Roboy Army v0.2.0

I bring you an update for Robot Army mod! This update has some awesome sprites made by YuokiTani, for all 4 of the current droid types. There will be new icons for the droids later. This release brings the Guard station and Rally Point (see wiki for details) and improvements to the artifact looting that allows bob's mods artifacts to get scooped up too. Rocket droids are now basically high damage snipers, and do no splash damage which should stop the hilarious-yet-expensive friendly fire issues.

Changes from 0.1.44 to 0.2.0 release:

• added guard station
• adjusted rocket droids projectiles so there is 0 splash area rather than 1, to fully avoid the "friendly fire" issue
• added terminator GFX work in progress, courtesy of YuokiTani - the "Lord of Art"
• added "laser" resistance to terminators.
• added rally beacon
• added bullet shells ejecting from rifle and SMG droids
• added custom sprites for smg, rifle, and rocket droids, courtesy of YuokiTani
• reduced terminator range by 1
• changed icons GFX for droid assembler, guard station has a matching one.
• reduced cost of droid assembler and guard station recipe in terms of electronic circuits
• guard station building graphics
• squads now pick up any item on the ground with the word "artifact" in it, so all bobs mods artifacts are now collected.

Robot Army 0.1.44

Here is a fix mostly driven by Factorio 0.13.5 causing mods using on_load() event for the wrong purpose (guilty!) to cause errors, and also to fix the ongoing squad formation issues, plus the loot chest placement bug.

Changes from 0.1.43 to 0.1.44 release:

• fixed on_load being used incorrectly.
• fixed squads disbanding after successful mission or if they fail a move order and their unitgroup becomes invalid. they will keep re-forming the squad.
• changed all global tables to be referenced by force name so it's totally player-independant now.
• added parameters for config to change grab artifacts radius
• made rocket droid splash area basically none, and made damage very high to help deal with big biters.
• fixed it so you don't lose the loot chest if you try to place it wrong

Robot Army 0.1.43

I bring you an update for Robot Army mod! This update patches the bugs in the lootchests mainly, as they were pretty annoying cases that seemed to occur a lot for the users, but not much in my testing. Changes below:

Changes from 0.1.42 to 0.1.43 release:

• fixed invalid chest issue when placing a loot chest and then removing and not putting a new one down before more artifacts are collected
• fixed loot chest not able to be placed after the first one has been placed and then removed.
• fixed dummy droid items being able to spawn infinite droids. What a loop-hole that was!!

Robot Army v1.42

I bring you an update for Robot Army mod! This update patches the bugs in the Clockwork Robot recipe being disabled every time you load a game, and fixes the squad joining mechanic. Made some minor balance changes to droid resistance values, and added lots of new config parameters to do things like scale default droid health or damage to your liking, turn off those "squad x is no more.." death messages. A new "retreat" mechanic was added, where a squad that was out fighting and has dropped to a certain number of members, rather than sending them off to their death again, we send them back to the nearest droid assembler (if there is one). I also added a unique sprite for the droid assembler, it's not just an assembler-2 anymore. One bug I fixed which isn't in the included changelog is the way the droid counter worked, for every force after the "player" force it was counting all droids for prior forces too. Now it only counts droids alive in your force.

Changes from 0.1.41 to 0.1.42 release:

• fixed clockwork riflebot deploy recipe getting disabled when loading a game where it was previously enabled. caused by a script error which should be double-checking/forcing recipes enabled if you have the right techs researched.
• removed some more debugging logs
• made squad wander radius based on the squad default radius config param
• more balance changes to droids, reduced physical and explosive resistance %
• fixed squad joining behaviours, was some residual bugs in that.
• added storage entity called 'army loot chest'. has unique graphic and icon
• added squad artifact gathering - artifacts appear in the 'army loot chest'
• undersized squads that are "finished" (after an attack, lost some dudes) are sent back to nearest droid assembler to wait for reinforcements
• added unique graphic for droid assembler
  -added config parameters to allow users to scale the default droid health and damage values.
• added config parameter to determine when a squad that was hunting has fallen below a certain size and should retreat for reinforcements
• added config parameter to turn on/off the "squad x is no more..." death messages.
• put the range for "find nearest enemy" back to 5k tiles. there is a known issue where if no target is found, the entire squad disbands. it's not obvious why, but i can make a work-around later.
• fixed droid counter counting more than just the intended force's droids

Robot Army 0.1.41

This release is to support Factorio 0.13, with the new changes to the game's modding API, some code changes had to be made, plus some clean-up. One of the major improvements in this patch to Robot Army is the x10 improvement in script running time. I had 844 droids while maintaining 60/60 FPS/UPS whereas before I could only go to about 300+ robots before I got to ~50 FPS. For example, script update rate went from 15ms to 1.5ms.

Changes from 0.1.4 to 0.1.41 release:

• compatibility changes for Factorio 0.13 release
• increased squad chunk update range so they don't leave ghosts behind them as they move
• optimised script update rate, tested with 844 droids active with 60/60 fps. compared to 300 droids and 50fps and below. Was a linear increase but was not noticeable until you hit the 12ms update time
• removed some debug stuff.
• adjusted recipes and stats of clockwork bot, smg and rocket bots. Basically increased health and decreased damage a little bit.

Robot Army v0.1.4

I bring you an update for Robot Army mod!

Highlights being three new droids, from early game to mid and late game. Rifle, SMG, Rocket launcher, and dual-laser droids exist now. You can place droid assemblers by robots now! Lots of multiplayer bug fixing so you should have a smooth experience. A new combinator called the Droid Activity Module that outputs the number of living droids in your force - keep control of production and deployment easily!

Full changelist:
Changes from 0.1.3 and internal builds to 0.1.4 release:
-updated to Factorio Standard Library 0.3.0 (https://github.com/Afforess/Factorio-St ... /tag/0.3.0)
-fixed logistics menus not showing the Battle Droid (Undeployed) item
-added Terminator droid
-added Rocket droid
-terminators and rocket droids can join squads
-added terminator dual laser sprite
-balance changes for basic battle droid (now called Droid SMG) - added explosion resistance to help against friendly fire rocket droids
-Droid Assemblers now spawn all types of droids
-Droid Assemblers now spawn based on their facing.
-Droid SMG damage increased slightly.
-added Clockwork Riflebot, an early-game slow firing medium-long range bot. Can join squads.
-Terminator ammo category changed to combat-robot-laser to take advantage of robot damage upgrade tree
-Clockwork rifle bot and SMG bot use the player's gun damage and shooting speed upgrades ammo category (not changed, just noted)
-massive performance improvements, fixed droids "dancing"
-changed SMG droid to yellow to avoid mixing up with Terminators
-added Chunk revealing at squad's position at the squad update tick rate.
-clockwork rifle bot damage reduced to 18 per shot - scales with gun damage upgrades
-SMG droid damage increased to 8 per shot - scales with gun damage upgrades
-rocket bot damage increased to 100 per rocket
-terminator lasers damage reduced slightly to 30 per shot. - scales with combat robot damage upgrades
-made clockwork rifle bots unlock with military 1 research
-made SMG and rocket droids unlock with military 2 research
-made Terminator unlock with military 3 research
-droid assemblers now work when placed by construction bots. did a quick and dirty workaround rather than the full re-work the mod needed.
-added Droid Activity Module which is a constant combinator with a virtual signal output of the number of droids alive currently. tick rate is adjustable for update speed for this signal
-adjusted resistances of most droids to have higher physical resistance % reduction, to allow for better balancing of droid vs droid battles.
-custom sprite (recolour/hackjob) for droid counter (droid activity module).
-fixed a whole lot of bugs with multiple forces and players and building droid assemblers and spawning droids etc having issues. Tested local LAN with 2 players building and fighting with droids.

Robot Army v0.1.3

Robot Army v0.1.3
Concept:
Manufacture and deploy automated soldiers to go out in hunting parties to annihilate the biter menage, or an opposing player's base/army.

How it works:
A manufacturable "droid" soldier unit which is placed like any normal object or deployed at the Droid Assembler. They move around and can form squads and attack nearest biter bases. They have a red tinted player sprite and machine-gun style attack method. Wherever you choose to place them, the soldiers mingle around until there is a minimum squad size, at which point they will move to go hunt. They can be placed at any time during battle if you want some backup while taking down a huge biter nest. Be aware . They engage with the enemy and will aggressively hunt nearby biters/nests. They may slaughter their way through an entire (early to mid-game) biter nest or at least die trying. Huge numbers will be needed to take on biter nests with large worms and medium/large biters. The mod will be expanded to add more powerful and different types of robot soldiers in order to help deal with that issue.

See a brief video showing the mod's aspects as they currently are:
YouTube video: How to make an army

Changes from 0.1.2 to 0.1.3:
-added Droid Assembler building and icon for it
-added intermediate droid item which is placeable by player or inserted into Droid Assembler to produce a "deployed" Droid which is spawned nearby.
-Droid Assembler spawns finished deployed droids to the RIGHT HAND SIDE of the building (this is just how it's coded for now. I'll do building-rotation based spawning location later)
-Droids gather into squads of 5 (default, changeable in config.lua) and then hunt for enemies. enemies within 5000 tiles, biter and/or enemy player forces.
-Droids auto-join nearby squads (configurable range config.lua) or create their own new squad if nobody nearby
-Droid's animations and selection box etc were fixed, much better now.
-Recipe adjusted to use basic armour not heavy armour - this has reduced the cost in steel significantly.
-Reduces Droid's resistances to be more in-line with their downgraded armour.