Factorio Forums

I am currently playing a game with the castra mod, where you want to not kill spawners, but the enemies that come out of them. Hence I would love an option to ignore a certain target. Currently this already works by creating a priority list with all valid targets except the spawner. And enabling only fire at priorized targets.

This could also be fun in the base game by incentivising leaving spawners alive, but cauterized to avoid farspread pollution.

If it already works, then why make a suggestion? And I have already seen it used on biter spawners.

I think he's asking for the QoL feature of having the option for the filters to toggle between a whitelist and blacklist, much like you see on inserters.

IMO, it's bizarre this feature doesn't already exist on other entities you can set filters for.

A whitelist/blacklist toggle would definitely be nice.
Especially since you might want to keep some close by spawners alive for later capture and it's a bit of a hassle to set the filter in the turrets to every biter/spitter variant when all you really want is "shoot everything but the nest".

JackTheSpades wrote: Wed Oct 22, 2025 4:03 pm it's a bit of a hassle to set the filter in the turrets to every biter/spitter variant

Blueprints copy filters. I think you might be able to shift right click and shift left click copy settings too.

computeraddict wrote: Wed Oct 22, 2025 5:23 pm Blueprints copy filters. I think you might be able to shift right click and shift left click copy settings too.

That is still worse than a blacklist, or a de-prioritized whitelist though. Take asteroids for example, say you have a railgun. The current solution is to write a target list only including huge asteroids and maybe big asteroids. But if you write huge ice before huge carbon, then a huge ice enters range while a huge carbon is about to hit, it will waste time to aim and shoot the huge ice then get hit. The ideal behavior is to blacklist all medium / small asteroids and shoot whatever else that is nearest.

option "ignore listed target" would be great yeah specially when you discover a mod

JackTheSpades wrote: Wed Oct 22, 2025 4:03 pm A whitelist/blacklist toggle would definitely be nice.
Especially since you might want to keep some close by spawners alive for later capture and it's a bit of a hassle to set the filter in the turrets to every biter/spitter variant when all you really want is "shoot everything but the nest".

It is a hassle but you can copy paste the settings.
Also you wont be doing this lategame anyway so you only need to set the small biters, and you can just then capture the nest by building enough walls/pipes so they cant spawn new enemies.

Gladaed wrote: Sat Oct 18, 2025 2:30 pm I would love an option to ignore a certain target.

As some have mentioned, this would be good with asteroids. I don't see the point of the current system - I never want any asteroids to hit my platform. I just want to target small/medium/big/huge - it's just extra clicks selecting all four types. And then there's the problem mentioned about prioritizing whatever order you list instead of prioritizing by which is closest, which can be mediated by alternating priorities across turrets, but why is this a thing?

Is there any situation in which you want to prioritize a particular type of asteroid instead of size? Seems like an oversight to me.