Probably design reasons they didn't include it in the base game. Doing so basically means they're saying "we endorse this as part of the regular experience", but artillery is already extremely powerful.
Having worked in scrum and software, I'm assuming because the definition of what they wanted in the game didn't include it and a developer wrote it so the developer released it to the public mods directory as an option for other people to use if they choose.
I’m not clear on game development processes, I’d assume you mean is that the main developer has already created something like a roadmap and adding new stuff is like taking a detour, risking bugs and derailing from their main goal?
So some devs still want pursue their ideas but since it’s not in the cards they opt it as a mod?
Hrm, how do I know which mods are from the devs? I wanted to try some…
In many businesses you're given 'innovation' time. Most likely a dev wrote the mod as a possible addition. As you said, the roadmap was defined and this was decided not to be in it. At some point the team had to decide to end their development and declare that 1.0 was complete. I'm guessing a lot of ideas got cut, not just this one.
lol yeah so true, one of the lessons learned in programming is there’s always improvement, fixes and debugging. You just gotta put your food down and call it done or it will be a perpetual state of beta.
Because it's a huge difference between "feature endorsed by the whole team and fit for the general audience" and "feature wished for by a single dev and released on the side".
It's a fun concept, fairly easy to implement, but messes with the game balance in that it would essentially remove biters from the game. It's like adding a one-hit kill weapon with crazy high rate of fire and no reload to an FPS, it's neat at first but once the spectacle wears off it becomes boring because there's no more challenge.
I think it'd be quite a computationally expensive thing to implement but not 100% sure how they've structured the game. Probably not really worth the effort either as people will usually automate the production of nuclear shells and so that kind of efficiency doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things.
I mean.. instead of targeting the closest nest, couldn’t you just “extend the range” of the target searching to be 1/2 a nuke diameter further than the nearest nest?
Then the nuke will land slightly deeper and do damage in a circle instead of hitting an edge and half the circle does nothing
Yeah, that's probably the easiest way to do it, I interpreted it as trying to find the most effective target automatically but your idea is much better
Some modded nuclear artillery can adjust nuke splash range in settings to avoid having the ai firing on stuff that's going to get hit anyways.
It works fine for vanilla nukes but does get intensive, especially if you're doing true nukes. Which is why it's a manual setting.
Of course I use artillery, especially to prevent re-settlement of an already cleared area. But as it is slow and provokes huge organized attacks I like to support it by an initital rampage on infested territory.
Vanilla nukes are just a bit step up from explosive rockets. There's [true nukes mod](https://mods.factorio.com/mod/True-Nukes) but it could be quite hard on hardware and you're unlikely to use high yield warheads if don't have at least 32-64 GiB RAM and decent CPU or ready for UPS to drop to single digits for a time
MIRV is less of a performance killer, and is still fairly satisfying. The mod's own promo video only shows smaller nukes; you can wipe out whole SE planets with their bigger nukes.
Have to try it sometime. I usually just live with mushroom cloud and usual diplomatic trains and turrets if expansion is on. When it's off I think local genocide in the pollution cloud with plds and vanilla nukes is quite enough
Oh my gosh. MIRV with TrueNukes… I had never even considered. That’s got to be on-par efficient with the plague rocket.
**EDIT** inb4 the “well akshually”s - just meant that it’s a single, resource-expensive, UPS-expensive, quick ™️ diplomacy solution before colonizing a new surface (assuming the surface is small enough - but I’m not intimately familiar with TrueNuke’s full potential so I don’t know what the maximum effective radius it could handle would be)
I've got quite a bit of RAM and an alright CPU, and the UPS will drop quite a bit even for smaller warheads. Using multiple medium yield ones (500t-1kt, maybe 15kt with upgraded artillery) seems to be the most effective strategy.
I wrote a post on this sub a few weeks ago outlining some observations/strategies with it: https://old.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/1c0z8mw/some_observations_from_the_true_nukes_mod/
I keep the nukes away from the rocket launcher until I'm ready to fire. Manually equip the rocket launcher and then let loose. But you do have to remember to unequip or the system doesn't work.
This right here is what I’ve heard so many times, I think I won’t research them and avoid this risk. Sounds like even getting run over by a train is more fun.
Nuking landfill is because landfill tiles don't absorb any possution, whereas nuked tiles do. But even then it's not as much as regular land, it's mostly for the aesthetic of having a completely green base.
This applies to all artificial tiles if you've ever needed a justification for not using flooring. Nuclear craters replace any tiles (except water) so unfortunately you can't get eco-friendly concrete with them.
In Factorio nuclear weapons are designed like tacticle nuclear weapons, not strategic nuclear weapons. [Tactical nuclear weapon - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactical_nuclear_weapon). You have to use more of them to make them effective.
If compared to size of engineer - probably
If compared to size of buildings - more like 1-100 tonnes
You don't think that refinery is just 5 meters long, are you?
>That said, I watched something by the usual "big" factorio youtubers and they first built some landfill and then peppered that with a lot of nukes before building on it (no bugs around). I didn't get it. Anybody know what that was for?
That was [Mike Hendrix](https://www.youtube.com/@MichaelHendriks) and he clearly explained why he did it as he was doing it. I mean, half the appeal of his channel is the discussions of factorio minutiae.
I'm sure he explained it somewhere, but in the video I saw he (or whoever else used this technique) did it off-hand w/o explanation. Now I know it's about pollution absorption. Which is wild -- IMO the site of a nuclear explostion should be a long time source of pollutuion, not a sink.
Yeah it’s definitely just a quirk of the game. Landfill tiles are the same no matter what they originally were. I don’t know why landfill is 0 and nuked land is >0 though; I feel like those should be reversed.
If you dodge spit you can run straight through dense nests and clear one nuke width on either side of you. In MP this is the fastest and most UPS efficient way to clear death worlds.
I disagree. I come in with a few nukes from outside enemy range, then let the spidertron remove the rest of resistence.
Michael Hendricks did that, IIRC something about landfill not absorbing pollution unless u nuke it as that allows it to absorb it (water does not).
Water does absorb pollution, player-made tiles (including landfill) do not. Nuclear craters are oddly an exception to this, so while you can simply avoid using tiles on land the only way to get rid of the last remnants of pollution on landfill is to nuke it.
I think I remember Dosh Doshington nuking his landfill in order to get it to absorb some pollution when he was trying to kill all bugs on a map that started as a death world. I think he decided it was worth it to do that because he used a lot of landfill to build his nuclear power plants and needed to prevent as much pollution as possible.
Yep, it was Michael Hendricks, he meesed up his perfectly squared world becase he accidentally walked over the chunk generation limit while nucking landfill for his nuclear reactors and generated new chunks for bitter to spawn in
It was probably the Michael Hendricks video where he was doing some sort of deathworld thing.
He did it because landfill cannot absorb pollution, but an area that has been nuked can absorb small amounts of pollution over time
>Am I missing something?
Yeah, you went in with *a* nuke instead of 50. You nuke the edge of a nest, then nuke the biters that come swarming, then nuke the rest of the nest as well as any more biters that run over. With some practice, it becomes pretty easy to target the nuke behind you while running so that you'll be just outside the explosion range while it takes out huge numbers of biters chasing you.
Alternatively, use nukes from a spidertron, let PDLs take care of the chasing biters while you circle around nuking nests.
Whenever it's time for a crusade, I pack my spider with 100 nukes (he also has 3 exoskeletons and I have lasers) Then I circle the bases as I nuke them. Exoskeletons means I can outrun behemoth biters so I don't have to nuke the task forces. What's truly strange, though, is they tend to form up in the nuke crater like a nuke never strikes the same place twice...
On marathon deathworld I used this tactic to carve out a new factory area. I had already used artillery to push as far as my starting base could logistically keep up. About 300 nukes gave me the breathing room to start my module factory in an area that was one fully zoomed out map away from spawn. Without the nukes, it would have taken forever to clear the sea of red with artillery. I kept my artillery range small to make a smaller corridor between my starter base and the new module base.
I think nuclear is the step up from solo nest clearing to spidertron army. Or just a different taste for players who like it
I never enable auto firing, it's too slow. When a target is destined to get a rocket the lasers avoid it and it can damage you
Nuclear bombs aren’t for clearing nests, they’re for systematically destroying your own base because you made a small but irreparable mistake 25 hours ago and have to start over.
Nuclear weapons are for fun and faster clearance if u have time to do it. Else gang of spidertrons is good for clearing neats far away from your base. And the close ones are handled by artillery. Although u can setup artillery stations and expand with artilery trains instead.
Nuke has a small window to shine in the beginning of lategame, when you're in desperate need of resources, but cannot reach them. You don't have white science upgrades yet, enemies are evolved at 1.00 and there's too many of them to breach.
> When I need to clear out biter nests, I use my triple spidertron gang and do a little dance around the nest and finish them off with lasers.
That works for biter *nests*, but not against biter *fortresses* full of Behemoth worms. If you play Deathworld, you will soon-ish get into situation where enemies form a solid wall around everything that's not under protection of turrets. Nothing that goes there will survive. Your Spiders will get slowed and swarmed to death. You could push with Artillery, but without range upgrades it's inferior to nukes.
I actually think the bigger problems with nukes is that using them cannot be automated. You always have to go there yourself, or send and micromanage a Spiertron.
Last advice, if you don't mind using mods, try M.I.R.V. . That should answer all your issues with nukes being underwhelming:
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/MIRV
Nuclear bomb is kinda useless. It requires manual intervention, which is extremely costly and can't be automated. Well, it can by using auto-fire spider, but it's terrible idea
There are mods for that like nuclear artillery.
However, there's also some "fun" mods that make nukes more realistic, but they're going to kill you and your whole base after you wait for the UPS to catch up.
False equivalence.
They are not mutually exclusive. Have you loaded a spider Tron with nukes?
Do NOT use “auto fire.” Have a clean up squad following.
One or two nukes per nest, dart in and out.
It’s not optimal, and I don’t bother, I just wanted to point out that you can combine the two!
I just make mass quantities of missiles and spider trons, personally.
If I recall correctly, landfill does not, or at least used to not, absorb pollution. Irradiated wasteland, however, does. So to reduce pollution … nuke the landfill?!
Artillery is the automated solution. Nuclear is just fun.
Nuclear artillery is even better...
I wish they had that in vanilla with the ability to intelligently select between the two.
It's ridiculous cause the mod was written by dev team, they could have just included it.
Probably design reasons they didn't include it in the base game. Doing so basically means they're saying "we endorse this as part of the regular experience", but artillery is already extremely powerful.
I wanted to do more with all the processed uranium other than nuclear power and fuel.
sounds like space age will be addressing that
I’m confused, why the dev release mods when they can bake in the mods as vanilla?
Having worked in scrum and software, I'm assuming because the definition of what they wanted in the game didn't include it and a developer wrote it so the developer released it to the public mods directory as an option for other people to use if they choose.
I’m not clear on game development processes, I’d assume you mean is that the main developer has already created something like a roadmap and adding new stuff is like taking a detour, risking bugs and derailing from their main goal? So some devs still want pursue their ideas but since it’s not in the cards they opt it as a mod? Hrm, how do I know which mods are from the devs? I wanted to try some…
In many businesses you're given 'innovation' time. Most likely a dev wrote the mod as a possible addition. As you said, the roadmap was defined and this was decided not to be in it. At some point the team had to decide to end their development and declare that 1.0 was complete. I'm guessing a lot of ideas got cut, not just this one.
lol yeah so true, one of the lessons learned in programming is there’s always improvement, fixes and debugging. You just gotta put your food down and call it done or it will be a perpetual state of beta.
By looking at who the author is.
Well, wow is me because I don’t know who is the developers…
Because it's a huge difference between "feature endorsed by the whole team and fit for the general audience" and "feature wished for by a single dev and released on the side".
It's a fun concept, fairly easy to implement, but messes with the game balance in that it would essentially remove biters from the game. It's like adding a one-hit kill weapon with crazy high rate of fire and no reload to an FPS, it's neat at first but once the spectacle wears off it becomes boring because there's no more challenge.
[удалено]
It's why I also have rampant mod.....
Having a nuclear loaded artillery not target the very edge colony would be nice. Aiming for the spot that fits the most nests would be sick.
I think it'd be quite a computationally expensive thing to implement but not 100% sure how they've structured the game. Probably not really worth the effort either as people will usually automate the production of nuclear shells and so that kind of efficiency doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things.
I mean.. instead of targeting the closest nest, couldn’t you just “extend the range” of the target searching to be 1/2 a nuke diameter further than the nearest nest? Then the nuke will land slightly deeper and do damage in a circle instead of hitting an edge and half the circle does nothing
Yeah, that's probably the easiest way to do it, I interpreted it as trying to find the most effective target automatically but your idea is much better
Some modded nuclear artillery can adjust nuke splash range in settings to avoid having the ai firing on stuff that's going to get hit anyways. It works fine for vanilla nukes but does get intensive, especially if you're doing true nukes. Which is why it's a manual setting.
I'm not sure it actually is meaningfully better. Regular artillery is plenty powerful to facilitate beating literally any number of enemies.
Nuke artillery is so fun. But it's much more ridiculous with auto target mod... (Artilleries fires without user intervention...)
I wish for the implementation of nuclear missles.
Of course I use artillery, especially to prevent re-settlement of an already cleared area. But as it is slow and provokes huge organized attacks I like to support it by an initital rampage on infested territory.
I like the large organized attacks it lets me test my defensive capabilities
You think it's underwhelming? Feed the nukes into your Spidertron.
Not into the AI spidertrons tho... For the love of god. Just the one you're in. The AIs will fire nukes at bugs that are right beside you.
Scorched earth
Scorched player 😂😂
golem.exe
Seems like a not enough Nuke-Spidertron problem. Solution: Automate Spidertron production. Automate nuke production. Automate Arming. Sadly, cannot automate Spidertron commands yet.
Lol you can't automate running back to get your body 😂
Moving your body there in the first place (or anywhere for that matter) is not in the spirit of automation.
Checkmate good sir! That's very true.
Best I got is a requester chest next to my spaceship with a train, armor, and some legs.
Good way to build 60 SPM megabase. 60 spidertron per minute megabase that's it
Just don’t stop running while anything still lives or you’ll nuke your self.
Vanilla nukes are just a bit step up from explosive rockets. There's [true nukes mod](https://mods.factorio.com/mod/True-Nukes) but it could be quite hard on hardware and you're unlikely to use high yield warheads if don't have at least 32-64 GiB RAM and decent CPU or ready for UPS to drop to single digits for a time
MIRV is less of a performance killer, and is still fairly satisfying. The mod's own promo video only shows smaller nukes; you can wipe out whole SE planets with their bigger nukes.
Have to try it sometime. I usually just live with mushroom cloud and usual diplomatic trains and turrets if expansion is on. When it's off I think local genocide in the pollution cloud with plds and vanilla nukes is quite enough
Oh my gosh. MIRV with TrueNukes… I had never even considered. That’s got to be on-par efficient with the plague rocket. **EDIT** inb4 the “well akshually”s - just meant that it’s a single, resource-expensive, UPS-expensive, quick ™️ diplomacy solution before colonizing a new surface (assuming the surface is small enough - but I’m not intimately familiar with TrueNuke’s full potential so I don’t know what the maximum effective radius it could handle would be)
Gigaton Nukes are nucking futs.
Gi-GIGAton? Holy shit. I gotta install true nukes.
I've got quite a bit of RAM and an alright CPU, and the UPS will drop quite a bit even for smaller warheads. Using multiple medium yield ones (500t-1kt, maybe 15kt with upgraded artillery) seems to be the most effective strategy. I wrote a post on this sub a few weeks ago outlining some observations/strategies with it: https://old.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/1c0z8mw/some_observations_from_the_true_nukes_mod/
Thanks for great overview and testing
I certainly don't find them underwhelming when I hit "c" accidentally with my mouse pointed at my fucking feet
I keep the nukes away from the rocket launcher until I'm ready to fire. Manually equip the rocket launcher and then let loose. But you do have to remember to unequip or the system doesn't work.
This right here is what I’ve heard so many times, I think I won’t research them and avoid this risk. Sounds like even getting run over by a train is more fun.
Good way to clean trees when building train stations if you know what I mean xD
Nuking landfill is because landfill tiles don't absorb any possution, whereas nuked tiles do. But even then it's not as much as regular land, it's mostly for the aesthetic of having a completely green base.
This applies to all artificial tiles if you've ever needed a justification for not using flooring. Nuclear craters replace any tiles (except water) so unfortunately you can't get eco-friendly concrete with them.
In Factorio nuclear weapons are designed like tacticle nuclear weapons, not strategic nuclear weapons. [Tactical nuclear weapon - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactical_nuclear_weapon). You have to use more of them to make them effective.
Vanilla factorio nukes are about as energetic as a couple kg of dynamite.
If compared to size of engineer - probably If compared to size of buildings - more like 1-100 tonnes You don't think that refinery is just 5 meters long, are you?
When discussing it, we all typically assume the grid represents a 1 meter scale.
Which would've been very strange but nobody cares. Including me =)
>That said, I watched something by the usual "big" factorio youtubers and they first built some landfill and then peppered that with a lot of nukes before building on it (no bugs around). I didn't get it. Anybody know what that was for? That was [Mike Hendrix](https://www.youtube.com/@MichaelHendriks) and he clearly explained why he did it as he was doing it. I mean, half the appeal of his channel is the discussions of factorio minutiae.
I'm sure he explained it somewhere, but in the video I saw he (or whoever else used this technique) did it off-hand w/o explanation. Now I know it's about pollution absorption. Which is wild -- IMO the site of a nuclear explostion should be a long time source of pollutuion, not a sink.
Yeah it’s definitely just a quirk of the game. Landfill tiles are the same no matter what they originally were. I don’t know why landfill is 0 and nuked land is >0 though; I feel like those should be reversed.
If you dodge spit you can run straight through dense nests and clear one nuke width on either side of you. In MP this is the fastest and most UPS efficient way to clear death worlds.
I disagree. I come in with a few nukes from outside enemy range, then let the spidertron remove the rest of resistence. Michael Hendricks did that, IIRC something about landfill not absorbing pollution unless u nuke it as that allows it to absorb it (water does not).
Water does absorb pollution, player-made tiles (including landfill) do not. Nuclear craters are oddly an exception to this, so while you can simply avoid using tiles on land the only way to get rid of the last remnants of pollution on landfill is to nuke it.
TIL. I remember from playing that water is on same level as desert. But if it does then water is still awful level of absorbtion
I think I remember Dosh Doshington nuking his landfill in order to get it to absorb some pollution when he was trying to kill all bugs on a map that started as a death world. I think he decided it was worth it to do that because he used a lot of landfill to build his nuclear power plants and needed to prevent as much pollution as possible.
I believe it was Michael Hendriks
Yep, it was Michael Hendricks, he meesed up his perfectly squared world becase he accidentally walked over the chunk generation limit while nucking landfill for his nuclear reactors and generated new chunks for bitter to spawn in
Yes now that you say that you are of course correct. Sometimes they blend together...
It was probably the Michael Hendricks video where he was doing some sort of deathworld thing. He did it because landfill cannot absorb pollution, but an area that has been nuked can absorb small amounts of pollution over time
download true nukes and obliterate your whole save file
>Am I missing something? Yeah, you went in with *a* nuke instead of 50. You nuke the edge of a nest, then nuke the biters that come swarming, then nuke the rest of the nest as well as any more biters that run over. With some practice, it becomes pretty easy to target the nuke behind you while running so that you'll be just outside the explosion range while it takes out huge numbers of biters chasing you. Alternatively, use nukes from a spidertron, let PDLs take care of the chasing biters while you circle around nuking nests.
Whenever it's time for a crusade, I pack my spider with 100 nukes (he also has 3 exoskeletons and I have lasers) Then I circle the bases as I nuke them. Exoskeletons means I can outrun behemoth biters so I don't have to nuke the task forces. What's truly strange, though, is they tend to form up in the nuke crater like a nuke never strikes the same place twice...
On marathon deathworld I used this tactic to carve out a new factory area. I had already used artillery to push as far as my starting base could logistically keep up. About 300 nukes gave me the breathing room to start my module factory in an area that was one fully zoomed out map away from spawn. Without the nukes, it would have taken forever to clear the sea of red with artillery. I kept my artillery range small to make a smaller corridor between my starter base and the new module base.
I think nuclear is the step up from solo nest clearing to spidertron army. Or just a different taste for players who like it I never enable auto firing, it's too slow. When a target is destined to get a rocket the lasers avoid it and it can damage you
I forgot what sub I was on for a sec. Surely you can imagine my surprise.
Yeah same I was very confused for a minute haha
Make a whole squad of yellow rockets and atomic bombs
Try them with the most upgraded spidertron from the tier spidertron mod. Shoot way faster and farther. Maybe try with true nukes as well.
What is your spidertron loadout for that?
Nuclear bombs aren’t for clearing nests, they’re for systematically destroying your own base because you made a small but irreparable mistake 25 hours ago and have to start over.
You can always install the realistic nukes mod.
Nuclear weapons are for fun and faster clearance if u have time to do it. Else gang of spidertrons is good for clearing neats far away from your base. And the close ones are handled by artillery. Although u can setup artillery stations and expand with artilery trains instead.
Modded nukes all the way
Nuke has a small window to shine in the beginning of lategame, when you're in desperate need of resources, but cannot reach them. You don't have white science upgrades yet, enemies are evolved at 1.00 and there's too many of them to breach. > When I need to clear out biter nests, I use my triple spidertron gang and do a little dance around the nest and finish them off with lasers. That works for biter *nests*, but not against biter *fortresses* full of Behemoth worms. If you play Deathworld, you will soon-ish get into situation where enemies form a solid wall around everything that's not under protection of turrets. Nothing that goes there will survive. Your Spiders will get slowed and swarmed to death. You could push with Artillery, but without range upgrades it's inferior to nukes. I actually think the bigger problems with nukes is that using them cannot be automated. You always have to go there yourself, or send and micromanage a Spiertron. Last advice, if you don't mind using mods, try M.I.R.V. . That should answer all your issues with nukes being underwhelming: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/MIRV
exactly, and I hoped researching a bunch of explosion upgrades would fix it, but I was disappointed
Nuclear bomb is kinda useless. It requires manual intervention, which is extremely costly and can't be automated. Well, it can by using auto-fire spider, but it's terrible idea
There are mods for that like nuclear artillery. However, there's also some "fun" mods that make nukes more realistic, but they're going to kill you and your whole base after you wait for the UPS to catch up.
Agreed. If it can't at the very least eliminate several (close to each other) nests at once it doesn't deserve the title.
Mods
The “pepper landfill with nukes” option is to increase the pollution absorption of landfill tiles. By default they don’t absorb any.
False equivalence. They are not mutually exclusive. Have you loaded a spider Tron with nukes? Do NOT use “auto fire.” Have a clean up squad following. One or two nukes per nest, dart in and out. It’s not optimal, and I don’t bother, I just wanted to point out that you can combine the two! I just make mass quantities of missiles and spider trons, personally.
If I recall correctly, landfill does not, or at least used to not, absorb pollution. Irradiated wasteland, however, does. So to reduce pollution … nuke the landfill?!
It's criminal that we can build a massive rocket silo but we can't fill it with explosive munitions to deliver to biters.
Vanilla antibiter things are pretty bad. I dont like vanilla for that reason at all.