Odd Beeta Behavior w/ gases

[Farsight]

So, I dig the Beetas, but I recently found some odd behavior I didn't expect.

I had 10 hives mixed in w/ Saturn traps in a high-pressure hydrogen environment. This worked, but was inefficient since dupes tended to get stung by beetas from every hive. So I made a new Beeta ranch, where each hive got its own room and dupes would drop in from above. I even added a motion sensor that released co2 as the dupe entered a chamber, so I left the rooms with a basic o2 atmosphere so the co2 could enter easily. Everything looked good...

And then the beetas started huddling on the floor (even the grown bees), refusing to move. Eventually every hive had all its bees on the floor... not asleep (there was no co2), but playing dead...

That's when I looked at the other side of that floor... their old room, packed with hydrogen. They were homesick!

Or more accurately, they were sick of oxygen. As an experiment, I used an airflow tile to let the hydrogen rush into the beeta's room... and they immediately took flight and started feeding their hive. Any bees stuck in a pocket of o2 stayed motionless, even if there was hydrogen right next to them.

Is this known/expected behavior?

[Farsight]

I figured out the issue...

There was a few tiny pockets of co2 in the beeta rooms. The beetas are sitting in them, neither sleeping nor consuming them, forever, until they die and the next beetiny takes their place.

My base is pretty big and complicated, so I suspect this is the same performance issue that can cause pufts to starve when the game is running slow.

[asurendra]

We already have mod that fixes puft problem. Need the same for beeta too...

[SGT_Imalas]

On 4/21/2023 at 5:43 PM, asurendra said:

We already have mod that fixes puft problem

that mod (I assume you talk about Don't Starve Mr. Puft ) affects all gas consuming critters, pufts, slickster and bees slugs

 

[Farsight]

17 hours ago, SGT_Imalas said:

that mod (I assume you talk about Don't Starve Mr. Puft ) affects all gas consuming critters, pufts, slickster and bees

 

Interesting. Can anyone verify that it actually fixes Beetas? Because in my game, they weren't 'eating' co2 -at-all-.

[SGT_Imalas]

Interesting.

I took a small dive into that stuff and I was mistaken, bees are not affected.

The mod fixes all critters that "eat" gas/liquid in some fashion (and gain calories from it). This fix works around the fact that critter AI lags in the endgame by just increasing the volume- the critter is still lagging, but it no longer starves as the amount consumed is increased dynamically to accord for the reduced consumption rate

 

Bees dont work like that - they simply have an element consumer (think of it as a gas pump) attached to them that just deletes co2 from its surroundings. Bees function as follows:

average co2 amount in my surroundings is higher than a certain treshold? -> create a "Sleeping-Chore". While that chore is active, it activates that element consumer that then removes co2 from its surroundings by a fixed rate. The consumption is (code wise) not the cause of the sleep, but merely a symptom.

so if the critters lag too much, that chore might stop working and thus the bee no longer goes to sleep (the rat tail of that sleeping behavior is very long)

while for the other critters, the issue can be bypassed by the mod, the sleep lag in bees ties directly to the critter AI lagging

[Farsight]

Ah, yeah, that's what I'm seeing. Bummer.

So the only workaround is to do exactly the -opposite- of the design intended: keep them away from CO2 at all costs.

Luckily the lagging reduces the likelihood of stings, but they seem to have improved performance a little there, unfortunately.

[asurendra]

Actually you can use CO2 to make beetas "sleep". They dont bite while lagging, yes? Just remove CO2 manually when you want to woke them up. Simple Carbon skimmer should do the job