Friday Facts #266 - Cleanup of mechanics

[Pinga]

Amazing FFF. A few questions:

- If the fuel value on items is being halved, does that mean trains and other burners will now consume twice as much fuel?

- Should pistols be removed from the game? Right now there's no reason to ever craft one. On a free game, you never really have to use them. In multiplayer games it's just something every player will pile up in random chests.

- Is armor durability necessary? They can't be repaired, and breaking a Power Armor doesn't sound like a very appealing mechanic. It doesn't seem to have any kind of interesting interaction from the player, other than worrying that your armor might break one day.

- Since "tool" is now a passive tech, have you considered other research benefits? Like increased range.

[sniderthanyou]

The greatest simplification would be rounded numbers for belt throughput. Calculating it manually is just so unnecessary complex right now with all those decimals...

Until the belt throughput is changed, or in case they decide not to, you have a few options for removing decimals. You can think (40/3), (80/3), and (120/3) items per second, or more easily, just think 800, 1600, 2400 items per minute.

I personally like the nice round 2400 / minute of a blue belt. It feels much nicer than the proposed 2700 / minute. However, there are other real benefits proposed in that linked Reddit thread, that probably do deserve at least a few moments of consideration from the developers.

[Aflixion]

This FFF states that fuel values are halved and efficiency raised to 100% to compensate. Does this mean the 8 MJ fuel value of coal is now 4 MJ, or does this mean the 3.6 MW energy consumption of the boiler is now 1.8 MW? Also, not all burner entities have 50% efficiency. Furnaces and locomotives already have 100% efficiency, cars have 60% efficiency, and tanks have 75% efficiency. The goal here is to not change fuel consumption rates, right?

[Kyralessa]

Weapons and armor behave much the same as pickaxes, you craft them once and keep them equipped forever. Maybe you should get rid of equipment entirely, simply upgrade the base armor and unlock new weapons without the need to equip them (what's the point of limiting it to three anyway?). While you're at it you could consume ammunition from the inventory directly and remove the tool box on the bottom right entirely, or maybe replace it with an ammo indicator (rather than info on the current stack only).

But does this account for intentionally having multiple sets of armor? I make two sets of Mk II armor. One is for construction, and focuses on personal roboports and exoskeletons. The other is for combat, and focuses on personal lasers.

[Durabys]

@bilka
Will you preserve all these internal mechanics you are removing in the base code for modders to use? E.g. the pickaxe slot and pickaxes in general and mining efficiency? Those are core part of Bob's and Angel's mods.

As the FFF states

[W]e completely removed mining tools from the game. [...] So the decision is that the whole hardness and mining power mechanics was removed.

So, the internal mechanics for these two things were removed and mods cannot bring them back.

*sighs*
This is going to cause such a fucking swear storm with Modders...

Couldn't you have simply created in the mod tab a second non-default factorio official mod file that would hold these mechanics?

[Pizzagod]

Weapons and armor behave much the same as pickaxes, you craft them once and keep them equipped forever. Maybe you should get rid of equipment entirely, simply upgrade the base armor and unlock new weapons without the need to equip them (what's the point of limiting it to three anyway?). While you're at it you could consume ammunition from the inventory directly and remove the tool box on the bottom right entirely, or maybe replace it with an ammo indicator (rather than info on the current stack only).

But does this account for intentionally having multiple sets of armor? I make two sets of Mk II armor. One is for construction, and focuses on personal roboports and exoskeletons. The other is for combat, and focuses on personal lasers.

See my previous post on that question, basically you could have different loadouts that the user selects in the UI.

[Philip017]

I didn't mean to take away mk2, but instead of making the armor expensive, the research would be expensive, it's not like the average player sets up an assembly line to produce mk2s. I don't mean to take away the grid either, it'd still be there and you could still deck it out, you just wouldn't have to put your old armor into a wooden box and shoot it. As for the setups, the armor could provide different loadout slots, much like in various RPGs. Instead of equipping a different armor you'd select a different loadout in the UI.

i set up modules by way of robots, once i have everything in the network, it's a super simple drop a blue print or requester/provider setup for mk1,2,3 modules. i use speed and productivity modules heavily through out my base, and eff 1 for miners everywhere. setting up modules is no big deal if you plan ahead of time.

as for upgrading armors, i am not opposed to requiring the previous tier armor to build the new one. but if you automatically upgrade my armor by placing its costs in the research bin, i loose part of the experience of the game. <in multiplayer> also what happens when i die? do i respawn with all my gear just because it's now automatic? with multiple players do they all get their free armors? this ruins it i think. not to mention the different layouts for armors, one for building, one for combat, one for movement...

i think making the pick axe go away is fine for vanilla, but as for how it's loss and how it impacts the modding community, i feel the functions should remain in the game. besides i like having a pick that is twice as fast as the steel one. when i feel like it i do make myself have a faster mining speed (2)

[ownlyme]

hope you just removed the pickaxe items and didn't remove the prototypes and equipment slot for them so we can just mod them
(i strongly disagree with your decision of removing them, it may seem like a little thing but it's a little thing that made you feel good)
i'd rather enhance the axes, implementing mining guns for late game or give them enhanced properties/attributes. maybe even adding melee weapons to the game.

will you keep the mining hardness moddable on entities? you used to be able to make entities unminable with this, while keeping their fast-replace functionality.
this was used in the realistic reactors mod to build a sarcophagus on a reactor ruin.

about the efficiency thing:
does that mean the boilers will just consume half as much fuel for making steam?
the amount of energy consumed to heat up water to steam was directly calculated from the energy-heat density defined in the water prototype.
i'm glad you're keeping the modding functionality though (using it in my transformers mod (used for pumping electricity from one network into another), 7% of the energy is supposed to get lost, like with real world transformers)

removing some resistances also sounds like a terrible idea, because you can mod awesome things with this (at least 1 of my own mods heavily rely on this... what exactly you ask? i gave vehicles 100% damage resistance to poison and the breaths-air flag, now when a vehicle takes poison damage from the radioactivity-force, the script inflicts damage to the driver. this was used to make radioactive fallout a dangerous place to be, disallowing the player to just hop into a car and stop caring about the fallout.)

sorry but this fff was really terrifying for me, i wish you'd just revert all those changes. from my point of view you are just changing things for the sake of change (and breaking almost every mod with it)
keep in mind that many of your "useless" features are used for workarounds in mods for things that would be impossible to realize otherwise.
(super mad)

[Pizzagod]

I didn't mean to take away mk2, but instead of making the armor expensive, the research would be expensive, it's not like the average player sets up an assembly line to produce mk2s. I don't mean to take away the grid either, it'd still be there and you could still deck it out, you just wouldn't have to put your old armor into a wooden box and shoot it. As for the setups, the armor could provide different loadout slots, much like in various RPGs. Instead of equipping a different armor you'd select a different loadout in the UI.

i set up modules by way of robots, once i have everything in the network, it's a super simple drop a blue print or requester/provider setup for mk1,2,3 modules. i use speed and productivity modules heavily through out my base, and eff 1 for miners everywhere. setting up modules is no big deal if you plan ahead of time.

as for upgrading armors, i am not opposed to requiring the previous tier armor to build the new one. but if you automatically upgrade my armor by placing its costs in the research bin, i loose part of the experience of the game. <in multiplayer> also what happens when i die? do i respawn with all my gear just because it's now automatic? with multiple players do they all get their free armors? this ruins it i think. not to mention the different layouts for armors, one for building, one for combat, one for movement...

i think making the pick axe go away is fine for vanilla, but as for how it's loss and how it impacts the modding community, i feel the functions should remain in the game. besides i like having a pick that is twice as fast as the steel one. when i feel like it i do make myself have a faster mining speed (2)

By the time you die in multiplayer you tend to have the resources for rebuilding your armor freely available, all you have to do is to wait for the robots to supply them to you. This wait time adds nothing to the game. I think the sense of progress in the game should stem from research, not manual crafting. When you get faster belts you have a new tool to increase throughput in your factory (after quickly automating assembly), when you unlock a new armor you don't get that feel of progress that quickly, you still have to scour for components. Instantly providing you with a new armor would make it clear that you made progress and that you finally finished that expensive research.

[hribek]

- Should pistols be removed from the game? Right now there's no reason to ever craft one. On a free game, you never really have to use them. In multiplayer games it's just something every player will pile up in random chests.

- Is armor durability necessary? They can't be repaired, and breaking a Power Armor doesn't sound like a very appealing mechanic. It doesn't seem to have any kind of interesting interaction from the player, other than worrying that your armor might break one day.

The changes are amazing, and I also support all of the above.

[bobingabout]

I'm just going to go sit in the corner and cry now...

[Philip017]

By the time you die in multiplayer you tend to have the resources for rebuilding your armor freely available, all you have to do is to wait for the robots to supply them to you. This wait time adds nothing to the game. I think the sense of progress in the game should stem from research, not manual crafting. When you get faster belts you have a new tool to increase throughput in your factory (after quickly automating assembly), when you unlock a new armor you don't get that feel of progress that quickly, you still have to scour for components. Instantly providing you with a new armor would make it clear that you made progress and that you finally finished that expensive research.

this is assuming that you are careful, if you are careless you can quickly die repeatably, and recovering your gear can in it's self be a mission. if you die in single player you can reload the game, in multiplayer you must play on.

in most situations after power armor is researched, everyone wants it, so everyone has to take turns making their armors, get that sense of achievement when you can finally make yours.

besides if you don't plan well and/or forget your armor you can quickly be dispatched by the biters, another learning experience.

adding the armor to your character automatically, will probably go unnoticed, and you loose that planning experience. i plan on what i want in my modular armor before i even have it researched. i need solar panels, personal roboports, and robots. are you planning on giving me these items too? does the grid become non-personal now?

also i never use the pistols either, wood box shoot, once i have my smg.

[Pizzagod]

By the time you die in multiplayer you tend to have the resources for rebuilding your armor freely available, all you have to do is to wait for the robots to supply them to you. This wait time adds nothing to the game. I think the sense of progress in the game should stem from research, not manual crafting. When you get faster belts you have a new tool to increase throughput in your factory (after quickly automating assembly), when you unlock a new armor you don't get that feel of progress that quickly, you still have to scour for components. Instantly providing you with a new armor would make it clear that you made progress and that you finally finished that expensive research.

this is assuming that you are careful, if you are careless you can quickly die repeatably, and recovering your gear can in it's self be a mission. if you die in single player you can reload the game, in multiplayer you must play on.

in most situations after power armor is researched, everyone wants it, so everyone has to take turns making their armors, get that sense of achievement when you can finally make yours.

besides if you don't plan well and/or forget your armor you can quickly be dispatched by the biters, another learning experience.

adding the armor to your character automatically, will probably go unnoticed, and you loose that planning experience. i plan on what i want in my modular armor before i even have it researched. i need solar panels, personal roboports, and robots. are you planning on giving me these items too? does the grid become non-personal now?

also i never use the pistols either, wood box shoot, once i have my smg.

As I mentioned several times, you'd still have your grid, and all the items that go in it. It'd just be much simpler to switch to a different loadout. My intention is not to reduce the depth of the game but to simplify the mechanics behind it.

[Mike5000]

I'm just going to go sit in the corner and cry now...

It sure seems that it would have been better just to hide superfluous details from the UI rather than destroying so much hard work.

[Philip017]

I'm just going to go sit in the corner and cry now...

It sure seems that it would have been better just to hide superfluous details from the UI rather than destroying so much hard work.

totally agree here.

[Ormek]

Assembling machine ingredient limit removal

I like it, that the later Assembling machines can do really more than the earlier ones. The game forces me to create them and thus directs me and guides me. The goal to just speed up things might not always be enough:
I can automatically produce items of type X: Yeah!
I can create items of type X faster: ok.

It’s like getting to the next level and see the next monster vs. getting a new highscore. I have always been driven by the first and never by the latter. With that simplification I can automize the rocket launch without using the later assembling machines. Players like me, might actually do that.

[HammerPiano]

In the base game, this efficiency mechanic is almost completely useless, so we decided to remove it. To keep the previous balancing on the same level, all the fuel values have been halved, and the efficiency set to 100%. This just means, that the fuel value is the amount of energy the machines can actually extract from the fuel and calculations like this will give clear results. In this case, the functionality will still remain for mods to use.

Does this mean that nuclear fuel is no longer 1.21 GJ?

I agree that the axes were annoying, especially when they broke.

[Cgeta]

Since the higher tier assemblers are no longer needed for progression, the blue one at least, how about making them more beneficial compared to the lower tier ones?
Giving them more benefits like maybe a small productivity boost by default. Like 5% for the blue one and 10% for the yellow one.
Or just have them be a lot faster

Since space is not a big deal in factorio there wouldn't be much of a need to replace the grey assemblers with blue or yellow ones just for a slight speed boost alone, as players can always just place more of the grey ones instead. Assembler 3 cost like 7 times as much to make than assembler 1, but are only 2.5 times faster.
Though, in combination with modules they definitely outdo the grey assemblers.

I would go as far as to make them more expensive too, regardless, and give them a bigger boost, to make them feel more like an upgrade


For comparison, belt upgrades are usually worth it just for the speed improvement, as unlike assemblers, belts are more complex to place and use. So, replacing a yellow belt with a blue one is easier than using 3 yellow belts instead of 1 blue one.

But if you want to increase your production speed, using 5 grey assemblers instead of 2 yellow ones is easy and cheap to do

[Egdod]

I don't get the importance of fuel efficiency in general. Other than boilers, I have never noticed anything that has an efficiency rating. Why would we want to cut all fuel values by 50% ? I must be missing something.

[H8UL]

All the changes look good to me!

Which of these changes are to the core game engine itself, and which are in the base mod only?

Starting to have doubts as I realise how much these affect the core game and will constrain modding options...