Artillery Targeting Remote "Area Resize" / "Patterns"

[ishar]

Playing with the new artillery wagon / targeting remote (which is awesome, by the way) and it occurred to me that it would be consistent if we could increase/decrease the target area similar to how we do with concrete, brick, and landfill. I.e. in effect laying down a field (or pattern) of fire or painting an area for indiscriminate shelling.

The utility is probably obvious, but these main ones occur to me:

• Expediting base destruction; i.e. don't have to target every single worm individually, while maintaining current balance.
• Hitting attack waves with artillery; i.e. far easier (though not guaranteed) to catch a fast moving targets when shelling an area.
• Forest removal.
• It'd be seriously cool to see a dozen or so shells land near-simultaneously.

[jraven]

Second this. Especially like OP's idea above for using keypad plus/minus like concrete areas for a bigger/smaller target area. Wanting a larger area having more targets and less clicking. Maybe/alternatively hold shift or control key and then drag left mouse to spam targets down without all the repeat clicking.

[FactorioParadox]

What would be the advantage of this over simply having them hit all biter stuff in a certain radius from the target (which would be big enough to cover an entire biter colony)?

[ishar]

The differences that I see:

• It would preserve the ability to do precise strikes; e.g. fire a single (targeted) artillery shell.
• It would allow for targeting non enemies (e.g. leading biter attack waves, trees, whatever, not just spawners/worms).
• It preserves balance; e.g. precision targeting each worm/spawner would be much more efficient than shelling a grid, but shelling a grid would be fewer clicks.
• The player remains in control and targeting remains distinct from just increasing the automatic attack range.