Factorio Forums

Posted: **Fri Nov 20, 2015 9:50 am**

Orbital Ion Cannon

: OrbitalIonCannon.jpg (91.33 KiB) Viewed 137090 times

Remember these things from Command & Conquer? I know I sure do...

Yeah, it's pretty much what you expect from the title. Here, take a look at these screenshots:

Launch the ion cannon into orbit with a rocket

Then use the targeting device to fire it when ready

Screw you trees. Or anything else really

Xterminator also made a great Mod Spotlight video about this mod.
See also: the followup video.

Info:

Do you have a large, late-game megabase and wish there were more cool things you could build? Do you wish you could do more with the rockets you launch? Do you really hate biters? If so, then this mod is for you!
Build a giant ion cannon and launch it into orbit with a rocket, wait for it to charge up, and then you're ready to call down the thunder on those pesky aliens.
Simply click anywhere with your targeting device and watch the total annihilation ensue. Just be sure not to call it down too close to your position, or you could end up caught in the blast zone.
If you've played the Command & Conquer series of games (if not, go download them, the classic ones are freeware), you're bound to recognize several features similar to the GDI's Ion Cannons.
Name: Orbital Ion Cannon
Latest Release: v1.8.2, May 1, 2020
Factorio Version: 0.18.22
License: MIT License
Author: Supercheese
Github: https://github.com/Suprcheese/Orbital-Ion-Cannon

Long Description:
This mod allows you to build and launch ion cannons into orbit that you can then fire at any location on the map. You can be caught in the blast if you aim it too close by, so please exercise caution.
You can click on the button added at the top of your screen to check on the status of your ion cannons in orbit.
Launching additional ion cannons allows you to fire whenever one is finished charging.

If you like, you can even automate the destruction of enemy nests by researching Auto-Targeting, which will utilize your radars to scan for enemy nests and automatically fire an ion cannon.

This mod is aware of Bob's mods and will update its recipes and technology requirements if Bob's Warfare and/or Bob's Power mods are installed.

This mod also has configuration options available through the in-game mod options menu (Options -> Mods). There you may adjust many parameters of the mod and customize it as you see fit.

See the bundled readme for more details and credits.

Feedback etc.

I've considered a couple possibilities for future development, if there's interest:

With the release of Factorio 0.15 comes nuclear power. Should ion cannons now be powered by a nuclear reactor...?
Different types of orbital weaponry? Kinetic projectiles? Missiles?
Keep track of how many times each ion cannon has been fired? This would just be a statistic, not really sure if it's worth it.
De-orbit ion cannons after they are fired enough times? This would require you to keep launching new ones to replace the old ones...but honestly by the time you can afford to fire off a dozen of these puppies you've got enough resources that this wouldn't be a problem

Anyway, you should have a good time blowing all those biter bases to kingdom come. What are you waiting for, start your assembly machines and get to launching!

Version history

Posted: **Fri Nov 20, 2015 8:00 pm**

a few things you could do:

-increase cooldown to 15 min
-decrease the amount of materials needed with bob's mods
-add a heatup time, so the cannon won't fire immediatly when selecting a target
-might aswell change the recipies for the rocket parts with bob's mods

Posted: **Fri Nov 20, 2015 8:49 pm**

kinnom wrote:a few things you could do:

-increase cooldown to 15 min
-decrease the amount of materials needed with bob's mods
-add a heatup time, so the cannon won't fire immediatly when selecting a target
-might aswell change the recipies for the rocket parts with bob's mods

You can easily change the cooldown time yourself in config.lua. Additionally, if you think that the materials required for the bob's mods version are too high, you can disable the bob's recipe and revert back to the standard one in config.lua as well.

I'm not sure how long of a heatup time you are thinking of - currently there are a few seconds between target designation and ion cannon activation. Were you thinking of just doubling or tripling this time? I think the time-to-fire is pretty good at the moment.

Posted: **Sat Nov 21, 2015 10:05 am**

I'm thinking of 60 sec of heatup

Posted: **Sat Nov 21, 2015 10:47 am**

cooool!!!

Posted: **Sat Nov 21, 2015 11:39 am**

Such awesome, much wow. Just the thing i've wanted.

Posted: **Sat Nov 21, 2015 11:48 am**

lol, awesome idea

me like

Posted: **Sat Nov 21, 2015 4:31 pm**

Looks awesome and I'm a big fan of the C&C games so that's just icing on the cake. Can't wait to try it out!

BTW what are those modules you have in the rocket silo? Just curious ^^

Posted: **Sat Nov 21, 2015 5:17 pm**

those are god modules 3 from bob's mods

Posted: **Sat Nov 21, 2015 11:13 pm**

Ah thanks, is that a good mod, what does it do? Can you give a link?

Posted: **Sun Nov 22, 2015 9:43 am**

found a bug: the recipe for the cannon tarheting device isn't unlocked

Posted: **Sun Nov 22, 2015 10:19 am**

kinnom wrote:found a bug: the recipe for the cannon tarheting device isn't unlocked

The recipe should unlock right after you launch your first ion cannon into orbit. Did this not happen for you?

Posted: **Sun Nov 22, 2015 4:10 pm**

wait, really? I thought it would unlock with the research.

Posted: **Sun Nov 22, 2015 6:06 pm**

Okay so your ion cannons are in vanilla built with 100 solar panels. Each can run at a greater efficiency in space. Lets say 35% more seeing as they are already pretty good(future stuff got to be better).
That gives us a power production of 8.1 million watts (8100 kilowatt) which when fully recharged should have 7.3 billion joules if the cooldown is 15 minutes. That would be enough power to boil aprox 24 974 liters of water from a temperature of 30 degrees. So i guess it might be a possible thing to do

!

Posted: **Sun Nov 22, 2015 6:13 pm**

Holy hellthis is amazing! I am definitely doing a Mod Spotlight on this in the coming week.

I am grabbing it for myself and can't wait to test it out.

In regards to future additions to the mod as you suggested in the first post, I think having a limit on how many times it can fire before it is "used up" is a good idea. That way you have something to constantly spend resources on to keep launching them if you want to continue using them. Also for other types of weapons, perhaps something like Rods from God? Essentially it is like a satellite that drops a large (about the size of a telephone pole in real life) metal rod from orbit. With the speed that it gets from dropping, the impact is essentially like a small asteroid hitting.

Either way, I really look forward to the future of this mod. Great work!

Posted: **Sun Nov 22, 2015 8:03 pm**

kinnom wrote:wait, really? I thought it would unlock with the research.

Well, I figured there's really no point in building an ion cannon targeting device before you have any ion cannons to target...

Xterminator wrote:Holy hellthis is amazing! I am definitely doing a Mod Spotlight on this in the coming week.
I am grabbing it for myself and can't wait to test it out.

In regards to future additions to the mod as you suggested in the first post, I think having a limit on how many times it can fire before it is "used up" is a good idea. That way you have something to constantly spend resources on to keep launching them if you want to continue using them. Also for other types of weapons, perhaps something like Rods from God? Essentially it is like a satellite that drops a large (about the size of a telephone pole in real life) metal rod from orbit. With the speed that it gets from dropping, the impact is essentially like a small asteroid hitting.

Either way, I really look forward to the future of this mod. Great work!

Excellent; I'm not good with video recording/editing myself, so I'm greatly looking forward to it.

Posted: **Sun Nov 22, 2015 8:48 pm**

It has been brought to my attention that vanilla assembly machine 3s could not craft the ion cannon recipe because it had too many ingredients. Version 1.0.2 of the mod corrects this issue.
If you have a mod that installs higher-tier assembly machines, however, you will still need to upgrade beyond assembler 3s.

EDIT: Another issue in multiplayer mode has been identified and fixed. Thanks for the bug reports.

EDIT #2: Pushed another update, this time to add a Compact GUI state, which is useful if you have a lot of ion cannons in orbit and don't want the Full GUI taking up half your screen.

Posted: **Tue Nov 24, 2015 2:57 pm**

One of the coolest mods out there. It just need a LOT of balancing to get it to work properly. If you want it to be really fancy, let's say a few things:

- To have the most efficient laser being fired at the ground, the Ion Cannon would need to be exactly at the top of the target.
- You can't place it at a geo-stationary orbits otherwise you can't fire at multiple locations.
- Ion Cannons needs to be placed at a low orbit so they can rotate around the world faster.
- Polar orbit covers the full planet, given enough orbits.
- Some of the times, the Ion Cannon will be in the dark side of the planet (close to night time), so it can't fire in such occasions.

Given that the Factorio world rotates so fast for it's size, I don't think that calculating this will lead to anything relevant. It's better to do something like:

- There are two phases in the heatup: getting the Cannon to be in the right place, and actually gathering the energy. Let's place a lower limit at 120 seconds to heatup, and a higher limit of 60 seconds.
+ f(x) = (x-1) / ( (x-1) + a )
+ We grab 'a' reasonable a like 10
+ Let's say we have 50 Ion Cannons, the math would be f(50) = 49 / 59 = 0.83 speed up from 60, so 0.83 * 60 = 49.8 seconds speedup, so would take a 70.1 seconds to heat up.
+ If you want a bigger 'a', then you need more Cannon on the space to have a lower heatup. The same goes if you want a higher speedup, in that case you should pick a smaller 'a'.

Posted: **Sat Dec 05, 2015 1:28 pm**

When i try to use your mod with research queue mod i get error when i start the game. It would be nice if mods were compatible. I also posted this on research queue thread.

Posted: **Sat Dec 05, 2015 8:32 pm**

Evilness wrote:When i try to use your mod with research queue mod i get error when i start the game. It would be nice if mods were compatible. I also posted this on research queue thread.

Hmm, 'tis quite the error. I get the same thing on my end when attempting to use both Research Queue and Ion Cannon, and I'm afraid I don't know what could be causing the conflict. I know both mods add a GUI element at the top of the screen, and perhaps that has something to do with it, but I really can't say for sure.

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