Factorio Forums

So is there an accidental +50% for the first level that wasn't intended? I seem to be getting that impression.

I thought the idea was to pretty much compress 5 levels into 1, not prevalence the whole thing.

Using a bunch of researches to get +2% productivity at a time was just painful to queue when the other researches cost an order of magnitude more. Since the cost of the research starts at some flat value, and goes up by a flat value; any benefit will soon become practically a rounding error (since the slope of increased cost per level is identical to previously.)

Nova wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 04, 2019 6:18 pm

Bilka wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 04, 2019 5:56 pm

Yes, I specifically made a change to prevent breaking older save games just before the "deploy" button was pressed

Well, that's slightly worrying. Sounds like you just noticed the problem and hastily changed it before release. Shouldn't something like that be stick out on normal testing of new versions?

It wasn't an unnoticed problem, we just didn't care that older saves would lose the mining productivity, (Something something, early access experimental),
But Bilka did care, so he wrote the small Lua migration.

It wasn't a problem or game breaking issue, just a nice move for old factories, and Bilka should have your thanks.

Yeah, on my save started in 0.17.0, with no mining prod researched yet, I see :
lvl 1 (+10% total) : 0.5k R+G
lvl 2 (+20% total) : 1.0k R+G+B
lvl 3 (+30% total) : 1.5k R+G+B+P+U
lvl 4 (+40% total) : 2.0k for all, including Space, excepting MilSci.

While in 0.16 it was :
lvl 1-2-3 (+6% total) : 0.6k R+G
lvl 4-5-6-7 (+14% total) : 2.2k R+G+B
lvl 8-9-10-11 (+22% total) : 3.8k R+G+B+P
lvl 12-13-14-15 (+30% total) : 5.4k R+G+B+P+H
lvl 16+ (+2%/lvl) : 1.5k + 0.1k/lvl

Yeah, it seems to be quite a bit cheaper, at least until the end of the game... but maybe it was a bit too expensive before ?

BlueTemplar wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 04, 2019 7:34 pm

Yeah, it seems to be quite a bit cheaper, at least until the end of the game... but maybe it was a bit too expensive before ?

IMO it was a bit too TEDIOUS before.

So its cheaper earlier and more expensive later? Sounds about right.
And less individual researches, so you don't have to restart it as often.

Bilka wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 04, 2019 5:56 pm

illmaren wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 04, 2019 5:51 pm

FactorioBot wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 04, 2019 5:47 pm

Balancing

• Changed mining productivity technology to add 10% in one level instead of 2%, increased the formula from 100 * level to 500 * level and removed some of the low level intermediate levels.

for older savegames too?

Yes, I specifically made a change to prevent breaking older save games just before the "deploy" button was pressed

Thats fantastic News!

Ranakastrasz wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 04, 2019 7:51 pm

So its cheaper earlier and more expensive later? Sounds about right.
And less individual researches, so you don't have to restart it as often.

No, actually it's cheaper always. As you get deeper into the infinite tech, the cost-per-percent for 0.17 approaches 20% of the 0.16 cost.

For instance, going from 50% to 60% was 13,500 science. Now it will be 3,000.

Hmmmm. Overall, I like the idea of simplifying and rebalancing the Mining Productivity levels. I just have a couple thoughts:

In the early game, it's kinda nice to be able to eke out a few extra % out of your ore patches incrementally, as you become able to afford it. Having several levels available in the Red & Green tier makes me feel like I'm able to accomplish some improvements before I have the full oil processing & mass red circuit production setup needed for more than a handful of blue science. Now once I get my single fairly easy level 1 productivity done, I can't invest anything into improving it further until much much further into the midgame when I have 1000 blue science to throw around.

Yes, the +10% bonus from level 1 is better than the +6% you get from the old R+G level 3, but it's a psychological and progression pacing thing more than a strictly numerical balancing thing. I liked having multiple intermediate steps I could decide to invest in at more points during my progression.

(Note: I like to play with fairly small & low-richness ore patches, forcing expanding to find new ones even pretty early game. So this may not be as big of a deal for everyone to feel the need to squeeze every last % bonus out of their ore fields.)

Then for level 4, just on a thematic level, shouldn't it just use the purple Production science packs and not yellow Utility packs as well? Mining Productivity seems to be solidly a Production tech, not High Tech / Utility, and it would help differentiate the paths more and get away from everything high level requiring both kinds.

For the higher research levels (roughly around level 4) the new mining is (asymptotic towards) 80% cheaper to research than the old situation. Thus effectively a factor five buff to the mining research.

*I compared the total cumulative cost to the total effect

At this rate, by the time I get to downloading - there will be a stable version - I'm being on 0.17.17 - that's a nice round number

TheBrain0110 wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 04, 2019 8:31 pm

Yes, the +10% bonus from level 1 is better than the +6% you get from the old R+G level 3, but it's a psychological and progression pacing thing more than a strictly numerical balancing thing. I liked having multiple intermediate steps I could decide to invest in at more points during my progression.

Heh, it was the opposite for me :
I saw : 2% - and I thought - "Why even bother ?!?"
Though I guess that it was also the pretty high cost per %, especially compared to what the other techs could enable !

But in the end, inherently, IMHO I feel that - before the end of the game and bittersweet Space Milk - ideally there should be no techs that just give bonuses to stuff without any other interaction required. (This is even more noticeable with Mining Productivity because Productivity Modules do the same thing *with* interaction.)

Rythe has explained it better than I could ever do :
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=63171

I like the mining change. On a base which can crank out 5k+ research, opening the research window to click yet another level of mining becomes very tedious.

Once the player hits infinite mining research, under .17, it will cost 1000 less then under .16 for 5 levels. This will make a difference at the lower levels of infinite research, but not so much at the higher levels.

Under .16, on one game, I hit 370 mining, which needed me about 740% improve in mining. At that level of mining, I really did not need any modded miners, since just about 4 regular electric mining drills would fill up a full yellow belt. The bottom line, over time mining productivity is extremely powerful, and I think way underrated by someone who has not taken a game to the mega base level.

If someone wanted to keep the cost the same, the formula would need to be "Level * 500 + 1000". Still I concur with earlier posts, at a certain point, the new formula becomes nothing more then a rounding error. The really big thing here is, quality of player experience is greatly enhanced by having to hit the research screen not as often in the end game.

Thanks for this change!

Hiladdar

Ranakastrasz wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 04, 2019 7:11 pm

So is there an accidental +50% for the first level that wasn't intended? I seem to be getting that impression.

I thought the idea was to pretty much compress 5 levels into 1, not prevalence the whole thing.

Was wondering the same here...

Yes, asymptotically it was actually 5 times cheaper. So I fixed it for 0.17.6.
The cost will be like this:
Level 1: 250 (red + green)
Level 2: 500 (+blue)
Level 3: 1000 (+purple+yellow)
of level 4+ is (level - 3) * 2500

Looking at the change log, my thought was that, 5x bonus, 5x cost, no change. Most likely one research per tier til infinity, so one for red+green, one adding blue, then one adding (Yellow?) and so on til space.

But, as above stated, you need to have increased it to... 15x I think.

Intuition fails for high-end math and all.

So was it intended to heavily buff productivity research, or did someone screw the math up?

Edit: Got confirmation. Fixed for next version.

Hiladdar wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 04, 2019 9:24 pm

I like the mining change. On a base which can crank out 5k+ research, opening the research window to click yet another level of mining becomes very tedious.

...

Still I concur with earlier posts, at a certain point, the new formula becomes nothing more then a rounding error. The really big thing here is, quality of player experience is greatly enhanced by having to hit the research screen not as often in the end game.

The way to fix this usability problem is not to rebalance the formulas yet again, but implement a repeat function on infinite tech. I always install the auto research mod for this reason, but I’d be perfectly satisfied with the combination of the new queue’s in .17 and a repeat toggle button for infinite techs.

FactorioBot wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 04, 2019 5:47 pm

Fixed NPE crash on sending biters if you plaster half the map with furnaces (yes, seriously). (66369)

This is my new favorite bug. Creative use of game mechanics!

Love the mining productivity buff.

Would love to see a similar smelting productivity.

Nova wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 04, 2019 6:18 pm

Bilka wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 04, 2019 5:56 pm

Yes, I specifically made a change to prevent breaking older save games just before the "deploy" button was pressed

Well, that's slightly worrying. Sounds like you just noticed the problem and hastily changed it before release. Shouldn't something like that be stick out on normal testing of new versions?

You do realize that we are actually playing a test release right?