Hullo

I noticed that the atomic cannon rounds don't actually have any more range than their regular counterparts, so I spent a while figuring out that the range_modifier property only modifies the seeking distance of the turret the cannon round is in. In order to change the distance that the round can travel, you'd need to do atomic_cannon_item.ammo_type.action.action_delivery.max_range = 90 (default value is 30 so you get 90 for 3x distance). I spent way too much time trying to figure out why the atomic cannon rounds weren't travelling farther.... This is an affect of how the game does cannon shells. Rockets and firearm ammo work how you'd expect them to, though, so no need to change anything there.

Also, the lowest level of atomic rocket is pretty laggy, and I was wondering if you would be willing to implement californium rockets in the 2 and 4 ton class, like the cannon shells, so that running around in a spidertron with nuclear obliteration on auto-fire won't lag me out too much?

Thanks for the cool mod.

Yeah, good ideas - and actually really quick to implement.
Thanks for putting all the time in to work that out - that makes a lot of sense.
I can actually add an 8-ton device with minimal changes (its already in the mod, just not used for anything in base-game).
So I might add an 8-ton, 4-ton and 2-ton device for rockets - does that sound reasonable?
Also maybe like a 20-ton yield artillery shell (so you have a small option for that as well)...

That does indeed sound reasonable. A 20-ton artillery shell would be nice. A little less laggy than the 500-ton.

I have a few other suggestions... About the balance of the californium rounds. It costs one u-235 to produce one californium (which I just realized it might be cool to rename to Californium-251 so it matches with the other radioactives), so one californium is about one u-235, and given their lower yields, their output is a lot lower than the higher yield munitions per uranium-235 invested. I think the Californium cost should be reduced by like 80%ish?

Also, is there a way to lower the intensity of the explosion flair and fallout smoke effects from the lower yield rounds (the firearm rounds, specifically)? Cuz when firing many low yield rounds at once, the whole screen can be obscured by the big fuzzy flash effect (I'm not really sure what to call it...). It's only really a problem with the faster-firing rounds.

And for the range modification thing, you'd still need the range_modifier tag set to 3 so that turrets will take advantage of the longer range munitions, like K2 Turret's Railgun. Also the stack size of the high yield cannon rounds is 200 which I don't think is intended.

Thank you for listening to feedback so much, I hope I'm not being annoying what with all this stuff I've suggested :P

I made the Californium so expensive in U-235 because, to be honest, in the late game U-235 is so cheap its ridiculous, when you have the enrichment, it is never the limiting factor to anything. I also didn't want the nuclear rounds to be too cheap, as they compete more directly with base-game weapons, where the larger weapons are more of their own thing. They are sort of intended to only be usable when you get super late game, when you only really fight on your own (instead of using artillery) for fun.
I will re-name Californium to Californium-251. That is a good idea.

The high stack size of the cannon shells is unintentional... I'll change that too.

Lowering the flare intensity isn't possible currently - you can turn it off entirely, but not reduce it. I don't mind that the screen goes basically white when you detonate too many nukes, it seems like a realistic consequence (I mean you really shouldn't look at a nuke from like 20m away, even a small one)...
Thinking about it, I have quite a big screen, so might suffer less than others - I might add an option for the magazines if its a problem due to that kind of thing.
For the smoke effects, they are sort of meant to make it difficult to see, as it probably would be... unless you have something really remarkable, I probably won't be changing that - sorry (although I find them annoying sometimes as well).

I was leaving the range_modifier the same anyway, so that's fine.

You aren't being annoying at all!! Quite the opposite, I really like getting feedback on this stuff - it gives me another perspective on the mod, and other views on what is important, which is really helpful. Also other people play the game differently to me, so notice things I miss - like the stack size thing, as I don't use tanks that much.
The update including all of this will be out in a few days, after the fallout from the last update settles down, feel free to give me any other suggestions, I'd be happy to have a look!

I'm also planning on fixing some weird bugs around the item-on-ground appearance of the weapons, as they don't glow (and I think this is easy to fix), and some of them are the wrong item (even easier to fix), all because the base-game nuke and uranium cannon shells do their item-on-ground appearances weirdly, so that they can glow, and I didn't realise this...

Yeah, that's fair, it's not really like I'm hurting for californium when making the cannon shells. :P The flare thing is unfortunate, but I can work with it. Besides that, I don't really have any other suggestions. If I have any in the future, I'll let you know.

(also I forgot that the thermobaric rockets look like nukes on conveyor belts... lol)

I'll be looking forward to the next update, the biters will be in for a reckoning! >:)

OK, the changes should be in the latest version - see what you think and tell me if you find anything weird/wrong/buggy.

After having done some testing... these are my thoughts:

Rockets: The low yield rockets feel like their max range is a little bit... lacking. Starting the lowest at 150%-200% and going up from there might be better. Also, for the fact that the regular rocket and the 2t yield rocket look similar, I have some suggestions: 1: Remove the yellow tip of the regular rocket and make it grey (or some other color). 2: Move the yellow highlight on the 2t rocket to the middle segment, and make its nose grey. 3: Make regular rocket have a red nose, give the explosive rocket the sprite of the current thermobaric rocket, then give the thermobaric rocket full red.

Artillery: The 20t shell has the wrong ordering. Right now it appears before the regular arty shell. Also, the 1kt arty shell has a craft time of 120s, while all other arty shells are at 300s.

Cannon Shells: I think you may have mixed up their range and shooting speed properties... I do enjoy my long-range fun though.

Item Sprites: They're perfect. Only thing I would say is that the 20t and 500t shells look a bit yellow. Could maybe make them share the color with the 1kt and give the 1kt an extra stripe of green.

I also sent off a number of shots (albeit in an empty world) to test your new script, and by my reckoning it is an improvement (didn't use any real scientific method here, though).

Overall, very nice update. I like.

OK, I have fixed most of the issues you mention, most of them were really quick to do - just a quick edit to the files.
I'm going with option 1 you suggested, as its really easy, and a good idea.

Could maybe make them share the color with the 1kt and give the 1kt an extra stripe of green.

Do you mean like going back to green for all the shells - I'm not against that, just interested.
Also making an extra stripe of green is quite hard to make look good - I really am no good at graphic design like this...

I have made the 500t a bit greener, and hopefully made them more distinguishable from the basic artillery shells, but this really is pushing up against my graphical design knowledge (which is basically importing the icons into paint-like programs, and playing with the hue/saturation until it looks about right).
If you have any graphics suggestions I'm happy to hear them, but do be aware that they might be beyond me.

The rockets feel much nicer to use now, the extra range really does help. Also, I wouldn't mind making some sprites. My graphical skills are relatively decent. Do you have any way I could send them to you?

Do you have a Github account? - if so, you could do a pull request... that would be excellent (Github page: https://github.com/More-Wrong/Factorio-True-Nukes). To do this, you have to fork the repo, make the changes then make a pull request.
Otherwise we could work something out... the forum has a private message - my name on there is BicycleEater. I might be a bit picky with sprites (I really like the vanilla-like feel), but I'd love to have someone do a good job on this!

Pull request submitted! (this is my first time using GitHub so hopefully I didn't screw anything up) I redid the rockets and the three lowest yield arty shells, and got rid of the fuzzy read haze on the californium.

Yeah, that looks great - I added a comment to the merge request, but I'll put it here as well:

Before I merge this, would it be alright if you change the 15kt and 100kt artillery shells to match (just if the shade of green is different it looks a bit weird). The new sprites are great though!

But these are certainly better than what I can do - thanks!

Done. I also redid some other textures. I put the whole of the details into the commit I just did. I kind of want to change the sprites for the nuke techs which are just explosions to be something other than explosions, to help differentiate them from each other, but I don't have any good ideas as of now.

OK, I've merged it in - Ill do another release on Factorio mods, then we'll be done!
Thanks so much for all the textures - they are so much better than anything I could do myself, and make everything look better!

Yay~

Always happy to help!