Friday Facts #162 - Theme Art Again

[Zaichik]

I'm pretty happy about the change. My least favorite part of Factorio is the biters, and I generally play with biters on passive, so not having to deal with them much at all is quite nice.

[Ratzap]

I'm glad you're not afraid to change things which are central to current gameplay in order to improve things. I've always found it a bit odd that primitive insect droppings suddenly allow tech breakthroughs for portable fusion etc.

In our MP games these days we seem to have one person almost dedicated to beating back the biter expansion. We don't even bother picking up the artifacts any more since we have so many. Hopefully the playthrough Kovarex is doing will continue to show you areas of improvement.

[Zerias]

If I read that right, the main if not only reason for the fluid multiplication is that circuits floor the decimals? Instead of modifying code for every single object relating to fluid to account for a volume increase, why not just have objects that output an initial fluid signal (tanks, pumpjacks, and possibly others I'm unaware of, yet not fluid signals from combinators) output ten times the signal they currently do. Anyone using circuits and combinators that would need the proper numbers can account for that with setups such as x/10 and x-10*(x/10).

Love the game, and looking forward to seeing future updates.

[MeduSalem]

I also welcome getting rid of the alien artifacts... they are highly unnecessary and you only stock up on them.

The player gear only needed a couple and the only other part where they came in handy is with Modules, but even there you hit the point where you just don't need any more of them. So yeah, good riddance.



Also the change of the fluid rounding issue is welcome as well.

That said I wonder if the game internally still calculates fluids with floating point numbers or if they were changed to Integer values altogether?
With the lowest amount where there still is a fluid in a pipe being 1, and 0 resembling no fluid at all. And no internally rounded fractions.

[TheTomCZ]

Cool...

For me, artifacts were just a nuisance... I like building my factory, I don't mind protecting it, I don't care if I need to clear some nests to expand.
Harvesting the artifacts, that was really pain in the ass... Very hard in early game, very tiresome in end game, when I just wanted to sit back and watch my well-oiled factory run on itself, and *BAM*, artifacts run out, and instead of expanding or optimizing the factory, I had to run to the very edge of the map to find some beasts, run through them and run back...

So big thumbs up from me

[Quickbowjob]

Would had like to see a biters farm fence setup with slaughterhouse and each higher biter tier has a different/better loot so no need to hunt the whole world, or is that just me?

[factoriouzr]

I agree with the removal of the alien artifacts, but I definitely want the Biters to STAY around. KEEP THE BITERS. They add a sense of challenge and fun to the game.

I think the biters need to be improved with:
more types/variety
more progression (more levels of difficulty, might be somewhat related to types)
better AI and interesting behaviours
ability to increase the difficulty on map creation of the biters

For those that don't want to play with them, you can add an option to turn them off at the start of the game.

For me personally (and I heard this from others as well), we like the biters. They just need some love and improvement, but it's still better to have them even in their current state and without dropping artifacts then remove them completely.

I like the challenge and it adds to the story that you are stranded on this alien planet with natives (aliens) and you have to defend yourself. It also adds challenge in claiming new resource spots. I really like this mix in this game. This is not just a logistics game, it's a survival game as well.

I would really like to see this game have late game increase in challenge from biters and cool ways to deal with them like sending automated combat robots, having robot patrols etc. In a few Friday facts, it was mentioned about having a player command centre and having an RTS type aspect to the game. Personally I would love this.

Along side fixing some more bugs, improving the UI, implementing common requested features, improving the biters is a really important thing for me that would really make me love the game even more

[mikiqex]

I play with enemies maxed out from the start to make it more challenging. Now I'm 20 % away from finishing the silo and I don't even collect artifacts any more, just clearing nests for more production lines. The down side is that I don't need trains in this setting, because everything is just too close...

[factoriouzr]

Would had like to see a biters farm fence setup with slaughterhouse and each higher biter tier has a different/better loot so no need to hunt the whole world, or is that just me?

I would also love this solution as it's possible to automate and it would look cool having biter farms, with the biters moving around in them like a zoo lol.

It would also be cool if they dropped more types of items and some with low probabilities but that you could use for better rewards.

Either don't need artifacts at all for anything but still have the biters for challenge and fun or add a way to farm them and have them drop the artifacts. Either way works for me, I love both approaches as long as biters are improved in the game and beefed up to provide more challenge to players that want it.

[BHakluyt]

Hi Klonan and team

I think you are going in the right direction research wise, however I don't think you should remove the artifacts completely from the game. Decrease the amount thats given by spawners a lot, like only one in 10 or 1/100 have a chance to give 1 to 5. I wish the developers did spend more time on the RPG aspect, because its something that would have been awesome and I've thought about it before too. At first I did think it had RPG elements since I could make different tiers of armours.

Back to artifacts, or more realistically, biological tissue samples: when one day there is space stations and the ability to go to other planets you will want to have some other, different alien life there. Then these samples would be an integral part of research to perhaps find a cure for an airborne virus on the planet. With colonisation this would be even more needed.

Use the artifacts for the sweet special stuff, like power armours and modules. Add some new gizmos for the power armour like a small device alowing you to not move when on conveyor belts, or teleportation devices. Make something like the poison capsule that uses genetically modified tissue to infect a hive with a virus. This could add a nice little production chain. Crush the tissue samples into an oil which are used for really advanced hydraulic systems, like engine units which give everything a power and speed boost. Or use it for certain infinite research branches. Afterall, its a hostile planet and I love the drive and fear for survival the biters provide. It would be nice to have more reward than just the space for a new outpost, and yet keep it so that players can progress to the "end" of the game without artifacts also. If you want more work, perhaps for those who only want to construct mega industrial bases without the additional challenge/annoyance of biters, add old caves that can be mined for a few artifacts? And if you have some more time for more work, please do some fine tuning to combat.

Sjoh with all the talk about research and and and...I hope that 8 legged surprise is still being worked on. That would be such a unique niche item to have in the game. It would make Factorio even more super cool.

Just some of my ideas. Thanks for a fantastic game.

EDIT: Yeah exactly. Thats why I made a post. Please don't do this. Give us an option in the settings rather then, please.

Remove alien artifacts? Why not just remove the biters completely?

[factoriouzr]

I play with enemies maxed out from the start to make it more challenging. Now I'm 20 % away from finishing the silo and I don't even collect artifacts any more, just clearing nests for more production lines. The down side is that I don't need trains in this setting, because everything is just too close...

I also play with maxed biter settings across the board but I find they don't provide much challenge in 0.14.x. I would love to crank up the biter difficulty in game when creating the map. Don't know if anybody else noticed this, but they don't move on my map even though they are in radar range unless i walk close to them. They used to move and swarm all around my base no matter where I used to be.

[Optera]

So long and thanks for the artifact spam.
While manually clearing nests I collect several k of them. Once i went to automating biter clearing with robot army i suddenly had several M.

[y.petremann]

I have an idea : artifact could be used to speed up research. You could put artifact in lab and it would increase speed research by 10% for exemple, while slowly consuming artifacts.

For my part, as already said, keep the biters, they are really useful :

• They are bugs in your factory and that force you to add a way to automaticaly fix your factory
• They add a little fun in exploration
• Their attacks represent the time you passed on your factory and the consequence of the polution you emit.

For alien artifacts, I thin that it's a great thngs to have them removed from critical line to win the game, also it's a good idea to keep them away of recipes you do only once and military recipes that could mostly get used for getting more alien artifacts, what the point of spending alien artifact to get them.
But as already said, I think that it could be good to keep them to allow a sort of consumable module for factories, for me it would need to be a good buf (energy or production related) and something you want to have on transport belts to transport to your machines (or by robots). This add variation to the game (else you could remove trains, robots, modular armor and circuit networks, they are not needed for the critical line to win the game).

For the loot mecanism, I think that there is too much of them, it would be definitely great to have less of them by spawners, but I like the bob ways, having small alien artifacts from biters themselves and getting way to add them.

[POPISowyNumer]

I personally think that getting absolutely rid of artifacts is not best way here. There are bigger issues with natives than some pinky blobs cluttering chests. There are few mods that give alternatives to clearing nests only to further scientific progress, but AI of biters and spitters lies six feet under for a long long time.

[Ilirea]

I would like to see the Alien Artifacts come to use in some consumable items like powerful grenades or smth:
--> kill Aliens
--> get Alien Artifacts
--> build more powerful ammo/grenades
--> kill more Aliens faster
--> repeat

[Nemoricus]

I agree with the removal of the alien artifacts, but I definitely want the Biters to STAY around. KEEP THE BITERS. They add a sense of challenge and fun to the game.

I think the biters need to be improved with:
more types/variety
more progression (more levels of difficulty, might be somewhat related to types)
better AI and interesting behaviours
ability to increase the difficulty on map creation of the biters

For those that don't want to play with them, you can add an option to turn them off at the start of the game.

For me personally (and I heard this from others as well), we like the biters. They just need some love and improvement, but it's still better to have them even in their current state and without dropping artifacts then remove them completely.

I like the challenge and it adds to the story that you are stranded on this alien planet with natives (aliens) and you have to defend yourself. It also adds challenge in claiming new resource spots. I really like this mix in this game. This is not just a logistics game, it's a survival game as well.

I would really like to see this game have late game increase in challenge from biters and cool ways to deal with them like sending automated combat robots, having robot patrols etc. In a few Friday facts, it was mentioned about having a player command centre and having an RTS type aspect to the game. Personally I would love this.

Along side fixing some more bugs, improving the UI, implementing common requested features, improving the biters is a really important thing for me that would really make me love the game even more

I'll second all of this. Removing artifacts is perfectly fine, since it means that you can fully automate all of your production now. However, it makes biters even more of an irritant, since it removes a benefit for clearing out their nests.

I would really like to see a combat pass some time soon, since it's by far the weakest aspect of the game. It doesn't need to be brilliant, since combat isn't the focus of this game. But I'd like to see it made less tedious to deal with.

[factoriouzr]

I have an idea : artifact could be used to speed up research. You could put artifact in lab and it would increase speed research by 10% for exemple, while slowly consuming artifacts.

For my part, as already said, keep the biters, they are really useful :

• They are bugs in your factory and that force you to add a way to automaticaly fix your factory
• They add a little fun in exploration
• Their attacks represent the time you passed on your factory and the consequence of the polution you emit.

For alien artifacts, I thin that it's a great thngs to have them removed from critical line to win the game, also it's a good idea to keep them away of recipes you do only once and military recipes that could mostly get used for getting more alien artifacts, what the point of spending alien artifact to get them.
But as already said, I think that it could be good to keep them to allow a sort of consumable module for factories, for me it would need to be a good buf (energy or production related) and something you want to have on transport belts to transport to your machines (or by robots). This add variation to the game (else you could remove trains, robots, modular armor and circuit networks, they are not needed for the critical line to win the game).

For the loot mecanism, I think that there is too much of them, it would be definitely great to have less of them by spawners, but I like the bob ways, having small alien artifacts from biters themselves and getting way to add them.

I'm good with this but the aliens should be farmable for their artifacts (this game is about automation) and the artifacts should disappear after 10 minutes to avoid save game bloat. This was an issue I noticed with stock factorio and more so with Bob's mods. You get a ton of them accumulating around your base with the mod (which isn't that bad since they are somewhat localized and you run around and collect them) but even then it's an issue if you don't check on a part of your base (walls and turrets) and when you come back, the entire screen is filled with artifacts. Also it's a chore to collect them without a mod that auto collects items in a certain radius. Also in the base game and with mods, destroying biter bases and biters (with bob's mods) would leave a ton of artifacts, and after a point you get tired of picking them up and don't need them so you skip some and they are so easy to miss. Then every artifact ends up making your save file bigger.

What if you go on a killing spree for fun (late game) or to expand or explore? You will leave tons of artifacts behind that will bloat your saved game. Having a 10 minute or so timeout on artifacts would be great because then they would eventually disappear and your saved game won't get bloated.

Another cool idea I had was to unload generated map chunks if the player hasn't built anything near them (within several screens maybe) and there is no active live radar feed of the area. Also if the player hasn't mined any resources in that chunk (to avoid exploiting having infinite resources close by without a mod). This way players that explore and go on biter killing sprees in end game for something to do won't bloat their saved game. The reason this makes sense is because if the player can't see it and isn't near it, biter bases will spawn anyway and the next time the radar scans that section you will see the base. Also map chunks are generated based on a seed, so re-generating the same chunk will yield the same map. Thus it won't remove anything from the game and keep the save file size down.

[torham]

I agree that artifacts are PITA in late game to clear. Removing them solves the problem.

Since the artefatcs are now used in just a few minor recipes, you could also greatly reduce the numbers of them. Say every nest only having 30% chance of spawning one. That way you can still have recipes that use them, but reduce clutter on the ground. Clutter problem could also be solved, If personal robots could be ordered to pick up any artefacts off the ground.

Further idea: - fuel for your industry - artefacts can be burned in bilers/furnaces/ magitech generators to get tons of very dirty form of energy ( lots of pollution).

[OvermindDL1]

I personally like the artifacts, however I do like them being removed from science, what I would do though is definitely mirror some of what has been suggested here, such as doing something different with artifacts, such as enhancing productivity somehow (some type of refining of the atmosphere for the lore or so?), or personally I would get rid of the artifacts but replace them with other drops, like having something like Chitin or Scales or so (since they look like insects) drop randomly from biters themselves (in greater amounts on larger ones) to be used in defensive structures (could use them directly to make a better wall, or perhaps use them as a kind of 'module' for walls and turrets that bump up their armor when inside), as well as have the nests drop something biologic to where you could make a better bullet tinged with some of their own venom or so.

In other words, I like having uses for enemy 'products', but generally only for better defending/attacking against those enemies. I rather like the idea of being able to put something like Chitin in a wall instead of constructing a wall out of it, if their could be an overlay graphic for the wall with it then that would be fantastic as well, but having slots in walls and turrets could be useful for mod authors as well.

/me is one of those that play death maps, if the map outside of my base is not red with enemies and I do not have constant warnings going off about attacks then the game is too boring as it is just expanding without anything holding me back....

EDIT: Plus, since the mods I play with have enemies that drop things (whether mini-artifacts or chitin or so), I love building things to gather up the materials outside, it is a fun logistics challenge!

[Quickbowjob]

Would had like to see a biters farm fence setup with slaughterhouse and each higher biter tier has a different/better loot so no need to hunt the whole world, or is that just me?

I would also love this solution as it's possible to automate and it would look cool having biter farms, with the biters moving around in them like a zoo lol.

It would also be cool if they dropped more types of items and some with low probabilities but that you could use for better rewards.

Either don't need artifacts at all for anything but still have the biters for challenge and fun or add a way to farm them and have them drop the artifacts. Either way works for me, I love both approaches as long as biters are improved in the game and beefed up to provide more challenge to players that want it.

There are fields, Neo, endless fields where biters beings are no longer born,.. but are grown and being change into this ..

Batteries!