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First off big shout out to the Devs for all the quality work so far with Factorio. That being said.. since the latest 17.70 patch with the non colliding biters I have noticed on my mega factory that once biters get into the thick of things with my defenses my UPS will drop 10-15ps. Its not before they hit the defenses but seems to happen as soon as they run into the wall of fire from my flamer turrets and it lasts until the last bug dies. It feels like its maybe the flamers fault and not the bugs but I cant be for sure. So far I've only tested this on my mega base and I've confirmed that its not the laser turrets or mines as this can happen at places where I do not have either of the them. It seems to start when the flamers start spraying and like I said finishes when the last bug dies in the fire. So far I've watched it when waves of 20-40 hit my wall.

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over 4 years ago - /u/Klonan - Direct link

We are aware of the problem with flamethrower turrets and UPS drops, it is to do with the blood particles (which are entities).

We have a plan, and the results are already very promising.

over 4 years ago - /u/Klonan - Direct link

Originally posted by Wargon2015

This is the first actually annoying bug that I've seen in a long time and you guys already have a plan hours after it was reported.
This is amazing.

Its not really a bug, just the way the engine works.

The blood particles are entities, and the dying animation creates a lot of them: https://gfycat.com/DeficientSadChimpanzee

In the engine, any entity search needs to iterated through all entities on the 'Advanced tile', which is 2x2 tiles.

The fire needs to check each tick (or every few ticks) to see what to damage... so it iterated through all the entities (including thousands of particles).

The biter pathing/collisions needs to iterate through all the entities as they walk through the fire.

So the result is the iteration takes a very long time, because there a bajilions of them: https://i.imgur.com/EXwijrK.jpg