Friday Facts #235 - 0.16 stable

[impetus maximus]

Left and forward goes left, left and reverse goes to the right.

what? not for me. left+reverse the back of the car goes left as it should.

[bman212121]

The 3rd thing I'd like to address is the mods. I don't know what your thoughts are for these, but I'm wondering if it will only be possible to download mods from mods.factorio.com, or if a server operator might be able to specify and alternative web address to get mods for their server. A lot of fps games allow you to run your own redirect server, which is great for LANs because you can have all of the mods local to the network, and everything will download super quick and not have to use a ton of bandwidth from the internet.

The other thing that I'm curious is to just make sure the game is capable of handling tweaked versions of Mods. For instance, let's say I download a popular weapon's mod, but the creator doesn't expose things like bullet damage into the mod gui. It's simple enough to just open up the mod, change some lines of code to the desired effects, and save it again. Even though the mod is the same mod, the checksum will be different, and the settings are different now. This mod wouldn't download from the portal, but there also wouldn't really be a way for it to download from the portal as it's a one off mod. If we could point to another location to download that would make it easy to accommodate things like this, and random tweaked versions wouldn't need to be uploaded to the mod portal. The other thing would be to make sure the mod portal just throws an error and doesn't attempt to download a mod it doesn't have the right version for. If the server operator has to get people to hand load a customized mod that's better than the game assuming it has the right version and causing mismatches or trying to force them to use something that won't work.

[bman212121]

Left and forward goes left, left and reverse goes to the right.

what? not for me. left+reverse the back of the car goes left as it should.

Yea you're right. Not sure why I was thinking it was backwards unless something I was using at some point was wrong.

[exi2163]

I never would have thought cheat engine would have harmed the devs, particularly for single player. Could you add a flag to the crash report if it's involved, maybe just by checking the process list?

No. Just plain no. If anything contains my process list or any other information that is not from the factorio memory space or its occupied directory i will disable any automatic upload and open a topic about the privacy breach on the forums.
As unfortunate it is that time has been waisted on that matter as important it is to stay on the path of doing the right thing.

There is literally nothing you can do about people using cheatengine because it is not detectable if done right. Check your memory for modifications? Just patch the check function to always return "all OK". Running those scripts on MP will desync them instantly. So there is nothing to be gained besides content for the blog which is fine for me, always love those posts for nerds

[fiery_salmon]

The metagame needs improvement.

Currently the factories and resources we make in Factorio just get discarded once either a satellite is launched or all the content is exhausted on an existing map.

I hope you guys will come up with something that allows any factories and resources gathered matter and be useable for an infinite metagame of sorts. See the link in my signature for a possible solution to this problem. I can answer questions about it if a developer asks them.

Note that nearly everybody is not considering it as a problem (given by responses to that thread).

[Karamel]

There is one thing you really should fix before releasing 1.0: the tech tree dependencies. Specifically, all technologies which require a particular science pack (for example blue) should have the technology which makes that pack available (Advanced electronics, in this case) as an (automatic) prerequisite.

Right now I have Advanced oil processing showing as available for research, but I can't possibly research it because I haven't yet researched Advanced electronics so I can't produce blue science packs. To me, this is annoying (because I don't necessarily have each research pack's unlocking tech memorized), to new players it's confusing, and it should be easy to fix permanently algorithmically.

[fiery_salmon]

There is one thing you really should fix before releasing 1.0: the tech tree dependencies. Specifically, all technologies which require a particular science pack (for example blue) should have the technology which makes that pack available (Advanced electronics, in this case) as an (automatic) prerequisite.

Right now I have Advanced oil processing showing as available for research, but I can't possibly research it because I haven't yet researched Advanced electronics so I can't produce blue science packs. To me, this is annoying (because I don't necessarily have each research pack's unlocking tech memorized), to new players it's confusing, and it should be easy to fix permanently algorithmically.

Suggested already and rejected - see for an example viewtopic.php?p=339162#p339178

[eradicator]

Well. you are actually convinced me to test it. And numbers are exactly like in wiki. Blue belt throughput is 44% better. And cheap easy to produce red belts are only 4% worse. Of course compared to fully upgraded stack inserters.
In terms of price 16 blue belts is 504 of iron, and 4 stack inserters, wagon and 3 rails in sum is 501,75 of iron+copper+stone+coal. And it's hardly any economy.

how were you testing it? Feeding it off the belt? Or off the chests? Because the whole point off this setup is to have four stack inserters putting in and four putting out of each cargo wagon with maximum efficiency of 27,7 items/s, which is also number stated in the wiki.
ALSO belts require only Iron that used to be the most sought after ore in 0.15 and before. I now play with RSO so i don't know if it's still a thing in 0.16.

44% is exactly the number you get when you compare two parallel inserters against blue belt, so the test was likely flawed. Also as soon as one wagon is full of one type of item chances are the inserters get stuck and won't transport any other items anymore. That's what i meant with "you can't filter at full speed". I guess it's not really full speed if wagons become full :P. Not that i ever tried to use that setup as an actual transport system. Btw i just tried drag-placing wagons and it doesn't work at all.

[bobucles]

Are we talking about cargo wagon busses? A 2x2 block of stack inserters can move 110.8 items per second. Each swing of an inserter moves these items 6 tiles as the items hop from 1 train car to the next. The sequence is a repeating pattern of 2 tracks and 4 inserters and is 2 tiles wide (2x6).

train bus.jpg (195.5 KiB) Viewed 6858 times

The item locomotive power of one "block" hauls an equivalent force of 665 items across 1 tile per second. Each block has a footprint of 12 tiles, giving 55.4 item moving power per amount of real estate used. This is roughly 40% stronger than using blue belts in the same space. Not bad! It STILL struggles to match the sheer item moving capacity of a high tech roboport which provides up to 80 item moving capacity per unit of land.

[maddoctor]

leave bots alone, it takes so long to research to increase there speeds to make it useful and it uses a ton of power. i see nothing wrong with it. i just really start using bots heavily after my 200 hr mark because of the power requirements and the research speed necessary

[Omnifarious]

The item locomotive power of one "block" hauls an equivalent force of 665 items across 1 tile per second. Each block has a footprint of 12 tiles, giving 55.4 item moving power per amount of real estate used. This is roughly 40% stronger than using blue belts in the same space. Not bad! It STILL struggles to match the sheer item moving capacity of a high tech roboport which provides up to 80 item moving capacity per unit of land.

Has anybody tried end-to-end. Basically, using two stack inserters at one end of a cargo wagon and pulling them out at the other? A cargo wagon is 6 tiles long. if you cared about latency, that means you could move 6 tiles just by shoving something into a cargo wagon and taking it out again on the other side. Also, it might be that cargo wagons can be placed one tile apart from each other end-to-end, and so you wouldn't need two rows of inserters between cargo wagons, just one. But, I suspect that may not be the case. A lot depends on whether or not a cargo wagon sticks over the end of the track at all.

[JoneKone]

Please improve car driving when on latency!
You have manged so well to hide latency that I almost never think about it.
The three exceptions I can think of are:
1. Biters are not where you think they are, and often when fighting you teleport around a lot.
2. Getting run over by a train after having passed the rail 2 seconds ago.
3. Driving a car on high latency is impossible on anything but empty plains.
Number three semms the most annoying, and fixable, to me.

Are you using DialUp over Wlan... oh wait.. you are using 4G/3G maybe 2G?

[impetus maximus]

any form of wireless is going to make for a lousy experience. that goes for any game.

[Rinin]

Are we talking about cargo wagon busses? A 2x2 block of stack inserters can move 110.8 items per second. Each swing of an inserter moves these items 6 tiles as the items hop from 1 train car to the next. The sequence is a repeating pattern of 2 tracks and 4 inserters and is 2 tiles wide (2x6).

Thanks for picture, it clarifies a lot.
Well, it's very interesting design. But for me it's still too ugly and manual to use it without desperate need to.

[Aeternus]

About that odd crash: If executing code not ingame then you either got:
- A programming bug in code that triggers in rare cases. I remember similar issues with apps I worked on in my IT college years. C-like languages can respond a bit strange when operations are done on a pointer or when something isn't dereferenced.
- Another process that tries to inject/hook itself on your process to make modifications. Checking what additional applications/DLLs try to interact with the Factorio executable, and adding that to the crashlog should point out the culprit.
- A bug in a legit process that runs on some systems, such as a virus or malware scanner or even operating system patch. That scanner/patch receiving an update/bugfix may account for a reduction in reports. Listing what processes interact with Factorio in a crashlog may show a common culprit.

[Deadly-Bagel]

And where's the fun if you don't get to see Iron and Copper Plates filtering through a pair of 18-18 belt balancers? =P

I prefer belts if only because they're so much simpler to manage - 1 Iron Plate belt + 1.5 Copper Plate belts = 1 Electronic Circuit belt. 2 Electronic Circuit belts + 2 Plastic belts + 2 Copper Ore belts = 1 Advanced Electronic Circuit belt. You can easily see how much of everything you're using and strictly manage it all, when using bots you don't get the option to prioritise or divide resources and you're limited to counting furnaces and assemblers or calculating from production statistics.

The whole thing is down to preference, sure bots might have more throughput per tile but they're less configurable, more expensive, consume power, require a LOT more research, aren't available (let alone more efficient) until much later in the game, and are overall just less satisfying in many opinions. I think we just need to give a pair of Stack Inserters the ability to compress/consume a blue belt - this will both simplify and buff train-belt loading and unloading, and make those faster prod+speed setups more feasible with belts.

Listing what processes interact with Factorio in a crashlog may show a common culprit.

That would probably be an invasion of privacy. Even though it's opt-out they're currently within their rights as they're only collecting game data, everything else is obfuscated, and that still caused an uproar.

[Lubricus]

Left and forward goes left, left and reverse goes to the right.

what? not for me. left+reverse the back of the car goes left as it should.

There is some controversy with the direction stuff should turn when reversing in games. A real car changes direction it turns when backing, that get's very strange with f.ex. a tank that can turn when standing still and usually don't change direction when reversing.

[eradicator]

Please improve car driving when on latency!
You have manged so well to hide latency that I almost never think about it.
The three exceptions I can think of are:
1. Biters are not where you think they are, and often when fighting you teleport around a lot.
2. Getting run over by a train after having passed the rail 2 seconds ago.
3. Driving a car on high latency is impossible on anything but empty plains.
Number three semms the most annoying, and fixable, to me.

Are you using DialUp over Wlan... oh wait.. you are using 4G/3G maybe 2G?

Anything above a latency of 50ms gets you very noticible input lag with cars. I don't even try to drive cars in multiplayer any more because it's so unpleasant to try to anticipate how much lag i currently have and how much in advance i have to steer to get the car to react in time. And even the tinyest lag spike rams you right into the next tree.

Left and forward goes left, left and reverse goes to the right.

what? not for me. left+reverse the back of the car goes left as it should.

There is some controversy with the direction stuff should turn when reversing in games. A real car changes direction it turns when backing, that get's very strange with f.ex. a tank that can turn when standing still and usually don't change direction when reversing.

Controversy? Real car turns direction? Wut? A car in reality and factorio always goes into the direction your steering to relative to the front of the vehicle. So the only thing that changes is what the player assumes to be the "front" of the vehicle (protip: the back is never the front).

left.png (5.53 KiB) Viewed 6704 times

[impetus maximus]

thank you for the diagram eradicator.
that is how it should work. if game makers swap the reverse direction you will have people growing up parallel parking into oncoming traffic.

[Aeternus]

Listing what processes interact with Factorio in a crashlog may show a common culprit.

That would probably be an invasion of privacy. Even though it's opt-out they're currently within their rights as they're only collecting game data, everything else is obfuscated, and that still caused an uproar.

If you'd gather the full process list currently running on the computer, yes. If you only list processes that have hooks to Factorio itself? Doubt it. You'd get common graphics drivers, sound drivers, some input/output drivers and software... maybe some screen capture software... Given the fact that the crashlogs already contain a decent amount of hardware info, having drivers and whatnot in there doesn't seem more intrusive to me. If you have it on as is...