Friday Facts #380 - Remote view

[SupplyDepoo]

You can already change the color of spidertrons just like locomotives, and the remotes will take on that color.

[Locane]

The tint indicator for whether a blueprint entity will be filled or not is RIGHT on, god, thank you!

Im confused. This functionaly is completely useless.
Why are getting exited about that?

I've spent SO much time working with remote view and blueprints in my SE run and trying to pick out what's built and what's a ghost entity, especially with pipes, has always been a pain in the ass to me. Now it will be super obvious what hasn't been built and is waiting on transport or parts. That's why I'm excited.

[bnrom]

I have a big problem with the 'instant remote rotate', working as described in the FFF:

...we realized that making rotation just an instant action might be the way out. It doesn't break the immersion too much and simplifies everything greatly for us and for the player, so we just did that.

I think this choice is a big mistake. This instant rotation will allow the player to be able to remotely send (logistic) signals anywhere, on any planet, wherever he can view the map. For example,

• Make one of two logistic signals be sent on a remote logistics network by flipping a splitter.
• Send arbitrary signals through convoluted setups.
• Reroute resources as needed, any time, anywhere.
• That green chip factory absorbing too much of the copper? No problem, just rotate the belt backwards to block the copper flow.
• Need some more X delivered to space on a rocket? No problem, just rotate that belt. Do this for any resources you find you need while you're off-planet.
• Make 'field-programmable gate arrays' consisting of belt matrices including underground belt connections.

This change (instant remote rotate) betrays the very-important-philosophy of aligning instrumentalism with what is fun, which is one of the most important and defining design priniciples of Factorio.

Even if you have the logistic robot tech already, the 'instant rotate' will remove the feeling of being 'cut off' from a remote part of the factory, needing to travel there personally if you failed to set up enough logistic robot infrastructure. Or, even if you do have the infrastructure there, the feeling of latency in your actions is an inherent and expected part of being remote. I would find the instant rotate quite jarring, and if the rotation can be instant but nothing else is, it would feel to me like the remote interactions are not an organic part of play but an artificial gameplay construct. In other words, it would break my immersion.

In summary, I think the 'instant remote rotate' is a very bad idea, because it

• creates a (potentially quite large) misalignment between instrumental play and fun play;
• breaks immersion.

+1 (it seems really weird - immersion wise)
I think rotating belts to effectively toggle production of anything in the factory is the most glaring issue (as that use seems pretty convenient, and requires no setup - and hence becomes something you might do a lot (and even feel pressured to do a lot) - which then highlights how weird and immersion breaking the interaction is).

How is being able to magically 180 rotate a belt instantly a whole planet away not massively immersion breaking? It seems to break a fundamental consistency present in factorio - that you are a humanoid figure who interacts locally with the world (tech's like roboports and remote controls aside).

Have you considered removing the instant rotation features (along with marking for rotation), and instead using deconstruct and then reconstruct (with ghosts entities being rotated instantly)?

[DarkShadow44]

Internally we had quite a lot of logic related to "real direction" and "future direction", which had to be considered in a lot of places and it was always bringing more and more problems.

I wonder if that also means that a blueprint on top of existing belts will instantly rotate belts. Otherwise there won't be any internal simplification since you still need the same logic here, right?