Factorio Forums

Koub. There are lots of complicated things in this game that can make life hard for a new player, but the triple fluid wagon is far from being one.

Seriously, how "complicated" can a mechanic with literally two toggles be, especially with the GUI that already made it dead obvious how it works? Not to mention the wagon was not divided by default, so if somehow this feature was too convoluted for a new player to wrap their head around, they wouldn't actually even have to touch it in the first place, since the wagon would work as it does now.

Koub wrote:To all people complaining the end of 3-liquid wagons is the end of Factorio, the real question is : would you have missed that feature that much if it had never existed, and the fluid wagon had from start been as it is now ? You mostly miss it because you got used to it.

This point is so freaking invalid that I don't even know where to begin with. You may as well remove the entire nuclear power and then say "derp, would you miss it if we never made it?". And we "got used to it" because it was actually a useful feature, used by a large number of players and you just partially confirmed it, if the backlash in this thread didn't already. So the "usefulness too minor" nonsense brought up by Kovarex is invalid as well.

Koub wrote:The goal the devs aim to is not to keep every existing player in his/her comfort zone, but to make a 1.0 version that will be the best possible for a new player. Other "breaking" changes have been made in the past years, and all the people who haven't lived them wouldn't understand today why the drama then, when they happened.

Straw man argument. We are talking about a change from current update, not the past ones, which are probably irrerelevant to this situation.

Koub wrote:If you want fome feature back for your own comfort or playstyle, then you're asking things for the wrong reasons. Ask them for the new player, to make HIS/HER gaming experience the best possible.

We want the feature back because it was a useful part of the game. In my opinion describing something like this as "comfort zone" is quite disrespectful towards part of the community. You made a change pretty much nobody asked for. Unless there actually were people who were like "OMG this fluid train thingy is too hard to understand! Please remove!".

I have a feeling that there's some other bizarre reason you've removed it, but don't want to disclose. Because honestly, it's absurd that you're trying to describe such a small, passive and simple feature as something "complicated" for a new player. As if flicking two toggles on a train wagon was some sort of ridiculous puzzle a new player would crack their head on for hours.

Koub wrote:And always remember, this is alpha, so nothing is engraved into stone.

And THAT's the reason why I still hope you'll come to your senses, listen to the players and add this nice feature back

I myself used the dividing feature practically all the time. The fact that the 3 chambers correlate nicely with 3 fluids produced by the Refinery was very convenient, allowing me to refrain from building oversized stations just to haul all 3 types of fluids.

kovarex wrote:The removal was not the gui problem itself. The fix wouldn't be that hard. But we opened the question whether the feature really adds enough to justify all the logic and gui around it, and we kind of discovered that the feature usefulness is too minor to justify the complications for the player.

Nonsense. What sort of "complications" for the player were there? I honestly can't see any logic here - how can a feature which is probably one of the most passive features in the game (seriously, you don't even have to TOUCH the GUI and the wagon will work just fine!) impose some "complications"? And as I've said earlier, the GUI, albeit not pretty, made it pretty obvious what it does and how it works, so please at least explain what sort of "complications" for the player you can see here?

Koub wrote:The goal the devs aim to is not to keep every existing player in his/her comfort zone, but to make a 1.0 version that will be the best possible for a new player. Other "breaking" changes have been made in the past years, and all the people who haven't lived them wouldn't understand today why the drama then, when they happened.
If you want fome feature back for your own comfort or playstyle, then you're asking things for the wrong reasons. Ask them for the new player, to make HIS/HER gaming experience the best possible.
And always remember, this is alpha, so nothing is engraved into stone.

While I do not find separate tanks any useful I have to disagree with you Koub in general.
There is over a million copies (!) sold (!) to people who decided to support this game in early access (!) stage. All these people deserve staying in comfort zone unless the change is not really needed to make something else much better. The game should evolve and become better in general but some tradeoffs will just hurt people for no reason. So reasoning should be appropriate.

This is what makes Wube different from other devs. Steam 97% rating does speak for itself. Devs did communicate with players making strategic moves so that player base is satisfied.

For all the development cycle last changes (sideloading/compression and this one) are the only changes players complain about at all. It is difficult to find balance between improvements and tradeoffs and it becomes increasingly difficult with growth of player base as you will most likely meet more unsatisfied players. But I do truly believe in Wube's ability to sort things out. People should express their opinions and Wube should react to it.

I have to say, between the belt compression changes and the fluid wagon change, Wube is doing its best to follow Patreon's example.

Hopefully the result will be the same, a swift reversion to the way things were.

I don't understand how we can say, "why ?! it will break my factory ? revert it back !" when playing an alpha.
Also, some people are saying that there are many people using this functionnality, many, maybe, but how much % ? If it's 1 or 2%, then it's unecessary to keep a functionnality that's not really 100% finished (you don't have a marker that show the tank that will be linked to your pump). Also, it can cause futures bugs too.
And remember that unhappy peoples tells theirs opinion more than the other.
And personnaly, i think dev should focus on functionnality used by the majority. If they could work 4 hours on optimisation to gain 1% would be better than to work 4 hours on all incoming bugs/reworking interface from separated tanks.
To finish, it could be modded, and mods are good for minor functionnality like this.

i haven't seen a valid reason to get rid of it yet.

Hello, I don't really post much. I just kind of play the game. I very much enjoy the triple fluid feature and would like it back please.

If it was removed because of a glitch, please fix the glitch and put it back in the game.

If it's a balance thing, feel free to make whatever changes you see fit. Nerf it into oblivion and nigh uselessness. A novelty would be more fun than nothing.

If it's a GUI thing, feel free to take your time ironing out the problems and bringing it up to par.

If it's a "new players and casuals are dumb" thing, consider creating a tutorial. The other train tutorials are so well designed! I would prefer a handholdy experience over no experience at all. I would like to point out that as someone who still considers themselves a "new player" that I find the fluid wagon is easier to figure out than its alternatives. I would also like to point out that I appreciate that there are alternatives and don't want to dumb down the game for myself at the expense of other players. I will move on to alternative forms of transportation at my own pace and when I see fit.

Please don't let this be something that splits the community. If this is something that is permanent, I will regretfully be reverting to an older version and remain sadly but firmly stuck in the past.
Please don't expect or rely on the community to make a mod to cover for you. That's a long, dark road I don't want to see another promising developer going down.
Please don't think that new players have more worth or deserve more attention than veterans. You should aim to please all people equally. Chasing new demographics always results in a bland, uninspired finished product.
Thank you for your consideration!

yohannc wrote:I don't understand how we can say, "why ?! it will break my factory ? revert it back !" when playing an alpha.

Honestly, the game has so much content at this point that calling it alpha is a little bit far-fetched. Nevertheless, people often put tens or hundreds of hours (sic) of playtime into their saves/factories and they have all the reason in the world to be upset about a change that is essentially game-wrecking for them, and so far has literally no valid reason to be introduced.

yohannc wrote:Also, some people are saying that there are many people using this functionnality, many, maybe, but how much % ? If it's 1 or 2%, then it's unecessary to keep a functionnality that's not really 100% finished (you don't have a marker that show the tank that will be linked to your pump). Also, it can cause futures bugs too.

>IF< is the keyword here - you have no information on how many people used the divided tank wagon. Might as well be 50% here, and judging from the activity in this thread, that was no small number at least. The argument that it's unnecessary to keep a functionality that's unfinished is invalid - lots of things in Factorio are unfinished, so does that mean the entire game should be removed? What's the exact disadvantage of keeping this feature, even if we assume that it was used only by minority? Do devs have to recode the feature from the scratch with every update or something?

yohannc wrote:And personnaly, i think dev should focus on functionnality used by the majority.

Again, how do you know how many people used it? Aside from that, I disagree - since it had no negative impact on the game, it should be kept even if used by minority. There are things which are good at filling a niche.

yohannc wrote:If they could work 4 hours on optimisation to gain 1% would be better than to work 4 hours on all incoming bugs/reworking interface from separated tanks.

Another part you're pulling stuff out of thin air - how do you know how much time devs spent on "fixing" the fluid tank and how does it compare against general optimisation?

yohannc wrote:To finish, it could be modded, and mods are good for minor functionnality like this.

Just no. Arguments that suggest usage of mods in discussions like this are immediately invalid, for at least following reasons:
-Mods disable achievements
-Any environment featuring mods is mostly detached from official game meta, as most people (including veterans) will always play vanilla. Plus blueprint sharing is complicated in this case.
-Mods often become incompatible when a big update rolls out, delaying the time you can try it out while you wait for your mods to update.
-Not all mods are reliably maintained and are often abandoned.


@EDIT:

I wholeheartedly agree with what Tendies4meplz wrote in the post above.

Seems a similar situation when in patch 0.15.3 was removed the ability to set /color using RGB values.

And activated again in the next patch.

GUI has issues? Fix it.

No GUI for tank wagon? Let the wagon with 3 independent tanks. Players will use 3 pumps.

About complexity: there are roboports networks, circuits networks, dozen of high levels of complexity mechanics and a 3 tanks wagon is too complex?

Please Devs, reconsider this feature. Thanks.

EDIT: or there are potential issues for train scheduling? About conditions for filling tanks?

Axios wrote: EDIT: or there are potential issues for train scheduling? About conditions for filling tanks?

I don't think there are. In the last iteration where the divided tank was available, train schedule conditions associated with it were working without any issues for me.

(First found and fell in love with Factorio back in mid-2015 and I am finally registering on the forums just to state my preference on this. I do trust that you'll come to the right decision without this post anyway, as I have been continually impressed with the rate and quality of art and design work all though development. The game, and your work ethic is a gem among all indies. I apologise that this might seem like brown-nosing to put it in before an argument, but it's my very first post and the appreciation is genuine.)

I would strongly prefer it, and think it makes much more sense to have the fluid wagon locked permanently as 3 separate tanks rather than locked to 1 connected tank. I totally understand and agree that the extra UI work+maintenance is not worth the reward, and I think that losing that UI is a good outcome anyway- it was mostly unneeded complexity for newbies to learn, and I never changed it again after initially setting a wagon.

So the decision comes down to deciding if the fluid wagon should be permanently be 1-big-connected-tank, or 3 individual tanks.

As others have stated, it only means 2 extra pumps and a tiny bit of pipe to use the full thing if they are individuals (no problem!) and on the other side of the argument, losing separated tanks take away lots of flexibility, convenience and lots of compactness from the fluid wagons- it will push players very strongly back towards cargo+barrels instead of ever using fluid wagons. Imagine, to carry 3 liquids you would need 2 whole extra carriages of station space! Considering their heavy weight and that giant space downside, there won't be much of a decision to make anymore!

I think your current fluid wagon model (and the 3 functional pump ports) visually signals that there are 3 individual tanks, so taking that away will probably confuse and frustrate new players quite a bit when they expect them to have 3 individual tanks. After all, when you think of a train carriage with only one tank, aren't you expecting it to look more like... this?




Those are my thoughts on the decision, thanks for reading!


This is an afterthought, but I think it there could be a big enough use-case for a large single-tank wagon (like above) for it to be worth adding to the base game. I think it would be used and useful enough to be worth the single extra unit of itemlist clutter. It would certainly be a great compromise and placate both sides of the argument of this tank patch, and give players the choice if they want it. I'd suggest giving it some kind of bonus like a 100k limit like barrel+cargo wagons can hold, or else making it much lighter than the triple-tanker. The existence of it in the itemlist up against the "current-graphics-fluid-wagon" would unquestionably indicate that there are 3-separated-tanks in that one, and 1 big one in this. Once again, this is an afterthought and please don't derail the thread too hard to talk about this. I suggest making a thread about it if there isn't some similar suggestion out there already.

This is a great example, of making the mistake of allowing a feature without making sure we really wanted that in the first place. If it never existed people would have zero problems with that.

kovarex wrote:This is a great example, of making the mistake of allowing a feature without making sure we really wanted that in the first place. If it never existed people would have zero problems with that.

Perfectly aware that the game is in development and Devs have the final word about what is in and what is deprecated.

Now several players have tried and enjoyed the feature.

For the future: revert the feature or we should rebuild fluid stations? Just for asking.

Anyway, Factorio is always awesome.

New player here, I have registered specifically to post my opinion on this matter.

New players are not all idiots!

I was able to use the separated fluid wagon JUST FINE in my first spaghetti playthrough!
I used lube, sulfuric acid and crude in a circular rail around my base. I also used 1/3 of the tank for my uranium outpost. 75k sulfuric acid or lubricant is just too much! Apart from oil / water / steam there is no point in having SO MUCH liquid stored in a train buffer!

Don't ruin the game trying to pander to casuals please.

Casuals do not play Factorio anyway

Just a few words to clarify :
I'm not part of the dev team. I'm a benevolent moderator who's been there for a long time, and has quite a memory things, and how/why/when they happened. When I express myself as a moderator, I write in an other colour, so now, I just write as a member of the community.

Also the part where I tell the devs' objective to aim for a good final product, even if that means breaking ascendant compatibility, this is not a personnal opinion of me, it's a paraphrase of this (Source):

Looking at the big picture, a tiny bit of functionality is lost, but I believe there is a big gain in making the interaction more intuitive. I fear many current players, especially those who won't read this Friday Facts might see this as a bad change, a change for the sake of change. Because I am taking away something they understand and know all the quirks of, to replace it with something that's simplified and new.

This is one of the reasons why improving the UI/UX is so hard. We made it 'okay' so we can maybe improve it later, but now when everyone (including us devs) have used it for so many years, it's hard to see what's wrong with it, because we eventually got used to all the unintuitive things.

As mentioned above, I don't mind being the bad guy, so taking away the hatred of active players who don't like change, do the above changes make Factorio a better game? Let us know what you think.

It's not about the fluid wagon change, I know, but this is, if I'm not mistaken, the mindset of the dev team : make changes they think should be made.

Also, I have never told or written anywhere that I liked the removal of the modular fluid wagon. Neither have I written that I hated it. To be honest, I couldn't care less. If I want my train to carry 25k of a fluid, I write that in the loading conditions, and that's all.

There are other aspects of the game I'd like see made better. It's just that I find people surprisingly emotional and almost aggressive, and I think this is disproportionate. The devs do change their mind if we convince them they are wrong. Constructive arguments are always better than being aggressive to convince people.

Koub wrote:Just a few words to clarify :
I'm not part of the dev team. I'm a benevolent moderator who's been there for a long time, and has quite a memory things, and how/why/when they happened. When I express myself as a moderator, I write in an other colour, so now, I just write as a member of the community.

Also the part where I tell the devs' objective to aim for a good final product, even if that means breaking ascendant compatibility, this is not a personnal opinion of me, it's a paraphrase of this (Source):

Looking at the big picture, a tiny bit of functionality is lost, but I believe there is a big gain in making the interaction more intuitive. I fear many current players, especially those who won't read this Friday Facts might see this as a bad change, a change for the sake of change. Because I am taking away something they understand and know all the quirks of, to replace it with something that's simplified and new.

This is one of the reasons why improving the UI/UX is so hard. We made it 'okay' so we can maybe improve it later, but now when everyone (including us devs) have used it for so many years, it's hard to see what's wrong with it, because we eventually got used to all the unintuitive things.

As mentioned above, I don't mind being the bad guy, so taking away the hatred of active players who don't like change, do the above changes make Factorio a better game? Let us know what you think.

It's not about the fluid wagon change, I know, but this is, if I'm not mistaken, the mindset of the dev team : make changes they think should be made.

Also, I have never told or written anywhere that I liked the removal of the modular fluid wagon. Neither have I written that I hated it. To be honest, I couldn't care less. If I want my train to carry 25k of a fluid, I write that in the loading conditions, and that's all.

There are other aspects of the game I'd like see made better. It's just that I find people surprisingly emotional and almost aggressive, and I think this is disproportionate. The devs do change their mind if we convince them they are wrong. Constructive arguments are always better than being aggressive to convince people.

This summarizes this discussion.
Devs/mods keep up the good work.

Happy Holidays

kovarex wrote:This is a great example, of making the mistake of allowing a feature without making sure we really wanted that in the first place. If it never existed people would have zero problems with that.

ask yourself, what is more important? what you the developer wants, or what the player wants?

tmx wrote: 75k sulfuric acid or lubricant is just too much! Apart from oil / water / steam there is no point in having SO MUCH liquid stored in a train buffer!

I'm not saying that I welcome this change, but there are better alternatives to that:
Read the train content into a decider combinator and switch off the pump.
OR
Use the "item count" condition in the train schedule GUI

Serenity wrote:I'm not saying that I welcome this change, but there are better alternatives to that:
Read the train content into a decider combinator and switch off the pump.

I know! I can use combinators and they're a lot of fun. However it doesn't feel as elegant having to use them. And in fact, combinators are certainly much harder to grasp for new players than fluid wagons.

Also, I feel like someone who can use trains should be able to grasp fluid wagons with no problems at all..

I agree with the decision to remove the optional split in the fluid wagon.

I do think however, that keeping 3 permanently separate tanks would be a better way to go than having only one tank. As others mentioned - it's very and intuitive, what you need to do to fill all three tanks, while it's much more effective than barreling/debarreling or carrying 3 wagons for unloading the refinery.

I'm not the most observant guy out there, so I have no idea how long this was in place before today.

I find it amusing, though, that I literally noticed this was a thing a couple hours before they removed it. I thought "Huh, that's cool. I'll probably never use it though."

And apparently I was right