Friday Facts #129 - The late game

[LotA]

we-need-to-go-deeper.jpg (16.82 KiB) Viewed 6829 times

I believe both underground and space platform should make it, although underground seems more urgent.

Underground as a subsurface of course, it would be a shame not to use this great mechanic.

With tweaked resources generation code it could brings its own new ore type and accommodate for the underground version of ore fields (basically placing more ore underneath surface ore fields).
Multiple layers with even deeper and richer ore are possible.

In the same manner as water, void would act as blocks of rocks, there should be a lot of it. The question is whether to allow digging (same thing as land-filling).

I guess this surface should be hostile, i guess you shouldnot be allowed to build most of the structures on it.
And it could host new kinds of lifeforms.

[HarryE]

I remember making a similar suggestion a while back in the suggestion forum when I began to grow really tired of babysitting my ore outposts.

I like the idea of even more powerful drills, especially if they look like this. But I don't think the dirty ore aspect is necessary. Conceptually it's a bit out of place, yaknow? Why are there suddenly two types of ore you have to deal with? Strikes me as rather arbitrary.

I'd say just allow the ability to scale up any of your ore yield via processing. I think it plays much more to Factorio's strengths if you could set up an ore processing chain instead of having to repeatedly set up your mining outposts. Minecraft mods do this all the time, although in a rather ham-fisted way. Instead of smelting your raw ore, you process it; gradually remove impurities so when you finally do smelt it, you have more output. It'd be a bit like instead of having your late game drill throw out both Ore and Dirty Ore, just make all Ore dirty. If you smelt 1 ore, you get 1 plate. If you crush 1 ore, you get two crushed ore, smelting two crushed ore gets you two plates.

You can restrict early game access to this via the research tree, or requiring access to late-game materials (eg. an ore crusher requires an electric engine, which requires lubricant, which means the player must have an oil refinery infrastructure in place). You don't need the Dirty Ore to restrict player access to this technology, when you already have two perfectly fine methods that do that.

[tehroach]

Late game enhancement - Mining
I definitely like the idea of adding an extra tier to the base plate production in a way that would not bog down the initial game play.
although I would go the way of having surface ores, ie the ones we have now and underground ores, Surface ores would represent the small portion of the ore body that has been exposed by erosion and can be easily mined by hand or the current mining techniques, the underground ores would require new mining methods to acquire and generate your "dirty ore", as you deplete the ore closest to the surface and dig deeper into the ground the time required to move the ore to the surface increases, meaning that production output slows. Then the deeper the mine the greater the chance of missing the bends and twists of the ore veins resulting in more waste products being bought to the surface.

The waste products from this idea could open up a whole new tree of research technology and factory options that would turn these waste products into useful items.

Also I would vote that the new miners were NOT infinite, but simply increase their expected lifetime by a few factors of 10.

Trains
Don't increase the size of the cargo wagons carrying capacity, because if I need more space I can simply just add more wagons.
instead add more tiers to the trains research

I must admit I play this game a lot because of the trains, so I might be a bit bias towards trains, but the two biggest problems for trains are:
*How long it takes to get trains
*Flying robots.

If a tier 1 train and tracks were available from the get go (or closer too) players would be more likely to design their initial bases around trains and it wouldn't be as big a pain in the ass when you are only new to trains and discover that your nice little base probably needs to be totally demolished to accommodate for your newly discovered trains
tier 1 trains would be slow or not able to pull many wagons and tier 1 tracks could be made from iron instead of steal, but limit the maximum speed of any train that used them

tier 2 trains would be the ones we have now

Higher tier trains could be used to make trains superior to robots, eg electric trains, bullet trains etc
IMO Trains should be superior to robots in every way, simply because of the time required by the player to setup the tracks for a train in comparison to simply plonking a roboport every so often
IMO robots could also use a little nurf ie slower speed (so they cant outrun the player) and smaller stack size (reduce to 10s of robots per robot port as apposed to the current 100s)

Hi Factorio Devs,

Since you're considering making a train wagon designed for fluids, it would make as much sense to also allow any fluid to be put inside a baril. There may not be a real "need" for it, but since any liquid can be put in pipes and storage tanks, they should also get the chance to be put in barrels.

Actually i think the opposite is true, with the fluid tanker we could remove the barrels from the game

Please don't remove the barrels from the game!

It would completely remove the need for interesting designs like this one


It is not that I am against the adding of the fluid tanker, BUT in a way adding the oil tanker goes against some of your own philosophies about Factorio!; The same philosophies that you have used to discredit the introduction of other suggested modules, as it trivializes a function that can already be achieved by other components in the game.

[MeduSalem]

Please don't remove the barrels from the game!

It would completely remove the need for interesting designs like this one

[...]

It is not that I am against the adding of the fluid tanker, BUT in a way adding the oil tanker goes against some of your own philosophies about Factorio!; The same philosophies that you have used to discredit the introduction of other suggested modules, as it trivializes a function that can already be achieved by other components in the game.

The problem is people want to have the tankers not only because they want to transport crude oil but also different fluids. The tankers could do that perfectly.

Barrels on the other hand would require them to add 7 barrel types, one for each fluid type, severely cluttering the inventory/crafting menus. Nobody would like that.

And that's why barrels should be removed because barrels are much more like a temporary solution until we have tankers and after they are implemented we don't really need 3 options to transport fluids, especially if barrels would be limited only to crude oil. Tankers and Pipes are already enough to deal with fluid transportation. Just get rid of the barrels.

[Lochar]

Going to have to be careful though, as you don't want to send the wrong tanker to the wrong port, as we don't have a liquid 'smart inserter' if you send petroleum to a crude oil station.

[Ojelle]

Going to have to be careful though, as you don't want to send the wrong tanker to the wrong port, as we don't have a liquid 'smart inserter' if you send petroleum to a crude oil station.

Yeah, this would be a possible mayor pain in the ass

[keyboardhack]

Going to have to be careful though, as you don't want to send the wrong tanker to the wrong port, as we don't have a liquid 'smart inserter' if you send petroleum to a crude oil station.

You can use combinators to check if the input is correct before sending it into your network.
Put the liquid in a storage tank that is connected to the rest of the pipe network with a small pump. Now take the signal from the tank and compare it in the small pump. if the signal of the liquid you want in the network is more than 0 then start the small pump. If the tank is accidently filled with the wrong liquid the small pump will read 0 of the liquid you want in the pipe network and the small pump won't run.
Example below where the cargowagon is the fluid wagon.

Now obviously we don't want the storage tank there and we can get rid of it if it will be possible to read the fluid value from the wagon.

tl:dr we already have a liquid 'smart inserter' because the small pump can act as one.

[Lochar]

And if the storage tanks are screwed up with multiple liquids? Honest question, as I haven't gotten to the point yet of being good with the networks.

[Zeblote]

Well, how do you expect the liquid tanker to work? Just dragging a pipe to a rail like in your screenshot looks bad and makes no sense, so that's most likely not the way the devs will handle it.

I'm imaging some new entitity that you build over the rail to connect with the rail tanker, and then you could set a filter on that.

[Fatmice]

I think mining can get a little more complicated to keep it interesting. Here are some ideas that I've been stewing on.

1. Surface ore deposits should stay the same. The proposal to increase the density, richness, and size to scale with distance from spawn sounds good. Additionally, there should be two more hidden factors call underground richness and depth. Underground richness is related to but not necessarily be proportional to the above-ground richness. The above-ground richness gives an indication of how much more ore is hiding underground, but like in a real mine, the underground richness varies with the depth where the average value will trend up to a maximum, whose value is a random value chosen from [above-ground richness - distance factor, above-ground richness + distance factor], then trend down to zero at a predetermined depth. The depth is a number that is generated concurrently with the surface ore deposit that is chosen randomly between [min(above-ground richness * distance factor, 2000), 2000]. Thus further out ore deposits will generally have lots of ore below ground.
2. Access to this ore requires some new mechanics. First, build a geological surveyor, a laboratory kind of building, on top of or next to a pristine ore patch. This building consumes blue research packs at a fix amount per depth to reveal the underground richness. Next place a deep-miner, a 5x5 entity that needs power, on top of the ore patch. This building will clear out the surface deposits, then proceeds to mine up to the depth that has been surveyed. In order to do so, it will need a supply of explosives, structural reinforcements (made from steel), and miner robots. The building can only hold a fix amount of miner robots. The amount of materials that the deep-miner brings up is proportional to the underground richness for that depth. In addition, the rate of materials being brought up is inversely proportional to the depth and the amount of miner robots. Thus using the maximum number of miner robots that a deep-miner can support will attenuate the inevitable decline in the rate of materials being brought to the surface. Explosives will be consumed proportionally to the hardness of the ore and which increases with depth. Structural reinforcements will be consumed in at a fix rate per depth and proportional to the number tiles that had above-ground ore within the 5x5 area of the deep-miner. The structural reinforcements are used to shore-up the structural integrity of the mine shafts and health points of the deep-miner, which slowly decay. Interestingly, the natives' bodies can be transformed into a very strong glue in chemical plants. This glue can be used with steel powder to make a very strong material that can be crafted into structural reinforcements. This auxiliary recipe will reduce steel usage.
3. Structural reinforcements are not necessary for materials to be extracted. However, should structural integrity falls below 50% then there is a real chance for the mine to collapse and destroy the deep-miner, it's miner robots, and sealing the 5x5 area below the deep-miner from future ore extraction.
4. The underground ore can not be used directly in a furnace. It must first be pulverized then washed in chemical plants to recover smeltable ore. The washing step generates much waste water that can partially be recovered by separating the solids from the water. The solids can be compacted into solid-waste while the water can be reused. The solid-waste can either be housed in a special waste-yard where they slowly "weather" away while generating significant amount of pollution or transported back to the deep-miner to fill in the mine shafts while at the same time recover some structural reinforcements. The washing step generates smeltable ores that cast into two plates instead of one.

These suggestions should allow far away ore deposits to last days, perhaps weeks, of real-time such that there will be a real sense of permanence to these mining outposts.

[MeduSalem]

Well, how do you expect the liquid tanker to work? Just dragging a pipe to a rail like in your screenshot looks bad and makes no sense, so that's most likely not the way the devs will handle it.

I'm imaging some new entitity that you build over the rail to connect with the rail tanker, and then you could set a filter on that.

I would say we could re-use the Small Pump itself to do it.

Depending on the direction the pump is facing it will either fill or drain a tankwagon next to it.


The next part would also be interesting... In one of the FFFs a about the Circuit Network stuff they said they basically want to make it possible to connect the trainstation to the circuit network and the contents of the train currently inside the station would then be output as signals.

If so, then these signals could be used to tell the Pump draining the tankwagon if it is allowed to drain the tankwagon.


Or just adding a "filter" to the Small Pump could also get the job done.

[Zeblote]

Yes, using the pump does make sense!

As long as placing it next to a rail changes the graphics, that is. Oil can't teleport

[MeduSalem]

Yes, using the pump does make sense!

As long as placing it next to a rail changes the graphics, that is. Oil can't teleport

Yeah... why not... make it reach up from the ground to inlet/outlets of the tankwagon or something like that when placed next to tracks.

I already thought about the "alignment" problem... it would look somewhat weird if the pump wouldn't align perfectly to the tank wagon's outlet/inlet.

All the more a reason that the devs finally fix the damn train-length issue so that the locomotives AND wagons align exactly with the building grid... It renders train station building such a chore, especially the longer the train. xD


Also I can already feel that allowing pumps to connect with train wagons would be finally allowing to fill the Diesel Locomotives with actual Light Oil/Petroleum Gas/Diesel or so...

[OvermindDL1]

I do not agree with extra dirty ore from miners of the same zones, rather I would have a new resource that looks like a cracked ground or so that you could only build something like a Deep Ore Miner on and it extracts dirty ore from there, infinitely and increasingly slowly, ala Oil. Put one in the center of the normal spawns or just scatter them around (none near spawn, increasing likelyhood far away). That would give the correct incentive to make permanent mining bases to run trains to instead of vanishing little mining areas.

Trains do not need an increase in storage, if anything they should have a decrease, or even beyond that the cargo wagons should be removed, to be replaced with a Flatbed that you could build on, say 2x8 in size, and it would be 'covered' so it looks like the cargo wagons do now when you are not actively building on it for ease of rendering (perhaps with some things occasionally on top like a turret or so, but chests you put on would remain covered). If too difficult to build such a thing in-world then could design the wagon in a machine, put the right things in the right slots at the right size (think modular armor) and then you build the wagon design. That would allow for putting in chests, fluid storage, turrets, whatever you allow on those. You could even go full-out modular armor style and just have players build a 'cargo wagon' then when clicked allows players to put the modular-armor-style things in, turrets, item storage, fluid storage, personal robots for it like a player, maybe shields (especially useful when it has turrets...), etc...

However, trains really really badly need to have their length fixed. They are not an even number of tiles in length and they are different lengths when vertical and horizontal. It is a fairly easy fix, mods have done it, but it needs to be done in vanilla itself.

[Zeblote]

they are different lengths when vertical and horizontal. It is a fairly easy fix, mods have done it, but it needs to be done in vanilla itself.

That's not an easy fix, and you can't create a mod to fix it. You would also need the source model to re-render all train sprites.

[OvermindDL1]

they are different lengths when vertical and horizontal. It is a fairly easy fix, mods have done it, but it needs to be done in vanilla itself.

That's not an easy fix, and you can't create a mod to fix it. You would also need the source model to re-render all train sprites.

Which the devs have, and the mod that fixed it just 'stretched' out the sprite to work with it for now, and it works fine if you do not look too close.

EDIT: Here is the mod that fixes the horizontal length: viewtopic.php?f=91&t=19458

[MeduSalem]

Which the devs have, and the mod that fixed it just 'stretched' out the sprite to work with it for now, and it works fine if you do not look too close.

EDIT: Here is the mod that fixes the horizontal length: viewtopic.php?f=91&t=19458

Wow, I almost consider using that mod even I usually don't use mods during the development stage of a game.

This needs to be in vanilla, BADLY.

[Zeblote]

they are different lengths when vertical and horizontal. It is a fairly easy fix, mods have done it, but it needs to be done in vanilla itself.

That's not an easy fix, and you can't create a mod to fix it. You would also need the source model to re-render all train sprites.

Which the devs have, and the mod that fixed it just 'stretched' out the sprite to work with it for now, and it works fine if you do not look too close.

EDIT: Here is the mod that fixes the horizontal length: viewtopic.php?f=91&t=19458

I can't see how this does anything about trains being shorter vertically.

[starholme]

they are different lengths when vertical and horizontal. It is a fairly easy fix, mods have done it, but it needs to be done in vanilla itself.

That's not an easy fix, and you can't create a mod to fix it. You would also need the source model to re-render all train sprites.

Which the devs have, and the mod that fixed it just 'stretched' out the sprite to work with it for now, and it works fine if you do not look too close.

EDIT: Here is the mod that fixes the horizontal length: viewtopic.php?f=91&t=19458

I can't see how this does anything about trains being shorter vertically.

It doesn't fix the vertical/horizontal thing. But at least the trains and wagons are an exact number of tiles in size.

[Zeblote]

Well, it's a start in the right direction.