[MOD 0.13.17+] Rampant

[Panthera_Tigris]

What resource do biters consume when spawning? I have reduced my pollution drastically by using efficiency modules and solar/ nuclear but the biter spawn rate is unchanged. In vanilla, the spawners use pollution as a resource and each biter has a pollution cost but here I see spawners that have no access to pollution also spawning new biters. Does the mod cheat to give them free pollution or something like that? I manage to hold them back easily with flamethrowers but just wondering how it works.

[Veden]

Biters and spitters don't require anything to spawn around spawners and this is unchanged from vanilla

In vanilla, to form attack groups they require pollution that the spawners absorbs and stores which is reduced by the number of units sent to the attack group.
Rampant can form attack groups independent of the spawner's absorbed pollution.

[SunTroll]

Is it possible that when there is decent distance between base and nests the bitters won't attack?

I'm using a effeciency modules and generaly trying to reduce polution as much as possible and rampant pretty much doesn't attack at all.
Maybe that is working as intended though.
(also noticed that when I update some other mods I'm no longer getting the reindexing map thingy but maybe that changed in last update.)

[Porter65]

This seems the same issue that I have here:
viewtopic.php?f=18&t=23042&p=541609#p541609

Basically, no biter base in pollution = Rampant doing nothing.

[Porter65]

Biters and spitters don't require anything to spawn around spawners and this is unchanged from vanilla

In vanilla, to form attack groups they require pollution that the spawners absorbs and stores which is reduced by the number of units sent to the attack group.
Rampant can form attack groups independent of the spawner's absorbed pollution.

Then it is dependent of what? Globally generated pollution? Because after 20+ hours of play, they never pre-emptively attacks.

[orzelek]

Biters and spitters don't require anything to spawn around spawners and this is unchanged from vanilla

In vanilla, to form attack groups they require pollution that the spawners absorbs and stores which is reduced by the number of units sent to the attack group.
Rampant can form attack groups independent of the spawner's absorbed pollution.

Then it is dependent of what? Globally generated pollution? Because after 20+ hours of play, they never pre-emptively attacks.

I might have similar issue with Rampant.
I'm playing with modified evolution due to science multipliers and I have only evolution from pollution others are at 0.
I might have seen 1 or 2 attacks from Rampant over 20h of playing. I don't get the usual vanilla attacks since my pollution cloud doesn't reach any spawners.

[trampek]

save for you as in mod page discussion

[trampek]

it was too big i had to pack it again so you have to unzip it once to use

[Malorn]

Hello, I posted a thread on the mod portal, but I'm assuming that isn't checked as often, perhaps? I decided to post here, since I really am now quite sure something is wrong with my game.

I've experienced quite a few problems with the mod over nearly 26 hours of gameplay. It started off with a strange passivity: I was not attacked, the rampant AI system never went into migration mode, etc. For some reason it NEVER went into Raiding state, either, which was probably why I was not being attacked, since I pushed nests outside my pollution cloud. Basically, the game seemed easier then the vanilla game, in terms of pressure. I was playing on RSO, and using it's spawning system for biters, meaning nests were very spread out.

As evolution grew, the biters finally started to do something, but it still wasn't much of something. Migration finally began and the biters expanded a bit, I did a little more culling but could still easily stop incoming waves using only five gun turrets... which was not something I expected at 50% evolution.

The thing that really has me confused is that there are large population of vanilla biters on the map. I see the advanced biters as well, but even in areas that I have been observing for a long time, there are still normal biters. Those biters have no tiers, and are very weak, i.e. are normal biters with normal stats. Aren't all biters supposed to be replaced eventually in rampant? We're talking nests I've been watching for 12 hours, here.

Overall, it feels like systems are somewhat working, i.e. when I manually trigger states they function properly, but it feels like something is missing. I shouldn't be 'just fine' at now 70% evolution using only two layers of walls and a few turrets.

[orzelek]

If you want to play RSO + Rampant you should switch RSO over to vanilla biters spawning method. That makes it work a bit better from my short playthrough.
I think Rampant specifically has biter scanning to also make it work with RSO biters spawning but as you see it might not work.

[Malorn]

If you want to play RSO + Rampant you should switch RSO over to vanilla biters spawning method. That makes it work a bit better from my short playthrough.
I think Rampant specifically has biter scanning to also make it work with RSO biters spawning but as you see it might not work.

Yeah, I did that about 10 hours past in the game, and I agree it did seem to help a bit, making it a little less likely to have normal biters.

Honestly, it mostly feels like the siege and raiding states are far too rare, raiding especially. But at it's core, I think Rampant is having trouble coping with the large areas created by RSO resource spread.

[orzelek]

If you want to play RSO + Rampant you should switch RSO over to vanilla biters spawning method. That makes it work a bit better from my short playthrough.
I think Rampant specifically has biter scanning to also make it work with RSO biters spawning but as you see it might not work.

Yeah, I did that about 10 hours past in the game, and I agree it did seem to help a bit, making it a little less likely to have normal biters.

Honestly, it mostly feels like the siege and raiding states are far too rare, raiding especially. But at it's core, I think Rampant is having trouble coping with the large areas created by RSO resource spread.

I played a bit with it and I think at some point Rampant might had some bugs since with vanilla generation I wasn't attacked for quite long time. It seemed to be fixed in more recent versions.
I didn't play recently with it so not sure what's the current state.

And you would need to use vanilla RSO biters from start - otherwise you will have a mix of both generations and Rampant might be confused also.

[Malorn]

Ok, so I made a test game and let it run for 10 hours overnight (set evolution to 100 with console at the beginning), then did it again with the same map seed and I think I can fully explain the problem. RSO biter generation creates nests that Rampant doesn't understand how to use. This causes a wide range of subtle problems from several different sources. Orzelek, you are fundamentally correct in that RSO biter generation is the cause. But the degree of problems means this should probably be said somewhere in the mod description.

• First, the VERY spread out generation causes some problems for Rampant since Rampant really likes resource patches for expansion, this can cause the AI to cluster up quite a lot and not really spread any long distances.

• Second, something in the code doesn't match up. RSO biter nests are not replaced, even after 10 hours of gameplay (special nests do appear, but from migration/siege), also the Rampant AI doesn't really understand where those RSO nests are located, meaning that doesn't make wise decisions.

• Third, when you recreate a fairly distant biter spread with low density and high deadzones, Rampant still does fine. This means there is something fundamental about RSO biters which is confusing it. With RSO biters, Rampant is nearly braindead, and produces far less threat than even vanilla biters.

In conclusion, I would suggest noting somewhere that Rampant cannot function properly with RSO biter generation, as it severely impairs the gameplay.

[orzelek]

I'm not sure if I can make value of RSO's startup setting dependant on presence of another mod.
And I do recall Rampant working with RSO generated bases but that was long time ago.

I'm pretty sure that the issue might be in the fact that RSO disables normal generation and creates the bases by hand in on chunk (and they are not confined to that chunk).

I think I could silently override settings when Rampant is present but that could cause some other issues.

[Malorn]

I'm not sure if I can make value of RSO's startup setting dependant on presence of another mod.
And I do recall Rampant working with RSO generated bases but that was long time ago.

I'm pretty sure that the issue might be in the fact that RSO disables normal generation and creates the bases by hand in on chunk (and they are not confined to that chunk).

I think I could silently override settings when Rampant is present but that could cause some other issues.

I certainly wasn't trying to say it needed that sort of intervention. I think something as simple as 'RSO biter generation may interfere with the proper functioning of Rampant' somewhere in the mod notes might be enough. It's not always up to modders to fix everything, especially since it can be just toggled off. The danger is that it is a 'silent' failure, so it took a lot of testing to figure out that this wasn't the intended Rampant experience and what had actually gone wrong.

Both mods have massive fanbases and are practically vital to many people's game experience, which is the only thing making some sort of note on both mods worthwhile.

[panisch]

im glad some more people are trying to figure this out now, since this is the only _real_ combat heavy mod for factorio which spices the game up quite substantially.

been following the development here and on the mod portal, seeing this issue being relatively widespread.

Orzelek, you are certainly correct saying that rampant used to work better. that was during the 0.18 period (dont recall exact versions). biters were very insane, but we started to like it. then during 1.0/1.1+ we started a new run and suddenly rampant was baby mode, very dissapointing.

i will start a new run later and do some testing myself, with the assumption that RSO is the culprit. i am using angelbobs as core with bobsenemies along with armored biters and some other goodies. hopefully i can make those work together, im not sure how crucial RSO is for my setup, but i dont want to play without rampant biters on crack anymore

thank you, Malorn for sharing your data with us, that's really helpful.

[panisch]

update here

game version 1.1.36
rampant 1.1.1

"mod settings - startup" RSO - ENABLE - "use vanilla biter generation" (this will be used by rampant)
"mod settings - map" RSO - DISABLE - "use RSO biter generation" (messes with rampant spawns)

now rampant has full control over biter and nest generation and the ai seems to be working very well. keep in mind that biters will only go really ham if they are touched by pollution clouds.

unfortunately it seems that "armoured biters" does not work with rampant in its current state.
armoured biters could either spawn from vanilla nests (which dont exist with these settings - rampant uses custom nests) or have dedicated armoured biter nests (mod settings). but these nests dont spawn, cause i assume rampant is suppressing their spawns.

[Friendch]

Hi there !

I searched but still don't understand what the world seed setting is ? Should I put the seed I'm in for the mod to impact ennemies ?
If not, I should keep the default value ? (In that case, what was it ? ^^ I don't have it anymore =/)

I was trying to play a bit with the settings because I never see vanilla mobs nor other mod's mob anymore, while I have those settings enabled. But I'm still early game tho. (And I see that for Armored bitters, previous message has the answer ^^)

Thanks ! Love the overhaul !

[The Scout]

Hope this is not the wrong place to post this, but I am playing with rampant evolution, and my evolution is not increasing i have killed a few bases, and im at 0.0 evo.
attached worldsave

BETTER.zip

World save with issue

(2.91 MiB) Downloaded 157 times

[The Scout]

desync report: After 3 hours of testing, i got this nailed down to rampant, it happens no matter what im doing after reloading the server. when rampant is enabled.

What where the players doing: I was building a rail loading station at the bottom left, and player 2 was off to the west of base.

Here's the archive of the desync that I used to test.

Here's a known good backup save, if you need it to help debug.

_autosave113.zip

(20.64 MiB) Downloaded 212 times

and finally heres the original desync archive. i used the one above to test as i desync almost instantly.