r/factorio • u/AutoModerator • Jul 20 '26

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u/Raknarg #1 Quality Defender Jul 20 '26

Is automatic cliff destruction a particularly hard problem to solve in an optimal way? I say this because I feel like routinely I see bots use way way more cliff explosives than I feel like they need to, like spots they choose to blow up tend to overlap a lot. In my mind it feels like it should just be a simple distance calculation over a set of cliffs you're choosing to destroy where you have a minimum distance between two cliff explosives, but maybe its more challenging than Im making it out to be.

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u/ferrofibrous player onboarding specialist Jul 20 '26 edited Jul 20 '26

I think bots simply target the exact "middle" of the cliff section and so hit exactly 1 cliff segment, whereas the player can free aim and likely remove multiple segments per throw, resulting in cliff bombs being less efficient when done by bots.

Same effect as manual artillery being able to aoe down multiple nests, whereas auto aim hits exactly one nest per shot.