Friday Facts #183 - Aiming for the release date

[Loewchen]

I like what you guys are doing with the game. I would, however, be careful with making the map view too powerful. I prefer the gameplay of having to walk to locations to "work" on the factory, rather than sit still and manage in god-mode.

Thought so as well, but if you can only give robot orders by map view and are not able to place stuff yourself, this would mean that you need to have roboport coverage, radar coverage and the new research to be able to use it. To fight biters and build circuit logic you still would have to move to the location as well.

[factoriouzr]

All this goes back to player freedom. Let everyone play how they like.

It's part of the basic conceit of default Factorio that you start as just a person, with person-like limitations (like simulating having to laboriously chop down trees with simple tools). The stuff you research and invest in, like bots, blueprints, exoskeletons, effectively extends your capacity until at the end you're a little closer to having the incredible powers of... the typical simulation game starting UI. Without that progression you might as well just play in sandbox mode (which you're free to choose as a special, non-default mode).

However, there's an acute problem with how much of a pain it is to get to blueprints and the ability to build repetitive structures without a lot of tedium in a new game, so much of a pain it's not worth what it earns the game in thematic terms. You want something that patches up that problem without screwing up the pacing and staged feel of the game (stages as in: the stage of the game where you gain the ability to run trains, for example, is qualitatively different than before). I really like the idea of the nanobots mod (you get blueprints and a less powerful, somewhat expensive consumable form of construction robot not long after you get electrical generation going) but having the early game robots as consumables doesn't to be how the developers want to go. Earlier blueprints and short range, player-avatar-based construction painting seems like a natural compromise.

I have seen that mod too, and I personally don't like the consumable nature of the nanobots.

I look at it this way. I can place any building down instantly within player reach, so why would I need one time use robots to place them down for me within player reach? In other words I don't want to be hand crafting yet another thing (disposable robots) just so I can build blueprints early game. It's just another tedious step that doesn't need to be added. All disposable robots adds is one more barrier before being able to use early game blueprints. I look at it like this is a convenience/quality of life improvement that doesn't fully have to make logical sense.

I am also good if the solution is to give the player early robots (perhaps part of the base suit they are wearing, just like the train management, map etc. However, I don't want to have some other tedious steps of recharging or refueling the robots. Maybe something along the lines of always having a personal roboport equipped, which is limited to 20 robots that are slow moving or something like that, but are fully self sufficient and self recharging.

[Xenomorph]

I like what you guys are doing with the game. I would, however, be careful with making the map view too powerful. I prefer the gameplay of having to walk to locations to "work" on the factory, rather than sit still and manage in god-mode. Don't give us too many ease-of-life capabilities. I will be playing the Death World for sure, as I find the normal (default) game rather easy and straight-forward. Giving me more "easier" things to manage my factory just takes away from the fun, imo.

Nobody force you to use the god-mode to build your factory.
Factorio has many types of players. Some build all up by theirself, other use blueprints. Some use logistic robots, other uses belts.
If you dislike the feature, dont use it

[kovarex]

I like what you guys are doing with the game. I would, however, be careful with making the map view too powerful. I prefer the gameplay of having to walk to locations to "work" on the factory, rather than sit still and manage in god-mode. Don't give us too many ease-of-life capabilities. I will be playing the Death World for sure, as I find the normal (default) game rather easy and straight-forward. Giving me more "easier" things to manage my factory just takes away from the fun, imo.

Nobody force you to use the god-mode to build your factory.
Factorio has many types of players. Some build all up by theirself, other use blueprints. Some use logistic robots, other uses belts.
If you dislike the feature, dont use it

This type of argument that is used all the time on these forums is just not valid as:

The best strategy needs to be fun.

[Stripes]

"Strategic Command" can always be gated behind Research, with gradually growing functionality corresponding to progress on specific branch representing it.

In fact, I personally prefer it exactly as such: both to avoid being overwhelmed trough quantity of features at start and keep gradual "difficulty decrease", associated with the research progress, intact.

[Metalface7]

On the topic of map presets, would it be possible to implement a setting to force the prevalence of certain biomes? I would like to try a game with mostly desert, and it seems to be a relatively rare biome now.

[Avezo]

Or radar could act as a vehicle, you enter into it and you can see the map like that.

[kurtulmak]

I look at it this way. I can place any building down instantly within player reach, so why would I need one time use robots to place them down for me within player reach? In other words I don't want to be hand crafting yet another thing (disposable robots) just so I can build blueprints early game. It's just another tedious step that doesn't need to be added. All disposable robots adds is one more barrier before being able to use early game blueprints. I look at it like this is a convenience/quality of life improvement that doesn't fully have to make logical sense.

I've said what I want to say here, but in defense of nanobots just wanted to add that you don't handcraft stuff for the mod (and you correctly note it would be quite pointless, as the nanobot clips take too long to produce by hand in useful numbers). It's designed to mostly come into use around when you're getting ready to start green science, i.e. it's not truly early game, it's "late early game", when you've got some electric miner -> stone furnace basic smelting, level 2 assemblers, and green circuit production, when you can set up a small l2 assembler nanobot line that will eat a few hundred circuits, gears, etc in total. It gets its best use doing stuff like setting up oil refining, green/blue science, expanding smelting, placing some early solar/accumulator blueprints, setting up basic rail outposts if you didn't have a lot of resources at the starting location, etc. It's also nice in that makes it so a veteran player isn't effectively obligated to beeline for regular robots and then roboport/personal roboport production.

In the early early game when you don't even have l1 assemblers blueprints don't have much point since the materials and hand assembly are the bottleneck, so the nanobots mod leaves a qualitative "stage of the game" gap where you'd like blueprints but don't have them for setting up the first power, first smelting, early red science, etc. but it's very mild compared to vanilla and it's probably worth it thematically.

[ChurchOrganist]

Regarding bots in the early game, I personally favour the option given by Klonan's Spawngear mod - you get 10 construction robots with your initial armour, and a few blue prints and dconstruction planner.

In 0.14 this is Power Armour Mk 2, but a special starter suit with 1 personal roboport and 10 construction bots could be added to 0.15.

These are un-upgraded bots, and can't be added to until you research flight of course, but they do help take the sting out of early game construction.

[IronCartographer]

I like what you guys are doing with the game. I would, however, be careful with making the map view too powerful. I prefer the gameplay of having to walk to locations to "work" on the factory, rather than sit still and manage in god-mode. Don't give us too many ease-of-life capabilities. I will be playing the Death World for sure, as I find the normal (default) game rather easy and straight-forward. Giving me more "easier" things to manage my factory just takes away from the fun, imo.

Nobody force you to use the god-mode to build your factory.
Factorio has many types of players. Some build all up by theirself, other use blueprints. Some use logistic robots, other uses belts.
If you dislike the feature, dont use it

This type of argument that is used all the time on these forums is just not valid as:

The best strategy needs to be fun.

As long as there are limitations to what you can do in the remote viewer (item manipulation, personal combat, certain device interactions) the "best strategy" will be situational. It may be better to be able to hop from place to place observing/building things with robots, or it may be better going there yourself to do what robots will not. Both can be fun. I hope at least modded items will be usable in such a view, for things like the Orbital Ion Cannon targeting device.

Wube's game development does a lot of good things other companies could learn from in player satisfaction, both in the game design and community interaction. Thanks for raising the bar!

[factoriouzr]

I look at it this way. I can place any building down instantly within player reach, so why would I need one time use robots to place them down for me within player reach? In other words I don't want to be hand crafting yet another thing (disposable robots) just so I can build blueprints early game. It's just another tedious step that doesn't need to be added. All disposable robots adds is one more barrier before being able to use early game blueprints. I look at it like this is a convenience/quality of life improvement that doesn't fully have to make logical sense.

I've said what I want to say here, but in defense of nanobots just wanted to add that you don't handcraft stuff for the mod (and you correctly note it would be quite pointless, as the nanobot clips take too long to produce by hand in useful numbers). It's designed to mostly come into use around when you're getting ready to start green science, i.e. it's not truly early game, it's "late early game", when you've got some electric miner -> stone furnace basic smelting, level 2 assemblers, and green circuit production, when you can set up a small l2 assembler nanobot line that will eat a few hundred circuits, gears, etc in total. It gets its best use doing stuff like setting up oil refining, green/blue science, expanding smelting, placing some early solar/accumulator blueprints, setting up basic rail outposts if you didn't have a lot of resources at the starting location, etc. It's also nice in that makes it so a veteran player isn't effectively obligated to beeline for regular robots and then roboport/personal roboport production.

In the early early game when you don't even have l1 assemblers blueprints don't have much point since the materials and hand assembly are the bottleneck, so the nanobots mod leaves a qualitative "stage of the game" gap where you'd like blueprints but don't have them for setting up the first power, first smelting, early red science, etc. but it's very mild compared to vanilla and it's probably worth it thematically.

Thanks for explaining more of the details of the mod. I did not know how early you can get them.

Moddability is one of the great things about this game. I'm glad we have a strong modding community and there are tons of mods available.

[BlackKnight]

Some thoughts

Add a prefix option to Station Names
Just started using combinators to create easy to see percentages of my ore buffers via map/normal view (smart display mod) and realised how useful it would be to include a solution to this on the actual stations on outposts in vanilla! It wouldn't change the official name when managing train schedules but when looked at in normal or map view would contain the extra prefix string - possibly in a different colour. This, among other possibilities, would allow for a very useful easy to review solution when on map view. How full (via combinators) the storage at stations are (and whether a changes to the number of trains should be assigned might be required). Additionally, the Station icon (dot next to station name in map vie) could be configured to show status - eg a problem to be fixed. Blinking if train awaiting condition, green if waiting for train, etc.
Station Name Prefix Examples:

• Iron Outpost1 - [23%]
• Iron Outpost2 - [15%]
• Copper Outpost1 - [85%]
• Copper Outpost2 - [2%]
• Copper Outpost3 - [55%]

Train Schedule Management:

• Have an option to show only stations without trains scheduled to them.

Map Start Presets:

• Allow Quick start option tiers as mentioned. With Electricity, With Oil.. etc
• Having a random seed option for maps and a different one for resources

Map Interaction:

• Unlock remote viewing in normal view when first satellite comes online -- which is pretty much the current end game goal anyway and takes quite some time to achieve. This would then be a reward for all that work and IMO wouldn't feel like "cheating". Limitations: Allow only viewing remote areas covered by radars - everywhere else would be black ...and allow interaction only when Roboports were available in range of the courser.

Copying Assembler Recipes

• For pasting multiples of a recipe or for the addition of different recipes from assembler(s) to a requester chest, adding by addition could be done by requiring shift to be held for additive mode for each left click - as soon as shift is released, the first next shift+left+click would set an entire new recipe request.

[BlackKnight]

For those with issues pasting really large blueprints, I find using this or a larger number works well "/c game.player.zoom = 0.15". Easy enough to still see where blueprints overlap over preexisting buildings if lining things up. (reminder that it stops achievements)

[IronCartographer]

For pasting multiples of a recipe or for the addition of different recipes from assembler(s) to a requester chest, adding by addition could be done by requiring shift to be held for additive mode for each left click - as soon as shift is released, the first next shift+left+click would set an entire new recipe request.

If you can add a recipe's ingredients by pasting without wiping out the previous settings of the requester chest, there's no functional difference/advantage of holding shift between pastes.

That is, unless successive each paste while still holding shift had some sort of growth factor, like x*2^n where n is the number of times clicked while holding shift. That would be adding waaay more special behavior though, and a terrible idea from a consistency standpoint.

Maybe the game could use an additive vs. overwriting paste mechanic and hotkey? I'm sure there would be other situations it could be of value, especially in mods. Adding Ctrl to the Shift-LeftClick paste hotkey for example would fit well with the existing standard of holding control to adjust single-element selection in a list.

[Harkonnen]

factoriouzr
Sorry for late reply On your other questions:

> 1) Combine logistics requests with auto trash on the same tab so that you can set two values, the minimum to keep (if you fall under, robots bring you more of the item), and a maximum, that if you go over, the excess gets auto trashed. Also have a checkbox that's checked by default that locks the two numbers and sliders and makes them the exact same value so you can easily say always keep 50 belts, etc
I personally like this idea. Makes things logical and frees UI space.

> 2) add more logistics request and auto trash slots (more tabs of them). See above item as well.
This is what I would avoid. Game is about automation, e.g. we discourage manual crafting in favour of automation. For same reason you are not supposed to carry many stuff around. Perfectly in Factorio spirit you should carry nearly nothing

> 3) Add ability to make blueprints from the map view and the ability to place blueprints from the map view...
Well - yes. There were ton of proposals like command-center, etc... I agree that this is natural extension, but it should be available only in late game when you start running building more and more outposts. Linkage to launching a rocket should be natural here. There is just one slight problem - you will have to run there anyway to build it or will be forced to link those outposts with roboports to your main logistic grid which is undesired. So there must be some way of deploying electricity/rails/initial-roboport towards that outposts without building a long line of roboports from your main base. I had idea once of orbital construction/logistic bots which are superslow, superexpensive, launched from a rocket but have that ability of ignoring roboports coverage area for the sake of initial outpost setup. Supply train later brings all other stuff including regular construction robots, then you can put your massive final blueprint for outpost with all walls, turrets and stuff.

kurtulmak
> you can just make it so that when the cursor is near a construction ghost it becomes a tinted 5x5 grid that constructs anything
Well, that's a good solution, but not when cursor near (would be jumpy UX when mouse is either on already built belt/inserter or on free space near ghost yet to be built). A solution could be for that 5x5 grid to appear once you click a ghost and keep holding mouse button. As for area - it can be adjusted with +- keys like it's implemeneted for paving/landfilling and adjusting map editor brush sizes. Initially this should probably be 1x1 or 3x3 so you have ability of selective ghost placement (just in case).

factoriouzr
Automatic placement all around yourself is bad option. Analogy with bots does not work completely here because they fly and collide with nothing. For example you will be unable to build grid of solar panels with substation in the middle - whatever side you approach, you will be immediately blocked by stuff placed in front of you and you will never reach the center. As for other buildings - even when game allows you to squeeze character between buildings, you must be close to edge anyway. Even more pain with pipes. My vision of this why I proposed rear hemisphere automatic placement - you builprint stuff, and then run in zig-zag snake pattern like 3-4 times along your smelting line (or another contraption). With automatic rear placement that would build everything, and you will get a feeling of progress like where you stopped in case your inventory runs out of items.

Also I want to note that early game blueprints are not for the sake of blueprinting huge stuff and semi-automating building process, they are for the sake of easy copy-paste of repeating patterns. So you place like 2 furnaces surrounded by inserters, then copy-copy-copy this core in a row. Then you make a parallel smelting line by copying that entire row.

[JaredCR]

I like the map improvements, like Turret range option, zoom in to the world, colors and icons, I think it will give more information to take better decisions.
Pura Vida!

[Engimage]

kurtulmak
> you can just make it so that when the cursor is near a construction ghost it becomes a tinted 5x5 grid that constructs anything
Well, that's a good solution, but not when cursor near (would be jumpy UX when mouse is either on already built belt/inserter or on free space near ghost yet to be built). A solution could be for that 5x5 grid to appear once you click a ghost and keep holding mouse button. As for area - it can be adjusted with +- keys like it's implemeneted for paving/landfilling and adjusting map editor brush sizes. Initially this should probably be 1x1 or 3x3 so you have ability of selective ghost placement (just in case).

I think that I would be nice to add a special item like Automatic Construction Kit (which you have to research/build first) which when used would act like a concrete placement - left click to construct ghosts, right click to deconstruct marked stuff, and you have already implemented the +- feature so it would be intuitive.

[Mendel]

With regards to 0.15 release, please take your time.

Take all the time you need for making a good quality patch.

And most importantly take all of that time as soon as possible.

Take all of it now!

And be done with it already!

I want it now!

Come on!

[factoriouzr]

factoriouzr
Sorry for late reply On your other questions:

> 1) Combine logistics requests with auto trash on the same tab so that you can set two values, the minimum to keep (if you fall under, robots bring you more of the item), and a maximum, that if you go over, the excess gets auto trashed. Also have a checkbox that's checked by default that locks the two numbers and sliders and makes them the exact same value so you can easily say always keep 50 belts, etc
I personally like this idea. Makes things logical and frees UI space.

> 2) add more logistics request and auto trash slots (more tabs of them). See above item as well.
This is what I would avoid. Game is about automation, e.g. we discourage manual crafting in favour of automation. For same reason you are not supposed to carry many stuff around. Perfectly in Factorio spirit you should carry nearly nothing

> 3) Add ability to make blueprints from the map view and the ability to place blueprints from the map view...
Well - yes. There were ton of proposals like command-center, etc... I agree that this is natural extension, but it should be available only in late game when you start running building more and more outposts. Linkage to launching a rocket should be natural here. There is just one slight problem - you will have to run there anyway to build it or will be forced to link those outposts with roboports to your main logistic grid which is undesired. So there must be some way of deploying electricity/rails/initial-roboport towards that outposts without building a long line of roboports from your main base. I had idea once of orbital construction/logistic bots which are superslow, superexpensive, launched from a rocket but have that ability of ignoring roboports coverage area for the sake of initial outpost setup. Supply train later brings all other stuff including regular construction robots, then you can put your massive final blueprint for outpost with all walls, turrets and stuff.

kurtulmak
> you can just make it so that when the cursor is near a construction ghost it becomes a tinted 5x5 grid that constructs anything
Well, that's a good solution, but not when cursor near (would be jumpy UX when mouse is either on already built belt/inserter or on free space near ghost yet to be built). A solution could be for that 5x5 grid to appear once you click a ghost and keep holding mouse button. As for area - it can be adjusted with +- keys like it's implemeneted for paving/landfilling and adjusting map editor brush sizes. Initially this should probably be 1x1 or 3x3 so you have ability of selective ghost placement (just in case).

factoriouzr
Automatic placement all around yourself is bad option. Analogy with bots does not work completely here because they fly and collide with nothing. For example you will be unable to build grid of solar panels with substation in the middle - whatever side you approach, you will be immediately blocked by stuff placed in front of you and you will never reach the center. As for other buildings - even when game allows you to squeeze character between buildings, you must be close to edge anyway. Even more pain with pipes. My vision of this why I proposed rear hemisphere automatic placement - you builprint stuff, and then run in zig-zag snake pattern like 3-4 times along your smelting line (or another contraption). With automatic rear placement that would build everything, and you will get a feeling of progress like where you stopped in case your inventory runs out of items.

Also I want to note that early game blueprints are not for the sake of blueprinting huge stuff and semi-automating building process, they are for the sake of easy copy-paste of repeating patterns. So you place like 2 furnaces surrounded by inserters, then copy-copy-copy this core in a row. Then you make a parallel smelting line by copying that entire row.

Thanks for the reply.

1) Great!

2) I'm sorry but you completely missed the point on this one. I don't carry stuff around so I can hand craft. I carry stuff around because I have/want to. Think laser turrets, walls, belts, underground, inserters (there are many types, and because you made so many special ones, the players need to carry more varieties on them), roboports, mining drills, etc. For eg. think making outposts, but by no means is this the only reason to carry stuff around. Also think mods. In particular big ones like Bob's mods that adds a lot more items, requiring the player to carry more things.

If you say, use trains to carry stuff or vehicles, then I say, what if the player doesn't want to, and even if they do, your system for logistics for trains isn't easy, and doesn't lend itself to this type of gameplay. You can't just park a train on passive provider tracks and construct an outpost for eg.

This isn't even my main reason for requesting more logistics slots. It's in fact for carrying less stuff around. Think trees, stone, various ore you can randomly pick up. Then think of the many many items added by Bob's mods for eg. that you can pick up easily when building, upgrading, deconstructing. I want many of these auto trashed. With the logistics request and auto trash slots being combined (or even if they are not), we should have more slots to play with.

Ultimately though, I don't see the harm in adding more slots. Tie it to infinite research so they players can add them 5 at a time and let the players play how they want . The way I see it, this feature is already in the game, it's already upgradable, why limit it, especially in a game that is moddable. On top of that there are many well known and popular mods for this game that add many more items. A lot of these items the player will likely want to request and a lot of these the player will likely want to auto trash.

3) My suggestion is on the size of the blueprints being able to be placed or saved easily. Right now you are limited to how far out you can zoom in the main game. My suggestion is to allow saving and putting blueprints from the map view. It's still up to the player to make sure they have roboport coverage or whatever. I just thing that right from the beginning of the game you should not be limited by blueprint size. I hope you know what I mean. I had to break up my train outposts into two blueprints and put lights as a marker to line up the blueprints with each other because they take up soooo much space.

I love your idea about orbital construction. I would love it if that made it into the game as well. For orbital construction as you laid it out, I agree, that should be a late game tech. What I'm talking about is just to let us place and save the blueprints from the map view at any zoom level.

4) I see your point about larger builds. Not quite sure how well it will feel to zig-zag 3-4 times to build something. It might work, but I'm thinking maybe "painting" an area say 20 x 20 or something might be easier and you can do it zoomed out. Much quicker I think.

Your point about early blueprints not being for large stuff, seems a bit strange and contradictory to me. Why put an artificial limit on it? This completely contradicts what players wanted for a long time (and you implemented in 0.15), which is blueprint preservation. I have wanted this feature for a long time and I would be extremely annoyed if you limited the size of the blueprints you can use from the start of the game. I must have played about 50-100 new games of factorio by now. I want to place down my smelting blueprint of 20 furnaces (for one ore type) in one blueprint. I don't want to place a blueprint of 2 furnaces 10 times for each column. The same goes for other things like my green circuit factories etc.

All of my games for quite a while now, I always start myself (and even in multiplayer, other players) with blueprints, roboports, robots, and some other items to skip the early repetitive part of the game as all of us are so bored of this part of the game. It's fine the first 10 times, but after that we are tired of rebuilding the same optimized designs from memory over and over again. The early game is definitely a weak part of factorio due to lack of blueprints and automated construction primarily. This seems to be a very common belief by many factorio players based on what posts are on this forum and bug reports.

[IronCartographer]

Early game blueprint suggestion, while we're on the subject: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=43531

You can't just park a train on passive provider tracks and construct an outpost for eg.

Not in the base game's vehicles [yet], but: you can use vehicle equipment grids to turn cargo wagons into mobile construction systems!

Right now you are limited to how far out you can zoom in the main game

You can continue to drag selection cursors while running, meaning blueprints can be far larger than the screen will show.