on UPS yet, but it is apparent that the grouping is back. Will look into it further.
Re: [0.18.37] Biters still do not group before attack
Hey !
Coming with my current game.
Vanilla - Deathworld - hudge resources.
Trying to recover some FPS by pushing biters out of my pollution cloud.
This scenario happend at least two times :
- Build some artillery spots and fire ON
- Some spots are easy to reach for biters, sometime artillery reach an other side of hudge water lake.
- If artillery reach other side of water, many biters failed to come.
- After a moment, no biters come at all. They regroup and don't move.
- After looking my FPS down (~20FPS) with attack and biters not coming, I save and quit.
Two times, when I launch my save an other day, HUDGE WAVES from all biters who wasn't come before.
GLAD to see them coming ))
You have change something with this update (0.18.43) ?
Or when biters are totally broken, we should save and launch again the game ?
Coming with my current game.
Vanilla - Deathworld - hudge resources.
Trying to recover some FPS by pushing biters out of my pollution cloud.
This scenario happend at least two times :
- Build some artillery spots and fire ON
- Some spots are easy to reach for biters, sometime artillery reach an other side of hudge water lake.
- If artillery reach other side of water, many biters failed to come.
- After a moment, no biters come at all. They regroup and don't move.
- After looking my FPS down (~20FPS) with attack and biters not coming, I save and quit.
Two times, when I launch my save an other day, HUDGE WAVES from all biters who wasn't come before.
GLAD to see them coming ))
You have change something with this update (0.18.43) ?
Or when biters are totally broken, we should save and launch again the game ?
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