Friday Facts #414 - Spoils of Agriculture

[Phauxstus]

Also, why harvesting the fruits removes the whole tree? This is not how the fruit trees usually work.

Could be a plant that only fruits once in its lifetime. Kinda strange for such a plant to bother with being a tree which favors longer sedentary playstyles, but considering how full of life Gleba is maybe growing a whole tree is equivalent to a tiny flower on Earth.

[AntiElitz]

While I consider the farming mechanic mostly boring, the new spoilage mechanic is something new I am looking for to mix up standard patterns! Great work, sounds like it will be fun!

[morse]

Also, why harvesting the fruits removes the whole tree? This is not how the fruit trees usually work.

Hop plant
Potato
Cucumber
Tomato
...

Textbook examples of the fruit trees indeed (BTW, you don't destroy the plants when you harvest cucumbers or tomato).

[seePyou]

You misunderstand and I don't know if there is a point to argue or try to make you see. All products right now in Factorio racing down blue belts stay the same for ever. I can be running Factorio for months and no product will ever change while on a belt or in a chest. But spoiling does just that. It changes the product in as short a time as minutes. That is a racing condition against time. If you still don't understand that, that's fine, you don't have to.

I dont misunderstand... Energy also "spoils" / gets lost when you do nothing, because all insertes etc have idle power draw.
What do you do as a counter measure? Produce at a constant rate so you always have enough... You dont like a new challenge, ok. But dont pretend its sooo much different to the challenges we already have ingame.

When you have no use for the spoilable product ... then pause production momentarily. We have all kinds of options for that...

Most of factorio is about throughput rate - except at the very beginning. Spoilables also are exactly the same in terms of throughput... with limited transportation length. thats it.

I do not agree with you. That's all. Thanks for your comments.

[FuryoftheStars]

It is likely a crude harvester. It's not sophisticated enough to just reach into the branches and pull out only the fruit without causing serious damage to the tree itself, so it's better to just rip the whole thing down and then replant.

Which would imply that a more sophisticated harvester could be researched. If that's the case that would be great.

Not necessarily. Everything that the engineer builds is a bit crude, so it makes logical sense to me that this would be one such thing.

[Anima117]

Lastly, once again, please also make it possible to automatically process wood into something other than just burning it.
Since construction bots actively harvest wood (at a point in the game where you are long past needing wood for anything) it just accumulates in my logistic chests and all I can do is burn it.

Just ship the wood to Vulcanus, and throw it in lava! That's one of the few items I can imagine would require getting shipped to Vulcanus to use it as a trashcan. The rest is probably just gonna get processed in the recycling machine and sent back into the production line.

[Phauxstus]

Or perhaps use the best freezer in the universe. Simply expose storage on space platform to absolute zero temperature of deep space, so it is preserved forever ?

Reread the post you quoted...

[DiegoPro77]

I think i'm gonna create a mod about refrigerators.
'Cause in this game we have spaceships, lasers and nukes but no freezers - and I want to have a place to preserve the ice creams for this summer.
(I'm from italy - and I'm already dying from the first summer heat wave.)

[morse]

I think i'm gonna create a mod about refrigerators.
'Cause in this game we have spaceships, lasers and nukes but no freezers - and I want to have a place to preserve the ice creams for this summer.
(I'm from italy - and I'm already dying from the first summer heat wave.)

You could create the mod that just removes the spoil time, if you don't like it.

It's obvious that the spoil time is a balance choice. If you introduce the way to halt it, it makes the whole feature pointless. You just replace the chests with freezers and that's it.

[Drury]

Spoiling items are pretty cool conceptually, but I'm iffy on the white bars.

They make things look a bit busy, even for alt mode. No idea what could be done to remedy that in a strictly better way. All that comes to mind is some sort of particle/shader effect, which wouldn't necessarily give an accurate feedback. Perhaps an accurate reading isn't strictly necessary in the first place? I suspect the items will always start spoiling at the same point in your production line anyways, so you might not need a UI bar for each and every one.

Also, since you say different items spoil at different rates, a bar might not be a good indicator of the exact time left as it only shows a percentage, not how much time you have left on the item.

I trust it all becomes less intrusive as you play, but still.


Love the tree harvester crane btw. Would be cool if it visually mirrored real life tree harvesters, which already look straight out of Factorio. I can imagine something like this grabbing a tree, pulling it out of the ground and mulching it up into sawdust just to get the fruits. Very on-brand.

[X3KJ]

I think it would be good to have a window or threshold in the "decay process" where the product has decayed a little bit, but the pracitcal use (e.g. for science) is still the same as if it was fresh. If you buy a perfectly good apple or bread right now, you wont get less perceivable taste or less satiation from it in an hour or tomorrow, even though decay has set in already before you even got it. Only after X amount of days it gets noticeably less tasty, where you would say "ok still good but i'd rather have a fresh one" ... and then eventually foul.

It's obvious that the spoil time is a balance choice. If you introduce the way to halt it, it makes the whole feature pointless. You just replace the chests with freezers and that's it.

Halting is different from Slowing though. If you have to put each product (multiples/ a stack) in belt-able container (like barrels), which slow the decay but not stop it. Allows for extension of transport ranges. But not for stockpiling of thousands of fruit/plant matter (which is questionable proposition anyway)

[Anima117]

Maybe we need another planet, which is arctic... so the products shipped there dont spoil (freezer technology is too advanced for factorio )

However, what I do wonder is, what will Gleba bring to the table. By that I mean, asside from progress towards finishing the expansion, what does it bring for the rest of the game once you're done with it?

Now you can farm wood on nauvis! The one thing we all waited for
Or maybe you export something unwillingly and unbenownst to you, which ... has an effect on nauvis ? let's hope the flora or fauna or whatever else lurks on greba does not cross-breed with the flora and fauna on nauvis

For the artic planet thing... I personally believe it is the 5th planet. Reason being Vulcanus is fire, Fulgora is air, Gleba is clearly earth... So the last element would be water, and I doubt they'll make waterworld (they might, but I don't know what they'd put on a water planet that you can't already put on Nauvis). So it is quite possible if this is the logic behind it, that the last one is an arctic planet

As for wood, the only reason I'd want to export wood, is to ship it to Vulcanus so I can finaly empty these damn wood chests that keep polluting my lawn lol

[mrudat]

Ooh, if this is engine-supported, we could add red-hot blocks of steel that can be forged into other shapes, but if left to cool for too long, we need to reheat.

Alternatively, we need to wait until they're cold enough to machine.

On the other hand, given molten metal carried in insulated pipes, that's not quite as exciting.


Hmm. We could make nuclear fuel that spoils, which would be more realistic, or spent nuclear fuel that becomes less radioactive over time.

[Drury]

Ooh, if this is engine-supported, we could add red-hot blocks of steel that can be forged into other shapes, but if left to cool for too long, we need to reheat.

Alternatively, we need to wait until they're cold enough to machine.

On the other hand, given molten metal carried in insulated pipes, that's not quite as exciting.


Hmm. We could make nuclear fuel that spoils, which would be more realistic, or spent nuclear fuel that becomes less radioactive over time.

me after designing my nuclear plant for 700 million years only to find half of my U-235 had already decayed:

[Syriusz]

Idea- special belt and chest that can cool produce and slow down spoilage?
I guess there will be later tech to turn spoilage into fertiliser to accelerate growth?
I can only imagine, what modders will do with this mechanic!

[Anima117]

Spoiling materials/resources create a need to be prompt with using them. Seeing spoilage times being even minutes, as stated in the FF, creates in me a sense of urgency, racing. Factorio has never been about racing to a goal, it's always been "take my time to design something". That seems to contradict this. It doesn't seem like I can store some resources in waiting for my design to work, and then wait to see if this is good enough, or stop a production block that is not working as well as I'd like, and then take some time to redesign it. Now I'm being penalized against that because the resources are spoiling.

I am not looking forward to this experience, I would not like to be subjected to that. If this makes it to the expansion, I might not pick this up.

To me, same issue as Fulgora. It's a weird idea you wouldn't want normally, and should be seen as a puzzle to solve, rather than just "Oh I have to be quick". See it more as "How can I make my factory be efficient, in a short manner". On Nauvis you would for example make a main bus of iron, copper, and other needed goodies, and leave it there, if you get some bottlenecks, it's fine so long as the factory runs, it's not an immediate problem, just the production unit needs to be upgraded to use the production surplus.

Meanwhile on Gleba the goal is more "How do I make my factory as efficient as possible without any bottleneck and the shortest delivery paths as possible", since you need both high production, and short distances, with a filter to take the mold out of your production line at all cost to avoid clogging the machine.
Kinda like how Fulgora is about taking trash into a recycling plant prior to using the ressources proper (Which theorically, you would want to separate every item you get from the trash heap into a different recycling line, and then separate each product from the recycling into more lines so that you can start doing a main bus again, just at the cost of a less certain input on the line). It's a small puzzle to solve.
Vulanus seems to also have some sort of puzzle to solve, which is mostly making factories that can sort iron, copper, and stone around, trash the unwanted surplus, and deal with more cliffs than usual btw, but it is probably the less unique of the three they revealed.)

Don't get me wrong, I'm not sold on the idea of taking bioscience packs to Nauvis, but the planning of making different factory types is to prevent it from getting stale when you change planets.

[Akontio]

Spoiling materials/resources create a need to be prompt with using them. Seeing spoilage times being even minutes, as stated in the FF, creates in me a sense of urgency, racing. Factorio has never been about racing to a goal, it's always been "take my time to design something". That seems to contradict this. It doesn't seem like I can store some resources in waiting for my design to work, and then wait to see if this is good enough, or stop a production block that is not working as well as I'd like, and then take some time to redesign it. Now I'm being penalized against that because the resources are spoiling.

I am not looking forward to this experience, I would not like to be subjected to that. If this makes it to the expansion, I might not pick this up.

The only reason your resources would spoil is if you are making unproductive and unthought out designs in your factory. This mechanic to me is less of a check of people who stockpile and afk, and more of an actual challenge as to get the most out of an already infinite product. You can legit just funnel spoilage to nutrients if that's that bad.

But really if you allow tons of resources to spoil, that is because YOU set up tons of collectors and created long and inefficient designs. You'd have to have, ironically, tried to rush through it to have a ton of spoilage, just plan out your operations carefully. Even getting the research for this planet won't be completed just by being 'quick' or trying to 'race', it encourages compact design as to shrink the most amount of spoilage time.

It's so weird to see this single thing effects your decision making process, it should actually be a planet that is just fine for you on paper.

[Niyu.Cuatro]

One thing i haven't seen mentioned. Given how diferent items will have different spoiling times. I'm pretty sure the spoiling time for the science packs is long enough for them to survive space travel and be used in another planet.

[X3KJ]

As for wood, the only reason I'd want to export wood, is to ship it to Vulcanus so I can finaly empty these damn wood chests that keep polluting my lawn lol

I keep my steam engines after nuclear transition... except burners set to wood. I just dont get why biters are still angry... it's eco friendly combustible material after all ... they could always regrow it, if they like trees...

me after designing my nuclear plant for 700 million years only to find half of my U-235 had already decayed

I dont want to be rushed like that, i will boycott the expansion if natural product decay is introduced for uranium /jk

[Winged_Shade]

This has a lot of potential to shake up the regular old factorio in a new and interesting way. I love that everything we've seen of 2.0 is challenging our preconceptions of how to build a "good factory".

Any of y'all that are hating this based off 15-second clips need to chill out. Wube are some of the best game devs on the market, have some faith that they know what they're doing.