I would have thought it would just have been better to make some aliens that can traverse water, to be honest.

Imagine them suddenly popping up behind your moat...

I also propose CRC -> SHA-* as you don't use it permanently (only when loading/saving) so performance hit is a non-issue and it's more future-proof. Actually, I was astounded to get to know you use a meager CRC for creating object-hashes... You can throw as many bits onto the checksum as you like, ...

4-colour theorem says that you should only need four different (hopefully harmonising) colours to display any such rail-markers. If you can find four nice colours, that go well together without circus effects (e.g. pastelly or something), it should be easily do-able and you only have to worry about ...

Only with a mod, I think.

A* pathfinding is expensive. And every track section is another node to check. That sounds about right, because even a moderate amount of nodes can bring a top end computer to its knees.

Even bots just aim for their destination without obstacles, but trains have to do all sorts of pathing.

So you have never misplaced an inserter or a belt then? Because this challenge prohibits any kind of deconstruction. There is a reason why it is an "exercise in frustration". This also makes walling off the base a risky endeavour since you cannot remove your wall. It doesn't say that I ca...

Well, Just about every game I've ever played has been compliant with Adecostructiae - once something is in, I rarely move it except to upgrade (that's half the fun of a constricted base, to work out how to place things and work around obstacles), I do Economy savant by walling off a small area at th...

The main character can walk around with a bunch of trains and tanks in his pocket. Realism in any game like this is selective and subjective. That said, water could be a resource that gets used up. It's not even hard to integrate if you're already "mining" fluid. Just make the pump work li...

How do people provide items from chests? Consider the following: I make yellow, then red, then blue belts, automatically and add on over time. My factory is therefore using a mix of all three and I have factories providing all three into chests. I also want to hold a stock in hand of the latest belt...

It reminds me a little of Global Effect, an old DOS game.

Nobody has ever played that though. It was Sim City, basically, but where you had to be eco-friendly.

I played one of my mini-base games (wall off in early stages, then you can use nothing outside the wall to get to launching the rocket) and I like to vary the defence. I've played it with entirely yellow-ammo guns (launched rocket). I've played it with uranium ammo now (launched rocket). I've played...

Recompiling anything that compiles under a major compiler to run on ARM is generally trivial in the modern age, so long as it is generally portable. The fact that Factorio is on Mac, Linux and Windows suggests that most of the obvious stuff is taken care of. The next problem that hits is having the ...

To be honest, most of what annoys me about the way the inventory UI works was quite obvious. The filter vs. actual item thing was always frustrating. The other "human interface" bits that remain annoying for me are: - Building circuit networks. It's never easy to see what's going to tie in...

Program in a language. Any language. If you get to the point that you actually start coding anything independently, you can pick up any language you like. Most people who I teach a language never get to writing their own programs (outside of tweaking examples, doing their coursework, etc.). If you'r...

I use underground pipes all the time, except for corners. It keeps them out of my way, stops them mixing and allows me to run pipelines in parallel. To be honest, I don't see the pipes as much of a hindrance but sometimes I literally just do underground pipes for two or three grid squares so I can w...

Nice homework question.

I agree, it's a good update. But that doesn't mean it's perfect... :-) The nuke is underwhelming and the amount of research and uranium refining to get to a point where you can just wander back to base and pick up 10 nukes is HUGE. Then you walk out, take out a couple of bases, and they're gone. To ...

Okay, so I do mini-bases, not mega-bases, so I wall myself in and get to the rocket without much else from outside. But here's my takeaway of 0.15: - Steam boilers are very short-lived now. Can't see the use of them once you get a single nuclear station up with even just three turbines on one heat e...

I just had one accumulator, which was circuit-networked to the coal intake on the individual steam boilers. I also put a loudspeaker on it so I got global low-power alerts the second its charge dipped below 100. If you control the individual boiler's coal, you can fire them up before the accumulator...

I'm a mathematician. I can't think of anything more dull than just plugging in the numbers and building an "ideal" ratio for absolute perfection. Especially with online games with strangers, it bores me to tears when people say "Oh, but X is 0.01% more efficient", I couldn't care...