Cannon Defense Systems

Features

This mod provides 3 new technologies to unlock 3 new high caliber cannon turrets and one additional ammo type:

• Basic cannon defense system

  This cannon is the first step towards utilizing truly high caliber ammunition against the enemy. It is a heavily armored turret that can shoot deadly cannon projectiles at a reasonable rate of fire. Its real weakness is its targeting speed.

• Advanced cannon defense system

  This is an evolved form of the basic cannon turret, specialized into increased fire rate. The barrel were modified to handle the increased heat generation from higher rates of fire. Having multiple barrels also help increasing the fire rate, not to mention the improved automated reloading mechanism.

• Heavy cannon defense system

  This turret is a bold new direction for cannon turret defenses. Firepower is increased by introducing an even higher caliber shell with previously unseen amounts of explosives. Significant improvement were made on the turret's barrel and base in order to withstand the sheer force of the launched projectiles. An unexpected but welcome side effect of these modifications is a seriously increased effective range - at the cost of fire rate.

• Heavy cannon shell

  An early version of the well known artillery shell, compatible with the Heavy turret. It has less damage but wider area of effect.

Configuration

The following attributes of the above turrets are configurable:

• 'Health': The health points of the cannon turret.
• 'Min range': The minimum range of the cannon turret in tile count. Targets closer to the turret will not be shot at.
• 'Max range': The maximum range of the heavy cannon turret in tile count. Targets farther away from the turret will not be shot at.
• 'Turn range (degree)': The angle of the arc where the cannon turret will attack targets. (provided in degrees)
• 'Fire rate (x/sec)': The number of time the cannon turret shoot per second (per 60 frames)

Furthermore basic properties of the new ammo are also configurable:

• 'Area': The effective area of the explosion resulting from a hit. All enemies within this many tiles of the explosion will suffer damage from it.
• 'Damage (physical)':The amount of physical damage done by the heavy cannon shell.
• 'Damage (explosive)': The amount of explosion damage done by the heavy cannon shell.
• 'Stack size': The amount of ammo item that fills one inventory slot.
• 'Weight': The weight of the ammo used for calculating rocket capacity.
• 'Range modifier': Bonus range provided to the heavy turret when using this ammo. (100% means no bonus)

Additional miscellaneous features can also be controlled:

• 'Friendly fire (physical)': Use this option to enable or disable cannon projectile's collision with friendly entities.
• 'Friendly fire (explosion)': Use this option to enable or disable explosive cannon projectile's explosion collision with friendly entities.
• 'Artillery range modifier (%)': Bonus range provided to the heavy turret when using artillery ammo. (100% means no bonus)

Mod Suggestions

• Artillery Research Overhaul
  This mod allows physical projectile damage researches to affect artillery shells. nice for the new heavy turret.
• Napalm Artillery - Factorio Mods
  This mod adds napalm to cook some biters with.
• Smart Cannon Shells - Factorio Mods
  This mod gives an in-game option to use cannon shells without friendly fire.

Compatibility

This mod is adding new recipes, items, technologies and entities. However it does fit these objects into the existing technology tree making edits to existing recipes, technology unlocks and prerequisites. Any mod that changes the same will probably conflict. List of changed objects:

• 'tank' technology - changes unlocks and prerequisites
• 'uranium-ammo' technology - changed prerequisites
• 'artillery' technology - changes prerequisites

This mod fills the same function as the great Cannon Turret mod hence its usage together with that is not recommended.

Background

I always thought factorio was missing out on its turret variance. One of the most natural thing to do is to include turrets that shoot ammo which is already present in the game: cannon shells.
Fortunately several mod already exists which provide such turrets. The most well known maybe the venerated Cannon Turret. It introduces a new turret with limited amount of configurability. It has very nice graphics, it works and it works great.

However the lack of configurability is somewhat disheartening. It also introduces a new ammo type for an in-game workaround the fact that cannon shells damage friendly entities in their path. This ammo doubles the number of cannon projectiles available leading into some item/recipe bloating. Finally, it only provide a single new turret.

With this mod I aim to streamline how cannon turrets work, make them configurable and provide a bit of variation with some new graphics.

Credits

• Thanks to VortiK for Cannon Turret
• Thanks to TheKingJo for King Jo's Warhammer 40K Predator Tank
• Thanks to TheKingJo for King Jo's Warhammer 40K Leman Russ Tank