Friday Facts #373 - Factorio: Space Age

[FuryoftheStars]

Also, for people who are afraid it is too fast. The 80 hour estimate to finish is loosely approximated by being able to finish vanilla by around 35 hours if you try.
In other words, if you don't rush and want to build neatly and enjoy the progress slowly, it will certainly be much more.

I think most Space Exploration veterans consider vanilla to be a 10-15 affair in a "no rush" style. Primarily because after playing big overhaul mods you just get good enough at the game that vanilla-level challenges become really quite trivial in comparison. So even twice or thrice the amount of content that vanilla has is still nowhere near what Space Exploration fans are looking for.

Not all players are SE (veteran) players. And even then, some of them probably still play long games, themselves.
I, personally, could play 100+ hours on the same map and not even build the rocket silo, yet.

Wait, cliff explosives are set to unlock later, once you reach another planet? This is... absurd, please don't do it. It would be just annoying, nothing else.

Agreed. I don't want to play with cliffs disabled... but I will if I need to travel to another world, first, to even unlock em. That, or I'll just mod em back, but I'd rather not do that kind of stuff. :/

• the engines have 4 attachment points, though only 2 are needed to fuel them with both liquids

It seems like one is being fed with red fluid at its top corner, while the other is being fed with blue fluid in its top corner. Then both are using 2 mid point connections to cross-connect the red & blue fluids. So they're using 3 each. Gives you some variety choices on how to connect and fuel all of your engines.

What I really wanted to know from that image, though, is what are the turrets shooting at.

Has anything been said about joining a multiplayer game with the expansion? They mentioned in a previous FF that you can join non-expansion multiplayer by disabling the expansion, but can other players who don't have the expansion join you?

If you have the expansion disabled, yes. We're all going to end up with the same 2.0 engine, regardless of purchase. But those that purchase the expansion will get the expansion content as a mod that can be enabled and disabled just like any other mod.

(IMHO we should be already at the point where non-IPv6-compatible hadware/software should be illegal, before IPv4-compatible (or at least defaulting to) hardware/software is made illegal a few years later, like it happened for digital TV standards.)

Huh, it's interesting to read that IPv6 is (as of March 2022) at almost 50% wide adoption in the US (where I live), because so far, nothing that I work with (as IT) has used this yet. Verizon, AT&T, our ISPs at multiple locations, and even our web hosting vendors, everyone provides us with IPv4 addresses, still. And I imagine that for internal use, IPv6 has no added value what-so-ever for a vast majority or companies, and 100% of residential. Don't get me wrong, I know why IPv6 is needed, and maybe this is just because I haven't had to deal with it much yet, but that **** just reads like garbage to me. :/

This is just a mod rip off into a to full "$20 expansion".

In all fairness, as they explained, and as has been linked, they were already planning on space a looong time before the game even hit 1.0. In fact, I'm pretty sure if asked and you checked, you'd find that SE was inspired and created because of the devs saying that's where they wanted to eventually go, but it'd be a while before they got there. They shouldn't have to drop/change their plans just because someone else made a mod of it, first.

> I HATE them with the burning intensity of 10,000 suns when they get in the way of my bus.

They kinda exist to discourage the community from just blueprinting the perfect bus.

Honestly the best way to play this game is to only use your own blueprints.

Don't need to be blueprinting when it comes to cliffs getting in the way of a bus....

I am one of those people who would love a longer burner phase

Me as well, though I also love the megabase phase, too. I want both.

I severely hate games that constraints players to force them play the game the way the developers intended. This is a terrible way, because it frustrates players as long as they aren't playing the game according to the sample solution by the developers.

Agreed. I stopped playing and left a negative review on another game after a 2.0 "revamp" in part because they took away some automation features because the devs didn't want their players afk'ing the (SP & MP) game.

Jetpack in SE is so stupid. Shits on literally all transportation, unless on a megabase grid already, it legit stops you from using trains, cars, caring about walkways, completely removes the need for exoskeleton.
Boy am I glad I am encouraged to fly everywhere myself as a large logistic bot instead of actually having logistic bots.

Yup, not a fan of the jetpack in the mods that add it, either. I also don't like Squeak Through. Defeats the point. At that point you might as well just play in God mode....

Are we going to see an engine update that handles greater than 60hz refresh rate?

I don't get why some people feel the need for a > 60 Hz refresh rate in a game like this? You gain nothing from it.


-------------------

As for the various debates on artillery.... Same as with cliff explosives, I wouldn't want to see it get moved off to locked behind another planet, unless there were some other intermediary things made available or other balance changes that make it ok. Otherwise, maybe if just the infinite research stuff got locked off to later...?

[galibert]

What I really wanted to know from that image, though, is what are the turrets shooting at.

Looks like they're shooting at the asteroids to break them down. Which would make military tech part of production, which is *really* interesting for people like me that are not interested in playing with biters.

[Nidan]

Are we going to see an engine update that handles greater than 60hz refresh rate?

I don't get why some people feel the need for a > 60 Hz refresh rate in a game like this? You gain nothing from it.

For factorio alone, no. But if they happen to have one for other reasons, it's obviously also getting used for factorio. And manually setting the refresh rate is extra work... (Can't SDL be made to paper over this issue?)

[Tertius]

I don't get why some people feel the need for a > 60 Hz refresh rate in a game like this? You gain nothing from it.

I'm not asking for faster animations. If just the screen scrolling would be rendered with 120 fps, it will look much smoother despite a lower item update rate of 60 fps. Entities would look sharp while scrolling, with no motion blur. It would make the whole game look more solid. It's difficult to describe to someone who never saw the effect of > 60 fps. It's not the animations, it's the whole impression of the screen.

How scrolling looks fundamentally different with different fps, investigate the results from the various tests on this website: https://testufo.com/
If you have 60 Hz monitor, see the comparison between 30 fps and 60 fps. It's about the same with 60 fps versus 120 fps, only another step better. Scrolling with 60 fps instead of 30 has no flicker but still motion blur, while 120 fps not even has motion blur. It's crystal sharp, always.

[Gemma]

I am just praying that Wube doesn't repeat the mistakes Klei made with Spaced Out.

Please enlighten us what those mistakes were ?¡

It's shit.

[tuhe]

I feel something we are missing in the conversation about the progression is TREES!: What about introducing a new item called the "wood-axe", which is the only way to cut down a tree, and gate it so the player can either get it after exploring the second planet, or find it by mining a special rock hidden .. somewhere .. on the map? .

Anyway, if I was WUBE my first FF would be an announcement that the first three FFs would be about cliffs just to troll.

[Tricorius]

I think it's pretty important to remember that they have announced nearly a year’s worth of FFF to trickle out all the changes.

I think getting our underwear in a bunch prematurely is pretty silly.

I expect they will give plenty of decent alternatives to smooth out the progression to the techs they are moving further into the new tech trees.

[BlueTemplar]

[...]
i hoped for improvements of already existing content; especially vehicles.
the car and tank are pretty much useless and steer like toys; driving with mouse was something i am waiting for !
[...]

Not sure what you mean by "driving with mouse", but these might help :
Click To Steer

Click with the steering remote to change your vehicle's steering angle.

and
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/move-with-mouse-updated
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Kruise_Kontrol
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/DMV_Direc ... t_Vehicles

gunplay is what most gamers come for; guys in this game youre crashlanded on an alien planet and will fight them with everything from pistols to bazookas and more !

I don't know about most, but at least a significant minority just disables biters entirely.

----

To those who think, that SA might be a light version of SE or that it contain lesser content than some mods:
- The factorio mod support is what is the basis of all those mods. Without the continuous from the factorio devs to support all of this, you'd only see a fraction of the mod variety. You can consider that a big fraction of the effort for any mod is done by factorio devs by providing the possibilities and engine support.
- By developing the SA expansion, new possibilities will be implemented into the factorio engine as well. It will be the basis for mods, that will profit from those possibilities and engine properties. No mod developer is able to do that, although they often have very creative ideas to implement certain ideas with the possiblities, which are available (but often are far from optimal)
[...]
For the modding community, the SA expansion will be big advantage, because they(we) will have more tools to play with and can implement more of the creative ideas, which were problematic before.

Yeah, it's probably not a coincidence that Space Exploration and Warptorio only came out in 0.17, as well as new mod features seemingly ramped up significantly, as this was when Factorio was moved to Wube's custom engine (and people that worked on that engine were also now available for that mod-enhancing work ?)

Off the top of my head, that's when we got surfaces, custom GUI and drawing, fluid burners, any many many more features that were perhaps even more focused on mods than on vanilla...

----

[...]
What I really wanted to know from that image, though, is what are the turrets shooting at.
[...]

Clearly, asteroids, then picking up their fragments with those arms ?

[...]
Yup, not a fan of the jetpack in the mods that add it, either. I also don't like Squeak Through. Defeats the point. At that point you might as well just play in God mode....
[...]

In theory, you *should* be able to build even the dreaded pipe corners without Squeak Through, and leave paths and put walls to be able to walk around them.
But in practice, when playing with biters you soon end up cramped for space, and start encroaching on these paths, but especially : there is nothing more infuriating that biters eating something valuable while you were stuck in a bunch of pipes !
(Well, after the very early game when using pipes as walls.)

----

Are we going to see an engine update that handles greater than 60hz refresh rate?

I don't get why some people feel the need for a > 60 Hz refresh rate in a game like this? You gain nothing from it.

For factorio alone, no. But if they happen to have one for other reasons, it's obviously also getting used for factorio. And manually setting the refresh rate is extra work... (Can't SDL be made to paper over this issue?)

"SDL" ?

----

I am just praying that Wube doesn't repeat the mistakes Klei made with Spaced Out.

Please enlighten us what those mistakes were ?¡

It's shit.

Ah yeah, that's very enlightening to anyone who hasn't played Spaced Out. NOT.

[Nidan]

Are we going to see an engine update that handles greater than 60hz refresh rate?

I don't get why some people feel the need for a > 60 Hz refresh rate in a game like this? You gain nothing from it.

For factorio alone, no. But if they happen to have one for other reasons, it's obviously also getting used for factorio. And manually setting the refresh rate is extra work... (Can't SDL be made to paper over this issue?)

"SDL" ?

The graphic library/backend factorio uses https://www.libsdl.org/

[FuryoftheStars]

Are we going to see an engine update that handles greater than 60hz refresh rate?

I don't get why some people feel the need for a > 60 Hz refresh rate in a game like this? You gain nothing from it.

For factorio alone, no. But if they happen to have one for other reasons, it's obviously also getting used for factorio. And manually setting the refresh rate is extra work... (Can't SDL be made to paper over this issue?)

Well, I wasn't talking about the need for a > 60 Hz monitor, but rather the need to have Factorio run at it.

I don't get why some people feel the need for a > 60 Hz refresh rate in a game like this? You gain nothing from it.

I'm not asking for faster animations. If just the screen scrolling would be rendered with 120 fps, it will look much smoother despite a lower item update rate of 60 fps. Entities would look sharp while scrolling, with no motion blur. It would make the whole game look more solid.

I guess I don't agree on that need. There's nothing I can think about with this game to where having things more "vivid" like that would be a benefit. It's not an fps where that would be of benefit. *shrug*

[Nidan]

Are we going to see an engine update that handles greater than 60hz refresh rate?

I don't get why some people feel the need for a > 60 Hz refresh rate in a game like this? You gain nothing from it.

For factorio alone, no. But if they happen to have one for other reasons, it's obviously also getting used for factorio. And manually setting the refresh rate is extra work... (Can't SDL be made to paper over this issue?)

Well, I wasn't talking about the need for a > 60 Hz monitor, but rather the need to have Factorio run at it.

No need per se, rather factorio being the odd one out:
I haven't seen factorio changing the refresh rate yet, nor any other monitor setting. (I assume factorio has no function to do so.) Thus it gets run with the refresh rate the monitor used before starting factorio, which is likely the natural refresh rate of the monitor, leading to the issue getting noticed.
Once the user knows factorio should run at 60Hz they can take the necessary steps to make it run smoothly. But at the same time other applications might not exhibit this behavior (e.g. for the most desktop applications and video players running below the natural refresh rate is the norm and can handle it correctly; a high FPS game makes use of whatever monitor and graphics card can handle), leading to the user blaming factorio as the only program/game not being able to cope with refresh rates above 60Hz.

That's why I'm wondering in my last comment if SDL can't just handle it, as it should be a somewhat common problem for games running at a fixed update rate. Wasn't double/triple buffering invented to decouple the update loops for game logic and display?

[mmmPI]

Very happy to read the FFF ! Excited to read some more !

This post is probably going to make everyone hate me, but...

Factorio in general seems to be stuck in this weird contradictory middle-point between automation/puzzle game and tower defence game. The long, slow factory building gameplay somewhat contradicts with the need to constantly defend yourself, and I feel like these mechanics sort of undermine each other a little bit.

I think there is a balance between those mechanics, where the biters are a "test" to your ability to automate defense, and once you get past that it is a little repetitive, i have played with mods like rampants to make ennemies stonger, and "smarter" but most of the time i tend to play peaceful. The regular balance of the game is what most player will experience, ( not death mode nor peaceful ) only part of them will dig deeper and use mods to enhance one or the other side you describe. I think the expansion as SE was doing will make this test more difficult , as you will need to "trust blindly" your defense, if it's on another planet where you can't see or move to manually "fix".

There is this mod called "brave new world" where you don't have character and do everything with robots, it is the most "tower-defence" related twist i can think of about factorio, but it also feels like a different game compared to what imo feels natural after you repaired your crashed spaceship, which is to continue the space journey

There is always a risk of alienating part of the players when you make and expansion, if too hard or too easy, too combat-oriented, too much shiny, not enough shiny, comparing to other games i am happy it is the same but expanded team that work on the project because i think it means this subtle alchemy will stay as it was, able to attract players from different genres and teach them the automation

"brave new world" is also the name for a civilization expansion game, and it is one of the counter example, where each new in the serie is made by a different team which start over. Some say it's refreshing but it can't capitalize on the accumulated time to carefully balance things out like in all those remastered games. I think the vanilla settings for factorio are very good because it prevent you from doing things too inefficiently, the biters would overrun you if you don't automate , yet it's not too hard as it scales with pollutions it adapt the difficulty to player speed.

Maybe it's a "weird" enough spot that it sparked a genre of similar but different games, that put a different emphasis on things, there is already a variety of mods that do just that in factorio But there is something special with the regular vanilla, factorio. I can't see any other reason that some people would pre-complain even before playing the actual expansion,that is because they are very attached to this "mix" that is the default settings. It's a very exciting and addictive balance between thinking and cliking which if you feel is repetitive, is because you haven't automated it yet

(And i mean it not just jokingly, factorio is not a game that is frustrating to play because you end up in loading sceen or waiting a pop up to scroll, or clicking always the same things without means to avoid it in large part)

Sure one wants the "new" to be different, but not too different otherwise it's not "new" it's just something else but one cannot just add some content after the regular factorio rocket launch as that would be quite a tough gate for starting to feel the "new". And if you change what was there, you may remove the fun for one or another player. Hence why i'm excited to read about the next FFF's, because i'm pretty sure by now that people at WUBE will share with us how they did it and i think it's a good move to build up the anticipation before the actual release.

Even if it's a long time "at least 1 year" to read pre-complains about future changes that need addressing already I can understand the angry tones from players that fear loosing something to which they are "weirdly" super-attached, but that also explains why all the secrets during developments, if you try a feature that people get attached to, and then decide not to include it, or modify it in the final version to integrate with other features, you get this cycle of mixed positive and negative feedback that is different from the feedback aiming at high-lighting the "what-can-be-improved" after some decisions are made. ( including the orientation of the expansion => tower defense or => automation ).

So overall i agree with were you locate factorio, the "weird spot", but i think it's by design, and i hope it will not change too much, that's my fear , especially for trains, for now i'm more curious how they are kept meaningful in space or if only in the planets, and what if game is spend more time in space and less time where there are trains, i would feel lost, like with new ways to control them, which are probably necessary if they are one different planet. 1 year is so long to find out; good things FFF's are back, now every week i'll check if there is something about trains, nice move Wube !

[TheKillerChicken]

Why does that spaceship remind me of a boss from Gradius III or Silpheed: The Lost Planet? Either way, looking forward to the FFFs again. You are the best, Wube.

[FuryoftheStars]

Are we going to see an engine update that handles greater than 60hz refresh rate?

I don't get why some people feel the need for a > 60 Hz refresh rate in a game like this? You gain nothing from it.

For factorio alone, no. But if they happen to have one for other reasons, it's obviously also getting used for factorio. And manually setting the refresh rate is extra work... (Can't SDL be made to paper over this issue?)

Well, I wasn't talking about the need for a > 60 Hz monitor, but rather the need to have Factorio run at it.

No need per se, rather factorio being the odd one out:
I haven't seen factorio changing the refresh rate yet, nor any other monitor setting. (I assume factorio has no function to do so.) Thus it gets run with the refresh rate the monitor used before starting factorio, which is likely the natural refresh rate of the monitor, leading to the issue getting noticed.
Once the user knows factorio should run at 60Hz they can take the necessary steps to make it run smoothly. But at the same time other applications might not exhibit this behavior (e.g. for the most desktop applications and video players running below the natural refresh rate is the norm and can handle it correctly; a high FPS game makes use of whatever monitor and graphics card can handle), leading to the user blaming factorio as the only program/game not being able to cope with refresh rates above 60Hz.

That's why I'm wondering in my last comment if SDL can't just handle it, as it should be a somewhat common problem for games running at a fixed update rate. Wasn't double/triple buffering invented to decouple the update loops for game logic and display?

I feel like we're not on the same page, here. You and I, I think, are talking about completely different things.

[TheKillerChicken]

I don't get why some people feel the need for a > 60 Hz refresh rate in a game like this? You gain nothing from it.

I'm not asking for faster animations. If just the screen scrolling would be rendered with 120 fps, it will look much smoother despite a lower item update rate of 60 fps. Entities would look sharp while scrolling, with no motion blur. It would make the whole game look more solid. It's difficult to describe to someone who never saw the effect of > 60 fps. It's not the animations, it's the whole impression of the screen.

How scrolling looks fundamentally different with different fps, investigate the results from the various tests on this website: https://testufo.com/
If you have 60 Hz monitor, see the comparison between 30 fps and 60 fps. It's about the same with 60 fps versus 120 fps, only another step better. Scrolling with 60 fps instead of 30 has no flicker but still motion blur, while 120 fps not even has motion blur. It's crystal sharp, always.

I use a plasma display as my gaming monitor so I see no motion blurs at all. I always thought of plasma displays as successor to the CRT due to its non-existent motion blurs and realistic colour output. I have seen 120+ hertz displays and they always looked too artificial with motion and response time compared to plasma. I guess my expectations are too high for non-plasma displays.

[GrandMasterB]

Hello, I am an engineer and simulation specialist for thermal systems. It's great that Friday Facts is back. I have played Factorio now 1430h with (K2, IR2, SE) and without mods. It's a wonderful logistics game, but the problems an engineer has to solve don't exist in Factorio. Not even in the mods, because it is a logistics game and no physics or chemistry is simulated. That is a little pity. No process generates waste heat. No transport or conversion losses in the power grids. No by-products or waste products. No pressure losses in the pipes or pumping characteristics in the pumps. I would be happy if such extensions make it into the game.

Apart from that I would like to see different enemies that have to combated with new weapons and different weapons. More exciting towers and maybe traps. maybe there could be some kind of brain bug that you have to kill to get certain resources. So missions with rewards that make you leave the base and search for them. I always play on death planets and usually still have the Rampant mod enabled.

That there is now the Space Exploration mod as an addon with better accessibility and graphics is ok, but I was admittedly disappointed at first, because we already had that with the mod.

I think the most important thing is more weapons, turrets and enemies. And a bit more real engineering tasks.

But the main thing is that the game continues to develop! I'm so excited about what's coming. You guys are doing a great job!

[walterwoj]

I'm on the beta/pre-order/shut-up-and-take-my-money train!

shut-up-and-take-my-money-futurama.gif (16.5 KiB) Viewed 1895 times

[serhatozgel]

No by-products or waste products.

One small example but uranium processing generates U-238 that we have to deal with.
I think there are plenty of by-products, waste products and ways to deal with waste that some mods add.

No pressure losses in the pipes

There is pressure loss in the pipes. Both normal pipes and heat pipes lose pressure with length.

No process generates waste heat. No transport or conversion losses in the power grids. I would be happy if such extensions make it into the game.
maybe there could be some kind of brain bug that you have to kill to get certain resources.

The common characteristic, and arguably the common problem of these mechanics is that they hurt predictability. Most players, including me, love the fact that we can calculate exact inputs and outputs and build perfect-ratio factories or use planning tools to plan for scale in advance. We can calculate the exact number of belts, assemblers, solar panels, etc. that we will need before seeing it in action. Implementation of real-life-like physics and chemistry could take predictability out of Factorio and that would be a very, very controversial change.

[FuryoftheStars]

No process generates waste heat. No transport or conversion losses in the power grids. I would be happy if such extensions make it into the game.
maybe there could be some kind of brain bug that you have to kill to get certain resources.

The common characteristic, and arguably the common problem of these mechanics is that they hurt predictability. Most players, including me, love the fact that we can calculate exact inputs and outputs and build perfect-ratio factories or use planning tools to plan for scale in advance. We can calculate the exact number of belts, assemblers, solar panels, etc. that we will need before seeing it in action. Implementation of real-life-like physics and chemistry could take predictability out of Factorio and that would be a very, very controversial change.

You can do waste heat and transport/conversion losses in a predictable manor.

Personally, I would like to see some of those kinds of things introduced, perhaps as optional difficulty features, but it does add additional complexity to the game that many might not like/be able to figure out. I mean, oil had to be simplified so basic only gave one output because so many people couldn't figure it out.

[Jap2.0]

Here it is! (beep boop)

https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-373

Definitively needs that animated GIF done as a video instead, if you can't somehow debug it.

The GIF didn't work on any of my 3 screens, on any of my internet provider, across 3 OSes and 8 browsers. even after refresh and long wait times.

It's actually a mp4 video, not an animated gif. It has this URL:
https://cdn.factorio.com/assets/img/blo ... orm-HR.mp4

I had to right click and then choose "play", but I assumed that was because I have autoplaying pretty much anything broadly disabled in Firefox.

I feel something we are missing in the conversation about the progression is TREES!: What about introducing a new item called the "wood-axe", which is the only way to cut down a tree, and gate it so the player can either get it after exploring the second planet, or find it by mining a special rock hidden .. somewhere .. on the map? .

Anyway, if I was WUBE my first FF would be an announcement that the first three FFs would be about cliffs just to troll.

I don't know, that seems a bit harsh. Maybe we could add axes made out of iron and steel? And just make cutting down trees a little slower without them?