Artillery Train - autofire disable?

[mpderksen]

I take my artillery train to the end of the line. I target and lob off some very satisfying nest destruction. I go back to reload and start laying tracks in the other direction that little raids are coming from. Creeping along, and suddenly, all 4 wagons open up and unload before I can identify anything. I throw down some lasers for protection and it turns out fine. But why did it auto-fire? Is there a certain range that I entered? Concerning that I don't know if that entire nest is gone, or just aggravated. I guess Spidertron has to run down and check it out?

[knighttemplar1960]

Artillery trains will not fire when they are in motion. Minimum range for artillery is 32 tiles, automatic range is up to 224 tiles. Once the wagons come to a stop watch the barrels, if they start to move you are close enough to a nest or worm for the wagon to fire. If you aren't ready to fire move the train backwards until the barrels don't move once you come to a stop.

[The_Mell]

Artillery train auto-fires if there are bases or worms in its range (can be shown on map as turret range) and the train is in manual mode & stopped.

Therefore you can avoid firing by keeping train in automatic mode and move around your train network by commands like go to station or Ctrl-click on rails.

[Zhardoz]

i wish you could toggle auto fire on these aswell like roboport in power armor

[Owl]

i found that by having my train at certain spots and unload shells into a stationairy artillery car that car will fire at anything in range.

[mpderksen]

Originally posted by The_Mell:

Artillery train auto-fires if there are bases or worms in its range (can be shown on map as turret range) and the train is in manual mode & stopped.

Therefore you can avoid firing by keeping train in automatic mode and move around your train network by commands like go to station or Ctrl-click on rails.

Okay, this is very helpful. At one point I couldn't figure out why it wasn't firing, and turns out I wasn't driving in Manual. BUT! let's say I get it where I want it, and would like to fire a shot across an area as a mini radar? As soon as I go off Auto, it would start firing.

@knighttemplar1960 if automatic range is 224, what is the manual targeting range of that red circle? (yes, I could look it up in the Wiki, sorry :) )

[knighttemplar1960]

Without any space science researches completed max manual range, using a remote control, for artillery is 560 tiles.

There are a couple of different ways you can use artillery wagons to defend your base. One way is to have a "touring" artillery train. Set up rails inside the outer walls of your base and place stations every 244 tiles with a command for the train to wait until its inactive for 5 seconds at each stop. That's really only good for a small base or if you know that you will be expanding that wall later on and only want it set up temporarily, unless you are going to have, say 1 train for each cardinal direction of wall and you name your stations something like West ATTY 1, West ATTY 2, etc. tedious to set up but runs smoothly there after.

The other way to do it is to set up stationary artillery pieces and have the artillery wagons deliver shells to a centralized distribution area since a standard car only holds 40 shells and an artillery wagon holds 100. You can also set the circuit network up so that the train station where you deliver the shells is off until it drops below a certain number of shells, and then turns on and an artillery train is dispatched to make a delivery.

[The_Mell]

Manual range is 1.5x automatic range i think (but not 100% sure).

[mpderksen]

This is all very helpful. To be clear, at this point I have lasers protecting the base, but few walls. I'm generally following along on the new KoS play through, with my own "flavor" (like I have nuclear already, but no building train....).

To that end, I'm trying to use the Arty Train to crush the nests that are sending annoying raiding parties. I am almost ready to build the silo and the supporting rocket parts assemblers. Maybe it's time to wall in the "primary base" that includes my science, most of my smelting and oil.

I was venturing out to to the edge of the pollution, but that seems to be vaster than I expected and the auto fire ate a BUNCH of shells before I really knew what was happening.....

[mpderksen]

quick follow up: Mission Accomplished. I did rail-creep, and fired into the dark as far as I could a few times. When I would fly over a nest, then I could specifically clear it. I think I was just moving too fast last time. I now have a VERY large area to grow, and didn't have a single raider for the rest of the evening. Still using a safe level of defenses, but the constant, aggravating little parties are currently over. Now I have an Arty train parked at the base, slowly filling with shells. I'll be ready to go out and expand once I need the space.
First time using this, and really fun, once I understood it.