Friday Facts #205 - Teaching the things that everybody knows

[nljr]

Talking about "non-obvious" things, when do we get an explanation of removing circuit wires and/or copy-pasting circuit settings between items.

It REALLY needs a button, rather than a magic-modifier-key-combo.

I was really upset when I found out there's no way to remove and reuse logic network wires. But then I realized that bots could create those wires out of nothing and I don't feel so bad about it.

[pseudoart]

It's good to see some UX improvements for the more "casual" player. Good work!

[Lubricus]

Fluid mechanics. I don't mean the esotericall stuff but the simple stufflike. How much is flowing through the pipe? Why is the pipe full/empty?
Should heat-exchanges be full with water or is it enough with a few % for them to work at 100%?

[burner]

Two things what I really like to get more info.
- Fluid mechanics.
- debug: time usage & detailed info rows / fields meaning. Some of these are clear but some of these not so much.

[innesm]

The good news is it's easy to fix [...] hold F and run around a bit.

Another way, that avoids the risk of hoovering up stuff from belts, is to use a deconstruction planner set to hit items that are on the ground.

[credomane]

"Optional dependency" still seems like too strong of a wording. They're not a dependency at all, they're a load order constraint and a version match.

That is what required dependency is too, though. Just with additional rule of do not load the mod if that fails. If you have a better name then by all means please provide it. I think that optional dependency will stick since everyone everywhere calls it that.

Option to automatically resolve mandatory dependencies would be nice, since most of the time latest versions work fine and most of the mods are on mod portal, and sorting them out manually can take a while.

Indeed a "Fetch required dependencies" button would be awesome. Especially if it had an option to act recursively; fetching required deps of require deps until all were satisfied.

[Cutemine]

Here are some more ideas for mini tutorials:

• how to place inverters and their interaction with belts (e.g. long-handed vs normal; belt sides)
• quick replacement of machines / furnaces etc with better ones
• rotating already built stuff
• detailed info view
• pollution (production, absorption, biter evolution)
• modules (like the armor: where to place them, when are they useful)
• fluid wagons (how to fill/empty them, split compartments)
• discharge defense and its remote control

[Twinsen]

- debug: time usage & detailed info rows / fields meaning. Some of these are clear but some of these not so much.

Debug things are for devs and bug reports. I even added a warning to prevent people from keeping them enabled or using them for cheating.

[monksu]

I'd label mod dependencies under "Required mods" and "[Optional] partner mods".

Dependency isn't a word used in everyday life if you are not a programmer. Well, biologists might use it too if they were talking about a calf and his mother. Or about a parasite and its host.

[Tongs]

I would split the military production tab.

One tab would contain items you equip: weapons, ammunition, armor, items that go in armor.

The other tab would contain items constructed on the ground, e.g. turrets.

Then it becomes easier to make the distinction and inform the user: "items in this tab are equipment that works differently than the other tabs."

[ThorsDragon]

Thank you!!! I think you're already planning on it- but I personally would LOOOOOOVE an in-depth tutorial on the circuit network workings. I use youtube videos for that now, and it would SOO COOL to have that in game, where I can pause it and my game, and follow the steps 1 by 1. If you haven't already considered it- explaining how to run a fully researched nuclear set up, that keeps 40 u-238 in your system, and takes the extra ones out to be used for power, and weapons, would be super cool and very nice!! Or at least the basics of that, so that we could then design a system from your wonderful instructions.

FANTASTICALLY AWESOME GAME, PLEASE KEEP UP YOUR AWESOME WORK!!!!!!

[eradicator]

Dependencies:

A button for automatically installing non-optional dependencies would really solve that issue best. "Hiding" information in a tooltip is imho not a good solution, because there's probably a large amount of ppl out there that won't even realize that those labels _have_ a tooltip in the first place. This is compounded by the fact that the requirement section shows the _internal_ name of the mod, which can an will be different from the localised name. Your example screenshot for example shows a dependency for "bobplates" which has a localized name of "Bob's Metals, Chemicals and Intermediates" ("Plates" isn't even in there!) which couldn't be further from intuitive, and the internal name isn't displayed on the in-game mod downloader at all. Adding an "add now" button to every non-/optional dependency might also work. That way the player gets full control over what they want to install without having to know about internal naming schemes.


Armor Info:

The new panel looks really neat. Will it always show every possible equipment tho? I hear some mods (which i don't use) add heaps of tiered equipment, and if the panel is then filled with five times as many icons because there's now five tiers for everything than that informative panel quickly degrades into "a heap of icons" which might scare away inexperienced players again. Not sure what a good solution to that would be tho :|.


Things that need explanation:

-Yellow colored mods in the mod list indicate available updates. Maybe add a yellow info text somewhere "Updates are available".
-"Chain"-insertering bottles/fuel between science labs and boilers. (Or are there more available?)


Lastly here's some suggestions to change some of the more technical terms to more common ones:

"Entity" -> "Building"/"Construct"
"Dependencies" -> "Requires"
"Optional Dependencies" -> "Works well with"/"Has additional content for"

Also if this post sounds overly negative - that's because i care so much to make factorio even better ;)

[RubyRhod]

I think in case of equipement and armor just putting the icons of what they accept or what they can be put in isn't a good way. what if I have a mod with many different armor? or hundreds of modules? and what about weapons? and shells for the different guns?

I think you should make a new Icon for >any armor< and a new Icon for >equipement<, >weapons< and so on. Those Icons should be easy to understand that it is just an example for every type of armor there may be.

so maybe the equipement "fusion reactor" should show: can be put in >armor< (heavy armor, modular armor and modular armor MK2) and >vehicle< (car, train, tank, whatever). and the shotgun shell should show 'can be put in >shotguns<' (any type of shotgun there may be)

and if you want to be thorough make the icon explain what item it stands for when hovering. so the icon >vehicles< would show the car, tank and train (and whatever is available by mod).

and maybe you can sort the different equipements. maybe you can make an icon for "defensive equipements", "weapon-equipements", and so on. and it could show something like this (but I didn't do the sorting into groups in this picture):

fff-205-armor-gui_RR.png (69.4 KiB) Viewed 7904 times

[Durabys]

https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-205

I hope you are also watching and reading the 'feature report' commentary in Factorio's Steam News Thread. Because people there had been talking about things that even I thought didn't exist.

Most interesting posts from there:

ŤɧɛƧʋƥɘʁƼēŵƈįɸ 28 minutes ago
Hi Factorio team! Would it be possible to add ''custom mod lists''. When you have few saved runs, each with diffrent mods it is hard to remember which mod to turn on/off for the particular game. I had this issue because i have one vanila game (i can just go to mods menu and turn off all of them), one vanilla+ (with mods like Upgrade Planner, it was also easy to turn them on because there were only like 3 mods) and fully modded game with more than 15 mods. Each time i wanted to play one after another it was very hard to remember what mods to use to those saves.

Another thing that frustrated me was when i wanted to join a server and it gave me list with 20 mods which are or aren't on the server. I couldn't pin this list to my menu or automatically select these mods. I ended switching 3 at a time and restarting my game couple of times.

Or maybe i just can't use Factorio.



Tasty Goeyduck 29 minutes ago
The resistance values are not expained in the armor, what does the first vs second value mean?



Nayru 2 hours ago
One thing on the battery in the armor : what is the maximum ouput to refill a shield ?
Because nothing tells us that info.

[Sphinx]

On this topic of the armor tooltip
Resistances Physical: 3/20%
It took me a long time to find out how armor works. I think it is hard to understand what this means if you don't go on a google spree.

[Koub]

Actually, it really depends on your gaming history profile. I has always seemed totally obvious to me what it meant. On the other hand, it took me literally hundreds of hours to even dare try trains. And it was long and painful.

[AcolyteOfRocket]

A bit off-topic but...

Please stop fluids annihilating each other when mixed - explode the pipe segment instead, it will be easier to spot and will prevent the two lines from mixing further.

Or add proper fluid properties and components, but I guess that would slow things down too much.

[eradicator]

Thinking a bit more about this:

Maybe instead of trying to cram everything into tooltips, have a sort of in-game "wiki" (like .chm files in old times...) that is searchable and explains every item / concept properly. That kind of single-info-source also makes it very easy to give newbies a hint in the right direction. Also if done right it could have an interface for mods to register additional help pages for their own concepts (sorted into tabs by mod?). The explanations should be wikipedia-"simple english"-style and convey only necessary information to understand the basic concepts. If someone really wants to know about the most tiny quirks (e.g. "north inserters are slower") they can still go to "real" wikis on the web.

Infact thinking about this i remembered that many larger minecraft mods have an in-game handbook and i was quite fond of having that kind of general information right there in my hotbar. The threshold to looking something up is just sooo much lower if you can do so right where you are, instead of having to hunt for uncertain results on google.

[y.petremann]

What I think is that some players swap from the survival world and the sandbox world, I think that tutorial mecanism would be interesting to quickly access some sort of sandbox world.

Also nuclear stuff is quite impressive, some people never goes to nuclear because it looks over-complicated, which in case when you find out how to deal with it is quite simple to get a working setup. A tutorial to introduce the nuclear production chain the same way steam is introduced in campaign would be interesting.

Finally I found that a lot of people I play with doesn't get some belt concepts like side blocking, side inserting, and how splitter works, a tutorial that would introduce to those concept (not killing all the fun of learning and discovering) would be greatly apreciated.

[jamezhall]

it's vacation season here in the office, with a lot of the team taking some time off

You guys deserve it! Thankyou so much for all your hard work that you put into making this game, & bringing us joy and many sleepless nights! Enjoy your vacation and I look forward to great things to come!