Oppenheimer Energy Lance

The Oppenheimer Lance is the most physically faithful weapon ever built for Factorio. It does not shoot a projectile. It stores a nuclear-scale charge in capacitor banks, fires a beam across up to 10,000 tiles, and dumps that energy into a growing sphere of ionized plasma. The sphere collapses, holds, and releases as a fireball at up to 48,000 K spawning a shockwave that ignites the ground utterly destroying anything in it's path.

It sweeps out to a 2,000-tile radius on a single Lance, following the same blast-wave mathematics that describe real detonations. Everything at the center is annihilated. The rest of the disc dies by the numbers: overpressure contours from Brode's 1955 fit, thermal burns falling off with the inverse square of distance, biters, nests, and trees each taking the dose the physics says they should.

WHAT YOU'LL SEE

The strike: A beam of charged plasma crosses the map. Its colour is the blackbody colour of the temperature it has reached, so a larger shot burns whiter and hotter.

The blast: A Sedov-Taylor shock front, fast out of the fireball and crawling at the rim, exactly as it moves in real air. Lightning arcs off its edge on Space Age installs.

The ground: Rock is painted by the peak heat it saw. Molten lava at the centre, cracked and glowing volcanic stone around it, folded ash at the edge. Then it cools tile by tile, on a solved heat model of conduction, radiation and latent heat, for as long as a real crust would take.

The crater: Dug and rimmed using Glasstone & Dolan's The Effects of Nuclear Weapons. Shallow water boils off under the fireball.

THE POWER

One Lance draws 36 GW and can be aimed anywhere from a 30-tile pop to the full 2,000-tile shot. Link several and they converge on one target, adding pressure and heat rather than an unmanageable crater size.

BUILT FROM REAL PHYSICS

Yield derives from the crater's real size, so the fire-control panel and the ground can never disagree. Damage is anchored to published lethality thresholds, so a 1% shot kills as hard at its centre as a full one; yield buys reach, not dose.

FAQ

Oppenheimer Energy Lance: FAQ

What is it?

A late-game superweapon that runs on electricity. You dial in a charge, pick a spot on the map, and confirm. It spends about 15 seconds pulling power into its capacitor banks, then fires a beam that burns for about 11 seconds and ends in a detonation. The blast radius runs from about 30 tiles at 1% up to 2,000 tiles at 100%.

How far can it shoot?

Up to 10,000 tiles from every installation, from the moment you build it. The minimum range is 64 tiles, and the designator refuses any target inside 1.1x your own blast radius.

Does it need Space Age?

No. It only needs base Factorio 2.0. Space Age adds the lava-and-cooling ground effects and the lightning storm around the blast.

How do I unlock it?

Research Oppenheimer Lance. It needs Military 4, Tank, Concrete and Radar, and costs red, green, blue, military and yellow science. One technology follows it:

• Capacity (9 levels) allows one more installation per level, up to 10.

How do I build one?

Place the turret first. It lays out its own pad and puts ghosts on every slot. Fill in:

• the capacitor banks (8 is the minimum, 32 gets you the full dial)
• the four Lance Substations
• the lamps

Connect one substation to your grid. Installations must stand at least 42 tiles apart.

How do I fire it?

1. Open the status panel from the shortcut bar and choose a yield.
2. Grab the Lance Designator from the shortcut bar and click a target. The barrel starts turning.
3. When the ground lamps turn solid amber, click the same spot again to confirm.
4. You have until the beam ignites, about 15 seconds, to abort. After that you can't take it back.

Can several installations fire together?

Yes. Installations that fire within 96 tiles of the same strike join it: one sphere, one detonation, their power added together with a bonus for firing together. A full battery of 10 pushes the blast toward, but never past, a 3,000-tile radius.

How much power does it need?

| State | Draw | |---|---| | Idle installation | 250 MW, flat | | 100% shot | 36 GW for the charge window |

If your grid can't keep up, or you haven't built enough banks to take in the charge, the shot still lands where you aimed. It just detonates at the yield you actually delivered.

If the grid fails outright mid-charge, the shot aborts and the installation goes dark until power returns.

Will it hurt my own base?

Yes, if you let it.

• The beam spares your own buildings but not players. Anyone standing in its path is vaporized, including you.
• The blast isn't picky about whose buildings are in the crater. The designator refuses targets inside your own blast radius, but the gun only protects itself. Aiming across your own outposts is on you.

How long is the cooldown?

About 15 seconds after each shot, the length of the spin-down sound.

Is it heavy on UPS?

Large shots are. A 100% detonation moves a shock wave across thousands of tiles and generates any terrain it passes that hasn't been generated yet. Expect a noticeable hit while a big one plays out, especially on unexplored ground. Small shots are cheap.

Does it work in multiplayer?

It's written to be multiplayer-safe, but it hasn't been tested in a real multiplayer game yet. Please report any desyncs.

I'm updating from an older version. Will my save break?

It shouldn't. Old installations are migrated automatically. If a capacitor bank was sitting where a substation now goes, it gets dropped on the ground next to the installation rather than deleted. Check each pad for ghosts after loading.

The Targeting Range, Cycling and Payload technologies no longer exist; saves that researched them still load.

Why does the mod folder say "artillery"?