Vehicle speed balancing

[sillyfly]

(This is partly balancing discussion partly concrete suggestions. If it is more suitable to Ideas & Suggestions please move it there).

I was playing around with cars and tanks, and realized cars and tanks are very slow compared to other means of transportation.

Let's have a short comparison, from fastest to slowest, of a few popular means of getting around in Factorio:

• 1. Trains - by far the fastest, with a maximum speed of 259.2 km/h
  
  2. Cars on Stone bricks - 102 km/h. Less than half the maximum speed of train.
  
  3. Player with 2 exo-skeletons, on Stone bricks - 67.4 km/h. Not bad - two thirds of the car on the same road.
  
  4. Player on Concrete path - 45.36 km/h - Still pretty impressive - without any mechanical help our player can run 100 meters in less than 8 seconds - that's about 20% faster than the world record!
  
  5. Tank on Stone bricks - 42 km/h - Pretty pathetic, but hey - you can run down trees quite easily, and are much more survivable, so maybe it's worth it.
  
  6. Player on normal ground - 32 km/h - the slowest player speed possible, and still faster than most people can run.

So, the numbers for the car and tank may look reasonable if taken on their own, but considering the player has super-human speed, they are quite pathetic. Now, the player speed is probably this high so the game won't get frustrating - if it took you 3 times longer to get from place to place you'll get pretty bored.
A point could also be made that the tank should not have a higher speed, as it would make it too easy to run away from biters, and I tend to agree.

The car however, I believe should be much faster, which brings us to the concrete part of this post - how to make the car faster. I see three possible options, each with it's own merit:

• 1. Give the car a straight up boost, making it 50%-100% faster. This is the simplest solution, but it may be unwanted as it could make the car hard to control, especially for unaccustomed players.
  
  2. Add a "car speed" research, 2 or 3 levels, each giving a 15%-30% speed boost to the car (ok, maybe also the tank and possibly train ). This way the player can get accustomed to the higher speeds as they become available, and also has the benefit of giving you more things to research (feeling of advancement).
  
  3. The third solution I see is adding a new type of vehicle altogether, a "fast car" or a "buggy", which is lighter and faster than the car, with less trunk space. This way you have the car for medium trips, or if you need to haul a lot of stuff, or the buggy for fast travel, when you aren't expecting to run into trouble.

[_itg]

It never would have occurred to me to want a faster car. What do you need one for? I mean, are you ever going to be routinely crossing long distances without a rail connection?

I'd also say the current transport methods are perfectly balanced against each other right now. It's not all about speed.

1. Trains take a lot of work and resources to set up, and they only follow fixed routes. They go a bit fast by real-world standards, but it helps make them worth the effort, so it's okay.

2. The car is clearly the fastest option that doesn't require pre-built rails.

3. Exoskeletons are fast and don't require keeping track of a vehicle, but they're high tech and require expensive power armor/modules.

4. Player on concrete is unrealistically fast, but it cuts out a lot of meanless downtime. Laying concrete takes some work and gives a sense of "marking your territory."

5. The tank is slow because it's primarily a weapon, and it's balanced so as not to be able to kite biters the way you could in the car.

6. Again, the player is ridiculously fast to cut down on boring transit time inside the factory.

If you really want a way to upgrade the car, my vote would go for adding module slots. Speed modules make it go faster at the cost of extra fuel, while efficiency modules improve gas mileage.

[sillyfly]

Yes, I do like to take the car to long trips, along roads I have paved. It feels simpler than trains, as I can just stop wherever I want, or go off the path if I like.
But it feels a little slow at times.

I guess modules are another option I haven't considered

[BlakeMW]

Heh I never realized quite how slow the Tank was, it's okay since the Tank is tougher than anything but a 4 fusions/ everything else shields power armor 2 setup and you can carry it around in your pocket so if you have a faster way to travel (car or exos) the slowness of the Tank is no issue.

Now as for the car, two things I would like, first is a speed boost on concrete (doesn't have to be an acceleration boost, just a top speed boost), secondly and most vitally is some way to auto-correct the cars bearing to follow cardinal directions (N/S/E/W), this would make it easier to do things like drive between rows of solar panels without hitting them, stay on concrete roads, and lay stuff from the car. I don't know exactly how the cardinal guide would work, I'd be fine if it just quietly and sneakily adjusts your bearing to 0/90/180/270 degrees if it is close to one any of those, or perhaps if we can hold down a key to make the vehicle "snap" to those directions.

[sillyfly]

I believe the car already gets a speed boost on concrete, as does the tank.

As for better steering - I agree this is an issue. In the meanwhile, there are at least three mods that can help with that - Better Vehicle Control, which should automatically align your vehicle to 45 degree angles; Drive Assist, which adds buttons to lock you at the four cardinal orientations (but it doesn't work with 0.12, although a fix would probably be easy to make); and my own mod, Pavement Drive Assist, which automatically aligns your car to paved roads (regardless of their orientation).

[Hexicube]

I'd guess that the train has the highest speed because you already know the train isn't going to collide with trees and rocks and what-not. Also, brick/concrete speeds aren't that important since you're not going to cover most of the world in it, and you probably won't drive a car/tank inside your base.

I think vehicle speeds are in a good spot; The car is good for fast movement over unexplored land, the train is good for going between set places really fast, the tank is good for going through forests and fighting biters, and moving on foot is responsive and versatile. Each one has a distinct role, and they're all useful in some way.

The fact that exo-skeletons stack the way they do could be a reason to change the way they stack (such as each one becoming half as effective as the last, making the current double exo-skeleton value a soft cap), since they're the outlier on the comparison chart.

[Kelidoskoped]

Allow one exo suit. Period. No buts.

[Qon]

Allow one exo suit. Period. No buts.

I guess you have never built a megabase...

[thereaverofdarkness]

Allow one exo suit. Period. No buts.

I guess you have never built a megabase...

We need teleporters. Player should be limited to one exoskeleton.

[Qon]

Allow one exo suit. Period. No buts.

I guess you have never built a megabase...

We need teleporters. Player should be limited to one exoskeleton.

Will I be able to teleport around by hitting WASD, effectivly increasing my running speed with that teleporter?
Have you built a CPU-melting megabase? When your blueprints are several times larger than your screen at full zoom out and you have to manouver around your megacontraptions while you build them at 10 ups, then you will also want to install many exoskeletons so that your character can run to the other side of your circuit production in at least the same speed as the standard walking speed. You will also want to install mods that let you install even more exeskeletons and upgraded personal roboports once you start to build big.

[thereaverofdarkness]

and you have to manouver around your megacontraptions while you build them at 10 ups,

It sounds to me like you either need to get a stronger CPU or learn the concept of "less is more".

I've built a fairly large base but it's a long ways away from slowing my machine down below 60 ups. I still use the transport belts to get around it, and if I could put a large amount of resources into building teleporters, I would. My latest base is well optimized for high output while also being compact. I can build anything I want with it, so it doesn't need any more production than it already has, but it's still sprawls pretty far across the map.

You could probably increase your movement speed by building some main lanes of travel and paving them with double express belt lines, but you'll also increase both your travel speed and your manufacturing output speed by optimizing your build to use fewer total structures and units. Try shutting off things you aren't using, or limit your buffer storage so that machines shut down after a while. Try reducing the number of robots you have traveling around, and use trains to transport large quantities of goods, as they are much less CPU-intensive for the amount transferred.

[Qon]

and you have to manouver around your megacontraptions while you build them at 10 ups,

It sounds to me like you either need to get a stronger CPU or learn the concept of "less is more".

My GPU broke so right now I can't even play on my main save. But no matter how good my computer is it will not be able to handle my base when I'm done with it.
No, less isn't more when it comes to world record in most rockets/minute. I derive enjoyment from massive constructs when I play factorio.

You could probably increase your movement speed by building some main lanes of travel and paving them with double express belt lines, but you'll also increase both your travel speed and your manufacturing output speed by optimizing your build to use fewer total structures and units. Try shutting off things you aren't using, or limit your buffer storage so that machines shut down after a while. Try reducing the number of robots you have traveling around, and use trains to transport large quantities of goods, as they are much less CPU-intensive for the amount transferred.

Your tips are not useful. You can't use any infrastructure to help you before you have defined what you are going to build your infrastructure around. It's just going to be in your way. When your blueprint is a megabase of unknown size then "build a train first" isn't going to be a realistic solution. But if you have a several exoskeletons it's reasonable to run to the other side of your blueprint.

Edit: And reducing the amount of bots is not really a goal if you replace them with belts, since belts use more CPU time than bots.

[thereaverofdarkness]

I feel like your issue is a niche one and not something the vanilla game experience should be based around. If you can't use multiple exoskeletons, neither can anyone else. You have the same chance at making the world record in either case. Alternatively, people could define the world record to allow a mod that lets you have more exoskeletons. But I'm sure teleporters would save time too.

[Qon]

I feel like your issue is a niche one and not something the vanilla game experience should be based around.

Your speed is quite limited until you have PAMKII. The armor modules are balanced with their space requirements and not with arbitrary limits on numbers on installed items. Building big is not really that niche, the general consensus seems to be that more is more. You are the first that I've seen that says that less is more and that your production doesn't have to increase.
The general consensus on the car also seems to be that it is non-optimal for intrabase transportation and perfectly optimal for ramming into power poles.

If you can't use multiple exoskeletons, neither can anyone else.

This is just horrible. The reason for having several is to reduce tedious walking that just wastes your time. Why should it become more pointlessly tedious for everyone? That's worse for all. The challenge in the late game should not be based around using the same movement speed that is reasonable in the coal age when your base is small enough to be covered by a single roboport.

You have the same chance at making the world record in either case.

Not relevant. The same is true for ANY change to the game. This does not support your point.

[thereaverofdarkness]

The challenge in the late game should not be based around using the same movement speed that is reasonable in the coal age when your base is small enough to be covered by a single roboport.

Maybe the challenge should be to increase your effective transportation speed by taking advantage of the various tools you unlock, with each one having its own advantages and drawbacks. The only drawbacks to wearing several exoskeletons is having to take them off before you go into combat, although you don't even really have to do that given how easy it is to do combat by laying down turrets.