Factorio Forums

Up front: The artillery is awesome!
You can burry tons of material in it and the distribution is challenging too, but I like challenges.
With some range upgrades you can keep biters out of your pollution cloud and instakill new nests being built relativly close to your base.

BUT: The biter pathfinding is terrible. Yes the artillery attracts a lot of them, but they start flipping out and end up running in one line to your wall.
If you have set up flame thrower turrets you can handle them easily.

I hoped for a more balanced attack; an equal amount of biters spread out running at your wall.

Wait for the AI rework project to kick in on .16 - may well wish you did not ahve that wish

TheTom wrote:Wait for the AI rework project to kick in on .16 - may well wish you did not ahve that wish

i assume it to be a mod projekt?

I'll be honest, at the beginning I did not understand what the artillery train is going to be about and was actually pretty annoyed by the fact that the devs are adding something like this. I thought it's going to be just a wagon with turrets, for defending the train against biters during travel and nothing else. I was like "Damn it, now I'll have to add yet another stupid wagon to every single train and rebuild my stations and stuff".

Little did I know how wrong I was...

Turns out, the artillery turrets and artillery wagons actually ARE a solution to the "biters stopping and killing locomotives" problem, but not in the way I imagined. Not only it is a perfect tool for stopping the expansion of biters into your territory, it's also a cool toy thanks to the remote artillery control item. Making the artillery guns have manual control range drastically larger than automatic was an genius move imo, as it both gives an incentive to use manual control and makes it enjoyable to use.

Not sure if anyone else noticed, but it now also created a reason to deploy and maintain dedicated guard outposts. Remote bases which do not house any miners, but only contain a single artillery cannon, with the goal of keeping the biters from setting foothold in your territory. This perfectly replaces the "giant turreted wall of china" around your entire train network, which before the update was the only solution for preventing the trains from being attacked by biters.

Vykromod wrote:I'll be honest, at the beginning I did not understand what the artillery train is going to be about and was actually pretty annoyed by the fact that the devs are adding something like this. I thought it's going to be just a wagon with turrets, for defending the train against biters during travel and nothing else. I was like "Damn it, now I'll have to add yet another stupid wagon to every single train and rebuild my stations and stuff".

Little did I know how wrong I was...

Turns out, the artillery turrets and artillery wagons actually ARE a solution to the "biters stopping and killing locomotives" problem, but not in the way I imagined. Not only it is a perfect tool for stopping the expansion of biters into your territory, it's also a cool toy thanks to the remote artillery control item. Making the artillery guns have manual control range drastically larger than automatic was an genius move imo, as it both gives an incentive to use manual control and makes it enjoyable to use.

Not sure if anyone else noticed, but it now also created a reason to deploy and maintain dedicated guard outposts. Remote bases which do not house any miners, but only contain a single artillery cannon, with the goal of keeping the biters from setting foothold in your territory. This perfectly replaces the "giant turreted wall of china" around your entire train network, which before the update was the only solution for preventing the trains from being attacked by biters.

The funny thing is, that I would already create dedicated outposts to maintain my border. Just, with artillery, now they can be further apart.

Artillery at the walls wrecked my UPS, not practical.

Best part about artillery, is the fact you can control where the biters are heading. Arty fires and they rush towards it, so you can make them come towards defenses that are waiting for them. Useful if you're using Train supplied Flamethrower turrets. Train arrives, offloads light oil and then the arty draws in the biters. Having tons of fun with this. Time to start designing forts that can channel the biters where they can die.

BUT: The biter pathfinding is terrible. Yes the artillery attracts a lot of them, but they start flipping out and end up running in one line to your wall.
If you have set up flame thrower turrets you can handle them easily.

I hoped for a more balanced attack; an equal amount of biters spread out running at your wall

I totally agree! This IMHO should be one of the targets for future releases.. just gets too easy getting rid of the alien threat!
Maybe the AI could learn a bit; the same way it considers targets (ie the pollution sources or the artillery), maybe it could considear areas to avoid (ie areas where a lot of biters have died) and just select the next best route or something..

I wonder how Rampant AI reacts to artillery. Seems like the kind of thing they might be better able to handle

But yea, pathfinding needs an overhaul.
Its not like robots where since they go in straight lines its fine if they are inefficient overall. No penalty occurs from bad terrain.
Biters kinda need to be able to walk around Obstacles.

Ranakastrasz wrote:I wonder how Rampant AI reacts to artillery. Seems like the kind of thing they might be better able to handle

But yea, pathfinding needs an overhaul.
Its not like robots where since they go in straight lines its fine if they are inefficient overall. No penalty occurs from bad terrain.
Biters kinda need to be able to walk around Obstacles.

Hope the devs read this...

Eh, its not like other people suggested it.