Factorio Roadmap for 1.0.

[DaveMcW]

They accept donations. https://www.factorio.com/donations

[kiba]

They accept donations. https://www.factorio.com/donations

Cool. I didn't know about that.

Though the donations wouldn't be enough to subsist on for a team, anyway.

[Drury]

They accept donations. https://www.factorio.com/donations

Cool. I didn't know about that.

Though the donations wouldn't be enough to subsist on for a team, anyway.

I'm pretty sure you can buy everyone a beer at least

[Sebb767]

I'd donate.

Don't you mean "buy"?

The dwarf fortress business model is donation, but Wube's business model is something else entirely.

Nope, I mean "donate". I already bought the game, but my 20 bucks won't support updates forever.

So for endless updates, they need a steady stream of income (they're not 80-hour no-pay maniacs like Scott, I guess) and I'd donate for this

[hoho]

Factorio is awesome and playable, yes.
It's FAR from complete.

The most obvious thing is the lack of real end-game. Sure, you can launch a rocket but that quite definitely isn't meant to be where you should end the game. Building up all that infrastructure to produce rockets and satellites seems rather wasteful as it could be extended a lot.

There were talks about building a space platform. They have the technology for other "worlds" for over a year now and I'd be extremely surprised if it doesn't get incorporated into the game somehow outside of mods. There has also been the ability to "trade" things. That could be used for stuff like feeding your home world with rockets, for example.

Factorio has tons of awesome features under the hood that aren't being used by the game itself. I hope they will get used eventually. I hope there will be feature additions for years to come.

Factorio could become somewhat similar to Minecraft in terms of its business model. Sure, it probably won't work all that well on consoles and phones but they could start selling servers for people that want them. That might generate some steady income without having to find new buyers all the time.

Of course, burnout of devs is always possible.and few people are willing to work on same project for extended periods of time. I just hope that the time factorio gets actively developed lasts for several years

[Sebb767]

The most obvious thing is the lack of real end-game. Sure, you can launch a rocket but that quite definitely isn't meant to be where you should end the game. Building up all that infrastructure to produce rockets and satellites seems rather wasteful as it could be extended a lot.

There were talks about building a space platform. They have the technology for other "worlds" for over a year now and I'd be extremely surprised if it doesn't get incorporated into the game somehow outside of mods. There has also been the ability to "trade" things. That could be used for stuff like feeding your home world with rockets, for example.

I partly agree. A better endgame would be nice, but what would a space platform be other than "load a sh*t ton of iron into your rocket" (which you do for building anyway)? Also, at some point the building mechanics limit you scale. Rows of hundreds of furnances are fun once, but not if you need to build them over and over. You'd somehow need to automate finding ore and building miners to counter this; then you need higher producing furnances etc. Maybe something like a tech level 3. But this would be a biiig revamp.

So yes, we need an endgame, but it probably has to be something special or revamp the system to support serious mass production. I'm open for anything, but simply throwing in a platform or building yet another furnance row on another planet sounds really boring.

Maybe the other planets have other ressources; kind of like the biome-idea? That would give it another go instead of just getting more iron/copper.

[hoho]

A better endgame would be nice, but what would a space platform be other than "load a sh*t ton of iron into your rocket" (which you do for building anyway)?

Well, you could combine the two ideas - build the platform in order to be able to send stuff to home planet. I think some sort of procedurally generated "orders" to be fulfilled would be nice there. Homeworld mod has something like that.

Also, at some point the building mechanics limit you scale. Rows of hundreds of furnances are fun once, but not if you need to build them over and over

I think the game manages this quite nicely with going from manual building to little-bit-less-manual with blueprints. When you reach that scale, you essentially can make a "machine" to process a metric ton of items in form of a blueprint. Of course, probably not many players are creating such things and instead are just using blueprints for copy-pasting trivial things.

You'd somehow need to automate finding ore and building miners to counter this; then you need higher producing furnances etc. Maybe something like a tech level 3. But this would be a biiig revamp.

I'm not sure if automated resource finding-extracting would work. This seems to be more for the RTS-thingy that was discussed somewhere.

I wouldn't mind if we had "autonomous" bots/tanks we can send out to explore but I don't think they should be able to build stuff on their own. What could be is that onec you get a satellite up you can "enter" a special building that makes the game to a regular top-down RTS thingy where you can order your bots around as you want. With more satellites the range of the map you can control that way also expands.

Battlezone 2 did something like that some 17 years ago. Most of the time you spent in your combat vehicle battling others but once you reached high enough tech level you could get out and control your underlings in a RTS-like fashion.

Maybe the other planets have other ressources; kind of like the biome-idea? That would give it another go instead of just getting more iron/copper.

So, basically, a "new start" with new resources and new goals on another planet? Yeah, that would be fun but it'd not be an end-game. It would just push the end-game to be that bit farther


Then, again, we could compare Factorio with Minecraft. Both have rather basic endgame and tons of players don't really consider the "official" end to be a goal to push towards all that much. Personally, I only killed the end dragon in Minecraft after a couple of years of playing the game (with tech mods) - I simply always had more interesting stuff to do in the overworld.

Of course, the obvious difference is that one can build castles made of dirt and stone in Minecraft without ever getting beyond wood tools while there is nothing comparable in Factorio. For me personally, factorio's main fun has been in the process, not the goal. To make it more fun for myself I've extended the process via mods like Marathon, Bob's, Angel's, and a myriad of others that increase science costs.

Of course, not all people would like to extend the "grind" and to be forced to expanding their production lines to some ludricious levels and I fully understand that. What I also think is that Factorio is not really meant to be liked by everyone. I'm lucky in sense that how it's implemented now suites me quite well (especially when adding a ton of mods). There are other games that are considered as pure awesomeness that I find boring. Not everyone needs to like everything.

[Sebb767]

[...] I think the game manages this quite nicely with going from manual building to little-bit-less-manual with blueprints. When you reach that scale, you essentially can make a "machine" to process a metric ton of items in form of a blueprint. Of course, probably not many players are creating such things and instead are just using blueprints for copy-pasting trivial things.

[...]

I'm not sure if automated resource finding-extracting would work. This seems to be more for the RTS-thingy that was discussed somewhere.

I wouldn't mind if we had "autonomous" bots/tanks we can send out to explore but I don't think they should be able to build stuff on their own. What could be is that onec you get a satellite up you can "enter" a special building that makes the game to a regular top-down RTS thingy where you can order your bots around as you want. With more satellites the range of the map you can control that way also expands.

Battlezone 2 did something like that some 17 years ago. Most of the time you spent in your combat vehicle battling others but once you reached high enough tech level you could get out and control your underlings in a RTS-like fashion.

I'm well aware of blueprints. My point is, the current mining system can't handle to increase your production yet another order of magnitude for a space platform IMO. The rocket took (for me, at least) about 100-ish active furnances. Buildung this smelting setup 10 times is doable via blueprints, but I was already pretty busy keeping the iron ore flowing. Imagine ten times as much: I'd be only running to discover new iron to just keep the input high or alternatively I would hardly make any progress because the influx is too low.

Something like deep miners pose a solution, but they'd need to be balanced via power usage because if they're even slower it would just be building rows of them. I'm talking about several screen sizes of fields here. Or, as I proposed, robots just build the far out mines for you

Maybe the other planets have other ressources; kind of like the biome-idea? That would give it another go instead of just getting more iron/copper.

So, basically, a "new start" with new resources and new goals on another planet? Yeah, that would be fun but it'd not be an end-game. It would just push the end-game to be that bit farther

I mean more dangerous planets (terrains?) where you need to land with your laser turrets equipped. Maybe you have low power there or extremly many/good enemies, but you could find plutonium you need for the nuclear plant to run which you need for your deep miners.

Then, again, we could compare Factorio with Minecraft. Both have rather basic endgame and tons of players don't really consider the "official" end to be a goal to push towards all that much. Personally, I only killed the end dragon in Minecraft after a couple of years of playing the game (with tech mods) - I simply always had more interesting stuff to do in the overworld.

Of course, the obvious difference is that one can build castles made of dirt and stone in Minecraft without ever getting beyond wood tools while there is nothing comparable in Factorio. For me personally, factorio's main fun has been in the process, not the goal. To make it more fun for myself I've extended the process via mods like Marathon, Bob's, Angel's, and a myriad of others that increase science costs.

Of course, not all people would like to extend the "grind" and to be forced to expanding their production lines to some ludricious levels and I fully understand that. What I also think is that Factorio is not really meant to be liked by everyone. I'm lucky in sense that how it's implemented now suites me quite well (especially when adding a ton of mods). There are other games that are considered as pure awesomeness that I find boring. Not everyone needs to like everything.

I totally agree here But it should be "ludricious levels", not "building the blueprint a ludricious amount of times".

[hoho]

My point is, the current mining system can't handle to increase your production yet another order of magnitude for a space platform IMO.

Ah, yes. Mining is indeed something that doesn't scale too well even with blueprints.

Though I think they made more distant ore fields to have greater yield so the further away from start you get the easier it should be. This could be a pretty nice solution, really.

I mean more dangerous planets (terrains?) where you need to land with your laser turrets equipped. Maybe you have low power there or extremly many/good enemies, but you could find plutonium you need for the nuclear plant to run which you need for your deep miners.

While I'd absolutely love something like this, it wouldn't really be *that* much different from what we have. Just multiply enemies by 10 and you'd have something quite similar. It would essentially be a "soft reset" of game - you are doing more or less the same thing but in a different environment with different starting tech level.

There still wouldn't be "real" end-game, just extension of what we have that pushes the completion a bit further back. To be honest I'm not really sure if there can be a real "end" to Factorio. Personally, I'd probably like to have some sort of colony supply missions that get progressively harder to fulfill. Yeah, it'll boil down to just expanding production/mining but that's pretty much what Factorio *is*.

But it should be "ludricious levels", not "building the blueprint a ludricious amount of times".

You can always just make a blueprint of blueprints!

I'm not too far into my current bobs-marathon-flux game (building production for blue science) but my biggest blueprint at the moment is for smelting with 40 steel furnaces that I've plotted down for copper and iron a few times. I chew through around 10k copper/s to keep 10 science labs going

[BlackKnight]

Awesome ideas guys, thanks for the inspiration.

In a related post (viewtopic.php?f=6&t=28545&p=184238#p184238), I wrote about some ideas based on enhancements (partly related to the recent posts above), which I very honestly can imagine being included into the real game.

Thoughts?

[Uxi]

10k coppper/ second ?!? I don't believe that...?

[alan2here]

Please can mining richness (recourses per tile) increase with distance away from the starting area? I'm spending so much time on mining expansions at the moment and more and more electricity defending them. Which has been fun making them neat and efficient and efficent to make, but I kinda want them to be a bit more permanent now.

I do to be fair have quite an ambitious main factory design.

[mooklepticon]

Please can mining richness (recourses per tile) increase with distance away from the starting area? I'm spending so much time on mining expansions at the moment and more and more electricity defending them. Which has been fun making them neat and efficient and efficent to make, but I kinda want them to be a bit more permanent now.

I do to be fair have quite an ambitious main factory design.

It does in 0.13

From viewtopic.php?f=3&t=27101

Map generator algorithm changed, further resource field now have greater richness.

[alan2here]

Thanks Thats excelent news

Anyone know how quickly this increases? I havn't been notincing but I guess that has helped a lot!

[Sebb767]

Thanks Thats excelent news

Anyone know how quickly this increases? I havn't been notincing but I guess that has helped a lot!

Map generation was pretty broken at the start, so I'm not sure, but I for me it looked like it doubles every 1-2 map widths. If you imported your map you'll need to find a not yet generated chunk however.

[alan2here]

At fully zoomed out without pressing "m"?

Presumably that'll be quite obvious soon then.

And new chunks = new places on the map that were black on the "press m" map.

[Sebb767]

At fully zoomed out without pressing "m"?

Nope, I'm talking about the map that pops up when you press "m" It's some distance, but nothing impossible.

And new chunks = new places on the map that were black on the "press m" map.

Should be, but it is possible that factorio generates a few not yet revealed blocks. But not many, so if you go a little further in that direction, everything should be okay.

[alan2here]

TY

[TheWombatGuru]

So, what's gonna be in 0.14 or 1.0 maybe?

[Neemys]

So, what's gonna be in 0.14 or 1.0 maybe?

See here for the initial plan for 0.14 :

FFF#151

Then the 0.14 has been bring to earlier date but most of the initial plan has been postpone to 0.15 which will happen not so far from the initial 0.14 see :

FFF#152