Friday Facts #351 - Beacon re-redesign & Simplified fluid mixing

[FactorioBot]

Here it is! (beep boop)

https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-351

[Kladdey]

Fluid flushing button - I love you guys <3

[Gergely]

Somehow, as a player, I would still prefer the fluid mixing prevention.

I don't know why.

Also, you don't have to add visible module slots to all entities. But you could instead make graphics of modules being attached to them some form or another. There are no slots expecting modules. They are simply an addon. An upgrade of sorts. However, definitely enable mods to do that. Let mods add module graphics to any entity that can accept modules

[MbraY]

Wow, i just love the new beacon redesign, not too aggressive and blends in fine, also love those visible module thing. Good job devs!

[AlmightyJu]

Now that is a beacon redesign I can get behind, it's there but not in your face and show the modules is a fab little extra.

[Klonan]

Somehow, as a player, I would still prefer the fluid mixing prevention.

I don't know why.

The mixing is still prevented in the most common cases,
It just the cases like a mod defined fluidbox connection force placed with a rotated blueprint of a upgradeable entity of another force during a full moon will not longer mix and force a crash.

Instead if there is some really weird case where its not easy to prevent the mixing, it will mix and you can just fix it as the player.
No more edge cases to detect and prevent, no more blocked underground connections, no more overly complex solution to something that is only ever an extremely rare case.

[ixnorp]

The thought process behind redesigning beacons is being hamstrung by calling them "beacons". That implies they're attracting attention to themselves and that they're the important entity rather than broadcasting some sort of information or radiating some kind of power. It's probably way too late to consider a name change but beacon always did strike me as a silly name for what it does.

The new design does look really cool though. I love the way you've integrated the modules into the entity's visual appearance even though that's going to drive modders mad when they make high slot count beacons. I don't think entirely removing alt-mode from beacons is a good idea. People who have it on care more about information than graphics. (Sorry graphics team we still love you. <3)

[V453000]

The thought process behind redesigning beacons is being hamstrung by calling them "beacons". That implies they're attracting attention to themselves and that they're the important entity rather than broadcasting some sort of information or radiating some kind of power. It's probably way too late to consider a name change but beacon always did strike me as a silly name for what it does.

The new design does look really cool though. I love the way you've integrated the modules into the entity's visual appearance even though that's going to drive modders mad when they make high slot count beacons. I don't think entirely removing alt-mode from beacons is a good idea. People who have it on care more about information than graphics. (Sorry graphics team we still love you. <3)

I agree and I've been saying this for years, a Beacon is a really wtf name. But indeed, it's too late to change that now.

The alt mode missing isn't really that much of a big deal, identifying module tiers is fine enough and you can just drag an upgrade planner over them, and for ghosts / blueprints the alt mode still shows.

And mods can re-enable the alt mode, especially if they add more module slots, but IMO making beacons even more OP is just silly. But mods do what mods will, and that's fine.

[DaveMcW]

Great new beacons!

The one part I dislike is the harpoon-like design of the antenna. It looks very threatening. I prefer the rounded antenna of the original beacon concept.

[yura881]

New beacon design is great. But I have two suggestion:
1. Add settings option: “show modules icons on beacons”
2. Use this version:

[V453000]

New beacon design is great. But I have two suggestion:
1. Add settings option: “show modules icons on beacons”
2. Use this version:

You can actually mod both suggestions surprisingly easily. If you just disable the tower and its animation, you get the hole design. Alt mode can easily be re-enabled by mods just as well.

[Niyu.Cuatro]

I like the flushing idea, But i think it should create pollution when flushing oils or acid. So players still have some motivation to be careful with their pipe placement.

[Xoriun]

As mentioned above, it would be easy to mod the alt-mode back for beacons.
However, I would really like to just have an option to toggle, whether alt-mode affects beacons or not.

[cyberspacesloth]

Flushing a given liquid from the pipe seems maybe a little too easy, given the remainder of the factorio experience. I would expect something like a filter pump, which can, over time, drain the undesirable liquid from the pipe (and either destroy it, or send it into another pipe system.

Of course, it does not make sense to introduce a whole new item (or modify existing pumps) for the few edge cases that should not arise during normal gameplay. However, this could potentially be an alternative global solution to the fluid-mixing problem -- allow it and let the player work with it if they want to (say, with a settings option in control of whether Factorio should try to prevent fluid mixing when building).

[V453000]

I like the flushing idea, But i think it should create pollution when flushing oils or acid. So players still have some motivation to be careful with their pipe placement.

It's still fairly annoying to have to flush it, and you've already spent pollution by producing these fluids (unless it's water) anyway.

[seePyou]

I was feeling guilty for having to express my negative opinion on FF-339!
I'm glad to see you have taken those comments to heart and come up with a VASTLY SUPERIOR DESIGN for beacons!
I love that it draws attention to the assemblers now! LOVE IT!
Well done! Thank you!

As for the flush button, also needed! THANK YOU! I've had occasion where that thing happened and I had to delete all the pipes and I did not like that!
Question for thought: What will it do if there are tanks connected to the network? Will it remove the tank contents as well? Is this something we might want to think about?

[yura881]

New beacon design is great. But I have two suggestion:
1. Add settings option: “show modules icons on beacons”
2. Use this version:

You can actually mod both suggestions surprisingly easily. If you just disable the tower and its animation, you get the hole design. Alt mode can easily be re-enabled by mods just as well.

I prefer to play games but not develop them
I hope someone create this mods.
P.S. New beacon design is rely good.

[Galapagon]

I like this new beacon design better than the old one, but if you're going for contentedness, these still feel very disjointed to me. I think it would be nice to see something similar to the electric mining drills with pipeline where the entities connect to each other. As you said, they're usually placed in rows, so it would make sense to see a continuous above ground cable system created by the rows, then an alternate model could be used for modules placed alone, or off center from eachother

Great work as always though guys! I hope there's a permission level set for fluid flush, so that people can't come into MP servers and flush active pipes being used vs pipes with incorrect fluids

[dekeonus]

I'm uncomfortable with the new beacons, all I'm seeing is messy caltrops:- a spike to skewer you and then wires to tangle you up. perhaps if the tower wasn't so spiked I'd like it more (the wires in the ground is cool, I now know where all that copper coil in the recipe goes). Perhaps some rectangular attachments like modern mobile towers ( https://www.istockphoto.com/au/photo/mo ... 5-55440142 ) to make the central tower less of a spike.

I don't like the module placement - it seems as though it's something a minmatar pilot (eve online) jury rigged together. It doesn't say to me high tech precision. I also see issues with mods which extend beacons to have higher module counts. Given the underground installation I think modules would be installed into carriers to be placed into the beacon (thinking rackmount servers / hdd racks). I do like the idea have having the effect tinted by the module colour.

[Cgeta]

Ooh I love the new new beacon design!
But I also feel a tad bad for all the things you've made models and sprites for that ended up unused.
I guess you can always reuse them, or parts of them, like the hole.
And maybe there's other uses for unused assets after the release.

Because the old new beacon design was quite cool.

And yeah, with the pipes, a flushing button seems by far to be the easiest solution.
Can't say I ever mixed liquids that often. If anything, mixing belts happens way more often and tends to have worse results, like when you accidentally got steel on your iron belt and now it's scattered all over the factory