Hello, I love this mod and want to know if it will be compatible with the new space age DLC? If not, is the author or anyone able to make the necessary updates to make it work? I'm super excited to explore space officially and want to feel this level of difficulty on other planets.

THANK YOU

Hasn't been updated for a year, so tough to say what will happen. I for one would love to see it updated. I plan for a completely vanilla SA playthrough, but Rampant makes the combat much more interesting.

I suspect when/if it's updated it will take a while as there is a lot of new content out there.

Currently I'm planning on updating for 2.0, so much has changed both in what is available and the pacing of the game. I will most likely need assistance with both testing and how Rampant should function given the DLC.

On the eve of 2.0 this was the mod I ended up checking first to see your plans since I knew there weren't any updates in a while.

Glad you're still around Veden, you made one of the most !!FUN!! mods for Factorio. Happy to help after my first vanilla run, I'm sure there are others too!

<3

Glad to help if needed, I love so much your mod !

Veden is for me the TOP of all moders, although I can't commit extensively - I can help testing any of the updates you do! I get it, its a lot of new stuff in this DLC and I'm sure there are more people that can help you if you ask!

THANK YOU for continuing your legacy with Rampant! My excitement for SA just quadrupled!

Veden the legend returns! All hail!

Rampant was the first mod I checked as well. I'm glad to hear there are plans to update it eventually. Let's hope more options for difficulty make themselves obvious with new enemies and ideas with space age.

Hasn't been updated for a year, so tough to say what will happen. I for one would love to see it updated. I plan for a completely vanilla SA playthrough, but Rampant makes the combat much more interesting.

That's the thing about software, Not everything needs to be constantly updated, If something works just fine, Then until something goes wrong an update simply isn't nessicary and a lot of people believe that when things aren't being updated that they are abandoned and that simply isn't the case, Rampant didn't get updated in a year because it did not need an update to function, Now it does and Veden has returned.

Also happy to help/test. Without rampant, deathworlds feel a bit boring :)

Wonder if pulling out AI changes from the faction changes into a separate mod might make sense at least in shorter term with the DLC changes and new enemies. Haven't touched vanilla biters in such a long time, that was shocked when they refused to destroy a wooden box with the starter pistol :(

Yeah, to me, the AI changes are the most important thing. The factions are nice, but they are the icing on the cake.

eversince i experienced the enemy ai probing my walls, retreating to probe again in other locations, it blew my mind away,
rather then just an endless mindless zerg, for the first time it felt like i was actually fighting against an Hive Mind.
Eversince then its been hard to play without this mod, and definately belongs in my top 5 mods i liked the most.

eversince i experienced the enemy ai probing my walls, retreating to probe again in other locations, it blew my mind away,
rather then just an endless mindless zerg, for the first time it felt like i was actually fighting against an Hive Mind.
Eversince then its been hard to play without this mod, and definately belongs in my top 5 mods i liked the most.

My sentiment exactly. I threw money at the creator on ko-fi in hopes of reigniting the flame, but also, to pay back the 100s of hours i've already enjoyed with the mod. fingers crossed

i can assist in testing ;)

The only Absolute must-have mod for me, sadface its not updated :(
Still confused how was the AI part of this not absorbed into base game (that's really all I want is the better AI)

This is amazing news! Looking forward to it!

Does the new 2.0 modding API give you more options for varying the enemy designs? I can imagine re-skinned demolishers that are leviathans swim through icy seas, and three-legged skitterers that attack by bursting into an electrical storm. It seems like the options for body plans have been made much wider?

Does the new 2.0 modding API give you more options for varying the enemy designs?

For the most part, yes.

I do like the idea of Nauvis basically being a deathworld. Just sketching on the toilet wall, but:

Nauvis: Has biters, which are attracted to pollution. This is what Rampant is already balanced for, and I wouldn't really want changes here, except! There's a lot more turrets available now, which can only be built once you have bases on other planets. This means more gameplay options, such as biters that are vulnerable to explosives (rocket turrets: Gleba!), or electricity (Fulgora), or... railguns...

It also means that your Nauvis base being overrun isn't the end of the game, if you've already managed to launch a rocket, and personally I fancy playing a game where I've tuned the biter settings such that we won't be able to survive on Nauvis long-term and will need to retake it once we've teched up. Having Rampant in my back pocket will make this easier. I'm usually playing multiplayer, but simultaneously GM'ing the enemies by adjusting difficulty settings on the fly... Rampant's settings being super useful there.

Vulcanus: Worms. It would be neat if there were a bit more variation, or maybe migration, but the basic concept here is that the worms play zone defense, and I don't think that should change. Maybe they occasionally breed, and the offspring try migrating to an empty spot? Which will always exist, assuming the players haven't been pushed out entirely. But then the offspring should probably start off even weaker than the easy worms, otherwise this is frankly impossible to defend against.

Gleba: This is already themed as spores -- essentially pheromones. The enemies are targeting food, not deliberately destroying your factory. If anything, I bet they appreciate the factory... though probably not the turrets. Most of the damage they do is accidental, through AoE. I wonder if it would be feasible to add 'curious' pentapods, which explore the factory instead of just beelining for the food? Maybe picking nutrients off the belts, or bioflux...

The idea I'm painting here is that they don't inherently mind your presence, and they're not inherently damaging, but they're definitely parasites and the bigger ones hurt you just by being nearby. Also it's creepy, seeing a group of tiny pentapods feeding off your bioflux belt. And it might kill your factory -- even if they don't destroy machinery, Gleba factories tend to be carefully balanced and easily breakable! Black start is an important consideration, but not something that usually goes off perfectly.

Of course, once you start shooting at them they might well get upset.

I love the idea of Biters just eating off your factory on Gleba. Think it would be interesting to have them scurry around like rats, even as far as to say they don't even attack you. When provoked they just run away as fast as possible. When provoked, maybe they just drop whatever they're holding onto the ground as well, make a mess of your factory floor.

They could plan raids where a whole mass of them invade and beeline towards food, and then grab a bunch and try to run away with as much as they can.

I do love the idea of them eating stuff on Gleba, it's super realistic. Maybe even have them only target walls, turrets, etc, and then just eat stuff in vast amounts and use it to spawn new enemies per X items eaten. They don't even attack the factory, just consume everything and spawn new things. That's a really different feeling.

The idea of raids like ants is super interesting, carrying it back to some sort of spawning area.

Currently I'm planning on updating for 2.0, so much has changed both in what is available and the pacing of the game. I will most likely need assistance with both testing and how Rampant should function given the DLC.

A huge fan of your mod, I'd be happy to help out a bit if things need tested, etc. I'm still slowly working my way through Space Age, but will put down a few design thoughts I've had about both what aspects of Rampant would be nice to continue in Space Age, and some considerations for things Space Age changes.

Unique features of Rampant:
This is all subjective, but while there are a variety of "new enemy" mods, Rampant does a few things that other don't, which I value a lot more. Specifically:

• AI Defense Probing means that you can't find the same few spots that regular small attacks will always hit and only reinforce those, you need a comprehensive defense line that can handle potential attacks from unexpected directions and in unpredictable swarm sizes. The unpredictability makes it a lot harder for defending a particular base to become a "solved state".

• More importantly, AI Raiding means that keeping spawners out of your pollution cloud is no longer sufficient to essentially prevent attacks altogether. This nullifies two simple but extremely effective vanilla strategies: placing your defense lines just outside your pollution cloud so no spawners will ever be inside it (can be made easier by using lots of Efficiency Module 1s everywhere), or even more simply just by place down some Artillery near the edges of your base, which will eventually clear all spawners in a large radius.

For me, the goal of an enemy/biter mod like Rampant is that I want an incentive to invest resources & creativity into designing cool defensive structures throughout the entire game, even the endgame, instead of being able to ignore defense at some point (the two points above do this great), and ideally I'd want an incentive to add some variety into my defenses instead of just "big block of laser turrets" copy pasted everywhere (the enemy variety in Rampart helps more with this point).

Space Age considerations:
Space Age changes up some of the gameplay in ways I'm still pondering how to fit alongside something like Rampant (currently I'm just using Armoured Biters with some increased values in the mod & map settings):

• The first point is that in Space Age, the player's attention has more & more demands placed on it the more the game progresses. While you start off just focused on your base on Nauvis, you start needing to spend some time handling your space platform(s), and eventually swapping between multiple planets. While you could sort of do something similar in vanilla by setting up remote sub-factories connected by railways to swap your attention between, the defensive systems are likely still interconnected in some way (e.g. ammo supply trains) and it's still all the same Nauvis enemies & current threat/evolution level, so there is less mental "gear-switching" to be done. The issue is that if I were to take the amount of time & thought that I typically need to devote to defenses in a "normal" Rampant game on Nauvis, and then replicate that on each of the planets + space platforms, I imagine the end result could become more "stressful" than "thrilling". It would be quite possible that as soon as I finished "putting out fires" on Nauvis, something would require attention on a space platform, and as soon as I address that, enemies would be overrunning on Gleba, etc. and never having any time to actually build / develop new production or experiment due to how each planet / space platform would have it's own rhythm to threats which may not coincide. So far in Space Age I've been surprised that I actually appreciated some long periods of relative peace while experimenting setting up space platforms, troubleshooting automated platform schedules, figuring out Gleba (my first planet I visited), etc. (Although of course part of this is that I'm still learning all the Space Age mechanics). So while for example I think it would be great for the Nauvis Rampant experience to be the same as pre-Space Age I think it might be worthwhile trying to allow for more "peaceful periods" during Space Age as a whole, either by allowing some planets to remain enemy-free (e.g. Fulgora, Aquilo, space platforms in planetary orbit), or having their threats still provide long peaceful periods (like how enemies on Gleba mostly ignore your factory itself in favor of your fruit orchards), etc.

• However this would connect to another new consideration, the player now has multiple options for locations to build factories in. If the disparity in the threat difficulty between locations becomes too great, the player may be incentivized to just put the vast majority of their production on the safest location, and only place the bare minimum necessary (for the unique resources) on all of the "dangerous" locations. I do think things like cost / space / convenience help mitigate this, e.g. would be costly to put all production on space platforms, Fulgora's limited island spaces would make large factories there difficult, Aquilo would require importing many resources, etc. so I'm not sure what the balance point would be at which it becomes preferable to simply move if the threats are too difficult in a particular location. For this reason, instead of having the majority of the threat difficulty all located on one location (e.g. Nauvis) with the other locations much less dangerous, it might be good to spread some of the threat out between locations a bit, although this is somewhat in conflict with the consideration above, so I'm not sure where the balance might lie.

• Space Age adds a lot more variety to defensive options with new turrets like the Rocket / Tesla / Railgun turret. There is already a little bit of interesting interplay here e.g. Rocket turrets are especially effective against harder enemies on Gleba where they are unlocked, and so is the Tesla turret unlocked on a different planet. However for the most part none of the planet-specific turrets seem either necessary or especially useful on other locations, so there isn't a great incentive to create defenses using a mixture of different turret types. Space platforms are an exception here, as the different asteroid sizes incentivize using Rockets for Large and Railguns for Huge sizes. It would be nice if planetary combat had incentives like this, however there is the consideration of allowing the order of planets visited to be chosen by the player. E.G. If at 50% evolution Nauvis enemies required Tesla Turrets to effectively defend against, this might constrain your choice of when to visit Fulgora.

This leads to my first suggestion: I noticed using a display mod that every different game location tracks its evolution factor separately, and they all increase over time even when it has no in-game effect, e.g. each space platform, or planets like Fulgora. Could you tie the introduction of new enemy types (or perhaps even just modifications to existing enemy types) not just to the evolution factor at that location, but also the evolution factor on other planets? E.G. When Vulcanus' evolution factor reaches 0.5, then Inferno Biters begin appearing on Nauvis, with their size still dictated by Nauvis' evolution factor. Or when Nauvis' evolution factor reaches 0.9, Radioactive Behemoth Stompers & Strafers get unlocked to start appearing on Gleba once Gleba's evolution factor reaches 0.8, or when Fulgora evolution factor reaches 0.5, Demolishers start adding a large radius, small damage electric AOE to their attacks, etc. Perhaps the overall goal is that the new enemies/traits added to other locations by a certain planet, are also particularly vulnerable to the turret unlocked on that planet. E.G. The Electric Biters unlocked on Nauvis by Fulgora evolution are actually weak to electric damage (perhaps their bodies are especially sensitive to changes in voltage and can be easily overloaded), or Inferno Biters on Nauvis unlocked by Vulcanus's evolution rarely create very large, high-health spawners that are a high priority to destroy due to them sending a steady stream of Inferno Biters if they are within Artillery range of your base, or long-range, high health Spitters on Nauvis unlocked by Gleba evolution that can be better handled with the high range of Rocket turrets, or some Cryo Stompers on Gleba covered in heavy Ice armor unlocked by Aquilo evolution that are better handled by Railguns, etc. As far as explaining why things on one planet are affecting another, and only after you visit it, you could simply say that the engineer's sending of rockets & cargo pods via platforms between planets is gradually contaminating them with non-native spores / radioactive particles / hidden egg cases, etc.
EDIT: Maybe also have pollution contribute to evolution (but not clouds) on Fulgora/Vulcanus/Aquilo so that those are not just tracking time.

This would address several points at once: Incentivizes making use of all the types of turrets, but doesn't pressure the player into visiting the planets in any particular order, and while it results in endgame defenses on all planets with enemies needing to be very robust, it helps smooth out the difference in the threat level of each planet since the linked evolution factors means that a portion of the increased threat on a particular planet is also affecting all the other planets. I'm not sure how best to also apply this to space platforms, although as mentioned earlier they already make good use of different types of turrets and have increasing threat based on where you are traveling to, so that might already be in a pretty good spot.

Apologies for the wall of text, looking forward to however Rampant develops!

I have nothing constructive to add to this conversation, other than to say that:

Rampant IS Factorio for me.

This mod is the reason I play. I crank the biter's to 11, and play the game desperately trying to survive. Been that way since 0.15

I'll wait to play Space Age until Rampant work's with it.

Thank's for making this mod Veden! It is BY! FAR! my favorite mod, and the reason I play.

Just want to chip in as well and say this is a legendary mod, thanks again Veden!

I wouldn't quite go that far. Space Age has enough new mechanics that playing it through once without Rampant is a very good idea.

But now that I have, I'm going to be waiting.