Version 0.16.27

[Tomplus]

Also suggesting to rename the english version of refined concrete to make it "easier to translate" is the funniest thing i've heared all day. That's not what "translation" means at all.

We do not want the name to be easier. The current name is easy to translate. It banal.
However, semantically it is wrong, as well as visually, as well as productively.

Visual new concrete has it's closer to `modern concrete`. Architects from this concrete create patchs of various shapes. However, such paths are not suitable for driving over heavy vehicles.
Reinforced concrete already yes. Only from this concrete flat roads are built.

The problem is that there is no such concept in construction and architecture as `refined concrete`.

For me, best name for NEW CONCRETE is: FIBER CONCRETE It is compatible with the specification Factorio
https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Fiber-reinforced_concrete

[Deadly-Bagel]

It's using iron bars, it would be reinforced concrete. Why would you go to the trouble of shaping iron into bars before turning it into fibres? It's also a more well-known name.

There's a number of things that should probably be renamed --- Modules mainly, maybe Modules as well but it won't be as confusing if Modules get renamed. Science Pack 1/2/3, Beacons, Steel "Plate", probably some of the Technologies too.

Before I bought the game the "Effectivity" Module was renamed which was a good start, then there's the more recent rename of the Diesel Locomotive, but I don't know of any others and renaming the Locomotive was a pretty hot point of the forum for a long time before it happened.

Maybe one of the last steps before release will be to go through everything and fix up anything poorly named or misleading, I can understand they've got other priorities right now but AFAIK none of the devs have made any comment (other than Rseding on the subject of Beacons) to give us an idea.

[Aeternus]

Better concrete... I know some Construction Bots that'll be working overtime in my factory post update.

Thanks for the infinite resources fix too

[Ringkeeper]

I also have a chest filled with 1000 Steam Engines and another one with almost as many boilers sitting around for almost a year now ever since Nuclear Power. What am I supposed to do with them... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Don't want to put 50k Iron to waste.

I used all my old steam engines to burn the vast amount of coal i have on my map. Or to burn the solid fuel that i get from my left over oil. Or to burn all the thousand wood i get.
Sure, with nuclear in priority on same level not that usefull.... but who cares?

but yes, recycling or using them in other products would be nice.

[Deadly-Bagel]

Way too much stuff that just lies around. Burner Mining Drills, old armour, the starting Pistol, Stone and Steel Furnaces, Burner Inserters (though I never use them myself), and now Boilers and Steam Engines - we used to be able to keep them as a backup but now what's the point, you'd need an accumulator array as well to utilise an S-R latch.

I installed a mod for my current game that makes furnaces build into each other, this felt much more natural and you don't feel punished for investing so much into Steel Furnaces which means you're not in as much of a rush to get to Electric Furnaces. It also adds a touch of complexity to science and provides a use for Stone other than rails.

Logically this works because you can start with a simple stone base, reinforce it with bricks and concrete then implement the electric elements last so there really is no excuse for having it the way it is now. The same is true for armour, I know the devs have said you can't build armour into the next tier because you would lose any Modules in it, but to me that's not a barrier, it's a hurdle. Attach the Module grid to the player instead of the armour, for example, and expand it like an inventory. This is probably also more flexible, and could allow things like loadouts - easy way to disable your Contruction Bots, anyone?

The other relics don't really have any logical use, but I'm not sure what else could be done. Some sort of "trash can" in the player's inventory perhaps, maybe it returns a few random resources in the process.

[eradicator]

Way too much stuff that just lies around. Burner Mining Drills, old armour, the starting Pistol,[...]

B..but how am i going to count how often i died without the constant pistol supply on death?

I installed a mod for my current game that makes furnaces build into each other, this felt much more natural and you don't feel punished for investing so much into Steel Furnaces which means you're not in as much of a rush to get to Electric Furnaces. It also adds a touch of complexity to science and provides a use for Stone other than rails.

Personally i hate that sort of staged-upgrade crafting. It just adds a pointless/illogical nessecarity to craft all the crappy old furnaces all the time. Maybe you managed to reduce the amount of old garbage items in stock, but at the same time you just required perpetual mass production of said garbage items. Also an electric furnace is not some old used stone furnace with a few coils and steel plates tacked onto it. Imagine someone seriously told you that $Smartphone X+1 is made by attaching a bigger processor, bigger battery and some memory chips onto an old $Smartphone X, you'd be laughing the whole day.

[Manron]

Imagine someone seriously told you that $Smartphone X+1 is made by attaching a bigger processor, bigger battery and some memory chips onto an old $Smartphone X, you'd be laughing the whole day.

Exactly. Instead they add a new camera and some software tweaks and sell the same old crap for a higher price.

[Deadly-Bagel]

Imagine someone seriously told you that $Smartphone X+1 is made by attaching a bigger processor, bigger battery and some memory chips onto an old $Smartphone X, you'd be laughing the whole day.

Exactly. Instead they add a new camera and some software tweaks and sell the same old crap for a higher price.

I was going to ask him what he thought Processing Units were but this is better xD

Also didn't Apple get caught updating software on their older devices to make them run slower? "For battery optimisation" they called it, yeah right.

[MeduSalem]

I also have a chest filled with 1000 Steam Engines and another one with almost as many boilers sitting around for almost a year now ever since Nuclear Power. What am I supposed to do with them... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Don't want to put 50k Iron to waste.

I used all my old steam engines to burn the vast amount of coal i have on my map. Or to burn the solid fuel that i get from my left over oil. Or to burn all the thousand wood i get.
Sure, with nuclear in priority on same level not that usefull.... but who cares? .

Well I also keep some boilers around to burn off some wood or solid fuel as necessary... and I hooked some of them directly into my Nuclear Plant with an priority override so that it stops taking Steam from the Heat Exchangers and instead uses the Steam from the Boilers... so the Boiler Steam gets used in the Steam Turbines then. No need for Steam Engines.

Still I have a thousand of them lying around.

but yes, recycling or using them in other products would be nice.

Way too much stuff that just lies around. Burner Mining Drills, old armour, the starting Pistol, Stone and Steel Furnaces, Burner Inserters (though I never use them myself), and now Boilers and Steam Engines - we used to be able to keep them as a backup but now what's the point, you'd need an accumulator array as well to utilise an S-R latch.

I installed a mod for my current game that makes furnaces build into each other, this felt much more natural and you don't feel punished for investing so much into Steel Furnaces which means you're not in as much of a rush to get to Electric Furnaces. It also adds a touch of complexity to science and provides a use for Stone other than rails.

Logically this works because you can start with a simple stone base, reinforce it with bricks and concrete then implement the electric elements last so there really is no excuse for having it the way it is now. The same is true for armour, I know the devs have said you can't build armour into the next tier because you would lose any Modules in it, but to me that's not a barrier, it's a hurdle. Attach the Module grid to the player instead of the armour, for example, and expand it like an inventory. This is probably also more flexible, and could allow things like loadouts - easy way to disable your Contruction Bots, anyone?

The other relics don't really have any logical use, but I'm not sure what else could be done. Some sort of "trash can" in the player's inventory perhaps, maybe it returns a few random resources in the process.

Actually I made exactly a thread about that issue already 3.5 years ago and it's pinned in the Balancing section:

Some items becoming "useless" in lategame & changing recipes


And sadly... most of the obsolete items that lie around are still a problem because people argued "it's not such an issue".

I would still favor most of the thread, including the new items thanks to nuclear power:

• Burner Inserters -> Regular Inserters -> Fast Inserter -> Stack Inserter
• Burner Mining Drills -> Electric Mining Drills
• Stone Furnace -> Steel Furnace -> Electric Furnace
• Iron Chest -> Steel Chest -> Logistic Chests
• Light Armor -> Heavy Armor -> Modular Armor -> Power Armor -> Power Armor MK2
• Shotgun -> Combat Shotgun
• Boiler -> Heat Exchanger
• Steam Engine -> Steam Turbine

Everything that starts to lie around and where a superior version is available should be an upgrade path. Either that or provide a generic recipe to disassemble items to gain back part of the investment.

And for Hazard Concrete/Refined Hazard Concrete... I just wish there was a way to convert them back to regular Concrete/Refined Concrete.

Personally i hate that sort of staged-upgrade crafting. It just adds a pointless/illogical nessecarity to craft all the crappy old furnaces all the time. Maybe you managed to reduce the amount of old garbage items in stock, but at the same time you just required perpetual mass production of said garbage items. Also an electric furnace is not some old used stone furnace with a few coils and steel plates tacked onto it. Imagine someone seriously told you that $Smartphone X+1 is made by attaching a bigger processor, bigger battery and some memory chips onto an old $Smartphone X, you'd be laughing the whole day.

Remember Google's project Ara?

Project Ara

ProjectAra1.jpg (199.51 KiB) Viewed 8346 times

Even though it never saw the light of the day... it could be done. So Google's engineers are the ones laughing.

[eradicator]

Imagine someone seriously told you that $Smartphone X+1 is made by attaching a bigger processor, bigger battery and some memory chips onto an old $Smartphone X, you'd be laughing the whole day.

Exactly. Instead they add a new camera and some software tweaks and sell the same old crap for a higher price.

I was going to ask him what he thought Processing Units were but this is better xD.

Apparently you're both confusing "manufacture a new device with a slightly altered design" (what actually happens) with "take an old device, open the lid, attach some new stuff to the board and close the lid again" (what you suggested).

@MeduSalem:
I don't "remember" Project ARA, as in, i never heared of it. From the picture i'm guessing it's supposed to be a modular upgradable smartphone? That would still mean that you have to take old parts out and replace them, not just sticking more and more stuff to the outside.

I just consider staged upgrades bad game design. If there was alternatively a way to upgrade e.g. a burner inserter into a regular one, sure, go ahead. But making that into the only path to build a regular inserter is just broken. Why would anyone design a production process for a regular inserter that requires to first construct a burner inserter, and then dismantle said burner inserter just to remove the fuel recieving mechanism and replace it with an electric motor? Anyone sane would design it to be built with the electric motor in the first place.

[MeduSalem]

@MeduSalem:
I don't "remember" Project ARA, as in, i never heared of it. From the picture i'm guessing it's supposed to be a modular upgradable smartphone? That would still mean that you have to take old parts out and replace them, not just sticking more and more stuff to the outside.

I just consider staged upgrades bad game design. If there was alternatively a way to upgrade e.g. a burner inserter into a regular one, sure, go ahead. But making that into the only path to build a regular inserter is just broken. Why would anyone design a production process for a regular inserter that requires to first construct a burner inserter, and then dismantle said burner inserter just to remove the fuel recieving mechanism and replace it with an electric motor? Anyone sane would design it to be built with the electric motor in the first place.

Well agreed, it doesn't make much sense for some things...

That said it's a game too. So I could live with that, more than I can live with 1-2k items sitting around I am never going to need anymore.

I mean we could also argue about the possibility of a generic disassemble recipe that takes whatever is inserted and returns a certain amount of its ingredients. That might even be the better solution because it works also on items you accidently overproduced.


But to expand more on the burner/electric stuff... I also made the suggestion once about 2 years ago to make the power source modules that can be changed:

Concept: Engine/Generator Modules for Machines

So it is not like I haven't thought about that awkwardness back then.

If it would have been adopted it would have been really funny because then you could have run each and every machine either using fuel or electricity or whatever else you happen to have.

[Deadly-Bagel]

Ehh, I'm not particularly favourable towards needing to craft Burner Inserters into Inserters. I'd bet most seasoned players don't even bother with them, manually inserting stacks until they can set up power (which isn't particularly difficult). There's also a lot of handcrafting of Inserters until you can work up to getting some automation going, and adding an extra step seems more an annoyance. I'd be happier if Burner Inserters were removed from the game entirely, really, I doubt even in Expensive Mode it's particularly hard to get to power without them, and their use for Boilers is controversial at best.

Less so with Mining Drills and Steam Engines, but all three of these have a problem; why would you build one engine only to immediately reconfigure it to another? Granted, the Engine builds into the Electric Engine, but that can be explained away. Furnaces and Boilers make sense as you make a base and build on it, the "burner section" (read: that bit where the fire goes) can simply have an electric element slotted in, nothing really needs replacing, but for the actual machines how do you convert a heat>kinetic system to an electric>kinetic system, and why would you want to want to do that instead of starting from scratch?

I just consider staged upgrades bad game design.

But that's the nature of the game. You smelt Ore into Iron and Copper, put them together into Electronic Circuits, add plastic and more cable for Advanced Circuits, smelt Iron into Steel and add more iron products to make an Engine, add that to the Advanced Circuit with some other stuff to make an Electric Engine, then a Flying Robot Frame before finally a Construction Robot, if this were all a single process then what would be the point of the game? Staged construction is how the game works, I don't see why we couldn't occasionally make use of that. Keep in mind the engineer knows he can build all this stuff so can design stuff with upgrades in mind but still to be usable as-is.

And are you suggesting that blue belts should build out of raw materials? You'd prefer to have a few thousand red and yellow belts stuffed in a chest somewhere, their resources wasted?

[Aeternus]

I would still favor most of the thread, including the new items thanks to nuclear power:

• Burner Inserters -> Regular Inserters -> Fast Inserter -> Stack Inserter
• Burner Mining Drills -> Electric Mining Drills
• Stone Furnace -> Steel Furnace -> Electric Furnace
• Iron Chest -> Steel Chest -> Logistic Chests
• Light Armor -> Heavy Armor -> Modular Armor -> Power Armor -> Power Armor MK2
• Shotgun -> Combat Shotgun
• Boiler -> Heat Exchanger
• Steam Engine -> Steam Turbine

Burner inserters, Boilers and Steam Engines: Remain useful for adding fuel to standard boilers. Since chemical fuel doesn't run out, there's really no reason to decommission a chemical powerplant.
Burner drills: These become obsolete. You -could- keep them around as coal miners that self feed though.
Stone furnace: Consumed in creating Boilers, so usually not wasteful. Besides... 5 stone isn't exactly a big loss.
Iron chest: These become obsolete. As a result I don't even bother to craft these. Wooden boxes until Steel becomes an option (and can be burned as fuel once these become obsolete). This recipe could be deleted as far as I'm concerned.
Armors: Yea, would be an idea to have every armor require the predecessor as component.
Shotguns: Meh. I don't use these. Same holds for the pistol -> SMG by the way.

[Deadly-Bagel]

Stone furnace: Consumed in creating Boilers, so usually not wasteful. Besides... 5 stone isn't exactly a big loss.

No, but 6 steel and 10 bricks for a Steel Furnace is a bit harder to foot when you need at least 100 of them for some decent production. This must be particularly painful in Expensive Mode. You -could- keep using Stone Furnaces but you'd need twice as many of them, and that's twice as many to remove or replace with Electric Furnaces.

Iron chest: These become obsolete. As a result I don't even bother to craft these. Wooden boxes until Steel becomes an option (and can be burned as fuel once these become obsolete). This recipe could be deleted as far as I'm concerned.

I think the different chests should be given different roles. Wooden Chest is just a meh starting item, but for most uses it still has more than enough storage space. Reduce this to 1-2 slots. Iron Chests are your go-to for general use, 10-20 slots and can be mass-produced. Steel Chests hold the largest number of slots but increase their size to 2x1 or 2x2, per-tile they should hold the most space but are awkward to use in most cases due to their size. Good for unloading high-volume train cargo (like Iron and Copper Ores) but they're no longer the "only so I can build them into logistic chests when I need to" item.

[MeduSalem]

Burner inserters, Boilers and Steam Engines: Remain useful for adding fuel to standard boilers. Since chemical fuel doesn't run out, there's really no reason to decommission a chemical powerplant.
Burner drills: These become obsolete. You -could- keep them around as coal miners that self feed though.
Stone furnace: Consumed in creating Boilers, so usually not wasteful. Besides... 5 stone isn't exactly a big loss.
Iron chest: These become obsolete. As a result I don't even bother to craft these. Wooden boxes until Steel becomes an option (and can be burned as fuel once these become obsolete). This recipe could be deleted as far as I'm concerned.
Armors: Yea, would be an idea to have every armor require the predecessor as component.
Shotguns: Meh. I don't use these. Same holds for the pistol -> SMG by the way.

Boilers/Steam Engines... I mostly tear down old power plants because when I am about to start using Nuclear I am not yet at the point where I can just do whatever I want... meaning I just can't expand carelessly into biter territory. It's often the phase where I should be at 20 different locations at once because everything should be upgraded at the same time and I don't have the time to do some landscaping of a lake... so I often need the space of the existing power plants because that spares me time as the shores are already prepared. So I end up decomissioning it and slowly replacing them to increase the power density. Some of the boilers still get some use as backup to burn off excess wood/solid fuel but not that many... also I hook them into the nuclear power plant just like you do in the thread over in the energy production section. Hence why most (>90%) of the boilers and ALL of the Steam Engines end up in chests.

Burner Inserters... I always use them where they come in touch with chemical fuel... Mostly for the reason that they are failsafe and don't require electricity to power themselves. So they are less likely to become the source of a power-death-spiral.

Burner Drills... I still have some of them around in a chest somewhere. I don't even know how many. But usually I go to Electric Mining Drills quite fast.

Stone Furnaces are used by boilers, yes, but if you don't need the boilers they become also wasted. I mean yeah, 5 stone isn't much... but if you have 1000 boilers sitting around in a chest... that is 4000 Iron and 5000 Stone wasted right there. That is 4 chests full of abandoned resources.

Steel Furnaces... I avoid them entirely and skip ahead to electric, exactly for the reason that I don't want a full chest of them.

Iron Chests... I avoid them entirely as well.
Wooden chests... can be burned off thankfully, so I use them early on.

Shotgun... I actually use the combat shotgun every now and then but the Flamethrower is far superior. Still I have the original shotgun lying around in a chest somewhere.

[Jap2.0]

I would still favor most of the thread, including the new items thanks to nuclear power:

• Burner Inserters -> Regular Inserters -> Fast Inserter -> Stack Inserter
• Burner Mining Drills -> Electric Mining Drills
• Stone Furnace -> Steel Furnace -> Electric Furnace
• Iron Chest -> Steel Chest -> Logistic Chests
• Light Armor -> Heavy Armor -> Modular Armor -> Power Armor -> Power Armor MK2
• Shotgun -> Combat Shotgun
• Boiler -> Heat Exchanger
• Steam Engine -> Steam Turbine

Burner inserters: I usually craft very few of these. Sometimes I use them for power, sometimes not - I don't think these are a huge issue.
Burner mining drills: No use for these.
Stone furnace: Can be used in boilers or steel furnaces.
Steel furnaces: Usually I don't upgrade these, but I can see how it would be a major problem for people who do.
Iron chest: These are pretty much useless.
Armors: Generally I go heavy armor -> Power armor mk. 2, occasionally with light armor it biters are bad. I can see how these could be an issue.
Weapons: I see how these could be an issue - for me, it's largely the starter pistol (not in your list), because from there, I usually go to the submachine gun, and later add a combat shotgun, flamethrower, and/or rocket launcher.
Boiler: I haven't had the opportunity to play extensively with nuclear yet. I'm on the fence about this - boilers do have some uses as backup power, getting rid of fuel items, etc., but I can see how it would be annoying if you go to only solar and/or nuclear.
Steam engine: See above - although sometimes for late game power I use steam turbines with boilers for various reasons.

[Sander_Bouwhuis]

I'm a big fan of the possibility to recycle everything. It gives me a 'good' feeling that the junk/waste is being put to good use. Admittedly, I don't need the resources, but it does play well when you are role playing an environmentally aware alien.

Is there a recycling mod around that anyone know of?

[Ryba666]

Great patch, new item is always good idea. But imho price of new concrete is to high for only 10% of movement speed. Maybe concrete and iron with rocks?

[eradicator]

I just consider staged upgrades bad game design.

But that's the nature of the game. You smelt Ore into Iron and Copper, put them together into Electronic Circuits, add plastic and more cable for Advanced Circuits, smelt Iron into Steel and add more iron products to make an Engine, add that to the Advanced Circuit with some other stuff to make an Electric Engine, then a Flying Robot Frame before finally a Construction Robot, if this were all a single process then what would be the point of the game? Staged construction is how the game works, I don't see why we couldn't occasionally make use of that. Keep in mind the engineer knows he can build all this stuff so can design stuff with upgrades in mind but still to be usable as-is.

I said staged upgrades not staged construction. All those things you mention are called "intermediates" for a reason. A copper plate is a reasonable intermediate product. A second-hand burner inserter is not. Porsches are not made by upgrading a vintage car.

And are you suggesting that blue belts should build out of raw materials? You'd prefer to have a few thousand red and yellow belts stuffed in a chest somewhere, their resources wasted?

From a pure conceptual standpoint, yes. Blue belts should not require reds which in turn require yellows, at least not as the only way of production. But if you just took the current recipe and replaced the reds with some plates or whatnot, then blues would be too boring to produce. So it would require some larger changes to the recipe cosmos. Same for electrical engines. Makes absolutely no sense to build them from old mechanical engines, totally different physics. But you'd have to invent some more intermediates first to put into the blank if you wanted to remove the mechanical engine from the electrical recipe. So, basically you have to balance suspension-of-believe against fun-through-complexity. And including burner inserters into every normal inserter doesn't get points on either scale.

As for stuff in chests, i don't really understand why everybody seems to care so much about that. A generic recycling machine to turn old machines into scrap metal to remelt into plates? Sure i'd use that. But trying to design a belt based system that properly moves all the random stuff from the "garbage" chests to some place in the factory where it's actually needed is far more trouble than it could ever be worth to me. That kind of back-into-production recycling is only feasible with bots, and i don't want to put random requester chests all over the place just for recycling. So...i'm glad to tell you that i already have large amounts of old belts stored...somewhere. Factorio is about mass production, not micro-recycling :P

[bobingabout]

Personally i hate that sort of staged-upgrade crafting. It just adds a pointless/illogical nessecarity to craft all the crappy old furnaces all the time. Maybe you managed to reduce the amount of old garbage items in stock, but at the same time you just required perpetual mass production of said garbage items. Also an electric furnace is not some old used stone furnace with a few coils and steel plates tacked onto it. Imagine someone seriously told you that $Smartphone X+1 is made by attaching a bigger processor, bigger battery and some memory chips onto an old $Smartphone X, you'd be laughing the whole day.

I just consider staged upgrades bad game design. If there was alternatively a way to upgrade e.g. a burner inserter into a regular one, sure, go ahead. But making that into the only path to build a regular inserter is just broken. Why would anyone design a production process for a regular inserter that requires to first construct a burner inserter, and then dismantle said burner inserter just to remove the fuel recieving mechanism and replace it with an electric motor? Anyone sane would design it to be built with the electric motor in the first place.

Honestly, I can't agree with you more.

My stance on this can clearly be seen with electronics. each tier of board is built outright, but with a lot of similar components as the previous tier. I think this sort of layout works, but then it only really works with intermediates, or where the end product is destroyed when it's used. more on that later.

I designed my modules with upgrading each module in mind, and included a merging path. honestly, it didn't go as well as I hoped, mostly because it favours the merging route, instead of the initial path. If you try to hand craft a raw productivity 8 module, it will build a speed module 7, productivity module 7, 2x pollution cleaning module 7s, 2x effectivity module 7s, merge the pollution cleaning and effectivity modules into green module 7s, then merge all 4 of these together into a single raw productivity module, then upgrade that to a raw productivity 8. This is the longest most expensive path possible.
what it should have done is make a raw productivity module 1, then upgrade it step by step to 8.

The base game layout is mostly why when it comes to most world buildable entities, you need the previous tier to build them. take for example an assembling machine 3 being needed to make an assembling machine 4. but I also did tweaks so that the 3 only costs a single 2, not 2 of them, I mean, if you're upgrading a 2 to a 3, why does it need 2 of them?

I also did an experiment with robot stuff in logistics so that you can build robots of the right tier straight up, with appropriate costs, but it does leave that hole where the old ones go unused. which is where recycling them back for raw materials would be a good idea, but then if everything you build costs titanium, why would you need your steel and aluminium back?