Friday Facts #381 - Space Platforms

[Saiph]

I think some people need to remember that Factorio is a game, not a physics simulation. They may enjoy showing off their qualifications and/or scientific knowledge, but that's almost irrelevant to the main aim, which is gameplay. After growing up with the space race during the 1960's, I also have wide experience of science and technology, and I've spent 45 years in the computer industry. But I'm not going to nit-pick Wube with criticisms of their game world(s). They make a very enjoyable game, and they're very good at what they do. End of story.

[Karamel]

Was momentum considered? In space, nothing is slowing down your spacecraft once you turn off your thrusters. From this FFF, it seems a platform slows down once you turn off its thrusters. And I wonder if you choose to ignore this for gameplay purposes or if there is some braking force applied.

But there is something slowing you down: all the asteroids you grab need to match their velocity to yours, which they do by siphoning some of your kinetic energy which then needs to be replenished by the engine. Which is how friction basically works IRL.

Anyway, I'm wondering about the platform and it's self-constructing abilities, and how flexible that is in regards to mods - could you, for example, play as some kind of alien technovirus slowly converting the planet to a mechanical "paradise"?

[MEOWMI]

I must say it is looking good. Feels congruent with the gameplay so far. The graphics are interesting. Although one may say they don't look realistic - and in a way that's true - I'd argue it fits Factorio's art style and mostly looks sensible. It is somewhat of a stretch to suggest that some of it would be cobbled together from scrap metal, but that idea does fit well with most of the game's visual design.

Regarding the "no holes in the platform" design, I like the warning indicator. Maybe you could also indicate with red the area that needs to be filled in...? Just an idea. It's probably not a big issue, but it would help drive home the point that "this area needs to be filled too".

[Riffix]

I'm really liking all of this except for one minor thing, the thruster drive cones.

I really like the graphics overall and I love the amount of movement in the thrusters. However, the fact that the drive cone shakes so much, including in and out and not just laterally, makes it look like it could fall off at any second. I know the art style for Factorio has always had this kinda "rough tech" feel to it but the drive cone makes it look junky and unsustainable. Nothing else in the game feels this way that I can think of but maybe I am wrong. I know you wanted to express the amount of thrust and power happening, but I think the drive cone shake is too much.

Looking forward to it all though!

[n7fty]

I hope there are inter-platform logistics, allowing you to have a large platform or two hang out near planets to amass fuel and ammo to stock small platforms that could be smaller, ergo faster, and wouldn't be as devastating to lose.

[Drury]

I'm really liking all of this except for one minor thing, the thruster drive cones.

I really like the graphics overall and I love the amount of movement in the thrusters. However, the fact that the drive cone shakes so much, including in and out and not just laterally, makes it look like it could fall off at any second. I know the art style for Factorio has always had this kinda "rough tech" feel to it but the drive cone makes it look junky and unsustainable. Nothing else in the game feels this way that I can think of but maybe I am wrong. I know you wanted to express the amount of thrust and power happening, but I think the drive cone shake is too much.

that's the best part though

[mmmPI]

What's the story behinds the platforms not being allowed to have holes?

I don't know the real story, but consider one can remove space-platform tile. It would lead to a situation where as a player you don't try to build compact, and instead you just remove the unoccupied tile in your expansive build to "save space". Which would maybe yield non-fun gameplay or 'ugly' space platform shape of dubious structural integrity.

[Drury]

What's the story behinds the platforms not being allowed to have holes?

probably to avoid a situation where you build a donut-shaped platform with thrusters in the middle that crap exhaust gases all over the lower half

[mmmPI]

probably to avoid a situation where you build a donut-shaped platform with thrusters in the middle that crap exhaust gases all over the lower half

That sounds still possible with a C shape platform though, and a very good idea to recycle carbon

[Toastinator]

Space Platforms are cool and all, But I'm going to be disappointed if Spaceships are not included

The Thruster Animation and Graphics are amazing, I'm sure they have other types for Late game. I'm Excited to see what they look like.

They mentioned how complicated it is to setup a Spaceship in SE, But I don't see why they cant create the same type UI Train stations that they mentioned for Space Platforms and use it for Spaceships as well. Fingers Crossed, But at this point. I don't think it's going to happen.

[Yinan]

And we're coming back full circle to quality, which, looking at what it does to some of the space platform components, seem to be mandatory after all -.-


On a different note, is the Thruster graphic final already? Because that's the only graphic that I really have issues with as it looks a little bit too "jury-rigged" and barely hold together, with everything wiggling around when active as if it's about to explode at any moment.
No other graphic/animation looks like it. It feels like the Thruster is especially shoddy work that we have here, which doesn't really fit much with the rest of Factorio...

Don't get me wrong, the animation/graphic in and of itself looks great, I just don't thing that it fits together with the rest of what we see in the game.

[blazespinnaker]

"the only reasonable solution to do that was weird."

lulz. even factorio devs calling its combinators weird. niiiiice.


"In the past we've had multiple versions of ways how to trash items from platforms, including having a special storage entity which was able to do that. It all got so complicated that in the end we just went with this super simple solution."

I mean, come on. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_debris

"Everything on Space platforms is done via the remote view (no coincidence it was the topic of the last FFF)."

oh man. I mean...

oh well. quality looks pretty cool.

[Neutronium]

Times like this I really regret following along on each of these FFF's over the last several months. Its going to be painful waiting for another year for all of this!

[Saphira123456]

I'm not sure how I feel about throwing stuff overboard, as it seems a bit hypocritical.

I mean, you refuse to put in a flare stack, incinerator, or etcetera to get rid of things you don't want on planets but you allow us to dump things overboard for space platforms?

What happened to your claim of not wanting to trivialize disposal of excess items? Because this does just that.

I think the reasoning here may be because you're much more space constrained with limited storage space. If you build it big enough with enough storage extensions, then you may not have to dump anything. But they have mentioned more advanced techs that could potentially use some of the additional resources you'll get in, so until you have the resource need, it's gotta go somewhere.... :/

Edit: Oh, but this does make me wonder if this behavior would be moddable to allow dumping in water....

I can see the cancellation argument now: "We don't want to trivialize disposal of excess items, so we won't allow dumping in water."

[blazespinnaker]

I think this really captures the spirit of what makes SE fun, when you first get to space, and amplifies it.
I am also cautiosly optimistic, that it seems that kovarex feels similar to how I feel, on what is not fun in SE.

The gameplay of this was designed by me, kovarex and v453000 together. It's more about what is right for a streamlined experience. This is an example of what I meant in FFF373 and the different game design goals. If you have different goals and different engine capabilities then you choose different options for the way things work.

Yeah, exactly. This really should never be required to be said.

But If you still don't know what SE is all about, read up on Arcosphere usage and production, though do for sure avoid the spoilers.

Something like that probably could never have been mainlined in factorio, and yet it's so incredibly amazing. Can't imagine the factorio universe without it.

[mmmPI]

"the only reasonable solution to do that was weird."

lulz. even factorio devs calling its combinators weird. niiiiice.

I might be wrong but i don't think that was refering to combinators, there are none in the picture following this sentence, i think it was refering to spamming requester chest + filter inserter to fill the silo with many different item in small quantity, and this lead to the silo now accepting logistic request directly for the expansion.

the full quote is

The problem was, that the actual gameplay produced by this system proved to be incredibly annoying very quickly. The reason is, that you need many different items in small quantities to build all the platform mini-factory and the only reasonable solution to do that was weird.
You had to filter the inventory slots in the silo, so each of the items would have a dedicated space, and then to bring every individual item to the silo.

Combinators are not weird they are niiiiiice !

[TOGoS]

Thrusters should definitely accelerate/decelerate the platform, not just "move" it. The video where the thrusters turn off and the platform stop moving looks downright weird. And I imagine that slowly getting one of those things up to speed would just feel a lot more satisfying and interesting (more fast-relative-to-you asteroids in the middle of the journey) than flying around as if velocity is an on/off switch. Bigger platforms / more thrusters would still have the same overall effect gameplay-wise, though.

Not allowing chests seems an odd choice, but the idea of it bothers me less than the momentum thing.

Other than that, looks pretty neat!

[Henry Loenwind]

Anyway, I'm wondering about the platform and it's self-constructing abilities, and how flexible that is in regards to mods - could you, for example, play as some kind of alien technovirus slowly converting the planet to a mechanical "paradise"?

That certainly would make a nice mod:

• The player character is removed (permanently locked in the central hub building), as are all non-remote-controllable vehicles.
• The only things that can be built on normal ground are miners and platform tiles.
• Platform tiles cannot be built on mineable resources (except oil wells, which are platform+building combos)
• Landfill platform tiles must be used to fill water (offshore pumps also are platform+building combos---make sure you'll place enough when assimilating lakes, or you'll have to pump water from miles away)
• The "no holes" rule applies (i.e. you really want to landfill water and exhaust ore patches so your area isn't full of cracks)
• No bots, but expanding your central hub so it stretches everywhere like a giant octopus is always an option for item transport. But that costs resources to build and cuts your available space into chunks as it also must be continuous (optionally, for harder difficulty: non-holey. Extra hard setting: it's a "high building").
• For mining outposts, I see 3 ways this could go:
  1. Expand your platform in a narrow strip to reach resources. Be prepared for your outposts to blow up when biters cut that strip.
  2. Rails can be built off-platform, and there are special "satellite platform controller buildings" (research!) that allow you to lay down platforms with limited building support (inserters, belts, chests, rail stations, walls, turrets, pipes, tanks, pumps).
  3. Rails and the buildings from the previous option can be built off-platform. Easy mode. Boring.

Someone please make this mod.

[Unknow0059]

Space platforms cannot have holes in tiles, and their surface must be contiguous. If a tile that bridges two sections is destroyed, the section without connection to the hub is destroyed as well.

I don't understand this. Why, what's the point? And, the video shows a hole that gets warning signs on it but other hole sdon't. What's up with this?

[bman212121]

Interesting. I feel like it combines a few existing ideas like seablock, factorissmo, while also bringing back some pre .15.x gameplay. I definitely enjoy each of those, so combined this certainly could be fun. One of the nice things about Factorio before the item count went crazy was that you could focus on building small puzzles which didn't require you to duplicate the puzzle 1,000 times. I hope these remain that way in that you don't want / need to scale them to crazy large numbers.

The lack of chests can make sense and I can justify those because storage chests add weight which would slow down the craft.

The one thing I heavily dislike is the fact that you took the easy way out and decided to just dump things off the edge of the craft. I feel like this 100% gives a bad impression to people, even if it is just a game. Factorio is training a new generation of players to simply toss things out the window, with zero regard for what happens. In the base game it's quite obvious polluting is bad, as you get attacked by the inhabitants of the home planet for pollution. I don't have a problem with having the option to throw things overboard, but I feel like there should be not only consequences for doing so (space aliens?) but there should also be a mechanic in the game which provides incentive to take care of your resources in a sustainable way. This game is suitable for a wide audience, and should be providing proper life lessons for young crowds about the pitfalls of not handling waste and recycling properly.