Artillery = more trouble than worth in the lond run?

[gienekman]

After using artillery for quite some time, i think it does more damage than good for a very simple reason:
Automatic attack = half the manual attack.

This does not seem like a big deal at first, but artillery seems to generate terraing in its maximum, manual range.
What this means, is that with each increase of range research, you have more and more unsecured land, slowing the game down.

So you are stuck bombing things manually...
Don't get me wrong, it's fun for a bit, but does get boring and it's against the very idea of automation.

[Qosmius]

When you are polluting alot in the end game the artylleri is very useful to automatically get rid of the nests inside your pollution area without having to manually destroy the nests.

The artylleri also removes biter expansion. If you manually destroy the nests they will rebuild after some time. If you have a large area to cover you will spend all your time 24/7 to remove nests or they rebuild. Artylleri does this for you.

[AlexMBrennan]

What this means, is that with each increase of range research, you have more and more unsecured land, slowing the game down.

Is it really "unsecured land" if your sentry turrets kill all the biters in that zone?

But yes, if you force the game to generate a large number of chunks then that will impact performance.

However, keep in mind that the game already has to generate any chunk touched by pollution so if you do the sensible thing and cover your pollution cloud with artillery then no additional chunks need to be generated. No one is forcing you to keep researching artillery range upgrades if you don't need artillery range upgrades.

So you are stuck bombing things manually...

What? Why? How does this follow from the above?

[Shurenai]

I fail to see how you're 'stuck bombing things manually'? Just make sure the range of your artillery in automatic mode exceeds the edge of your polution, and let it fire automatically. Can it fire further? Yes- Does it need to? Absolutely not.

So automate it. Manual firing is for when you want a specific portion of land clear Now; Not later.

Even if it only does half the damage, if it's properly automated, that doesn't even matter- Just place to artillery guns instead of one and go do other things.

To make a comparison to another aspect of the game..A yellow belt transfers 15 items per second down wind. But you can just pick up all the contents of a chest and move it to the other end yourself. You, the player, can move MUCH more than 15 items per second. So, why don't you do that instead of belting it? Because automation is the game. Yes, You -can- do that, But, It takes your attention from other places that need it. If you're constantly running items back and forth instead of expanding, and improving, you're falling way behind on things that need doing.

And so it is with artillery. You don't need to fire at that ridiculous maximum manual range. You don't need to do 100% damage with it. Because you can automate a dozen of them and let it do all the work for you while you're off tinkering with your base. It's the same reason we use turrets to automate defense, even though our own weapons do more damage- If we're always defending, we're never progressing.

[Jupiter3927]

Artillery is great.
Add a couple range upgrades and have a dedicated artillery train visiting your old heavily defended outposts and you're expanding pretty fast with no effort.
Keep an artillery cannon on the corners of your territory and you get a really cool 'no man's land' between you and your neighbors where you can freely expand your factory to do whatever you want.

It's much less effort than running around nuking all the biters.
Nuclear artillery would be pretty cool though...

[SeaBee]

I like using the artillery train to patrol the borders of my factory. Just setup several stops for the train to visit and an ammunition depot to keep it supplied. Makes expansion a lot easier, when you need more space or resources.

[Fumo Bnnuy n Frends]

Tbh whatever you spent on artillery in terms of production and power you can go into making uranium enrichment plants and just getting a crap ton of bright green rocks and making a ton of atomic bombs and missles and just go in tank destroying them systematically on one side one at a time and building walls with lazer turrets to keep them at bay until you can expand much more outwards.

[gienekman]

Originally posted by Senpai-kun:

Why not just stop researching range upgrades, then?

Default auto attack range is not nearly enough, that's why.

[Premu]

For expansion I personally prefer to bring out either my tank or go on foot and nuke those nests. Although some additionally fire support is helpful some times.

Artillery has another usefuly effect, though - it creates a large part of no-mans-land. You won't run directly into large groups of biters after leaving your base. No behemoth worms which are able to outreach your turrets will appear close to your walls either. Drones operating slightly outside of your walls (for example if they take a shortcut outside of your base) are much safer, too.