[2.0.23] biters not attacking artillery wagon

[ForestFireJoe]

WHEN I use an artillery wagon on auto-fire (manual fire ???? )
THEN a biter attack is summoned
AND the biters do not consider the artillery wagon a target

i expect:

the biters should attack the artillery wagon with their usual frenzy reserved for artillery turrets.


BACKGROUND:

viewtopic.php?f=11&t=102018&p=565676&hi ... on#p565676

this has been an issue since 1.x , and the issue has survived 2.0 updates until now. i've got you a nice save ready, just load it , move to Nauvis, and watch for the artillery fire and alerts.

i've loaded this save three times and each time they just charge the location and then loiter around it. you'll even see them destroy adjacent rails, and stand next to the wagon.

[ForestFireJoe]

darn it, my save is too large. i think this will be easy to reproduce and i'll add an image at least.

[ForestFireJoe]

see attached.
1) shot fired
2) attack incoming
3) attack finds no target

[Loewchen]

See 3638 on how to provide the save.

[ForestFireJoe]

i created a scenario with editor, and attached it.

[boskid]

Thanks for the report. I have to classify this as minor issue.

Problem is that biters usually want to attack military targets while artillery wagons are not marked as military targets. If they would be, trains with artillery wagons would aggro biters whenever they would ride next to them, possibly forcing biters to also destroy rails. When i asked about making artillery wagons to be military targets a decision was made that we wont do that because the consequence of biters starting to attack moving trains would in many cases lead to infrastructure being destroyed (if a spitter puts an acid puddle on a rail where a train was, the rail will get destroyed). By considering pros and cons of this change, we will keep artillery wagons as non military targets which means this behavior will stay in game.