Friday Facts #279 - Train GUI & Modern Spitter

[Klonan]

https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-279

[bigyihsuan]

My first thought was YES FFF

Then YES TRAIN IMPROVEMENTS

Then "acid green acid makes sense but looks weird"

[Mike5000]

The train GUI changes are cute but what trains really need are a way to avoid thundering herds without the massive complexity of LTN.

[mexmer]

train gui looks nice, but i still miss ability to name trains.
so i will be able to search for them (or filter by name), in train overview.

btw. drag and drop is quite good, no more deleting and rewriting train plans.

i'm not sure, if i like visuals of it, but concept is quite good.

also, those big dots on map are train stations? if so, will we be able to pick station by clicking on that dot?

btw. spitters predicting player movements will be fun

[theolderbeholder]

Wow. That was money well spent for a hi-res capable graphics card.

[Gergely]

Makes me wanna puke.

(Unfortunately, it doesn't make me puke.)

[Selvek]

Hmm, I love the new spitter, but the new worm looks kinda overly smooth and texture-less. Maybe it should have the nice carapace plates?

[nosports]

I would hint a change of the temporary trainstation for easier use....

as you have stated 'for personal' use its quite resonable that a certail loco/train is used for personal transport.
So i would suggest that you could mark a loco as 'personal' and when clickin on the map for a temporal train-stop you could choose the personal loco with one click, and with a double click you can choose a certain train in the map....

[dmsilev]

Curious as to how the rest of the GUI revamp is going. In the overview from two weeks ago, the Train GUI was listed as having just cleared the first step in the pipeline, and from what we see today I assume it's somewhere between Implementation Draft and Final Review. How about all of the other red x's on that chart (blueprint library being the most notable)?

[chris13524]

It seems too easy to avoid the acid balls. Would it be possible to "underpredict" how far to overshoot based on the average distance the player moved in any one direction over the past, say, 10 seconds? This way, it doesn't always shoot as if the player would keep running straight in one direction, especially if they keep switching directions. Making the splashes bigger might help, too. Could these two aspects (how much to underpredict and size of acid ball) be evolution related things?

[ThorsDragon]

Yay updates!!
I wouldn't mind the spitters and worms being more accurate/predicting better. Worms are supposed to be scary.
Train GUI looks great!

[glee8e]

New arts are always welcomed, and the new splitters and bitters is quite impressive. But I have some questions regarding the immobile versions..

1. Maybe it's just me, but does anyone else feels the new spawner looks a bit too flat? The current art shows it is roughly a half of a ball above the ground, but now it maybe just 1/4. I'd say this change has its benefits in some ways, but it is not as iconic as it was before in my eyes. Otherwise the new style is quite impressive.

2. The worms seems too smooth. They are not diving through deep water but digging through rough dirt or sand. The low res version shows its power, while the new version seems to be a bit less tough. AFAIK no game so far draw worms that can bore through the earth in that style.

[Cyonic]

I love the personal train transport and train GUI.

I like the spitters and really enjoy the whole minigame of dodging the spit attacks, are you also scaling up damage a tad to compensate for the increased dodging?

The new worm design does look a bit bland and textureless. I'd also like a bit more visual feedback when spitters are producing a projectile. Perhaps some peristaltic action where a pulse moves up their body as though they are regurgitating the spit from an internal organ.

[Gabrol]

Can we have conditions for train stops? Like "if Iron < 100, ignore Train Stop X"

The progress bar for the wait conditions are kinda odd to me, maybe if was a thinner line under the condition box?

What if you made the Spitter projectiles look like boiling acid? like steam coming out of the green goop

I'm waiting eagerly for this GUI update

[OGG_OGG_OGG]

Ctrl+Click nearest rail/station.

If that means I can just click on any rail and the train will automatically go there that would be amazing. You could setup a stacker with trains at spawn and if you die you could easily hop in and press a rail on the map to get back. I'm not sure how I feel about the new worms/nests though. They seem a bit out of place to me. Compared to the rest of the game they seem too bright and too clean. Maybe it makes sense though since I'm comparing it to the textures of factories made by the player.

[Eiermann]

I love the idea of temporary train-stops. Even tho i still miss the ability to rename trains and a (filterable) list of trains. Playing vanilla with 20+ trains is pain. Configureable train-lines (one configuration + multiple trains) would be lovely and is still missing in the game - should be a standard feature in my eyes.

[Pinga]

Do the temporary go to station disable inserters during this stop?

Example: I use my Iron Ore train to travel to the Circuit factory, now my ore train is full or circuits?

[ExoY]

Will it be possible to hide the waiting conditions in the new train gui? (something like a little checkbox expande/ fold up)

So the gui for trains with a lot of stations in their schedule (e.g. Some sort of supply train) is more organized and near and it is easier to find a station to make changes and such...

[Avezo]

Why can't train fuel be in the same tab? It's annoying having to switch tabs just for such a small use case.

Also, it seems spitters don't have eyes? It's weird, they should see where they want to shoot.

[ethernal]

With train GUI we can see the cargo being filled up but we don't get the locomotive fuel supply status. This might help identify issues with missing fueling. Any plans to address that?