Factorio Forums

Question: how annoying would it be if you had to select a recipe for furnaces? I have browsed the forums and found very polarised views on it.

The reason I'm asking is as follows. Furnace recipes must have a single ingredient (not counting fluids) or the recipe won't work. If you want a "furnace" that combines two+ things, then you have to create a new kind of assembling machine and make it look and behave like a furnace. So DIR has two kinds of furnace: the regular kind you know from vanilla, and "alloy furnaces", which produce bronze, glass, steel, etc. Regular furnaces are furnaces, but because (e.g.) bronze is a mixture of tin and copper, the alloy furnaces have to be assembling machines internally which means they have to have a recipe selected.

The problem for me is that there are currently three tiers of furnace and alloy furnace (stone > bronze > iron), and plans for a fourth level of post-rocket play to be added later involving larger batch-styley machines. This means for every tier, I have to create two different looking furnaces, two different entity prototypes, two different recipes, etc. etc. It's double the work, just because of an internal game mechanic. But really, low tech furnaces like your great aunt Ug would have built would be no different whether you chucked one kind of ore-bearing rock in or two.

A further issue is the lowest tier, stone age tech. You absolutely have to have a bog-standard tier 1 furnace which can be made out of unprocessed stuff you just pick up off the ground, i.e. stone. It's the basic processing machine that bootstraps literally everything else in the game. In DIR, stone furnaces can only smelt copper and tin. However, tier 2 is bronze tech. Bronze can be processed in tier 1 machines (it has to), but it's an alloy recipe, so that means there needs to be a "stone alloy furnace". The thing is, you only need to build one stone alloy furnace once, produce half a stack of bronze ingots, and then you can make your own bronze alloy furnace which is far better. So I'd have to go through the whole hassle of designing sprites which are up to the standard of everything else, create entities, recipes, blah blah blah, for a machine which most people are most likely going to build just once, which is immediately upgraded to something else.

The solution would be to not have any distinction whatsoever between regular furnaces and alloy furnaces - just have one furnace per tier. The drawback to that is that furnaces will never auto-smelt whatever gets stuck into them: they will only smelt the one thing you have selected the recipe for. I have found a few people say that they would actually prefer this. But some people hate the idea. Personally, I'm torn, because my gut instinct is that I'd find it annoying too. But 92% of the mod's assets are complete and I'm just blocked by being fed up with making variations of furnace.

From my experience playing bobs and angelsbobs/pyanodons mods I find it more annoying to have a lot of similar furnances (like in bobs) that I can confuse and end up crafting the wrong type of than setting up furnances with a recipe (like the blast furnances from angels or the like). Up until now it didn't cross my mind that setting up the actually-a-assembling-machine-furnances could be tedious, because factorio is very convenient with copying recipes.

Also in vanilla I sometimes had little misstakes by belting the wrong ore or iron plates to a smelter, that ended up very hard to clean up, because emptying partially filled furnances is annoying and the wrong plates on the wrong belts go everywhere. With smelters that don't smelt whatever comes near them that isn't such an escalating problem.

koun wrote: ↑

Mon May 27, 2019 1:55 pm

From my experience playing bobs and angelsbobs/pyanodons mods I find it more annoying to have a lot of similar furnances (like in bobs) that I can confuse and end up crafting the wrong type of than setting up furnances with a recipe (like the blast furnances from angels or the like). Up until now it didn't cross my mind that setting up the actually-a-assembling-machine-furnances could be tedious, because factorio is very convenient with copying recipes.

Also in vanilla I sometimes had little misstakes by belting the wrong ore or iron plates to a smelter, that ended up very hard to clean up, because emptying partially filled furnances is annoying and the wrong plates on the wrong belts go everywhere. With smelters that don't smelt whatever comes near them that isn't such an escalating problem.

Or my iron smelter picked up some iron plats from the output and tried to make steel. Or the steel setup would pick up iron ore from the first stage instead of iron plate. With actually-a-assembling-machine-furnances the inserters will only load what the selected recipe needs.

I think as complexity increases the recipes with just one input become less important and so does any minor saving on not having to pick a recipe. Having to always select the recipe would have the above advantages and allow using mixed belts of ores, e.g. half tin half lead going to a few furnaces. Currently you then have to use and program filter inserters for that.

Actually-a-assembling-machine-furnances would have other advantages that I find more and more important:

1) They show the recipe. That means you see there is such a recipe. Yes, you can put Silicon Ore (quartz) into a furnace to get glass. You don't have to research Angels glass making recipes. How is a user supposed to know that works? Try to stick every item into a furnace and see what happens?

2) They show the recipe details. How much Saphirite Ore give how many Iron Plates in what time? At the moment I have to open up helmod, add the relevant recipes and set it to produce a fixed amount to see what the ratios and speeds are. Seeing those infors simply by hovering over the recipe with the mouse would be far easier. And behold, making glass Bobs way is better than Angels glass mkI and so much simpler.

Note: Bob has 3 lines of furnaces: 1) vanilla, 2) metal mixing, 3) fluid taking.


As for the problem of having a way to make some initial bronze to make the bronze mixing furnace you could also have a recipe for assemblers to make bronze inefficiently. So you start with the stone furnace for iron, copper, simple stuff. Then the assembler can hammer together some low quality bronze (maybe mixing copper and tin plates?) and you can bootstrap the next tire of furnaces (which are actually-a-assembling-machine-furnances). Story wise the stone furnaces are just a pot over some flames. Whatever you throw in there melts. No recipe needed. The rest is "smarter" and you have to program it right to work. They can do more and do it faster but take a little more to setup. By that time you can cut&paste recipes.

Short one here:
Selecting recipes is not a problem, having chemical and metal mixing furnace is a pain

Thanks for the feedback.

So the vibe I'm getting is that having to select recipes is a minor annoyance, but not as bad as having pointless machines.

I just did a balancing playthrough of the early-game-as-is, but just one furnace type per tier, and it seems OK.

WOW

I'm really impressed by your work man! I have every single mod you made and use them a lot. Can't wait for these! The models looks so good!

Looks very nice, but being such a wide overhaul is a BIT of a problem since it kills compatability with other mods.
Watching this, but will probably not play it on launch (since I'm busy explorering space atm).

Mernom wrote: ↑

Tue May 28, 2019 9:20 pm

Looks very nice, but being such a wide overhaul is a BIT of a problem since it kills compatability with other mods.

Not a problem for me. Turnabout is fair play.

I think i will really enjoy playing your Mod. And in my opinion it is a false definition that furnaces simply burn without selecting a recipe. I would prefer it would be that case for every machine, to program it with what you want to do before it starts anything. So in my opinion it is an improvement if the furnace needs to get a recipe in advance. You only set it once, and copy it for your smelting fabric, so not a big annoyance.

One potentially major argument against non furnace type furnaces. With furnace entities, once you upgrade the efficiency of the system (say, going from raw ores to cleaned ores... This is a viable way to increase efficiency right?), they will automatically update their recipe once they run out of the old ingridient. With assembler type entities, you'd need to clean up the line and change recipe manually.

Mernom wrote: ↑

Fri May 31, 2019 10:24 pm

One potentially major argument against non furnace type furnaces. With furnace entities, once you upgrade the efficiency of the system (say, going from raw ores to cleaned ores... This is a viable way to increase efficiency right?), they will automatically update their recipe once they run out of the old ingridient. With assembler type entities, you'd need to clean up the line and change recipe manually.

Except for anything needing more than 1 ore per cycle. You will be left if lots of furnaces stuck with 1 ore left.

Mernom wrote: ↑

Fri May 31, 2019 10:24 pm

One potentially major argument against non furnace type furnaces. With furnace entities, once you upgrade the efficiency of the system (say, going from raw ores to cleaned ores... This is a viable way to increase efficiency right?), they will automatically update their recipe once they run out of the old ingridient. With assembler type entities, you'd need to clean up the line and change recipe manually.

This is true, but the question is whether that's a good enough reason to have a whole array of machines which aren't otherwise needed at all (and all the extra graphics work on my end that it would entail, distinguishable icons, crafting tab clutter etc.).

It would only occur three times during an entire playthrough. The first of those would be very early-game where you won't have a substantial number of machines and belts to "reset". You should unlock ore > crushed ore within the first hour, and it's not difficult to copy-paste a new recipe across the relatively small number of furnaces you have active at that stage - cleaning up the belts might be more annoying but again, not really a major task when your base is so small. Also, it's optional - you need a couple of pulverisers early-game to make glass, but otherwise the extra work in getting the production bonus is completely skippable if you're not short of ore.

The next kind of tech unlock which might (or might not) need you to do it would be crushed ore > purified ore. This also introduces byproducts which need filtering out. It also occurs right after the stage where in vanilla you'd be switching out 2x2 burner furnaces to 3x3 electric furnaces (doesn't apply in the Revolution as all furnaces are 3x3, just saying that people are used to having to reorganise their smelteries around this stage anyhow). I know playstyles vary but for me this is about the time I go hardcore mass production and am getting ready to rip up my bootstrap base anyhow.

The third and final stage of ore yield boosting (purified ore > dust) happens not long after that and again, it's completely optional, might not even be worth doing unless you've opted for a very resource-thin map - dusts are needed for some high-tech recipes but not in massive quantities, and they give the lowest boost in yield, taking you from 2.25x to 3x.

I'm still open-minded about it, won't make a final decision until playing it through properly. I was actually surprised to discover how few smelting recipes there are, even in a modded game like this.

I tend to use a mid-game smelter layout that does copper and iron in parallel, sending both kinds of ore up both sides of a belt and using smart inserters to pick the ones that need making. This obviously wouldn't work if furnaces needed recipes to be set. However, it's not a huge thing and I could certainly live without it, especially as it seems this mod will have more variations in alloys etc.

First Second attempt at the upcoming ore variations, Revolution-styley:

I really like the icons! It comes across as a bit of a cross between the round current base game ore and the chunky WIP ore from the Fridays Facts #297. Personally I'm a big fan of mods that change the base ore textures (Better Ore Icons, Realistic Ores, etc), and this is a less drastic step in between base and those kinds of changes. Also appreciate the variations in ore on belts already being present in your work. Great job!

TheModCow wrote: ↑

Thu Jun 06, 2019 2:00 am

I really like the icons! It comes across as a bit of a cross between the round current base game ore and the chunky WIP ore from the Fridays Facts #297. Personally I'm a big fan of mods that change the base ore textures (Better Ore Icons, Realistic Ores, etc), and this is a less drastic step in between base and those kinds of changes. Also appreciate the variations in ore on belts already being present in your work. Great job!

Thanks, appreciated.

I actually think the incoming icons from Wube are better. I started making mine a year ago when I didn't know Factorio was going to update to high-res icons, and also I feel like it's important that icons are consistent - I'm adding new ores and ore byproducts like gold, tin, lead etc. that the base game doesn't have - and icons are supposed to be symbolic, they carry meaning. I find it 10x harder to mimic something else than to knock out seven consistent variations of a replacement. So I will probably put in a mod setting that lets people use the vanilla icons (where they're available) if they don't care about the style mismatch.

There are already nearly 500 new icons in the mod because of all the material/component variations (if you count some that may not ever be used like gold gears, and if you count the stacked variations for Deadlock's Stacking Beltboxes support). I'm also permitting myself a bit of pride that 99% of the 500 are already ready for the coming-soon change to mipmapped icons for items on belts, for maximum FPS, even before that feature has even been released. The 1% that aren't are things that you wouldn't ever ship around en masse with belts.

ME: Must finish that electric arc furnace.
ME:
ME: But it's difficult
ME:
ME:
ME: Keep meaning to change that info signal icon

(2 hours later)

ME: What was I supposed to be doing again

Clockwork punkbots return, for early-game blueprint building. Cheap plus slow equals adorable.

I really like your art style. So far, I never got into any of the big conversion mods, but that might change when DIR is finished.

Deadlock989 wrote: ↑

Mon Jun 10, 2019 6:39 pm

ME: Must finish that electric arc furnace.
ME:
ME: But it's difficult
ME:
ME:
ME: Keep meaning to change that info signal icon

(2 hours later)

ME: What was I supposed to be doing again

I recognize that one. There is always something simpler than the task at hand that also needs doing. You get to procrastinate, but don't have to feel bad about it

Deadlock989 wrote: ↑

Sat May 11, 2019 12:30 pm

3. Created a 5x5 solar array. This has the power of 4 solar panels, 300 kW, but in about 70% of the space. Could have made it 6x6 but I like that it isn't an exact multiple, so people will have design new layouts.

solar1.png

I think your new solar panel need a little bit "dirtier look" to blend with vanilla. Still, I love how your designs blend with vanilla.