Factorio Forums

TL;DR

When a gate is open, they should not get damaged by a rail gun shot.

What?

Currently, there is no good reason to use gates on space ships, especially when using rail guns. similar on the planets.
Maybe even partially opened gates could be missed by rail guns?

Why?

There is currently no good way to protect a railgun when it is not shooting, ran out of ammo or to protect it from asteroids besides just shooting them.
I assume this would be too overpowered, but maybe it works out.
This would provide the turrets with cover and would maybe make for another entry point into circuits as well as introduce players to cicruitry in combination with turrets, like how to detect when a turret is shooting, and so on.

To make that a bit eaiser, it might be necessary to add a new circuit option though:
This could potentially require a new circuit option, like Read Target (either a list of enemies / entities in range, or a simple true false).
This setting alone could probably also be seen as another suggestion entirely.

That's a really nice idea! A related issue is to make railguns stop hitting landmines / construction bots. I used them on Nauvis to out-range worms but I don't have anything to protect them in front.

I agree that entities which do not impede walking, driving, nor enemies should not be damaged by railguns.

+1

I thought I was doing something wrong when I tried to open my gates so they wouldn't be hit by the railgun. Apparently they get hit regardless.

It would be nice for very low and floating entities to not be hit by the projectile. This would include landmines, bots, and open walls.

+1
I'm surprised that railguns damage so many low objects, given they appear to fire parallel to a surface and and leave no scorch marks on the ground. Anything flush with the ground shouldn't really be damaged when fired in space. (When fired on a planet, if they damage low objects, it should only be in the distance between where the round drops low enough to graze low objects, and where it runs out of kinetic energy. This range would differ based on each planet's gravity, atmospheric density, and magnetic field strength.)

I've also run into a few times where an "Actively Targeting" circuit condition would be handy.

+1
Something lowered into the ground should not be damaged by something flying above ground, simply as that

+1