Friday Facts #284 - 0.17 experimental

[Xuhybrid]

[...] If you think a very experienced player should be failing in the tutorial campaign, you're a fuckin moron.

I think you went a bit overboard there . It's only a experimental release, prone to plenty of tweaks still. It's good to get feedback of people liking it and people that don't, but there's no need to get like that . I haven't played it yet but I'm pretty sure they will balance it or find another way to make the players think "oh, I need to produce more" instead of "oh, I need to play a tower defense".

Perhaps. I only made that statement in direct response to their FF which tries to dismiss anyone criticising the difficulty.
"But why so hard?!?!", "But Ben... it is seriously HARD… way too hard for new players!"

Punishing players who build optimally or play well would be one thing, but i only had 4 miners and 4 labs going. I wasn't going overboard yet i had to build 4 ammo assembly machines and i still ran out moments before completing the research. The amount of biters is ridiculous. The very act of trying to keep up, only spawns MORE biters. A new player could easily decide to build more and more to keep up, causing their own downfall even faster. The spawning mechanics or pollution is never explained, and even in freeplay the attacks don't come this often for just entry level machinery.

[Cohiba]

As a very new player it is WAY to hard, because new players we aren't efficient we pollute bad and we get overrun to easily. We also have no idea on how to defend against bitters and poof there go our turrets and oh look were dead. after the 2nd or 3rd time of failing we start looking for youtube videos or go nope the game is just to hard forget it, onto the next game.

[astroshak]

I think the lesson that defense phase is trying to teach is ... Overproduce or Go Home.

Its not hard to survive when you have a lot of furnaces taking one belt of ore and converting it into a belt of plates, feeding 12 assembly machines making ammo, 6 of which are going west, and the other 6 are going east.

Yet that amount of production is way overkill for anything that came before it in the mission. Overproduce! Produce more Iron Plates and then more ammo than you think you’re going to need; with the (unmodded) exception of burner equipment, everything that has an upgrade is recyclable.

[BlueTemplar]

The attack system emulates Freeplays pollution system. If you pollute hard, you are attacked hard. The only difference is that the 'price' of a biter is lowered inversely to how far you are through the final research.

Ooh, then it's *both* !
I thought that it couldn't possibly be pollution based, considering how fast the attacks were scaling up !

I also fell into the "veteran sets up big factory and gets suddenly overrun" trap. It's not a serious problem, since this might not affect the target audience. But it wasn't really enjoyable in the end... felt like I could not do anything to get out of that mess once i realized what's going on. Placed more labs... enough to get the ending screen before they had eaten power & labs. Got the finish screen in time, but the game was practically lost. No time to re-work the base to produce more ammo & strengthen defense (while that seems to be a vital part of factorio). This didn't feel like victory. Even more so since I didn't expected that to be the end.

Biters go tame again when you win. So it's easy to reconquer your base.
However, I've seen a lot of players that didn't even know that you could continue the game after dying !
Perhaps this should be emphasized in the tutorial (rather than the campaign, where it would break immersion too much...)

I wonder, did you balance the ending on purpose that you win while your base is getting wrecked ?
Are you planning a NPC-character driven tank arriving at the last moment and saving you ?

Just played the new tutorial campaign (v0.17.3), am disappointed. Not that it is bad, I just expected more. Some examples:

Short & No Story.
For it to replace New Hope, it is neither long enough yet nor does it have decent story / longer term goals except survival and research.

I don't know why you expected it to replace New Hope ?
AFAIK, it's designed to replace First Steps... it's the Tutorial, not the Campaign !

Campaign thoughts:

1) I don't like the "gather some of your equipment and escape east". I wound up picking up my whole base at that point (I wasn't sure if I would keep my inventory or not), and I'm really glad I did... it would have been really unfortunate not to. There's probably a way to streamline this so you don't have to guess whether you get rewarded for spending the time to pick everything up.

Yeah, Compilatron should be clearer that you should pick *everything that you can* !

- The "evacuation"... like the idea, but hardly felt like there was a threat. Better AI would be nice, maybe shoo'ing away the player.

Yeah, in practice these seems to be no rush... and the biters/worms are very tame, only attacking if you hit them -
I actually went out and killed some (and that poor worm in the forest)... *with my "bare" hands* !

This seems to be a very good point to teach melee attack to new players -
(Which is even less clear now that you can't see how much damage a pickaxe does.)

Just send one (1) small biter pestering Compilatron, and ask the player to kill it ?)

Then maybe after he learned that : 2 - 3 - 4 ... (waiting until the player kills the previous batch, then some time) - until the player realizes that he *really* should get going !
(I don't remember, do you already get the gun in the first part ? You probably shouldn't...)

2) I think underground belts, or at least long handed inserters, should be unlocked near the end of the campaign. Aside from the fact that it's just limiting in terms of how you can effectively lay out smelting, I wouldn't want new players to get the impression that the game will continue with just having to route more and more, long awkward belts around your base.

They *are* unlocked when you win. Limiting the complexity for the new players at start is good.

3) Maybe a permanent autosave when you move to the new area? After I beat the campaign, I wanted to give the survival section another go to see if I could do it better. But alas, I would have had to go back through the (boring) tutorial section, so it'll have to wait until I'm willing to play through that again.

It's already there, how come you haven't seen it ?

4) Related - there is a level selection menu inside the campaign... with only one level ("arrival")... I was hoping a second level to start at the "East" area might show up there, but no such luck.

Yeah, maybe loading the relevant autosave ?

I don't understand how the tutorial being harder for experienced players is a good thing. Experienced players are - presumably - playing the game more correctly than brand new players.

When was the last time that you enjoyed the tutorial again ?
Low-level player balance tends often to be wildly different than high-level game balance...

Now I understand why the biter situation in the campaign was so "hard". I even had a faint feeling that somehow it is related to the research progress so I was proven right. However I think there should be something to indicate that the game is deliberately doing this to you and you are supposed to figure out how to overcome it, and this is not representative of the "real game". Otherwise a new player might get the impression that Factorio is a tower defense game and decide that it's not their game.
I also felt the lack of encouraging the player to try everything in the beginning part, as if I could only carry on with the game because I already knew how to play.

yea. Its just.... I thought it was scaling up over time, and most likely scaled to research. So I kept increasing bullet production to keep up, made thick walls, etc. With the idea that, because this was a Tutorial, for new players, that it wouldn't actually throw enough at you to, ya know, deal with 20+ turrets on each side and 4 or 6 or however many assemblers I had making bullets. I had no idea that pollution was a factor here. If I had, well. I would have shut down my green circuit production and most of my copper mines, shut off my stone mines, and basically minimized my pollution profile. I had no idea that it was scaled such that at x% research, x% of your pollution budget had to go to making bullets. Seriously, who does that?

If it had said, "The pollution is agitating the biters. In this situation, minimizing unnecessary pollution is highly recommended" or something, I would have known what was going on.

In the normal game, if you ramp up your pollution, attacks increase, yes, and especially now. But nowhere near to the point where 100% of your production must go to military spending....

Yeah, this first impression is a big issue currently.
It's great that the tutorial part 2 incentivizes you to automate bullet making and feeding turrets with belts -
though on one hand, there's Compilatron helping you, maybe at some point he should just stop and tell you to set it up?
And on the other hand, placing turrets on cliffs is very tempting, but problematic for automatic insertion !
- but it should be made VERY CLEAR to the players that the Default settings Freeplay (and the Campaign) is NOT like that !!

I think the lesson that defense phase is trying to teach is ... Overproduce or Go Home.

Its not hard to survive when you have a lot of furnaces taking one belt of ore and converting it into a belt of plates, feeding 12 assembly machines making ammo, 6 of which are going west, and the other 6 are going east.

Uh, no, if you do that, you're going to need walls and dozens of turrets to finish the mission !

my win

(I'm not sure that this "biter pasture on stone" behavior is a bug or a feature ?)

demo_17_1_8762_c.jpg (3.71 MiB) Viewed 5772 times

[BlueTemplar]

The biter behaviour now is much better, you have to actively go out and clear the ones in your cloud to stop wasting iron.

Uh, this was *already* the case, even with spawners absorbing unlimited pollution... (also, you're not wasting iron if you use flame/laser turrets.)

[CDarklock]

Uh, no, if you do that, you're going to need walls and dozens of turrets to finish the mission !

My first time through, I had double-thick walls and 18 turrets. My major issue was absolutely keeping the turrets loaded. I really should have done an autoloader of some sort, but I didn't, and then I was too busy running ammo back and forth to build one later. I think an autoloader would have made a huge difference, and that would have totally been enough even with heavier attacks.

I did, last night, manage to get through the campaign with a single turret.

[BlueTemplar]

Oh, inserting items by hand into assemblers ? That got me as an "experienced player", scaling attacks up too early... had to reload.

[CDarklock]

Oh, inserting items by hand into assemblers ? That got me as an "experienced player", scaling attacks up too early... had to reload.

One step farther: preloaded the assemblers, but without power. Dropped the power pole, completed the "per minute" requirements, and pulled the power back down. My entire pollution footprint during research was one boiler and one steam engine. I didn't even run an inserter into the boiler, I just control-clicked a stack of coal into it every so often.

Also the biters were far more interested in Compilatron than they were in me.

[BlueTemplar]

Indeed :

P.S.: I actually triggered the first wave unwittingly, trying to "save" Compilatron...

[BlueTemplar]

I miss ruins.

The "hidden" easter eggs (and the not hidden Solid Fuel) are pretty cool !

It's a shame though that biters are tame by that point, so you don't really have to fight them for those...
(On the other hand, would most people bother to ?)

It's likely to be pretty hard to power that radar though?

[Light]

I wasn't aware the biter waves were impacted by pollution in this case. Given how they spawned from thin air, I was under the impression they were a set amount, possibly affected by how fast the player progressed. If they spawned waves from nests instead then it would have made a lot more sense, given pollution doesn't have to touch them to trigger big attacks when it should.

I even remember intentionally trying to get pollution to touch the nest to see if anything would happen, which is likely why it hit like a truck when the final objective triggered and I had to glitch them out to survive.

Even still, it was a nice teaser for what's to come once all the details are ironed out.

[Bizz Keryear]

Have written over the past month several post I never published, cause well didn't manage to
Anyway I still want see two things before 1.0.

edit: FIRST AND MOST IMPORTANT: BACKGROUND SAVES Please change the game so that you aren't interrupted anymore by the game saving. I mean every other games does this why you don't manage it in Factorio? Yay, seems done already (or I'm too focused on playing the game)

2nd the for ... (I think it was 0.13 or) 0.14 promised spider tank. ... Just because I think it's cool and it was promised.

In any other way I couldn't be happier and you never stop to amaze me in the ways you improve the game I'd never thought of.

sorry g2g steam fnished download 0.17 hav2play

[BlueTemplar]

Please change the game so that you aren't interrupted anymore by the game saving. I mean every other games does this why you don't manage it in Factorio?

They don't ?
And Factorio probably can't, because of how the simulation works. (Check the save sizes!)

(Do you think that it can specifically be an issue in the tutorial ?)

[Jap2.0]

Please change the game so that you aren't interrupted anymore by the game saving. I mean every other games does this why you don't manage it in Factorio?

They don't ?
And Factorio probably can't, because of how the simulation works. (Check the save sizes!)

(Do you think that it can specifically be an issue in the tutorial ?)

Actually this is a hidden option on Linux - I don't know if it's made its way to Windows yet. You might have to go into the config file to enable it, though.

[BlueTemplar]

Huh. And it can save without even pausing the simulation for a noticeable number of ticks?
(Though now that I think of it, it does have to do something like that each time a new player joins in MP...)

[5thHorseman]

I don't understand how the tutorial being harder for experienced players is a good thing. Experienced players are - presumably - playing the game more correctly than brand new players.

When was the last time that you enjoyed the tutorial again ?

I don't see what this has to do with what I said. But for Factorio, that time was never. I only played the campaign (which is what this is and what the devs say it is, even though it seems to replace any and all tutorials) once, back in 0.14 or something like that, and hated it. I actually didn't pick the game up again until much later, when it was pointed out to me that the "campaign" wasn't actually the main game mode and the freeplay was what everybody really played.

[BlueTemplar]

the campaign (which is what this is and what the devs say it is, even though it seems to replace any and all tutorials)

Uh, the previous FFF was pretty clear about it ?

Introduction Campaign (NPE/Tutorial/Demo)

With 0.17, we will be releasing the first public version of the new Introduction Campaign. Because of this, naturally, we will be removing the old 'First Steps' and 'New Hope' campaigns.

The 'Main Campaign' will be added to the game later, and we will be providing some more details on the Introduction and Main Campaigns next week.

(emphasis mine)

If you're reffering to this :

As you might expect I try not to mention the word tutorial anywhere.

I suppose it's because tutorials are generally poorly made, and so have a bad reputation ?

I don't understand how the tutorial being harder for experienced players is a good thing. Experienced players are - presumably - playing the game more correctly than brand new players.

When was the last time that you enjoyed the tutorial again ?

I don't see what this has to do with what I said. But for Factorio, that time was never.

Derp. Sorry, I seem to have accidentally a sentence...
What I should have said :
"When was the last time that you played (by choice, or worse, having been forced to) a dedicated tutorial in any game again, and have enjoyed it?"
If it can both be a good tutorial, *and* replaying it can be enjoyable (a feat that I didn't think was even possible before playing this one), then why not to have both?
Also, this mostly comes from the dynamic difficulty... (and also from learned habits that come from having already solved a lot of game's puzzles)

[CDarklock]

"When was the last time that you played (by choice, or worse, having been forced to) a dedicated tutorial in any game again, and have enjoyed it?"

I kind of do this all the time... but I am weird.

Like in "Kingdoms of Amalur" you have that intro part where you go through and it says "here's how to use a sword, here's how to wear armour, here's a bow, here are some daggers, here's how to sneak, here's how to use magic" etc. etc. etc. I play through that every damn time.

Or in "Viva Pinata," where you literally can't get the tutorial again unless you go into system settings on your XBox and deliberately remove your settings file. I have repeatedly gone into storage devices and deleted everything so I could play through the initial stuff all over again.

I just have a particular fondness for the early parts of games. Which is why I have... I think sixty hours total, in the 0.17 campaign? (checks Steam playtime) No, I had 215 hours before it came out, so 52 at best and I've also put a couple hours into freeplay. Forty-something, I'd expect.

[Venatos]

"Compilatron builds a mining setup for the player and then the Objective window directs the player to feed the produced plates into the 'feeder'. Once that is complete, the 'feeder' is removed and the player needs to load and unload the assembling machine with inserters. "

im just happy i allready know the game, this would confuse the hell out of me. its freakin quantum physics all over again. "shudder"
how is that easier to understand then watching an inserter take an item from a belt and putting it into an assembler?

[Lonami]

After playing the new campaign, I can finally point out a few things!

• Is it normal to start at 75% UI scaling in my 1366x768 laptop screen? Everything was tiny!
• First, when a research is completed,the dialog that pops up has a very very wide [x] button. I thought it wasn't very consistent with the rest, but it might be intended.
• I've researced escape pod, but I didn't bother growing my science production. I wonder what could be a way to really encourage the players. I designed the belts quite well and I didn't want to mess it all up just to increase the production.
• It felt like it needed some more polishment. Sorry for being vague here.
• Perhaps the camera moves too fast for some people. I personally don't mind it.
• I think the concept of Compilatron is cool, but damn, he moves and builds fast!
• Biters build even faster. After you blink they have built the base directly without any transition.
• When you get the hotbar... Suddenly I have so many items! Perhaps a way to filter those I have discovered? Or those that I currently have in my inventory? Like "[ ] Show all", disabled by default.
• I filled the hotbar with useless stuff and I can't remove them

Now, I really love the redesign of the technology tree, and the design of the introduction! The valley where we play is awesome. Anyway, let's post this for now.