DISCLAIMER: I have made custom edits to the sourcecode which may have broken things. I plan on doing further testing without any of my changes to troubleshoot whether my tinkering broke things but wanted to see if anyone else was noticing or experiencing similar issues.

Our world is about 4 hours old and our evolution is at 44%.

A friend and I played a bunch of Rampant on 0.18 and it was brutally hard. We recently decided to do another play through and updated everything to 1.1 but it seems that Rampant may be broken.

1) Raiding and Sieging AI appear to be non functional (we spent the 1st hour of our new playthrough clearing out nearby nests and then we were not attacked until our pollution cloud reached the biter nests. Then there were very small/minimal attacks). I feel like in 0.18 Rampant pressured us the entire early game.
2) The biters don't appear to be expanding or filling out the map. Or if they are it's quite minimal.

In 0.18 during the early game my friend would have to run around and basically manage our defences full time while I set up the base. Our 1.1 world is about 4 hours old now and beyond the clearing of the starting 5-6 nests around our base the game feels like it's on peaceful mode rather than Rampant DeathWorld.

Hi,
So you are comparing to some 0.18 mod version, not to 1.0.0? Do you play with New Enemies set as On?
What are enemy bases density and size settings for your map? 6 nests around starting area seems not much. I noticed that for 100..150% density Rampant 1.* doesn't accumulate enough aggression internal value to produce considerable attacks or nesting. Setting 400% solves the problem. Please read this topic posts https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Rampant/discussion/5f3e827ca93b766a7bb8d92d .

RaidingAI is not as aggressive as it was prior to 1.* version (for example like in Rampant '2019). No global waves once per N minutes like it was before, only some local waves easier to survive without proper defenses.
SiegingAI is ok (there was definitely a difference between this setting On and Off at least in mod version 1.0.1, didn't have enough time to check in v.1.0.4)

In general spawners nesting has been lowered drastically comparing to 0.18 with turning off vanilla migration - I miss it :-) . But Rampant's builders act faster and build much bigger bases. And they love to expand bases inside the chunk (even without Hive nest) - vanilla doesn't have this dangerous feature.

Pollution-triggered attacks were still enourmous in 1.0.1. It was a quick way to die by letting cloud come to biters nests if evolution is over 30%. In 1.0.4 biters don't attack anymore when nearby chunks are polluted like it was all the time last few years. Only when pollution reaches the nests chunks and consumed during some time - looks similar to vanilla factorio or very early game behavior. But maybe it's my problem - very small pollution unit values due to huge territory I conquered and walled off. Maybe mod now calculate the PU values consumed to rise aggression value accordingly - I don't know. Previously the fact of cloud entering the chunk or nearby chunk was enough for disaster to come :-)
Probably in 1.0.4 version after total rebalance something changed - didn't have any problems with biters. But I can't say for sure - maybe I got some tech progress in the current game and conquered a big enough territory. A new map or early save is required. Didn't have time for it after last update.

Hi Garrotte,

1) So you are comparing to some 0.18 mod version, not to 1.0.0?
Rampant_0.18.16.zip
vs
Rampant_1.0.4.zip

2) Do you play with New Enemies set as On?
Yes

3) What are enemy bases density and size settings for your map?
Whatever Deathworld defaults to. Which appears to be:
Frequency - 200%
Size - 200%

4) 6 nests around starting area seems not much.
The seed we're playing (485696315) is pretty advantageous :) https://i.imgur.com/ffO0AUz.png

5) RaidingAI & SiegingAI
Here is our current map at 3h 40m https://i.imgur.com/xmS93L6.png (pollution layer on: https://i.imgur.com/9LHB42f.png )
For the entire 3h 40m we seem to only get pollution based attacks. Rampant doesn't build toward us or attack us unless there's pollution getting absorbed.

Please let me know if I missed something you'd like answered. I'm a little tied up right now but I definitely want to figure out how to make Rampant brutally difficult like I'm used to.

Try to add bases frequency. It's a paradise you got at start location :-) . 400 or 500%. Check 'World: enemy deadzone frequency' setting to be near 0.

Increase Ending enemy level from 4 to 8. So at evo 44% you'll get bigger and more protected biters. Add variations for more fun.

I suppose (didn't test) that increasing 'AI:Temperament Rate Modifier' should make biters more aggressive. When biters raid more they settle more (as I understood Rampant's migration works only during the phase of raid/siege or pollution-triggered wave).
With vanilla expansion removed player has not many ways to provoke biters expansion peacefully. :-(

Try to add bases frequency. It's a paradise you got at start location :-) . 400 or 500%.

If we decide to keep playing and restart we will definitely try this.

Check 'World: enemy deadzone frequency' setting to be near 0.

It's on the default of .1

Increase Ending enemy level from 4 to 8. So at evo 44% you'll get bigger and more protected biters. Add variations for more fun.

We've got ending on 10. I've always set variations to 1 because I was under the impression that all it did was fudge the stats +- a little and I preferred the consistency in knowing what I was fighting.

When biters raid more they settle more (as I understood Rampant's migration works only during the phase of raid/siege or pollution-triggered wave).
With vanilla expansion removed player has not many ways to provoke biters expansion peacefully. :-(

If this is how it works then that definitely explains the bugs not expanding. We wiped out those starting nests in hour 1 before ramping up our base/pollution. So in hours 2-4 we have fought pretty much zero bugs and fed them almost no pollution.

Here is our current map at 3h 40m https://i.imgur.com/xmS93L6.png (pollution layer on: https://i.imgur.com/9LHB42f.png )
For the entire 3h 40m we seem to only get pollution based attacks. Rampant doesn't build toward us or attack us unless there's pollution getting absorbed.

With Rampant1.0.1 you could expect intensive biters nesting on Iron ore 8.9M spot and Stone 1M spot. Probably. Not sure, because enemy bases are too far away and from each other. I had such experience with 400% bases frequency on copper 6M spot near my wall - nests packs were built every half an hour realtime. I had to run out and destroy them very often. In Rampant 1.0.4 looks like biters became too calm. I'll try to play with Temperament setting to make them expand in peaceful time period.
"peaceful" = player is not raiding them and pollution is far away from current biters nests.

(Whoops, nevermind. I ran a test this morning and what I had posted isn't happening!)

We tried again with Deathworld default on another seed thinking that the main problem was the "cheater seed" was just way too favourable. But we pretty much had the same experience as described before (4h / 44% and all we get is trickled / very small attacks from few nests absorbing pollution.). Only we had to spend more time clearing out the initial bases on this one since the layout was much less favourable (had to get creative and run around to the various iron patches spreading out our pollution as much as possible while we built up yellow mags). https://i.imgur.com/v3fIvB7.png

I'm starting to wonder if we simply got more aware / better at managing our pollution. I still have my mods folder from rampant ver 0.18/ factorio ver 1.0 so I'm thinking we could try one of these seeds on there and feel out how things differ as a next step.

I increased Temperament a bit https://imgur.com/a/S8TdYvz
And it worked - in about 30 minutes got such a lovely new enemy base with 2 hives over copper spot at absolutely peaceful side (that big area was cleaned long ago - in Rampant1.0.1 biters didn't make them wait to occupy resources chunk) https://imgur.com/a/OBJvMWq

So did you set enemy bases frequency to 400% or even more for new map? I wasted a month in August-September trying to make Rampant 1.* work for me with no success until I increased initial nests frequency. See the topic about it with a lot of complains.
When nests are so dense I believe (not sure) aggression value increases much faster. In mod 1.0.1 in some circumstances biters kept the pressure infinitely making me to save the game and reload it to reset aggression (Veden wrote in 1.0.4 changelog about that problem fix) - it required many nests to be nearby the area where RaidingAI sent biters in suicide attack once and nests start sending endless attackers waves.

I still have my mods folder from rampant ver 0.18/ factorio ver 1.0 so I'm thinking we could try one of these seeds on there and feel out how things differ as a next step.

You'll have to fix mod a lot to make it work with Factorio 1.* . The only thing I regret about for those mod versions is vanilla migration - stable expansion once in a selected time period of time settings whatever player does - even if he doesn't produce pollution, doesn't attack nests, doesn't launch space rockets. Yes, vanilla migration is stupid, but it doesn't require evolution growth or player's aggression.

So did you set enemy bases frequency to 400% or even more for new map?

No, we didn't, we did default Deathworld again. I am not sure how I feel about having to clear out so many extra nests in the starting area :P

I still have my mods folder from rampant ver 0.18/ factorio ver 1.0 so I'm thinking we could try one of these seeds on there and feel out how things differ as a next step.

You'll have to fix mod a lot to make it work with Factorio 1.*

I've already got Rampant_0.18.16.zip working on Factorio 1.0 (this was our last playthrough that we committed to and we got it into the mega base phase). I can't recall how much I had to edit, if anything, to make it work. I think Factorio 1.0 is just the final stable of Factorio 0.18 so I don't think it was a lot, if anything, but I can't remember.

Also I think that Factorio 1.1+ is when they introduced breaking changes (although I was able to get 0.18.16 working on 1.1+ as well only having to fix 2-3 errors and start a new map).

I am not sure how I feel about having to clear out so many extra nests in the starting area

It's definitely easy. Till evolution 30% it's tier1 - destroy anytime any base size. Then biters get much more health. So if you manage to keep evo under 30% you even don't need oil processing. And no need to waste resources on piercing magazines, but better to invest into bullets&turrets bonuses. Just don't purge bases without need and 30% milestone won't be exceeded. Deathworld evo progress is fast only for time passed, but as you play in multiplayer, you can do quick.
Before March-April'2020 Rampant didn't require high bases frequency. I played with 150-200% in factorio 0.17/0.18. Maybe with new Temperament setting high enough this mod can be playable even with 200% bases frequency - need to test.

I'm starting to wonder if we simply got more aware / better at managing our pollution. I still have my mods folder from rampant ver 0.18/ factorio ver 1.0 so I'm thinking we could try one of these seeds on there and feel out how things differ as a next step.

So in the end we are pretty sure it was this. I loaded up .18 on 1.0 and simulated a min-max'd pollution start (i.e. letting pretty much 0 pollution get absorbed) and the biters were just as docile as 1.0.4 on 1.1.

So we did a few things to help make a min-max'd pollution start more challenging:

1) I added some code to give the biters 60 points if they hadn't spent or gained points in the last 60 seconds. (Based on their current behavior state they either: i) at 400 points settle/expand or ii) at 175 points I think they make a squad to attack you with)
2) In the Factorio map settings we set the minimum AI expansion time to 1 minute and maximum to 5 minutes (In the early game this basically spawns a squad/group every 5 minutes that Rampant then takes over and either attacks you with or expands with)
3) I coded it so that if the AI ever rolled a peaceful state it instead forces them to a migrating state (though this one might have some negative implications; I didn't spend much time analyzing anything further because I really wanted to play, lol)

1) and 2) give the AI the ability to attack you from outside your pollution cloud (and also pressure you to ramp up since extra time spent hand crafting / minimizing pollution is time that the AI is accumulating points to expand with).

So even though on this most recent map we made sure that the AI wasn't absorbing any pollution early on these settings still allowed them to poke at us and force us to lookout / set up defenses, whereas before we didn't need to :)

Not sure how 1 works as the AI gains points every 7 ticks.

3) just means that you wont have peaceful breaks.

I would increase the temperament rate modifier to 5 to 10 and increase difficulty scaling to 2 to 5

You probably want to increase the max biter group size to 150.

Also without a save, this will not get fixed.

Also if you are changing the source code then I cannot promise you haven't broken things.

For me PROVOKED enemies expansion now works great after I re-started maps with 400% bases frequencies and increased temperament+difficulty a little. All I miss is non-provoked expansion - I suppose it doesn't exist like was discovered here: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Rampant/discussion/5fc115f656ce8e26455bbe31 . But if mod version 1.0.4 changed it - then great! Need to test.
I found another problem (not sure for now) that biters hesitate to attack when pollution cloud touches their bases. They consume considerable pollution before running a small attack. And it doesn't trigger semi-global attacks (with all bases from that map side producing attack waves) like it was before. Still re-checking.

Rampant is full of surprises. Yesterday I came to conclusion, that hives do appear only near resources spots. A week ago I found out, that biters do love resources spots so much that build there faster and in big groups - and it's even stronger focus for them then nesting near my wall with SiegingAI enabled (or maybe SiegingAI logics doesn't work regularly like it did before).

Hi Veden,

Not sure how 1 works as the AI gains points every 7 ticks.

Can you confirm that map.points should be increasing every 7 ticks on its own? i.e. if you load into a game and do nothing, should the AI be getting free points?

(If you want to see my mess it's here tacked onto pick 6 https://pastebin.com/5nWXPYJN)

I would increase the temperament rate modifier to 5 to 10 and increase difficulty scaling to 2 to 5

We have temperament on 1 and difficulty scaling on 2. Rampant is currently kicking our butts at the start of the midgame (oil / chem science / 7-8 hr base) so we're definitely satisfied with where things are at.

You probably want to increase the max biter group size to 150.

This is something we did for the .18 playthroughs but I don't think we've gotten a 1.0.4 playthrough to the point where this should matter yet.

Also without a save, this will not get fixed.

Here's the save that prompted this initial post. (The combination of that seed's favourability and our early game pollution control may explain how passive the game felt; so I'll leave it up to you to decide whether you'd like to poke around in it or not)

https://mega.nz/file/p0JDjCDQ#iaM0MFT5kLqkLeLCRkQiI9faqV1el-i-CUvNUitML9A

Also if you are changing the source code then I cannot promise you haven't broken things.

A very real possibility :) In that save I think my only 2 edits are:

i) Editing the propTables10 and evoToTierMapping arrays (and how they're referenced)
ii) Removing biter health randomization (i.e. forcing their health to be whatever is defined for that tier)

Yes, the points are capped by evolution with 12500 being the max at 100% evo.

so 10% evo is 1250 max ai points, which is 3 settlers or 7 attack squads.

So what I was attempting to do (and believe I did do) was to grant the AI points to spend (not to modify the caps).

hello, i cant say much from tech point of view you guys all about but for me just simple player difficulty dropped a lot
before this update after i attacked bitters to get some new space they were crazy for long time (i play at x7 longer day/nights and set them to attack only at night) so before after i attacked i had to defend for at least 2 nights and if i killed huge bases there were coming from everywhere , even attackin my far away mine outpost, now there is nothing at all like that , i go kill them and no reaction at all, sometimes they come to closest outpost near my attack thats it
but not only defending seems easier , also when i go kill them they dont hunt me like before ... before when i attacked 1 bitter base all bases around even from quite far area send help there(in addition to attackin my base from every direction if that was night) now i see other bases on screen but they do nothing, before i had to be very carefull to not be cut off by bitters now i just go and kill, quite boring tbh, also i could see big bases growing ... if i didnt rush and kill hives fast there were more and more of them and from side i was coming was evergrowing tree of worms , now nothing

i tried setup same mod settings as before update and later i made most of them +50% or more than i had before , i didnt touch that temperament setting tho ...in general my setings are not some super high cos i play with angel and some other mods that make build and research stuff long but before update it was diffrent game

I would gladly accept testers for release builds.

Otherwise I need saves because I can't troubleshoot descriptions.

Balancing for every play style is something that I don't have time to do.

Also try changing the temperament setting if things are to easy.

i posted save on forum cos i didnt know how do it here , also i zipped it twice cos it was too big at first

in this save we are just few hours after clearing west area ( around fresh wall) and then north west but bitters never attack nor wall nor our base but before it would require to active defend it with tanks and stuff for some time after such huge fights , evo is bit low but we doing it slow cos others mods , our other game was same but bitters was way more active
i changed diff settings to 1.1 and temperament to 1.25 , will tell you how it goes but we prolly get time to play some more at weekend

also my wife remeberd one moment when they were attacking us like before , from every direction , it was few nights after i fly over map with that super fast plane from aircraft mod , i couldnt resist then and burned some bases with napalm and long after that they were coming for some time

try 1.0.6 and let me know

alright cool, we had some break from playing but we sure will come back to it

hey again
we played some and its much better now, temperament setting is +25% and monsters attackin and expanding like they should. Generally all AI works very nice and do all things it was before. It is challenging, tho still seems a bit easier as before but then again i dont remember what old settings we had so its hard to compare. Would have try and tune settings more but we moved to playing on headless server now ( instead standard LAN from game menu) and its real pain to change settings on server so we play as it is.
Very nice work , this is one of few mods i couldnt play factorio without.
Tnx a lot for your work :)

hey again
we played some and its much better now, temperament setting is +25% and monsters attackin and expanding like they should. Generally all AI works very nice and do all things it was before. It is challenging, tho still seems a bit easier as before but then again i dont remember what old settings we had so its hard to compare. Would have try and tune settings more but we moved to playing on headless server now ( instead standard LAN from game menu) and its real pain to change settings on server so we play as it is.
Very nice work , this is one of few mods i couldnt play factorio without.
Tnx a lot for your work :)

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