Factorio Forums

This is just a small/short idea suggestion

TL;DR

A wagon or a loco unit with a possibility of building turrets on it that can stop when agro-ed.

What ?

this idea is not calling for a simple "turret wagon" that I have seen before, its an empty wagon with a surface to build defensive buildings (or any buildings) that will have a programmable behavior. Main idea is for the wagon/train to stop when the turrets were triggered, finish the killing and move after x time of inactivity. I looked into modding myself but I doubt I will have enough time to actually do it.

Why ?

Because maintaining train tracks 1k+ long through a red sea is very boring. And clearing hectares of spawners even more so.

yes, thats an great idea. i also wrote about that in the Ideas and Suggestions tab.( viewtopic.php?f=9&t=9 )
you could also have like small train carts with a gun turret on it. and a inserter system which can restock the turret with ammo at a station. or a laser turret witch an battery attachment which you could also recharge at a station. i hope the developers will try out these ideas because they seem like some great ideas. and i also see a lot of people have problems with biters agro-ing on their trains.

Rails are fixed paths though, you need to travel through the area in the first place to build them so how does that work?

Additionally they can't really be used as a line of defence as it would be too easy for a wave (or most of a wave) to cross the tracks before a train stops to attack them. For this to be a reliable defence mechanism you would need several layers which is far more effort than you're bargaining for.

Something like an armoured FARL (but more like a giant tank instead of a train) might be more appropriate, wades into an area blowing up everything around it and laying down walls, turrets and roboports behind it.

Artillery trains are planed for 0.16 AFAIK.

Deadly-Bagel wrote:Rails are fixed paths though, you need to travel through the area in the first place to build them so how does that work?

Additionally they can't really be used as a line of defence as it would be too easy for a wave (or most of a wave) to cross the tracks before a train stops to attack them. For this to be a reliable defence mechanism you would need several layers which is far more effort than you're bargaining for.

Something like an armoured FARL (but more like a giant tank instead of a train) might be more appropriate, wades into an area blowing up everything around it and laying down walls, turrets and roboports behind it.

Hm yes, rails are fixed paths, but you do not take into concideration that hives spread with biters, where there once were no more aliens, quite fast becomes as infested again.
I do not think OP wants them as a base defence, but as a portable defence for trains going between stations.

So you mean just to defend that train rather than as a line defence? Traditional trains are 1:2, a single artillery wagon would extend the length of the train by 33% and slow it down, needing a second would be ridiculous so therefore you would want one of these wagons to be sufficient to defend the train against anything.

Looking at the OP's idea it doesn't really work. Laser turrets wouldn't have a power source, and gun turrets require an ammo feed so at most you could fit only two on a 6x2 wagon. Not enough to guarantee the safety of the train.

Overall it would make more sense for trains to just instantly kill anything they hit, or try to shunt them out of the way.

I'm hoping the artillery train is actually going to be artillery, as in something with very long range designed to target spawners. That way you could keep expansion in check and only deal with the occasional raiding party. However there are problems with this. If you require vision you would need radars everywhere which are a priority target for biters, if you don't then does the artillery magically know it's destroyed the target? I guess it could scan any sector it lands a hit in. But then you need to think about it being used as a clearing technique. Build a rail, park an artillery wagon on it and let it clear out a bunch of nests. I'm not saying it's a bad strategy, it's just a roundabout way of having to do it, would make more sense to have a static artillery cannon as well / instead. That suggests it's just going to be a wagon with guns on it which I guarantee will be underwhelming and barely ever used.

Artillery train is planned v0.16 feature.
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=678 Roadmap

See also viewtopic.php?f=80&t=17734 New types of vehicles (train, tank, car, plane, ship...)
for similar ideas

Deadly-Bagel wrote:So you mean just to defend that train rather than as a line defence? Traditional trains are 1:2, a single artillery wagon would extend the length of the train by 33% and slow it down, needing a second would be ridiculous so therefore you would want one of these wagons to be sufficient to defend the train against anything.

Looking at the OP's idea it doesn't really work. Laser turrets wouldn't have a power source, and gun turrets require an ammo feed so at most you could fit only two on a 6x2 wagon. Not enough to guarantee the safety of the train.

Overall it would make more sense for trains to just instantly kill anything they hit, or try to shunt them out of the way.

I'm hoping the artillery train is actually going to be artillery, as in something with very long range designed to target spawners. That way you could keep expansion in check and only deal with the occasional raiding party. However there are problems with this. If you require vision you would need radars everywhere which are a priority target for biters, if you don't then does the artillery magically know it's destroyed the target? I guess it could scan any sector it lands a hit in. But then you need to think about it being used as a clearing technique. Build a rail, park an artillery wagon on it and let it clear out a bunch of nests. I'm not saying it's a bad strategy, it's just a roundabout way of having to do it, would make more sense to have a static artillery cannon as well / instead. That suggests it's just going to be a wagon with guns on it which I guarantee will be underwhelming and barely ever used.

Maybe the artillery train needs some targeting Support.
Could be necessary to launch at least 3 satellites to have gps.
As a Bonus fog of war would be gone.

JimBarracus wrote:Could be necessary to launch at least 3 satellites to have gps.

GPS requires a minimum of 4 satellites to calculate positions.
To cover the globe at least 12? (not entirely sure there) satellites are required.

As a Bonus fog of war would be gone.

I recall constantly uncovering everything greatly reduced performance in older versions.

Optera wrote:

JimBarracus wrote:Could be necessary to launch at least 3 satellites to have gps.

GPS requires a minimum of 4 satellites to calculate positions.
To cover the globe at least 12? (not entirely sure there) satellites are required.

Technically (I think) 3 satellites are required to calculate latitude and longitude and 4 are required to calculate height. Since Factorio doesn't have height, we could assume 3 would work. I can't verify the 12 figure, but that could be interesting as Factorio is (I believe) a 2,000,000 by 2,000,000 meter flat planet. However, most players don't go that far out.

Jap2.0 wrote: Technically (I think) 3 satellites are required to calculate latitude and longitude and 4 are required to calculate height. Since Factorio doesn't have height, we could assume 3 would work. I can't verify the 12 figure, but that could be interesting as Factorio is (I believe) a 2,000,000 by 2,000,000 meter flat planet. However, most players don't go that far out.

Yeah factorio is a flat earthers dream. To bad for them such a construct can't exist and everything with mass will eventually accumulate into spherical shapes.

I hope upcoming versions will have worlds wrap around like proper sphere projections.
It would make for some interesting world spanning rail networks.

Optera wrote:

Jap2.0 wrote: Technically (I think) 3 satellites are required to calculate latitude and longitude and 4 are required to calculate height. Since Factorio doesn't have height, we could assume 3 would work. I can't verify the 12 figure, but that could be interesting as Factorio is (I believe) a 2,000,000 by 2,000,000 meter flat planet. However, most players don't go that far out.

Yeah factorio is a flat earthers dream. To bad for them such a construct can't exist and everything with mass will eventually accumulate into spherical shapes.

I hope upcoming versions will have worlds wrap around like proper sphere projections.
It would make for some interesting world spanning rail networks.

If they make it so that if you go off one side you come back on the other, that would be 2 million train tracks, or 500k iron, 1m million steel, and 1m million stone (5.5million iron + 1 million stone).

I guess that may actually be feasible.

I apologize in advance for further derailing this topic.

Jap2.0 wrote: If they make it so that if you go off one side you come back on the other, that would be 2 million train tracks, or 500k iron, 1m million steel, and 1m million stone (5.5million iron + 1 million stone).

I guess that may actually be feasible.

These numbers won't scare anyone working with a megabase.
Since tracks cover 2x2, shouldn't that be 1M tracks for single track?

Optera wrote:I apologize in advance for further derailing this topic.

Jap2.0 wrote: If they make it so that if you go off one side you come back on the other, that would be 2 million train tracks, or 500k iron, 1m million steel, and 1m million stone (5.5million iron + 1 million stone).

I guess that may actually be feasible.

These numbers won't scare anyone working with a megabase.
Since tracks cover 2x2, shouldn't that be 1M tracks for single track?

Yep, sorry, I was thinking it was 2 million each way, it's 1 million each way.