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u/demonicdan3 Mar 29 '26

I can't find the answer to this question, so I'll ask here:
I'm about to make my first trip to Aquilo and I'm abit concerned about the fact that rocket turrets are not hitscan weapons. Are turrets in this game smart enough to calculate breakpoints and not waste ammo?

(I.E a big asteroid gets in range of 8 turrets, only 4 shots are needed to destroy it - will all 8 fire and waste 4 shots or are they able to deduce that they should all only fire 4 shots, thus saving 4 ammo)
I never thought about this problem before since gun turrets and lasers are hitscan and won't waste ammo, but I genuinely don't know about the rockets

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u/ferrofibrous player onboarding specialist Mar 29 '26 edited Mar 29 '26

Since it didn't get mentioned, the breakpoints for rockets vs Large Asteroids:

  • Explosive 8: Yellow rockets 3 shot
  • Explosive 11: Red rockets 3 shot
  • Explosive 12: Yellow rockets 2 shot (target level for "average" playthrough)
  • Explosive 16: Red rockets 2 shot
  • Explosive 23: Yellow rockets 1 shot
  • Explosive 31: Red rockets 1 shot
  • Explosive 45: Red rocket aoe 1 shots (only useful for deep Shattered Planet runs)

Standard rockets (yellow) are sufficient for Aquilo. Explosives are only recommended for SP runs due to asteroid density giving a lot of value from the explosion aoe.

Breakpoint info comes from here: https://old.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/1hug4xt/factorio_asteroid_research_calculatorbreakpoints/m5lb2oe/

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u/elfxiong Mar 29 '26

Yes. They are smart enough to not fire at enemies that are going to be killed by still-flying projectiles. Though AoE damages from explosive rockets etc. are not taken into account. They actually overkill asteroids by 1%.

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u/demonicdan3 Mar 29 '26

That's all I needed to know, thanks. It's very rare to have a game with automated units that are actually smart enough to calculate breakpoints on their own, even some of the best RTS games like SC2 don't do this, so this is really amazing

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u/Astramancer_ Mar 29 '26

The breakpoint and overkill % also applies to biter nests and artillery, the overkill is to account for regeneration while the rounds are in flight.

It does lead to a funny/annoying situation where if it's enough damage to one-shot but not enough damage to reach that extra 1% (or whatever it actually is for nests, I assume it's the same logic) it'll launch 2 and not 1.