Factorio Roadmap for 1.0.

[SeigneurAo]

Hey dear developers.

Do you have any estimate as to when we will get the first experimental builds of 0.15 ?
Thanks in advance !

The plan is to have approximately 3 months to implement all the planned changes, so it could be expected around february 2017.

Thanks for the quick answer.
I had seen the FFF but I thought it was the date for 0.15 release, so I thought maybe we'd have some experimentals before, with partial features.

[Hidrog]

You guys should pull a Don't Starve and have the spawners grow legs, leaving behind a new nest, walk around the world as incredibly powerful enemies and then sit back down as a new nest. Perhaps if you kill them while they are standing up, they could unlock a separate type of research, into the physiology of the aliens. This could open up into the stuff you hint at in your planned features https://www.factorio.com/content, such as using agriculture and studying biters and spitters to find better ways to "deal" with them.

[Hidrog]

You guys should pull a Don't Starve and have the spawners grow legs, leaving behind a new nest, walk around the world as incredibly powerful enemies and then sit back down as a new nest. Perhaps if you kill them while they are standing up, they could unlock a separate type of research, into the physiology of the aliens. This could open up into the stuff you hint at in your planned features https://www.factorio.com/content, such as using agriculture and studying biters and spitters to find better ways to "deal" with them.

This is a repost because I think I might have done it wrong the first time. Sorry, I'm very new to using forums.

[Deadly-Bagel]

Request for the devs, there are numerous topics in Suggestions on updating combat, and while many of them are (I think) off the mark as to where the game needs to go this is definitely a BIG point of contention for players new and veteran. The problems are too numerous to list here but how pathetic rockets are, even without factoring their extremely high cost, is a good example.

Please can you assuage our concerns by confirming you recognise combat needs heavy attention and that it will be addressed before release? Ideally put it in the roadmap (for 0.16 I assume)? So far, AFAIK, there has been zero dev comment on the matter.

[Boogieman14]

A recent FFF did mention kovarex wants to get rid of turret creep as a game mechanic, so the topic of combat has been mentioned at least. One would assume getting rid of turrent creep can only be part of a bigger combat revamp. Confirmation of a bigger vision and inclusion in the roadmap would be nice.

[Deadly-Bagel]

No, that's not the kind of thing I mean. In vanilla there is absolutely no reason to ever build rockets, their closest thing for a purpose right now is that the research allows the rocket silo. They're saying rather than fixing the core problems they're just slapping a bandaid over turret creeping, a tedious but workable nest-clearing tool, which by the way isn't going to stop it being used. Sure it will take longer but until you get either the tank (and can be bothered making shells, and this is STILL circumstantial as it still dies pretty easily) or power armour, what alternative do you have?

Put a line of turrets down out of range, wait for them to active, put another line of turrets down a little ways ahead (so they are protected by the previous row while they activate), repeat. Slower but no different really, and the problem isn't ease or simplicity, turret creeping is a pain, the problem is we currently don't have an alternative.

[Grimakar]

With the personal roboport, turret creeping becomes very relaxed. Just make a blueprint for laser turrets and big poles and let the bots build it closer and closer to the base. After the base is done, you take the deconstructor to collect both alien artifacts and your turrets. The bots even repair your turrets right on time. You only need to research the bot speed, so the bugs cannot hurt your little friends.

[Deadly-Bagel]

If you've got that far you can equip a few shields and go in with the combat shotgun. It's more before you get your power armour. Sure, I guess you could craft 16 engines (if you don't have them already) and build the tank, then set up a sulphur > explosive > Cannon Shell production, wait 15 mins for it to produce ~100 cannon shells (assuming you have the 400 steel required) then precariously kite the biters around their nest as long as it isn't near any trees. Once you have your iron outpost you could mount the tank on your wall or use it as a paperweight because now you've got your power armour. Total time: ~30 mins, expensive.

Alternatively you could walk up some turrets. You've already got laser turrets, and if you don't well you're going to use them anyway. If there's only one or two worms you could also use gun turrets, the activation time gives you plenty of time to drop in some ammo. Put both on your quick bar, it's very fast even without the auto-load mod. Total time: ~10 mins, cheap.

If instead you could craft a few rockets to take out any worms, then go in with grenades to finish the bases and clean up with the SMG, and could do all this relatively safely, would you do that instead?

[Grimakar]

Maybe yes, but making Factorio a tower offense game is quiet funny
In the beginning I am doing it with the normal gun turrets. I just run in having pressed the left mouse button to build a line of towers, then switch the cursor to ammo and ctrl click this into the turrets. That works really fast with some practise and is very uncomfortable for the early bugs and their base. Only thing is picking up the turrets takes some time and isn't very funny. But later with bots, no prob.
So for this early phase an alternative way of killing those aliens efficiently would be nice.

[Hannu]

Just wanted to comment on universal fluid barreling and rail tanker cars. I feel like this should be an either/or thing, I've wanted universal fluid barreling for quite some time, but having rail tanker cars imo invalidates fluid barreling completely. Why fuss with barrels at all when you can just use the rail tankers and pipes to handle all fluid movement?

I think that they both have quite separate use, like in real life, if they are reasonably balanced. Barrels should be nerfed, for example to contain 5 units of fluid. Then you could choose tedious but high capacity pipe lines for refineries, plastic factories and other high volume production plants and use barrels and bots to transport sulfuric acid to few blue circuit assemblers or lubricant to belt and electric engine assemblers or light oil to flame turrets to spots which are often far away from refinery or chemical production cell.

[akynaston]

Just wanted to comment on universal fluid barreling and rail tanker cars. I feel like this should be an either/or thing, I've wanted universal fluid barreling for quite some time, but having rail tanker cars imo invalidates fluid barreling completely. Why fuss with barrels at all when you can just use the rail tankers and pipes to handle all fluid movement?

I think that they both have quite separate use, like in real life, if they are reasonably balanced. Barrels should be nerfed, for example to contain 5 units of fluid. Then you could choose tedious but high capacity pipe lines for refineries, plastic factories and other high volume production plants and use barrels and bots to transport sulfuric acid to few blue circuit assemblers or lubricant to belt and electric engine assemblers or light oil to flame turrets to spots which are often far away from refinery or chemical production cell.

I agree with Hannu: if I'm doing my math right, a normal steel chest can hold 10 times more than a single oil tank. Granted that you can't do anything with the Oil . .except un-barrel it when its in this format; but I've started simplifying my factory to only un-barrel when needed (YEA COMBINATORS AND WIRING!!!).

I'd love to store any liquids in a barrel; including water: I could have steam engines (and presumably Nuclear reactors) far away from the water source; yet ensure they always have water. Same goes for flame turrets and their corresponding oil.

[Deadly-Bagel]

Personally I don't think it's barrels that need nerfing, it's chests. There's never any reason I have needed to store almost 10,000 Electronic Circuits on a single tile. You could have 14 wagons unload all their cargo between 12 chests and still have room to spare.

Steel Chests could stand to be reduced to 20 slots, if not less.

[Grimakar]

Personally I don't think it's barrels that need nerfing, it's chests. There's never any reason I have needed to store almost 10,000 Electronic Circuits on a single tile. You could have 14 wagons unload all their cargo between 12 chests and still have room to spare.

Steel Chests could stand to be reduced to 20 slots, if not less.

Or you make the "chests" bigger, not the content, but the tiles on the map. Maybe like...
small: the wood chest is small and only can take a small amount, like 2 stacks. size: 1x1 tiles
medium: the metal chest is quiet bigger and can take more content, like 6 stacks. size: 2x1 tiles
large: the formerly known "steel chest" now becomes a warehouse. it takes like 40 stacks or more and needs electricity. size: 2x3 tiles

[Deadly-Bagel]

I would prefer Iron Chests remain 1x1 in size for convenience. Not sure how I feel about warehouses requiring electricity...

Speaking of chests, logistic storage chests would need revising. Perhaps they could be kept at 40 slots but changed to 2x2 size and prevent inserters accessing them? Then you could apply item filters to them which would solve a lot of logistic bot problems.

The other thing that may need considering is the "teleportation of items" - personally I wouldn't use this strategy as it's tedious and expensive but you can insert an item into one end of a chest and take it out of the other almost immediately. In this manner Cargo Wagons can currently be used to transport items quite long distances almost instantaneously. This probably won't be an issue, just something to think about.

[Grimakar]

The other thing that may need considering is the "teleportation of items" - personally I wouldn't use this strategy as it's tedious and expensive but you can insert an item into one end of a chest and take it out of the other almost immediately. In this manner Cargo Wagons can currently be used to transport items quite long distances almost instantaneously. This probably won't be an issue, just something to think about.

That makes me think of the ender chest of Minecraft. But to be honest, I have no idea, what you are talking about. How can cargo wagons transport items instantaneously? Where is there a teleportation?

[Deadly-Bagel]

Say you've got a chest 6 tiles long (basically a wagon). You put stack inserters on either side of it, one inserting and one extracting. A stack of items is inserted into one end, and immediately at the other end (5 tiles distance) the other inserter picks them out. Thus the items are essentially travelling five tiles instantly.

[Hannu]

Personally I don't think it's barrels that need nerfing, it's chests. There's never any reason I have needed to store almost 10,000 Electronic Circuits on a single tile. You could have 14 wagons unload all their cargo between 12 chests and still have room to spare.

Steel Chests could stand to be reduced to 20 slots, if not less.

In most cases that would be OK, but I recognize 2 problems.

First, a problem with raw wood. When I make railway lines in my rail worlds I get sometimes thousands of raw wood. I make a steel chest and put wood in and forget, after I have put all spare wagons in my work train. Or sometimes I collect wood later and use it as fuel (or Bob's circuit boards it I play modded game).
Second, coal plants. I do not like accumulators. I use solar panels at day and coal plants at night. 500 MW coal plant uses about 150 stacks of coal during night. I want to have emergency storage of at least 15 minutes because sometimes trains have delays. Large chest array would be somewhat impractical.
Large storage are also practical because I like to use longer and slower trains with longer intervals.

OK, I admit that these may be so far away from typical player's problems that it is justified to force me to use mods. Probably I use in any case, for example warehouse mod. I have also considered to make 6x2 chest for train stations just to decrease wiring work when I delete my train station blueprint.

[Deadly-Bagel]

Why not feed the wood into your boilers? If you're powering a large factory it should get through it reasonably quickly.

For your steam setup, let's consider first the setup itself. 500mW is approximately 1,000 steam engines (510kW each) and each engine is, what, 3x5 tiles? 4x5 if you count the gap for the power poles, x10 engines plus 14 boilers and something to feed them (UG pipe or offshore pump) is 4x65 per 10 steam engines. You've got 1,000 so arranged in a 100 long linear array that's 400x65 = 26,000 square tiles.

To store 150 stacks of coal to unload to a belt is 4 chests (actually stores 192 stacks). Say you grab coal off the feed belt and into a chest on each side, then pass to a second chest and back onto the belt. That's a total of 10 tiles to feed 26,000 tiles of power generation per night with plenty to spare. Alternatively you can store 576 stacks of coal PER WAGON at the train station just in unloading buffers. Please do go on about why a "large" chest array would be impractical.

[DeathMers]

Have you tried to feed boilers with rocket fuel? I use harvested trees, old electric poles immediately after they got in logistic system to get rid of them (request chest to wood, El. Poles - circuit condition to stop fuel feed belt and emply chest on not stopped part of feed belt). Coal is something like support source in case of lack rocket fuel (and plastic, ammo shit), in a late game, there is no problem to create enough RF, and supply works fine in single line layout for more over 2000 steam engines (around 3000 boilers)

[Hannu]

Why not feed the wood into your boilers? If you're powering a large factory it should get through it reasonably quickly.

Usually I burn all wood. I have an active provider chest near all entries and bots transport wood to boilers or steel furnaces. However, when I make something large in forest, I get quite often more wood than I can handle. I know that I can bring 20 wagons with me and transport wood back to base, but I forgot it or think it is impractical. Of course if there would be a void slot or other mean to destroy items easily this would not be a problem.

Please do go on about why a "large" chest array would be impractical.

For example 1000 engine coal plant needs enormous amount of stuff to remember and bring with, especially because I want to fill straight shore and put machines on concrete floor. Sometimes my work train have 10 wagons. It would probably need extra trip to base to get more chests and inserters, at least because I forget something. Huge storage area filled with belts, inserters and 1 tile chests is not very aesthetic, in my opinion. Some kind of larger warehouse is much more elegant. It is mostly just my personal opinions what is fine and entertaining way to do things. Of course it would not be laborious (build by construction bots) or take significant amount of resources.

I am not strictly against decreasing chests. Even wood chests are practically infinite in most purposes and limited size could maybe give some interesting challenges in mid game phase. My examples was extremities.