0.13 balance discussion

[Slayer1557]

There were a number of balance changes made with the 0.13 update, and I wanted to see what people thought about them.

The one's I'd like to focus on are:
•Roboport have decreased transmition power consumption (200kw->50kw) while the robots (and their recharging) has increased power consumption (200kW per recharge slot to 1Mw per slot) Basically, covering area by roboports is cheaper, but using robots for transport is more expensive. To keep the personal roboport usefulness, energies used in personal roboport have been all multiplied by 10.
•Increased battery equipment power storage, input, and output by a factor of 20.
•Oil yield drains to 10% two times slower.
•Added cluster grenades and grenade upgrades.
•Flamethrower turret. Fueled with fluid, shoots a stream of burning oil towards oncoming enemies.
•Added the Stack inserter - an expensive upgrade over fast inserters that can move several more items at a time.

What's everyone's thoughts on this stuff? This looks like a pretty big hit to Robots. Are they actually using more power to move around, or is it just increasing recharge speed? And what is meant by personal roboport energies multiplied by 10? How much it can store? Transmit? Maybe the battery equipment upgrade will help offset that.

Hooray for even more windfall oil! I love this change. I often get pressured by the time I'm getting blue science set up because I just don't have enough oil to keep up, before I get advanced oil processing.

I've never used grenades because they were pretty worthless as soon as you started seeing medium biters. Can't wait to see what the new ones do.

Flamethrowers. Same as the grenades. Was pretty worthless, can't wait to test it now. I saw the gif from a previous FFF of the new flamethrower and it looks sick. Anyone try it out yet? How does it square up against nests? Big biters? Behemoths? Evil forests?

And one of the bigger balance changes, the stack inserter. What do people think of it now? What about the upgrades affecting regular inserters to a degree? I was never really into logistics robots that much, and with the new stack inserter, I'm not sure I'm going to be switching any time soon.

[siggboy]

The one's I'd like to focus on are:
•Roboport have decreased transmition power consumption (200kw->50kw) while the robots (and their recharging) has increased power consumption (200kW per recharge slot to 1Mw per slot)
•Increased battery equipment power storage, input, and output by a factor of 20.
•Oil yield drains to 10% two times slower.

I'm pretty sure the personal robots actually use 10% of the energy and not 1000%. This looks like a mistake in the description. I think it's a rather arbitrary change to keep the personal roboport viable, and doesn't really make sense. The alternative would have been to rescale all the power armor energy to be in line with the new robots, but what they did is of course a lot simpler.

It doesn't really make sense that you have amazing fusion reactors in your armor but only steam and solar in your base, so this whole area of alien technology could use a rework anyway.

The new robot balance is fine. It looks to me as if the robots simply use five times as much energy, but the idle power draw of roboports has been reduced to 25% instead. So if you just want to cover a large base with robots it's much cheaper now in terms of energy, but if you actually use the robots in bulk you need prepare your power generation for it. I like it.

The increased windfall oil is crazy! It will put the amount of oil finally in line with the amount of ore (in 0.12 when you mass produce rockets you always run out of oil first, assuming all resources are balanced). It will be nice to see 1.5 million oil in a single field with RSO.

The new batteries in armor are great, the old ones where just not worth using really; all you did was wait for fusion reactors and use those. Now you can use batteries and solar panels and actually have enough energy for multiple roboports unless you use them all the time. It will even make sense to add buffer batteries to the fusion reactors to have more robot uptime.

I'm not really interested in combat, but making the flamethrower finally useful was certainly a good move. It could also be useful to make one just for deforesting (BTW that's exactly how real world fire deforesting works as well).

[siggboy]

The alternative would have been to rescale all the power armor energy to be in line with the new robots, but what they did is of course a lot simpler.

I've just checked 0.13 and this is indeed what they have done (fusion reactor now delivers 750kW instead of 75, exoskeleton consumes 200 instead of 20 etc.).

[Shin]

The new flamethrower seems OP. It's even better at destroying biters and spawners than the combat shotgun which is already extremly strong. It's main dmg seems to come from the fires on the ground not it's shot damage alone. You can just spray for 1-2 seconds on a spawner and it will die just by watching it burn.

[siggboy]

Nice . I might finally re-enable aliens in my games if there's now a reasonable way to deal with them (that is not completely annoying or boring).

[Shin]

Nice . I might finally re-enable aliens in my games if there's now a reasonable way to deal with them (that is not completely annoying or boring).

There were already reasonable ways to deal with them before. The flamethrower is just way too strong and aliens seem to be in general a bit weak and boring. I hope they will get some more variety in the future.

[siggboy]

The only unmodded, "reasonable" way to deal with them was to use lots of energy shield and a combat shotgun, or in the very late game, a crazy amount of destroyer capsules.

Anything else was monkey business (in the mid game you could use a tank to get some alien artifacts, but tank gets obsolete in end game).

Half of the weapons were completely useless.

And don't get me started about turret creep -- the biggest cheese tactic of them all, it should not be necessary to use such cheese.

I think the main problem with the combat balance is the almost instant respawn of the biters. This makes taking out bases an all or nothing approach. There is no tactical combat at all.

[Shin]

The only unmodded, "reasonable" way to deal with them was to use lots of energy shield and a combat shotgun, or in the very late game, a crazy amount of destroyer capsules.

Anything else was monkey business (in the mid game you could use a tank to get some alien artifacts, but tank gets obsolete in end game).

Half of the weapons were completely useless.

And don't get me started about turret creep -- the biggest cheese tactic of them all, it should not be necessary to use such cheese.

I think the main problem with the combat balance is the almost instant respawn of the biters. This makes taking out bases an all or nothing approach. There is no tactical combat at all.

Tank upgrades will be there in future updates. Maybe this will make the tank more useful in late game?

I know that turret creep is cheesy and not really fun. But it's still a tactic. Maybe if the spawners have some kind of slimey creep like the Zerg in Starcraft to prevent the player from building near them would solve this?

I have to agree, that some of these weapons are not worth it. Rocket launcher and railgun are kinda useless. I never build them. And other weapons like the combat shotgun and the new flamethrower are far too good compared to them.
There are really some balance issues.

Also I have to agree with you that there is not much tactic.That's why more enemy variety and better balanced weapons for different purposes would bring a fresh wind into combat. I don't think the problem is the fast spawn rate of the biters because you can take them out fairly easy and spawners don't have much hp. Poison capsules also works to prevent them from spawning (And now fire too). It's more like the combat needs to be more complex. I know that the focus lies on building factories. But that doesn't mean that combat has to be boring. It would be much more interesting if there was more complexity and variation. Especially the enemies needs some variation instead of just a recolored version with more hp. Factorio has the interesting evolution and pollution system. It would be sad if this doesn't do much. For example spawners could evolve, different enemies with abilities like flying or tunneling could spawn. All weapons should be useful and for different purposes and enemy types (more important resistance system) etc. Maybe this will be a thing for the future? I'm optimistic because they added the flamethrower turrent and there will be an artillery turret in 0.14. On the factorio homepage is also mentioned that combat is not fleshed out and they will work on it. And somewhere I read that kovarex like the idea of RTS elements. So I didn't give up on a more tactical and better combat system. But this seems to be a thing for later updates.

[siggboy]

On the factorio homepage is also mentioned that combat is not fleshed out and they will work on it. And somewhere I read that kovarex like the idea of RTS elements. So I didn't give up on a more tactical and better combat system. But this seems to be a thing for later updates.

It's not easy to create an interesting combat system with some tactical depth, where there's more to it than simply brute-forcing your way through. So I'll be excited to see something like that in the game, but right now I'm not holding my breath.

In my current long game I've completely disabled aliens. Unfortunately it makes you feel alone in the world -- I'd love to have some company but not if it's a constant distraction that adds nothing to the fun.

Maybe I'll play with Orbital Cannon in the future and some other combat mods (Nucular already adds nuclear weapons), then it'll at least be some fun to blast the fuckers away when I need the space.

[Shin]

On the factorio homepage is also mentioned that combat is not fleshed out and they will work on it. And somewhere I read that kovarex like the idea of RTS elements. So I didn't give up on a more tactical and better combat system. But this seems to be a thing for later updates.

It's not easy to create an interesting combat system with some tactical depth, where there's more to it than simply brute-forcing your way through. So I'll be excited to see something like that in the game, but right now I'm not holding my breath.

In my current long game I've completely disabled aliens. Unfortunately it makes you feel alone in the world -- I'd love to have some company but not if it's a constant distraction that adds nothing to the fun.

Maybe I'll play with Orbital Cannon in the future and some other combat mods (Nucular already adds nuclear weapons), then it'll at least be some fun to blast the fuckers away when I need the space.

That's true. But I still hope that they will work on it. Factorio is already amazing in the building aspect. If the combat could also get more depth and strategy this would be a really cool combination.

You could set the alien bases on small and very low frequency if you still want some alien company so that they don't attack you constantly (also for alien science).

Maybe there could be more options for the aliens in the map generator,too (should there be spitters, should they evolve, how hard should the attack, maybe difficulty options?). Some people like more combat and some people don't like it. If there are more choices, everyone could be happy and play like they want.
But I know it's not that easy as it sounds. But it would be great if it could be done!

[Tricorius]

And somewhere I read that kovarex like the idea of RTS elements.

As long as the whole game doesn't go too "RTS"-y...this could be *very* fun. If the current feel of building, gathering resources, etc can be maintained and an RTS element added to only the offensive (and I guess maybe defensive) combat portions of the game, it's entirely possible that this could be the perfect genre mashup game.

[MeduSalem]

•Oil yield drains to 10% two times slower.

My thoughts...?

-> Urgh. It drops to 5% now too. So basically you now need twice as many depleted oil wells. But I can live with it.

•Flamethrower turret. Fueled with fluid, shoots a stream of burning oil towards oncoming enemies.

Pretty damn hardcore... did someone already calculate the damage in comparison to Gun/Laser Turrets?

Because I think they are pretty much overpowered currently.

Not that this is a bad thing, but... yeah... 1 flame thrower turret basically every 15-20 gun turrets at my base reduced the ammo consumption so low that I don't even notice that there are biter attacks.

•Added the Stack inserter - an expensive upgrade over fast inserters that can move several more items at a time.

Probably the most controversal addition/change to the game. I really dislike how I am unable to control the stack size. I can't even get the inserters to insert/take correct amount of items into/from chests anymore. A total no-go.

Apart from that I would be interested to know if someone actually made some Inserter tests already to show energy usage, speed/throughput and other quirks.

[orzelek]

BTW: Oil wells at 5% are result of migration.
New ones will behave as they should and have 10% minimum.

[MeduSalem]

BTW: Oil wells at 5% are result of migration.
New ones will behave as they should and have 10% minimum.

Damn. I guess that there won't be a fix for that, am I wrong?

Well I always wanted to expand to the biter nest sitting ontop of some oil wells on the other side of the lake anyways.

[orzelek]

BTW: Oil wells at 5% are result of migration.
New ones will behave as they should and have 10% minimum.

Damn. I guess that there won't be a fix for that, am I wrong?

Well I always wanted to expand to the biter nest sitting ontop of some oil wells on the other side of the lake anyways.

You can console fix the amount to 1k unless you want achievements.

[MeduSalem]

You can console fix the amount to 1k unless you want achievements.

Well... I am not really that much of a cheater... so I won't fiddle with that.

[Photoloss]

The flamethrower definitely feels super-strong. Which I find actually is a good thing because its mechanics seem a lot more interesting to me compared to the combat shotgun. Persistant fire AoEs allow for some skillful play, luring biters into flames dedicated to the previous wave and similar tricks. Firing in an arc makes it easier to hit the intended targets while the low projectile speed keeps it from feeling too cheaty against the bugs themselves. The added risk of self harm or starting a forest fire adds some nice tension until "energy shield lol". Loading up on exo-legs lategame and going on hit-and-run sprees also feels fantastic as the biter world burns around you.
The downside, of course, is that combat in general is fairly lackluster and having a new weapon which can rival the combat shotgun isn't an improvement. Rather than a damage nerf enemies should become smarter/more interesting, trying to avoid fires or piles of fallen comrades and generally have more variety. The spawners definitely need more resistances though, at least make them evolve fire/laser/electric(bot) resistance if too many are killed with the same damage type.

Haven't tried grenades yet and honestly don't see a reason to, they fill the same tactical niche as the flamethrower (delayed AoE and forest clearing) but with more downsides: explosives production is more challenging and less beneficial than grabbing some excess oil and iron you need for sulfuric acid/batteries anyway; they take an inventory spot; yet another separate damage upgrade and enemies actually have resistance to explosive damage. Rockets have the same problem, by the time you can unlock them you're better off just sticking with the weapons you already have.

I don't know if it's a consequence of the energy nerf but construction bots seemed to take ages setting up larger solar farms. In particular I noticed they don't reach the nearest roboport in time to recharge if it isn't in their direct path of travel, wasting a lot of time in "crawl mode". Maybe this is an old issue but it certainly seems more prevalent now.

The inserter changes feel weird. Previously the Smart Inserter unlocked all the filtering+circuit+logistics capability, it felt like a valuable and important technological advancement which also made it a worthy ingredient in Science Pack 3s. Since the actual filtering feature is rarely necessary (regular inserters filter machine inputs anyway) the new Filter Inserter just feels like a resource sink by comparison.

The new stack-from-belt tech can be a minor disadvantage for regular inserters sometimes. This is an interplay with the auto-insertion cap on assemblers: with very high upgrades the inserters can sometimes "overfill" the assemblers and won't refill their hands until the machine is empty and stops working. If taking two products from the same belt upgraded inserters will wait to fill their hand rather than grab the second material even if the latter is currently bottlenecking the crafting. Sometimes crafting speeds, belt speeds and "wait to fill hand" delay align in a bad way leaving the machine idle and the belt full as inserters stop waiting right as the next item comes along. Most of these issues would probably take a lot of extra computing time to figure out the best course of action, but the first one has an easy solution: make inserter capacity upgrades also increase the refilling threshold for assemblers, or make it adjustable on the machines themselves.

Express underground belts feel less cheaty now.

Energy shields definitely need looking at, the amount of survivability you can maintain with 5-6 exo legs is insane considering the hit-and-run capability of upgraded flamethrowers, grenades or destroyer bot wrecking balls. Since the main constraint of power armour is grid space I suggest applying the regen rate of all shield modules immediately rather than only the fraction supplied by already-depleted shield modules and rebalancing the recharge rate to have a break-even point of more than 5-6 shield modules (the amount of "filler" shields you can fit in a MKII suit full of exo-legs)

Overall some very nice additions. The only point I would consider "made worse" rather than merely "has room for further improvements" is the Smart->Filter Inserter change, and that only applies for veterans who remember it being more than just a resource sink. For new players it's entirely in line with all the other components our scientists "throw at the wall to see what sticks"
Oh and vanilla landfill is awesome.

[siggboy]

Good stuff, Photoloss, nice food for thought.

The downside, of course, is that combat in general is fairly lackluster and having a new weapon which can rival the combat shotgun isn't an improvement. Rather than a damage nerf enemies should become smarter/more interesting

The game compensates for enemy stupidity by making them respawn very quickly. The aliens should become smarter, like you suggest, and respawn slower. I think respawn has already been slowed down in 0.13 (not sure), but if it's the case it's a step in the right direction.
Right now the only tactic that makes sense is to prioritize the spawners and ignore the aliens as long as possible, because fighting with the biters is complete monkey business unless you can quickly kill their nests.

Rockets have the same problem, by the time you can unlock them you're better off just sticking with the weapons you already have.

If the rockets are still as useless as in 0.12 then they really need a buff, or their characteristics need to be changed to give them a tactical advantage over the other weapons. The Nucular mod adds nuclear rockets which are quite awesome (they do good damage and leave a radiating poison area which kills spawners but also accelerates evolution); that is one way to make them more interesting.

The new stack-from-belt tech can be a minor disadvantage for regular inserters sometimes. This is an interplay with the auto-insertion cap on assemblers:

There is a thread where it's being discussed to make the stack bonus configurable and/or set it along with the filter signal that can be given to an inserter. This would allow a skilled player to work around many of the limitations of stack inserters, and allow for designs that require precise control over the amount of items that are loaded at a time (smart furnaces, smart loaders).

I feel that the Stack Inserter is often worse than a regular inserter when feeding machines, for the reasons that you've mentioned (the machine buffering is not flexible enough, and machines can starve; that has also been pointed out in the thread linked above). The regular inserters have become better, though, at least when you're loading the assemblers from belts.

Energy shields definitely need looking at, the amount of survivability you can maintain with 5-6 exo legs is insane considering the hit-and-run capability of upgraded flamethrowers

I think 5-6 exo legs is overkill, 3 is enough to outrun everything and then you can put so many energy shields into your armor that you become almost indestructible. However, if energy shields get nerfed then we probably need a combat buff elsewhere, because right now you really need to be indestructible if you want to clear spawner clusters with worms in them (or resort to cheese tactics, i.e. turret creep...). Maybe there should be a MkII tank with energy shields, because the tank in late game is worse than a player with shields.

Overall some very nice additions. The only point I would consider "made worse" rather than merely "has room for further improvements" is the Smart->Filter Inserter change, and that only applies for veterans who remember it being more than just a resource sink.

The really bad part of this change is the arbitrary color change (smart/filter is now purple, stack is green, wtf); the filter inserter has become more of a niche item, but still has its places. The filter stack inserters currently have the problem that if you want to set the filter from a combinator you don't have control over which signal is chosen for the (single) filter slot if there are multiple signals in your input. That needs some combinator enhancements to be made really viable for non-trivial setups.

[Photoloss]

The game compensates for enemy stupidity by making them respawn very quickly. The aliens should become smarter, like you suggest, and respawn slower. I think respawn has already been slowed down in 0.13 (not sure), but if it's the case it's a step in the right direction.
Right now the only tactic that makes sense is to prioritize the spawners and ignore the aliens as long as possible, because fighting with the biters is complete monkey business unless you can quickly kill their nests.

Oh, I know, but even the Zerg themselves had tactical support options from the get-go. In terms of ever calling Factorio a "completed game" the combat definitely has one of the biggest "needs more work" flags. There is one other option for killing the biters though: solar-powered laser turrets provide infinite death for the infinitely spawning hordes. In that way solar is actually balanced and guns/steam power are underpowered. I still love the sight of 100 destroyer bots swinging into a base and melting everything

If the rockets are still as useless as in 0.12 then they really need a buff, or their characteristics need to be changed to give them a tactical advantage over the other weapons. The Nucular mod adds nuclear rockets which are quite awesome (they do good damage and leave a radiating poison area which kills spawners but also accelerates evolution); that is one way to make them more interesting.

I did not see any rocket buffs sadly, and it took a while to remember landmines even existed
One thing rockets could provide is a range advantage. And I'm talking 40+ range here with target tracking and high single-target damage. Bob's sniper rifle was crazily OP last time I checked and the turrets were even worse, but rocketry might be late enough to allow taking down big worms without fear of retaliation. Definitely better than uranium-free nukes in my book.

There is a thread where it's being discussed to make the stack bonus configurable and/or set it along with the filter signal that can be given to an inserter. This would allow a skilled player to work around many of the limitations of stack inserters, and allow for designs that require precise control over the amount of items that are loaded at a time (smart furnaces, smart loaders).

I feel that the Stack Inserter is often worse than a regular inserter when feeding machines, for the reasons that you've mentioned (the machine buffering is not flexible enough, and machines can starve; that has also been pointed out in the thread linked above). The regular inserters have become better, though, at least when you're loading the assemblers from belts.

Thanks for the link, sadly player-focused solutions first require you to notice something is wrong in the first place. The random stalling seemed to happen on regular belt-fed assemblers simply due to a specific (non-maximal) item density on the belt.
The stack inserter seems alright to me actually. It suffers the same problems as the regular ones but it fulfills the one purpose I need it for admirably: stuffing assemblers surrounded by speed beacons If they have any other intended purpose (or any at all in the case of Filter Stack Inserters...) I'd like to hear it.

I think 5-6 exo legs is overkill, 3 is enough to outrun everything and then you can put so many energy shields into your armor that you become almost indestructible. However, if energy shields get nerfed then we probably need a combat buff elsewhere, because right now you really need to be indestructible if you want to clear spawner clusters with worms in them (or resort to cheese tactics, i.e. turret creep...). Maybe there should be a MkII tank with energy shields, because the tank in late game is worse than a player with shields.

WARP SPEED!!! is not overkill (don't forget to add concrete. Concrete everywhere!)
In my experience 5 shields is enough to run around the outskirts and torch spawners, but of course if you're caught you die. Rather than just giving the tank shields they should make a modular version, and also a Modular Car.

The really bad part of this change is the arbitrary color change (smart/filter is now purple, stack is green, wtf); the filter inserter has become more of a niche item, but still has its places. The filter stack inserters currently have the problem that if you want to set the filter from a combinator you don't have control over which signal is chosen for the (single) filter slot if there are multiple signals in your input. That needs some combinator enhancements to be made really viable for non-trivial setups.

I don't mind the colour change as the green one still is more important than the new purple
Not wanting anything removed or rolled back mind you, once the little issues are sorted out the new inserters will be great and science needs a proper rework in the long run anyway.

[siggboy]

The stack inserter seems alright to me actually. It suffers the same problems as the regular ones but it fulfills the one purpose I need it for admirably: stuffing assemblers surrounded by speed beacons If they have any other intended purpose (or any at all in the case of Filter Stack Inserters...) I'd like to hear it.

For me their main purpose is loading and unloading trains. If you use them to load high-speed assemblers you run into the problem that is discussed in that thread I've mentioned: the assembler will run low on materials and then the inserter will wake up, but since it takes the inserter some time to gather up the full stack of items, the machine will run dry (and stall) before it receives the next batch of input. The inserter would have to wake up earlier in order to compensate.

That is probably not an issue if you load the assembler directly from a chest, but belts are often more convenient, and then the stack inserter fails.

Right now it's better to use 2 Fast Inserters to load from a belt; that is now faster than in 0.12, because they can take batches of 3 items from a belt (in 0.12 they could only load single items). So with 2 Fast Inserters you match pretty much every machine in practice (barring some corner cases and setups that are inefficient for other reasons).

So the bottom line is: Stack Inserters are the way to go if you load from/to a chest (train stations and robot factories). In other cases the old inserters are better. If they tweaked the loading behaviour into machines a little you could also use them to load from a belt into an assembler, but right now that seems to be a bit broken.