Guard faction problem

[nilbog]

So I've edited factions off and on for a while now.. mostly using the php editor in addition to navicat to create new ones. I have made a few factions in the past and they all work great. I did a lot of work on factions this week, until one day, mysteriously, guards stopped attacking.

I was fixing the social aspect of the newbie mobs by making new factions for them after experiencing beetles assisting snakes, and rats helping beetles, etc.

So I created new factions to achieve the following effect:
newb_beetles ,assist other beetles only
newb_rats , dont assist other newbie mobs.

New faction for faction_list:

478 newb_beetles
base -200 (for dubious), all other mods 0

New faction for npc_faction:

20014 newb_beetles ; primary faction 478, ignoreprimaryassist 0

Now, for the guards.. qeynos2 guards for example.

Guard_Gehnus: regular old default Gehnus.. has npc_aggro 1

npc faction id: 20027 "qeynos2guards"
primary: antonius bayle
faction hits :
Antonius Bayle  	              -30   	 Assist  	 
Circle of Unseen Hands 	       10 	Passive 	
Corrupt Qeynos Guards 	       10 	Passive 	
Guards of Qeynos 	      -30 	Assist 	
Merchants of Qeynos 	      -30 	Assist 	
Sabertooths of Blackburrow 	0 	Aggressive 	
General KOS 	                0 	Aggressive 	
KOS_animal 	                0 	Aggressive 	
newb_snakes 	                0 	Aggressive 	
newb_beetles 	                0 	Aggressive 	
newb_bats 	                        0 	Aggressive 	
newb_wolves 	                0 	Aggressive

and finally.. a_fire_beetle, qeynos2

npc faction id: 20014 "newb_beetles"
primary faction: newb_beetles
faction hits: none

This worked fine.. for at least a whole day, I tested the rats, bats, snakes beetles.. Fippy Darkpaw, etc. Then I moved on to some other zones, reusing the newb_beetles faction when i needed it. And all was well.

Then I got reports of it not working, and sure enough, the guards stand there and watch the mobs walk by. Also, when I kill Guard_Gehnus or any of the other guards, they no longer give me faction hits.

-So.. I checked maps. They are fine, I can cast on mobs in the zone.
-Then I checked the npc_faction_entries. My new entries for the mobs are still there, just at the end of the table. (could this cause any issue?)

One interesting thing is that it works fine in Tox forest. The city guards there have the same newb_beetles faction assigned to attack, the fire_beetles have 20014 newb_beetles faction. And the guards attack them just fine.

I saw this post by Chaoslayer describing, I think, partially the same issue. http://www.eqemulator.net/forums/showthread.php?t=26360

Does anyone have any ideas about this? Experienced this?

Any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks!