Hey there.

Im loving the mod and it's a very important part of my mod pack - increased length of nights, darker nights, turrets taking 60s to arm up and so on. The only part Im missing is to actually limit bitter attacks to night only - is there any way I could mod-mod this mod to work like that?

Hi Galileus,

This is a more difficult request than it might seem on the surface: currently this mod doesn't change any of the core biter AI at all - it simply requests the AI make more attacks from polluted sectors at night. And it's for this reason it's highly compatible with other biter mods.

To implement this request, I will have to dig into the actual AI and start changing things around. I'll see if it I can find a way to do it, but it may not be quick or might not even be within my capabilities. One way or another I need to do some research on the inner workings of biter AI.

Thank you for speedy reply!

I was testing some Rampant mod for now, since it has a option that does what your mod does - and this is honestly the only part that I'm interested in - but it doesn't seem to be able to do quite what I want it to do.

My immediate idea is not to stop vanilla AI attacks as is as much as to force (or have player do) opt into peaceful mode. I saw reports from earlier Factorio versions of switching to peaceful mode mid-game with a mod increasing night aggression (might've been earlier version of this one?) doing just that, but failed to replicate this exact behavior. Might or might not be because of my still super low knowledge of framework of this game.

Still, this mod will be one of the core mods of my Nightmare setup, so thanks for your work. And P.S. I really liked the "Sending Biters" message. I can only imagine how scary that would be with 10% attack cost / long range slow spread pollution ;)

My immediate idea is not to stop vanilla AI attacks as is as much as to force (or have player do) opt into peaceful mode. I saw reports from earlier Factorio versions of switching to peaceful mode mid-game with a mod increasing night aggression (might've been earlier version of this one?) doing just that, but failed to replicate this exact behavior. Might or might not be because of my still super low knowledge of framework of this game.

Funnily enough, this is what I'm looking at right now. The factorio API does let me change peaceful mode on the fly. If this alters all biters' behavior immediately this might be a lot easier than expected. But if it only changes new spawns, then, well, I'll need to look at other options...

Still, this mod will be one of the core mods of my Nightmare setup, so thanks for your work. And P.S. I really liked the "Sending Biters" message. I can only imagine how scary that would be with 10% attack cost / long range slow spread pollution ;)

hehe. Well if you want the message, it's still in control.lua - just uncomment it. But it was just meant to help me debug, not to tell players of their impending doom.

I was wondering what to rename it to.

"Impending doom" will do just fine.

Well, bad news... Setting peaceful mode doesn't seem to stop pollution attacks, so I'm guessing it only applies to new spawns.

Ok, I found a sort of work around. Not sure if it will work with rampant. But feel free to try the new version.

Few quick test later and it seems to do exactly what I hoped for - the biters build up during the day to launch an all-out attack as soon as the night comes. With that Rampant won't be necessary and honestly an overkill, since with big bases and big pollution spread the opening night attack is scary as all hells on a camping trip.

This will be a very interesting coop session. And I might finally get some use from that "Dark Souls death sound mod". Thank you so much!

Glad to hear it. Have fun... and stay alive!