Target prioritising of turrets

[ssilk]

Hm.

We are here at the same question as with the priorities for the electricity (accus have lowest priority, laser have highest), which was often been suggested - and also by some global changeable slider...
Despite from the fact, that it wouldn't bring anything good for the handling of the electricity (and I think also for the handling of this), I think this is really not a way we should think of.

Cause - and I think that is something important - how should that change be transmitted? How will the information come from that global configuration screen into the turret? I mean: Other games do that of course. Cause it is possible, it's a computer program. Everything is possible.
We are so used to that form of "magic global changing spreads throughout the game-world", that nobody cares. But for Factory I think this way should not be walked!

Cause if such a global changeable GUI really would exists I would say: Where are the radio stations to transmit that signal to the turrets.

Well. And here we have closed the circle: The answer to hook up that nightmare of 3000 lasers or more, is not to plug it into a circuit network, but to connect it to some wireless signal. And - as you might have read - that might come with 0.13. https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-123

So that is in my opinion the way to do it right. If needed. What I doubt.

[MeduSalem]

We are here at the same question as with the priorities for the electricity (accus have lowest priority, laser have highest), which was often been suggested - and also by some global changeable slider...
Despite from the fact, that it wouldn't bring anything good for the handling of the electricity (and I think also for the handling of this), I think this is really not a way we should think of.

Well... I guess for electricity it wouldn't work anyways because the reason people would like to change priority of power production/consumption is basically to shut down the Steam Engines if they don't need them. Which would basically require to adjust the priority on-the-fly, so a "global" one-time adjustment of priorities probably wouldn't be able to deal with the problem.

But yeah, the upcoming power switch will probably eliminate the problem anyways...

Cause - and I think that is something important - how should that change be transmitted? How will the information come from that global configuration screen into the turret? I mean: Other games do that of course. Cause it is possible, it's a computer program. Everything is possible.
We are so used to that form of "magic global changing spreads throughout the game-world", that nobody cares. But for Factory I think this way should not be walked!

Cause if such a global changeable GUI really would exists I would say: Where are the radio stations to transmit that signal to the turrets.

Well with that attitude one could ask:

1. How do the Gun Turrets detect any enemies and rotate the guns in the right direction when they don't even require a little amount of energy for their targeting systems?
2. How do splitters work when they don't require energy?
3. How do belts work when they don't require energy?
4. How do accumulators/laser turrets don't deteriorate slowly over time due to continuous charge/discharge?
5. The list goes on and on...

Space Magic? Probably.

But truth is some of the systems have been implemented exactly the way they are for the sake of convenience. No matter how much some of us might dislike it, including myself.

Though I could provide simple solutions even for the above examples which would satisfy the need for realism and still be interesting to play with, rather than tedious:

1. Make gun turrets require electricity (just a little bit to power their motors and detectors and to push the trigger, not anywhere near as much as laser turrets - don't worry)
2. Make the splitters require electricity as well.
3. Make belts require a "belt-control item" you plop down somewhere along a belt that is either powered with fuel (early stages) or electricy (later on, which can be equipped with modules to increase belt speed, rendering fast/express belts superfluous, and which could also be used to access the current contents of the entire connected belt with circuit logic)
4. Make accumulators/laser turrets require swapping of eventually deteriorated batteries to maintain performance of the energy storage

And I would have even more concepts like these on the backburner, some of which nobody else has ever proposed on the forum, but what are they good for if the playerbase and the dev-team decided "nope, not going to happen because convenience takes priority over realism" on some of the topics a long time ago, pretty much sealing the coffin for them when it comes to improvements/additions/changes?

Well. And here we have closed the circle: The answer to hook up that nightmare of 3000 lasers or more, is not to plug it into a circuit network, but to connect it to some wireless signal. And - as you might have read - that might come with 0.13. https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-123

Using wireless signals wouldn't really reduce the amount of combinator contraptions, because even with wireless signals you would have to segment the perimeter into sections covered by individual sensors with turret batteries attached to them, and each section needs to be controlled with its own individual combinator contraption. So if you output the combinator contraption's signal with wireless signal to the turret battery or with a circuit network wire doesn't matter thaaat much anymore.

It would only be a matter of taste if you would like to have all the Priority-Control contraptions "centralized" somewhere on the map... then you use wireless signals. But if you prefer to have the Controller decentralized, located behind each individual section then you could go with wires as well.

So at least I wouldn't see any way to make the priority system any easier. I might be able to live with that way, but that doesn't mean everyone would be able to live with it.

So that is in my opinion the way to do it right. If needed. What I doubt.

Well currently it is not really needed because there is no diversity in enemies or turrets for that matter. From mid to late game defense is nothing but a bagatelle currently. Just enclose your base with walls and a line of laser turrets and be done with it. Only difficulty about it being to get that far, that's all.

[Lallante]

This isnt a balancing issue - its the downside of using turret creep to kill biter spawns (which IMO should be made much harder anyway)

[Requia]

I like the choosing priorities option, because while other people are talking about going biggest first, my though is spitters first. Walls are a lot harder to destroy than turrets and cheaper to replace, but spitters can ignore them if the turret is in range. Once big spitters start showing it becomes enough of a problem that rather a lot of turrets are needed atm to ensure they die before the first turret does.