Factorio Forums

A general question on turrets/laser and their targets. Are they smart enough to not fire on the nearest target, if there are several around? Let say you have a laser, a gun turret with standard ammo and then a pack of small biter and a large one. Ideally the turret with yellow ammo should fire on small biter, because it can take them off rather easily and won't do anything on the large biter. For the laser, that a bit more subtle, let say that killing a small biter is an overkill with a laser and it would fare well against a large biter.

So? Nearest firing upon or some smart for our defenses?

Your questions are answered here viewtopic.php?f=16&t=15999 Target prioritising of turrets
I think this is also interesting for you: viewtopic.php?f=16&t=15999&start=10#p130748

I have read the 3 pages. To sum up: no targeting priority done. Closest enemy gets attacked. That's bad.

Porter65 wrote:I have read the 3 pages. To sum up: no targeting priority done. Closest enemy gets attacked. That's bad.

Technically, that is a priority. Hi, I'm Mr. Picker, first name Nit.

Porter65 wrote:I have read the 3 pages. To sum up: no targeting priority done. Closest enemy gets attacked. That's bad.

Not really. Efficiency is key, and there's really only one type of turret up usually. Maybe it'd make sense modding wise if multiple turret types became popular...but best to keep things simple to hold down on lag.

They do worry about overkill though at least. Don't have to worry about multiple laser shots getting wasted, which is nice.

An optimal algorithm would take a lot of CPU if there are lots of biters and turrets. The optimal would be to calculate the order biters should be taken care of to minimize their threat, the threat being the capacity of the biter to harm structures. For every tick, you'd have to :
- get all biters on range
- calculate the time it would take each of them to get to the point where they can damage buildings
- calculate the damage each of them would do if let get in that position
- calculate if the turrets in range have the possibility to kill all biters in range before they can damage buildings
=> If it's the case, shoot them from earliest threat to latest
=> If it's not the case, sort the biters in the order that would make them able to do the least damage depending on the time they'd have to make damage before they'd get killed and their DPS.

This vs actual :
- detect one
- kill it

The defense in factorio is a classical rock-scissors-paper situation. Try to combine the advantages of lasers (firepower, but "slow") an gun turrets (rapid firing, weak above small/medium biters). Just put the gun turrets some tiles in front of your lasers (watch for the range as it differs, think it's17&25). The ideal situation would be that the fast shirmisher (small, maybe Medium ones) get shot down before the Big ones get in range of the Gun turrets. This way you relief the lasers that take out the big ones better since most of their firepower get's concentrated on them. Try tofigure out how many of both towers you Need as the time gap beteten shooting down the one or other is small.

I just want "lowest HP" setting, instead of first seen, target target locked.

kaZ wrote:The defense in factorio is a classical rock-scissors-paper situation. Try to combine the advantages of lasers (firepower, but "slow") an gun turrets (rapid firing, weak above small/medium biters). Just put the gun turrets some tiles in front of your lasers (watch for the range as it differs, think it's17&25). The ideal situation would be that the fast shirmisher (small, maybe Medium ones) get shot down before the Big ones get in range of the Gun turrets. This way you relief the lasers that take out the big ones better since most of their firepower get's concentrated on them. Try tofigure out how many of both towers you Need as the time gap beteten shooting down the one or other is small.

tried this before, its great for Bitters, but sadly its only average on Spitters.