What good are explosive cannon shells?

[Hurkyl]

My experience with the tank is:

• The main cannon -- with regular cannon shells -- is really good at shooting down nests. Good at sniping worms too if you aren't using poison capsules.
• The flamethrower is really good at cleaning up swarms of biters/spitters

When I've tried them out, explosive cannon shells were terrible at attacking enemy structures -- even with closely packed nests it seemed much better to shoot them one by one with regular shells.

And while it seemed good for enemy groups, the flamethrower is already amazing at that, except in one specific use case: the range is too short to easily deal with that group of spitters chasing you.

But with how terrible the explosive shells at the main job of gunning down enemy structures, loading up the main cannon with explosive shells for cleaning up spitters seems like a terrible idea.

I suppose if you're willing to go through the trouble of manually switching out ammo in the middle of a fight they're useful for that niche, but otherwise...?

[nikimilky]

I remember when I asked this someone told me its only good use is to destroy other people's bases in multiplayer.

I only make it as an ingredient for the artillery shells in my playthrough

[vemusa]

This is a historical problem. To understand it, you first need to know how things used to be in Factorio 1.1
In Factorio 1.1 :

• Regular cannon shell only deals 200 physical and 100 explosion damage, and only has 300 piercing power.
• Uranium cannon shell only deals 400 physical and 200 explosion damage, and only has 600 piercing power.
• Spawner always has 350 health regardless of evolution factor.
• Medium, big, and behemoth worm only has 400 , 750 , and 750 health, respectively.
• Explosive cannon shell and it's uranium variant were the same as they are now in 2.0
• As a consequence, explosive shell was always better than regular shell in 1.1

And then Factorio 2.0 comes with some balance changes:

• Regular cannon shell now deals 1000 physical and 100 explosion damage, and has 1000 piercing power.
• Uranium cannon shell now deals 2000 physical and 200 explosion damage, and has 2200 piercing power.
• Spawner's health now scales with evolution factor, up to 3500 at max evolution.
• Medium, big, and behemoth worm now has 500 , 1500 , and 3000 health, respectively.
• Explosive cannon shell and it's uranium variant aren't changed.
• As a consequence, explosive shell and it's uranium variant are now much weaker against spawners and worms.

That's where your question comes from.
Now to awnser your question, I think the only good use of explosive shell is when you research physical projectile damage to the point that it's low damage is no longer a problem.