Friday Facts #205 - Teaching the things that everybody knows

[Chaia]

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

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

• How filtered entities work when "set filters" is enabled - So, what if I send it 73 different signals at once? Which ones are chosen?(snip)

Thats a thing I always wondered also, as my tests seemed kinda inconsistent for me.

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

+1, because you actually have to try out how much fits in one tank (btw its 25.000 units.) Same goes fo the rail tanker (which is made of 3 tanks and therefore carries 75.000 units)


Also +1 for a better explanation for boiler efficiency and how it influences energy input (coal) vs energy output (steam).
For vanilla boilers its their 3.6MW energy input multiplied with their efficiency of 50% resulting in 1.8MW usable energy as steam. 1.8MW per boiler divided by 900kW per steam engine equals 2. Means you need 2 steam engines per boiler.
The water usage is more straightforward. Each vanilla steam engine uses 30 units of water per second, the pump supplies 1200 water per second; 1200/30=40 steam engines.

Another +1 for better pipe explanation. How much throughput can a pipe actually handle? Is one pump the upper limit or can you actually fit more through it?

[bman212121]

After 350 hours into the game according to steam, I've still never:

1. Used the circuit network.

2. Figured out how fluid works

3. Done any complex train setups that use rail signals.

I think the rail signals are probably intuitive enough that if I wanted to set that up, I could probably figure it out now. By I basically have no clue how to use the circuit network and / or why I'd want to start using it. Then the fluids I might be scarred from an earlier version where the pumps were smaller than the pipes, but I was attempting to pump fluid across the map and it was working then simply adding in another pump all of the sudden it all broke and taking it back out wouldn't fix it. I usually just barrel it on site and then either toss it on a belt of let the robots move it around because it's much easier.

When you compared pipes to belts, belts just magically work. There is no slow down over distance, there are no pumps. You can clearly see if the belt is full or not. You don't need to worry about accidently putting two belts parallel to each other and having them contaminate each other. It definitely would be good to know if there are ways you can make the pipes work more like belts and not have to barrel everything because of weird unexplained things that happen when trying to use pipes. I'm not sure if pipes are even meant to be used for any type of distance where you can lay down 10,000 belt in a row and everything just works perfectly.

[Sander_Bouwhuis]

I've played over 100 hours and have done 7 runs so far, but I still don't (fully) understand the following:

Trains/rails
When I started playing (maybe 2 years ago or so?) trains and rails were confusing as hell and everybody complaint about them. So I never used them. In fact, I never found the need. I simply build long conveyor belts.
Now that there are tutorials, I guess with my next play-through I'll check them out.

Circuit networks
I have no idea what they are useful/necessary/needed for. I completed the game 7 times so far and have not once thought I missed something. I tried to connect a wire once but I must not have been doing it right because nothing seemed to happen.

Logistics robots
I also never use any logistics robots. I've used them exactly once to try, but they are VERY slow. Simply putting down a belt+inserter is many factors faster. I simply don't really understand how all the requesting items to your inventory works either.
Construction robots on the other hand I find very useful for blueprints.

Fluid in pipes
I don't understand the bottlenecks. So, I simply put oil derricks on every oil spot and connect all of them to a couple of refineries. I still don't know how many derricks I need for how many refineries. Also, because oil derricks constantly change (lower) their output you cannot do a set-it-and-forget-it setup.
Also, pipes SUCK! They get accidentally connected and fluids mix and you can't walk through them and it's completely unclear how much is in a pipe. I'm always having great fun with Factorio when building belt constructions, and then always HATE it when I need oil/fluids. They are FAR less fun to do. In fact, I wish they were not in the game (at least in its current state).

Gameplay problems that probably won't be fixed

• There is a lot of stuff in the game that isn't really necessary. For instance, you are never forced to use rails, circuit networks, nuclear, solar etc. So, therefore it's quicker and easier to just do what you know (belts + inserters + steam/coal engines) and you can still easily 'win' the game.
• 99% of the game is getting resources for research. It's TOTALLY boring. I love building stuff, but it seems all for nothing. Also, I've only once (in my very first play-through) launched a rocket. After that first rocket I really didn't see the use of it.
  I really wish Factorio would have something interesting to do. Maybe an economy of sorts. Buying and selling resources for low profit and difficult to make things for high profit. I'm not sure what, but just doing research bores me to tears. Give us a good reason to build things. (I LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE building things.)

[bman212121]

I've played over 100 hours and have done 7 runs so far, but I still don't (fully) understand the following:

Logistics robots
I also never use any logistics robots. I've used them exactly once to try, but they are VERY slow. Simply putting down a belt+inserter is many factors faster. I simply don't really understand how all the requesting items to your inventory works either.
Construction robots on the other hand I find very useful for blueprints.

Fluid in pipes
I don't understand the bottlenecks. So, I simply put oil derricks on every oil spot and connect all of them to a couple of refineries. I still don't know how many derricks I need for how many refineries. Also, because oil derricks constantly change (lower) their output you cannot do a set-it-and-forget-it setup.
Also, pipes SUCK! They get accidentally connected and fluids mix and you can't walk through them and it's completely unclear how much is in a pipe. I'm always having great fun with Factorio when building belt constructions, and then always HATE it when I need oil/fluids. They are FAR less fun to do. In fact, I wish they were not in the game (at least in its current state).

Gameplay problems that probably won't be fixed

• There is a lot of stuff in the game that isn't really necessary. For instance, you are never forced to use rails, circuit networks, nuclear, solar etc. So, therefore it's quicker and easier to just do what you know (belts + inserters + steam/coal engines) and you can still easily 'win' the game.
• 99% of the game is getting resources for research. It's TOTALLY boring. I love building stuff, but it seems all for nothing. Also, I've only once (in my very first play-through) launched a rocket. After that first rocket I really didn't see the use of it.
  I really wish Factorio would have something interesting to do. Maybe an economy of sorts. Buying and selling resources for low profit and difficult to make things for high profit. I'm not sure what, but just doing research bores me to tears. Give us a good reason to build things. (I LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE building things.)

I think you just might not be far enough along to understand the importance of the logistics network. Where it comes into super handy is when you need to start making things like processing units and items that have very random combinations. No longer to do you need to work out how to mix all of the random stuff together, you can just request it and get it made. Once you start having uses for it then you'll be a bit annoyed you can't use it until you get high tech science packs because of the artificial limitation imposed on the logistics network research.

I wouldn't mind that the game helps encourage places where it's advantageous to use rails, and the above, but I definitely wouldn't want anyone to force me to do it that way. In your case you are not forced to use rail, solar, or even logistics currently, but I can bet hundreds of people here would be encouraging you to do so for the benefits they offer. Solar's main benefit is reduced pollution. If you don't want to fend off biters or have a stealthy outpost, then solar is a must. Rail can be useful for moving large quantities of things around. I explained what logistics can help with. I'd bet circuit network would also have advantages that 20 other people are using them for, but unless their benefits are highlighted some how even I can't tell you how they make your life easier.

Factorio is such a deep game that you always find new things about it that you didn't know before. Coming back to the main point of this thread it's pretty clear to see that it's not even just detailing what the item is, it's how this item will make things easier on you. Some of that can be explained, but obviously some of that is the fun of learning it through playing the game over and over again. I don't think anyone can pick up all of the finer points of the game in 2 or 3 runs, so I do kind of wish that some of the achievements were actual game scenarios instead of the game just always ending with a rocket shoot off. If you go achievement hunting you will actually need to use some more of the stuff that's in the game, but that's not straight forward unless you know that are game achievements and try to get them.

[ledow]

I have a couple of thousand hours.

Trains / rails - I use them, but usually only when I've got a complete mini-base up and running (i.e. can already make anything I like, get enough science etc. to launch rocket, etc.). They are only useful if you don't encapsulate enough resources, or you're deliberately expanding but then they're the only way. You don't want to be piping oil back or making belts that long... e.g. in one game I have I am 1000 roboports (at max distance from each other) from home, where each oil is 36000% on each pump, and where each resource is a few million PER DOT, i.e. each miner has 16 million or more copper/iron/stone/coal to exhaust.

Circuit networks - toys. I rarely use them, even though I understand how they work and could make my own complicated setups. To be honest, it's like Minecraft redstrone - it's too much a faff for simple ends. All the logic combinator stuff should really be conditions of the device rather than separate entities. Far too much faffing to do a simple logic condition on a couple of inputs. I made some red/yellow alternating flashing lights around my rocket launch, I made a "safe train crossing" so I couldn't get run over (but I've rarely ever died from that because I'm careful anyway, so I rarely bother), but it's too much poncing about for a simple and pretty unnecessary result.
However, I do use them in limited circumstances - enabling/disabling train stops (I don't have humungous setups, but it lets me keep my critical junction clear of anyone who doesn't need to be there, when otherwise they like to constantly deliver to an already-full station and cause traffic jams), handling oil conversion (so I end up with even amounts of everything so it doesn't back up until EVERYTHING is full up), stopping the satellite getting put immediately into the rocket / launching the rocket only when white-science runs out.

Logistics robots - probably the thing I use the most, and no I don't have a robot-heavy factory. Generate rare item, stick it in storage, bots will supply it to requester chests on demand. It means you can generate things like blue circuits, throw them in a box and then pluck them out of another box anywhere that's joined via roboports. Invaluable, much cheaper than huge long belts, much less FPS-hit (if your FPS never struggles, you only do small bases - I've only ever done one "big base", by the way). Also, it means you aren't producing a belt's-worth of rare resources unnecessarily, sucking everything out of your factory to do so. Plus - how the hell do you keep your base repaired? You have to have a stock of things available for the bots to pick up and replace broken items with. Seriously, you're missing out, or your bases are tiny. My major annoyance with bots is going to be solved by the new chests announced last week, because circuits are useless for "I want to keep a stock of this resource, but I want that resource to be available to bots, but I always want to collect any extraneous resource elsewhere to this point so it can be redistributed".

Fluids - I've never needed to think about those. Alright, it's annoying they can't touch, but that's not a big deal (just use undergrounds for long parallel runs). Jams are only ever the same thing - the refineries want to push out all three types. If one type is blocked, the other two types won't be released. Very simple solution, with the oil conversion factories and the most basic circuit (if heavy oil > light oil, then turn on the factory that converts heavy to light). And nowadays you just shove distant oil into a fluid tanker, and nearby oil goes right to whatever you need it to, surely? My fluid setup is about one half-zoomed screen. It's not hard. Then just shove barrelled oil / train fluid / pumped oil into the top and put a few fluid tanks to give you a small reserve.

P.S. Yes, I have most of the achievements, including no-logistics, no-lasers, no-solar, etc. I got in ONE GAME (i.e. in the same game I didn't use logistics, solar or lasers). So I get that you can play that way. But fluids are no hassle, bots are essential unless you want lots of long, boring parallel belts and spend half your resources filling up the belt to get to where it needs to go, trains are the only sensible way to do proper long-distance / when your nearby resources run out. It's only circuit networks that I don't really see the point of, and then only the non-trivial uses, and mainly because of the faffing required.

Factorio is a very deep and demanding game, but my first game was "what do I do" (I spawned on a massive island, didn't know anything about the aliens until I couldn't work out how to collect the old purple science and had to read up on it), my second game I built bot networks and fluids and launched the rocket, my third game I played with trains, tanks and cars, my fourth game I realised how to do turret-creep properly and invaded some alien territory and played with blueprints, my fifth game I played with some circuits but in the end didn't use them much, my sixth game I played with flamethrowers and rockets, my seventh game I played with nukes, and my eighth game I just kept launching rockets and heading North and ended up launching a couple of hundred rockets, laying down 1000 roboports in a (defended) line and then running trains up and down it (it takes 30 minutes per journey!). I only stopped there because it crashes my laptop because it uses so much video memory.

After all that - I went back and played the tutorial missions / campaigns (I'm not even joking, I'd never done them - and those "puzzle" ones where you have to spend money for everything you use are so ridiculously simple it's just annoying).

[eradicator]

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.

Calling it a "wiki" might have been a bad idea as it implies some kind of collaborative effort. Wording has to be carefully chosen to not create reactions like yours . "Engineers Manual" is what i called it in my modding-ideas.txt (all those ideas that i never had the time to implement ). I totally agree that tooltips _can_ be a great place to gain information, but if the tooltips carry too much information they trigger the same ignore-response on players that "walls of text" trigger. So simply putting more and more info into tooltips can not be a solution. Half of the people i play with already don't look at tooltips, probably because they find the "flavor text" too long (i personally like it), and many of the participants of this thread also obviously did not find, read or understand the tooltips that already exit (e.g. fluid rates for steam). Also if the information is part of a tooltip that requires the player to a) look at the right tooltip - the recipe, item and placed entity of the same building can be three different tooltips!, b) this requires the person to have the item at hand and c) look at all the buildings possibly related - for steam power that's pump+pipe+boiler+engine. The boiler has has no info about how much water it can handle for example. A short "How does steam power work" article with 5-6 sentences (i did say _short_ articles) in an in-game manual could clarify this easily, and as long as it doesn't include detailed number examples (or the numbers are pulled directly from source) updating it is a non-issue. Also i think to optimally handle such a new features it might be best to have a dedicated employee for it, at the very least when it's new and needs to be filled up with content for the first time. Also it would have to be very carefully written as to not spoil too much of the game (mentioning anything about "optimal ratios" would be a no-go as it would lead to all the newbies build the same setup) while still conveing all the nessecary information. And not to be misunderstood, i'll say again that i agree that the tooltips can definetly still be improved, but i think they are more useful to show "current" information on the state of something, i.e. current energy charge etc.

TL;DR:
Hey you. I think factorio is a game that - after a certain point - simply requires that you spend some time leaning back to try to understand the deeper mechanics - learning is fun! And if a player is not willing to do that (because they find it too tedious) then all the tooltips, manuals and wikis in the world won't be of any use to them.

[eradicator]

I've played over 100 hours and have done 7 runs so far, but I still don't (fully) understand the following:

Trains/rails
If you want to get ore from a copper and and iron and a coal field all several thousand tiles away you can use the same rail for all of them, as opposed to transport belts where you'd have to place a new belt for each of them. Rails are also very cheap to make and trains have extremely high throughput if done right. A single rail line can easily outperform several parallel blue belts. Also on a meta-level rails consume less cpu-resources, so you can build a larger factory before the lag-monster catches you.

Circuit networks
They aren't nessecary. But they can be useful even on a small scale. For example if you want to make sure that your boilers always get coal before the rest of the factory does you can simply but a cable on the belts, measuring if the boilers have enough coal and only if they have allow the belt to transport the rest of the coal to the factory (this does not requires any combinators).

Logistics robots
Without any tech upgrades logistic bots are somewhat slow. But once you have speed3 and cargo3 they can beat belts and inserters to a point where many players consider them "too easy". I use them mostly for very-short-range transport when i can't be bothered to try and figure out how to fit 8 different input materials onto 2 input lanes :P. (Also logistic request slots make life sooo much more easy).

Fluid in pipes
Yea, i don't enjoy piping either. It's called "pipemess" for a reason. There are mods that add directional corner pipes that can make things easier i hear. Oil is to me just a "pump as much into the refineries as i can" thing. And if that's not enough just get more. The lowered output doesn't really matter if you just consider them empty from the start. As for accidential mixing of stuff - have you never accidentially spilled stuff onto a belt wrongly? Every once in a while i rotate an inserter wrongly and then half an hour later i notice that some assembler stopped working down the line because it's blocked by $random_item_that's_not_supposed_to_be_on_that_belt.

Gameplay problems that probably won't be fixed
I think the fact that there are many systems to chose from to get to the goal and not be forced to use any of them is exactly the strong part of factorio. There's always room left to optimize later by learning how the other bits work. After i build my first train (probably on the third map or so) i had this magic moment of "how the fuck did i ever do this without?". :D

[Ripshaft]

haven't played in a bit but had to stop in and say goddamn that hd radar just pops out with crispness! dayum! I always liked the style of the radar with its distinctive quadriped design, glad to see it's only been hit with a sexifying beam to transition to hd.

[deer_buster]

I like what you are doing so far, but is this available to the mod authors too? Being able to provide a tutorial on how a mod item works would be a great addition, I think.

[eFieX]

Hi

I am very new to the game, bought it 2 weeks ago, and when i red this post i figured i share my experience on learning the game since i am in the middle of it

So the thing mentioned with the tool tips certainly will help a lot, also what i struggle with is to find out which things are stacking. For example the exoskeleton, if i would not watch youtube videos about the game i would have never figured to use more than one because it is nowhere mentioned that it stacks.
Also the usage of the armor, maybe this was mentioned somewhere and i missed it but i actually needed to figure out how to open the armor menu, right clicking on it wasn't my first intention, i did search for a button.
With which tool can resources be produced, sometimes you see the icon of an assembler when you hover over something, sometimes you don't.
Specially in the beginning i would have needed that information a lot more to know which building i need to produced which resource.
I actually deleted my first factory and started the game again in sandbox mode with everything unlocked to explore all the things before building a factory again.
The in game tutorials, first of all i love the way you implement tutorials. I really hate games which are forcing you to play a tutorial.
This system is really awesome, choose what you wanna see when you need it, I only wish for more of these tutorials.
Also on more basic things, for example when you place down concrete or landfill i have seen in videos that people actually can change the brush/stamp size, how does that work ? I know this is simple to look up somewhere but i did not stumble upon this in game, and this for example i would consider a basic in game functionality which would be explained in a basics tutorial.
Pipes are also something i have a hard time understanding, i assume they work kinda the same like a belt, but on the belt you see when too many things accessing it. On the pipes however i do not know how to plan out things, it happens all the time to me that a connect them to factories and they fill up super slow or don't fill up at all.
When i add another source it usually works then but again i would like to plan ahead these things and do not know quite how yet.

Things i was surprised i need mods for:
When i started to play around with circuit network i was surprised that i cannot access the load of a factory or train wagons i needed to install the mod Inventory Sensor to get that information into the network.
Yesterday i started dealing with Trains and also run into the issue that automating them with the vanilla version is quite tricky, today i will install the mod Train Logistics Network because i believe it will solve the issue.
The only really annoying thing in the game TREES, i installed the mod AAI Miner to have something that helps me with tree's in the beginning, but still trees are so annoying i can't even explain in words, would be really really great if there would be a solution from the beginning so you do not have to waste so much time on clearing out areas, even in the late game i do not feel the solutions given are satisfying. Removing with bots spams inventory and storage full, shooting them still takes time, and nukes are super late. (by the way am i the only who thinks it is a little crazy that nukes are the best way to deal with trees in a game where you build a space ship)

Personal Opinions
One thing i learned pretty fast in factorio is that you have to think big.
Which makes the default reach and build distance pretty annoying to me. So in a video i found this.
/c game.player.force.character_reach_distance_bonus = 10000
/c game.player.force.character_build_distance_bonus = 10000
This drastically changes my gaming experience, I mentioned that i first explored things in Sandbox mode, going back from sandbox and need to stand right next to everything to interact was very painful and not really fun at all.
I most of the time play the game half or fully zoomed out, this is even true from the very beginning on where you need to do stuff yourself, because usually resources are scattered and you have to run a lot, and later the game progresses more and more into a organizing/planning state than an interactive state so it would even be more annoying to be right next to everything since it is really big.

Upgrading Belts,Factories and Furnaces. Would be great if this could be done with the bots instead of me running around like crazy and place all these things because again it feels to me more like a organizing and planning thing later than an actual i have to do this and that, except the biters of course
Interaction with ghost design and bots. I like to plan stuff before I actually place it, in the early stages of the game this is no problem with shift clicking to create these ghosts. Later in the game it turned out to be a bit more difficult since whenever you do that a bot will build it for you, which is not always what i want.
I would really like to have a ghost thing like it is now which will be ignored by the bots and then have a tool that converts the ghost into a task for the bots, basically blueprinting it without creating a blueprint.

With logistic chests i also have one small issue. For example i create repair tools and put the directly into a passive provider.
So if this happens on one end of the factory the bots on the other end need to cross the whole thing to get one repair tool.
I placed requester chests for that, hooked them up with a circuit network and let them request 100 tools and put them into a passive provider chest right next to, the network counts down the request for each item in the provider.
So this somehow works but it generates a loop for some time, of course the provider provides the request.
I can think of 2 solutions.
A quick one, simply add a checkbox into the requester chest "Passive Provide", when checked this chest will provide everything stored in it (and of course it should not provide to itself).
A more complex one would be if you introduce grouping.
What i mean by that, when i select a chest i can assign it to a group. Lets call the group "repairtools" (name doesn't matter could be anything), so in the circuit network you can choose now only items from that group or only items except from that group.
This way you would be able to control which chests can provide to other chests.

Trash, how can I really trash things, by that I mean they are gone forever and i never see them again, not in my inventory, not in any chest not on the ground simply gone, this is something the game really needs i think.

Wishful Thinking
There is the space science pack and also a mod called spacex where you build a space station aso..
Man it would be awesome when you actually could go to space, lets say the space science packs can only be put into a research lab that exists in space and you have to ship up all the other science packs to the space station to keep on researching.
Or certain materials can only crafted in space aso...
This would be so awesome, don't know if it is possible, but still it would be awesome

So here are my experiences and thoughts, if stuff here is already possible and i simply do not know it please go easy on me, again play the game for 2 weeks now so there is a ton of things i do not know about it.

cheers

[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?

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

Modders DO use debug mode. Maybe 1.0 simply disables debug mode unless a specific program parameter is used.

[Sander_Bouwhuis]

@eFieX
You make some good points. The annoyances you mention (e.g., build reach and trees) is what everyone has to deal with. I think most people simply do what I do... install a mod to not be uselessly hampered by artificial limitations.

[mrvn]

When installing a mod the dependencies are not shown and not installed automatically. You need to leave the mod portal, which restarts the game and then check if any mods have failed to load. And then you have to do it again for the missing mods over and over till you have all dependencies. This is really tiresome.

Why not show the depends right when installing a mod? Make the mod list a tree where each module has it's dependencies as children. Then you can just click at a mod to open the branch and select which of the (optional) dependencies to install too. And all the required mods should be installed by default when installing a mod.

[Dev-iL]

The annoyances you mention (e.g., build reach and trees) is what everyone has to deal with. I think most people simply do what I do... install a mod to not be uselessly hampered by artificial limitations.

On the other hand, without these limitations, certain aspects of the game would be completely broken (e.g. PvP)

Image credit: Mooncat.

I think that longer reach distance should be researchable in vanilla - perhaps as a passive bonus, or tied to player equipment like the mining pick tier, the armor tier, or an armor module.

[ColdPrototype]

A small useful thing would be a change to the accumulator circuit network panel that tells you the quantity of the selected signal that will be output at maximum charge.

[eFieX]

The annoyances you mention (e.g., build reach and trees) is what everyone has to deal with. I think most people simply do what I do... install a mod to not be uselessly hampered by artificial limitations.

On the other hand, without these limitations, certain aspects of the game would be completely broken (e.g. PvP)

Image credit: Mooncat.

I think that longer reach distance should be research able in vanilla - perhaps as a passive bonus, or tied to player equipment like the mining pick tier, the armor tier, or an armor module.

Interesting i did not play multiplayer so far, but yeah when i think about it might be broken at some point, hilarious gif
Make it research able might be a cool thing, i am thinking of some kind of teleport technology

[voyta]

Anyone else thrown off by how the radar dish shadow cast on the radar base is completely different angle than the one cast by the entity on the ground?

[Sander_Bouwhuis]

The annoyances you mention (e.g., build reach and trees) is what everyone has to deal with. I think most people simply do what I do... install a mod to not be uselessly hampered by artificial limitations.

On the other hand, without these limitations, certain aspects of the game would be completely broken (e.g. PvP)

Image credit: Mooncat.

I think that longer reach distance should be researchable in vanilla - perhaps as a passive bonus, or tied to player equipment like the mining pick tier, the armor tier, or an armor module.

Aha, ok. I normally don't play multiplayer games.
The only two exceptions in the last 5 years have been Minecraft (briefly) and Terraria (quite a lot). But, both were friendly / cooperative with a friend. In fact, I've been meaning to try cooperative in Factorio but haven't gotten around to it yet (work and kids mainly).

[Jap2.0]

Hi

I am very new to the game, bought it 2 weeks ago, and when i red this post i figured i share my experience on learning the game since i am in the middle of it

So the thing mentioned with the tool tips certainly will help a lot, also what i struggle with is to find out which things are stacking. For example the exoskeleton, if i would not watch youtube videos about the game i would have never figured to use more than one because it is nowhere mentioned that it stacks.
Also the usage of the armor, maybe this was mentioned somewhere and i missed it but i actually needed to figure out how to open the armor menu, right clicking on it wasn't my first intention, i did search for a button.
With which tool can resources be produced, sometimes you see the icon of an assembler when you hover over something, sometimes you don't.
Specially in the beginning i would have needed that information a lot more to know which building i need to produced which resource.
I actually deleted my first factory and started the game again in sandbox mode with everything unlocked to explore all the things before building a factory again.
The in game tutorials, first of all i love the way you implement tutorials. I really hate games which are forcing you to play a tutorial.
This system is really awesome, choose what you wanna see when you need it, I only wish for more of these tutorials.
Also on more basic things, for example when you place down concrete or landfill i have seen in videos that people actually can change the brush/stamp size, how does that work ? I know this is simple to look up somewhere but i did not stumble upon this in game, and this for example i would consider a basic in game functionality which would be explained in a basics tutorial.
Pipes are also something i have a hard time understanding, i assume they work kinda the same like a belt, but on the belt you see when too many things accessing it. On the pipes however i do not know how to plan out things, it happens all the time to me that a connect them to factories and they fill up super slow or don't fill up at all.
When i add another source it usually works then but again i would like to plan ahead these things and do not know quite how yet.

Things i was surprised i need mods for:
When i started to play around with circuit network i was surprised that i cannot access the load of a factory or train wagons i needed to install the mod Inventory Sensor to get that information into the network.
Yesterday i started dealing with Trains and also run into the issue that automating them with the vanilla version is quite tricky, today i will install the mod Train Logistics Network because i believe it will solve the issue.
The only really annoying thing in the game TREES, i installed the mod AAI Miner to have something that helps me with tree's in the beginning, but still trees are so annoying i can't even explain in words, would be really really great if there would be a solution from the beginning so you do not have to waste so much time on clearing out areas, even in the late game i do not feel the solutions given are satisfying. Removing with bots spams inventory and storage full, shooting them still takes time, and nukes are super late. (by the way am i the only who thinks it is a little crazy that nukes are the best way to deal with trees in a game where you build a space ship)

Personal Opinions
One thing i learned pretty fast in factorio is that you have to think big.
Which makes the default reach and build distance pretty annoying to me. So in a video i found this.
/c game.player.force.character_reach_distance_bonus = 10000
/c game.player.force.character_build_distance_bonus = 10000
This drastically changes my gaming experience, I mentioned that i first explored things in Sandbox mode, going back from sandbox and need to stand right next to everything to interact was very painful and not really fun at all.
I most of the time play the game half or fully zoomed out, this is even true from the very beginning on where you need to do stuff yourself, because usually resources are scattered and you have to run a lot, and later the game progresses more and more into a organizing/planning state than an interactive state so it would even be more annoying to be right next to everything since it is really big.

Upgrading Belts,Factories and Furnaces. Would be great if this could be done with the bots instead of me running around like crazy and place all these things because again it feels to me more like a organizing and planning thing later than an actual i have to do this and that, except the biters of course
Interaction with ghost design and bots. I like to plan stuff before I actually place it, in the early stages of the game this is no problem with shift clicking to create these ghosts. Later in the game it turned out to be a bit more difficult since whenever you do that a bot will build it for you, which is not always what i want.
I would really like to have a ghost thing like it is now which will be ignored by the bots and then have a tool that converts the ghost into a task for the bots, basically blueprinting it without creating a blueprint.

With logistic chests i also have one small issue. For example i create repair tools and put the directly into a passive provider.
So if this happens on one end of the factory the bots on the other end need to cross the whole thing to get one repair tool.
I placed requester chests for that, hooked them up with a circuit network and let them request 100 tools and put them into a passive provider chest right next to, the network counts down the request for each item in the provider.
So this somehow works but it generates a loop for some time, of course the provider provides the request.
I can think of 2 solutions.
A quick one, simply add a checkbox into the requester chest "Passive Provide", when checked this chest will provide everything stored in it (and of course it should not provide to itself).
A more complex one would be if you introduce grouping.
What i mean by that, when i select a chest i can assign it to a group. Lets call the group "repairtools" (name doesn't matter could be anything), so in the circuit network you can choose now only items from that group or only items except from that group.
This way you would be able to control which chests can provide to other chests.

Trash, how can I really trash things, by that I mean they are gone forever and i never see them again, not in my inventory, not in any chest not on the ground simply gone, this is something the game really needs i think.

Wishful Thinking
There is the space science pack and also a mod called spacex where you build a space station aso..
Man it would be awesome when you actually could go to space, lets say the space science packs can only be put into a research lab that exists in space and you have to ship up all the other science packs to the space station to keep on researching.
Or certain materials can only crafted in space aso...
This would be so awesome, don't know if it is possible, but still it would be awesome

So here are my experiences and thoughts, if stuff here is already possible and i simply do not know it please go easy on me, again play the game for 2 weeks now so there is a ton of things i do not know about it.

cheers

Size for concreter is +/- on the keypad.

For the passive provider/requester loop, see the Logistics Buffer Chest (FFF #203), which is planned for 0.16 and I think is what you are looking for.

To get rid of stuff forever, put it in a chest and shoot it.

[eFieX]

Size for concreter is +/- on the keypad.

For the passive provider/requester loop, see the Logistics Buffer Chest (FFF #203), which is planned for 0.16 and I think is what you are looking for.

To get rid of stuff forever, put it in a chest and shoot it.

Thanks, yes the buffer chest seems to be the solution i was asking for
I guess there is no release date for that update ?