Factorio Forums

TL;DR

Give asteroids variable health, within a certain maximum and minimum value.

What?

I don't know if it's feasible, but asteroids spawning with a non-fixed health value within a certain range of their current fixed health value would be nice. eg: Instead of all spawning with 5000 health, they might have a random amount somewhere between, say.... 4500 and 5500. Or maybe a narrower margin than that.

Why?

Currently, especially for railguns and rocket turrets that do a large amount of fixed damage, damage research has a certain frustrating property. Namely that explosive damage upgrades between Stronger Explosives 7 and Stronger Explosives 12 do not improve your ability to get through asteroid fields, with Stronger Explosives 12 finally taking the amount of rockets needed from 3 to 2. This creates 'break points' of lopsided value in the infinite researches. If asteroids had a variable health value, the incremental upgrades could improve the 'percentage of asteroids you destroy in 2 hits instead of 3', instead of waiting until Stronger Explosives 12 to achieve a sudden better clear rate of asteroids.

This is only true for the normal Rocket, which deals all of its damage in a single "Lump" to the targeted Asteroid. Multiple rockets are launched per Asteroid to ensure it is "overkilled".

Even though the advertised Damage is lower, I have experimentally found Explosive Rockets to be more effective when travelling at high speeds through Dense Asteroid fields. The Splash Damage effect works great for cleaning-up Medium/Small asteroids; reducing the amount of Gun or Laser turrets that you need. In turn, this allows for more dense packing of the Rocket Turrets - increasing the amount of Damage that can be dealt overall. If the Asteroids are too dense, then the Turrets will get overwhelmed regardless.

Interesting idea though! I think this could be implemented (to test out the Gameplay changes) in a Mod by adding "clones" of each Asteroid's Definition, with the Health values and Spawn Rates modified slightly for each copy.

eugenekay wrote: Sun May 18, 2025 3:44 pm This is only true for the normal Rocket, which deals all of its damage in a single "Lump" to the targeted Asteroid. Multiple rockets are launched per Asteroid to ensure it is "overkilled".

Even though the advertised Damage is lower, I have experimentally found Explosive Rockets to be more effective when travelling at high speeds through Dense Asteroid fields. The Splash Damage effect works great for cleaning-up Medium/Small asteroids; reducing the amount of Gun or Laser turrets that you need. In turn, this allows for more dense packing of the Rocket Turrets - increasing the amount of Damage that can be dealt overall. If the Asteroids are too dense, then the Turrets will get overwhelmed regardless.

Interesting idea though! I think this could be implemented (to test out the Gameplay changes) in a Mod by adding "clones" of each Asteroid's Definition, with the Health values and Spawn Rates modified slightly for each copy.

In the long term this 'issue' with research and breakpoints does become somewhat negligible with the alternative methods of dealing with asteroids, as with explosive rockets, I agree! The context for these thoughts was during a run for Express Delivery, when I looked at the upgrades and had to just write them off altogether for being too much of a time sink. Even though I had some time spare to research things, it wasn't enough time to make that path worthwhile. It was a shame, so that's what got me thinking about it, specifically with an eye to the 'win condition'. Anything beyond that, it's obviously not that relevant for.

Explosive rockets actually have the same issue though with a slightly smoother curve. The AoE damage is fixed so for instance Stronger Explosives 23 reduces the hits needed to kill normal bigs from 3 to 2, which is also a huge performance cliff for Promethium haulers.