Friday Facts #245 - Campaign concept

[Nusty]

Greetings,

Love the changes, One thing I am wondering if it's possible to do. When you click or hover over an icon to research if the lines that lead out of it could change colour or turn dotted? (for coulour blind) so it's easier to see where they lead to. The top part of the tree (with the green science) it looks confusing and hard to see where the lines go. I can just imagine how hard it will be for me to see the lines when I am playing for a long time at an early hour.

Just a thought,

[vedrit]

I'm glad they're making the science pack unlocks clearer in the tech tree. Just last night I was looking for the blue pack unlock. It was not where I thought it was.

[Rinin]

As for Production vs High Tech science. Probably good idea - is giving Player a choise between "Drone-Powered Base" and "Good power armor and all related stuff" because it's 2 ultimate endgame goals quite often, and they could be easily separated. Now Production path looks more or less useless except for rare scenarios. It's only evolution of already existed infrastructure at high cost (blue belts production, production of modules without drones).

TL DR - Move "Logistic network" to Production science!

[bobucles]

Unlike bobucles, I'm all for this power armor mk2 change. I won't say there's a huge gap between mk1 & mk2, but I think it's a sufficient gap : mk2 requires yellow packs. So mk1 isn't worthless.

Mk1 requires blue circuits. If you have blue circuits you're already over the biggest hurdle to getting mk2. That's probably the biggest problem. If Mk1 didn't require blue circuits, it would be early enough to be worth grabbing.

No one ever asked for Mk2 to be even earlier in the tech tree. The problem has always been with Mk1. The change doesn't make much sense.

[hyspeed]

Hi,

I would like to see the blue science packs tweaked. The numbers for it just don't seem to fit correctly with the other science packs.

I think the attached image explains it better than I can.

ScienceFactories.png (23.79 KiB) Viewed 6890 times

I think simply reducing the cycle time to 8 or 10 seconds (from 12) would help balance it out.


thanks,
jon

[V453000]

The main campaign should be multiplayer (co-op) compatible.

Also, note that removing level 3 module pre-requisities from power armor mk2 technology can be easily “replaced” by just making the power armor mk2 technology more expensive. Making it earlier is not the intention.

[darkszero]

Regarding the Production vs High-Tech packs, just seeing the tech-tree for what's unlocked by the Production research shows how pointless the split is: it appears you unlock 10 researches, but 4 of then also requires High-Tech.
Never mind that 2 of the unlocked tech is just high-tiered belts and assembling machines: helpful, but would you be highly anticipating then?

As crazy ideas go, could the Production pack be unlocked and produced earlier than the Blue Science pack?

[kenpachizero]

Hello,

Since you are changing the tech tree could you please fix up some research that does not make sense, here is a couple;

You can research portable solar panels without researching solar energy
you can research artillery without tanks but then need to research tank to get the components to make the artillery shell
the flight research should contain the flying robot frame not robotics
you can get up to the Advanced mat 2 without researching electric engine among others

[FactoryBuilder]

I feel like if you want hi tech and production to be separate, then there should be a way for both methods to have a path to researching and launching a rocket. Also, production should have something for defence because hi tech has both artillery and power armour. It seems like if you wanted to expand or protect yourself late game, you'd need hi tech even if you're going for a production approach.

[Omnifarious]

I found the way technologies were just handed to me in the campaign missions to be kind of jarring.

I think, maybe, as a substitute you could have a map expansion reveal a chest full of science packs and then lock the research tree such that you can only use them to research the next tech you want them to have, or something like that. That would make the way technologies show up in the campaign feel more natural and reasonable.

One problem I have with the campaign is that the production of science packs and their consumption by science labs is pretty central to the game, but you basically don't do that in the campaign at all.

[quyxkh]

Nooo! Just teach people to use ^F!

t^Fpack, now you have a list of every tech that unlocks a pack. t^Fshel, everything to do with shells, including all the tech that unlocks them and all the tech that improves them. quick-change search is ^A, with a search up ^Abel and you've got all the belt researches.

[Z01C]

The Purple and Yellow science packs are too confusing, as they pretty much fulfill the same role. Progression of Red -> Green -> Blue is clear with Gray also being clear as a military side-tier that you don't need if there are no biters (until endgame). However, Purple and Yellow both happen at the same time and you need to get both anyway. It is a false dichotomy in the game play and intuitively it doesn't make sense either... aren't Purple items high tech anyway? Rocket science is also clear as the last stage of progression. I don't see how splitting the 4th tier of science into two made any sense.

[Alice3173]

I understand, that from "trying to be realistic" point of view, distinction between high-tech and production science packs makes sense. With that said, to me as someone who researches unlimited techs I need both packs anyway. So I just go for robots, then build lines for both packs.

As for achievements - those 11% don't include people playing with mods. If you really want to look at steam stats, you would think that half of the people get bored/lost before reaching oil.

Maybe it could be good to allow few key achievements to be achieved in modded game as well.

Going by Steam achievement numbers is pretty unreliable anyways. It's not uncommon for popular games to have an unavoidable achievement at the beginning of the game yet it has a 60-70% rate of game owners having gotten it. For example:

This means that more than 3/10 owners of Portal 2 haven't even gotten through the first five minutes or so or the game.

[m44v]

Going by Steam achievement numbers is pretty unreliable anyways. It's not uncommon for popular games to have an unavoidable achievement at the beginning of the game yet it has a 60-70% rate of game owners having gotten it. For example:
Image
This means that more than 3/10 owners of Portal 2 haven't even gotten through the first five minutes or so or the game.

That tells you that is pretty common to own games that you don't play, and Factorio is no different. That doesn't mean the achievements numbers are unreliable, you just need to be careful how you interpret it, like anything that involves statistics.

[Bokkie]

Going by Steam achievement numbers is pretty unreliable anyways. It's not uncommon for popular games to have an unavoidable achievement at the beginning of the game yet it has a 60-70% rate of game owners having gotten it. For example:
Image
This means that more than 3/10 owners of Portal 2 haven't even gotten through the first five minutes or so or the game.

That tells you that is pretty common to own games that you don't play, and Factorio is no different. That doesn't mean the achievements numbers are unreliable, you just need to be careful how you interpret it, like anything that involves statistics.

True. I have a lot of games on steam which is never have played.. (old school games..)

And for the rocket thing.. I have a large number of bases I've started but never finished because some mistakes, so no rocket either.. I think that I've sended 5 Rockets into space, while +700 hours in Factorio..

[thecatlover1996]

If you add this unlocked by science X feature please make sure that you don't add things to that list, that require a different research which requires the same.

If Research B requires research A, and research C requires B, then C should not also require research A (because it already does that through B).
Because otherwise you have this weird bunch of pseudo random lines, that just confuses the users.

snip

IMO you did that with your Power Armor:

I agree on this one, it doesn't make sense to have a line from yellow science to power armor mk2 if the power armor requires military 4, which itself requires yellow science

[Roxor128]

This instalment drew my attention to a couple of things that bug me:


1. The Logistics System. I know, I know, it's very much a love-it-or-hate-it thing. This is just about its place in the tree from a technology perspective, not a buffing/nerfing one. Promise.

Yeah, production science being a requirement makes sense (we do use it for producing low-count items after all), high tech doesn't. If anything, it's simpler to make robots that deliver between two fixed locations, like the chests are. It's the Personal Logistics that should be more demanding. The bots need to be smarter to collect and deliver from a moving target, after all.

This in mind, I suggest a reordering of the logistics bots stuff along these lines (arrow means "leads to"):

Robotics -> Basic logistic robot system (allows construction of mk1 logistic bots, requester, passive provider and storage chests, but only allows delivery between those)
Basic logistic robot system -> Advanced logistic robots (unlocks mk2 logistic bots which can deliver to the player), Advanced logistic system (unlocks active provider chests and request-and-store chests (I forget the official name as I haven't gotten around to trying them in a game yet))
Advanced logistic robots -> Personal logistics
Advanced logistic system -> Personal logistics

Beyond these basics, there could be other upgrades (possibly even side-branches if the devs can think of any), maybe one last level of logistic bots, a few of personal logistics, etc. Whatever tickles your fancy, devs. Tweak the bots as needed to suit.


2. The Portable Fusion Reactor. It's rather out-of-nowhere at the moment. Actually, I've had this complaint ever since alien artefacts were removed (though I am glad to no longer have to go and slaughter the wildlife just to do research). Without an alien origin, it needs predecessor technologies.

I propose three levels of fusion technology:

1. Basic Fusion Power. Unlocks a fusion reactor. Works like a nuclear reactor, except the fuel is liquid deuterium piped in (could have waste helium piped out if the devs can think of any uses for it, otherwise just vent it into the atmosphere). Extracting deuterium from ordinary water needs a huge mass of chemical plants to produce enough to keep a reactor running (has been implemented in a mod called Fission and Fusion, with an extra step of making a pellet because we couldn't figure out how to get a reactor to take fluids for fuel).

2. Intermediate Fusion Power. Unlocks a small self-contained reactor that can be fuelled by barrels of deuterium. Intended for running small mining outposts getting a few barrels delivered by the train that collects their ore. Would also go nicely with a generalised turret wagon (which could take any three 2*2 turrets) as a power source for a pair of laser turrets on such a wagon.

3. Advanced Fusion Power. Unlocks the portable fusion reactor and anything else the devs can come up with that would fit with it.


Of the two, I'd really rather see work focus on giving the portable fusion reactor a family.

[DarkyPupu]

Couldn't care less about the campaign, never really went into existing ones - i tried but not interested on the concept itself.
About Steam achievements, there are so much chances that a player used a mod and / or a console command that i wouldn't rely too much on them

For the two other facts, especially resource packs research i think it's a good idea

[ShadowXVII]

...only about 11% of players on Steam have ever launched a rocket

I still can't seem to get that achievement... despite having "So long and thanks for all the fish".

[pleegwat]

Would it make sense to change things so you don't need production science to launch the rocket?