Factorio Forums

Artillery wagons automatically scans (fires) only part of map within its range (level 7 +210%) IF character is located far away from it. Artillery resume firing to the rest enemies IF player comes closer to artillery wagons. I reproduced it with all mods disabled.

Leftmost image – initial state. Blue area – unexplored range to scan.
Center image – partially cleared range, an actual problem. I waited 15 minutes for it. Green area – cleared, Red area – missed part.
Rightmost image – fully cleared range while character is located near the train.
Save file is available on request.

Thanks for the report. The artillery won't generate chunks so those areas where not generated until you got closer to them and then it scanned and fired at them.

Why artillery cannot generate chunks?

coppercoil wrote: Sun Jun 30, 2019 10:42 am Why artillery cannot generate chunks?

Because it would be slow when you research a higher artillery range and every turret on your map suddenly starts exploring new chunks. It would also massively increase the savefile size.

Bilka wrote: Sun Jun 30, 2019 11:11 am Because it would be slow when you research a higher artillery range and every turret on your map suddenly starts exploring new chunks. It would also massively increase the savefile size.

Large artillery range becomes useless if remote chunks are unavailable (unexplored). Expensive artillery range research is made on purpose to cover larger areas. If artillery doesn’t clear its range – it doesn’t work as expected. Temporary slowdown and large save file sizes (and hundreds of thousands of science packs) is the price the player pays for large coverage. Sometimes I think about Artillery range 8 research (which is really expensive for my base), but why should I spend another 256000 of science if it will not work?
I want extra large areas to be cleared automatically, without my assistance. I have thought it’s a common task for artillery.

If the chunk isn't generated the biters don't physically exist and will never attack you so it just doesn't matter that the artillery isn't shooting the non-existent biter nests.

Rseding91 wrote: Sun Jun 30, 2019 12:44 pm If the chunk isn't generated the biters don't physically exist and will never attack you so it just doesn't matter that the artillery isn't shooting the non-existent biter nests.

It seems my use-case is slightly different. I use artillery to clear my way forward. I’m expanding into alien’s territory and building defense line along entire perimeter, so chunks will be definitely created (and biters too). Though it’s hard to build defense while nests are here, so I want artillery to clear area along the way (along the wall, not perpendicular). When area is clear, I go there and build next wall segment without disturbance, and then train moves to the wall tail to clear further area.
And suddenly there’re aliens within the range… Of course, artillery starts firing but I have some problems already.