Friday Facts #305 - The Oil Changes

[Gullyn]

And there you have it. Only one dev was willing to discuss this major change with the community. That should remove any doubt that this was a dog-and-pony-show.

I mean, I wouldn't exactly be enthusiastic to engage with the doom and gloom that's happening in this thread as a dev...

Indeed. The Chicken Little responses are a strong incentive NOT to allow people EA to a game title. Not a single one of the complaints levied against this change would even exist if the game was simply presented when complete as 1.0 and nobody had ever known a BOP recipe other than this.

Besides, they explained their positions on the issue in the FFF. People are welcome to make their arguments for or against it, and if a particular response merits enough interest from a developer, yet needs more information to properly discuss among themselves, I'm sure they'd ask.

Let's not pretend that simply by continuing to yell about it, that Wube has to repeatedly write FFF and forum posts until there's some sort of player consensus on the matter.

I think my comment is being misconstrued. Wube should just make the game the way they want to and stop the false pretence that they want or desire community feedback. These changes should've simply been released before the FFF, not after hundreds of person-hours of discussion. I felt the same way with the potential bot-nerf.

[JCav]

And there you have it. Only one dev was willing to discuss this major change with the community. That should remove any doubt that this was a dog-and-pony-show.

I mean, I wouldn't exactly be enthusiastic to engage with the doom and gloom that's happening in this thread as a dev...

Indeed. The Chicken Little responses are a strong incentive NOT to allow people EA to a game title. Not a single one of the complaints levied against this change would even exist if the game was simply presented when complete as 1.0 and nobody had ever known a BOP recipe other than this.

Besides, they explained their positions on the issue in the FFF. People are welcome to make their arguments for or against it, and if a particular response merits enough interest from a developer, yet needs more information to properly discuss among themselves, I'm sure they'd ask.

Let's not pretend that simply by continuing to yell about it, that Wube has to repeatedly write FFF and forum posts until there's some sort of player consensus on the matter.

I think my comment is being misconstrued. Wube should just make the game the way they want to and stop the false pretence that they want or desire community feedback. These changes should've simply been released before the FFF, not after hundreds of person-hours of discussion. I felt the same way with the potential bot-nerf.

On the contrary, I know exactly what you meant - and I suspect Astrella did as well. I flatly reject your position that this is a "dog-and-pony-show" and consider it to be extremely insulting to Wube. The argument of "I don't like this change, and agreed with others who don't like it, but they did it anyway and therefore they had no intention of ever listening to us" is utterly fallacious.

[mmmPI]

In the old way though, depending just how much lube you were after, you could run a mix of basic and advanced processing.

I always just ran advanced completely and had a circuit-controlled cracking setup attached to it myself.

I usually have most of them AOP but still some BOP that i fully crack when i don't need lube and i transform some of my PG to solid fuel only when i need more lube. (automatically with circuit so i never really see the inefficencies unless my chem plant that get rid of PG are overloaded , which i know happens when i build blue belts a lot in a short time) And i rarely go for coal liquefaction, i like train, i prefer getting many oil field.

I am not only seeing the value of ressources but the lazyness i have and some behavior i see a lot in multiplayer which consist in copy pasting self sufficent blueprint design.

With the new process i will try and see if i can make a box that gets the minimum number of different input, and produce what i need without byproduct.

The 1 in 1 out receipe for ref feels cheaty to me for that reason, (a bit like when you vent every undesired gas with bob's mods at the cost of much energy instead of collecting them and reusing them in other process you only do 1/2 of the logistic and don't deal with backlog) Wether it is Heavy oil or PG i dislike it.

You can make a deadlock free oil blueprint that is inefficent and produce only plastic without water, only coal and crude. And copy paste the same one 10 times. You may/may not make a deadlock free oil blueprint that is inefficient and produce only solid fuel. same for sulfur. Knowing me i'd rather do that because i think it look better on the map many small square , each having its own station , its little train and stuff, i have time to spend but what about on a multiplayer server, one person join, get tasked to increase plastic prod, copy paste the gameblueprint alongside the crude pipeline, done.

If you can't make those setups though, you need like atm one way to sink the fluid you have in excess, cracking is good but assume everything we need is at the end of the chain , made from PG.

If sulfur was to be made from heavy oil, you would need a way to sink both PG and LO, or a process that produce only HO, or in a case of a process that produce only HO+LO, you would need a receipe that does LO+coal= HO, or LO+crude = HO. So that you have a way to either make plastic or sulfur late game.

I am not sure what make the most sense/would be easier to understand/make the gameplay better. ( or even if i'm overlooking something).

EDIT: if you fiddle around with a receipe to produce HO+LO in a basic oil processing, maybe introduce a way to crack LO=>PG, unlocked at the same time as plastic given the 17.60 tech tree. ( this way it could replace the crude in=> PG out , still trying other alternatives x) ).

[zenos14]

This is a disappointing development

[tangopianista]

I noticed basic oil processing changed before reading FF, and found it really convenient, wondering why I hadn't thought of it myself. Every time I set up oil, I've gotta make a big tank array for all that extra liquid, which is a distraction from the learning curve (for myself too, since I take long breaks and relearning it is part of the fun).

IMO You should get MUCH more petroleum during basic processing. 45 units is less than a 2:1 ratio from crude. That's almost an insult. If you want to help the oil learning curve, be a bit more generous with resources, maybe.

Sulfur makes more intuitive sense for chemical science pack.

I understand the motivation for putting bots in chemical science, but it feels like an artificial limit. In real life, automated construction robots would obviously be largely a matter of logistic, computer science technology, not chemistry. If blue science needs more enticing technologies, make them feel more like actual chemistry problems.

If you're going to delay bots any more, you REALLY gotta put in early construction bots!

[Ranakastrasz]

Gotta say, I love how they are changing this. Oil was always a massive step in complexity. Cutting it into smaller pieces is a good thing.

That we are also getting more flexable liquid outputs, and maybe inputs, is icing on the cake, since people have wanted that for ages.

[conn11]

As of .17.60 the newBOP changes are drastical and might even feal cheaty by expirienced player, but considering that there are two things which are making Factorio great:
1) easy to learn, hard to master: E.g. it isn't that hard to set up an spagetthi starter base, developing it to a x rpm/spm Megabase; a bit more complicated.
2) nonlinearity: you get the general direction launch a rocket, but it's optional to use many (amazing) mechanics like trains, real train networks, bots, circuit network
Keeping that in mind, newBOP as in .17.60 fits quite well in this philosophy, as you will need AOP or Coal Liquidation (CL) later. By just adding a bigger flare stacker animation an the refinery, it could be fixed thematically. Any major upgrade annoyances to AOP could be avoided by using blocked output fluid boxses.
Nonetheless one of the biggest concern so far, seems to be the danger of duming oil down (for reasons quite well explored in the 60+ pages of forum). On the other hand oil really seems to be a game quiting experience for a relevant fraction of would be factorians, witch generally indicates poor design.
How do we now balance between the two concerns, to achieve the best result for new players and the veterans? I suggest by making AOP even more relevant: HO is only used by lubricant, but Lubricant this is crucial for bots and blue belts. So the real question is how to make LO (with 45/5sec. gained from AOP) more relevant than just efficent SF. IMHO the change in the rocket fuel repice is the way to go.

For some ad hoc examples:
-nerf crude Oil Flamethrower fuel to 90% of its "power" and reindroduce the old repice as advanced version with buffed states (110%) or longer flame effect on target and call it Napalm maybe even add some plastic.

-Or use a variant of the atillery shell with the old flamethrower recipe instead the cannon shell for some long range deforrestation

I'm sure many more exampels could be found, to not only make AOP just more efficient (and than effectifly crack down the majority of LO and maybe HO to PG), but more relevant. And like others said before, with relativly small amaounts of HO, coal liquifidation might become much more prevalent in late game. Plus consodering a possible future oil and advanced oil tutorial to help this transition to AOP and CL.

Furthermore since bots pre blue science seem to be almost madatory for a relevant subgroup of players, it should be considerd to add oldBOP as (tweaked PG poor) "intermediate Oil Processing" for example researchable after newBOP back in game. Though I'm unsure if this would maybe be disfavorable from a balancing aspect and/or seriously consider to make Nanobots or the Construction Drones mod by Klonan Vanilla. After all complexity isn't the problem (quite the contrary) accumulation of it is.

[Antaios]

On the other hand oil really seems to be a game quiting experience for a relevant fraction of would be factorians, witch generally indicates poor design.

Oil is a game quitting experience because blue science is the first time a player has to start putting in serious effort to continue their factory. Red, Green, Military science are all negligible in comparison to blue, and the first time going out exploring, setting up outposts/trains/defences in the red/green era is interesting and fun, not particularly puzzle-y, more game-y.

It's natural that when the game starts requiring a certain amount of effort in it's problem solving, some players are going to quit - these are players that would never likely finish the game in the first place however. If they couldn't stand the effort to setup blue science, they don't have much hope of setting up larger smelting, purple or yellow science, later defence requirements, or continuing outpost building.

[Tricorius]

There's been big sweeping changes before all we all lived through them. At the end, to launch a rocket you still need to balance multiple oil outputs. This is what experimental patches are for, to explore concepts and see how they actually work in gameplay.

While true, the current result of .60 is that veterans have to wait longer for tools we might prefer and newcomers learn the “wrong” way to handle oil and are likely to build out a sub factory to deal with oil that leads to future error messages and almost guaranteed restructuring of the one type of resource in Factorio that when you pick up disappears.

I don’t think that is a good user experience. And the entire proposed reason for this change was the new player experience.

(And yes, I played through a quick run up through basic oil. I fully admit I’m biased, but I did feel not having construction bots as soon as I normally do. I don’t even rush to cracking as I don’t mind some slight inefficiency as long as my factory is plugging through. But this actually did make me rush through to advanced oil. I assume that is an intended consequence.)

[BlueTemplar]

Are we basically witnessing a cynical process in which the game attracts a certain kind of audience who happily pay for the experience offered and then the game is gradually made less complex (e.g. removing recipe input limits on low level assemblers) in order to accommodate a more casual audience and bring in new money? (thinking face emoji)

You realize that they have bills/salaries to pay, right ?

If Wube was *really* cynical and "just about the money", they would have declared the game "done" mid-2016 (and stopped working on it), calling 0.13 = 1.0, and fixing only the 20% of the bugs causing 80% of the issues...

[Tricorius]

I may not agree 100% with all the changes, but, looking at it from vanilla perspective only, it makes about 95% on my sense meter. most of me disagreeing with the changes stem from "I'm used to the old version" and "I'll have to make changes to my mods."

Heh. Yes. We developers tend to be an opinionated bunch. And frequently have to make compromises that leave no one on the team fully happy with the end result.

Personal attacks against anyone are bad form. (Also, this creates a toxic community where the individuals—developers and community members alike—think twice before jumping into a discussion.) I understand emotional responses, but it disappoints me to see individuals called out. We have *no* idea what is on the other side of the screen. (Bob and a few others get a small peek into thee inside.)

I still love Factorio. And always will. And consider the dev team to be one of the best in the industry. But I’m used to the way I do things too....now get off my refinery lawn, dammit! All of you...at least what is left of the lawn...looks like some of it has died from pollution.

[conn11]

On the other hand oil really seems to be a game quiting experience for a relevant fraction of would be factorians, witch generally indicates poor design.

Oil is a game quitting experience because blue science is the first time a player has to start putting in serious effort to continue their factory. Red, Green, Military science are all negligible in comparison to blue, and the first time going out exploring, setting up outposts/trains/defences in the red/green era is interesting and fun, not particularly puzzle-y, more game-y.

It's natural that when the game starts requiring a certain amount of effort in it's problem solving, some players are going to quit - these are players that would never likely finish the game in the first place however. If they couldn't stand the effort to setup blue science, they don't have much hope of setting up larger smelting, purple or yellow science, later defence requirements, or continuing outpost building.

This is quite plausible, after all no everybody wll enjoy the game. But having a (at beginning) convuluted oil on top of that, isn‘t helping the fraction of new players, who might get post Blue science. Also to change BOP is less invasive than to simplify blue science. The jump from linear to almost exponetial factory gworth is a memorable feature. As I‘ve pointed out though working for early game, is BOP significantly dumbing mid to late game down, and if this is the case what could be done about it.

[Antaios]

This is quite plausible, after all no everybody wll enjoy the game. But having a (at beginning) convuluted oil on top of that, isn‘t helping the fraction of new players, who might get post Blue science. Also to change BOP is less invasive than to simplify blue science. The jump from linear to almost exponetial factory gworth is a memorable feature. As I‘ve pointed out though working for early game, is BOP significantly dumbing mid to late game down, and if this is the case what could be done about it.

Except oil isn't convoluted, it is quite logical and all the information the player needs to understand it is at their fingertips, even more so with future gui enhancements, and hopefully if we get more/better feedback on fluid flow in pipes and tanks.

viewtopic.php?f=38&t=73684&p=445760#p445760

[julius33]

DISCLAIMER: I have played Factorio 400 hours and have only built couple bases which have launched rockets(plural).
So, i played a little with the new oil in a fairly new game.

As the update dropped, i had automated red, green and military for 45 spm for my new base, had established a pump jack outpost and built my first 2 refineries which were making flamer ammo from the heavy and light oil. The update dropped, so i removed the flamer fuel facilities. Now all I had to do was slap down chemical plants next to my plastic production and bring water over there and used the same belt as plastic to transport the sulfur. And then I spent the first 75 chemical science packs on advanced oil processing out of habit, however, I don't feel like i need to set it up right away.

I'd say this change is a welcome one: As someone pointed out earlier in the thread, with nice pictures as well(thanks whoever you were) it reduces the overwhelming amount of stuff that starts happening at the dawn of blue science: building outposts to bolster waning resources of the starting base, defending against the growing threat of biters and medium biters, getting more smelting because blue science takes a ton, especially the steel part, and setting up blue science itself, which takes so many more assemblers. I really enjoyed not having the headache of dealing the the extra crap that comes out of the refinery early on, even though the flamer fuel is a somewhat elegant solution - you can stockpile it for later anyway.

I really don't think this change dumbs down the game - Advanced Oil Processing is still required. I find this change removes tedium, which is nice. Being complex for the sake of being complex is not a merit in itself. The first 100 hours of the game I vaguely remember abandoning my games/saves simply because the oil part of the base becomes incredibly tedious incredibly quick with all the pipes cluttering the place and needing many refineries to have enough petroleum and so forth(and having to crack most of it or stockpile).

The change sure pushes the difficulty wall further up the science packs for sure, but I'd argue it's for the better, because a lot of the cool stuff is locked behind blue. Now you don't have to climb a cliff to get to power armor, which for me is probably the most fun part, also you can start experimenting with nuclear AND, what i think is really important, is it makes producing explosives also less of a headache, because you are simply running a single pipe to everywhere and can more easily produce most of the crap you unlock. Also, producing more petroleum now means plopping down a refinery, instead of an industrial complex so that you can crack the byproducts into petroleum.

If I really wanted to stick with the crowd here and complain about something:
Solid fuel is stupid: you can use it, or "upgrade" it, but that's about it? Lubricant is even more stupid because it takes only heavy oil to make, so why not just use heavy oil in the electric engine and blue belts? I'd argue you could make the lubricant and solid fuel part more complex now seeing as they are pushed further back. Also, why are there sooooooooooooooooooooooooooo many researches in red/green science? I feel like they could be spaced out a bit more.

Anyway, thanks to the devs for the change and for reading, I think this change is for the better.
(Also the entitlement to their opinion is very strong in this forum, to the point that even I feel like someone is choking me with their opinion, and I'm not even on the dev team )

[conn11]

This is quite plausible, after all no everybody wll enjoy the game. But having a (at beginning) convuluted oil on top of that, isn‘t helping the fraction of new players, who might get post Blue science. Also to change BOP is less invasive than to simplify blue science. The jump from linear to almost exponetial factory gworth is a memorable feature. As I‘ve pointed out though working for early game, is BOP significantly dumbing mid to late game down, and if this is the case what could be done about it.

Except oil isn't convoluted, it is quite logical and all the information the player needs to understand it is at their fingertips, even more so with future gui enhancements, and hopefully if we get more/better feedback on fluid flow in pipes and tanks.

viewtopic.php?f=38&t=73684&p=445760#p445760

As the circuit networks is almost by definition logical, but not often touched by beginners. I agree oil balancing is not only logical, but fun. Therfore practically nobody is suggesting to change AOP significantly. But oldBOP with only SF to balance (considering mass storing, brute force solution), without use of circuit conditions is quite challenging. I’m not sure some UI changes would have fixed that (I‘m not saying they with some Oil tutorials should not be implemented). The best compromise seems to be a smoother introduction into oil, with the potential to make HO and LO more relevant in the later game, wich is adding to the puzzle in a positive way.

[Antaios]

I'd say this change is a welcome one: As someone pointed out earlier in the thread, with nice pictures as well(thanks whoever you were) it reduces the overwhelming amount of stuff that starts happening at the dawn of blue science: building outposts to bolster waning resources of the starting base, defending against the growing threat of biters and medium biters, getting more smelting because blue science takes a ton, especially the steel part, and setting up blue science itself, which takes so many more assemblers. I really enjoyed not having the headache of dealing the the extra crap that comes out of the refinery early on, even though the flamer fuel is a somewhat elegant solution - you can stockpile it for later anyway.

I really don't think this change dumbs down the game - Advanced Oil Processing is still required. I find this change removes tedium, which is nice. Being complex for the sake of being complex is not a merit in itself. The first 100 hours of the game I vaguely remember abandoning my games/saves simply because the oil part of the base becomes incredibly tedious incredibly quick with all the pipes cluttering the place and needing many refineries to have enough petroleum and so forth(and having to crack most of it or stockpile).

The change sure pushes the difficulty wall further up the science packs for sure, but I'd argue it's for the better, because a lot of the cool stuff is locked behind blue. Now you don't have to climb a cliff to get to power armor, which for me is probably the most fun part, also you can start experimenting with nuclear AND, what i think is really important, is it makes producing explosives also less of a headache, because you are simply running a single pipe to everywhere and can more easily produce most of the crap you unlock. Also, producing more petroleum now means plopping down a refinery, instead of an industrial complex so that you can crack the byproducts into petroleum.

This is a perfect example of something I said in a previous post, that people are initially inclined to like any change that makes things easier, simply because it's easier.

I made that post, by the way and it does not advocate that these things happening at green/red science are actually a problem but merely a cause for the scapegoating that oil gets.

There is very little 'extra crap' the old basic oil processing has you actually having to deal with. A few tanks, that's it. People set up advanced oil processing and cracking early once they have played a few times out of habit, in preparation, but it is entirely unnecessary. It takes 1100 blue science, or 1600 advanced circuits, or 1100 batteries to be created before the tanks fill up, and that's if you're not even using any light or heavy oil whatsoever, which blue science used to.

Further, those things you're dealing with would benefit from technologies available via light or heavy oil at that time. Defending against those medium biters? why not the ability to start making some laser turrets. Building large smelting arrays? why not some early bots. Modular armour at this point is only really useful for nightvision and perhaps a shield or two, any other uses require the other oil products, besides, the combat progression is usually tank -> power armour, except the tank is behind blue science. There is no more of a 'wall' to power armour than there previously was, unless you consider plonking down 2 tanks a wall.

And moving that basic refinery setup down later creates other problems during purple and yellow, dulls that time of the game and forces rapid progression and far more tedium there than there previously was during red/green, especially as you have to start rapidly ramping up of oil products you haven't even started making yet.

Your tedium issue with the old system could have been solved by rebalancing the basic oil processing recipe alone, to give less heavy and light oil, and perhaps a little more petroleum.
And any issues with not having the 'solution' for oil early enough even after that could be solved by making cracking a green tech, whilst keeping advanced oil processing a blue one.

As the circuit networks is almost by definition logical, but not often touched by beginners. I agree oil balancing is not only logical, but fun. Therfore practically nobody is suggesting to change AOP significantly. But oldBOP with only SF to balance (considering mass storing, brute force solution), without use of circuit conditions is quite challenging. I’m not sure some UI changes would have fixed that (I‘m not saying they with some Oil tutorials should not be implemented). The best compromise seems to be a smoother introduction into oil, with the potential to make HO and LO more relevant in the later game, wich is adding to the puzzle in a positive way.

I can only surmise you did not read the link I posted as to why none of the old basic oil processing is overly challenging.

[Klonan]

This is a perfect example of something I said in a previous post, that people are initially inclined to like any change that makes things easier, simply because it's easier.

The opposite is also true, people are initially inclined to dislike a change simply because they are used to the status quo.

[Antaios]

This is a perfect example of something I said in a previous post, that people are initially inclined to like any change that makes things easier, simply because it's easier.

The opposite is also true, people are initially inclined to dislike a change simply because they are used to the status quo.

I might agree sometimes, but you can usually tell by the things said by the people liking and diskiking.
Generally, someone who dislikes something purely because it's different will not have very good arguments as to why the change is a bad thing, they'll boil back to 'I don't like change', and similar is true for people liking easy things. I think the breadth and depth of the discussion against this change rules out a good portion of people disliking it simply because it is different.

[Garie]

I hate the fluid mechanics: a T-Junktion not work as 50:50 'splitter'. If this issue isn't fixed, all science changes makes no scence.
More fluids for rocket launch works not in that favor.

[Oktokolo]

I hate the fluid mechanics:

New fluid mechanics are planned but did not make it in the game yet.