Friday Facts #284 - 0.17 experimental

[Klonan]

https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-284

[DaMetaEX]

that bitter attack thing. i agree it would be hard for new players. i went it doing what a new player would. i put alot of production into bullet and put them in my turrets but they got overwhelmed by the last 10% to the point where i was convinced it would be impossible for new players because the attack actually halted my iron production which could mean my science pack setup grinds to a halt all the while more and more bitters show up.

you see what i'm getting at? i lost my entire iron production during the final moments of the playable portion of the introduction. it could have ground to a halt leaving me at 99% and 4000000 bitters at my door. poor ai bot man had about 100 attacking him when it was all over.

[dee-]

dat gif

and congratulations for releasing 0.17

[CDarklock]

Since I am sure eight thousand people will show up to argue with your reasoning on the campaign, let me just say I was nodding my head at every reason you gave.

Looking forward to campaign updates in future patches... I have put about 30 hours into it so far, and it's still fun.

[AngledLuffa]

Congratulations on the new version and its quickly shrinking bug list! The new graphics are great.

I have greatly enjoyed starting over on an extra-hard deathworld and trying to build while at the same time piling dead biters to the top of my walls.

[Ranakastrasz]

that bitter attack thing. i agree it would be hard for new players. i went it doing what a new player would. i put alot of production into bullet and put them in my turrets but they got overwhelmed by the last 10% to the point where i was convinced it would be impossible for new players because the attack actually halted my iron production which could mean my science pack setup grinds to a halt all the while more and more bitters show up.

you see what i'm getting at? i lost my entire iron production during the final moments of the playable portion of the introduction. it could have ground to a halt leaving me at 99% and 4000000 bitters at my door. poor ai bot man had about 100 attacking him when it was all over.

That was pretty much my experience too. Ok, sure, scale it up with pollution. But, well, when the biters tear through your wall after you stockpiled a lot of ammo, and your power supply gets torn apart, something went wrong. If it scales with pollution anyway. That said, knowing it scales with pollution, there is hope at least. Namely, don't start the research until you stockpile a ton of ammo, and get all 100 or however many science packs and like 30 research labs..... Stupid gameplay traps.
I'll try it again, but eh, given that is apperently working as intended.... How the frak are you supposed to survive that?

[gyorokpeter]

Now I understand why the biter situation in the campaign was so "hard". I even had a faint feeling that somehow it is related to the research progress so I was proven right. However I think there should be something to indicate that the game is deliberately doing this to you and you are supposed to figure out how to overcome it, and this is not representative of the "real game". Otherwise a new player might get the impression that Factorio is a tower defense game and decide that it's not their game.
I also felt the lack of encouraging the player to try everything in the beginning part, as if I could only carry on with the game because I already knew how to play.

[Ratzap]

The biter behaviour now is much better, you have to actively go out and clear the ones in your cloud to stop wasting iron.

The only things missing from the stock game now are FARL and FNEI. I could live without the FNEI but laying track in stock is a pain.

[Charidan]

I agree with the FFF on this one: the campaign is much harder for veteran players than new ones.

As a veteran player in freeplay, I generally start games with 2-4 people, stick a pair of burner miners on coal and then quickly establish steam power and electric drills and inserters. I bypass burner inserters and burner drills entirely, and logistics finishes right when I'm establishing a smelting line to feed into a bus. The campaign doesn't work on this logic at all, and that's not a failing of the campaign.

In the 0.17 campaign when I was introduced to steam power, I looked at the placement of my ore patches and determined I would wait until I had undergrounds to properly automate. Splitters and undergrounds are entirely unnecessary except for a sort of future-proofing the campaign doesn't demand from you, but I hamstrung my own factory waiting for them. Some of this was because I didn't read the new science costs and realize that everything was 3x expensive as usual, but mostly it was veteran player obstinance.

When I first played Factorio in 0.13, I played the very first mission and optimized it to hell. Yes, the one where you have almost nothing but burner inserters. I made sure each and every one of my mines and inserters was supplied with coal. It was a beautiful array that looks like spaghetti to freeplay design sensibilities, but it was a fully automated construction pipeline from start to finish using burner inserters. No veteran player would ever consider establishing a burner inserter infrastructure that thoroughly, because they know that electric inserters are coming, and soon.

New players don't fall into the trap of waiting for what's coming next because they don't know what that is. They will engage with the mechanics they have, and do as much as possible with them.

[Ranakastrasz]

Now I understand why the biter situation in the campaign was so "hard". I even had a faint feeling that somehow it is related to the research progress so I was proven right. However I think there should be something to indicate that the game is deliberately doing this to you and you are supposed to figure out how to overcome it, and this is not representative of the "real game". Otherwise a new player might get the impression that Factorio is a tower defense game and decide that it's not their game.
I also felt the lack of encouraging the player to try everything in the beginning part, as if I could only carry on with the game because I already knew how to play.

yea. Its just.... I thought it was scaling up over time, and most likely scaled to research. So I kept increasing bullet production to keep up, made thick walls, etc. With the idea that, because this was a Tutorial, for new players, that it wouldn't actually throw enough at you to, ya know, deal with 20+ turrets on each side and 4 or 6 or however many assemblers I had making bullets. I had no idea that pollution was a factor here. If I had, well. I would have shut down my green circuit production and most of my copper mines, shut off my stone mines, and basically minimized my pollution profile. I had no idea that it was scaled such that at x% research, x% of your pollution budget had to go to making bullets. Seriously, who does that?

If it had said, "The pollution is agitating the biters. In this situation, minimizing unnecessary pollution is highly recommended" or something, I would have known what was going on.

In the normal game, if you ramp up your pollution, attacks increase, yes, and especially now. But nowhere near to the point where 100% of your production must go to military spending....

[Darkhogg]

Even the developers misquote "the factory grows", there is no hope.

[Ranakastrasz]

The biter behaviour now is much better, you have to actively go out and clear the ones in your cloud to stop wasting iron.

The only things missing from the stock game now are FARL and FNEI. I could live without the FNEI but laying track in stock is a pain.

Yea. It used to be like that, or so I thought. Very early game, you want to go kill any bases that start touching your pollution cloud, or are close to it, because attacks waste your time reacting, and waste resources. If you kill the base, it costs resources and time, sure, but the attacks stop. At least til you expand further and piss off more bases.

It scales the difficulty, more or less, based on your pollution. Of course, then I learned that the spawner pollution eating was completely broken, and I was actually making the situation worse. Now it works like it was supposed to, but any buffs given to the biter's spawning rate or w.e. weren't reverted, so you have like many times as many biters. One spawn per spawner instead of one spawn per chunk.

[CDarklock]

I'll try it again, but eh, given that is apperently working as intended.... How the frak are you supposed to survive that?

Minimal goal attainment. Don't build much more than you need. And use your awareness of upcoming attacks to plan ahead. Time is a resource, take some, use it.

I've seen other people do little turret "nests" with walls only around the turret. I want to experiment with how that differs from what I did, which was just to double-wall the whole path into the base. Also I want to try fewer turrets, and building an autofeed system. I think I can cover each side with a pair of three-turret groups surrounding a chest with burner inserters feeding them. Maybe I only need one group per side, even; I think I can exploit pathing AI to funnel attacks into a smaller space.

Another thing I did a lot of - leading to much longer play times - was to look for interesting, fun things to do before even attempting the listed goals. Like optional research, that sort of thing.

*sigh*

Saw the net/disk activity graph spike on Steam, and thought I just got the 0.17.4 update... but it was Stardew Valley. Still waiting I guess

[Durabys]

https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-284

Will we get Loaders in Freeplay? Have Loaders only work with filling up/emptying chest-types (wagons and chests). Everything else would need inserters.

[MoleOnDope]

Will we get Loaders in Freeplay? Have Loaders only work with filling up/emptying chest-types (wagons and chests). Everything else would need inserters.

I believe loaders/feeders are intended as tools for playtesting by the devs or modders, so they're deliberately not made for vanilla.
Inserters would be pretty much useless compared to loaders/feeders

[Ranakastrasz]

Will we get Loaders in Freeplay? Have Loaders only work with filling up/emptying chest-types (wagons and chests). Everything else would need inserters.

I believe loaders/feeders are intended as tools for playtesting by the devs or modders, so they're deliberately not made for vanilla.
Inserters would be pretty much useless compared to loaders/feeders

Loaders can't replace inserters. Assemblers at least do not need a while belt of resource input, and the mess of splitting a belt into 2 assemblers is something inserters are just plain better at.

Loaders would be good for loading/emptying chests, trains, and..... Thats about it. Rockets maybe?

[stretch611]

Thank you for releasing 0.17... Even though I will live in solitude like a hermit the next few weeks.

One thing, after looking at the release notes and the roadmap... What is happening with Spidertron?

[PaszaVonPomiot]

Congratz for 0.17!

[Nova]

I especially like the pictures of the different factories of players.

[christian]

I love the new difficulty changes. Please keep it. I agree about your point that the game should be pulling the player in all directions to prioritize. It's a great balancing act "challenge". Love it! Best devs I've ever known. Good luck Factorio Devs, hope you guys at least sleep this week haha.