[MOD 0.18] Orbital Ion Cannon 1.8.2

[timelordStarlord]

just installed the mod along with the Satellite Uplink Station mod and now i'm getting this error when i try to load my saved game. whats going on?

Which Factorio version are you using? I'm guessing you need to update to 0.12.33.

ah, i seem to be stuck on version 0.12.3 and it cant find updates

[traiben]

Faced with such a problem, I try to shoot does not work and writes a friendly UNIT too close to the attack is canceled

[Supercheese]

Faced with such a problem, I try to shoot does not work and writes a friendly UNIT too close to the attack is canceled

You'll want to go into config.lua and disable the Proximity Check to fix this -- but in the next update, this will be disabled by default, so it should no longer be a problem.

In related news, it seems Long Reach is a very popular mod!

[traiben]

Faced with such a problem, I try to shoot does not work and writes a friendly UNIT too close to the attack is canceled

You'll want to go into config.lua and disable the Proximity Check to fix this -- but in the next update, this will be disabled by default, so it should no longer be a problem.

In related news, it seems Long Reach is a very popular mod!

thanks for the help

[Supercheese]

Ok, new version up!

Version 1.2.0
----------------

• Added an Auto-Targeting Station, a radar-type entity that periodically scans for enemy spawners, and automatically fires an ion cannon if it detects one.
• Reduced the overlap the klaxon sound can have when firing multiple ion cannons in succession.
• Extended the remote interface to allow firing an ion cannon. See the readme for more modding details.
• Changed the default config.lua settings:
  • Damage increased, heatup time increased, cooldown increased, proximity check disabled, voice style reverted to classic C&C.
  • These are of course just changes to the defaults, you can change them yourself at any time.
• Increased the cost of the ion cannon recipe.
• The target location for all ion cannons is now shown on the map (when you press M). This is helpful to identify which spawner an Auto-Targeting Station is firing at -- or to detect enemy target locations in PvP!

Automate enemy eradication:

Auto-Targeting Stations scan for biter nests...

AutoTarget1.jpg (639.58 KiB) Viewed 8716 times

...and automatically designate them as ion cannon targets

AutoTarget2.jpg (269.55 KiB) Viewed 8716 times

Grab it from the first post and check it out!

[mawnicker]

The auto-target capability is a great addition. It's a perfect fit for the mod and for Factorio in general. More automation is always good. It makes the Ion Cannon less of a toy. Now it's a legitimate base defense strategy. Especially for temporary mining outposts. Also, it gives you an incentive to build a lot more Ion Cannons. Previously it was sort of pointless to have more than ~5 or so. The extra cost for the recipe seems appropriate too. Solid mod design.

My game starts to lag from all the alien artifacts on the ground. Could the Ion Cannon perhaps vaporize items on impact? You could just do a search for "item-entity" and call destroy() after the ion cannon does damage. That should work with the various Alien Artifact mods. Maybe this should only happen when the Ion Cannon is automatically fired. Honestly I'd be fine if it just always destroyed items. I get really tired of picking them up. I love the Ion Cannon as a fire and forget base clearing tool.

[Supercheese]

Glad you like it!

My game starts to lag from all the alien artifacts on the ground. Could the Ion Cannon perhaps vaporize items on impact? You could just do a search for "item-entity" and call destroy() after the ion cannon does damage. That should work with the various Alien Artifact mods. Maybe this should only happen when the Ion Cannon is automatically fired. Honestly I'd be fine if it just always destroyed items. I get really tired of picking them up. I love the Ion Cannon as a fire and forget base clearing tool.

Perhaps you should invest in an item-picker-upper mod like: viewtopic.php?f=93&t=23074 or viewtopic.php?f=97&t=19411 or viewtopic.php?f=93&t=5410

...or just disable the loot-dropping in the first place. Bob's mods et al. that add the loot drops should have a configuration option to disable it.

[bNarFProfCrazy]

Nice addition.

How far is the scanner range for the new auto targetter?
Same as a normal radar station?
Is that configurable too?

[Supercheese]

Nice addition.

How far is the scanner range for the new auto targetter?
Same as a normal radar station?
Is that configurable too?

Yes, auto-targeting range is in config.lua.

[Qon]

First: Thank you!

I can live with the longer cooldown, I do have a lot of Ion cannons up anyways.

Though the recipe still doesn't use satellites. I guess you don't like that idea. I'm curious to know why. But since you haven't commented on this suggestion I guess you aren't intrested in explaining either?
With 2 satellites you need 200 solar panels instead of 100 since they take 100 panels each, but I think that is fair and is what I use.

I don't see the point of longer heatup. Just makes it more annoying to vaporize the natives. Just my opinon. Thanks for making it a config option

The auto-targeter is fantastic if you crank up the range to something sensible
But 2k range (had to try it) is really bad for performance though. I checked the API and saw that you can not detect which chunk was updated at the event so this isn't really your fault. Hope they make a better API for 0.13.
Since the targeter only targets spawners it has to have long range enough to clear all bases within your pollution cloud to be useful. And with 200 range it is basically no better than a victory pole and you still depend on turrets since bases further than 200 tiles away will be within your pollution cloud and will send armies at you. I think 1k range for spawner targeting and 500 for the natives themselves is necessary. If natives are targeted then you could use Ion cannons instead of turrets as base defence even if you don't kill all spawners within pollution.

So this is a great start. Is native targeting planned for future updates?

[Sedar]

Ok, new version up!

Version 1.2.0

Wow, great update. Thank you wery much!

[Qon]

...and automatically designate them as ion cannon targets

AutoTarget2.jpg

I can't see Ion cannon targets on the map. And just going by the coordinates printed alone isn't that easy if you want to know where it fires.

[Nickname34]

EDIT: oops, is technology

[Qon]

dood, not working with only bobwarfare

dood, your bug report is not working.

What is "not working"?
How is it not working?
Any error messages?
Factorio version, OIC version, bobs version?

Edit:

EDIT: oops, is technology

Lol ok q:

[Qon]

I found a funny bug:
For some reason my Ion cannons recharge in a few seconds. I haven't changed the time, it's still 300 seconds. But It counts like 25 seconds/second. I even sped up my fire rate so that I can fire one Ion cannon every 5 ticks instead of 10 and when I fire continously the first one will recharge when I fire #125 or something. So I can't even fire all my cannons because they recharge faster than I can shoot them.

I guess I can stop launching one Ion cannon every game-minute now

[Supercheese]

I found a funny bug:
For some reason my Ion cannons recharge in a few seconds. I haven't changed the time, it's still 300 seconds. But It counts like 25 seconds/second. I even sped up my fire rate so that I can fire one Ion cannon every 5 ticks instead of 10 and when I fire continously the first one will recharge when I fire #125 or something. So I can't even fire all my cannons because they recharge faster than I can shoot them.

I guess I can stop launching one Ion cannon every game-minute now

Sounds like you edited something in control.lua that caused the weird behavior.

[mawnicker]

Perhaps you should invest in an item-picker-upper mod

I actually have two. I use Natural Evolution which has a simple 50x50 AEO item-picker-upper. I also have a mod to mark items for deconstruction. Neither really works with auto-target since the area is so big. Also, if I build something to collect artifacts, then the aliens just wouldn't expand there. At least not until it was destroyed. I don't want to disable the drops because I have areas setup to collect them. Even if I did it wouldn't solve the problem. The ordinary Alien Artifacts from spawners would accumulate and cause lag if I used the Ion Cannon as automated defense in a rarely visited region of the map. I can make this change myself if you point me towards the right place in the code. Ideally there's a code-path that executes when the Ion Cannon is fired and has the x/y location in scope.

[Qon]

Sounds like you edited something in control.lua that caused the weird behavior.

I didn't.

Edit:
Think I found your bug after a few seconds of checking your code.

Code: Select all

script.on_event(defines.events.on_rocket_launched, function(event)
	local force = event.rocket.force
	if event.rocket.get_item_count("orbital-ion-cannon") > 0 then
		table.insert(global.forces_ion_cannon_table[force.name], {ionCannonCooldownSeconds, 0})
		global.IonCannonLaunched = true
		Event.register(defines.events.on_tick, process_tick)

You add the process on tick handler every time a rocket is launched. So if I launch 25 rockets (that is, play for 25 minutes) then I get 25 times faster cooldowns.

[DevilXD]

I think that you can't have this line:

Code: Select all

Event.register(defines.events.on_tick, process_tick)

... in the on_rocked_launched event, because each time I launch a new Ion Cannon, the cooldown timer ticks faster, because the event registers multiple times.
After launching the second Ion cannon, it was ticking 2x faster, after the third - 3x faster and so on...

EDIT: Looks like user Qon was faster

EDIT2: After studying your code and the event part of Factorio Standard Library, as a super-simple and perfectly working solution I did this - I've added this line before the Event.register:

Code: Select all

Event.remove(defines.events.on_tick, process_tick)

Everything now works like a charm

[Malryn]

Nice update!

I was worried the Radar Satellites was going to incompatible with this change but it works like a champ.

One recommendation for there to be a way to prevent the targeting radars not to shoot at the same target between selecting a target to the actual firing. I would think that would be hard to do programmatically. Best would be jut dont make redundant radars so close to each other.