Make the upcoming artillery wagon modular
Posted: Sat May 06, 2017 2:02 am
I like the idea the devs mentioned in the recent Friday Factorio Facts #189 of a train car that can shoot (and there are already mods which can do similar things).
Rather than making it specialised to a particular weapon type, why not go all-out and make it modular? A train car is 2*6 tiles anyway, so make it able to have any turrets that can fit into that space mounted on it. The existing gun turrets and laser turrets are 2*2, so you could put three of them on one, though for laser turrets their power needs would require an accumulator (or adding a 2*2 generator, perhaps along the lines of one of my Predecessor Fusion Reactor ideas), and thus only being able to use two on a wagon (unless you made wagons on the same train share power, in which case you could have one of these wagons with just power stuff on it).
With this modular approach, whatever other weapons you might want to put on such a car can just be implemented as another turret the player can put on it (or use to defend their base).
Reloading these turret wagons would be simple: Just set up inserters fed with the appropriate ammo for the turrets you've put on a given wagon at one of your stations. Recharging accumulators for laser turrets could happen automatically if the power grid goes over where the wagon stops.
The only downside to this approach is that you wouldn't be able to use flamethrower turrets, as they're 3*3. Though if you had a smaller version maybe they could draw on a fluid wagon for their ammo, assuming they didn't just use the same ammo as the player.
Rather than making it specialised to a particular weapon type, why not go all-out and make it modular? A train car is 2*6 tiles anyway, so make it able to have any turrets that can fit into that space mounted on it. The existing gun turrets and laser turrets are 2*2, so you could put three of them on one, though for laser turrets their power needs would require an accumulator (or adding a 2*2 generator, perhaps along the lines of one of my Predecessor Fusion Reactor ideas), and thus only being able to use two on a wagon (unless you made wagons on the same train share power, in which case you could have one of these wagons with just power stuff on it).
With this modular approach, whatever other weapons you might want to put on such a car can just be implemented as another turret the player can put on it (or use to defend their base).
Reloading these turret wagons would be simple: Just set up inserters fed with the appropriate ammo for the turrets you've put on a given wagon at one of your stations. Recharging accumulators for laser turrets could happen automatically if the power grid goes over where the wagon stops.
The only downside to this approach is that you wouldn't be able to use flamethrower turrets, as they're 3*3. Though if you had a smaller version maybe they could draw on a fluid wagon for their ammo, assuming they didn't just use the same ammo as the player.