Friday Facts #66 - Merry christmas

[kovarex]

So the news is here: https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-66

[FishSandwich]

Generally speaking, the 0.11.7 was a disaster, so we had to work during weekend to make a fix release on monday.

We appreciate your hard works.

[Night_Ange1]

Awesome Devs looks great! Can't wait for all this to be implimenter .12 is going to be epic!

[Rseding91]

Generally speaking, the 0.11.7 was a disaster, so we had to work during weekend to make a fix release on monday.

We appreciate your hard works.

Indeed I haven't had such a great experience with game developers in any other game I've ever played.

Also, regardless of what the "end game" ends up being - I'm sure it will be amazing

[bonob]

Well, 11.7 is the first time that the replay is working, at least for me, so I don't want to update until I finished the game I started with it :/

The new features for signal processing sound exciting !

Merry Christmas

[irbork]

LOL the end goal space ship looks like a giant pile of scrap.
Its fine as long as it get the task done

[Xterminator]

Yes we greatly appreciate your hard work and dedication! Probably the best dev team of any game I have had experience with. Really can't wait for all the new changes and an actual end game in 0.12 :p I like the sketch of the spaceship, it reminds me of a futuristic version of Hal's Moving Castle.

[Cordylus]

Please add to the receivers the rail signal. It will help A LOT with the train managing.

[kovarex]

Please add to the receivers the rail signal. It will help A LOT with the train managing.

Yes, that is a possibility as well, these things are very easy to implement.

[Terminal]

I think that Transport Belt should also be a receiver. When wired up, the signal would have to be on for the transport belt to move materials. Production machines as well. Miners, Furnaces, Assembly Machines, Oil Refineries and Chemical Plants...

Could you elaborate on the Train Stop enhancements? I've struggled for a while to send single stacks of Repair Packs/Walls to satellite bases, and I'm hoping your changes will make trains more useful and usable!

[Kanddak]

I'm definitely looking forward to being able to detect the contents of a train. It sounds like you are talking about making the train station detect all items in the entire train. It might be more useful to make a way to detect the contents of individual cargo wagons (perhaps we need smart wagons for this purpose: cargo wagon + some number of electronic circuits?). Maybe a sensor platform which sees the contents of whatever vehicle is parked on top of it? This might be useful for cars and tanks as well as train wagons.

I'm also really looking forward to space travel, because I was kind of hoping that was the direction the game would go in before it was announced. After reading the replies on that announcement I feel like "endgame" is an unnecessarily polarizing word. It is always nice to have more things to do but there is no need for a construction game to have a fixed "ending".
It seems like there is a lot of potential for space travel to develop in several stages:

1. Ability to build a spaceport to load/unload/fuel existing spacecraft. This would roughly correspond to the current Rocket Defense, but perhaps with more details like adding rocket-specific fuels to the chemical industry, communications equipment, etc. In a scenario where the player comes from an existing spacefaring civilization and needs to prepare a planet for colonization or get rescued from having crash landed, this would be the point where spacecraft from the player's home civilization could visit and rescue the player, deliver colonists, or trade. In a scenario where the player is a von Neumann probe or something of that nature, this wouldn't be very useful yet.
2. Ability to construct spacecraft locally. This might allow the player to reveal the map, use space-based solar power or weapons, mine asteroids, etc. This is the starting point of what you've mentioned planning for 0.12, allowing construction in space leading up to:
3. Ability to construct large, interstellar-capable spacecraft for trade, exploration, establishing new colonies, et cetera. Again, exactly what good this does depends on the start scenario and whether or not the player has a relationship with an existing spacefaring civilization. It seems like the game mechanics could be designed in such a way that there is plenty of room for different start scenarios depending on individual player preferences.

[3LollipopZ]

Oh Yeah! I'm Excited!!! Signals are my time killer and where I spend most of my time automating.

I am still desperate for more logic in my train and conveyor network. Perhaps splitter logic for is the next piece of conveyor full, one a day for a period of time (coal or burner material), or timed power networks (solar + batteries + chest). It will be great to play around with these new logic gates and see how we can get some more innovative automation into the game.

Oh, perhaps dig a trench, fill it with oil if it's empty or enemies are nearby, and set it on fire automatically with fire breathing dragons / turrets
Ok, maybe not the dragons.... but maybe a nice medieval mod one day.

[cyanit]

This sounds really great. I hope you'll add a way to reserve railway-blocks (defined by the train signals) for certain trains in the system. Because the last time I tried to centralize all my trainlines into one large trainyard it wasn't stable.

Basically I had one large ring with several seperate stations (which then joined the ring again) and every outpost (with a turn-arround loop at the end) had a specific train and it's own connection to the ring. This all worked well in theory and also in practice for a while. But every 10-20 minutes the system would jam because a train decided it would use any other rail to turn arround. Only to come back and face the train which was supposed to go there. And then the other trains wait behind that.

It would be pretty handy if you could just click on a train signal (or something similar) and specify that only a chosen list of trains can ever pass it.

Keep up the good work!

[THENIRL]

Oh, yes, freaking yes, more signal manipulation! If we can play around with automation now, we'll be able to REALLY make stuff happen if we can get some more complex circuits going!

Also, freaking SPACESHIP! You can't beat SPACE! Unless you're on a SPACESHIP! XD

[ssilk]

Is the "combinatior" basically the same as in Reason?
https://www.propellerheads.se/products/ ... ombinator/

In short: put in as many devices in it as you want, route the cables and route up to 4 controls (plus 4 buttons) to any control in any device in the combinator.

Edit: Oh, and if you changed the game objectives (I really have overlooked that
https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... =30#p57545
And the previous page), they can be added to the game proposals? Like "Building spaceship and doing colonization"?

[MF-]

Please add to the receivers the rail signal. It will help A LOT with the train managing.

Yes, that is a possibility as well, these things are very easy to implement.

Just to be sure:
So.. A CCnet condition will be able to enable/disable a rail signal?

[MF-]

So the news is here: https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-66
He made a prototype of light-based progress bar indicator of the amount of items in the chest. In that moment, my head exploded from the possibilities it can bring.

Sometimes I forget that you got inspired by BC/IC2 instead of RedPower.

Awesome.
Finally something for the automation people instead of the warlords

train station sensor (sends items in the train in the station)
light/daytime sensor
accumulator capacity sensor
electric network energy sensor
enemy sensor
manual switch

light, condition can be specified, can be colored depending the singal
gate
electric network switch, can disconnect segments of electric network based on signal condition.
pumps

A couple more come to my mind
Many aim to provide custom railroad automation instead of fully relying on the autopilot.

Sensors:
Generic pressure plate: entity sensor - player, biters, items on ground
manual push button - toggling a switch back and forth is annoying
in-rail weight sensor: Would report a type of carriage passing over (locomotive/wagon) and %age of it's load.
rail signal (as sensor): To detect the state of a block/signal (red, yellow, green)

Actuators:
rail signal (as actuator)
railroad switch motor -> Allow us to operate trains as model trains, instead of them running in full automatic mode

Signal manipulation:
Integrator: Would add up measurements of each carriage from the in-rail weight sensor

[VDOgamez]

Please add to the receivers the rail signal. It will help A LOT with the train managing.

Yes, that is a possibility as well, these things are very easy to implement.

Anything improving the capacity of the rail signals, such as circuit control of signals and train or signal detection would be very much appreciated. There's a lot of things that are difficult or impossible to do in the game right now with trains that would likely be feasible with the addition of anything else to the rail signal system. I imagine that having the capacity to toggle signals might also make them more accessible to mods. As nice as it is to have simple and easy-to-learn rail signals there's also the potential for something really cool.

[Night_Ange1]

Can we add Gates to the entities which can receive a signal. Gates getting signals operate off signal otherwise they work as before. (Gated crosswalks )

[Artman40]

One thing that really would benefit the game was a small item editor for making custom levels. This means that it would be really easy to add items which you could produce by setting things like which items they need, where you could craft it and how much time it takes to craft them.