Friday Facts #398 - Fulgora

[Dixi]

Yay! Alien technologies? Looks very cool.

[forsaken75]

Oh come on, you're really going to make us wait another week to see what's going on?! Earendel, you TEASE!

That's the trick. They release some vague information, and have us speculate about the implications, and then they scoop up the good ideas and implement them.

You truly don't understand how long coding new features takes, don't you ?

(Looks at bobs , angels, seablock, industrial revolution, pyanadons, space exploration, nullius, etc..etc..) nope..no clue. Additionally , you have zero understanding of what experience the rest of us have in order to reach any of our conclusions so yeah, continue assuming.

[Tertius]

It's funny if they really do add a Lightning Rod as a power source because a single Lightning Strike on Earth has only enough total power to run a Lightbulb for a Day and that is it. That is what high Volts and low Amps gets you, after all Humans have proven to be able to survive a Lightning Strike so it cannot be all that many Joules.

Did you ask ChatGPT about that?
I ordered ChatGPT to give numbers about ordinary not too strong lightning, and it gave an estimate for a not too strong lightning of 30,000 A with 10,000,000 V in 1 Millisecond. That's 30,000 A * 10,000,000 V * 0.001 s, and ChatGPT claimed this would be 300,000 Joule, thus giving a 10 W lightbulb enough energy for about 8.3 hours.
However, ChatGPT was wrong, because actually 30,000 A * 10,000,000 V * 0.001 s = 300,000,000 Joule. Factor 1000 more. That's enough energy for 8333 hours or almost one year.

Never trust AI! Always verify results.

And so I guess if we could catch lightning on Fulgora, it would be a better energy source than the well known solar panel. A solar panel produces 17.5 MJ per day, as much as one lightning in 300 MJ / 17.5 MJ = 17 days.

[Glomzubuk]

I wonder... what killed them all. Was it the weather? Was it themlseves? Or something else... alive out there?

Or was it the Factorio engineer in a past life, just reliving his torment in an endless loop?

Your mention of loops, plus the overall theme of the planet with the lost civilisation, the storms, and the general desolation reminded me of this stargate episode

[DanGio]

Thanks for this update, really nice work, love the narrative. Building a nice and tidy safe space on Fulgora is definitely sometinhg i'm looking into, so that I can watch nature go crazy while sipping a good mug of coffee

[buhrietoe]

I'm getting Tesla wireless transmission vibes. Maybe the lightning catchers act more like a big substation powering structures around it. No power poles needed here.

[Terrahertz]

there are many factorio alternatives

Your entitled to your opinion, but if you talk about alternatives at least name some. I don't like these vague arguments, because if somebody responds with: "Well this alternative is pretty bad" the follow up is often: "Well true, but I was thinking of something else" again without naming that something.

I could name a few and why I would recommand Factorio more:

• Dyson Sphere Programm: This one is acutally nice, but I do not see much replay value especially as there are no mods for it. Also building things there is annoying due to the planets being actually spheres. It's also too simple in comparison, no fluids, no circuits, no trains, no complex nuclear setups.

• Satisfactory: Stuck in perpetual early access, not having a true end goal/purpose to the entire operation.

• Techtonica: More story focused, also quite early in development.

• Factory Town: More of a settlers/anno clone with factory elements.

• Learning Factory: Small Factorio clone imho.

If I really loosly define the genre there are also:

• Hydroneer: More of a physics simulation.

• Space Engineers: Very shallow production chains, more focus on designing ships and combat.

• OpenTTD: If you just look at trains.

• Sweet Transit: An mix between OpenTTD and Anno.

But thats acutally all the comes to my mind, you can roast me on that if you so desire.

they really needed to step up their game with 2.0 and i have yet to see anything at all innovative with 2.0 other than re-skinned rolled-in mods done better because they are the OG devs and have access to the newer engine others dont have access to.

What would stepping up their game look like then? I mean they are, amoung other things, expanding on the three things that make Factorio really stand out in the genre: Cicruit Networks, Trains and QoL.

[scarhoof]

First we get Microsoft Flight Simulator on Arrakis, now we get Factorio? If we get mobile worms chasing us through the desert I'm going to be super stoked.

[GregoriusT]

Did you ask ChatGPT about that?

Never trust AI! Always verify results.

Ahem that knowledge was from before AI language models even existed so I highly doubt that.

The reference for this was some science youtube channel that explained why we do not harvest energy from lightning strikes, and it was a while ago so i dont know which of the many channels that was. I only remember the maths ending up at a conventional lightbulb being driven for about 20 or so hours, and the only reason that factoid stayed in my mind was because I once modded a lightning rod into minecraft for power production, and that episode proved that my idea of lightning power was pure bullshit inspired by Stargate, LOL.

[picklock]

Another beautifully designed and interesting new planet. Is this planet also randomly generated or is it always the same map?

And more information about the planet such as unique resources, research and so on would have been interesting today. But you announced more information at the end of the FFF. I am curious.

[tvardero]

Question to devs:
Is lightning hardcoded for that planet, or will we get full weather system + modding API?

[Terrahertz]

Wikipedia suggests 7GJ for a lightning strike, though capturing all of it could be tricky.

Don't forget most of those gigajoules are wasted on the heating up of the air to plasma all the way down to the ground

Maybe there will be a building sending up a ballon or something to harvest the difference in electric potential in a more controlled fashion, getting rid of the need for lightning rods in a larger area while also giving you a stable source of power.

A lot of people, including myself, I think are expecting some new source of power in the game, because why should the expansion by limited to items and production-buildings? Also the Planet has lower solar radiation and no water, so all currently available means of power production are not going to be rather useless on there. And such a promiment feature of the planet is just to big to pass on the idea, I guess

[Kadet123]

One thing no one is talking about are those cliff-sized alien walls in some areas. They were clearly built by someone. I wonder if a tech coming from this planet is walls 2.0 that are basically buildable cliffs: larger and thicker segments (maybe 2x2 or 3x3) that are damn near indestructible.

[Kadet123]

One thing no one is talking about are those cliff-sized alien walls in some areas. They were clearly built by someone. I wonder if a tech coming from this planet is walls 2.0 that are basically buildable cliffs: larger and thicker segments (maybe 2x2 or 3x3) that are damn near indestructible.

Seeing how they slope, it would be a fun mechanic if they were "one-way" tiles for certain entities, like the car (and certain biters) could jump off them, but not go back up.

[aka13]

I once modded a lightning rod into minecraft for power production

Understatement of the century

[xeln4g4]

A W E S O M E !!!

[DeepSpaced]

One thing no one is talking about are those cliff-sized alien walls in some areas. They were clearly built by someone. I wonder if a tech coming from this planet is walls 2.0 that are basically buildable cliffs: larger and thicker segments (maybe 2x2 or 3x3) that are damn near indestructible.

Seeing how they slope, it would be a fun mechanic if they were "one-way" tiles for certain entities, like the car (and certain biters) could jump off them, but not go back up.

I'm super curious about those too - they look like reservoirs of some sort, you can see pipe inlets. Imagine being able to build ponds for managing fluids - could be like tailing ponds for processing the oilsands or maybe they once held water before the planet became a dustbowl?

[aka13]

One thing no one is talking about are those cliff-sized alien walls in some areas. They were clearly built by someone. I wonder if a tech coming from this planet is walls 2.0 that are basically buildable cliffs: larger and thicker segments (maybe 2x2 or 3x3) that are damn near indestructible.

Seeing how they slope, it would be a fun mechanic if they were "one-way" tiles for certain entities, like the car (and certain biters) could jump off them, but not go back up.

I'm super curious about those too - they look like reservoirs of some sort, you can see pipe inlets. Imagine being able to build ponds for managing fluids - could be like tailing ponds for processing the oilsands or maybe they once held water before the planet became a dustbowl?

I would do indescribable acts of violence for a basebuilder game with physical storage pits for whatever, be it liquids, solids, sands or whatever.
The railcraft tank from minecraft is still unmatched.

Rectangles with interfaces are so boring, I hope you are right in your assumptions.

[Ghulmeister]

Oh come on, you're really going to make us wait another week to see what's going on?! Earendel, you TEASE!

That's the trick. They release some vague information, and have us speculate about the implications, and then they scoop up the good ideas and implement them.

all of 2.0 has just been a refined/simplified Space Exploration with the top 10 mods rolled in. Factorio is and always will be my #1 but to newcomers, there are many factorio alternatives and they really needed to step up their game with 2.0 and i have yet to see anything at all innovative with 2.0 other than re-skinned rolled-in mods done better because they are the OG devs and have access to the newer engine others dont have access to. Of course this is an unpopular opinion and i expect to get flamed, just tired of all the OMFG THIS IS AWESOME when it all already exists.

people like you will never be happy, you only focus on the most negative outcome and your cynicism prevents you from ever seeing anything positive.
why should the devs try to win the battle against people like you, when there is no way to please you in the first place?

i trust these devs to do a great job and to always give 100% effort and dedication in anything they do, i dont need anything else from them.
i dont need them to revolutionize the factory-genre or to come up with something that thousands of modders could not think of.
afterall, it is factually these devs that basically invented the modern factory-genre as it exists today. all of these "alternatives", as you call them, made their game with factorios foundations in mind.

so please go discrespect some random tiktoker who copy & pastes other peoples content, but dont you dare to insult dedicated "no-bullshit"- gamedevs like these, who create genuine OC games.
there are way too few of them nowadays, and most devs just want you to buy their hundreds of skins and lootboxes while mismanaging what their playerbase actually wants from the game.

[mmmPI]

Did you ask ChatGPT about that?

Never trust AI! Always verify results.

Ahem that knowledge was from before AI language models even existed so I highly doubt that.

The reference for this was some science youtube channel that explained why we do not harvest energy from lightning strikes, and it was a while ago so i dont know which of the many channels that was. I only remember the maths ending up at a conventional lightbulb being driven for about 20 or so hours, and the only reason that factoid stayed in my mind was because I once modded a lightning rod into minecraft for power production, and that episode proved that my idea of lightning power was pure bullshit inspired by Stargate, LOL.

I also do not trust random people on the internet, be them teacher in combinators or mod expert, i did my own meta-research, about researchs other people made with real lightning bolt. I thought maybe you were comparing two different quantity, one being the energy of the bolt, the other, the electricity harvested from experimental setup. And the difference could be order of magnitude difference maybe and then i found this articled titled this way :

There's Way More Energy in a Bolt of Lightning Than We Thought which is a rewrite of the original Catching lightning in a fossil – and calculating how much energy a strike contains one emphasises that the knowledge is new, the other on the method used to acquire the new estimations.

That seem to agree with the wiki page about harvesting lighting energy. Which quote an expert saying : "the energy in a thunderstorm is comparable to that of an atomic bomb, but trying to harvest the energy of lightning from the ground is hopeless"