I love this mod... I'm been seeing a strange issue with the last few beta versions. I hope you have some insight.

I've set the bots to hunt at 30 bots and return at 10. On a new game this worked once. Afterwards, the bots go out to hunt, and the bots in the group slowly stop functioning (they 'freeze' up). A few minutes later, the map area they are in loses visibility and goes dark. I have a starter base save that I can provide if you want to see it occur.

The count in the activity module doesn't decrease, so I assume it is still deployed on the map. Suggestions?

Please provide the game save, and what version of the mod are you using?

I'm using
robot army 0.4.3 (using game to get updates of mods)
Angel's ores 0.8.12
RSO 5.0.18

I"ll try to message you directly with a link to the save.

OK it looks like I can't direct message - this is a link to the save - I'll delete out this file once you have it.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1pYYtFweBYyczCSYwr3UToKdATn8jLn2Z
Small save - under 4mb still.

okay, I got it. you can delete it. thanks!

I will look into the disappearances, but note I am short of time these days so I can't guarantee it will be quick.

The robots should be revealing terrain as long as they are alive/active - if the terrain is not visible anymore, they are probably dead/were deleted by the game for pathfinding failures.

I can't remember if 0.4.3 includes the flag for the units to tell the game to never destroy them even if they are being lame and failing to path-find somewhere. If that feature isn't there on 0.4.3 then i'm afraid that's what is happening. If the feature IS there, then it's a mystery and I can report it to the Devs.

Take the time you need. You responded 3 min within my first post, so you already earned the gold star sticker.
You should be able to load the save and simply watch the robots go out to hunt before some start to vanish - it shouldn't take too long. I'm not sure if the return size has something to do with this, but at least once the disappearing seemed to fail as the return size was being reached.
The lingering green dots on the map show a approximate last known location if you wanted to run out and find the ones that went missing.

If there is a newer unreleased version with the flag you want me to try - I can load that to compare.

Newer version is too fancy, too much exciting new shit in it. It's not really backwards compatible (it could be but I haven't out any effort into migration yet)

FYI The does pickup tool will grab the units that have vanished if you correctly guess where they are. It's like they still exist but they are turned off . I recently had a group of them stop moving / attacking during a fight and they all disappeared. Strange.

The game does funny things in the background, it's hard to know sometimes. That's weird the tool is able to still find/pick them up!

Hey - I know you mentioned a new big mod update coming above - is this big update planned as .5? This is still one of my favorite mods so I'm planning to add it back in and start a new game with it as soon as its available.

Heya, yes the big update is v5.0 and is for v0.18, and has a host of changes in it and new features.

Download the current "Unstable" branch and try it out. The settings modules are per-droid assembler now, and counter modules too. Attach a counter or settings module to the droid assembler with a circuit wire (green or red should work) and the counter will show how many droids are deployed specifically from that one assembler. The settings module controls how large the squad is and the hunt radius from that assembler only. The squad mechanic is now assembler-based, to help you control how you deploy your armies and control their radius etc.

download it here, and put it in a folder called: robotarmy_0.5.0
https://github.com/kyranf/robotarmyfactorio/archive/Unstable.zip

I was able to install it after a bit because I didn't notice I fat fingered the .0.5.0 For anyone else who tries this - It does seem to require a new game. on .18 in order to work - loading an existing save upgraded from .17 will produce errors.

Did you remember what kind of errors they were? And when you say existing save game upgraded from 0.17, is that a save game without robot army in it, from 0.17 to 0.18 while adding robot army at the same time? Or a 0.17 game WITH robot army , upgraded to 0.18 with the latest version all at the same time, causing errors? The combination of things is important..

I'm about to go back and try this again with the the latest version of Factorio and the most recent version that you can search and download from the menu. This is still my favorite and I'm showing my son this mod in a multiplayer game at home. I'm hoping all the recent improvements helped things.

I'll let you know if the recent updates fixed this strange behavior or there is still a issue.

Hey, the publicly available ones for 1.1.x are still in the mod version 0.4.x, the 0.5 version has not released yet.. It can be obtained via Github as I mentioned before, but will need a new game.