Artillery needs to be moved back to Nauvis

[Jem_Jmd3au1]

Hello, long-time Factorio player here.

There is one pretty big balance problem with Nauvis in Space Age - The starting planet, with first 6 science packs available, gives the player no options to defend against Behemoth worms, or even to push into heavily infested areas once the evolution goes over 90%. In the past, the only solution for surviving extreme biter settings was to rush Artillery, but now there are no tools for neither defense, nor offense. After multiple failed attempts I can say that playing with extreme biter settings (either custom, or with available presets (Deathworld Marathon)) is now close to impossible.

My suggestion is that Artillery should return under yellow science to address this issue.

Clarification: Everyone enjoys this game for something else. To me, the most fun part is combat. Without Space Age, it was possible to go really nuts with enemy settings. But now, even though we have a lot of new and powerful toys, they are all locked behind late game and the combat possibilities actually went down compared to vanilla.

That is all, thanks for reading!

[aka13]

On my first playthrough, I more or less completely abandoned nauvis. I stuck all my research for all sciences on vulcanus, and only had nauvis produce uranium. I think that could be a viable strategy for such punishing enemy settings as well. You can manufacture the full science set on vulcanus and don't really need uranium as an energy import. I only really imported uranium as fuel for gleba and later to kickstart Aquilo.

Perhaps you could try such a strategy, although I myself am not fond of the removal of artillery either.

[Qon]

"My playstyle in Space Age is to never leave nauvis and never use any of the new content that SA provides. Please make sure to balance this expansion around us players that refuse to engage with the new content but have the expansion activated anyways. Btw I'm very very good at Factorio so I play at high difficulty but I'm completely unable to adjust to any changes. If I fail the game is impossible and it can't be my fault that I'm trying to force a bad playstyle"

(I'm making a point, strawman is on purpose and not actually an attack on you)

Dude, just do a quick trip to the artillery planet and bring back an artillery piece before you die. Or if nauvis is too hard for you play on the easy planets that don't have expansions until you get artillery.

[Jem_Jmd3au1]

"My playstyle in Space Age is to never leave nauvis and never use any of the new content that SA provides. Please make sure to balance this expansion around us players that refuse to engage with the new content but have the expansion activated anyways. Btw I'm very very good at Factorio so I play at high difficulty but I'm completely unable to adjust to any changes. If I fail the game is impossible and it can't be my fault that I'm trying to force a bad playstyle"

If your main goal in game is combat, Nauvis is your only option (sorry, Pentapods). And right now, extreme combat that was previously possible, was made pretty much impossible because you hit a wall and there is no way around it. "Rushing" Artillery is out of question, not only because it's on another planet, but also because it costs 4k science now. And my point is that game introduces a mechanic (Behemoths) that have no counterplay. It is impossible to push into them, as well as defend against them without Artillery.

You have 2 options right now:
- Tune it down, but then it becomes too trivial once you unlock your toys. And not as enjoyable, since combat is the whole point.
- Disable Space Age, but then you lose Rocket turrets and Tesla turrets. And, well, the rest of the content (which, of course, I intend to engage with. Just later and on my own terms).

Lastly, I don't feel like moving Artillery to Nauvis is such a drastic change that would destroy the balance of the game. It has zero effect on Vulcanus, Fulgora and Aquillo content. Haven't tried it against Pentapods, but you can start there with Arty researched even now, if you go to Vulcanus first.

[Jem_Jmd3au1]

On my first playthrough, I more or less completely abandoned nauvis.

Perhaps, but there is nothing to shoot at on other planets. Well, at least nothing that would compare to biters. And you still need a functional base down threre, but in all my attepmts it got overrun and destroyed.

[Qon]

"My playstyle in Space Age is to never leave nauvis and never use any of the new content that SA provides. Please make sure to balance this expansion around us players that refuse to engage with the new content but have the expansion activated anyways. Btw I'm very very good at Factorio so I play at high difficulty but I'm completely unable to adjust to any changes. If I fail the game is impossible and it can't be my fault that I'm trying to force a bad playstyle"

"Rushing" Artillery is out of question, not only because it's on another planet, but also because it costs 4k science now.

So you are just repeating what I said as parody now? Sending rockets was made 20x cheaper or something and Rocket Control Units were purged to make the recipe much simpler. It's supposed to be both cheap and easy to reach other planets in the maybe early mid-game now.

Artillery research required 2k of science before, if you can make 2k you can make 4k packs. You get free resources and fast foundries on Vulcanus the artillery planet anyways so that should make up for the little bump in packs required. If you don't know how to play the game maybe don't play on a difficulty that is too hard for you. Start out on easy while you are new to the game and don't complain that hard mode is hard.

And my point is that game introduces a mechanic (Behemoths) that have no counterplay. It is impossible to push into them, as well as defend against them without Artillery.

Is this a joke? Have you never even tried mines, capsules and rocket launchers? You don't even need logistic or productivity science packs to fight deathworld behemoth bitters if you know how to play the game. Git gud.

[SirSmuggler]

I've never played deathworld or similar, in fact I tend to dial the biters down a bit from default settings, so I don't know if this is helpfull at all, how ever...
I just realized the good old Tank now has an equipmnetgrid! That might help with combating the big baddies?

[aka13]

On my first playthrough, I more or less completely abandoned nauvis.

Perhaps, but there is nothing to shoot at on other planets. Well, at least nothing that would compare to biters. And you still need a functional base down threre, but in all my attepmts it got overrun and destroyed.

Artillery is very important on Gleba as well. And as said, you only need a functional base long enough to launch a couple of rockets for the platform. As long as you don't overtweak ressource gen, and tech multipliers, it should be totally doable. You also shouldve notices that pollution is less punishing now.

[Jem_Jmd3au1]

Is this a joke? Have you never even tried mines, capsules and rocket launchers? You don't even need logistic or productivity science packs to fight deathworld behemoth bitters if you know how to play the game. Git gud.

So I should use Land mines to counter Behemoth worms spitting on my walls with 48 range while I'm off the planet. Got it.
You know, I feel like making another thread, this time asking devs to remove Artillery from the game. It's not needed anymore, because we have Land mines. Nukes? What for? Land mines FTW!

I would like to ask you to share your wisdom one more time if you don't mind, as you forgot to address my other point, and that is offense. You know, how to push into large biter nest full of Behemoth spitters, worms and stuff... oh, wait. No, no no, don't bother. I know the answer: Land mines! (and Git gud).

So you are just repeating what I said as parody now?

No, I was taking you quite seriously 2 replies back.

[Qon]

I would like to ask you to share your wisdom one more time if you don't mind, as you forgot to address my other point, and that is offense. You know, how to push into large biter nest full of Behemoth spitters, worms and stuff... oh, wait. No, no no, don't bother. I know the answer: Land mines! (and Git gud).

You got it! Bring many thousands, they are fairly cheap to produce. Move mouse vigorously and spam them. They distract the bitters and worms, but you can place 100 in the time it takes them to kill 10. Them attacking mines before they get armed and hidden is very good, they work like distractor capsules for you. And then the stun and AoE damage will also keep you safe. If you get good at the dance and occasional switch to slowdown capsules you can kind of run into a big behemoth nest and at times circle at the edge. Land mines kill worms and nest also. And with a rocket launcher you can chip down nest while the land mines is your crowd control.
But 2.0 changed nest HP so of course that might will slow you down a bit.

Is this a joke? Have you never even tried mines, capsules and rocket launchers? You don't even need logistic or productivity science packs to fight deathworld behemoth bitters if you know how to play the game. Git gud.

So I should use Land mines to counter Behemoth worms spitting on my walls with 48 range while I'm off the planet. Got it.
You know, I feel like making another thread, this time asking devs to remove Artillery from the game. It's not needed anymore, because we have Land mines. Nukes? What for? Land mines FTW!

Land mines are kind of a weapon that can hit behemoth worms, since roboports outrange the worms. But you need to completely overwhelm the worms with a lot of flying robots placing mines on top of the worms, with plenty of speed upgrades. Otherwise they just get shot down. Worms that aren't behemoths are way easier to deal with with this strategy.

But I'm not suggesting mines as a good way to outrange behemoth worms, that's what artillery (and I guess railgun) are for. Mines work if placed by the player though and when placed by robots as defense against behemoth biter attacks.

It's possible to manually manipulate the AI to delay the expansion groups from placing behemoth spitters close to your base, but that is not really a passive solution that works if you leave Nauvis unattended for a long time. But you can buy enough time to be able to get Artillery.

[EustaceCS]

Extreme settings are meaned to be extreme, no?
Default biters are less like floor wipes and more like real menace though. Which is... hella inconvenient. But also fun to resolve.

So I should use Land mines to counter Behemoth worms spitting on my walls with 48 range while I'm off the planet. Got it.

Jeep. My brain has farted. Missed "off the planet" part somehow.

[Alwego]

+1

[GTG3000]

Not sure how feasible it is on marathon, but a cloud of 50 destroyer bots zaps behemoths very quickly even before research locked behind Fulgora. Also, poison capsules are your friend.

Now, if you're willing to relocate to Fulgora for a bit, you could research the electricity damage up and make destroyers and personal discharge defence *quite* powerful. And I guess tesla weapons are nifty too.

If you can launch a rocket and leave Nauvis for a bit, setting up shop on Vulcanus or Fulgora would be pretty simple and would give you time to plan and prepare a return to Nauvis with bigger guns.

[r3xk3nnw4y]

On my first playthrough, I more or less completely abandoned nauvis. I stuck all my research for all sciences on vulcanus, and only had nauvis produce uranium. I think that could be a viable strategy for such punishing enemy settings as well. You can manufacture the full science set on vulcanus and don't really need uranium as an energy import. I only really imported uranium as fuel for gleba and later to kickstart Aquilo.

Perhaps you could try such a strategy, although I myself am not fond of the removal of artillery either.

A good solution would probably be to include a promuthium or similar level research that allows for synthesis of tungsten from steel and other things that can found on nauvis or better yet manufactured in space. Which will also allow for orbital bombardment, which sounds super cool for an endgame research. In addition it allows for an implicit post game side goal of reclaiming nauvis since you will now be able to make artillery supplies on world as well as orbitally drop artishells on the nests of need be

[CyberCider]

On my first playthrough, I more or less completely abandoned nauvis. I stuck all my research for all sciences on vulcanus, and only had nauvis produce uranium. I think that could be a viable strategy for such punishing enemy settings as well. You can manufacture the full science set on vulcanus and don't really need uranium as an energy import. I only really imported uranium as fuel for gleba and later to kickstart Aquilo.

Perhaps you could try such a strategy, although I myself am not fond of the removal of artillery either.

A good solution would probably be to include a promuthium or similar level research that allows for synthesis of tungsten from steel and other things that can found on nauvis or better yet manufactured in space. Which will also allow for orbital bombardment, which sounds super cool for an endgame research. In addition it allows for an implicit post game side goal of reclaiming nauvis since you will now be able to make artillery supplies on world as well as orbitally drop artishells on the nests of need be

I do really like the sound of orbital bombardment, perhaps I am still a stellaris player at heart. Perhaps there should be two modes of operation: Kinetic, and atomic ? I always was a fan of the M.I.R.V. mod by Klonan.

But synthesizing tungsten, an exotic resource, out of essentially thin air sounds like a lame idea. Especially when it’s not at all needed for the main idea to work. You’d just need to reload at Vulcanus every once in a while.

[mooklepticon]

Agree with OP. I want basic artillery on Nauvis. I am OK with researches being on Vulcanus. (the MOD Space Age Bullshit Fix does this, among other things.)

[mouzy]

I like it being a Vulcanus tech. I think it was kind of necessary to move some things off of Nauvis because Nauvis is basically the early game now - leaving Nauvis happens maybe 30-40% of the way into a space age run. However, some of the utility+prod tech in vanilla factorio is balanced around being extremely late game, basically at the same point where you would usually be able to win - it wouldn't make sense to have it available so early in space age.

This is particularly true for artillery - artillery basically solves Nauvis defense, once you have it set up you just never need to worry about it again at all. There's not really anywhere else for Nauvis defense to go after that, so having it available so early in the game would really remove the sense of progression there.

I also think part of the benefit of biters as a mechanic are that they put some pressure on you to encourage you to get out of your comfort zone and start setting up new tech. Like early on they push you to deal with things like military science and oil so you can get better weapons and outpace their evolution. Having some weaponry like artillery and spidertrons tied to space travel fits well with this imo - you're encouraged to get out of your comfort zone and try going to space because you need those weapons.

[Hares]

Agree with OP. I want basic artillery on Nauvis. I am OK with researches being on Vulcanus. (the MOD Space Age Bullshit Fix does this, among other things.)

Strong minus on that from me.
As mouzy posted, Artillery "solves" the biter problem.

I like it being a Vulcanus tech. I think it was kind of necessary to move some things off of Nauvis because Nauvis is basically the early game now - leaving Nauvis happens maybe 30-40% of the way into a space age run.

You are supposed to leave Nauvis and not sit there until Behemoth worms. You are supposed to go space in a modpack called Space Age. You are also probably supposed to leave Nauvis on bare blue science tech level, way before the artillery. And if you don't like/want this -- play on railworld preset (

which I find the most relaxing way to play Factorio in general and SA particularly

).

TL;DR:
Why do you even bother play Space Age anyway? To sit on Nauvis until 90%+ evolution?

[mooklepticon]

TL;DR:
Why do you even bother play Space Age anyway? To sit on Nauvis until 90%+ evolution?

Why do you even bother replying to forum posts if you're just gonna be a jerk about it? You're coming off really condescending here.

[Hares]

TL;DR:
Why do you even bother play Space Age anyway? To sit on Nauvis until 90%+ evolution?

Why do you even bother replying to forum posts if you're just gonna be a jerk about it? You're coming off really condescending here.

No, I'm just asking a direct question. What's the purpose of NOT restricting endgame tech behind the other planets?