Friday Facts #86 - Trees

[Hindenobyl]

If you guys want to add a new machine type for just concrete, an idea I like very much, why not have the new machine handle every recipe that uses both solids and fluids? Right now chemical plants handle mostly fluid inputs with a couple solid inputs and assembly machines handle mostly solid inputs with a few fluid inputs. If cement uses both solids and fluids it would be the perfect excuse to simplify the somewhat random nature of what items are in made in chemical plants vs assembly machines.

[bigyihsuan]

concrete walls

YES. ALL MY YES. We need something better than a stone wall when we have iron and steel just laying around.

Maybe there should be a mod for better walls.

[orzelek]

concrete walls

YES. ALL MY YES. We need something better than a stone wall when we have iron and steel just laying around.

Maybe there should be a mod for better walls.

There is at least one: https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... 14&t=10213

[Smarty]

Fancy trees. forget the end game stuff we want fancy trees

[Oxyd]

A way to make the trees even more fancy would be to give them background sounds, like factory buildings have. Walking through a forest, you could hear leaves rustling in the wind and birds chirp. Maybe this could depend on pollution level, so forests near your factory sound lifeless but forests further away are full of invisible life.

[Yttrium]

We plan to make a rule, that high pollution levels can make the tree not only loose some leafs, but it can also change the leaf color towards grey

A few months ago I heard someone fantasize about that on a twitch stream!

This machine tempts me a lot to put some specialised machine in the game instead of just using the assembling machine again.

What about changing the graphic of the assembly machine when you select an recipe?
that way you can create an even bigger mess of different factories without changing the complexity of the game.

[bobingabout]

trees, me gusta.

For the point of adding new machine types... When trying to make a new machine, please try and give it a purpose for more than just one recipe, the current oil refinery is about as specialised as you'd want to get(it needed it for the multiple fluid input/output lines), and even that has 2 recipes.

[AmigoGumball]

Some kind of mixing machine would be great. It could also make some kind of special fuel or glass for solar panels...

[aRatNamedSammy]

i like the tree's and the evolution to see em dying, it give a visual sight about how your pollution affect things around the base
limestone sand and water for cement recipe looks good.. my opinion, its like 2nd wall..and a third wall could be reinforced wall (concrete stone and steel) or something that use old wall to upgrade em, instead of just destroying it
concrete for heavy factory is a good idea

[jerrycheng]

Is there any possibility that let trees regrow after mining? Not using mod.

[Peter34]

https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-86

When I saw the subject title of yesterday's Facts, I assumed it'd be about the problem issue of Tree removal. So I was rather disappointed.

Still, I'm glad to see a graphics change to Trees, as the dark ones are often hard to see, against a green dirt background, or even more so against the near-black of a Coal patch. In fact I basically can't see them - instead I find out they're there when I mouse over them.

[Peter34]

If you guys want to add a new machine type for just concrete, an idea I like very much, why not have the new machine handle every recipe that uses both solids and fluids? Right now chemical plants handle mostly fluid inputs with a couple solid inputs and assembly machines handle mostly solid inputs with a few fluid inputs. If cement uses both solids and fluids it would be the perfect excuse to simplify the somewhat random nature of what items are in made in chemical plants vs assembly machines.

I like the idea of more machines added to the game. One for making Concrete and a few other things would be nice, and I'd also like to see a visually distinct machine for working with Barrels. Currently the vanilla game only lets you barrel and unbarrel Crude Oil, and in a normal Assebly Machine, but some mods enable the barelling and unbarelling of all liquids (e.g. Water, Lubricant, Light Oil, Heavy...), usually in an Assembly Machine (the mod I have chosen does that) or in a special made machine for that purpose.

I'd like to see the later made official, as part of a tier 2 Fluid Handling tech (that might also include tanker wagons for the railway system).

Also, in general, with regards to adding more ore types to the game, I'm not fond of that idea. I don't think the game gains much if you add Aluminium, Titanium, Rare Earths and a couple of others. It can very easy become needless complexity.

Adding some kind of Sand Miner, that can work on any dirt patch (not only in Desert Biome) to extract Sand, which can be used to made Glass and Silicon, would be fine. And likewise in addition to Sand adding one more ore type, with Sand being a mid-game item (along with Steel, and relative to Iron and Copper being early game items) and this other new ore type being a late game item.

[lost57]

Everything sounds great. so much more time, effort and especially features are going into .12 than i initially thought! Well done guys, keep up the hard work.

[Bfgiant]

What about changing the graphic of the assembly machine when you select an recipe?
that way you can create an even bigger mess of different factories without changing the complexity of the game.

I also thought of this when reading through the thread-- it reduces the number of machines one can build, but helps introduce variety.

[MeduSalem]

Also, in general, with regards to adding more ore types to the game, I'm not fond of that idea. I don't think the game gains much if you add Aluminium, Titanium, Rare Earths and a couple of others. It can very easy become needless complexity.

Adding some kind of Sand Miner, that can work on any dirt patch (not only in Desert Biome) to extract Sand, which can be used to made Glass and Silicon, would be fine. And likewise in addition to Sand adding one more ore type, with Sand being a mid-game item (along with Steel, and relative to Iron and Copper being early game items) and this other new ore type being a late game item.

I also think that Titanium and Rare Earths are quite superfluous concepts for games because it is actually quite hard to find applications for them even in the real world other than in ultra complex contraptions or other far off futuristic designs that will probably never make it to public anyways. Only scientists (especially chemistry, physics and material science) or high tech industry far beyond the day-to-day concepts of Factorio actually need them because of their special applications where normal materials wouldn't suffice. If mods do them I'm ok with that, but they don't really need to be in the main game.

Aluminium altough is on the edge in my opinion. There are a lot consumer applications for it... especially in cases where Iron/Steel (7850kg/m³) is just too heavy compared to Aluminium (2700kg/m³). Also Iron and Steel actually never stop oxidizing until there's nothing left than a pile of rust while Aluminium stops oxidizing due to the effect of passivation by creating a patina. Those two major advantages over iron/steel gives Aluminium a wide range of applications all over the place from aerospace, automotives, marine, rail, buildings, packaging, energy distribution and tons of others where there's need for reduced weight, weather resistence and conductivity. It's even used in military and demolition because of its strong chemical reactions... Think about Thermit.

And when we come to the point of talking about Cement and Concrete one can't get around Silicium and Aluminium because in any modern Hydraulic Cement recipes they are equally part of the mixture next to Limestone, if not even more important. Both Silicium and Aluminium are the reason why Concrete is able to get hard even under water without air. Without aluminium silicates cement/concrete would not set when in contact with water at all. It's like trying to drive a car without engine.

I see the most common problem why additional resources probably won't get added anytime soon if at all is because of the fear people might be like "I have to start over to get those new resources? Screw you!" and so they avoid adding new resource types. It's a basic barrier that might be risky to overcome because adding new resources in Factorio is like throwing an additional class in an already quite well balanced RPG game forcing people to think over and to adapt their playing style to the new possibilities. Some welcome it, some don't.

Also nobody said that those new materials have to be part of the main game right from the beginning. They could be part of a mid/late-game stage like for example oil is.

Let's just say Silicium and Aluminium are amongst the 3 most commonly found elements on our planet so it's quite funny that they are not found in Factorio in at least some form. Apart from them I wouldn't even know what other resources to add to the game apart from Uranium maybe so that people crying out for cheap power plants finally shut up.

I might be especially picky on that topic since I'm into that business so I can't act "meh" about it... I can't sit there and be like "yeah, let's throw some random rocks into the recipe and call it cement". It should be at least somewhat faithful and for that 2 additional resources people have been arguing about for a 2 years already anyways might be needed.

But it's up to the Devs anyways to decide what they want to have in their game and what they don't. In the end I will play with whatever solution they come up with - in the end it's just a game.

What about changing the graphic of the assembly machine when you select an recipe?
that way you can create an even bigger mess of different factories without changing the complexity of the game.

I also thought of this when reading through the thread-- it reduces the number of machines one can build, but helps introduce variety.

Thought about that too, but there might be arguments about different crafting costs and whatnot. Also about conflicting research.

[ssilk]

When I saw the subject title of yesterday's Facts, I assumed it'd be about the problem issue of Tree removal. So I was rather disappointed.

Why? this is the "cleanest" method you can do (game-play-wise): Pollute and the surrounding is cleaned from trees.

[jerrycheng]

Using it only for floors would be silly, I agree. But we plan to use the concrete also in recipes of other things, heavy machines that need base like rocket silo, concrete walls or chemical plant.

It seems that concrete will be the recipes of rocket silo. However it was said at fff#86 that the concrete will be done at 0.13.

So how would you deal with it? Use the old machines (assembling machines) at 0.12?

[Wolfwaffe]

Ah, this is what i'd like to see. Nature dying to our machines. Sight for sore eyes.


...Yeah, I'm kinda weird.

[Peter34]

When I saw the subject title of yesterday's Facts, I assumed it'd be about the problem issue of Tree removal. So I was rather disappointed.

Why? this is the "cleanest" method you can do (game-play-wise): Pollute and the surrounding is cleaned from trees.

The problem with manual Tree removal is early game. You keep forgetting the 4th dimension, Ssilk!

[Metonymia]

Why Iron Ore? In the RoadWorks mod, Concrete is created by mining Limestone Ore (an ore added by the RoadWorks mod), which is then burned into Quicklime. Quicklime is mixed with Stone and Water to make Concrete Blocks. I personally think that method is better.

See https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... =14&t=4405 for the RoadWorks mod.

Heck, this could even be used to make two different types of walls: a basic one made of stone, and an upgraded one which has concrete in it.