Friday Facts #205 - Teaching the things that everybody knows

[y.petremann]

Thinking a bit more about this:

Maybe instead of trying to cram everything into tooltips, have a sort of in-game "wiki" (like .chm files in old times...) that is searchable and explains every item / concept properly. That kind of single-info-source also makes it very easy to give newbies a hint in the right direction. Also if done right it could have an interface for mods to register additional help pages for their own concepts (sorted into tabs by mod?). The explanations should be wikipedia-"simple english"-style and convey only necessary information to understand the basic concepts. If someone really wants to know about the most tiny quirks (e.g. "north inserters are slower") they can still go to "real" wikis on the web.

Infact thinking about this i remembered that many larger minecraft mods have an in-game handbook and i was quite fond of having that kind of general information right there in my hotbar. The threshold to looking something up is just sooo much lower if you can do so right where you are, instead of having to hunt for uncertain results on google.

This would be a really good idea, for general gamers and for modders, and also it could be a great idea to be able to invoke the "wiki" from the console/control.lua to get help about an object, so if the object is an entity/slot we could get a quick explanation of that, if it is something else or we added a flag to say we need modding information, it would display the lua-api information like with python help command, so we could do help on classes but also on methods/parameters.

[bobucles]

Wikis aren't a very good idea. Stopping the game to read a book just doesn't appeal to many gamers, even the kind that enjoy logistic puzzle games. It's most fun to learn as you go. If the information is simple and easily displayed then keep it on the tooltip. Also wikis have a nasty habit of being out dated, badly formatted or incomplete(oh boy let me tell you about Total War in game wikis!)but that's just another symptom of the information being in an undesirable and thus poorly visited place.

I think the radar does a poor job of explaining how the permanent vision works or that it exists at all. That blue tint on the minimap isn't effective (most streamers don't even see it) and there is no indicator on the main view.

[QGamer]

I like the radar graphics! Version 0.16 will look super cool!

I heard you're including some circuit network tutorials. Do you have:

• 3 types of combinators & what they basically do
• All of the different operations of the arithmetic & decider combinators
• How red & green wires work
• How filtered entities work when "set filters" is enabled
  So, what if I send it 73 different signals at once? Which ones are chosen?
• Special signals: everything, anything, & each
• Which entities can be connected to circuit network
• Interacting with rail signals
• Lamp colors
• Programmable speakers
• Power switches
• Interacting with gates

The circuit network was very confusing when I first unlocked it. I thought (because of reading technology description) that I needed the circuit network to use gates properly. Could you clarify that please?

Also, do you have information on:

• Shift-click power poles to remove wires
• Blueprints, blueprint books, & deconstruction planners (tutorial would be helpful here)
• Damage, resistances, & piercing power mechanics
• Discharge defense
• Combat robots
• Grenades & capsules
• Flamethrower turrets
• What effectivity means for burners (not the modules, but the actual data member effectivity, you can see it in the lua files or entity descriptions if it's not equal to 100%)
  If I remember correctly, the tank has 75% effectivity.
• Vehicle acceleration & speed bonuses with solid or rocket fuel

EDIT: I listed all of these things because they might not be immediately obvious to a newbie, and sometimes even I don't really understand them. I am really glad that you take the time to look at your game from every perspective. Keep up the good work!

[bripi]

***LOVE*** the new radar! Stunning!

[loup-vaillant]

I'm not sure I understand basic fluid mechanic.

Everyone knows that 1 boiler feeds 2 steam engines, and 1 offshore pump feeds 20 boilers (and therefore 40 steam engines), for a total of 40MW (I think).

Question is, how are we supposed to figure this out? My only hints came from the campaign and the FFF that introduced the new boilers. Is there a way to know this only by playing the game? If so, where should I look?

Fluid mechanics are hard to figure out. For the most part, they just work™, but fine tuning and edge cases feels like black magic to me (for instance, this bug/misfeature where throughput is influenced by the order in which we place the pipes, or the reported problems caused by loops —I bet they have the same underlying causes). I don't even know how to assess the throughput of any given piece of pipe (or any other fluid container): so far, I've only spotted the current quantity of fluid.

[Alice3173]

I'm not sure I understand basic fluid mechanic.

Everyone knows that 1 boiler feeds 2 steam engines, and 1 offshore pump feeds 20 boilers (and therefore 40 steam engines), for a total of 40MW (I think).

Question is, how are we supposed to figure this out? My only hints came from the campaign and the FFF that introduced the new boilers. Is there a way to know this only by playing the game? If so, where should I look?

Fluid mechanics are hard to figure out. For the most part, they just work™, but fine tuning and edge cases feels like black magic to me (for instance, this bug/misfeature where throughput is influenced by the order in which we place the pipes, or the reported problems caused by loops —I bet they have the same underlying causes). I don't even know how to assess the throughput of any given piece of pipe (or any other fluid container): so far, I've only spotted the current quantity of fluid.

There needs to be a lot more information given on production (and consumption) of any sort. You shouldn't have to stop and do a bunch of math just so you can figure out how many items an assembler produces per second, how much water a pump produces per second, or how long it takes a boiler to consume a piece of coal and so on. This is stuff that should be easily enough automated by the game for us for a huge benefit to most players.

[welens]

My main misunderstanding with mid-game - how to quickly insert modules into assemblies, refineries and chemical plants.
You can insert into one, blueprint it and delete all remaining and insert via blueprint but it doesn't look natural and easy way.
May be some shortcuts for copying and inserting module scheme like copying assembly destinations would be useful.

[Lubricus]

I'm not sure I understand basic fluid mechanic.

Everyone knows that 1 boiler feeds 2 steam engines, and 1 offshore pump feeds 20 boilers (and therefore 40 steam engines), for a total of 40MW (I think).

Question is, how are we supposed to figure this out? My only hints came from the campaign and the FFF that introduced the new boilers. Is there a way to know this only by playing the game? If so, where should I look?

Fluid mechanics are hard to figure out. For the most part, they just work™, but fine tuning and edge cases feels like black magic to me (for instance, this bug/misfeature where throughput is influenced by the order in which we place the pipes, or the reported problems caused by loops —I bet they have the same underlying causes). I don't even know how to assess the throughput of any given piece of pipe (or any other fluid container): so far, I've only spotted the current quantity of fluid.

There needs to be a lot more information given on production (and consumption) of any sort. You shouldn't have to stop and do a bunch of math just so you can figure out how many items an assembler produces per second, how much water a pump produces per second, or how long it takes a boiler to consume a piece of coal and so on. This is stuff that should be easily enough automated by the game for us for a huge benefit to most players.

With assemblers and belts it's easy just by looking and inspecting your factory to figure out where the bottlenecks are. It's only it you wan't to plan out the factory you need doing the math.
With pipes, heat-exchangers and turbines it's hard to understand what is happening and where the bottlenecks is. Better tooltips and information on flows (visual/numbers?) and so on would be great. Even after consulting the forum with the math i didn't understand what was wrong with my setup. Could be that I am a little slow. (First it was pipe loop that screwed up the flow, later the nuclear powerplant was limited by the pipes between the heat exchangers and turbines when I thought the heat exchangers had to little water)

[Koub]

Thinking a bit more about this:

Maybe instead of trying to cram everything into tooltips, have a sort of in-game "wiki" (like .chm files in old times...) that is searchable and explains every item / concept properly. That kind of single-info-source also makes it very easy to give newbies a hint in the right direction. Also if done right it could have an interface for mods to register additional help pages for their own concepts (sorted into tabs by mod?). The explanations should be wikipedia-"simple english"-style and convey only necessary information to understand the basic concepts. If someone really wants to know about the most tiny quirks (e.g. "north inserters are slower") they can still go to "real" wikis on the web.

Infact thinking about this i remembered that many larger minecraft mods have an in-game handbook and i was quite fond of having that kind of general information right there in my hotbar. The threshold to looking something up is just sooo much lower if you can do so right where you are, instead of having to hunt for uncertain results on google.

Factopaedia

[Acacel]

Hello,

as you are searching for some unexplained things:

can the storage tank get a tooltipp like:

can contain 30.000 units of fluid?

because what it does is really clear but how much is in game not mentioned

[Gergely]

- debug: time usage & detailed info rows / fields meaning. Some of these are clear but some of these not so much.

Debug things are for devs and bug reports. I even added a warning to prevent people from keeping them enabled or using them for cheating.

Wait a minute... does debug mode finally disable achievements?

[QGamer]

Also, it would be nice if there were explanations for the different graphs: production/consumption graphs (items/fluids/buildings), the electric network graphs, kills/losses graphs, the logistic network view (can only be opened by pressing L), and info views of that sort. There isn't much in-game information about any of these.

I only found out the kills/losses graphs and logistic network views even existed by looking at the controls options.

[madpav3l]

- debug: time usage & detailed info rows / fields meaning. Some of these are clear but some of these not so much.

Debug things are for devs and bug reports. I even added a warning to prevent people from keeping them enabled or using them for cheating.

Wait a minute... does debug mode finally disable achievements?

No but I think they will remove the debug menu when the game releases as 1.0

[madpav3l]

There needs to be a tutorial to teach people to read controls option menu. I see so many posts on reddit "today I found..." and the feature was in the controls menu under certain key, but then again people usually skip tutorials so I don't how to teach them. End of rant.

[fregate84]

for tutorial, you can explain :

- About train, that we can have 2 station with the same name. And train do load balancing
- About wire, explein with exemple what we can do :
----- backup power
----- alam if a thing is low (power, iron, ...)
----- enable/disable belt to priorize a production
----- put 10 differents item in a train with only one inserter and some logic & dynamic filtering ....
----- limiting prodution to a number with enable/disable of arm
- explain how all capsules work
- explain the logistic network. What is the goal of each chest...

[RobertTerwilliger]

Discharge defence was always mystery to me. How does it work? What item should I hold - defence itself, or a remote? I just never wanted to test it really, because it requires to place myself in danger, not justified danger.

[orzelek]

It has been buffed recently so it might be useful.
Defence goes to armor, remote into hand.
It now damages and throws back enemies - I haven't used it yet so no idea about effectivness.

[fregate84]

You can also add somewhere that the fluid go slower when the pipe is longer.

[TheKingOfFailure]

...the logistic network view (can only be opened by pressing L)

I've been playing since 0.11 HOW HAVE I NOT KNOWN ABOUT THIS TREASURE???

In other news I also don't understand how armor-type resistances work (ie. 5/20%) and the pollution/Biter evolution relationship can be better explained to the user, currently all we know is from the game's description "enemy evolves with you"(or whatever). Mention that pollution should be avoided unless you want an infestation problem. And how certain tiles destroy it, like trees and grass and so paving is problematic.

Also a tutorial on the logistics chests and their relationships with eachother would be nice

And hello from a long-time lurker! *waves while slowly retreating back into the darkness*

[ondrii]

for tutorial, you can explain :

- About train, that we can have 2 station with the same name. And train do load balancing

I've been playing Facorio almost year and a half and I did not know about that!
BIG THANKS!