[Question] 0.21141 MIssion 3.2 Is this portal actually being used?
- Thread starter HofNerd
- Start date
It should be spawning stuff and creatures should sometimes retreat into it. The spawns points on this level are grouped together and creatures in the group can come out of any randomly, so you might play and have nothing come out of it. This one is in a group with three others: 
I have drawn in the paths as I know them. The portal to the right (south east) spawns for the south eastern hill. (I am very sure about this because I constantly see mantises patrol from the south east corner to the south eastern hill.)
The portal on top of the north eastern hill was not circled, but it spawns for the same path as the portal on the side of the hill and the portal in the north east corner of the map. (It spawns creatures that stay on the hill, the other portals spawn creatures that go to and stay on the same hill.)
I am still very sure I have never seen any spawns coming from the portal in the north east corner lower level hill side.
I'm sorry, you are absolutely right. I assumed it was working because the group of 4 spawn points are added exactly the same way and as the other 3 were spawning creatures it must be fine right? Well no, because as your diagram shows, different patrol zones may share spawn points. The group of 4 that the troublesome one is in are not spawning anything for their zone because I must have been tired when I was plugging in base values for their spawn probabilities and left an important field empty. The problem now is, if I just stick a value in to fix it, 3.2 is going to get slightly harder... Think anyone will notice?
No need to be sorry here. You had reason to believe the portal was being used, found out it was not, and you adopted the new proven truth you found.
I was very sure about that portal not spawning anything, because I never had a need to block it with major ants when harvesting in the north east corner. (I use stationary major ant groups to defend my foraging trails, so I quickly have to learn where most enemies are attacking from.) Because of this I only realised its existance yesterday.
"The group of 4 that the troublesome one is in are not spawning anything for their zone" I have seen the 'non-troublesome' portals from this group spew out enemies perfectly fine? (Your group of 4 marked in red or my group of 4 on the north patrol zone?)
I think it is going to make that level a bit harder, as L mantises that walk down the north east path to the hill get close enough to the nest entrance to attack the foraging trail when foraging deeper into the map (west). Hooking up this portal to the group will make it less likely for enemies to spawn ontop of the hill, so it makes it more likely for L mantises to attack the player.
What I meant was that there are several patrol routes set up. There are 3 for the lower ground, (east, centre and west), and then additional routes for each of the high ground islands where there are more leaves to harvest. Each patrol route is linked to several spawn points - when the game decides its time for a new creature to spawn on a particular patrol route, it will choose a random spawn point associated with that patrol. The patrol routes are allowed to share spawn points - the "East Lowground Patrol" uses the four that I highlighted in red, but nothing is ever actually spawned on this patrol because of the mistake. Three of the four highlighted are also members of other patrol routes though, so they still spawn creatures that go elsewhere.
Ohhh, so there actually is an unused (nothing spawns on it) patrol path on the east side of the map? Now I get it! If that patrol path goes too close to the nest it might increase difficulty by quite a bit if it is enabled. (Enemies getting close enough to see ants near the nest entrance.) Otherwise there probably won't be that much of a difficulty increase, as it doesn't take long before the player has to go west to forage. (Makes the player no longer come into contact with enemies from that group.)
Edit:
Actually, I see the nest entrance is inbetween the portals. This makes me expect enemies from that group to walk near/over the nest entrance when moving to their initial patrol points.
Yes - that bothered me when I checked it yesterday. I think I might remove the south east spawn point from that group (so they don't walk over the nest) and set the weight of that patrol's spawns to very low, then maybe reduce the nearest island spawn weight slightly to compensate.
I guess there's only one way to fully find out how much it changes the difficulty...
