Friday Facts #380 - Remote view

[lburton]

I do like the general simplification of the planet view menu/system - that said it might be nice to be able to have a quick jump menu and/or shortcuts as options similar to what some RTS games have. ctrl-shift-<n> or something

[Slywyn]

Since we can set remote ghost recipes, can we finally add the ability to set recipes that you don't have yet? Just restrict the ghost from being built at all until the recipe is researched as if you don't "have" the machine in the first place, and add something like the 'restricted' symbol to it to make it more clear WHY it's not being built, which already shows up on the blueprint itself in current Factorio. This would be a huge QoL change for people who use blueprints(even blueprints they've made themselves, not even ones that they've gotten from Factorio Prints/Factorio School) and would fix a problem that's been around since blueprints were added.

[Rebmes]

This does look pretty awesome.

I'm bummed that remote viewing will take a more prominent role in the expansion, however. I always much prefer to bring the character >.<

(give me a teleporter instead!)

[maniak1349]

... why Informatron is listed as a place to be?

[Tohim]

I created a forum account just to say this - With all of these new changes to blueprinting and all, This could be the perfect opportunity to add something else massively helpful to the player:

For context, whenever I'm building my factory, I like to use blueprints in large swaths at a time to plan ahead & make expansion easier. The problem is, as I reach mid/late game, this playstyle largely bars me from being able to use automated construction, as I have no control over which blueprints I actually want built, and those I don't.

Thus, might I suggest adding a way to 'alt-place' blueprints which construction bots ignore, and then mark them for construction later, with a new "Construction Planner" perhaps?

Even outside of my personal playstyle, this functionality would be beneficial to the player in many other ways - giving them colossally increased control over automated construction in general; For example, planning out a entire grand perimeter wall design, but only authorizing construction of key parts of it to preserve available resources AND ease load on the logistics/construction network. The possibilities are endless!

[IForgotMyName]

The new ghost graphics are great and much easier to navigate

However, tile ghosts look strange: due to the shade, the tiles “merge” with objects, which greatly worsens the appearance

IMHO for tiles you should choose a different effect, less saturated and non-animated

[FunMaker]

I like, that far reach is not needed anymore. But i am afraid, that the full-remote-support will change the feeling in a way i might not like. It produces emotions, that i have to walk 2 minutes to a place where i built up something a few moments ago to correct something. The identification with the player pawn is also reduced. It stands somewhere in a dark place and is never seen again.

The upper things are something i am afraid of (because people don't like change) - hopefully the impact is not so dramatically that factorio feels like an generic rts ( in the point of how the player interacts with the game environment)

[Tricorius]

The biggest motivation that arose from playtesting was to be able to add fuel to stuck locomotives, remove random items from places where they don't belong, and to add/upgrade/remove modules.

So, all of this is super awesome, but it implies that you have roboport range everywhere you want to remote build.

If my locomotive runs out of fuel outside of roboport range, do I need to run a Spidertron over?

I have a feeling we have a few future FFFs with some additional bot changes coming in the future.

[PhasmaNL]

Sorry...

[Pi-C]

Modding-related: Given that there is the space map, will it finally be possible to put entities on map view even if they are not on the same surface as the player?

[dragon_gawain]

So, I have two things that I'd like to request in light of this FFF.
1: Being able to put an 'empty module' into an upgrade planner, so I can upgrade a whole swath of buildings that don't have modules, to have modules. This would also apply to blueprints. Being able to copy-paste modules from one machine to another would help a lot with the first point of this, but the real thing I'm shooting for here is to be able to put in some modules in my blueprint without needing to place down the blueprint, let it build, fill in the modules, recreate the blueprint, then take down my structure. Being able to modify things in detail in a blueprint sounds like a pipe dream, and I wouldn't ever want to plan a build in a blueprint so being able to place things in a blueprint seems excessive, but being able to add modules would be awesome! There's already the feature to 'upgrade' modules from one type to another, so hopefully that won't be too hard?
2: In regards to the planets/platforms window in the new map, I feel like it would be great if that window could be toggled/minimized. Especially on smaller monitors, I get the feeling it can take up a lot of the screen.

As always, thanks for the FFF!

[Shuisman]

In the middle large train yard: what is the icon between the flying robot frame and brick?

[Anachrony]

This does look pretty awesome.

I'm bummed that remote viewing will take a more prominent role in the expansion, however. I always much prefer to bring the character >.<

(give me a teleporter instead!)

There are already mods for teleporters. That's already entirely within the capabilities of the current game engine, they just choose not to do that in vanilla for game design reasons. But if you don't agree with that you can mod it already. It's unlikely that they plan on trivializing interplanetary travel that way by default.

What mods can't already do in a reasonable way is all the quality of life interface changes that they've mentioned here. Some of these capabilities really need to be in the engine to be feasible, unlike teleporters. So it's good to see that we'll have all these options now.

[BlackKnight]

Really hyped to finally see RemoteConfiguration mod's features finally added to vanilla -- which I was anticipating after comments in last weeks FFF. I play in mapview most of the time and this will finally allow much more control without the assistance of what I now consider critical mods to assist with game interaction in map view.
Also really excited to be able to configure ghosts before they are built finally! I really like the idea of the Ghost build panel as well as its intuitive placement on the left of the input screen, replacing the users inventory panel.
Please don't forget to add construction planner's ability to remove all modules. Actually, I really like how the mod ModuleInserter works. Maybe a native module planner instead? I use this mod frequently to update modules in sub factory sections and find it saves so much time!

Ghost shimmering also bothers me to some degree. In a sea of these new ghosts I think I would feel a little sick with the screen shifting from from side to side. So making shimmering toggleable perhaps? Perhaps it would help if shimmering was shifting up/down instead of side to side? Also, as someone with colorblindness, an ability to change the tint would be appreciated. And as someone else pointed out - a game-wide night time mode option for being able to tone down blues hues may be useful..? A long time feature request of mine was to make ghosts visibility toggle-able somehow. Once ghosts exist, remnants become irrelevant since you can no longer see them and I really like to see the destruction left behind before reconstruction.

Also I would recommend against shadows for ghosts. On one hand I can imagine shadows preferred to make ghosts appear less like they were floating. On the other hand, the main attribute of a ghost is that it is superficial and thus shouldn't have tangible reactivity to something like the sun creating a shadow.

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Really love everything about this one. My one quip would be why not leave belt/splitter rotation to the robots like everything else? You've created a new inconsistency in your attempts to eliminate inconsistencies!

This also bothers me. It feels really inconsistent since you went to the effort to "fix" rotating belts by having a bot update its state but a splitter just "inverts" without contact?

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Some details noticed that were not specifically mentioned in the FFF - most in map view image
- Mapview bridge visuals: Great to see finally, I like the implementation! Love to see the cloverleaf!
- Colored worms - and what that could mean to combat!
- 9 Science packs! (tags)
- Redo button in shortcuts to finally compliment Undo! I also noticed this and super happy to finally have this feature. No more 'Oh crap' moments as I undo something somewhere on the map by hitting CTRL+Z too many times.
- "There seems to be a new ore in the game, some kind of antenna and a second type of cliffs."

- Good noticing. Really wondering what the different cliff icon is for.
- Bookmark View? - minimap text line with "Silos"
- Spent miners have a blinking red symbol on them

[edit: clarity]

[Slywyn]

In the middle large train yard: what is the icon between the flying robot frame and brick?

Looks like batteries and maybe sulfur. They're really close together.

[Vulkandrache]

The remote view is great but the new ghost graphics are awful.
The blue tint is really hard on the eyes and i hope to god that the jittering distortion wont make it into the final product.

[huwp]

So happy for these changes, especially being able to completely configure modules!

I always walk around the planets like this:
N (satellite view), and then a keyboard shortcut for the labels I created - and there I already select the label / planet I need, and it turns out just two actions

You don't need to press N first, those keyboard shortcuts opens satellite view automatically.

[marrette]

One problem I saw with this new feature is that it was hurting my eyes a little, especially the last picture (titled One more thing), will there be an accessibility option to either dampen or remove the flickering effect?

Oh, and before someone decides on yet another "give it a chance" or similar response, please respect that some people are disabled and not built the same way as you, and have to live their life with the hand they've been dealt with regardless of whether that is a mobility, cognitive or metal impairment. Unfortunately accessibility isn't always considered in the design stage, and sometimes only as an afterthought, and so this post is there as a reminder there is a small number of people that sees this effect as exclusionary rather than inclusionary. When someone highlights a disability and hears a "give it a chance" comment, I do wonder if they look at a person in a wheelchair and tell them to give the stairs a chance!

I second this, this tint of blue + the shimmering effect is also hurting my eyes a bit, an option to change that tint or deactivate the effect would be greatly apreciated.

I'm glad I'm not the only one with this feedback here, because playing with that effect on for extended periods of time would cause me serious eye strain and headaches.

same for me. the tint blue hurt my eye. the animated effect make it even worse.
Please add an option to not have the tint blue effect (the current ghost is fine for my eye even over long period).

Otherwise all the other features are great.

[Hamster]

The distortion effect is a big NO. Way to annoying. At least add an option to disable it. Otherwise nice feature.

[Abarel]

I like to use blueprints in large swaths at a time to plan ahead & make expansion easier. The problem is, as I reach mid/late game, this playstyle largely bars me from being able to use automated construction, as I have no control over which blueprints I actually want built, and those I don't.

I am not against what you propose, but maybe... could you add roboports coverage just on areas you want to enable for bots?