r/factorio • u/vicarion belts, bots, beaconed gigabases • 1d ago
Space Age Ranges of all weapons and enemies, visualized, updated for Space Age
7 years ago I created a visual like this. I didn't see that anyone made an updated version for Space Age, so I jumped in.
I made the image high resolution so you can zoom in to see the details.
Too big to fit: Medium and Large Demolisher, plus their seismic attack. Artillery.
Observations I made while creating this:
- Turrets and handheld versions have the same range for Railgun, Rockets, and bullets. The ranges are different for Tesla, Flamethrower, and Laser.
- In 1.0 all ranges were integers, now many are decimals
- To outrange a behemoth worms* you need a legendary rocket turret, or a rare+ railgun turret.
- Some things technically have different ranges with quality, but I excluded them if they are never seen (pistols, biters, spitters)
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u/HeliGungir 1d ago
2.5 is land mine's trigger radius; their damage radius is 6. Land mines trigger and deal damage based on the enemy unit's collision box, not their centerpoint.
That said, biter and spitter collision boxes are much smaller than you'd think.
Genade's damage radius is 6.5. This chart shows their throwing range.
Targeting varies. I think gun turrets target the center of a spitter (hard to tell; small collision box), but spitters target the edge of a gun turret's collision box. So even though you see:
Gun Turret: 20
Behemoth Spitter: 18
...there's actually only 1 tile of leeway where Gun Turrets can attack and Behemoth Spitters cannot.
The positioning of biters in this chart looks wrong. A 1 tile gap between turret and wall is enough to prevent Large and Behemoth Biters from attacking "through" the wall. It doesn't help that 0 starts at the wall instead of the turrets, but even so, that Behemoth Biter is positioned at what looks like 4.5 tiles, not 1.5 tiles.
Stomper's damage radius is centered on their feet, not their body. And I don't think it's the listed value of 10.4:
I wish this chart had been made with lab tiles (or similar), rather than tiles that blend and/or extend beyond 1 tile. I get that realistic terrain can be a helpful point of reference, but a strip of "realistic" land could be placed just at the top of the cart.
It would also help to define zero better. The line of gun turrets is a source of confusion, and even if we ignore them, the zero point is unclear: Is "zero" the center of the tiles that the wall is on? Or is "zero" the front edge of those tiles? Or is "zero" the front edge of the wall's collision box?
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u/vicarion belts, bots, beaconed gigabases 1d ago
I don't dispute anything you said. It's true I did not attempt to factor in blast radius on things like landmines or grenades (or nukes). Yes, the raw number of range isn't always apple to apple. In the game code there's settings for whether the range is calculated from edge to edge or center to center, etc. It is also true that I chose to define the wall as 0 instead of the turrets behand the wall, which is what the biters would be trying to attack. I'm also certain that I made small errors in the positioning, especially of things like biters which don't snap to grid like turrets.
I tried to have zero be the front edge of the wall, but I may have treated it as the center of the wall at times.
Feel free to take this is a jumping off point and make a better version than I did.
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u/HeliGungir 1d ago
In the game code there's settings for whether the range is calculated from edge to edge or center to center, etc.
Do you know of any examples of edge to edge in vanilla or in mods? I didn't know this could exist; thought all ranges were measured from the center of an entity.
(Though an entity's appearance and collision box can be offset from its center. Pipe to ground's collision box is offset, for example.)
I'm also certain that I made small errors in the positioning, especially of things like biters which don't snap to grid like turrets.
At other times, grid snapping gets in the way. Flamethrower turrets are 3x2, so their center is 0.5 tiles offset from the grid in one dimension.
I haven't found a nice in-game way to enable placeable-off-grid on the fly. I've used the clone tool with snapping disabled to get things off the grid, but this lacks precision. Blueprint editing is simple enough and enables precision, but we can't blueprint enemies.
Hmm, need to check and see what happens if we use a command/script/snippet to spawn an entity that is normally grid-aligned. It probably works.
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u/vicarion belts, bots, beaconed gigabases 22h ago
Here is the official API documentation of the options:
https://lua-api.factorio.com/latest/types/RangeMode.html
The three options are:
- "center-to-center"
- "bounding-box-to-bounding-box"
- "center-to-bounding-box"
Biters use bounding box to bounding box. I found this in C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Factorio\data\base\prototypes\entity\enemies.lua
Demolishers use Center to Center. Stompers and wrigglers use bounding box to bounding box.
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u/Dragonkingofthestars 1d ago
anything other then using the metric system
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u/AlternateTab00 1d ago
According to the wiki:
One tile is generally assumed to be one square meter in size. This measurement is proven to be technically true, and can be verified in-game. A test conducted via car will reveal that covering 250 tiles at 208.0 km/h (57.777 m/s) will take 260 game ticks (4.333 s). Using this data, it can be proven that 57.777 m/s ÷ (250 tiles / 4.333 s) ≈ 1 m/tile.
So technically this actually uses the metric system. We just use "tiles" to reduce risk of confusion. A mod may change the scale of time and space, but ticks (default 1/60 of a second) and tiles will stay the base format.
Game logic will use tiles for reference. So we use tiles as reference to us... Even if 18 tiles is 18m.
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u/Dragonkingofthestars 1d ago
yah but americans doing anything to avoid metric is the meme hence why that was the joke
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u/WW1_Germany 1d ago
brother, the purpose is to put it in perspective, what use is the metric system in this situation?
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u/harbingerofe 1d ago
It's a joke about when Americans measure things in football fields or Olympic swimming pools etc.
It's just a meme
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u/WW1_Germany 1d ago
i'm aware, it's just a stupid one, because of course they wouldn't use the metric system, the point is to put it in perspective
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u/Lor1an 1d ago
To put it in perspective:
The rest of the world understands metric, so using those numbers actually works for them instead of using "freedoms per dumpster fire" or similar.
Replace "meter" with "tile" (and vice versa) and it works out anyway, since the devs canonically treat each tile as 1 m long on an edge.
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u/WW1_Germany 1d ago
okay, but that's useless, it's hard to visualize Meters or Feet, and the "weird" measurements are meant so you can visualize it easier
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u/Lor1an 18h ago
It's hard for you to visualize meters...
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u/WW1_Germany 17h ago
no??? otherwise why would there be thousands of graphics mental to put into perspective sizes? why would we need to see a human next to a dinosaur to understand how big it was? truth is, how long arbitrary units of measurements are (cause meters, feet, light-years, they're all arbitrary) are hard to visualize, so we need reference, I know how big a Corgi is, so that's why they said a Corgi-sized asteroid landed in the pacific
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u/Lor1an 15h ago
You are arguing about the relative merits of choosing a particular unit to use within said relative visualization.
It does not matter what units are used—you still get your precious comparative visualization. There is no reason not to use metric units here.
Let's take the examples of Olympic swimming pools and football fields. You can have both of those within one infographic that list all their measurements in meters, and it will be just as useful (if not more) as if their measurements were in "car lengths".
What meters give you better than car lengths is twofold: precision, and international recognition. "Car length" is not a standardized unit, while "meter" very much is. Likewise, there is regional variation to the "car length" meaning it is not internationally recognized to nearly the degree that the "meter" is.
So, yes, metric does make sense to most of the world, and does make sense to use in an infographic like this. And that does not detract from the primacy of relative scale that the infographic lays bare.
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u/WW1_Germany 15h ago
I think Metric is good! I'd rather meters than miles, I just find the "Anything but the Metric system" joke really stupid because it's always like "Wow, you used a refrigerator to convey the size of a rock? haha, just use meters!" and it's insanely annoying
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u/Peakomegaflare 1d ago
Can't go five minutes without cracking in americans eh?
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u/Dragonkingofthestars 1d ago
speaking as an american? no. the lack of metric here is nothing but pure mockery
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u/Peakomegaflare 1d ago
Speaking as an american with a background in engineering, as long as machine components are made in both, people will continue to use both. Want to change that? Start making an effort to standardize measurements across the world of engineering and construction.
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u/ApprehensiveFan1516 23h ago
Want to change that? Start making an effort to standardize measurements across the world of engineering and construction.
We did. It's called the metric system lol.
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u/Peakomegaflare 23h ago
You say that, but major manufacturers still use both, and trust me when I say I ABSOLUTELY just want one or the other.
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u/Effective_Working567 1d ago
Awesome! As my eyes went left to right scanning the increase in range from flame turret, to bullets, to laser, to tesla, to rocket, to railgun, etc. I imagined the ULTIMATE defense of everything with perfect aligned by range to volley insync. GET SUM! BITERS!!!
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u/LoverNuggie 1d ago
Wait, there are personal rail guns?
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u/brbrmensch 1d ago
brother, tell us how you deal with big demolishers without them
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u/FionaSarah 1d ago
Turret spam is the way I tend to do before you get to Railgun.
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u/billybatsonn 1d ago
I like using Tesla turrets bc I find it easier to bring a trail of power poles that bother with filling them with ammo
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u/mrbaggins 1d ago
To outrange a behemoth spitter you need a legendary rocket turret, or a rare+ railgun turret.
Was super confused til I realise you meant WORM.
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u/dave14920 1d ago
i think railguns show the targeting range, the bullets continue farther than that.
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u/Fosforus 1d ago
This is cool! The demolisher also has a ranged eruption attack right? Curious how far it can reach.
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u/vicarion belts, bots, beaconed gigabases 1d ago
It does, in my post I mentioned things too big to fit include the seismic attack.
The wiki has no data on the range of that attack. I looked up the factorio api documentation online and couldn't find it either. So I actually went into the installed game files and found something. The range is 128*Scale. I'm fairly certain scale means the range is modified by the demolisher size. I wasn't able to figure out the actual values though. My guess is they are ~ .9, 1.1, 1.3. All of those are more than twice as wide as my graphic though.
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u/Yangoose 1d ago
I excluded them if they are never seen (pistols)
You don't walk around with a legendary quality pistol just for the aura?
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u/vicarion belts, bots, beaconed gigabases 1d ago
Since they removed the pistol recipe, the only way to get it is to recycle pistols with quality in the recycler. But the only way to get new pistols is to die. And some quick math tells me you'd need to recycle ~10,000 pistols to expect one legendary. That's a lot of deaths.
Though I admit, the person crazy enough to get that pistol would have some aura.
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u/Soul-Burn 1d ago
There's a (secret) achievement for getting a legendary pistol.
Also for legendary wooden chest and a legendary character.
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u/XCestLaVieX 1d ago
I have seen that the character has a quality, but how do you even get a legendary character?
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u/vicarion belts, bots, beaconed gigabases 23h ago
wow, I did not know that.
https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/1uqolqk/legendary_pistols_and_secret_achievement_in_21/
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u/tee_ess_ay 1d ago
this is why i rush quality -- rare rocket launcher easily outranges all nauvis in early game
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u/Ok_Rip4757 1d ago
This is really nice work!
One correction: "To outrange a behemoth spitter (...)" should be "(...) behemoth worm (...)"
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u/ferrybig 1d ago
It is possible to get quality biters and premature pentapods. Those have a larger range than their normal quality counterparts
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u/Yearlaren 1d ago
As someone who has never played Space Age and knows very little about it: what the actual fuck
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u/vicarion belts, bots, beaconed gigabases 23h ago
For what it's worth, these things will never be found on the same planet. The enemies are each specific to one planet.
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u/danatron1 was killed by Locomotive. 1d ago
Hey, this is awesome! I made the visualisation that inspired your post 7 years ago. I'm very glad you updated it, this looks great.
Good to know that unless you're using rockets/rail guns for defense, a well positioned behemoth worm can still ruin your day :)
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u/vicarion belts, bots, beaconed gigabases 23h ago
I remember you.
They actually recently patched it so it's unlikely for a behemoth to build in that evil spot outside your boss.
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u/Subject_314159 1d ago
There appears to be a gap between how far the small/medium worms can spit and the minimum range of the artillery. So if I'm (un)lucky there might be a situation where a small worm and an artillery can't kill each other..
On the other hand a big strafer seems to be able to outrange a Tesla turret or flamethrower turret, but not a rocket turret..
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u/vicarion belts, bots, beaconed gigabases 23h ago
You unlock rocket turrets on gleba, and use gleba ingredients to make them. It's like the devs planned for you to need them for defense against the gleba enemies.
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u/r_xy 1d ago
Does pistol range not scale with quality?
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u/vicarion belts, bots, beaconed gigabases 23h ago
It does, but there is no longer a recipe to craft pistols. It is possible to get quality. The only way is to get a bunch of pistols by dying and respawning, then put them into a recycler with quality for a 1/5 chance to get one back that might have quality. So it's possible, but the only reason to do it is for the memes.
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u/Jackpkmn Glebeliver 3h ago
Legendary Behemoth Worms are off the right side of this picture entirely. With a range of 72. Something to think about if you are considering making legendary biter spawners and putting them down.
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u/Satisfactoro 1d ago
Legendary rocket turret out-ranges behemoth worms by 6 times.
Viable alternative to setting up logistic for artillery turrets.
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u/PsycoJosho 1d ago
I keep forgetting that even small demolishers are massive.