Friday Facts #304 - Small bugs; Big changes

[Engimage]

This was the post you should not have made man

This is the point I have lost faith in you.

Good luck getting new players into your game. But never look back.

[V453000]

The biggest concern I could think of, is that with the new BOP, new players will skip AOP, as for reasons stated quite good in the last 16 pages (e.g. reserving not enough spacing). Sometimes they will need lube, so minimal AOP has to been set up. Probably cracking all LO to PG , as stated new players likely don't care much for ratios. Even worse with coal liquifidation there is a good posibility to de facto skip AOP by coal liquidation. Sure it's purple science, but red belts are working just fine and following your argument will new players even use bots? It's much more easy to spam refineries and pumps and a +25% bloated PG output than get into oil chain, esspecially if you remove the need to work with balancing completly from BOP. Futhermore it's more like the real advanced, because easy process is the new BOP. And of course you are forcing any expiriencd player to deliberatly create inefficent setups.
Edit: Cracking dosen't requires mandatory balancing, at worse you will be overflown by PG

They need it to some degree, and it needs to keep working to give heavy into lubricant. That's enough. It does need to be 5kSPM worth of oil, but it needs to work. The puzzle of AOP and coal liquefaction is the same so it doesn't really matter which one the player chooses.

You have to get lubricant somehow one way or another otherwise you can't access Utility science packs as they have flying robot frames in them. Since 0.17 Utility science does include the flying frames, a new player experimenting with robots is also quite a bit more likely than beforehand.

Using something inefficient is not a terrible things as it gives you room for improvement. A new player needs to be able to get through the game from start to finish in a reasonable manner, but that does not mean efficiently. That's what replaying and inventing new designs is for.

This was the post you should not have made man

This is the point I have lost faith in you.

Good luck getting new players into your game. But never look back.

This is very sad to read, mainly because I legit don't understand why would you say that. If that's just because I dare to disagree and try to post why, in hope of getting clear counter arguments, then I am sorry but I have to dare as the only alternative is leaving you without further argumentation or explanation, or obeying mindlessly.

[FuryoftheStars]

{...}

One idea that has some merit to me is that rather than delaying learning the multiple output, try making it so players have to handle it sooner. IE, make a regular assembler recipe, prior to oil, give two outputs.

This has the benefit of moving one of these 4 concepts to a stage of the game that has better visual feedback (as a lot of people are complaining that’s one of their issues) without having to actually change oil.

(And so yeah, for the record, I’m against even the heavy only out as this is really not much different.)

Edit: spelling

[V453000]

{...}

One idea that has some merit to me is that rather than delaying learning the multiple output, try making it so players have to handle it sooner. IE, make a regular assembler recipe, prior to oil, give two outputs.

This has the benefit of moving one of these 4 concepts to a stage of the game that has better visual feedback (as a lot of people are complaining that’s one of their issues) without having to actually change oil.

(And so yeah, for the record, I’m against even the heavy only out and this is really isn’t much different.)

This is an interesting idea but how exactly would this be done? Almost every step of the game already has something new to learn already, and oil/chemical science pack is immediately after green science. Such a multi-output solution would have to be in green science where isn't much room for it - changing logistic science pack does not sound like a great idea s the belt+inserter is IMO a great recipe as both of these things are incredibly useful. Earlier than green science is already a big thing for newcomers.

[conn11]

The biggest concern I could think of, is that with the new BOP, new players will skip AOP, as for reasons stated quite good in the last 16 pages (e.g. reserving not enough spacing). Sometimes they will need lube, so minimal AOP has to been set up. Probably cracking all LO to PG , as stated new players likely don't care much for ratios. Even worse with coal liquifidation there is a good posibility to de facto skip AOP by coal liquidation. Sure it's purple science, but red belts are working just fine and following your argument will new players even use bots? It's much more easy to spam refineries and pumps and a +25% bloated PG output than get into oil chain, esspecially if you remove the need to work with balancing completly from BOP. Futhermore it's more like the real advanced, because easy process is the new BOP. And of course you are forcing any expiriencd player to deliberatly create inefficent setups.
Edit: Cracking dosen't requires mandatory balancing, at worse you will be overflown by PG

They need it to some degree, and it needs to keep working to give heavy into lubricant. That's enough. It does need to be 5kSPM worth of oil, but it needs to work. The puzzle of AOP and coal liquefaction is the same so it doesn't really matter which one the player chooses.

You have to get lubricant somehow one way or another otherwise you can't access Utility science packs as they have flying robot frames in them. Since 0.17 Utility science does include the flying frames, a new player experimenting with robots is also quite a bit more likely than beforehand.

Using something inefficient is not a terrible things as it gives you room for improvement. A new player needs to be able to get through the game from start to finish in a reasonable manner, but that does not mean efficiently. That's what replaying and inventing new designs is for.

Sure but up until now you don't have to be inefficent. The oil wall is apparently a game quitting hassle, so it should be smoothend. Currently it's needed to progress to blue science, but with the new BOP the wall comes (mainly) at robots, wich are optinal. But wich drive would a new player have to overcome it, if they don't really know about robots in the first place? The new BOP teaches nothing about balancing or cracking into more useful products, so all of those mechanics are to be learned than, puls solid fuel making in nw BOP can't be used as balancing tool, but only as drain of the PG product. I don't really see a problem with the slightly more complex solution of basic cracking. It saves spave for AOP setups and hints new players to the need of balancing and processing. If 3 output seems to overhelming, than HO only is the perfect route (as for reason widly stated before). At least IMHO.

[morsk]

I wonder how many first time players actually use robots, too. I certainly didn't use them first time around, I didn't even know they exist and I had no idea that I need the storage chest for them. These things are better nowadays, but still. They are a powerful tool but completely optional.

I used them to build solar my first time, and felt solar & bots belonged together. Bots waste power, but solar lets them make more power. Solar is annoying to build, but the bots build it.

Why does it matter whether new players are using them the first time? New players make second maps too. Early bots are for anyone who wants early bots. The same with trains, or combinators, or feeding two coal miners into each other. It's not only for people who know how to do it the first time. At that rate, trains would require blue or purple science, and beacons and electric furnaces would take space science.

[V453000]

The biggest concern I could think of, is that with the new BOP, new players will skip AOP, as for reasons stated quite good in the last 16 pages (e.g. reserving not enough spacing). Sometimes they will need lube, so minimal AOP has to been set up. Probably cracking all LO to PG , as stated new players likely don't care much for ratios. Even worse with coal liquifidation there is a good posibility to de facto skip AOP by coal liquidation. Sure it's purple science, but red belts are working just fine and following your argument will new players even use bots? It's much more easy to spam refineries and pumps and a +25% bloated PG output than get into oil chain, esspecially if you remove the need to work with balancing completly from BOP. Futhermore it's more like the real advanced, because easy process is the new BOP. And of course you are forcing any expiriencd player to deliberatly create inefficent setups.
Edit: Cracking dosen't requires mandatory balancing, at worse you will be overflown by PG

They need it to some degree, and it needs to keep working to give heavy into lubricant. That's enough. It does need to be 5kSPM worth of oil, but it needs to work. The puzzle of AOP and coal liquefaction is the same so it doesn't really matter which one the player chooses.

You have to get lubricant somehow one way or another otherwise you can't access Utility science packs as they have flying robot frames in them. Since 0.17 Utility science does include the flying frames, a new player experimenting with robots is also quite a bit more likely than beforehand.

Using something inefficient is not a terrible things as it gives you room for improvement. A new player needs to be able to get through the game from start to finish in a reasonable manner, but that does not mean efficiently. That's what replaying and inventing new designs is for.

Sure but up until now you don't have to be inefficent. The oil wall is apparently a game quitting hassle, so it should be smoothend. Currently it's needed to progress to blue science, but with the new BOP the wall comes (mainly) at robots, wich are optinal. But wich drive would a new player have to overcome it, if they don't really know about robots in the first place? The new BOP teaches nothing about balancing or cracking into more useful products, so all of those mechanics are to be learned than, puls solid fuel making in nw BOP can't be used as balancing tool, but only as drain of the PG product. I don't really see a problem with the slightly more complex solution of basic cracking. It saves spave for AOP setups and hints new players to the need of balancing and processing. If 3 output seems to overhelming, than HO only is the perfect route (as for reason widly stated before). At least IMHO.

Being inefficient is far less of a problem than being stuck, and gives room to unlock more efficient solutions (see prod modules or enrichment process). The AOP wall is mandatory for Utility science or you can do it earlier for the reward of bots. That sounds like a completely reasonable choice to have - having a puzzle and a motivator for solving it.

[slay_mithos]

Funny enough, the ones that will suffer the most from these changes are new players and those slightly less new, all of the people that already struggle in learning how to defend against bitter attacks.

Until now the tips we could give them were along the lines of "use piercing rounds in turrets and put some walls, but try to quickly unlock laser turrets and construction robots (you don't need that many at the start so it doesn't matter if your factory is sub-par for making those parts just yet), those will help you make your base a lot safer and the robots will repair damage caused by the bitters and spitters, letting you earn enough time to safely research tanks, flame throwers and damage upgrades in order to have the tools to both defend and attack".
Now, the laser turrets and robots come much later and the turrets start significantly weaker as well, so good luck newer players, I hope you like running around with repair packs and grenades.

I'm pretty sure all of us more "experienced" players will figure out ways to negate the lack of solid fuel, laser turrets and construction robots by changing the order of some researches so it won't impact us all that much, but for newer players this will mean potentially a different wall.

Don't get me wrong, I'm completely in favour of easing the learning of the 3 output oil processing (because even with the new pipes and the solid fuel it is still a fairly big wall), but wouldn't it be a good idea to slowly introduce multiple output recipes, maybe starting with solid items first?
The mini-tutorials could/should have something like "here is how to handle 3 types of oil products and set automated solid fuel, later setting it to only work when the light/heavy oil are nearly full with pumps and circuit network".
This way of handling the fluids also teaches players about some extremely simple circuit network that will help them a lot when they reach later parts of the game as well (oil cracking, nuclear, more advanced stuff with inserters or trains...).

[conn11]

The biggest concern I could think of, is that with the new BOP, new players will skip AOP, as for reasons stated quite good in the last 16 pages (e.g. reserving not enough spacing). Sometimes they will need lube, so minimal AOP has to been set up. Probably cracking all LO to PG , as stated new players likely don't care much for ratios. Even worse with coal liquifidation there is a good posibility to de facto skip AOP by coal liquidation. Sure it's purple science, but red belts are working just fine and following your argument will new players even use bots? It's much more easy to spam refineries and pumps and a +25% bloated PG output than get into oil chain, esspecially if you remove the need to work with balancing completly from BOP. Futhermore it's more like the real advanced, because easy process is the new BOP. And of course you are forcing any expiriencd player to deliberatly create inefficent setups.
Edit: Cracking dosen't requires mandatory balancing, at worse you will be overflown by PG

They need it to some degree, and it needs to keep working to give heavy into lubricant. That's enough. It does need to be 5kSPM worth of oil, but it needs to work. The puzzle of AOP and coal liquefaction is the same so it doesn't really matter which one the player chooses.

You have to get lubricant somehow one way or another otherwise you can't access Utility science packs as they have flying robot frames in them. Since 0.17 Utility science does include the flying frames, a new player experimenting with robots is also quite a bit more likely than beforehand.

Using something inefficient is not a terrible things as it gives you room for improvement. A new player needs to be able to get through the game from start to finish in a reasonable manner, but that does not mean efficiently. That's what replaying and inventing new designs is for.

Sure but up until now you don't have to be inefficent. The oil wall is apparently a game quitting hassle, so it should be smoothend. Currently it's needed to progress to blue science, but with the new BOP the wall comes (mainly) at robots, wich are optinal. But wich drive would a new player have to overcome it, if they don't really know about robots in the first place? The new BOP teaches nothing about balancing or cracking into more useful products, so all of those mechanics are to be learned than, puls solid fuel making in nw BOP can't be used as balancing tool, but only as drain of the PG product. I don't really see a problem with the slightly more complex solution of basic cracking. It saves spave for AOP setups and hints new players to the need of balancing and processing. If 3 output seems to overhelming, than HO only is the perfect route (as for reason widly stated before). At least IMHO.

Being inefficient is far less of a problem than being stuck, and gives room to unlock more efficient solutions (see prod modules or enrichment process). The AOP wall is mandatory for Utility science or you can do it earlier for the reward of bots. That sounds like a completely reasonable choice to have - having a puzzle and a motivator for solving it.

agreed, in my first playthroughs i didn't touch circuits or train signals. The resulting factory isn't necessarly good but -somewhat- functional. But imagening a new player, who dosen't know the great benefit of bots and the expotential growth they bring, would there be any drive to continue? At this point hand placing items can get quite monotonous and your inventory is overflown by "trash" and finding produced items can get a little bit complicated.

Any solution with pre blue lubricant would fix it. For example introducing HO only. You stated, that it would add more basic steps. True, but nothing new, the player already learned that functional products (iron plate) can make an advanced product (steel). And it would at least introduce almost all solutions to the later aspects of AOP

[Engimage]

This was the post you should not have made man

This is the point I have lost faith in you.

Good luck getting new players into your game. But never look back.

This is very sad to read, mainly because I legit don't understand why would you say that. If that's just because I dare to disagree and try to post why, in hope of getting clear counter arguments, then I am sorry but I have to dare as the only alternative is leaving you without further argumentation or explanation, or obeying mindlessly.

17 pages of valid arguments pinpointing the real issues, and giving a ton of solutions how to deal with them. It just looks like you never read them or just did not want to consider and weight them being blinded by your own solution.

The overwhelming majority of forum users is against your solution. It is at least a bell to reconsider.

I do understand that forum users are not newcomers you want to please with this change. But going blindly against the majority of existing player base is definitely not something Wube was famous for.

And in your post all you do is say you do not like any of proposed ideas. No actual arguments just your subjective opinion.

All you did is actually discourage people from providing you with the ideas.

This is just my personal opinion and I will now go silent until this gets Kovarex approved and published. This will be a big decision point for me.

[V453000]

17 pages of valid arguments pinpointing the real issues, and giving a ton of solutions how to deal with them. It just looks like you never read them or just did not want to consider and weight them being blinded by your own solution.

The overwhelming majority of forum users is against your solution. It is at least a bell to reconsider.

I do understand that forum users are not newcomers you want to please with this change. But going blindly against the majority of existing player base is definitely not something Wube was famous for.

And in your post all you do is say you do not like any of proposed ideas. No actual arguments just your subjective opinion.

All you did is actually discourage people from providing you with the ideas.

This is just my personal opinion and I will now go silent until this gets Kovarex approved and published. This will be a big decision point for me.

I did try to point out why each of the solutions I have read and described in my post are not better than the proposed solution. Which solution would you prefer and how can you answer my problem with it?

We always listen to people and seeing disagreement is always considered very much. But it's arguments not mere disagreement that eventually convince us. All problems of a solution need to be answered otherwise it can't happen.

[Theikkru]

I'm not ready to let this go, because I think this is a case of killing a fly with a sledgehammer. I can agree that the current set of recipes makes for a rather concentrated wall of challenges for newer players, and I can agree with smoothing out the difficulty curve by shunting some of it to Advanced processing, but I think the FFF changes will shunt too many of them to advanced processing, and a very similar problem will happen then.

The fact that it's split (delayed) is a huge benefit - first time around you learn how basic pumpjack/fluid transport/refinery/chemplant works, and second time around you can actually do a puzzle as you already know the basic mechanics. Doing a puzzle AND learning the mechanics at the same time is the problem, and it's really not necessary to do both.

The issue I see here is that the introduction of pumpjacks/refineries/chemplants doesn't actually present a conceptual puzzle, because it only uses concepts that are already familiar to the player; they just use different buildings with different graphics. Effectively, with the FFF changes, this amounts to just setting up yet another assembly line, only the miners are pumpjacks and sit on oil fields, pipes are used instead of belts to move oil to the refineries, which behave exactly like furnaces, and then more pipes go to the chemplants that use the refined products (just like iron/copper plates) to make useful stuff. As others have pointed out, fluid handling and piping was already introduced with steam power, so that isn't new either.
I do not see this puzzle/problem alone as significant enough of a challenge to warrant its own stage in tech development, especially when compared to what awaits at advanced processing.

One of the less complicated but still contributing factors is that suddenly there is 5 different fluids that you need to do something with, and they go into plastic/sulfur/explosives on top of that. It's not complicated, it's just one recipe after another if you take it slow. But it's a many step process with many unfamiliar items compared to almost any other unlock in the game. I'm not saying all researches should only unlock one extra processing step, but oil has been too much for years and we have been trying to soften it since then.

This part I can get behind, because it's true that suddenly there's a metric ****ton of intermediate products and end products to set up all at once, which is again, not conceptually challenging, but just a lot to deal with all at once. Thus, I can agree with reducing the number of outputs and shifting some recipes in general, but not reducing the number of outputs to one.

I don't really understand the argument of "it's making the game simpler" and I feel like many people take it in the "git gud" way - "we understand it, make newcomers suffer too" (I don't assume all of people who posted this argument think along those lines, but I'm getting that feeling from many posts). Advanced oil processing is still completely mandatory to go through, it's just a bit later. The thing that changes is that you can access anything unlocked by Chemical science pack, but you can only get robots after you get Advanced oil processing going. You could say the puzzle and the reward is exactly the same as it was then - except cracking provides a solution to the oil puzzle other than adding storage tanks to fix the problem temporarily.

I am in the camp that it won't necessarily make the game simpler, but it won't distribute the challenges any better because it just shifts the hump to advanced processing. I think it's important to introduce the concept of output blocking during basic processing, because if you don't, then (new) players will assume oil refining to be a simple re-skinned assembly line, and plan their setup accordingly (i.e. not leave space for piping water, heavy, or light oils). This means that when advanced processing rears its head, players are faced with the prospect of tearing up their whole refining setup in order to restructure everything to accommodate all the extra fluids, and redesigning the chemplant piping to run off the 3 different outputs, all without bots. I don't see this as any less strenuous than having to set up oil in the first place. Delaying the introduction of output blocking to this point would therefore be no less frustrating, with the only saving grace being the immediate availability of cracking to fix it once discovered, and, as has been raised repeatedly, the biggest stumbling block is discovering the problem, not solving it.

Conversely, if players had to deal with 2 refinery outputs during basic processing and learned about output blocking early on, they would learn to avoid the problem before the complexity of advanced processing, the 3rd output, and all the associated recipes were introduced. Moreover, the presence of 2 outputs would strongly hint at the existence of a 3rd (just from the graphics and geometry of the refinery), giving them a chance to plan ahead and leave some space. In short, this would distribute the challenges and tasks much more evenly between the two stages, by keeping the critical conceptual stuff with basic processing, but shifting a lot of the busywork to advanced.

I've read many times the difference between getting solid fuel from petroleum gas and light oil. I think you massively overestimate how much a new player cares about efficiency, and how much should he. As long as the process runs, it's fine. New players also don't get 4 rows of full-belt smelting from the start, yet they still have fun and do progress in the game. However for now I did reduce the Petroleum gas price for solid fuel from 20 to 15.

I see this as more a problem for the justification of light oil than an issue of poor efficiency. Even with current recipes, a lot of people just crack everything except some heavy oil (for lubricant) down to petroleum and just run the recipes off it, just for simplicity. By itself that isn't a problem, but if there is no recipe that exclusively requires light oil, I guarantee that there will be a significant cross-section of the player-base that comes to the conclusion that light oil is a pointless complication and shouldn't be in the game at all.

Adding cracking with basic oil processing and having basic oil processing only output heavy or light I don't find to be a good solution. It would mean it just extends the refining process by one (in case of light oil) or two (in case of heavy oil) rather basic steps - when we already have a lot of basic steps.

Allowing the player to select individual recipes (heavy or light or petroleum gas only) would allow to completely avoid using Advanced oil processing. That's surely dumbing it down significantly. Adding flare stacks has the same effect of making Advanced oil processing completely optional additional complexity for more resource efficiency.

This I can also understand, which is why I advocated changing refinery outputs to two instead of introducing cracking early.

I believe Advanced oil processing should be mandatory to go through in order to finish the game, but it does not have to be when the player is completely new to the whole concept of oil. You didn't learn quadratic functions before learning to count on fingers either.

I think it's important to identify what it is about oil that makes it a challenging new concept; as I wrote above, I believe it is the introduction of multiple outputs that is conceptually most significant, and not the simple introduction of a new assembly line with different graphics/sprites. I can see why shunting some of the recipes to advanced processing would mitigate the hassle during initial setup, but I also think that it's important to introduce the output blocking concept alongside oil itself (especially since the different graphics/buildings will have primed players to be looking for such new concepts).

The remainder about bots and tech progression I will not address, since I personally do not see them as a significant issue.

[mmmPI]

I am quite surprised how many times I have read "the problem of multiple output refining is just delayed" in a bad meaning.

Yes because the game is very good !! , someone who thinks he done factorio because he could play 50 hours without getting stuck, and quit when comes the oil processing, since " i 've seen enough of the game this is for hardcore gamer" will miss something. The good feeling comes from solving puzzle, not doing multiple repetitive single tasks. ( bad meaning but with good feelings )

Allowing the player to select individual recipes (heavy or light or petroleum gas only) would allow to completely avoid using Advanced oil processing. That's surely dumbing it down significantly.

Not to select, to be forced to to have BOTH, so to deal with a "1 input 2 ouput", before dealing with the "2 input 3 ouput". ( and to prevent the single ratio thing)

I wonder how many first time players actually use robots, too. I certainly didn't use them first time around, I didn't even know they exist and I had no idea that I need the storage chest for them. These things are better nowadays, but still. They are a powerful tool but completely optional.

That's too bad too as 1rst point, the robots are super cool to use ! I wonder how many first time players wanted to play because they saw some of the super video with robots. I wanted to make massive robot base before i even tried to send a rocket in space even though in 0.12 they used to be like in the proposed changed, behing 250 or so blue science. That was getting robots that made me need to use oil, and gave me the motivation to try better setups.
There are many base building games out there, Factorio has this unique feel as it was not designed to punish you with tedious repetitve task when you try to build massive, instead, it helps you ! ( even though i find it funnier not to use them now ).

EDIT: was clear in my mind but didn't worded it, there is a problem in asking a player to rebuild a setup in order to get robots, since you are supposed to use the robots when times comes to scale things up/ rebuild.

It's very nice to hear different views and argument on the subject, hopefully given how Factorio is moddable, everyone will enjoy the game as much as i do

[FuryoftheStars]

{...}

One idea that has some merit to me is that rather than delaying learning the multiple output, try making it so players have to handle it sooner. IE, make a regular assembler recipe, prior to oil, give two outputs.

This has the benefit of moving one of these 4 concepts to a stage of the game that has better visual feedback (as a lot of people are complaining that’s one of their issues) without having to actually change oil.

(And so yeah, for the record, I’m against even the heavy only out and this is really isn’t much different.)

This is an interesting idea but how exactly would this be done? Almost every step of the game already has something new to learn already, and oil/chemical science pack is immediately after green science. Such a multi-output solution would have to be in green science where isn't much room for it - changing logistic science pack does not sound like a great idea s the belt+inserter is IMO a great recipe as both of these things are incredibly useful. Earlier than green science is already a big thing for newcomers.

I’m going to have to lean heavily on others for proposals on this as I am unable to get into the game today to look at existing techs and recipes to find a good fit. It could be as simple as redesigning a couple existing recipes, or it could require adding something new. I don’t think there are that many new concepts being learned in red & green science to where we can’t find the space.

[Serenity]

It just seems weird to have a 1 input -> 1 output recipe at this stage. That's too simple. And what happens to the other oils in that scenario? Purely theoretically they could be automatically flared off in the refinery, but then that should cause extra pollution.

The solution to only output heavy oil or light oil at this stage has a similar conceptual issue, but I feel that not outputting the most desired end product directly it a lot better. You get a slightly refined product and still have to do some steps to turn it into petroleum. And having access to cracking at this stage allows you to get rid of all excess oils, even if you don't do perfect ratios or use circuits. You'd no longer have to buffer fluids in tanks until later.
Giving HO and LO with BOP would work very well too. Then AOP is a step up by giving you petroleum directly and complicating the balancing a bit.

I already brought up the general complexity jump with plastic, red circuits and blue science. You need to build several setups and several have long crafting times. But simplifying the refining itself is not going to fix this. It just addresses the backing up issue, and not necessarily in the best way.

[_Attila_]

Well, it appears that all these pages of opinions were pointless and any more will be too. The decision seems to have been made and that will be that.

I'm sorry that I dare to post counter arguments or my general impressions, but please convince me otherwise about those points if you believe I missed or overlooked something.

If 16 pages here and a bunch more on other forums did not convince you, I don't think that any more posts saying the same thing will do any good.

I don't know how many new players will continue to play beyond oil after these changes, but I know that there will be many people who will have lots of their videos, blueprints, tutorials and mods made obsolete.

It is my understanding that old saves will not migrate well, so many people will be playing with the current version, offering no feedback on whatever comes after until they are ready to start a new game.

Such a fundamental change at this stage of development just seems very odd to me.

[Koub]

[[...]
17 pages of valid arguments pinpointing the real issues, and giving a ton of solutions how to deal with them. It just looks like you never read them or just did not want to consider and weight them being blinded by your own solution.

The overwhelming majority of forum users is against your solution. It is at least a bell to reconsider.

No matter if I'm pro or against the change, argumentum ad populum is not a valid way to prove you're right.
Or a billion flies can't all be wrong, and we should eat shit.

The devs do read us, but sometimes go against the majority. Not always, just sometimes. And I'm sure most of us have gotten used to all those at-the-time contrevorsial changes, and wouldn't want to go back. And if you've been here for around 3 years, you know that better than most.

[V453000]

First off, thank you for this post, it's great and to the point.

The issue I see here is that the introduction of pumpjacks/refineries/chemplants doesn't actually present a conceptual puzzle, because it only uses concepts that are already familiar to the player; they just use different buildings with different graphics. Effectively, with the FFF changes, this amounts to just setting up yet another assembly line, only the miners are pumpjacks and sit on oil fields, pipes are used instead of belts to move oil to the refineries, which behave exactly like furnaces, and then more pipes go to the chemplants that use the refined products (just like iron/copper plates) to make useful stuff. As others have pointed out, fluid handling and piping was already introduced with steam power, so that isn't new either.
I do not see this puzzle/problem alone as significant enough of a challenge to warrant its own stage in tech development, especially when compared to what awaits at advanced processing.

This part I can get behind, because it's true that suddenly there's a metric ****ton of intermediate products and end products to set up all at once, which is again, not conceptually challenging, but just a lot to deal with all at once. Thus, I can agree with reducing the number of outputs and shifting some recipes in general, but not reducing the number of outputs to one.

Indeed, and it does not have to be the big puzzle the first time around. Getting familiar with the basics and the recipes first can easily be the first step.

I am in the camp that it won't necessarily make the game simpler, but it won't distribute the challenges any better because it just shifts the hump to advanced processing. I think it's important to introduce the concept of output blocking during basic processing, because if you don't, then (new) players will assume oil refining to be a simple re-skinned assembly line, and plan their setup accordingly (i.e. not leave space for piping water, heavy, or light oils). This means that when advanced processing rears its head, players are faced with the prospect of tearing up their whole refining setup in order to restructure everything to accommodate all the extra fluids, and redesigning the chemplant piping to run off the 3 different outputs, all without bots. I don't see this as any less strenuous than having to set up oil in the first place. Delaying the introduction of output blocking to this point would therefore be no less frustrating, with the only saving grace being the immediate availability of cracking to fix it once discovered, and, as has been raised repeatedly, the biggest stumbling block is discovering the problem, not solving it.

Conversely, if players had to deal with 2 refinery outputs during basic processing and learned about output blocking early on, they would learn to avoid the problem before the complexity of advanced processing, the 3rd output, and all the associated recipes were introduced. Moreover, the presence of 2 outputs would strongly hint at the existence of a 3rd (just from the graphics and geometry of the refinery), giving them a chance to plan ahead and leave some space. In short, this would distribute the challenges and tasks much more evenly between the two stages, by keeping the critical conceptual stuff with basic processing, but shifting a lot of the busywork to advanced.

I think that inherently by having a puzzle after knowing the basic mechanics of the process, it already does distribute the challenge better. Indeed the multiple output process is the new problematic part.

The player does not absolutely have to redesign is his refinery and just add another one, but I do agree people are probably generally motivated to alter the existing one instead ... which is fine IMO.

The saving grace of having cracking to solve the blocking problem is quite significant as it feels much more as a legit and long-term solution than storing the excess in storage tanks.

This I can also understand, which is why I advocated changing refinery outputs to two instead of introducing cracking early.

But the conceptual issue of "multiple output process" is almost the same whether you use 2, 3 or 4 outputs. I really don't like cracking early as it just adds another 1 in 1 out (ignoring water but eh) recipe to the already endless tasklist of setting up oil.


Again, thank you for this calm post.

[conn11]

[/quote]
ignoring water but eh
[/quote]

a basic waterless cracking repice would take care of that. Maybe dependend of HO and LO or more easier with inefficent yields, wich would discourage usage after AOP. Much less of a slegdehammer, as exellently stated above.

[mmmPI]

No matter if I'm pro or against the change, argumentum ad populum is not a valid way to prove you're right.
Or a billion flies can't all be wrong, and we should eat shit.

The devs do read us, but sometimes go against the majority. Not always, just sometimes. And I'm sure most of us have gotten used to all those at-the-time contrevorsial changes, and wouldn't want to go back. And if you've been here for around 3 years, you know that better than most.

You can't read the XX amount of pages of new player not asking how to solve oil not working. Or that stopped playing because the game was too hard. I have friends that are not more stupid than me, they just don't want to think too much when they play a video games, they want to have fun fast. We don't play factorio together that's fine. Now i wish they were interested in factorio, but not to the point that factorio stop requiring some thinking they still my friends.

It's not "git gud" it's maybe snobbish, but it is a general tendancy for games to wider their audience by frustrating less persons, making it easier to set your hands on with tutorials will not answer the question for those friends you can't make them want to use their brain before the fun happens, i have talked a lot about that, some people just want to learn while doing, will never read tutorials and will look for a game they can have fun for a time/ master after lots of times spent playing like tetris.