Searchlight Assault Defensive Wall (with fixes for bugs)

Anonymous

This is a set of blueprints for managing the Searchlight Assault mod, as seen in DoshDoshington's videos. The searchlights are amazing at ambience, but they're incredibly quirky to use for combat. So enjoy this set of blueprints that will help you avoid the annoying bugs I've encountered. This also exists to document my issues and how I solved them, because no one else seems to have found workable solutions to the searchlight bugs I found. Each blueprint in the book has explanations on specific details, so check the book for information on each blueprint. #### Searchlight Bugs and Workarounds First, the searchlights can crash your game if you're building them with bots. It seems to happen if the searchlight is placed before anything else, it activates, then a turret is placed down in range of the active searchlight. The workaround is to build the wall and all the turrets first, then add the searchlights afterwards. There are two blueprints demonstrating how that works. Basically, use the `Part 1` blueprint first, then use the `Part 2` blueprint after. Simple stuff. Just be coordinated about managing your blueprints and you'll be fine. Second, the searchlights will often bug out and stop patrolling their assigned search area. That's fine if you only want them for aesthetics, but it makes them substantially worse at the primary reason I was using them, which is to keep rampant biter bases off my walls before I unlocked spidertrons or artillery. The more frequent the biter attacks, the less the searchlights will be in their patrol area. This is a big problem with rampant. The only solution I found was to manually change the turret settings, which fixes the issue until they bug out again. So I automated my hacky bugfix with a simple circuit network. Considering the stated goal of the Searchlight Assault mod was to encourage people to automate and use circuits, I think my workaround is within the spirit of the mod. #### Searchlight Circuits for Dummies The way the blueprint circuit works, there's a simple timer that resets the searchlight settings every minute, which keeps them searching the correct area. It works by adding one to one of the values for a single second. The searchlights seem to better eliminate biters when they're actually scanning their search area, and there's no problem updating hundreds of searchlights, so it's a big win. Don't connect all the searchlights to the same circuit network. They input and output signals simultaneously. So you need to be careful about how you filter signals. Put two searchlights on the same wire, and their values add together. Your minimum search range just doubled, and both the searchlights are pointing in the same direction. Whops! Not good. The easiest solution is to have a global "searchlight reset" signal, and use a combinator for each searchlight to read that global signal without sending any signals backwards to the other searchlights. But I didn't just set up a reset circuit. I went ahead and also set up global searchlight control, so I can update all the searchlights in my base if I want to change their settings. That way I can tweak the range and angle without manually changing a hundred searchlights. Use the `Central Control Circuit` blueprint to manage your global searchlight settings. Just don't put the search direction on the global signal. If you do, you'll need to break up each segment of wall into it's own network to avoid the "pointing in the same direction" problem. The example design fixes this problem by using two combinators per searchlight to filter the direction signal out. My example designs use two combinators per searchlight, because I accidentally connected a searchlight to the main signal wire one too many times. If you give up the ability to filter signals, you can use only one arithmetic combinator and reduce the cost of the blueprint. Just remove the combinator that inserts the negative signal in the wall blueprint. You might need to reconnect the green wires. You can also use the same type of combinator required for building searchlights, if you also give up the ability to send global signals. Not worth it in my opinion, but I left an example blueprint if you need the cheapest option. Personally, I prefer my blueprints to be incredibly difficult to break. #### Final Thoughts I've been enjoying the Searchlight Assault mod. It's an interesting addition to the game. With more aggressive biters and rampant sieges, this mod is really useful for semi-automating early wall defense. It keeps worms off your walls while being early tech and being cheap to build. It just needs a few more bugfixes. Still, building circuit networks to solve the patrol bug was enjoyable. I wish there were more things that required using circuits, and this mod is a good place to start. If the author is able to fix the game crashing bug, I highly recommend Searchlight Assault.