Friday Facts #129 - The late game

[Rythe]

Yes please for these FF#129 plans, more than less.

Although the steam engine smoke should be white as others have noted.

And I still don't want loaders as presented in the last FF. Just somethings to load/unload trains on the quick and simpler.

I do like the dirty ore and extended processing concepts. Making mines much more long term via research and more expensive builds would be a big plus.

But I do not think infinite research is a good late game solution. It's essentially more of the same with the rocket launch pad, only most will find it more conceptually boring than the rocket launch pad. It might work as a bit of a bandaid now, but will play hell on combat balance down the road. It will also immediately play hell with combat balance for combat mods. How it'll effect mods in that regard, along with any future combat plans for vanilla, is probably reason enough not to do it.

The other reason not to do it is it robs completionists of the 'research all science' goal. That only works for us if it's possible to do, and there's few enough hard end states in the game already. Can't think of any others, really, besides campaign missions.

You know, now that I think about it more, and given current game state and thread suggestions, I believe the best long term solution for a complete vanilla Factorio is planet colonization.

We have the rocket launch pad. Next step would be for each rocket launch to queue up a colonist lander/escape pod. Have the player designate a landing zone for each lander.

Now depending on work load you want to undertake for it, the lander could be/morph into a sort of arcology a la Sim City. Player factories would need to supply them with produced goods to sustain a population count. End game score would be the number of colonists a player is supporting.

Expanding the idea could involve new production chains for arcology-specific goods. Farms -> Food. Misc consumer goods and generalized necessities. Power consumption.

A Factorio expansion could then take up the orbital platform concept for something else. Possibly colonizing new, harsher, more dangerous worlds with interplanetary logistics chains.

- Edit -
Oh right. It kind of feels like there are not enough green science techs. Some blue science techs could maybe be shifted down? Or more techs introduced for the tier. More expensive green science techs is an 'eh' solution, I think, but could play a part either way.

[aklesey1]

Nice news, and so when 0.13 is plannig to release?

[Goldminer]

I am very happy to see this posting today!

I made at least two games in setting up big bases, made trains and stuck in both exactly in that late-game Issue now. The other thingy i like is the exact observation go for a rebalancing for researching costs. I m a bit of a slow player, need my time, setting up with big Walls, big plans that takes time. Normaly i have done the most research before i use most of it.

See extensions for the late game is a nice thing. Let me suggest that it would great to come up with something like an Expert-Mode wich lead to the point where Complexity is boosted, prices, productiontime. As it is right now, there is not much of a challenge if you get the Idea of the game.

One thing i hope to see in Future for Trains: Like the Chests i would see Trains which have Requester Function. So i dont have to manualy stack up every time a train with stuff for building or i can link them with smart inserters / logistic net.

one Part i miss in the Game is something nice to build. Think about something like building a Town for upcoming Settlers for the Colonized new Planet! i see something like build Town parts, Parks and so on for like 1000 People and that will need Housings Farms and so on. So there is some Reason to get much ground for a real Settlement, a Reason to build everything and at the End there may be a big nice to view Town build from segments uses stone, and metals.

and as i do suggestions here i would highly recommend to enable a new part in the chemical plant: Liquified Coal! ... a bit of iron + coal get another way to coal for the price of a extreme pollution Now i dont find to much reasons to collect any coal ... maybe there should an overhaul of the Energy Part too - much more energy usage, more Energy Plants, Coal, Oil, Gas and more and less solar. Its to easy with the realy too cheap solars. Get 10k Solars and the game is done with that ...

I realy hope you get some new Stuff in the late Game and come up with great rebalancing!

[Xipheas]

Steam should be white, yes.
Boilers should give off smoke.

[Goldminer]

Liquified coal = Oil, i missed it down there. liquified Coal

Mines could get a huge Bonus from the productivity Modules or i like the Idea produce Deep Mining Drills which multiply outcome of Mines and will used up / must restocked from time to time - or a combination of both?

bye

[stepcz]

Right now we are doing surface strip mining, so introducing some kind of deep underground mining would be logical. Underground mines should have much larger reserves but be more difficult to mine. This could be inspired by real life mining - it takes a long time to build a deep mine, it needs lots of power and infrastructure, the mined material is not pure and has to be sorted and/or refined before being usable etc.

I would also like to suggest adding research for next generation(s) of solar panels and accumulators with better energy efficiency. Having half of the map plastered with solar farms is not cool.

[Goldminer]

...

I would also like to suggest adding research for next generation(s) of solar panels and accumulators with better energy efficiency. Having half of the map plastered with solar farms is not cool.

thats the only disadvantage from solars ... they also overpowered at this point as they are now in my opinion. Energy is far too easy / cheap to get in this way^^

For the Deep mining Idea is this inspiration Video nice i think :>

Great inspirational Deep Mine Video )

[DethBringa]

So after reading everything, thought I'd make a new summary post of my thoughts.

-MINING-
I still think my tracked robominer+minerport idea is a great way to tackle the mining.
viewtopic.php?p=134079#p134079

After-note:
Not a fan of infinite ore myself.


-SMOKE VISUALS-
Well everyone already covered it, white steam from steam engines and black plumes from boilers.


-TRAIN WAGONS-
I actually like the system now, I don't feel it needs adjusted. The only suggestions I would make would be if you are going to add a fluid wagon (like irl) the also add open top ore wagons and tipping stations (like irl). But really I like the limits from the existing train system. But please don't remove the barrels.


-RTS SYSTEM-
I have seen this mentioned a few times, reading through the wall-of-text from NemesisZidar, it really sounds cool. I would love to be able to produce bots armed with pistols/shotguns/smgs and armor. That would be amazing to see ingame. different armour and weapons affecting movement speed. This would be great. However with the game being about automation it would make more sense it automating these units. I think of the style like Black Reign, set the sliders of different behaviors and let them rip. This means you could build scouts with light or no armour with pistols to search out but not encounter enemies and then tanky ones to engage to the death.


-ENDGAME-
OMG the post I read on supplying a landing population with goods sounds amazing. Idk about how well it would work in this game but it does sound cool.


-RESEARCH-
Additional research would be cool but please not infinite. I see others have expressed the same thing, us completionists like to be able to research everything. Although, the items above would add a lot of research to the tech tree.

[Goldminer]

After-note:
Not a fan of infinite ore myself.

There is infinite Ore in the Game already. The question is what we have to do get it^^ Build boring new Trainstations every game hour after cleaning parts of the map from aliens after building new walls or build deep mines, maybe big mines, fields filled with holes over holes without moving train stations everytime but support the deep mine with more and more drills, better drills, supportbeams, explosives, fabrics for refinement, more and more growing infrastructure as far the deep mine will drinven deeper in to the planet.

[guinimesa]

For ores either could be that you START with dirty ore and you refine it poorly or you make a poor iron or something like that, then you place a long term mine that gives you pure ore that can be directly smelted for a standart or higher quality and/or you place a blast furnace kind of setup. you crush it for more production with less material.
For green science maybe making a litte more expensive the green packs and needing more quantity to unlock the science.

[undeadnightorc]

I feel like I'm the only one who has an issue with the new smoke visuals.
"The motivation for this is to provide some smoke, even when the particle based smoke is turned off in the graphical options"

I like playing the game with smoke off, as it gives cleaner visuals and is less distracting. It was annoying at times to try to see behind the smoke as you were building stuff. I don't think I like the idea of having smoke graphics forced on us with no real option to turn it off.

[Ojelle]

A really simple switch for green tech could be that you need red belts instead of yellow. If you needed to make them more costly ofc, thats an entirely other thing.

[vanatteveldt]

I agree that something needs to be done about late-game mining.

AFAISI, the "point" of this game is that you do a lot of manual work in the beginning (the "chopping trees" from the first trailer ), but then progressively automate everything as more tech is unlocked: first production, then defense, then train logistics, then robots. A typical late-game factory completely runs itself, including bringing replacement ammo/repair packs to outposts.

The only things that cannot be automated are exploration/conquest (although combat robots help ), and setting up outposts. For outposts, blueprints help a lot, and with a blueprint for the junction, the station, the loading, the mines, and the defensive structures it is a lot less painful - but even with blueprints setting up outpost No. 33 is just not a very exciting or challenging task, and running rails takes a lot of time even with FARL on a map with a lot of water.

So, I believe there should either be a way to further automate outpost creation (e.g. the mining robots proposed above, or some sort of dynamic blueprint that automatically covers a resource patch) and/or a logistic/tech heavy way to eliminate the need to make ever more outposts, e.g. the deep mines that some mods offer.

Currently, I just get bored at the stage where my main "job" becomes riding my FARL to new outposts and setting them up.

[horntx]

Are you going to do any thing with the end game like maybe you can build space platforms or orbital weapons.

[Arch666Angel]

WE WANT THE SPACEPLATFORM!

[Adil]

Well, I'd like to reiterate on the thought voiced somewhere 5 pages before: mining is not endgame on it's own, there should be other interactions/mechanics of factory and the world that progress with the time.
Especially when considering the infinite upgrades, the considerations should be taken about increasing the environment counteraction like biters being allowed to evolve further too.

Robominers seem like a logical progession to me.

[...]

Could be a way to go about it...

• Craft Mining Robots
• Put Roboport into an area with resource patches
• Put down requester chest(s) and set the type of resource(s) you want to be mined as request
• Enjoy

You can already do that with simple logistic robots, and provider chests near every miner. To me the problem is that you still have to manually tailor positioning of miners due to irregularities of ore field shapes.

Also, there's been other interesting concept for resource sinks here.

Instead of trashing science I would prefer an ongoing maintenance or cost for each science you research.

[MeduSalem]

You can already do that with simple logistic robots, and provider chests near every miner. To me the problem is that you still have to manually tailor positioning of miners due to irregularities of ore field shapes.

I know. Miner+Provider Chest is what I have been doing for the past year already and building new outposts/tearing them down is still tedious. I wish I wouldn't have to tear them down, then I wouldn't care about the setup as much. I just dislike destroying stuff I invested a lot of time to build.

[RobertTerwilliger]

Very good new, despite many of the changes aren't for 0.13 - but in this case we are getting kinda cliffhanger - something to wait for : )

Resourse distribution tweak is very good - was expecting this for quite long, considering how many players use mods for this - but I'm vanilla player, so just have been waiting for devs to notice the fact and implement the option = )

Feel a bit sceptical about cargo cart size increase, but I guess it's more for insane bases - personally I'm not a enormous base lover, and my last game (specialized mini-towns style) needed only single-wagon trains, and "normal" setups usually use 2-wagon trains.
Once again, I still realize, how many resources are being eated by mega-bases, so I'm thinking about some mid and late game expensive cargo wagon size techs. What do you think? I think it's quite reasonable.

[vaderciya]

I want literally everything in this FFF, but also some actual late game somethings. Something a bit better than just "build this expensive rocket that serves no purpose"

[roman566]

I would like an end game resource sink, but infinite research? How is it different from spamming rockets ad infinitum? Maybe bump prices of end game blue based tech as well? Then split rocket based research into several projects and add a new and very expensive science pack explicitly for them?

I would also propose 'hardcore difficulty' where tech costs scale with every tech researched so with 20 technologies, 21st would cost 20 times more than normal. Very nice resource sink and additional challenge for, well, hardcore players.

thats the only disadvantage from solars ... they also overpowered at this point as they are now in my opinion. Energy is far too easy / cheap to get in this way^^

I could say the same about steam power. By boiling solid fuel you have unlimited energy for free. They also take much less space than solars and are much faster to set up. Totally OP.