Hunter and Killer Spidertrons

Factorio Mod: Turn Spidertrons into automatic biter killing machines

Help wanted! Inquire within!

This mod is looking for contributors and/or a new maintainer. If you are interested, send an email.

Introduction

As I find it boring to play without biters and too annoying to deal with them manually, I created this mod.

If you activate this mod, all spidertrons named Killer will find the nearest spawner or worm and perform a hit-and-run attack on it. That means your killers need to be armed with lasers and/or rockets. Should they take damage or run low on ammo, they will automatically to the closest marker named Homebase and wait there until they have been repaired and rearmed.

To mark a Homebase, create a map marker with the name Homebase. Thanks sOvr9000 for the better wording.

If there are no enemies to kill, your Killers will walk around the map to ensure that there is always an strech of unpolluted area between the explored and the unknown. This ensures that biters have no reason to attack you.

Be aware that this is imperfect. Sometimes Killers walk through the middle of nests and get damaged faster than they can escape. Sometimes, they can't find a way to reach an enemy.

**If you see modified defaults on a new save, go to the Main Menu, then Settings, then Mod Settings, then Map and finally reset all the Hunter and Killer Spidertrons settings to the default values.**

Roadmap / ChangeLog

• 0.1: Killer function
• 0.1.1: Fixes
• 0.2: Explorer
• 0.2.1: Bug fixes
• 0.2.2: Messages
• 0.2.3: Improvements
• 0.2.4: Fix packager script
• 0.3: Settings
• 0.4: Different Loadouts
• 0.5: Multiple killer groups
• 0.5.1: Bug fixes
• 0.5.3: Bug fix
• 0.6: Update to Factorio 2.0
• 0.6.1: Bug fix
• 0.6.2: Search And Destroy Mode
• 0.6.3: Bug fix
• 0.6.4: Bug fix
• 0.7.0: Flying Hunters
• 0.7.1: Copy-paste fixes
• 0.7.2: Bug fix
• 0.8.0: Jet support
• 0.9.0: Improved handling of large groups
• ☑ Don't retreat on exploration targets
• ☑ Add grace period for assignment, keep the groups together
• ☑ Demote a leader if it's waiting for followers for too long
• ☑ Update to game version 2.1
• 0.10.0: Multi-surface fixes
• ☐ Check surfaces with killers on them
• ☐ Send killers to targets on their surface
• ☐ Test with finite maps. Special mode to find all targets if map is finite.
• 0.10.1: Group improvements
• ☐ Different group size for exploration target
• 0.11: Hunter function

How does the Killer operate?

The Killer spidertron works by what is known as a Finite State Machine.

Each Killer is always in one of the following states. It remains in this state and does something until the condition for a new state is fulfilled. The state is indicated by the color of the spidertron.

The spawners, worms, and places to explore will be called targets in the following descriptions.

| State | Action | Color | |-----------|-----------------------------------------------|-------| | idle | Wait for a spawner / worm to become a target. | White | | planning | Waiting for the path planner to finish | Yellow | | walking | Going to where the autopilot leads it. | Grey | | approach | Walk up to the target. | Orange | | attack | Go towards the target until it is destroyed. | Red | | retreat | Go back to the latest safe position. | Cyan | | go-home | Return to the nearest Homebase. | Blue | | re-arm | Wait to be rearmed and repaired. | Green | | leader | Wait for assembling an attack group. | Dark Red | | follower | Wait for assembling an attack group. | Dark Green |

The conditions to switch from one state to another are:

| From State | Condition(s) | To State | |------------|--------------------------------------------------|----------| | idle | A target is close enough to a polluted chunk. | planning/attack | | idle | Health or ammo are low. | go-home | | idle | Group attack: Go to assembly position. | leader | | idle | Group attack: Go to assembly position. | follower | | approach | The selected target is destroyed. | idle | | approach | Safe distance to target reached. | attack | | attack | Target destroyed, low health, or low ammo. | retreat | | attack | Target reached. | retreat | | retreat | Safe position reached, Health and ammo are ok. | idle | | retreat | Safe position reached, Health or ammo are low. | planning/go-home | | go-home | Homebase reaced. | re-arm | | go-home | Health and ammo are ok. | idle | | re-arm | Health and ammo are ok. | idle | | planning | Finding a path to the target | attack/go-home | | planning | Sent somewhere by remote. | walking | | walking | Arrived at target. | idle | | leader | Group is assembled. | approach | | follower | Group is assembled. | approach | | leader | Group is disbanded. | idle | | follower | Group is disbanded. | idle |

The planning takes time. Therefore, the spidertrons will walk in circles to evade spitter fire (except when assembling a group). Planning itself is done in the background, at a pace determined by the game engine. The computation is shared evenly between all spidertrons in planning state. Also, the planner