Friday Facts #386 - Vulcanus

[Tricorius]

Agreed, we don’t know where it is in the tech tree. But I would guess it’s around the time you hit space as that is where quality would start being most beneficial.

Maybe, but it could also require materials from the other planets to even make. We just don't know enough about it, yet.

As far as it being part of the quality mod, they could still use it and just not make any quality modules.

Unless you're hosting a MP server where you specifically don't want Quality used, in which case the only way to guarantee that (afaik) is to not have it available from the start.

Hmmmm. Excellent points. Multiplayer Factorio doesn’t work well for me (my network does NOT like UDP) so I never really consider things from a MP perspective.

[KoblerMan]

Huh, lava and zerg. Two of my favorite things.

Let's do this.

As a Zerg main, I have one thing to say to you: LIVE FOR THE SWARM!

[adam_bise]

lul vulc____

[Chrisdasdasd]

Inferno castle from Heroes III confirmed.
Nice

BTW are you accounting for different day/night cycles, tidal locks and different year lengths as well?

[FasterJump]

How about replacing burning "trees" with some kind of colored crystal formations on Vulcanis? (Vulnicus? Vulnacus? Vulcanicus? Vulcanor? Vulcanum?)

I'm neutral about cliffs, I don't hate it. It's fun to build around it during early-game, and removing it if needed late-game.

Also, being able to pick a landing area would be great.

Dumping items (excess ore) in lava makes as much sense as having infinite lakes... Which is fine, I think. Also, infinite source of ore (just like oil and water) sounds good.

Also, I'm wondering if we will have some backstory, why the main character lands on a planet in a solar system far from everything. What he looking for something? Was it an intentional crash, or did he just entered a black hole that brought him so far from his own system? What will happen when he goes home, will his "mission" be fulfilled? Or something entirely different, he's an alien himself?

[Tertius]

[...] on Vulcanis? (Vulnicus? Vulnacus? Vulcanicus? Vulcanor? Vulcanum?)

The planet is called Vulcanus, and it is said it has volcanoes in its landscape.

[Gerard]

Vulcanus - looks awesome. A typical hostile world where the main threats are the atmosphere and temperature. If it is possible to choose a starting planet, it will be one of the most difficult challenges, because water would be a scarce commodity, but not for a chemist.

If I were to change my vision, it would be possible to use sulfuric acid in the reverse process to break it down into sulfur and water - in case the planet is not a starting planet. Otherwise, steam geysers and steam condensing machines could be added to the processing or directly to steam engines and the coal liquefaction process.

As for the lava, I think there will be some kind of tungsten excavators that will pump it into machines that cool the lava into basalt. They could only be placed on the shore of a lava lake. Then, in another machine, it is crushed to a % chance of obtaining iron and copper. The stone would have fallen out in any other case.

Tungsten could be smelted into plates, not in an ordinary furnace, but in a chemical furnace, e.g. with sulfuric acid.
I only see the use of calcite in the production of better concrete and as a polarizing prism for lasers to increase their power.

I'm looking forward to the next FFF.

[computeraddict]

I only see the use of calcite in the production of better concrete and as a polarizing prism for lasers to increase their power.

Don't forget that H2SO4 + CaCO3 -> CaSO4 + CO2 + H2O. I'm guessing we'll have to synthesize our water on Vulcanus by mining calcite to neutralize the acid from our sulfuric acid geysers.

We'll probably be helped out by solar being stronger. Hopefully.

[Ogro]

I was here wishing it was Friday already when I realized it is already Friday in Prague, Czechia !
That made me wonder which timezone they use to post it. I would be angry if I was in Prague and still hadn't my FF by breakfast...

[mmmPI]

I was here wishing it was Friday already when I realized it is already Friday in Prague, Czechia !
That made me wonder which timezone they use to post it. I would be angry if I was in Prague and still hadn't my FF by breakfast...

If the time of publication of the other FFF is to be considered a reference, the next FFF should be published in around 5 to 6 hours, which would make it correspond to 1:00 PM in Prague/ european time

[aka13]

I was here wishing it was Friday already when I realized it is already Friday in Prague, Czechia !
That made me wonder which timezone they use to post it. I would be angry if I was in Prague and still hadn't my FF by breakfast...

I am pretty sure it's 13:00 Berlin time, when it gets posted. You can check by checking the time of the FFF forum posts.

[QuirkyCat]

Have you considered the effect of a planet's distance from the sun on solar panels?

[FuryoftheStars]

Have you considered the effect of a planet's distance from the sun on solar panels?

From an image in FFF-380:

fff-380-planet-selection-old.png (43.58 KiB) Viewed 1474 times

[Tertius]

From an image in FFF-380:

I'm curious, how the other properties will be used by new or influence existing entities: gravity, magnetic field, pressure. They're probably not there for the lulz, the game manages them for some purpose for sure.

[datarza]

Eventually, they took a look on Alien Biomes mod

[Qon]

Eventually, they took a look on Alien Biomes mod

You mean Earendel looked at his own mod? Wow, shocking! Are you sure he didn't make Alien Biomes without out ever opening his eyes?

[datarza]

Are you sure

Yes, I am sure

[FutureSpec]

The planet looks neat, and I'm excited that there are new resources.

but they are difficult to build on until you get cliff explosives

Ugh. Cliffs have got to be one of the most complained about features in the base game, to the point where many people simply turn them off.

I hope the devs will consider iterating on them so they're not so obnoxious. The feature always felt "tacked on" to me, and unsatisfying in its resource requirements, hit boxes, and destruction animations. And let's face it, they've always been "fake" -- it's not a real height map, it's not actual elevation, it's just a dumb barrier that kinda looks like a real cliff because of the artist, not because of the engine. I'm not saying we need real Z-levels, as I'm sure that would be beyond the ability of the engine to ever handle. But cliffs just aren't FUN.

Replying to myself here to say: thank you devs for the recent Nauvis FFF which included better cliff generation! I will play my 2.0 + DLC run with cliffs turned on!

[Koub]

From an image in FFF-380:

I'm curious, how the other properties will be used by new or influence existing entities: gravity, magnetic field, pressure. They're probably not there for the lulz, the game manages them for some purpose for sure.

I can see the gravity having an influence on how much load a single rocket can carry to space and/or how much rocket fuel a rocket would consume for a given load. Reminder : we'll have a new weight system for rockets (https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-382).

Day/night cycles should lead to different optimal accumulator to solar panel ratios, although this single number is insufficient to calculate that optimum ratio.

That's all I can guess with reasonable confidence for now.

[MeduSalem]

I can see the gravity having an influence on how much load a single rocket can carry to space and/or how much rocket fuel a rocket would consume for a given load. Reminder : we'll have a new weight system for rockets (https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-382).

I hope it will just require different amounts of fuel; because that is much easier to manage... just wait until the Rocket silo is filled with fuel and launch.

If it would be different load capacities it is going to suck big time because then every planet has its own ratios for transporting items to the platforms for absolutely everything. I wouldn't want to have to look that sort of stuff up on the wiki every time.