[MOD 0.15] Will-o'-the-wisps

[Betep3akata]

Info

Name: Will-o'-the-wisps
Category: enemies
Download-Url: https://mods.factorio.com/mods/Betep3ak ... -the-wisps
Factorio Version: 0.14.7+
Tested with versioon: 0.14.21
License: CC BY-NC-SA
Author: Betep3akata = Wind of Sunset

Short description:

This mod adds will-o'-the-wisps which spawn mainly in forests at night time:
1. Yellow will-o'-the-wisps live in forests and do not attack first.
2. Red will-o'-the-wisps live under stones. Physical damage leads to fast replication process.
3. Will-o'-the-wisp in the state of spore. They cause the corrosion of structures around and have a devastating effect on solar power plants.
UV-light is the only solution to reduce a lifetime of purple will-o'-the-wisps at night. Also affects on other types of the wisps.

Feedback:

You can adjust the balancing and performance values in config.lua and even in libs/consts.lua.
Any further suggestions for improvement, or bug reports are welcome here.

[Light]

Hello again,

I have some more questions so I can get the most out of this experience.

1. How does the UV lamp affect the other wisps exactly? Yellows look like they fly away from it (which is pretty cool to see), but do they also die by it?

2. You mentioned setting the lamps to pulse mode to save a bit of power while dealing with them. Are they simply affected by touching the light once or is it how long they're exposed to it?

Since I play with the Pitch Black mod, it's always dark outside even during the "day". Wisps are out 24/7 and the UV lamps are always on. This is why I'd like to learn more about the light mechanics in every way so they're used to maximum effect without causing too many brownouts early on.

It's nice to have some life outside of biters by the way, so I'm pleased this mod exists.

[Betep3akata]

Hello,
1. No, they do not run away intentionally. Yes, they will die if they stay at UV.
It's a good idea to wisps to escape from the light source. But isn't implemented yet and performance impact of it may be too heavy. The multiple UV lamps may create problems in determining the direction of escape.

2.Yes, they simply affected by touching the light once.
But the current implementation stands that they check exposition by UV every 3.71(6) sec. If at the moment of check at least one lamp in the 21x21 square around the wisp is active the wisp will be exposed. Then death comes to the affected wisp during next 1.88(3) seconds,

I'm going to update the light mechanics in the near future. Are there any suggestions?
I think about the smart version of UV: the wisp detector, for example.

Thanks,
Alex

[richerds1234]

Just an idea. I've noticed when some mods conflict (or I have found something I have no clue what it is I'm just assuming its some conflict) some items don't show up in this case something has made UV lamps not show up in the crafting menu despite every other part of the mod working, so maybe an option in the config to make normal lamps act like UV lamps? If I find whats causing the lamps to not show up I'll let you know.
---I've gone through all of the mods I'm using and none of them are blocking the lamp It just doesn't let me craft it(not showing up in crafting menus. A new game might fix it but I haven't had much time to test that yet.
--- OK resetting the tech tree fixes the problem

Another idea is maybe an option in the config to change the yellow wisps to attack if damaged instead of if one is killed.
Also do yellow wisps spawn if trees are destroyed in general or is it only if done by the player? currently from what I noticed robots and aliens don't spawn them could that be added?

[Betep3akata]

Hi, richerds1234,
1. Yes, this was the tech tree related issue. I will fix that in the next release.
2. It is possible to trigger the counterattacking behavior by the incoming damage but in terms of performance is much better to trigger it by death only.
3. I often see the wisps that were spawned by the aliens who plow their way through forests. So, not only by the player. And it is the feature that the flying robots can deconstruct the trees safely.

Thanks for feedback,
Alex

[Light]

Changing the UV light to automatically turn on when wisps are nearby would be a big plus.
Just a basic setup of using these lights has consumed 113MW, which considering I'll have some forest in the factory itself for pollution purposes, requires some lights inside the factory and not just border protection.

Another issue I seem to run into is that considering there's a lot of dense forest in my game (The trees regrow), there's usually 10+ purple wisps flowing in my direction thanks to biters attacking them. The lamp will kill off maybe 4-5 of them but the rest slip through like they weren't affected by the lamp at all. I also tested this by creating 100 wisps in a wide lighted area and some aren't affected when they all should have died off at almost the same time. This is why I wondered if I needed to stack UV lamps, given the wisps only seem to fade one at a time.

A personal suggestion would be to also have wisps become neutral again after 30 minutes or so. This would be for pitch black mod players who as mentioned previously, don't have a daytime period anymore. The wisps are constantly at full assault mode and can dish out more punishment than biters for a long time. It wasn't surprising to see major parts of my factory getting wiped out since wisps eat ammo for breakfast and spawn in large numbers.

[Betep3akata]

About the dense forests, you can change the const.FOREST_MIN_DENSITY = 200 value in lib/consts.lua to 250-300 or more per chunk.

Proposals which I going to implement:
1. Set the aggression period for 3 minutes because standard night lasts only 42-125 secs
2. Check and update the way of exposing UV on the wisps. Add the detector of wisps.
3. A bit decrease the UV lamps energy consumption.

And I suddenly realized that without the day time at all the wisps cannot choose new trees for spontaneously rising at night...

[Betep3akata]

All issues above should be addressed by version 14.22.9.

[Light]

Looks like small wooden poles are affected by the purple wisps. I'll be testing the other things at a later time to see if they're working on my end without the daylight period.

[Light]

Test Update:

• Yellows do spawn in new areas with Pitch Black, though they don't spawn when I run through the trees anymore.
• Wooden poles continue to take damage, although I'm unsure what's supposed to be immune to provide a detailed list for you. I do use Bob's Mods alongside Angel's mods and Bio Industries, so one of them may be responsible.
• Detection does work although it's unfortunate you couldn't integrate it into the lamp itself.

For some reason I still notice purple wisps slipping through the lights and being unaffected as it just floats into the factory. Perhaps a reduction in how long it takes for a purple to die when exposed would remedy this issue or having it die instantly when interacting with the light.

They're really the only ones that give me all kinds of trouble since 30 or so breeze through the factory every minute and just melt my electric poles. The detector is useful but having to hook up several to different light arrays is not ideal. I'm unsure the challenge any of this poses but if the UV light could auto-detect by itself (or had the detector pre-attached rather than two different deployable entities which need circuits), a slight radius increase so the lights could be further apart since they're rather blinding in close proximity, as well as purple wisps dying almost instantly in contact with the light so they finally stop slipping through and spamming my map with 100 warning signs; Those three changes would be the bow on the package in my book. Then I could watch the wisps dance around and I'd dance around with them knowing the factory is safe while I'm not there.

[Betep3akata]

Thanks for the detailed feedback!
1.

Yellows do spawn in new areas with Pitch Black, though they don't spawn when I run through the trees anymore.

I will recheck that they don't spawn near the location of the player.

But I think this issue is about the limit on the maximum wisps count in the game and the extremely long night:
config.lua: config.MAX_WISPS_COUNT = 800
libs/consts.lua: const.WANDERING_WISP_PERCENT = 0.8 -- i.e. 80% of MAX_WISPS_COUNT
These values mean that 640 wisps can spawn spontaneously and 160 wisps will be "reserved" for the spawning around the player. Without long night modifications, 800 is enough because the day time controls on their population. And I am already have added a few tweaks (for the next release) on balance to reduce an average TTL of wisps.

2.

Wooden poles continue to take damage

I will see what I can do with it. Other modifications may indeed break expected behavior. Could you check the corrosion resistance value and the involved mods line on the small electric pole?


3.

Detection does work although it's unfortunate you couldn't integrate it into the lamp itself.

Sadly, no. Now the effects of the overlapped lights are summed. You can build more than one lamp with the single detector. That allows saving the valuable code execution time which is consumed by each request from an entity to find wisps near. Frequentative search for the entities in the defined range is a very expensive operation for performance reasons. Maybe in the future, I'll try to reduce a cost of this operation a little by the introduction of caching for already found entities per area.

4.
To what extent the range of a single lamp should be increased to allow the comfortable placement?

[Light]

I've pinpointed that ShinyBob is responsible for the missing corrosion protection.
https://mods.factorio.com/mods/Inequalitix/ShinyBob

Detection does work although it's unfortunate you couldn't integrate it into the lamp itself.

Sadly, no. Now the effects of the overlapped lights are summed. You can build more than one lamp with the single detector. That allows saving the valuable code execution time which is consumed by each request from an entity to find wisps near. Frequentative search for the entities in the defined range is a very expensive operation for performance reasons. Maybe in the future, I'll try to reduce a cost of this operation a little by the introduction of caching for already found entities per area.

I see. Now that I know how it works, I've built fewer detectors and placed them more in front so they're not taking up too much performance. If the range of the detector can be improved without as much negative impact compared to having several detectors, that would be just as useful. Perhaps even a toggle or variable signal in the detector to control its range for those who may need a wide region or one that's much smaller.

4.To what extent the range of a single lamp should be increased to allow the comfortable placement?

After placing lamps 20 spaces apart from each other I didn't find it that bad. I may have had a few closer than they were supposed to by accident or a lamp close by. The tree farms work nicely although the wisps sure love to kill the detector right away when provoked. It does make a rather pleasant purple tint when far enough apart.

[dermiste]

How will the recipes be affected with the big 0.15 science overhaul (no more alien artifacts) ?

[Betep3akata]

How will the recipes be affected with the big 0.15 science overhaul (no more alien artifacts) ?

Most likely we will add the alien artifacts again.

But I'm a little disappointed that the biters are not even considered an integral part of the game:
viewtopic.php?f=38&t=41110&start=80#p242956

... Biters aren't meant to be some incredible difficult force to be reckoned with. They simply exist as a thing that goes along with the main part of the game: factory design and automation. They're even less important in 0.15 with alien artifacts being removed.

The main problem of artifacts that they are dropping out from a fallen enemies constantly. If there are no artifacts, then there is no problem they said. I think that the artifacts could be a kind of a loot which is rare and challenging to obtain.

[Betep3akata]

I've pinpointed that ShinyBob is responsible for the missing corrosion protection.
https://mods.factorio.com/mods/Inequalitix/ShinyBob
...

14.22.11
1. The missing corrosion protection most likely fixed;
2. Support for the modifications with the long night was updated: they will be active for 3 minutes every 9 minutes without the continuous rise from trees;
3. The average TTL of the wisps was reduced;
4. A small chance of appearing of Reds in forests added:)
5. The input R and output W signals were added into detectors. R = the custom range of detection (1-128) i.e. 8x8 chunks area max.

I've rechecked and think that the Smart UV Lamp can be added. But is not it make life too easy?

[Light]

Everything is working smoothly and the increased range of the detectors has helped a great deal.

Although it may just be me, but I actually liked the constant rise of the wisps in random areas of the vast forest during the long nights. Creating a vast sea of purple wisps that float through the map. Perhaps a config option for their continuous rise could be added for those who like this sort of thing.

The purple sea

Other than that I have nothing left to suggest, the mod is perfectly tuned in my book.

[Betep3akata]

Hi,
I added this feature for 14.22.12. You may just set the FAKE_DAY_MODE to false in the config file to achieve the constant spawning of the wisps. Also you may adjust percentages for each type of spontaneously spawned wisps.

As always thanks for testing!

P.S.: There are two more planned features:
1. Purples who not destroy electric poles but attach themselves to the poles and drain energy;
2. Some catastrophic event in case if the wisps will have access to the crude oil tanks.

[steinio]

Hello,

very cute mod.
I placed some uv lamps with detector so they stay off until wisps are detected but it seems that the power drain stays very high.
Is it possible, that the idle power value is to high?

Edit: Don't cut down a whole forest at night

willo.png (1.96 MiB) Viewed 9381 times

Greetings steinio

[Betep3akata]

Hello!
Could you please provide some exact values?


For my testbed I have the following values:
1. 1x UV - on = 800kw
2. 1x UV - off by circuit = 26.5kw - Is it too much or you have another value?

An amazing "explosion" effect on your screenshot!

Thanks,
Alex

[steinio]

Hello!
Could you please provide some exact values?


For my testbed I have the following values:
1. 1x UV - on = 800kw
2. 1x UV - off by circuit = 26.5kw - Is it too much or you have another value?

An amazing "explosion" effect on your screenshot!

Thanks,
Alex

Oh yes i checked it quicklyand i have the same values.
Seems i have just a lot of these.

UVLAMP.png (162.61 KiB) Viewed 9374 times

Greetings steinio