Rampant Tactics

Factorio Mod - Improves the enemies tactics by using potential fields/pheromones allowing probing of defenses, retreats, reinforcements, counterattacking, breaching, rallying death cry, and player hunting. Also removes homing biter projectiles.

Forum Post

https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?f=94&t=31445

Notes

0.14.14 factorio version fixed save corruption
0.14.10 factorio version fixed more pathing issues
0.14.4 factorio version fixed some issues with unit groups commands

There will be a slight pause the first time this is started up due to indexing all the chunks that have been generated.

MP should be working

Configure Options not in game menu:

• Ramp up to max biter wave size

Features

• Recycling Biters - When large groups of biters form on the game map and aren't assigned to a unit group or near a base will be periodically removed and refunded to the ai causing attack waves proportional to the number of units removed.
• Breaching - When biters are destroying structures nearby unit groups will come to join them
• Frenzy squads - When a unit group gets close to a player or start combat they switch to attacking everything in there path for a set radius or until there is nothing left
• Rabid squads - Is in a permanent frenzied state as soon as the group is formed
• Tactical Retreats - these will take place when a unit group is in a chunk that has reached a death threshold
• Unit Group Merging - if multiple unit groups retreat at the same time there is a chance the groups will merge
• Unit Group Forming - any chunks with spawners in it that is covered by a pollution or player clouds will form groups based on the evolution factor
• Probing Behavior Against Defenses - unit groups will attempt to avoid chunks that are soaked in death
• Player Hunting - unit groups will track the player based on there emitted pheromone cloud
• Rallying Death Cry - when a unit is killed on a chunk that is past the retreat threshold, the unit will attempt to summon reinforcements to help them
• Counterattacks - when the player is in combat near nests they will send reinforcements to unit groups
• Reinforcements - nests will send assistance to nearby nests under attack by the player
• No Homing Projectiles - all projectiles are fired at locations and no longer track the player
• Pathfinding - unit groups will use potential fields to perform only single step pathfinding allowing for efficient and dynamic pathing
• Peace mode - if something sets peace mode, Rampant will respect it

Planned Features

• Tunneling Biters
• Fire Biters
• Suicide Biters
• Infesting Biters
• Adaptive aliens
• Base Expansion

Version History

0.15.5 -

• Tweak: Increased ai refund from 2 to 3
• Fix: Signals, Chain Signals, and Train stops now correctly rebuild when the corresponding make safe is toggled
• Feature: Remote interfaces for adjusting wave size, thresholds, ai build points, ai state, player thresholds, and attack triggers
• Improvement: Added reactor, programmable speaker, radars, lights, and rocket silo to biter targets
• Improvement: Switched all configs to global runtime except Dumb projectiles and NE Unit Launcher Options

0.15.4 -

• Fix: Changed setting name from "make buildings safe from biters" to "Enable building safety." This is to clarify what the setting does.

0.15.3 -

• Improvement: Added configuration for safe buildings. This will be improved after a bug fix in factorio

0.15.2 -

• Improvement: Created in game options for
  • Max biter wave size
  • Use dumb projectiles
  • Use Natural Evolution unit launchers (Requires NE)
  • Togglable attack wave triggers (pollution, player)
  • Attack wave pollution trigger threshold

0.15.1 -

• Tweak: Increased small spitter damage from 7 to 15
• Tweak: Increased medium spitter damage from 15 to 22
• Improvement: Replaced game.evolution with game.forces.enemy.evolution
• Improvement: Fixed flame-thrower to flamethrower
• Improvement: Changed tunnel to have non-zero hp

0.14.13 -

• Reverted: Pheromone generation tweaks from 0.14.11
• Feature: Recycling large biter swarms that are stuck (causes a big attack wave, and pops up a message)
• Feature: Breaching, Biters destroying player buildings will attract other unit groups
• Tweak: Reduced unit group max size from 600 to 450
• Tweak: Reduced unit group radius from 30 to 20
• Fix: Unit groups merging during combat
• Optimization: Cleaned up regroup squad function to scale better
• Optimization: Retreats only fire once per chunk for every logic cycle
• Improvement: Cleaned up dispersion function for Pheromones
• Improvement: Increased attack wave frequency based on evolution factor (mainly for endgame)

0.14.12 -

• Tweak: Decreased slow map scan chunks scanned per logic cycle from 8 to 6
• Fix: Didn't set new version number forcing chunk recalculation every load
• Improvement: Added player buildings to slow map scan to catch buildings made outside factorio event system, (i.e. FARL)
• Improvement: Added console message when upgrading

0.14.11 -

• Tweak: Increased pheromone generation on (This only potential affects target selection and pathfinding, these do not trigger biter waves):
  • Generators from 8 to 12
  • Pumps from 2 to 5
  • Offshore Pumps from 2 to 5
  • Transport Belts from 1 to 2
  • Accumulator from 10 to 14
  • Solar Panel from 8 to 12
  • Boiler from 12 to 16
  • Assembling Machines from 10 to 16
  • Roboport from 10 to 14
  • Beacon from 10 to 14
  • Furance from 12 to 16
  • Mining Drills from 15 to 19
  • Ammo Turret from 2.5 to 5
  • Wall from 0.25 to 0.55
  • Electric Turret from 4.25 to 7
  • Fluid Turret from 5 to 9
  • Turret from 3.5 to 5
• Tweak: Reduced map scan speed from 10 chunks to 8 chunks to account for worms in calculation
• Tweak: Increased pheromone dispersion from 0.05 to 0.1
• Tweak: Increased unit group move distance from 32 to 40
• Tweak: Reduced unit group member disown distance from 10 to 5
• Tweak: Increased unit group max slow down when ahead from 0.6 to 1
• Tweak: Reduced unit group max speedup when behind from 1.4 to 1.1
• Tweak: Increased unit group max slowdown from slow members from 0.3 to 0.9 (this is max speed multipler, so this is faster)
• Tweak: Increased unit attack radius from 20 to 28 tiles
• Improvement: Increased movement cycles for larger groups from 4 cycles to 6 cycles
• Improvement: Biter groups should attempt to avoid getting too close to water (screws up pathing)
• Improvement: Added worms to chunk calculation for determining better unit group formation and pathing
• Improvement: Removed nest negative contribution to base pheromone map for better pathing
• Improvement: Pheromones no longer travel over impassable terrain
• Fix: Prevent group spawning on chunks with enemy structures
• Fix: Capped the max group size that can be created by merging to 600 biters
• Fix: Dispand unit groups larger than 600 (https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?f=94&t=31445&start=80#p255243, Thank you Nerchio for the save game)

0.14.10 -

• Feature: Replaces homing projectiles with non homing versions
• Improvement: Respect for peace mode. To be used with something like the True Peace Mod
• Fix: Enforce rate limit for retreats

0.14.9 -

• Fix: Added null check in rally cry for chunks that have yet to be generated by game engine (https://mods.factorio.com/mods/Veden/Rampant/discussion/7946)

0.14.8 -

• Feature: Rallying death cry, when a native dies on a chunk past the death threshold it will attempt to summon reinforcements from nearby nests
• Tweak: Increased unit group merge distance from 16 to 28 tiles
• Tweak: Increased retreat grab radius from 15 tiles to 24 tiles
• Tweak: Decreased vengeance squad cost from 50 to 45
• Improvement: On group merge recalculate the kamikaze threshold, so groups that become large have a chance to kamikaze before attacking
• Improvement: Disallow group merges when units are taking and receiving damage
• Fix: Corrected unit group frenzy trigger based on engaging a target
• Optimization: Switched to increment tick counter for processing and logic event
• Optimization: Rate limited rally cry to 3/0.75 sec
• Optimization: Rate limited retreat to 8/0.75 sec

0.14.7 -

• Feature: Counterattack waves trigger when the player is standing in a chunk with the death pheromone past the retreat threshold
• Feature: Reinforcement waves trigger when the player is standing in a chunk that contains a nest
• Tweak: Increased max number of unit groups that can be active concurrently from 30 to 40
• Improvement: Removed restriction on unit group formations around nests

0.14.6 -

• Major Fix: Corrected retreat logic having inverted comparison introduced in 14.4, so unit groups stopped retreating after lots of death happened in a chunk
• Major Fix: Corrected pheromone dispersal with negative numbers
• Fix: Adjusted scoring so unit groups try to avoid nest clusters when retreating (Messes up pathfinding)
• Fix: When placing a player building ai was given credit as if they destroyed it
• Tweak: Reduced retreat time length from 4.5 to 3 seconds
• Tweak: Reduced death pheromone produced on death from 100 to 75
• Tweak: Increased attack radius of unit groups from 16 to 20 tiles
• Tweak: Increased attack time length from 2.25 to 3 seconds
• Tweak: Increased nest pheromone production from 15 to 30
• Tweak: Increased unit group search radius during formations from 2 chunks to 3 chunks
• Framework: Decoupled squad status and kamikaze flag
• Improvement: Biters don't retreat when dying on a chunk with a nest
• Improvement: Chunks covered by nest pheromone remove death pheromone faster
• Improvement: Attack wave size varies based on normal distribution that is centered around a scaled evolution factor that is lower than vanilla

0.14.5 -

• Improvement: Enlarged player processing bubble from 3 to 4 chunks (pheromone radius is still 4 chunks)
• Fix: Increased player scoring weight, so biter groups correctly hunt once more (https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?f=94&t=31445&start=40#p216119)
• Improvement: Adjusted attack pathing, so groups can move diagonally
• Fix: Unit group retreating when player occupies same chunk

0.14.4 -

• Fixed a bug in the processing queue when upgrading mod
• Greatly decreased Player pheromone radius, now sits at roughly 4 chunks around the player
• Reworked pheromone pathfinding
• Removed base and defense attack wave trigger, in favor of using player pheromone and pollution
• Added periods of time where the enemy is not sending Rampant attack waves
• Adjusted retreat percentage to suit the reduced attack wave size
• Improved responsiveness on larger maps
• Reduced AI max build points
• Fixed player iteration bug

0.14.3 -

• Slightly lowered Rampant attack wave frequency
• Altered attack wave size to ramp up slower
• Added configuration options for:
• • Attack wave generation area
    • • Attack wave threshold
    • • Attack wave size
    • • Turn off rampant attack waves

0.14.2 -

• Adjusted unit retreat group size threshold
• Adjusted squad attack pattern (https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?f=94&t=31445&start=20#p203861)
• Fixed migration issue

0.14.1 -

• Fixed ai created bases not being counted in logic
• Optimization to offset ai created bases scanning

0.13.5 = 0.14.5

0.13.4 = 0.14.4

0.13.3 = 0.14.3

0.13.2 = 0.14.2

0.13.1 - Back ported 0.14 factorio version to 0.13 factorio version

0.0.8 -

• Fixed retreat oscillations (https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?f=94&t=31445&start=10#p198750)
• Added scaling for kamikaze attack (https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?f=94&t=31445&start=10#p199401)
• Increased squad size max from 125 to 150, (larger waves)

0.0.6 -

• Some speed improvements
• MP is working (https://github.com/veden/Rampant/issues/1)

0.0.5 -

• Fix for nil chunk in ai attack (https://mods.factorio.com/mods/Veden/Rampant/discussion/2512)
• Checks for main surface (https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?f=94&t=31445&p=198228#p198563)
• Updated info with forum homepage

0.0.4 - initial release