Simple Questions and Short Answers

[eradicator]

Is this a known bug? Will this get fixed?

It's officially "not a bug" because the "they take turns" behavior is just a random side-effect of how the engine works. I can't find the forum thread right now, but here's a reddit thread where @Rseding91 (a dev) states exactly that: https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comme ... concerned/

[Pi-C]

How do I get the name of my mod in the data stage? I know there is mods["name"] to check for a certain mod, but it doesn't allow me to read the name of the calling mod.

[Bene8493]

It's officially "not a bug" because the "they take turns" behavior is just a random side-effect of how the engine works. I can't find the forum thread right now, but here's a reddit thread where @Rseding91 (a dev) states exactly that: https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comme ... concerned/

Thanks a lot. I think it should be a feature. I use assemblers with multiple outputs quite often (as most probably do) and always assumed that they would take out equally. After 700 hours of playing this is the first time I noticed that's not the case. I wonder why this isn't implemented as it just doesn't seem very factoriolike to behave in a not defined way. Is it not possible without sacrificing a lot of performance? Of course you can just build a little circuit network and solve it like that, but that would cost performance as well and shouldn't be necessary imo. Or you can carefully align your factory with the chunks but who wants to do that?
Hesitating to make a feature request since the devs are aware of it.

[eradicator]

Is it not possible without sacrificing a lot of performance?
Hesitating to make a feature request since the devs are aware of it.

Factorio is a huge simulation, every bit of the factory is updated in order. Inserter 1, Inserter 2, etcpp. And most of the things affect each other. So things that seem trivial to solve at a glance are often really really damn hard if you try to solve them for every edge case. For example if inserters should be guaranteed to take "one after another" from an underfilled assembler (which is in itself an edge-case when looking at common large scale production), then this "order" has to be stored somewhere. "Storing extra data" is the No1 reason that modding interface requests are denied with. And then you would also have to come up with a solution for when the player adds or removes inserters mid-cycle. Or if one of the inserters has power but the others don't, etc pp. I hope you get the point.

[csduff]

Does anyone know if there is a way to synchronize research between save games?

I have a testing world (cheats enable, infinite chests, infinite energy, etc.) that I mainly use to create blueprints for use in my main playthrough. I would love to be able to ensure that I don't accidentally have access to higher level of technology than I have unlocked in my main playthrough.

[nog]

Not to my knowledge.

I used to do like you, use a cheaty map/save, to debug my OCD designs. In editor mode you can "un-research" techs in the researches window, it's the best way I found to "sync" the researches.

[Pi-C]

Ẃho is the driver if two or more players are riding on the same train that is set to manual mode?

Vehicles with type == "car" may have a driver (vehicle.get_driver()) and a passenger (vehicle.get_passenger()). The driver does the driving, and the passenger either does nothing or may control the weapons.

Vehicles with type == "locomotive", type == "artillery-wagon", type == "cargo-wagon", and type == "fluid-wagon" may only have a driver. With these, vehicle.get_passenger() will fail with the error "Entity is not car".

If player A enters the locomotive, he is driver and can manually control the train. Player B can't enter that locomotive (rolling stock only has room for one person), but could enter any other unoccupied locomotive or wagon of that train. B would also be driver.

I've tested this locally with two different instances of Factorio, and both players could control the train. However, I couldn't test this with both players trying to control the train at the same time. So what happens if two or more players are on the same train and at least two of them try to control it simultaneously? Will the train stop if A brakes -- or will it accelerate because B has hit <W> at the same tick?

[eradicator]

Will the train stop if A brakes -- or will it accelerate because B has hit <W> at the same tick?

Pure speculation: If there's no special code to handle multiple drivers it'll try to do both at the same time. And breaking will probably win.

[Pi-C]

Will the train stop if A brakes -- or will it accelerate because B has hit <W> at the same tick?

Pure speculation: If there's no special code to handle multiple drivers it'll try to do both at the same time. And breaking will probably win.

I thought everything would have to be deterministic in order to work in multiplayer … How about one player steering to the left, the other to the right, then? Did anybody try this in a real multiplayer game yet?

[jackiebonds]

Thanks, I don't have the mk2 power armor yet. Next mission is to craft it, then

[eradicator]

Will the train stop if A brakes -- or will it accelerate because B has hit <W> at the same tick?

Pure speculation: If there's no special code to handle multiple drivers it'll try to do both at the same time. And breaking will probably win.

I thought everything would have to be deterministic in order to work in multiplayer … How about one player steering to the left, the other to the right, then? Did anybody try this in a real multiplayer game yet? :-)

I don't see how determinism relates to this. Just speculating that it doesn't matter who presses the keys. If Player1 presses W *and* A at the same time, or if the keys are pressed by different people the effect should/might/would be the same.

[thereaverofdarkness]

I thought everything would have to be deterministic in order to work in multiplayer

It is as deterministic as possible. Kovarex has spoken multiple times on the issue of determinism in Factorio, as the game was supposed to be entirely deterministic at the outset, even without multiplayer. The addition of multiplayer revealed several determinism errors and helped improve the overall determinism of the game. If any of you find a glitch in which a thing is not deterministic, or the game does not know how to handle a multiplayer input, you should report it in the bugs forum and the devs will be very excited to see and fix it.

[Pi-C]

I thought everything would have to be deterministic in order to work in multiplayer

If any of you find a glitch in which a thing is not deterministic, or the game does not know how to handle a multiplayer input, you should report it in the bugs forum and the devs will be very excited to see and fix it.

I really don't know whether the game knows how to handle multiplayer input because I've only ever used a simulated multiplayer game (i.e. switching between two game instances running in parallel, so input will only come from one instance at any given time -- thus it's not possible to have contradicting inputs at the same tick). That's why I've been asking here how such situations would be handled in a real multiplayer game.

[Trebor]

Is there an UPS difference between an entity connected to an electric network that has no fuel and one connected to an open switch?

[disentius]

Interesting quiestion: tested with an inserter chest to chest

As far as i can see: no. in both cases the inserter stays active, aka bad for ups.

inserter active, can take from chest.png (386.99 KiB) Viewed 6355 times

inserter inactive, can not take from chest.png (316.27 KiB) Viewed 6355 times

inserter active, no electricity generated.png (274.74 KiB) Viewed 6355 times

[RickJS]

I just discovered that I am not getting alerts that aliens are attacking (neither sounds nor the flashing icon to the right of the tool bar). I haven't found any setting that controls this. Where should I look next for the cause?

[RickJS]

Added info: the little yellow triangles with the exclamation points do show on the map, but not beside the quickbar.

[disentius]

Do you have any radars placed?

[RickJS]

Do you have any radars placed?

Yes. Typically Radar 3 from Bob's Warfare.

I've been jumping around between various saves, at different revisions, and different mod collections. So I'm not sure when & where the problem showed up. Sorry about that.

[RickJS]

Another new feature/bug is that I can no longer zoom in enough to see the actual landscape view, even with the hot keys.

My latest mod additions are Orbital Ion Cannon, The Fat Controller, Air Filtering, Noxy's Waterfill, Dectorio, Bio Industries, and Robot Army. Are any of these known to be problematic?