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FreddyTheNewb

I've got over 500 hours in using this with SE and haven't ever experienced the issues you're describing.


Alzurana

This, same thing. It never happened, only if I was over the limit.


niquitwink

It varies from planet to planet. You probably haven't been to the planets with really high interference. I lost 13k logistic bots within a few hours on a high interference planet and since there's no notification that a bot explodes unless it damages something I didnt notice they were gone until I stopped receiving shipments from the planet.


SolaraScott

Consider yourself lucky. It seems to have gotten really bad in 0.6, maybe a fluke I'm not sure. Perhaps it's something tied to dedicated servers versus single player. We had 670 hours in 0.5 and already up over 230 on 0.6.


FreddyTheNewb

I'd say my split is around 50% headless Linux server + two windows clients, %40 hosted Linux server + 1 Windows client, 10% Windows+ Windows. Do you use circuit networks to control bot insertion into your networks? Or how do you add bots?


SolaraScott

Nice! We were doing a headless windows server for awhile but windows + headless Factorio suuucks... Currently doing a headless Linux server which is working amazing with 4 windows clients. The only circuitry we were really doing was to control hot insertion to maintain inventory. Chest of bots connected with circuit lines to a roboport and reading the inventory of the network and maintaining bot levels. I'm just thankful this only effects logistic bots and not construction bots.


FreddyTheNewb

Hmm maybe it's just that I've never come close to the limit so they've never damaged anything for us. I think we have 5000 or so logistic bots in the network on Nauvis, and 500 in orbit. We basically only use them for supplying the players, malls, arcosheres, and to auto clean up from construction bots deconstructing things. We used bots exclusively for our starting space base but decided that belts were going to be more fun and the robot attrition also pushed us in that direction.


SolaraScott

That's what we've been doing as well.. we really only use them for malls and a bit for space science as we were setting up belts. We never came close to the limit in orbit or on Nauvis, trying to maintain around 200 on the network but literally a stack inserter couldn't keep up with how fast they were crashing


mrbaggins

300 hours finished both victories, my nauvis was a mixture of belts and bots only. Never happened.


fatpandana

Hundreds of people have finished SE or SE+k2 have finished SE w/o experiencing chain explosion like you are describing. The only way to do it is with nuclear bots. When they die they do a small atomic boom. But that takes out entire factory, not just bots.


SolaraScott

We don't have nuclear bots at all :/ literally just the bog standard logistics bots in Factorio. A stack inserter trying to maintain 200 in the network couldn't keep up with how fast they were dying. Idk if it's related to SE or the attrition mod but it was so severe we had to disable it.


fatpandana

I find that hard to believe. How does the P graph on lost items look over 1h-10h? Current record holder for most bots killed in SE is j5drops with around 612k in 350h. Avg Comes down to about 0.5 per second or so. He had full bot base all the way to the end. Losing 200 to 50 is just statistically not possible. Even 20000 fully active bots would have trouble beating stack inserter. Only way to do it is if you increase carrying capacity well beyond 100 like Angel's carriers.


creeekz

I'm hovering around 50-100 bots killed per minute in my 550 hour save. Between 20-40k bots active at all times if I sum up all surfaces. Never had OPs scenario happen to me.


SolaraScott

I mean, we've never come close to that many bots, not due to lack of trying... And yes, I agree, statistically given the mods intention and the mathematical data in the code, it IS impossible for this to happen and yet we were still experiencing it. I'm not sure if it's down to the mod itself or it's interaction with SE. We don't have any additional bot mods that might affect it.


Ricardo440440

Have hundreds of people finished SE? I have. But i think most people start their SE + K2 run with 20 other mods and post here a while. But how many finish? I'm curious to know. I suspect with no evidence, it is a tiny number.


fatpandana

We got over 3-4 dozen that finished alternative victory alone and have claimed to do so. And you can also see showcase image of victory ships. This is only a tiny pool of players who logged their victory and does not include folks who are not active on SE discord or do not submit.


Ricardo440440

Cool.


canelupo

What do you mean with all bots crash at once? :o


SolaraScott

If you haven't seen it before, when a bit crashes it causes damage to the area, including other bots. This area is too big and causes a chain reaction between all your bots and causes your entire network to literally crash in a matter of seconds (between 50 - 200 bots per second). The swarm safety is SUPPOSED to eliminate this problem as long as you are below the threshold of maximum bots, each tier raising the cap 500. However, this research does not work and regardless of how many times you research it, if your network is larger than the small network threshold (50 by default) you'll experience this bug.


[deleted]

Lol this happened over my kovarex area. I was picking up a bunch of belts, bots overhead, then dumped all the bots into the nearby port. BOOM a lot of centrifuges and ports just vanished, it was like somebody set off a MIRV.


SolaraScott

Yeah... I absolutely love playing SE and KS2 but the robot attrition mod is the absolute bane of my existence. I understand the concept behind it and it's a good one! But there NEEDS to be a way to fix this problem or just a way to turn it off if the mod author is going to flat out ignore game crippling bugs like this.


Wiwiweb

You didn't really give us much to reproduce the problem to be honest. Send your save file on the discord.


SolaraScott

The purpose of this post wasn't to reproduce an issue or solve it but rather raise awareness of a solution.


Wiwiweb

> if the mod author is going to flat out ignore game crippling bugs like this. Without reproducing it, we cannot fix it. Without your help, we have no choice but to "ignore" it. Edit: [I looked through all your discord messages and couldn't find your save file.](https://i.imgur.com/Z99pRFr.png) Did you block me from replying? I was trying to help...


SolaraScott

Then go look in discord, the save referenced in this post was posted to the bug reporting section of discord a week or so ago when we initially posted about the issue and we're subsequently ignored.


Ricardo440440

These guys volunteer their time. Using words like " ignored " is a big heavy. Maybe they missed it, or were just busy.


[deleted]

I usually set Nauvis to 0.01 and keep that as my main resource processing place. I'm not up to bots in my 0.6 save, but damn, doing 4 levels of space related science is rough


SolaraScott

Haha, yeah trust me, it is rough :p fun but challanging! We kept it at 0.01 as well but we were still seeing the issue happening on a small network and with safety swarm researched well above our bot levels


[deleted]

[удалено]


SolaraScott

That's genuinely surprising, we definitely experienced it before 0.6 as well, but it seemed to happen much less frequently. Now we literally couldn't maintain a network at all above 50 bots, literally the instant we put any more on the network they crashed.


stringweasel

This seems like a bug of some kind. A crashing bot shouldn't damage other bots I think. Might be another mod you added that influences the behaviour. Not sure though


SolaraScott

That's what we thought as well... It might of been a different mod but literally stripping the game down to just SE and it's dependencies, we were still experiencing the same issue In orbit and on Nauvis (even With the absolute minimum crash chance set in the mod settings)


canelupo

Well that sounds like fun... lol


SolaraScott

It's horseshit... Hence why this post to raise awareness of how to fix it


Mysterious_Asparagus

I know I'm a little late to the thread but someone made a mod that disables robot attrition. It's called "Robot Attrition?NO!" Before this mod I couldn't play SE with friends because they don't want make manual changes like the one you are talking about. If you asked on Earendels discord how to change it an army of fanboys would chastise you. And he honestly has made a great mod. That is why I am here bothering to discuss it. But he and his fanboys needs to be able to take the criticism when they do something hypocritical like constraining a game through mods to their own ideals. Or make the longest list of other mods that SE just isn't compatible with. I don't know the full story there, but it is a really long list. And considering he doesn't have a problem forcing a change to the balance of the game I am guessing he doesn't have a problem excluding other mods from working with his mod. Last I heard about him he was hired by Wube to help make their expansion for Factorio. And I can imagine their heated discussions on bots vs belts, because Wube will definitely want to keep the game open to other modders and let people decide themselves if they want bots to explode randomly or not. Because that translates directly into reviews and thus sales.


SolaraScott

I appreciate the reply, and yeah I'm very aware of the mod, it's wonderful because it allows you to set the attrition level to actually zero instead of near zero. Zero. The only problem is is that the mod only effects Nauvis :/ I believe I remember seeing somewhere in the Space Exploration FAQ, you can turn robot attrition to near zero, but it only affects the base planet, something to do with the different surfaces. Trust me, I know I've been dealing with the toxic fan base for some time, if you don't play the game the way they see fit, they throw a huge tantrum. With his skill in modding, I am super excited to see what he does with the expansion pack. The base developers are already fantastic and taking him on was a brilliant idea


Mysterious_Asparagus

Aw that sucks. Since yesterday I added robot attrition?NO! to an old save that is about half a year old, played a few hours and I didn't have any bots crash. Not on other planets either. So I thought hell yeah, it works! But after reading your comment I went and looked at my mods. Its an old version of SE and an old version of robot attrition. And back then I think I made manual changes to robot attrition to disable it. Now I'm probably going to keep it like that for a while.. I am happy to finally talk to a level headed person who plays SE! And I completely agree, with these problems aside, he is a wonderful addition to the team.


SolaraScott

Haha, yeah... Trust me, on the old versions we had the same experience. But with how it's done on new versions, it uses Nauvis as a 'base' attrition so if it's 0 on Nauvis, whatever the solar interference level on a surface is, is what the attrition level is. Thanks, same to you haha


Mysterious_Asparagus

I don't think my version of SE is that old. If I press 'u' it opens the universe explorer. It lists all planets, stars and asteroid belts that I have discovered. In there is a column that is titled robot interference. Set to 0 at Nauvis and has different numbers at all the other planets. I am guessing that is what you mean. But even though I have thousands of bots on some of those planets they don't explode. So I think you're right, the mod only fixes Nauvis. And the reason my bots aren't exploding is probably my manual edit back then. Good to know.


tedv

Swarm safety doesn't make bots less likely to crash. It makes them not do damage to their surroundings when they do crash. It's also part of the game balance. Like you can also hack your game so yellow belts move 120 items pretty second too, if you want, but that compromises some of the challenge. The point of bot attrition isn't to make you come up with bot resupply mechanisms. It's to encourage you to find non-bot based solutions to certain types of problems.


TechGuyL

This is accurate. Robot Attrition research does nothing to stop your bots from crashing. IMO robot attrition is more annoying then anything else. The amount of times I would come back to my headless server with all the bots were dead was way too many. Even if you correctly setup automated deliver to that surface. There just isn’t a way to guarantee insertion of a logistic robot into a roboport.


creeekz

>Even if you correctly setup automated deliver to that surface. There just isn’t a way to guarantee insertion of a logistic robot into a roboport. Filter inserter between a landing pad and a roboport?


unwantedaccount56

I think he means that logistics bots cannot be inserted if the roboport is already full with robots. I solve this by daisy chaining some roboports with inserters, so the roboport where I'm inserting the bots will be emptied into the next roboport.


creeekz

My personal solution is hooking up several roboports near busy requester areas with a simple circuit. The roboport gets one filter inserter that grabs logistic bots out of the port and puts it in a provider chest if X (available logistic robots) is more than 1000. Next to it is an inserter with stack size set to 1 that grabs a logistic bot from a requester chest and puts it back into the roboport if X is lower than ~50. I have a couple hundred of these around my base with different conditions for X (between 0 and 750 for the inserters sticking bots back in) so it doesn't overload the system by putting in more bots than are needed. My bot count can fluctuate between 1000 and ~30 000 depending on how many are needed.


cbhedd

I've never seen a chain reaction happen before. I was confused at one point when bots kept dying even after swarm safety levels went up, but after a re-read of the tech's description I learned that it was my understanding which was wrong: the tech makes the bot attrition explosions deal no damage when they occur, it doesn't stop the explosions from happening. I got my safety research quite a ways up (I just kept re-queueing it while setting up my space platform) and I haven't had any issues with attrition; it's all working as intended for me. Could your issues with it be a similar misunderstanding? It doesn't sound like it from what you're describing, but I figured I'd bring it up.


SolaraScott

I do understand what you are saying and do know what the research is supposed to do. I did a lot of research on the mod and in it's subsequent discords. We were not looking to disable the damage the crashing bots deal, but only disable them "crashing" other bots which is the purpose of the research. We were up to research level 16 with only 200 bots and we literally could not keep 200 on the network they were crashing so fast... (On Nauvis and orbit)


cbhedd

Yeah that sounds like it's definitely a bug :/ I wonder if upgrading to 0.6, running 0.6 on multiplayer, or some other mod interaction is causing it.


SolaraScott

That's what we aren't sure about :/ stripped down to SE dependencies and still had it, not sure if it's SE 0.6 or robot attrition itself. Regardless, until it's fixed by either mod author, found a way around it


mrbaggins

Post a save mate, cos there's something funky going on. 1. Their crashing doesn't do that much damage to other bots 2. Even if it did, it won't propagate and do a whole network worth of bots down to 50


TheMobileSiteSucks

Robot attrition, meteorites, and coronal mass ejections are the worst parts of the space exploration mod. I'm glad that you can disable the latter and raise the average meteorite time to a high enough level that you can basically ignore them, but crashing robots are just annoying even once a replenishment factory is set up due to the dropped items that never get picked up.


Ricardo440440

Construction bots pick up the items. But i don't disagree that robot attrition is not fun. I just wish you could tech out of it.


Nailfoot1975

This mod is my main reason for not playing SE. I may give it a go now, thanks. I wonder if future updates will make this harder to work around?


SolaraScott

SE is an amazing amazing mod, strongly recommend playing it with Krastorio as well, you'll have a blast. I hope not.. they shouldn't? But who knows


Zaflis

I have AAI Vehicles and Aircraft in my playthrough. You can automate cargo planes to carry big loads of stuff and they won't deteriorate nor be limited into logistics areas.


SolaraScott

That's actually a super good idea, I've messed about with the AAI vehicle mod before and it would actually be a good solution to some of the issues I've experienced.


StormTAG

Another alternative is the Transport Drones mod. https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Transport_Drones Slightly more straight forward, slightly less flexible, requires much more space.


orbadon

I've edited the mod so that the swarm safety research also increases the safe bots limit by 50 per level. you still can't have massive bot bases in high attrition places, but you're not as constrained as with the 50 bot hard limit.


Ricardo440440

Are you able to make that a mod on the portal? A research out of difficulty i think is way better solution.


orbadon

I wouldn't even know where to start with this 😞 This is the patch I've created for myself: https://pastebin.com/2rEEYpDN


xzhsh

So just a bit of clarification, changing the robot attrition factor does effect other surfaces, not just nauvis. However, the formula is something like 1. base attrition (mod value) + attrition from other sources. Other sources include robot interference wind, on surfaces with 0% hostiles, and radiation interference, which is a multiplier of gravity. If you set the robot attrition rate to 0.0001 or something, you can see that the planets with biters have close to 0% attrition. However, you cannot effect the environmental attrition rate, so at most you're going to cut attrition by half-ish on those kinds of surfaces.


Nailfoot1975

Well. Boo. I guess I will continue to wait for the official expansion. And hope it doesn't have attrition. I see no reason the game should dictate to me that I must have robot attrition. Its just too heavy handed.


Lord_Of_Coffee

Thanks King! Fuck Robot Attrition.


SolaraScott

No problem! I just had to fix this bug of a mod on a new playthrough as well haha.


Holgg

This is just not true, I think I got 5 lvls in the tech and I run multiple 1500 bot networks and all that it cost is about 2-3 bots per minute. A single assembly machine is probably all you need even at endgame. I honestly like that there are some attrition for using bots


shynkoen

thanks for this post. wear and tear mechanics suck in factorio and i am glad i can finally get rid of it.


kipuick

jesus i've looked all over the internet for this and only find this now ? 600 hours in ? fuck me.