Factorio Forums

Mindful this might end up in "won't fix" but....

If a player starts a forest fire and then leaves, and that fire eventually spreads to an enemy nest causing damage, the enemies will retaliate against the player who started the forest fire. That is, they pathfind to the character entity who used the flame thrower no matter where they are at the moment the retaliation group stops forming and departs. This seems unintuitive, as biters should not have any idea where the player is from a forest fire.

In my case, I had started a forest fire in a fairly large forest, then taken a train ride over 5000 tiles long, and was doing other work when a group of biters started coming straight for where I was at that point. A group of biters came straight to me even over that distance. (At least they tried... they got around 3/4 of the way before they attacked a radar to alert me to their presence)

Expected behaviour? I'm not sure. Maybe they go to the point that was the source of the fire, though this would carry a high risk of taking more fire damage along the way. Maybe the attack party doesn't select an attack target and immediately disbands.

Actual behaviour: Attack party proceeds to the character who started the forest fire over any distance. Tested over many thousand tiles.

Thanks for the report. Biters are actually not supposed to chase you across the entire map for the reasons you mentioned. I changed it so that if the player is far enough away, they'll path toward the point where the fire originated – this should be reasonably close to where they took damage, and it makes them move. I don't like it when biters take damage and decide to do nothing about it.

So, fixed in 1.1.51.

Oxyd wrote: Tue Dec 21, 2021 11:41 pm Biters are actually not supposed to chase you across the entire map for the reasons you mentioned. I changed it so that if the player is far enough away, they'll path toward the point where the fire originated – this should be reasonably close to where they took damage, and it makes them move.

ok, but he also mentioned

DeHackEd wrote: Sat Dec 11, 2021 7:36 pm This seems unintuitive, as biters should not have any idea where the player is from a forest fire.

similarly, i don't know how would biters know where did the fire originate.

Oxyd wrote: Tue Dec 21, 2021 11:41 pm I don't like it when biters take damage and decide to do nothing about it.

i fully agree. why then not use the 'fleeing' behavior mentioned in 99767 ? that seems a much more appropriate respose to a forest fire than crawling through the burning forest to a point they had no clue existed just a second before.
unless, of course, 'fleeing' works as 'returning to their nest/other starting position', which in this case would probably result in an understandably awkward this-is-fine meme moment.
if so, why not think of a new behavior that would make them try to just... stay away from fire? maybe also try to pathfind around flamethrower fire instead of being suicidal?
(this is partially ironic, but...) if biters care that much about the nature and hate you for destroying it, maybe spitters could try to spit on the fire (both forest and flamethrower one) to put it out and preserve the nature?