Friday Facts #304 - Small bugs; Big changes

[Yandersen]

Feel obliged to join common screams about oil recipe changes. No need to wait for Monday to see the obvious negative change in the gameplay experience: the players will be forced to setup solid fuel production based on gas, and then rebuild the whole system to switch it to light oil once advanced recipe available. Meaning all the pipes will have to be replaced, chem plants reconfigured and so on. Cuz different fluids don't mix, right? Oh jeez, please don't give this one a go, devs, pleeeese!..


Really, if the reasoning behind this simplification change is that it will make the oil setup easier for the beginners as they may get lost with fluid output backup problems, then there is a better way: just let boilers run on any oil products - crude, gas, light and heavy. That is it - get rid of unwanted products by burning them for energy until better use come to mind!

Boilers run on oil products. Totally realistic. Common thing with mods. Not yet in vanilla. WHY.
Seriously: basic oil processing magically turns crude oil into petroleum gas? Nice idea. Totally makes sense, right. Teaches kids the basics of alien oil processing mechanics.

[BlueTemplar]

in general this [recommendation] keeps a need to learn the basics of the circuit network, but it reduces the puzzle complexity

Thankfully, I don't think that there's a need to ever learn circuit network in vanilla Factorio, petrochem can probably be dealt with with enough buffer tanks and cracking only ?

I'm not keen on the oil processing changes for two reasons:

• Postponing the complexity spike does no favours to the player. It's still going to hit at Advanced Oil, and probably worse as newer players will likely have built for the basic recipe, and will be blindsided by the substantial extra space consumed for Advanced's piping needs. This will require them to substantially rebuild their oil, and I suspect will lead to more quitting out of frustration than the initial learning curve around oil. Especially when you take into account...
• [delaying bots]

the players will be forced to setup solid fuel production based on gas, and then rebuild the whole system to switch it to light oil once advanced recipe available. Meaning all the pipes will have to be replaced, chem plants reconfigured and so on.

Well, it's already a bit the case today, considering how advanced also needs water...

For me the issue isn't the change. It is the fact that it does not seem to solve the underlying problem currently triggered by basic oil processing. It simply delays it to advanced oil processing, with more things going on and a more complex set of demands meet. Demands that hit all at once as advanced oil would be the only way to get light and heavy oil instead of gradually as advanced (heavy oil gets a use once lubricant turns up).

As others have mentioned, you're also just pushing having to learn to deal with multiple outputs to later, at a time when there's a higher demand for it to work correctly.

I don't know what the right solution is. I don't feel like this is it.

------------------------

I have to admit, though, I don't understand the complexity some feel as though oil is. I certainly didn't get it 100% right my first time dealing with it, but the game had already taught me everything I needed to know. Miners and assemblers taught me what happens when the output is allowed to back up. Everything has a running animation, so the flare stacks not running is a dead give away when the refineries are not running (I believe now, even, the backed up results are highlighted red in the gui).[...solid fuel...cracking]

As others have already said, Basic Oil as it currently is is bad because two lessons are suddenly thrust upon players - multiple fluid outputs AND production-halting if one output is full. Those lessons still need to be taught. The proposed change postpones BOTH lessons, which isn't ideal (as others have also pointed out). So why not split the two lessons up? Change it to the following :

You forget about the third lesson, which comes first : suddenly having to deal with a lot of complexity from pipe placement (much harder than the initial boiler setup, that many players might have already forgotten about at that point).

Does vanilla really need more dumbing down than it already has? Was there suddenly an influx of people complaining about this? Because it's odd how it didn't seem to be a problem years or even months ago.
[...]
I'd probably complain if mods weren't keeping the game afloat, but I just had to ask why now of all times this was seen as necessary outside of "difficulty" which is poor reasoning given how pipes can't even mix fluids anymore to cause the frustrations oil used to have. It's pretty idiot proof at this point.

"Why isn't my refinery working ?!?" (=>Because you don't have any space left for output.) is, like, in the top 5 of new player questions !
(Though I wonder how well the proposed flare stack would deal with this issue? Would having it unlocked at the same time, with relevant text, be a good enough tip?)

Currently every unit of blue science requires 75 units of crude oil to produce using basic oil processing. But, you also get a whole lot of extra light and heavy oil as a bonus. With the changes, you would have to produce 53 1/3rd petroleum gas per 100 oil. I would change the recipe to 150 crude -> 80 pet gas and leave the craft time at 5 to make up for the lost material. That would keep the crude oil / blue science ratio the same as before.

I haven't done the math for 0.17 yet, but I remember that in 0.16 you only needed a dozen pipes to store the excess fluids if you were beelining straight to advanced processing (this is for advanced players, of course...)

Trivializing the oil recipe is really a fun killer. Do you remember the fun you had in completing wow dungeon raids? Then they simplified it, now everyone can get their top gear easily but both the fun and the achievement value is gone.

Aren't you talking about end-game (and even past-end-game) features here? The Factorio equivalent would be past-rocket play : mods & megabases...

At this point I'm glad the modding community provides content that gives this game some depth, since vanilla keeps losing what initially brought me to it in the first place. I'm trying to recall when the last time something meaningful was added and not removed since it certainly feels like it was a while ago. (Nuclear perhaps?)

It's not like they are going to remove Advanced Oil processing...

We got the awesome (and optional) Rail-Building tutorials--why not make an equally awesome (and equally optional) Refineries Tutorial instead?

As many others have already said, tutorials are preferable to overly-simplifying everything. Circuits are a nightmare to master, but I certainly wouldn't want those affected because they're harder than most other things. Tutorials exist to provide knowledge and understanding of them, so there's no need to gimp them on the basis of being too difficult to figure out right away.

I generally agree with most posts in this thread about oil (also the delay of bots), but here's another angle on fixing the new players vs. oil thing.

You made a fancy tutorial system, it might be worth using that.

The first time a refinery backs up on the output, have the game prompt the player into a tutorial that runs them through a simple early refinery setup and hints that they could use the light/heavy for fuel blocks or tank it for later. Problem solved, no need to mess with balancing in any way. This was how we solved the train signal complexity problem wasn't it?

Oil tutorials would be great to have*, but a lot of people don't do the tutorials. (Or there would be less questions about signals.)
*(or at least game hints at start - there's already one about oil production backing up, but how many people don't turn these off?)

This all sounds great, especially the oil changes. I've been teaching my young nephews how to play and happened upon various situations in the tutorial (they only did the first part and wanted to play) which only careless kids can do and then still have to ask me questions or have me instruct on what they should've done since they didn't learn it properly by accidentally skipping it in the tutorial. The parts they did, they still had questions about because there was too much freedom and too many ways to inadvertently and incorrectly complete the tasks, so they moved on to the next thing without actually learning what they were supposed to.

Anyway, the oil changes will certainly make that part much easier to teach since they'll be dealing with two new things--oil, and in one pipe; and gas, out one pipe--rather than 5 and "why is this pipe here if we aren't using it...why do we need to not use it (for something we don't know about yet--advanced oil processing) and save it for later?"

Hear hear !

I really like the "sulphur byproduct from crude-oil refining" idea - much more realistic! Maybe this could be an additional recipe unlocked by Advanced Oil (made more efficient than the current sulphur recipe). Regardless, I'd really like the current sulphur recipe to change to something that makes more intuitive sense.

Yeah, or maybe easier, have sulphur come from heavy oil and heavy oil being the only output from basic processing, as already suggested.
(Though, yeah, there probably would need to be a "basic" cracking recipe that doesn't require water?)

You could make lubricant require crude as well as heavy oil to make. That would also solve the "Lubricant recipe is too simple." problem.

Note that all lubricant uses currently also require gas.

[SpiffyTriffid]

snip

The most simple fix in the world for this "problem" is to tell the player, at a higher volume than currently, "SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH YOUR SETUP, AND HERE ARE THE PARTS THAT ARE INVOLVED". Whether the solution is the outside voice of having a visual indicator, or the loud shouting of a flashing GUI message, the root cause is this: players do not understand what is wrong with their setup. It's not that they can't figure out how to fix the problem, it's that they don't know what the problem is to begin fixing it.
Give the player a good indication of what the problem is to let them fix it, instead of removing the problem completely! Wube, please do this right!

[frostig]

I am not a fan of the new oil processing. The only reason to do Advanced Oil is to get Heavy Oil for Lubricant. You can use a basic factory all game long and only build an advanced one for Lubricant. Better way would be to teach new players more clear that when one output is blocked that all other outputs will also not produce.

[Unknow0059]

Next week I wanna see you guys reaction to the community's reaction to your reaction to oil processing being a difficulty spike.

I like the oil change. I'm not a veteran player, I only have like 50h in, haven't ever got past oil processing. I just make solid fuel and don't use it. I now learned of alternatives but that's beside the point. It makes it easier to setup the pipes around the refinery when you can decide what comes out where, I really like that.

[Yandersen]

Will bump my solution again - let boilers also run on gas/light/heavy oil. Burn anything unwanted/excess in boilers for steam power. No more fluid backup problems then, easy for beginners. Vanilla need to learn from mods sometimes, IMO.

And just a side note, I think converting petroleum gas into sulfur looks weird. IMHO, the only difference by basic and advanced oil processing should be that advanced one produces sulfur as a forth output product. Yep, right in the refinery. At the cost of less output fluid products. So the basic and advanced will serve different purpose, unlike now, when the basic recipe is just a thing to quickly step over rushing for advanced. Note how coil liquefaction still being an alternative to switch to depending on conditions, am I right?

[Adamo]

Petroleum is just another name for Crude Oil...

I'm not sure whether you're agreeing that what I said makes sense because of this, or that you're saying this is something I didn't consider. Crude petroleum is the same as "crude oil", for sure, which is part of what motivated my suggestion.

And just a side note, I think converting petroleum gas into sulfur looks weird.

Agreed. Distilling refined petroleum gas from crude petroleum would leave the sulfur behind in the raffinate or the heavier oil products. To a first approximation, sulfur concentration is proportional to the average weight of the hydrocarbons. The petroleum gas would be the last place to try to pull the sulfur from of all the oils available in the game.

[BlueTemplar]

I just wanted to point out that some people seem to have misunderstood you?

[Yandersen]

The proposed change (luckily not implemented yet) made quite a stir in the community. Dear devs, please hold on implementing this one. Whichever problem you are trying to deal with this way, there must be a better option, better solution.

The reasoning behind this change was not explained, but my guess is that the oil setup stage of the game is comparably hard step for the new players to take, as it is easy to get lost in piping mess and fluid backup problems. The solution I may propose here is to let boilers run on gas/light/heavy oil also, so any unused/unwanted/excess products may be burned for electricity, which is on a steam power at the stage of oil setup anyway. Also, people proposed to add a popup tutorial hints about fluid backup problems once they first occur, so to give a new player some tips how to solve it (f.e., suggesting to burn the excess products in boilers instead of the coal).

[Koub] Merged into the FFF discussion from standalone trhead.

[gGeorg]

Hello Devs,

oil change proposal made me register and write an article.


Oil refinery
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I can understant effort to lower oil procces spike. However, the propose makes things worse. It not only keep the spike, but make it even higher. Higher spike happen later when transition standard to advanced comes.
Your proposal of new Oil process is easy, one pipe in, one pipe out.Work done right? Well, the difference difficulty from new simple standard to advanced >>> 2 pipe in & 3 out + chance of blocking other product is WAY higher. The new oil processing CREATES spike instead of smooting the spike. What would be the next step to reduce a spike, dumb down advanced oil too?

In case your target is smothing the process transtions of chain oil, then make smoother transition from zero to standard then to advanced so make it GRADUALY rising difficulty. In two steps.

Recomendation:
Option 1 : Add water as requirement for standard oil refinery.
Reasoning >
1. Transition from 2pipes in, 1 pipe out (standard) to advanced oil (2 in 3 out) is smoother. Therfore REDUCE spike.
2. Location of standard refinery requiring water could be different than refinery without water. e.g. Lats make requirement for input same, so the perfect location of standard and advanced refienery will be the same. Therfore chance that for transition to advanced oil will make to move my oil proceesing somewhere else is reduced. Therfore spike is REDUCED.

Option 2: Add water as requirement for standard oil refinery and produce only heavy oil.
Reasoning>
There are two major difficulty steps in oil a] piping and new products ; b] refinery stops becouse of one product overflow
It would be wise to separate each difficulty step for separate level of refinery.

Make standard oil production tech all the buildings available (cracking, 3 solid fuels, lubricant). So player has list of new building. All the building have one or two inputls but just one output. Easy to balance. It is one diffiiclty step.
Then add advanced oil. Second difficulty step, reguires some advanced design layout (and/or circuitry). Challenge to make advanced refinery work efficiently is enough reward to face 3 outputs issues. Advanced oil will be significantly efficient version of standard. e.g. you get all the fun with standard. You get all the challenge and bonus production with advanced.
This way difficulty spike is REDUCED becouse it is split between two GRADUAL STEPS.

Flamethrower ammo
--------------------------
In case you insist on over simplified standard oil, Keep the complexity for ammo.
3 ingerdients in, 1 product out.
Proposal:
1. Coal + Steel + Petrol = ammo
2. Wood + Steel + Petrol = ammo

Reasoning >
Keep complexity level. Do not dumb down the game!
Coal and wood are flamables. Both are used in chemical industry. It would be nice to have another usage for wood, more over cellulose can make interesting mixtures so adding wood into a flamethrower ammo is perfectly possible.

Laser damage
-----------------
Personal defence system is already total OverPower. I have battle suit with 7 defence systems. It allows me walk into totaly red screen (massive nest near a 15M patches) and walk and walk until all die. Its faster and cheaper then atomic bomb. Compare kill stat chart when using atomic bomb vs laser defence. Laser defence wins.
Recomedation >>
1. It is good you want to fix shoot spead, but keep the dmg on the same lvl. Or at least make power consumption higher so the ratio dmg/Joule is the same (or lower). Later on you could make personal defence system more power hungry. But dont change too much in one go.


Note: On top of mentioned issues, later logistic bots make gameplay more manual e.g. not fun.

I hope you postpone the oil changes to reach expected factorio quality first.

Best regards,

[Zeg]

This is getting to be a slightly off topic segment of these oil conversations, but...

And just a side note, I think converting petroleum gas into sulfur looks weird.

Agreed. Distilling refined petroleum gas from crude petroleum would leave the sulfur behind in the raffinate or the heavier oil products. To a first approximation, sulfur concentration is proportional to the average weight of the hydrocarbons. The petroleum gas would be the last place to try to pull the sulfur from of all the oils available in the game.

While I'd agree it's more realistic, this is certainly not a change that can exist on it's own. Imagine you want to make a ton of lasers using just sulphuric. Now you have the output backup problem for all 3 oil fluids, which is probably why sulphur is an 'end-of-line' product in the first place. I'd say changing to heavy oil would be feasible (though you'd probably need to keep current basic oil fractioning or maybe even shift it further toward heavy). Also maybe add advanced coal cracking too for later in the game... that should probably put out a bunch of sulphur.

[BlueTemplar]

A "basic" = blue science (EDIT : or maybe even green science, as an alternative to finding an oil patch??), inefficient coal liquefaction recipe would probably be nice to have !

I am not a fan of the new oil processing. The only reason to do Advanced Oil is to get Heavy Oil for Lubricant. You can use a basic factory all game long and only build an advanced one for Lubricant. Better way would be to teach new players more clear that when one output is blocked that all other outputs will also not produce.

Uh, but currently, it's the advanced processing that seems to be completely optional as far as new players are concerned... (New players generally don't have any idea or care about ratios...)

[RobertTerwilliger]

My biggest gripe is it teaching a bad lesson about how you make solid fuel efficiently. The new oil recipe forces you to make solid fuel from Petroleum until you have researched Advanced Oil Processing.

... and after you unlock new technology, you get obviously better way to do it than before, otherwise it'd be weird "downgrade tech".
Although new tech will probably murder all your previous efforts by forcing you to (oh my god!) reconnect inputs to another fluid pipe!

[userchron]

instead of oil changes just add oil burners, it will reduce the difficulty, while keeping a big part of the gameplay in takt.

[eradicator]

Without productivity modules it is 100% more efficient, with productivity modules, it is even more. This will be a motivation especially when oil shortage tends to be quite pressing problem in the mid game.

Like i already said, in end-game you need 2+ chem plants per refinery, so building extra pumpjacks probably costs less UPS. And it's also much easier to build bacon sandwiches for the simplified basic processing, which means less refineries total.

[jodokus31]

The more i think about the oil change, the more i dislike it, because:
- Basic oil processing produces the most useful oilproduct. You almost don't need anything else, apart from a tiny bit of lube for bots.
- It depends on map settings, whether advanced oil processing is needed. Basically, if you crank up oil, its way better to just use basic processing and beacon the crap out of it.
- The move to advanced seems to be more difficult than ever. Additionally, you have to tear down solid fuel from petro. There have to be an even bigger motivation to use it, than just 100% more output, making it the best option in every case.
- construction bots behind blue science feels painful.

If you want to decrease difficulty for beginners, you should also revise the "default"-settings. Resources are nice, but biters are sometimes too close.
Additionally, the lowest frequency settings for resources doesn't have much impact. IMHO it should generate much less patches.

[XFFmaxXFFrus]

You decided to make the basic recipe processing only the gas, but it greatly simplifies the game, Vit I it gas and not enough on the base so I can put a lot of plants with the basic recipe and put them a huge amount of oil.
I think it's better to do it through the quality of cleaning and make 3 recipe:
basic 10%, advanced 45% and full 90% of the total output and input.

[Serenity]

The more I think about it, the worse it feels. The whole point of oil processing in general was already to turn most of it into petroleum. You need some heavy and/or light for solid fuel and lube, but that's it. The most needed thing has always been petroleum for plastic. And now you don't need oil for flame thrower ammo either (but I guess turrets still use liquids. That's inconsistent).
So it wasn't already terribly complex in the grand scheme of things to begin with. I long wished there were some more complex oil production later on. Maybe something to combine a metal and oil products.
With basic oil processing already fulfilling most of your needs, advanced is indeed not an improvement. The whole point was that it gave you better ratios and cracking. Now many people won't build large cracking plants anymore and just use basic for most stuff. Is that really a good idea?

Also, yeah, putting new people on a track to use make solid fuel from petroleum is not good. That different oil products are more efficient sources of SF is not that obvious. And being required to tear down the initial SF piping to switch to a different input is not good either

But I guess there will be mods to revert this change.

[Yandersen]

Yeah, later bots just prolongs the painful construction-by-hand-phase. Would be nice if the devs will remember that someone has put some lore in the base of the game long time ago. Would be nice to start with a few slow construction robots that do not need charging (to let them operate without personal roboport and modular armor) just to give a "crippled" hand until robotics come.

[sosofly]

so..
the new change make the advanced circuit 、blue science pack 、advanced oil processing productions can only build by hand
they almost 3 times bigger than science pack 1 and 2
you call them "easier"？？