And of course this is brought up here, but first, the subject of the thread.
I liked the changes, I will admit I found the last bits of the old one a bit too overwhelming, and this one's a bit more my speed, far less chance of me thinking I've been doing well only to fine myself in an unwinnable situation due to my own over-construction and/or slowness
Lorash wrote: ↑Fri Aug 02, 2019 7:25 pm
You're still forced to use advanced oil processing, so nothing meaningful was removed from the game, just moved later. Plenty of people hit a brick wall around blue science and give up, not because it's too difficult to do, but because it's no longer fun.
I'd actually say something meaningful was removed, basic oil processing, as Advanced oil processing has now become
needed, previously it was optional (though not using it was suboptimal), but like electric furnaces or beacons, a player could ignore it if they wanted to for some reason, there's also the fact that "Moved later" can also mean moved to a point past where it'd be fun to get, or past a point where the player no longer has any interest in the game if it means having to deal with that tedium. And I for one am firmly in the camp that the delay in bots (and excess oil products to turn into fuel) happens too late now
As for your second point, if it's because they no longer have fun around blue science, will the change in oil keep the fun? I haven't seen any evidence it'll do so
V453000 wrote: ↑Fri Aug 02, 2019 6:54 pm
In short, the changes make oil less annoying to set up in the basic form. I hate hearing that this is only for newcomers, I think it’s just generally better, not having to worry about as many things.
In case of no changes, the basic oil processing was annoying yet completely unsustainable, deadlocking all the time. This lead to just spamming tanks which is a really weak solution, and forced the player to rush advanced oil processing, thus rushing blue science. However with all the things in green the player is generally in a good spot.
Thinking on this post, has made me realize two main things about my dislike of the oil changes, for the first one, it may just be that part of my issue with all this is that I have trouble wrapping my head around old BOP being unsustainable, my first few playthroughs I got oil with the intent of using solid fuel to fuel my boilers/smelters so hearing people mention back up just seems like that's a failure to communicate the usage of solid fuel than anything else. Maybe my experience learning factorio is just atypical, but this feels like such a minor enough problem that a short "You can make oil products now! And use any excess of the THREE outputs as fuel for boilers/furnaces" popup like we get when we first get trains would fix everything to me.
For the second thing, well I also feel that in the rush to simply things you guys made BOP too simple, you've pushed a couple useful things farther back than they should (bots and extra oil products to make solid fuel into) and I (though you guys have made it clear you think otherwise, so time will have to tell on this one) feel it doesn't teach new players anything other than possibly bad habits, while for veteran players (or at least for me) it just prods them to rush AOP for the stuff that used to be red/green techs and never take a second look at BOP once it's there, maybe that's the intent but it just feels off
There's also my problem with the usage of sulfur for blue science and the look of the refineries with BOP but that's a whole 'nother tangent
You are right though, the arguments have all been discussed and at this point the best thing to do is probably wait and see how it actually affect things, but people are angry and to be honest, having played with it a bit the past few days has only increased my feeling this is a mistake, but I admit that could just be due to my own preferences talking for now
V453000 wrote: ↑Fri Aug 02, 2019 6:54 pm
Also, I honestly cannot spend another full weekend fully reading the forums and spending several hours writing replies.
Fair, hope you have a good one and sorry for any stress we may have caused