Friday Facts #106 - Brain satisfaction tool

[jasa_m]

So my eei level is very high because when close my eyes and i see my factory and im expanding it






Or wait is that the addiction i have?

This is called the tetris efrfect i believe. Probably most factorio players suffer from it, myself included xD

Great post kovarex!

[Mr. Thunder_Tw]

To increase the eei I would like to suggest more altererations in the terrain generator, so it can produce a more subtle change of climate (now its feels like either dessert, water or dense vegetation) so it feels more rewarding to "leave the nest" and explore, maybe add some 'real' rocks you cant simply shoot away, but force the player to go around(like mountains).
Another suggestion(2) is that at some point the player is forced to look for resources that can only be found outside the starting grounds. And maybe set up some form of transport to get it home. Train, car or tank.
Suggestion 3: have some 'queen biter' that defends well but walks slow and can aid in giving tactics/orders to sets of critters.

[Junion]

Come on this is factorio..not enough images of a machine pushing F5 for you.

[vulstar]

I have the need to expand, improve, and maintain when playing factorio. And especialy conquer parts of the world creating a living space for my species, and then turning it into a paradise!

[Drury]

About the main menu... You know how the menu worked in Command & Conquer Generals: Zero Hour? I'm talking about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUNq7wog_Ro. I think it would be cool to make that kind of animation for factorio.

Oh yeah Zero Hour menu is awesome. Transport Tycoon did something similar, really gets you pumped to play.

Rise of the Reds mod for Zero Hour takes it to a whole another level

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_9EuTZhepY

In a way, Factorio trailer is the same idea, except it's not the main menu

[Kar-Chee]

Hello
What you are describing in your post as a game-satisfaction-configuration is actually application of economist Theory of Value or Value management. You even precisely described why it is hard to measure value for specific person - everyone likes different things.

What might interest you is why the Value (eei) drops over time. The person playing is actually losing valuable commodity - time. And because even time has different value for each person it drops with different speeds for each person. That's why older people sometimes wonder whether current games are just worse than the classics they remember. They aren't, but the value sum you get out of the game is less because you now value your time more.

Another interesting fact you brought up is that if people actually buy the game their interest drops slower so the dev has more time to show all the strengths the game has. Your conclusion is correct but the cause is a little more complicated. The value actually drops just the same speed, but the player keeps playing even if the the value sum is negative. He values the time he is losing more than the value the game is giving him and yet he keeps playing. But why is that?
Because of something called sunk cost fallacy. In short it means that we fear more than we like the gains. It describes the fact that when you invest something valuable to you (time, money etc.) into something you get emotionally attached to it and your perception of reality gets a little distorted - we are not completely rational beings after all.
That's why when you buy a ticket to a movie and later discovers that a party is happening that you would probably like more, you still go to the movies. Or why you just "want to win your losses back" in gambling. Or why it is so hard to let your company go bankrupt when you invested so much into it even though you would never ever buy a company in a similar state to yours. That would be stupid right?

[Overread]

To increase the eei I would like to suggest more altererations in the terrain generator, so it can produce a more subtle change of climate (now its feels like either dessert, water or dense vegetation) so it feels more rewarding to "leave the nest" and explore, maybe add some 'real' rocks you cant simply shoot away, but force the player to go around(like mountains).
Another suggestion(2) is that at some point the player is forced to look for resources that can only be found outside the starting grounds. And maybe set up some form of transport to get it home. Train, car or tank.
Suggestion 3: have some 'queen biter' that defends well but walks slow and can aid in giving tactics/orders to sets of critters.

I would second all these things however to expand upon these points:

1) Terrain - more features in this would be great, however I feel the game also has to match this against the terraforming capacity of the player - last thing you want is to hamstring the player. This means that any random terrain needs to:
a) Leave space big enough to build factories -
b) Where a isn't possible allow for descrution/modification of terrain to allow factory building
c) Allow fast transport of materials across large distances via train - this means terrain placement has to allow for track building room - or track building needs to be made more "curvy" to allow for sharper corners. Again point b aids in this matter (essentially you want trains for long distance rather than forcing players to have to use hover-bots which are high tech - or just endless long belts which loses some of the games immersion when you've miles long conveyors).

2) Resources outside of the home area kind of exists as :
a) You've got Alien tech to grab which results in a need to expand to take out Biter nests; of course the downside is that they are not a fixed harvesting point done on automatic harvesting so its not really the same - its more expansion without the demand to hold the expanded area - indeed for Biter harvesting you really want to expand and then let them re-fill that spot to harvest again.
b) You can set rarity and other parameters so that you have to travel further for resources; has to be done carefully otherwise the game is simply getting longer and longer with no real gain to immersion (its stretching out all that lag-time the news post spoke of - lag time between achievement events).

3) I would support the addition of a few other resources - esp for the space age period stuff - which is set to spawn much further away from the start location by default. This puts a demand on building not just rail networks; not just expanding into much heavier infested Biter territory; but also puts a neat requirement in for more radar spots to expand the map to spot those far far off resources.

4) Queen biters are a neat concept. Would be neat if they could:
a) Found new biter nests which, being set by a queen, would expand and grow more rapidly than regular biter nests.
b) Be able to group up and order larger attacks by a control circle rather than nest by nest. Thus meaning that a queen within one nest could potentially order multiple surrounding nests to issue a much increased attack upon a single spot.

I'd see a queen as providing a huge boost to the Biter's threat level as in all honesty once the player has a wall with lasers and machine guns with automated production and delivery of ammo its very hard for Biters to actually do any significant damage. Their threat level mostly applies to early game expansion before the player has their defences up and running.

5) Expanding on the increased threat level a "siege" biter would be a neat concept - a heavy biter that charges at the walls/buildings and takes damage more from the impact of hitting (damaging/destroying) the buildings than from gun/laser shots hitting it - ergo something that can break a defensive line and thus force the player to invest more in defence setups and/or repair them up as well beyond simply throwing a few repairs on a few bits of wall after they've been attacked a halfdozen times.



EDIT - https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... 37#p111337 expanded upon some of the Biter threat ideas in a separate post.

[AmpsterMan]

Very interesting hypothesis you have there. I can agree on the splash image in the beginning at least. One of my favorite changes to 12.x is the image. As I'm still very new, seeing that helped me visualize my factory.

[TuckJohn]

This post about eei is probably my favorite FFF, and I have been reading since #25. I have noticed very similar things in many games that I play, and especialy in the (very little) games that I have on my phone. A great example of this would be clash of clans- the higher level buildings that you get, the longer that it takes to upgrade.

[Jonathan88]

4) Queen biters are a neat concept. Would be neat if they could:
a) Found new biter nests which, being set by a queen, would expand and grow more rapidly than regular biter nests.
b) Be able to group up and order larger attacks by a control circle rather than nest by nest. Thus meaning that a queen within one nest could potentially order multiple surrounding nests to issue a much increased attack upon a single spot.

I'd see a queen as providing a huge boost to the Biter's threat level as in all honesty once the player has a wall with lasers and machine guns with automated production and delivery of ammo its very hard for Biters to actually do any significant damage. Their threat level mostly applies to early game expansion before the player has their defences up and running.

5) Expanding on the increased threat level a "siege" biter would be a neat concept - a heavy biter that charges at the walls/buildings and takes damage more from the impact of hitting (damaging/destroying) the buildings than from gun/laser shots hitting it - ergo something that can break a defensive line and thus force the player to invest more in defence setups and/or repair them up as well beyond simply throwing a few repairs on a few bits of wall after they've been attacked a halfdozen times.

That is kind of similar to this: https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... 866#p88866
Yes - my idea has flaws but it looks cool!

[RedstoneMandu]

little notes on few things about how to improve bitters and military part of the game

1)Bitters gets little slower on the stone brick road and concrete. This encourages the player to place bricks and concrete everywhere.
2)Long-range bitters that can attack things from far away. Probably acidic/poisonous spit or something.
3)Auto Patrol Bot that instead of following the player, It patrols certain area that is set by player. Has a less attack point then the equivalent standing defense system, but it gets the ammo from the logistic system by itself.
4)Electric fence that damages bitters that touches itself. Weaker then walls.
5)Battle Airship that does not take damage from melee bitters, but takes damages form worms and long-range bitters
6)Bitter Scanner that emits a wire signal if biters are in range
7)Bitter lure that makes the bitter priority to attack it first. Only thing that the bitter will get more distracted are the robots.

few notes on other misc stuff

1)Other method of using the current steam system instead of just boilers. (optional, just think of types of generators.)
2)Manual Switch (Like a constant comparator but can be toggled off or on manually)
3)Wireless Signals (Needs a power for both ends, but can convey a signal without using bunch of poles. can have small, medium, big radio antennas, and differ in range of signal convey.)
4)Signal-dependent multi-machines (Machines that are two or more but one in some way, that needs some kind of signal wire between the machines to work. Good for high-tier game mechanics.)

i hope this helps with future development of the factorio game.

[Zeblote]

2)Long-range bitters that can attack things from far away. Probably acidic/poisonous spit or something.

Spitters already attack from a long enough range, do you really want biter artillery?!

[cncr04s]

I've lost interest in playing altogether. I've done pretty much all there is to do with the game already - there is not enough new content to bring me back.
I do agree with all the bug fixing that is going on, I applaud. I await such time that the devs have to sit down and really think about the direction of the game and get new features put in. New resources, items, etc. Terrain features would be nice.

[TuckJohn]

Something that I though about while reaching the end of the game: my eei (and the players that I play with) hit zero while the rocket is being built. The only thing that you are doing at that point is just waiting for things to be made to produce the rocket, namely speed modals. The only reason that we are able to play the remaining half-hour is though blowing things up with a rocket launcher. Improving the end game in this way is needed.

[ripgeneral]

Just sent rocket again.
My issues with game:

• 1 No sense of scale
  I can't see planet where i landed.
  2 All resources are in minor proximity.
  So there is no need to move a lot of stuff from one place to another
  It would be epic if we have 2 giant deposits in 100km range
  Also we need tools to automate building such systems.
  3 Satellite launch doesn't give us any profits. You won a game . It's lame
  Let it scout planet from orbit. It can find ore deposits, enemy hive locations, maybe Relics ,other players?
  4 After cleaning square 5*5 km from aliens using tanks turrets etc. I just want to wipe this bastards using bombers of course i should build
  infrastructure for this.
  5 Biter artillery why not if i'll have tools to prevent it

PS This game looks like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_C ... ideo_game) for me
But it hasn't cheating construction or energy and material transfer. Main goal is to prepare planet for colonization . Not pointless war

[Drury]

No sense of scale
I can't see planet where i landed.

This is actually a very exciting rant in my opinion.

I've never felt the way you do, but thinking how this deficiency could possibly be removed, some really exciting ideas come to mind!

Once you have the platform up in orbit, it could look like Starbound. I.e. the thing has a part of the planet curvature in the background, slowly spinning. May as well rip off the FTL jumping part once it's ready to go because it's awesome.

https://youtu.be/HAxNtR_TBRo

Also - yes. If you want to have resources more spread out, set them to be more spread out in map generation. Satellite launch is to be expanded into it's own endgame. Bombers, yes, I want. These ones, please. Actually, also everything else from that video. Biters kind of get artillery in the form of spitters and worms but the more enemy types the better. I'm curious how are the plans on burrowing biters that can only be stopped by paving your factory. We already got the latter now.

[TuckJohn]

Just sent rocket again.
My issues with game:

• 1 No sense of scale
  I can't see planet where i landed.
  2 All resources are in minor proximity.
  So there is no need to move a lot of stuff from one place to another
  It would be epic if we have 2 giant deposits in 100km range
  Also we need tools to automate building such systems.
  3 Satellite launch doesn't give us any profits. You won a game . It's lame
  Let it scout planet from orbit. It can find ore deposits, enemy hive locations, maybe Relics ,other players?
  4 After cleaning square 5*5 km from aliens using tanks turrets etc. I just want to wipe this bastards using bombers of course i should build
  infrastructure for this.
  5 Biter artillery why not if i'll have tools to prevent it

PS This game looks like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_C ... ideo_game) for me
But it hasn't cheating construction or energy and material transfer. Main goal is to prepare planet for colonization . Not pointless war

1.Agreed, but I think improving the other 3 points will make [1] go away.
2. True. So true, although, as mentioned, you can set that in the map generation screen.
3. True, even though it will be expanded.
4 & 5. I agree with the point of pointless war- there should be an end-game in relation to the extermination of the pests.

[Husky]

eei examples were very good, I admit some of the techniques used to promote games do this. There is a number of games on the market where developers don't use the eei method

[Mr. Thunder_Tw]

I'm curious how are the plans on burrowing biters that can only be stopped by paving your factory.

I would like to know too.
Are the devs having plans or thinking about introducing any of these suggestions?

[ssilk]

There are a lot ideas in the suggestion board about such enemies (for example https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... f=80&t=139 ). Worms that dig through your factory for example (The concrete tiles are eventually needed to keep them apart (like in Dune)).

That's of course not an answer, but because there where so many suggestions about that, I think (not sure of course, I just guess here! But this guess is based on references) it is on a list of possible new enemies. Near to the top of that list. When that is implemented is a completely different question, for 0.13 some 8-legged enemies are planned. If there is a need (from the sight of game-play), they will implement more enemies.