Surely the stack size of 1 is a decision that some people would object to, aswell as the ludicrous explosive requirement to produce a modicum of shells. Please consider adding some settings to increase stack size and tweak the manufacturing parameters for the shells. Thank you.

The stack size of 1 is definitely a decision some people object to - unfortunately it isn't really my decision. The stack size of basic artillery shells is copied directly from the vanilla artillery shell, so they have the same oddities: they stack to 1 in inventories, 15 in artillery turrets and 100 in artillery wagons. I can't really mess with that setting without making basic artillery a better option than vanilla - it has to be a pain in the ass in all the same ways, plus one or two more (i.e. the damage and accuracy), so that vanilla artillery is still relevant later on as a better alternative. While I'd like to accommodate a broader range of playstyles, I'm not sure that would be a good idea for progression or in the spirit of the mod.

The 16 explosives required is also taken directly from vanilla artillery shells - I've tried to leave the recipes as close to the original vanilla ones as I can without increasing the level of research required. Vanilla shells take 16 explosives total, so basic shells take 16 too. But with the reduced damage I can see an argument for reducing the explosives required in lockstep, so I probably will add a setting for that.

Thanks for letting me know your thoughts!

Thank you for your input, Pseudonymous. To my shame, I did not know that the normal artillery stacks to 1 in inventory and considering your argument, I agree it's best for it to remain unchanged.

I enjoy the mod. Having played a bit more with it I no longer think that the 16 exp is ludicrous considering the overall resource savings that eliminating nests near your base brings as your close in defenses have less work to do and ammo to chew through. However it could still be slightly lower than 16 considering the rather weak effect of a single gun, but definitely not less than 12. I also think that the range could use a slight nerf because with enough of them you can more or less eliminate nest expansion near your base and you could argue that it diminishes the drive to unlock better arty later on, as you mentioned as well as be more in theme with the fact that it is supposed to be weaker. So far I have been using it to great effect in my playthrough.

Kind regards, Alin.

I think I'm still going to add a few recipe cost adjustment settings, with some bounds - defaulting to the full cost as it is now but allowing users to set the explosives cost as low as 4 (1/4th of the cost to match 1/4th of the damage). I'm also adding a similar adjustment to the engine unit cost of the wagons to accommodate for the 1/4th rotation speed. For the sake of keeping parity between the wagons and turrets I'm also going to add a setting to substitute concrete with stone bricks, to bring the cost/tech level down just a little more if the user desires.

I don't think a range nerf is necessary though, since the accuracy debuff already drastically reduces the efficacy of each shell at long range - since more shots will miss the further the target is from the gun, it dramatically drives up the cost per kill and I think that balances itself out.

The accuracy debuff may be, but there is another thing I perhaps have not emphasized enough -- A single gun is enough to eliminate biter attacks in its area, from my experience. Isn't this a little op for early game? I believe that completely eliminating the stress of biter attacks so early into the game is counterproductive. I would go for a slight range nerf, if anything, you could make it slightly more accurate but reduce the range by at the very least 40. I think 200 with a very slight accuracy boost is still plenty of and mayhaps the ability to change the range in settings would balance things out very nicely while also falling neatly into line with the fact that the it is slightly worse. You've got to give people a reason to want the newest smartphone, right? ;))

Kind regards, Alin.

Yeah even with the expensive shell it's still a bit strong. Because the nest stay close together the accuracy penalty doesn't really matter. Maybe increase the physical damage while reducing explosive power to make the inaccuracy weakness matter more. It's inaccuracy can also be a blessing as it often kill half of the retaliating biter too.

Thought it's fine I hate manually clearing biter nest. Being able to automate genocide ealier is much more fun. Kinda my fault as I play extreme railworld with biter setting almost similar to death world.

I have been toying with the idea of a kinetic impact shell rather than an explosive one - having the same flat 1000 physical damage of the vanilla artillery but with no explosion radius at all, so it's dead-on or nothing. That might be a little too steep of a change, though.

I agree that as it stands it's pretty strong, I'm just not sure of any change to that I can make without making it completely useless and not even worth the effort of building.

My one other idea is making the guns take damage from firing shells, limiting the lifespan of the gun and thus how long it can keep an area clear of nests, unless the player is on-hand to fix it. That problem would kind of evaporate once the player gets a bot network though.

I think maybe players should still have a reason to use Basic Artillery even if they have access to normal Artillery. As it stand right now, the basic artillery is good enough to give no incentive to prioritize researching normal artillery, and when they eventually do because they exhausted the rest of the research tree, it becomes kind of obsolete. If you're dead set on not changing the range at all you could try,

A few random ideas:
- a selection of a few additional projectiles that can also be used in the normal artillery gun.
* High explosive - slightly more damage, slightly bigger area of effect. requires tungsten like the normal shell but also something else that makes it more difficult to produce.
* Chemical shells - Basically poison capsule, could also make slowdown shell while at it. Some direct impact damage, no explosive.
* Kinetic artillery doesn't really make much sense for anything other than direct fire. modern howitzers use explosives or sometimes chemical fillers. The odds of directly striking a target in indirect fire are very low and without the fragmentation of the casing exploding, the damage to anything farther than a few meters is minimal and the reason why kinetic projectiles as artillery have not been used anywhere for centuries.
- Limiting the the lifespan of the gun seems like a pointless exercise. it just adds tedium but no depth. it increases processing time because of the bots constantly shuffling and grief from biters blowing up construction drones once the logistic network is up.
- Direct fire mode. Guns will prioritize nests, however they will also fire over the walls directly at biters up to a range of say, no more than 75 blocks but not less than 20 blocks. Same damage, same reload time, higher accuracy. (Don't know if it is feasible, just an idea.) you could make it optional via a toggle when clicking on the gun and via the circuit network maybe? Could be a fun mechanic.
- I still think that slightly lowering the range is the best way to fix the issue. 180-200 would not make it useless. Combined with the direct fire mode and cheaper default recipe would make for a very interesting use case scenario where you might want to keep using the basic artillery even after unlocking its counterpart but without replacing it!
- You could try playing around with a faster rate of fire. It would go along nicely with the smaller range and you could also scale down the model to be 10-15% smaller to suggest a smaller caliber.

All these are just a few brainstormed ideas in 15 minutes. Take them with a grain of salt.

Kind regards, Alin.

Yeah, I think you're right about the range. I've been thinking about the balance since I woke up and there's really no way around the fact that it's just too strong as it stands. I do find myself thinking that a straight nerf might be a little too much though, so I'll add a setting for it so that players can customise their experience - maybe have a default 0.8 multiplier of the vanilla max range but let players change it anywhere between 0.5 and 1.

More kinds of shells is an interesting idea but I'm not sure it's the right choice to include them in this mod. Maybe a separate one with a selection of incendiary, fragmentation, high explosive, poison, perhaps nuclear shells, is a good idea; and I could add basic variants of those as well (except perhaps for the nuclear shells) with this mod as an optional dependency. A guided kinetic shell might work in this context too, reintroducing the radar into the recipe and eliminating the accuracy penalty for it.

I agree, limiting the lifespan of the gun was a bad idea. Chalk it up to having been awake less than 20 minutes, I suppose.

Direct fire mode, while an interesting idea, would require an entirely custom targeting script. I don't even know if it's possible to alter the targeting behaviour, truth be told, but even if I can it'd have to be a ground-up rebuild. I'm not saying no, but it is something I'd need to look into more and then decide if it's worth the requisite effort. Just on the face of it though, it seems like it should be its own thing (e.g. a mortar turret) rather than a secondary fire mode of an artillery turret.

A faster rate of fire, or perhaps a cluster shell to achieve a higher effective rate of fire without making the gun shoot faster, is also an interesting idea. If the latter were chosen it could be folded into the hypothetical additional shells mod mentioned above. Perhaps for the former, adding a separate research to improve the basic artillery with something like a rapid-reload magazine that lets it fire a few shells in rapid succession followed by a rest period might be interesting too.

I don't think I'd want to make any major graphical changes like resizing it. I'm not entirely sure how to go about that with the turret sprites themselves (as opposed to the turret/wagon bases) and it's not really something I want to sink too much effort into as I'm much more interested in the gameplay aspect of artillery.

Thanks for all the suggestions though. Do let me know what you think of my interpretation of your suggestions, feel free to tell me I'm being an obstinate fool and not listening, etc