Is there a way to disable the purple cloud of destruction ? It comes out of nowhere and destroys a chunk of walls and turrets which i have to constantly rebuild, like every other minute or so.

Amazing mod. I hope you continue working on it :) Thank you.

I sincerely second that....so far i have not found a reliable way to reproduce so i cant say for sure its rampant but it seems likely and its quite annoying, especially since it happens after the attack has already been defeated and suddenly boom, half a chunk gone :D

It's most probably rampant, as after disabling it solved the problem with the random purple cloud of destruction. Unfortunately have no clue what the cloud is supposed to mean (or how the logic works) nor haven't found the way how to disable this specific feature so I had to disable the mod.

#Update: It seems the cloud is the pheromone cloud. It supposed to hunt players, though it completely destroys base as biters get closer (to your base) with their spawners so it completely misses its purpose (since it gets activated at spots hundreds of tiles away from you), unfortunately...

Second thing - it might be related to AAI Programmable Vehicles as those entities might be somehow considered as a unit/player which means the pheromone attacks are triggered by them as well. I and my friend spotted that those attacks might be triggered by our haulers looping from the mine and the base.

I noticed it appearing around biters when they decide to spawn their nests.
However, it also appears after they were killed and a bit too far behind walls, as in my case:
https://i.imgur.com/DcZ4vw5.png
https://i.imgur.com/PCzrGxF.png

So the problem is, apparently, not taking into account if biters actually made it and are making spawners.

Pretty sure your on the right track in the title there(wmd)...a.k.a. nuclear biters.

I think Dukat is on the right Track, after experimenting a bit in the editor, i think it is the "build-clear" cloud defined in ChunkScanner.lua wich is then called 3 times in SquadAttack.lua, but im far to inexperienced to crawl trough the code and analyze it step for step to see if the "surface.create_entity(map.createBuildCloudQuery)" commands are just not catched by an if (looking if any biters are still alive) or if there is a deeper underlying loop/purpose that i may missed.
I can certainly rule out the nuclear biters since after looking up the possibles entitites in my game, there are none even defined.

TheRhodanist is right, it's the "smokeUtils.makeNewCloud" function in ChunkScanner.lua.

So my ghetto solution was to change all the relevant numbers (radius, damage, etc) under that function to 0, except for "duration" which has to be at least 1 due to loading error. Probably only need to do some of these but I really wanted the cloud to disappear completely.

Then in the SmokeUtils.lua file, under the "smokeUtils.makeNewCloud" function (first function you see) change "fade_away_duration" to 0 to avoid another loading error.

Now you should be able to enjoy Rampant without the random destructive purple cloud.

Is there an easy way to edit this and/or a how to guide? The purple cloud has a habit of spawning on my AAI vehicle if they are in AI state.
Edit: I found where it was C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Factorio\mods\Rampant_0.18.16\prototypes\buildings

Another way based on TheRhodanist's info is to just comment out all of the "surface.create_entity(map.createBuildCloudQuery)" functions in the SquadaAttack.lua file. So far working fine with AAI vehicles.

This is an excellent mod but tbh the purple clouds feel way overtuned for other reasons too. Would be nice to have an tickbox to disable it but at least it can still be done pretty easily by editing the files.

The WMD should do less damage and fire when builders arrive at the nest site now.