Add a maximum range to ranged biter attacks and no homing

[factoriouzr]

Add a maximum range to ranged biter attacks. This becomes really obvious with mods like bob's mods that adds other types of attacks to biters and robots with increased speed. Often times a biter would attack a construction or logistics bot at range but because the bot is so fast, it would get a good distance away from the biter that attacked it and into my base and the bullet from the biter would still follow and hit the robot. With the area of affect damage added by the mod, my factories, belts and inserters or whatever is around the robot get destroyed all the time.

This may not be noticeable in the base game due to limits in robot speed and no area of affect damage from biters, but I think this is an issue in the base game, where projectiles home in on whatever they are attacking and have unlimited range.

I suggest:
1) projectiles of all types should have a maximum range (in distance not time), after which they vanish
2) projectiles should not home in on whatever they are attacking. Ie if you are really fast or the robots are really fast. If you have enough time to dodge the attack by side stepping for example, the projectile should not hit you

[Deadly-Bagel]

The rocket has a max range, might be worth checking with Bob to see if he can configure a max range on the projectile. Not sure if he can set it to a 'skillshot' instead of a targeted attack but again worth checking.

[ssilk]

1) Projectiles have already a maximum range of 1000 tiles. It's a hard limit to keep the number of "bullets in the air" controllable. It makes no sense to make that shorter, cause that would disable the ability to have such long range weapons (AFAIK some mods use such long ranges).


2) The homing is ... well, it depends on what you want to achieve. If you aim to a fixed position (tile on ground), the target doesn't shift. Of course. But if you aim to an entity and the entity moves, then it does. Ergo if you don't want to have homing bullets you need to target to a position.

What I want to say is: It's not an issue per se, it's how modders and the vanilla game uses the aiming. It should not be changed by default, it makes sense.

IMHO my ideas around the whole subject:
- Laser turrets should work like https://mods.factorio.com/mods/Klonan/L ... am_Turrets - the "curving laser beams" are ridiculous.
- Gun turrets are fast enough to keep it as it is.
- Spitters: Well. That is the issue. That is the only reason to change it. But only for them and not in general.

So I suggest a new way of targeting for that case: A weapon mode, where you aim onto an entity, but the game mechanics targets then to a position. That position is calculated by the speed and direction of that entity at the moment when you fire (plus distance to that entity multiplied by bullet-speed. Perhaps also including the own speed, so that forward bullets are faster, than backwards).
So if the entity doesn't change direction or speed it will be hit. If it changes, then not, or not so hard if the weapon has a splatter radius or other effects when hit.

And when I'm on this: It would be also cool, if the bullets can define also different effect, depending on what is hit. For example: If you hit the targeted entity: well, the defined damage is made. If you hit the ground, nothing special happens. If you hit a tree, the tree explodes and gives fire-effect to the splatters. Etc.

[bobingabout]

In theory, you could fix spitter (and worm) projectile attacks by changing their projectile target type from entity to position. Though, I'm not sure how well this works, it seems to work okay on the tank with my artillery type weapons (Which is basically a capsule gun), but when I tried to do it with the plasma cannon in my vehicle equipment, the plasma projectiles still appear to be homing. I'll have to take a look at that again.

Anyway, assuming it works, you could change the spit projectile to position targeting, but then have to change the damage time from entity hit, to area. Not much of a problem for my newer spit projectiles, because they all have a small Area effect anyway, but it does cause "Friendly fire" scenarios, where your aliens attack these spitters.

[factoriouzr]

Thanks for the reply guys. I'm also thinking that leaving it the way it is but just reduce the distance of the projectiles significantly would make it a lot better if the distance is chosen carefully.

Also bob, in your mods, the player can easily be killed in one shot if not fully upgraded by higher tier worms even when they are out of range, if a construction or other bot flies near the player and it was shot at. This is very annoying as it looks like the player is safe, it looks like the bots are out of range of the worms/spitters then a second or fraction of a second later, boom game over screen. This can be be improved by increasing the bullet speed and decreasing the distance. Though again, the values have to be chosen wisely. Other options are to reduce the area of effect damage, though that would make the biters easier (and they are already way too easy in the base game).

[Deadly-Bagel]

If it's AoE damage it should probably be targeting a point anyway rather than tracking. Can balance it by increasing projectile speed.