Friday Facts #397 - Factoriopedia

[FactorioBot]

Here it is! (beep boop)

https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-397

[MatHack]

Helpful feature, just a question about the keybinding:
Considering Alt is bound to Alt-mode, wouldn't Alt + LMB toggle the alt mode every time you use it to open the new feature?

[Marvin01]

Considering Alt is bound to Alt-mode, wouldn't Alt + LMB toggle the alt mode every time you use it to open the new feature?

Creating a blueprint with Alt+B doesn't toggle it, so that shouldn't be an issue.

[Taneeda]

Love those little details like the history buttons, especially with the mouse backward/forward buttons which are deeply connected in my muscle memory for that Those are the details that make the difference between a great game and an awesome game. I can't really enjoy other factory builder games because of the lack of such details...

[Stringweasel]

Definitely a much needed feature! It looks great

One little remark, the two most used things in the information panel (except maybe for the stack-size, etc) is likely the "Ingredients" and "Used In". The "Unlocked By" is rarely used, but now it's taking up a lot of screen space, and you would have to scroll past it every time to to look at the very-useful "Used In" section. It might be nice to move "Unlocked By" to the bottom. This will be especially useful for mods that add a few more buildings/items, and especially for overhaul mods with many items/buildings.

[Ghoulish]

A very useful addition!

[DDRJake]

Very nice. Could we please be able to mouse over entities and explore this while the game is paused? Checking stats on moving objects is very difficult and pause stops tooltips dead.

[Justderpingalong]

Looks neat! Though... I am gonna ask: What is the benefit of having like 4 different 'rail' entities in the blueprint book? Just the 1 seems like it would suffice.

[husnikadam]

One little remark, the two most used things in the information panel (except maybe for the stack-size, etc) is likely the "Ingredients" and "Used In". The "Unlocked By" is rarely used, but now it's taking up a lot of screen space, and you would have to scroll past it every time to to look at the very-useful "Used In" section. It might be nice to move "Unlocked By" to the bottom. This will be especially useful for mods that add a few more buildings/items, and especially for overhaul mods with many items/buildings.

Agreed!

[FasterJump]

Cool features, the "history" looks very convenient.

For a second I was surprised to read "Steel plate" next to the icon of a steel beam (I haven't played the game since a while).

I agree that "Unlocked by" is less important than "Used in".

[LoneWolf_LWP]

I get the feeling that with most of the ffa's I could just say something like.

Ok, that's another mod I can dump

It's not meant in a negative way, but I hope we get enough "real" new things that havent been solved/done by the modding communtiy already.

The implementation of course is good as some mods are not UPS friendly, but still, it doesnt feel new, just implemented.

I truly hope that i'm mistaken and the really cool new stuff still needs to come.

[Gergely]

Why use the hat in "m/s^2" for unit of measurement of gravity? There is a perfectly good Unicode character for superscript: m/s²

[EvanT]

Vulcanus has ~4G Gravity along with ~4 times the atmospheric pressure?!

No visit without an exoskeleton.

[gGeorg]

Nice QoL, I have used Wiki for this. Alt-Tab is easy.
I see an issue with layout of Factoriopedia - scrollbars.
Your intention to make UI layout standardized also make it space hungry, (lot of gray without any information).
It means, player has few information on screen then bunch available when scroll. That is PAIN design.

Scrollbars are poison in games. Accounting software are not very funny, but contains a lot of scrollbars. This link work also other-way around >>> add scrollbars to your game to make it boring equal to an accounting software.

I would recommend work more on layout to eliminate scrollbars as much as possible. For example make it 3 sections, side by side instead of current two (list of items, total item info). >>> ( 1. list of items; 2. base info - research & receipt, no scroll here never ;3. rest info with scroll possible)

[FasterJump]

Also, the Steel furnace tooltip says 4/m.

m is for meters, and min is for minutes. Literally unplayable.

[Tooster]

It's pretty funny reading "Rocket capacity" on a substation's page, almost as if the substation had the capacity for rockets and self defense XD

Overall good, but pretty unfortunate that "Unlocked By" takes so much vertical space, when I assume it will most commonly be a single element. Something has to be done with this. As for placing it underneath the products, I think I'm against it. Some mods add a lot of items. Damn, even simple "Assembler" could display a very long list, and I am against scrolling for half an hour just to see what tech unlocks my machine. Maybe something like a small table of contents or vertical tabs could be used instead?

While at it I came up with a proposition for alternative quality tier names:
normal, uncommon, rare, epic, legendary -> C grade, B, grade, A grade, A+ grade, S grade. It's similar to power efficiency grades, but they use A+++, A++, A+, A, B, ... G.

[woytaz]

But since it is a tooltip, you can't really go and click those to explore further.

Not with this attitude! This just means you need to implement nested tooltips next They're crazy helpful! See Crusader Kings 3 or Baldur's Gate 3 for examples.

[bodobram]

I like this idea. For me, a real game changer was this tool that can calculate a whole supply chain and the needed factories for it:
https://kirkmcdonald.github.io/calc.htm ... ircuit:f:1

Maybe, it is worth an idea to add a similar functionality also in the Factoriopedia, so for example provide an extra button "Show supply chain" which shows a graph of all raw ingredients that are necessary to craft this product.

[Terrahertz]

Again a very nice addition to the game.

Altough I have to say that information on Vulcanus is quite concerning: 4 times the gravity of Earth, 4 times the air pressure, as if a half molten Planet isn't dangerous enough

But also what info is given is quite concerning:

• Gravity, Magnetic Field, Pressure: Might just be lore, but this would be a bit out of line with the usual information policy inside the game.

• Gravity: Might have something to do with the amount of fuel or generall components required per rocket? As the capacity seems to be a fixed value.

• Magnetic Field: Does this mean if it's not 100 %, power grid entities get randomly damaged?

• Pressure: Special survial gear required?

• Connections: Until now I was under the impression that In space, nobody can tell you where to go. I can deal with that, it's just a bit odd.

• Exclusive Recipies: Now that's a big one. Does this mean the can only be unlocked there or does this mean they can only be produced there?

BTW is anybody else under the impression that the devs are waiting for FFF-400 to reveal the next Planet?

[tolomea]

You didn't mention locked / unlocked state at all.

I presume in search results, used by, alt recipes etc you see all recipes, it'd be nice if locked stuff was grey'd out and pushed to the end.

Also on locked items the tech to unlock is the most important thing. But on unlocked ones it's the least, so maybe it should jump to the bottom.