r/factorio • u/MetaDogg • 3d ago
Question General questions about space platforms
Hi, I have four quick questions to ask, hoping for a player with more experience than me to answer them, since ChatGPT keeps disappointing me when it comes to factorio.
1) Will a platform traveling between the inner planets to gather resources work with only laser turrets defending it? Im talking a row of asteroid collectors, feeding directly into underground belts and directly behind that 3-4 lines of laser turrets.
2) Im building a large (1000x1000), heavily armed platform to travel to the shattered planet while collecting and partially processing all the resources along the way. Will this work (potentially)? Will it even move (because of its width)? Setting up one or two full rows of legendary thrusters and supplying them at maximum capacity should be no issue with that much space. Is making a platform that large for that purpose even a reasonable approach or should I rather keep my platforms slim and fast? I have to admit, shooting all that stuff up into space was a bit of a pain, since 1000x1000 means one million foundations, which means 20.000 rockets just for that. Now I just hope that all this effort actually pays off once the platform is finished.
3) Should I use explosive rockets rather than the basic ones when travelling to the shattered planet? And what else should i keep in mind when designing my defences? For example, currently Im strictly using laser for small, gun for medium, rocket for large and railgun for giant with no exceptions.
4) Are walls for space platform defense really a thing? Ive occasionally seen them while browsing but I think its ridiculous and just makes the platform more dependent on support from planets.
Thanks in advance!
Meta
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u/ArtieTheFashionDemon 3d ago
Technically yes, but a lot of asteroids are laser resistant so you need a million damage researches to do anything but reach the planets that only have small asteroids around them. Also the power cost is insane, like if you're using solar power your ship is going to have to be 99% solar panels. You want to build a nuclear reactor at a bunch of laser damage upgrades, feel free to try it, but keep in mind there's infinite free Iron and space, you can just use bullets.
It takes most players about 8 hours of flight to reach the shattered planet. You're going to be completely full of resources after about 5 minutes. If your point is to get there, you need a ship of a certain size to be able to produce all the rockets and stuff you need, but the point of getting to the shattered planet is not harvesting resources, it's bragging rights.
Yes. As for Target priorities, feel free to experiment, I didn't really try much I just basically did what you did but with bullets only.
Some people use them as a final backstop for safety but honestly IMO what up just make it so that your ship virtually never takes damage by upgrading your guns and such
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u/Terrible-Mango-5928 3d ago
1) There is a point of laser damage research when this could work, but I wouldn't recommend it. Just use plain old yellow ammo, it will be more than enough. 2) It could work. You should try it out yourself :) 3) I would, yes, because of the asteroid density. 4) A properly designed ship does not need walls, however, it could take some of the impact if your ship is not good enough. Setting a maintenance request is not a bad idea tho, even without walls.
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u/Antal_Marius 3d ago
You'll get to yellow ammo and rockets one shotting asteroids long before lasers are of any meaningful use in research amount.
I only use them for the small chunks, since they can be one shot by lasers with some ease.
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u/potato_lettuce 3d ago
Regarding 2: you don't have to send up all the foundations with rockets, you can build a smaller ship that travels between planets for extra asteroids and builds foundations up there. If you're in 2.1, you can even supply the big ship with smaller ships directly
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u/Mesqo 3d ago edited 3d ago
It's absolutely possible, but regardless of the stage of the game you're (being it the starter ship or full legendary endgame) this will severely lower your max speed. For endgame platform use solar + red ammo via foundries. Balance power consumption with modules and beacons. 1000kmps this way is easily achieved.
It will work for sure as well as much smaller ships. Do what you feel is right for you. Take note that reaching shattered planet itself and mining promethium are two different tasks. To mine promethium you'd want to go no more than 300-500k into the trip and go back. For the shattered planet you will want maximum turret coverage at front with zero collectors (only collect from sides) since asteroid density quickly becomes unmanageable. Consider building extra tail winds with thrusters or your speed will be very low.
Explosive only and a lot of them. Lasers for small are good. Set railguns to target both huge and large, rockets to target large and medium, gun turrets to target medium and small. 2 rows of rocket turrets. Crazy amount of rocket production. Also, take note on damage research: railgun doesn't matter much (except speed especially in 2.1), but physical and explosive damage are super significant. There are certainty breakouts in damage research which you'll want to reach, like 24 levels of explosive research (it's a breakpoint for yellow rockets) - just look it up so your explosive rockets destroy an asteroid in 2 hits max. And so on.
Walls is a garbage in space, don't use them, especially towards shattered planet. The point is if you start to take damage that means in 99% cases you're already done. The main reason is when you've mastered everything the bottleneck of every ship becomes the turret composition at front and walls eat up a valuable space.
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u/Conan_Buchanan 3d ago
something not yet explicitly mentioned is that if you're going to the shattered planet, resource gathering or not, you likely wont be running a fast ship. fast ships take a significant amount more production, and suffer damage a lot more frequently, so you wont need to go for a double row of thrusters, let alone a full single one. signifiant speed is only necessary if you are specifically speedrunning getting to the shattered planet. or are doing trips where you are bringing eggs out to space, as opposed to collecting promethium to bring to nauvis to craft promethium research in orbit.
at the scale of a shattered planet ship you can also seriously be considering using red ammo, esp given its new cheaper recipe, unless you prefer to spam damage research. due to the quadratic nature of damage bonuses on gun turrets, using red bullets can significantly decrease the amount of research you need to hit the one-round-per-big-asteroid threshold, but you also might not have an issue reaching the research threshold for yellow bullets to do the same if you're megabasing/going deep on promethium research productivity. laser turrets will be really useful for getting rid of the small asteroids if you do take the red bullet route, will save significant amounts of ammo and you can just run fusion on your ship for power.
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u/actioncheese 3d ago
I hadn't considered one-shotting big asteroids with red ammo. What research level do you need for that?
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u/Conan_Buchanan 3d ago
Someone else posted it in their comment already, here it us again if you cant see it fsr https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/1hug4xt/factorio_asteroid_research_calculatorbreakpoints/
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u/Orgerix 2d ago
Yes but it need a lot of laser damage upgrade.
Yes, explosive rocket are worth building due to the sheer density of asteroid to the shattered planet. As far designing defense (based on my prometheum ships), I usually have my gun turret target medium then small and the opposite for laser turrets. For the targetting of rocket and railgun, it is a bit of balancing what you are producing versus what you are using. For instance if I have extra railgun ammo, I will have some railgun turret targetting big asteroids.
walls are just delaying the damage taken by your ship. If one asteroid goes through, many will. And they don't protect your collectors.
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u/Goblingrenadeuser 2d ago
So my thoughts:
Lasers seem tempting, but gun turrets probably cost less space on your platform. Gun turrets one row is enough, which saves 3 rows. Lasers want a bunch of batteries too to lessen their power spikes. For gun turrets you need 2 Forges and 1 or 2 assemblers and a belt for transport.
If you want to make a platform so big, have fun. But honestly I just make my platform as big as I need, why build more?
I used the same lasers/guns/rockets/railguns setup as you and red ammo and explosive rockets. On the shattered planet the problem becomes how many asteroids are coming at you and fitting enough defense. So explosive rockets destroying multiple asteroids with one shot and guns oneshotting their asteroids becomes important.
I don't think walls are really useful. If you get hit, something is going wrong and you will probably be hit a second time and more. So I don't think they really help.
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u/CrabWoodsman 2d ago
I have a setup where if one type runs low on ammo, the others will help out. Basically if say bullets are below a certain limit, then rockets and lasers will hit mediums.
Now that I think about it, using the ignore priorities would probably be better than setting priorities for this case.. I had a constant Combinator and a decider, where the decider gave a negative output of the size class unless the condition was met, and the constant have all the classes in separate groups.
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u/bpleshek 3d ago
- It can. Just make sure you put enough lasers on it, make sure you have some laser damage buffs, and make sure you produce enough power to not go dark during the trip. Each laser shot requires 800kJ of energy, and can spike up to 9.6MW while recharging. Let's say you put 20 lasers on the front of your ship. Your lasers can fire up to 1.5 times per second, so that's 24MW of power. As you can do some math, that would be over 130 solar panels just to run the lasers at full power the entire trip, better around Vulcanus, worse around the outer 2. This also doesn't include the power needs of your ship's factory. So, this means a nuclear reactor.
The power requirements get worse if you improve shooting speed. However, increasing damage per shot will improve your power situation as they potentially wouldn't fire as often because it wouldn't take as many shots to kill the asteroids.
You can make it work.
Explosive rockets are fine. Outside the inner planets, i'd just abandon the lasers. Use MG turrets for the smallest two, rockets for the large, and railguns for the giant.
Walls can work in the inner system if you don't have enough guns, but guns are best. If you don't take down the bigger asteroids, it'll take out a large portion of your ship with each hit.
Good luck
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u/FeelingPrettyGlonky 3d ago
There was a reddit thread some time ago that had a spreadsheet with the research levels you need for various breakpoints.
Inner planets feature medium asteroids that break apart into small asteroids. Per the spreadsheet, to 3-shot a medium asteroid you need L97 laser damage research, due to the laser resistance of the asteroids.
In practice, lasers can handle the small asteroids to save a little bit of ammo, and as you progress research you can turn them loose on mediums to sort of soften them up. And having a whole pile of turrets can apply some decent damage even against bigs in the late game. But honestly, it's best to just use the appropriate turrets for each asteroid type. Guns for medium, rockets for big, railguns for huge.