Friday Facts #159 - Research revolution

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Drury
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Re: Friday Facts #159 - Research revolution

Post by Drury »

AndaleTheGreat wrote:
Drury wrote:What I fear though is that they won't give PvP enough attention and leave it half-assed like the rest of the combat in the game.
EDIT: Honestly, if you don't know what do to with it contract a game designer with RTS experience. It can't stay as it is, it needs an overhaul.
Personally I'm of the opinion that it shouldn't happen at all. I don't want/need pvp unless they are planning some kind of tournament event. I might be in the minority on the PVP opinion but I'm into this game for the interest of building stuff. The idea of playing short-term games solely for fighting purposes just holds no interest. If I want that I'll go play an actual RTS or a shooter. I can load up Starcraft or Overwatch for my fighting fix and that is fine. I'm here to try and build efficient production lines.

Actually, my new challenge is building the smallest possible base using the Factorisimo mod (currently up to a full blue product line and everything is inside only two buildings. My mining areas are about 10x more space than my facility.
I'd agree if they don't plan on doing it right they shouldn't do it at all, but at the same time I can see it being done right. Bottomline being, the game should become better when you add features, not worse.

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Re: Friday Facts #159 - Research revolution

Post by Andrzejef »

AndaleTheGreat wrote:
Drury wrote:What I fear though is that they won't give PvP enough attention and leave it half-assed like the rest of the combat in the game.
EDIT: Honestly, if you don't know what do to with it contract a game designer with RTS experience. It can't stay as it is, it needs an overhaul.
Personally I'm of the opinion that it shouldn't happen at all. I don't want/need pvp unless they are planning some kind of tournament event. I might be in the minority on the PVP opinion but I'm into this game for the interest of building stuff. The idea of playing short-term games solely for fighting purposes just holds no interest. If I want that I'll go play an actual RTS or a shooter. I can load up Starcraft or Overwatch for my fighting fix and that is fine. I'm here to try and build efficient production lines.

Actually, my new challenge is building the smallest possible base using the Factorisimo mod (currently up to a full blue product line and everything is inside only two buildings. My mining areas are about 10x more space than my facility.
I too am not a big fan of PvP myself in general. I also think factorio isn't really fit for PvP play as it is, but "IF" - I'd see it as skirmish (simple seek&destroy basis, pre-set factories and eq for headstart, increased production/research speed), king of the hill (One badass neutral factory in the middle to take over and then repel invaders, pre-set eq and factories for headstart, increased prod/research speed), or long-session play like DF succession games or Homm3 sessions.
As for the last option, I'd see it rather as "domination" mode rather than plain seek&destroy. Like a set of control points thrown throughout the map, to capture and hold, the party that controls the most of them over time wins (kind of like WH40k DoW strategic points victory condition).

That is my view on the topic, anyway. But hey, I can always be proven wrong :)

EDIT: I also think the forum detects the times "edited" count wrong :P
EDIT2: Unless it only counts that when you edit post after a reply was posted to it. Then it's OK.
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evenly challangeing starting locations

Post by Impatient »

@klonan regarding starting areas of teams:

regarding the picture of the starting area placement the first thing that came into my mind was "the team in the middle will be the first that gets defeated." this is because the starting area in the middle has short distances to all neighboring enemy teams whereas the starting areas in the outer ring just have short distances to 3 neighboring enemy teams starting areas. or picture it like a room with combatants in a "everyone for herself" fight with one combatant in the middle and the rest with their backs to the wall. you can picture the outcome.

my prediction for a match is, that the base in the middle will be destroyed first and that area after that will be a common battleground for the other teams.

my suggestions on this issue are:
- the simplest: do not place a team in the middle. place all teams in the ring, so each team has equal distances to all the other teams. the area in the middle most likely becoming the common battleground as well.
- have a map limited in size and looping. like on the inside or outside of a sphere. and distribute the starting areas evenly. (limited map size is for other reasons interesting in a multiplayer game as well.)
- give the team in the center starting area some advantage to compensate for its prone location.

developing this thought further, i think the problem can be formulated as follows: assuming the teams have equal experience and skill, the challenge to win for team x is the inverted of the somehow weighted average distance to the other teams (1,2, ..., n) starting areas. or in other words the challenge is higher if the average distance to the other teams is lower.

in its simplest linear form:
Cx = 1/(n/(Dx1+Dx2+ .... +Dxn))

with "somehow weighted" i mean that the formular has not necessarily to be linear. the impact of lower distances may also be exponential. you got to playtest to determine how powerful the impact is. if the impact is exponential to the power of 2 the formula would be:

Cx = 1/(n/(SQR(SQU(Dx1)+SQU(Dx2)+ .... +SQU(Dxn))))

a general formulation is true for any layout of starting area placement. no matter if random or with a certain pattern. as it can be seen without doing any calculation, C is the same for all teams in the "all teams in the ring" layout. but certainly not in the "one team in the middle" layout. or in general, the challenge is lower if the starting area is on the edge of the area of all starting areas.

if you ever played the board game "risk" you most likely already noticed this problem. players who sit on australia or south amerika have a high probability of winning. because they so to say stand with their backs to the wall (have a well defended base) and just have to defend and attack in one direction, not into all.

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Re: Friday Facts #159 - Research revolution

Post by Impatient »

Drury wrote:If you want an actual competition, don't go for more than 2 teams. Anything more is too chaotic for any strategic or tactical depth, plus it makes the players more hopeful that they can win when the chances are roughly 50%, and as a result more engaged. Plus you'll have 0 issues with players from defeated teams; the game ends when one team gets defeated.

Your issues with spawns can perhaps be solved in a similar manner to the way Offworld Trading Company does its own PvP. Similar to Factorio, the game is played on a randomly generated map with many different resources scattered about. Both players are given a certain amount of time pre-game to select the spots for their bases. They can choose from 4 different HQs, each of them has different resource preferences (robotic HQ doesn't require water, for instance). This means that there's a variety of different sweetspots on each generated map, not just the one which has all the resources. How I could see this working in Factorio would be as follows:

HQ is made up of a rocket silo enclosed in a decently large (spanning several ore fields) teamcolored metal grid-paved area. The recipe for teamcolored pavement is available from the start. You can only build on this teamcolored pavement, but you can pave any neutral surface, and you're free to walk and drive anywhere as usual. I imagine it being easy to craft, but expensive (EDIT: I realize now that would be stupid. It should be more complex but not expensive, so you have to tech up before expanding. The starting area should suffice for some time.). The point of this pavement is to prevent teams from griefing each other in unpredictable ways like mass-producing oil pumps and placing them on all oil fields in a radius etc.

Before the game starts, both teams have a full-screen overview of the map. There are no biters yet. Every player can click anywhere on the map to set their suggested HQ location, which gets highlighted on the map on the map for everyone to see with proper size. When everyone has placed their HQ and a timer runs out, the team votes whose placement was the most rational. Then, the game begins with all players spawning in their elected HQ position and start placing down miners on team-paved ore field etc etc. Biters are generated at this point with the two teams' HQ positions in mind. If playtests show that more types of HQs are necessary to prevent one-sided games due to one team getting a favorable placement, they should be considered, however I reckon they're require big changes to how the game plays. Might be better to have large or infinite maps, although if HQs were spawned too far apart, military options would become an issue. Nobody would drive their tank miles across into the enemy HQ to destroy a bunch of refineries and die.

Speaking of which, if you want base-destruction, you'll need new construction/destruction mechanics. When you lose a building in an RTS, you're screwed for quite some time and it can even be game-changing. In Factorio, you just plop down another one, which is annoying to both the defender (gosh, more wannabe base-destroyers) and attacker (wow I did absolutely nothing). Even then, generally you have several buildings of the same type to accelerate production, so losing a few isn't a big deal. To help this, I'd suggest having the resulting piles of scrap and rubble stay there for a certain amount of time before decaying, and make it impossible to build on rubble. That way, when attackers destroy something, it will stay destroyed for some time and actually give them an edge.
i +1 this posters ideas. not word by word, but in general. i also think, that the dev team will be confornted with a lot of PvP balancing issues, once the technical hurdles are taken. @dev team: mark the ideas of the quoted poster.

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Re: evenly challangeing starting locations

Post by Antaios »

Impatient wrote: my prediction for a match is, that the base in the middle will be destroyed first and that area after that will be a common battleground for the other teams.
Or, all the other teams will be too busy fighting their closer neighbours on the ring, and the player in the middle will have a mostly peaceful experience.

The more players, the closer those on the ring would be to each other compared to the team in the middle, So I reckon (at least sometimes) the middle position is actually the safest, in the given map layout example.

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Re: evenly challangeing starting locations

Post by AndaleTheGreat »

Antaios wrote:
Impatient wrote: my prediction for a match is, that the base in the middle will be destroyed first and that area after that will be a common battleground for the other teams.
Or, all the other teams will be too busy fighting their closer neighbours on the ring, and the player in the middle will have a mostly peaceful experience.

I've played enough Starcraft/Warcraft (Battle.net Edition! WOO!)/Command n Conquer to know that the middle is screwed ladder/tournament maps are unlikely to even have a center starting option. Tho there is usually the good ol' cornucopia of goods in the middle.
In my experience, actual players (I mean non-AI, not people who are specifically good) will follow 1 of 2 rules. Either playing "blood in the water" and joining the frenzy to destroy or attacking the aggressor while the aggressor is busy somewhere else. So there's no way to plan on how things would turn out.
Yes there are rushers but I'm referring to the reaction after first aggression is made, and yes there are pure defenders (me) but we rarely win unless we can manage to turtle/steamroll.


I think I went on a rant that didn't matter so here's a TL;DR: Middle gets screwed, don't have a middle. Ever.

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Re: Friday Facts #159 - Research revolution

Post by Mortalitor »

@kovarex On the topic of copying the starting areas in the multiplayer team games. I'm sure it's already come up either in this thread or between you guys, but what about mirroring the map so that it's symmetrical about a center line between the two bases. I'm not sure how easy it'd be with the map generator, but it's worth a try ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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Re: evenly challangeing starting locations

Post by Drury »

AndaleTheGreat wrote:Yes there are rushers but I'm referring to the reaction after first aggression is made, and yes there are pure defenders (me) but we rarely win unless we can manage to turtle/steamroll.
Weird. When I play FFA in various CnC games and mods, it generally boils down to "whoever turtles, wins." Of course there's a degree of skill involved, but generally if you never attack anyone, nobody will attack you, and if you can carefully expand and build a huge army quickly, there won't be nobody to stop you, especially if all your opponents are going at each other and exhausting themselves.

As I said, you need a bit of skill to turtle efficiently, but it's nothing compared to the skill you'd need to be aggressive throughout the game against multiple opponents and still win. FFA is fundamentally flawed due to this.

Other than that, yeah. Middle is suicide. All the aggressors go through there, you'll be under attack from nearly all sides, except the one with a guy slowly adding to his blob of 50 tanks, waving it around to discourage anyone who gets close.

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Re: evenly challangeing starting locations

Post by Piroko »

Drury wrote:Weird. When I play FFA in various CnC games and mods, it generally boils down to "whoever turtles, wins.".
Same. Though that is because attacking someone tends to cost more time and resources than defending said attack. And there lies the largest problem with Factorio, you only need around a hundred iron- and copperplates for a smg and some clips and you can wreck thousands of plates worth of stuff. Building a defence is really resource- and time consuming in comparison to your typical RTS and the normal defences can be outsmarted or outranged way too easily. That's the main reason why I don't think Factorio is suited for anything else but some derpy fun-pvp on customized maps.

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Re: Friday Facts #159 - Research revolution

Post by rolfl »

About PvP

In a sense, it's all about player demands and skills, though. Personally, I am not much of a "combat" type player. I play Factorio because it gives me the ability to think through logistics problems, and solve a long-running process using smart strategies, and so on. I like that, and it's great. I set up a perimeter defense on my factory, and make occasional forays outside of it to get artifacts for science and modules (and armor).... but, other than that, fighting is not really part of my fun.

I don't like the "on-your-toes" - be ready at any time for an incoming attack. I prefer to establish, and then maintain control of an area.

On the other hand, I get that not all players are like me, and some (most?) want to have a thrilling, suspenseful, beat-each-other-up experience. I get that too (and I go to karate for that fix - just not Factorio).

I am not going to pretend that I understand the PvP motivation enough to criticise, or suggest alternatives that make that aspect of Factorio better... but, I just don't want anything to happen that makes the "regular" or "traditional" aspects of Factorio "worse".

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Re: Friday Facts #159 - Research revolution

Post by Drury »

rolfl wrote:In a sense, it's all about player demands and skills, though. Personally, I am not much of a "combat" type player. I play Factorio because it gives me the ability to think through logistics problems, and solve a long-running process using smart strategies, and so on. I like that, and it's great. I set up a perimeter defense on my factory, and make occasional forays outside of it to get artifacts for science and modules (and armor).... but, other than that, fighting is not really part of my fun.
I think most people feel this way. I do too. I don't think it has to do with what type of player you are - Factorio combat is just so straightforward there is no fun in it regardless of one's preferences. You go somewhere with a gun, you hold down space, you win. Most of what you're doing is kiting a large blob of biters, you drive/run in circles, shooting back at them until they're all dead, then you go for the base, they come again, rinse, repeat. There is no such thing as different biter bases that would require different tactics, weapons don't radically differ in their use, so you just use the most powerful ones. Sure, a grenade has different mechanics than an smg, but the effect on biters is the same, grenades are just better. The biters don't adjust to your tactics. If you keep running at them with a flamethrower, they won't send any special fireproof biters. If you keep throwing poison, they'll keep dying to it all the same. You don't have to think about anything, you just do the same thing over and over again and it works. That's not fun.

Said this before already - there need to be specialized types of biter nests that spawn one type of biter that has a lot of resistances to most types of weapons, except one. This way the variety of weapons in the game will start making sense to use and manufacture ammo for. You'll need flamethrowers for this one, smgs for that one, rocket launchers for another. For PvP, different armor types. Thermal armor for fire, blast armor for explosives, kevlar armor for physical. Get that counterplay going. See they're going for poison? Get gas masks.

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Re: Friday Facts #159 - Research revolution

Post by bripi »

100% against the "new" science pack 3 ideas. This level is already difficult and time-consuming enough and with both engines and advanced circuits will be next to impossible to get to much less keep up in terms of resources. Not to mention the fact that level 2 factories require level 1 factories which require their own factories...god, I HATE THAT CRAP. I *like* that alien-stuff is necessary for research now, and that's it's bloody easy once you've got it. It takes enough resources and time to *get* to it, so all this complaining about how "easy" it is is just rubbish.

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Re: Friday Facts #159 - Research revolution

Post by mrvn »

daniel34 wrote:
mrvn wrote:I would rather see solar boilers. Hot water (any liquid) from solar energy.
I'm very much against that.

How would that work? You put down some solar boilers which in daylight heat the water flowing through them (like normal boilers but without coal) and then make energy out of them using steam engines? There isn't really another use for hot water/fluid right now that makes sense.

The difference would be that solar boilers don't cause much pollution, but balancing the game between a solar panel field vs. a solar boiler + steam engine setup would be incredibly difficult as both wouldn't cause much/any pollution and they are too similar (only work at daytime and don't burn anything) and probably are equivalently big and efficient (by size).

The only reason to justify keeping both would be the research cost (one is much more expensive to research) or the material cost (solar boilers are much cheaper to build than solar panels).

It would also look strange from a size perspective: they both have to require the same space for the same power (given they are both dependant on power from the same 'sun') or the whole system would be imbalanced. Players would be wondering why there even are two implementations (solar power/solar boiler) of the same thing if one of them turns out to be superior.

TL;DR we already have an energy source depending on the 'sun's energy, why add another when there are so many alternatives available?

Note: don't take this as a personal insult as I've also thought about such ideas in the past (and made posts like this), but I've since learned that diversity in power sources is better than alternatives of the same power source.
There are a few reasons for solar boilers:

1) It's an real-world tech that simply makes sense.
2) It allows upgrading the existing cole burning steam setup to a cleaner sunlight equivalent.
3) It's more efficient.

As for the size I think they should be smaller than solar pannels. Solar pannels produce electricity from sunlight. As such they are water pump, boiler and steam engine all in one. The solar boiler would only be part of the generator so you have to consider the size of pump + boiler + steam engine versus solar pannel. Unlike solar pannels the solar boilers can use hot liquid to store energy for later use, as they do in real live. Simply pump the hot liquid into a storage tank and use it with steam engines when needed.

As for balancing: How do you balance the nuclear reactor? You build one, it gives you 100MW energy for forever, without needing any fuel (there is no ore to fuel it with in factorio yet), all day and night. It would be the ultimate power generator without any downside and make all other forms pointless. Or do you add a new ore type, recepies to build fuel rods and the reactor poduces spend rods from fuel rods that you have to store somewhere. Spend rods would then cause massive pollution and maybe even damage to nearby structures? Although normally fuel rods last many years so that's unreal too.

If you have to go nuclear then instead of a nuclear reactor using fision for energy maybe a fusion reactor would be more plausible. For extra hardness it could use Helium 3 from the moon as fuel, mined by rockets you send up after the first one.

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Re: evenly challangeing starting locations

Post by mrvn »

Piroko wrote:
Drury wrote:Weird. When I play FFA in various CnC games and mods, it generally boils down to "whoever turtles, wins.".
Same. Though that is because attacking someone tends to cost more time and resources than defending said attack. And there lies the largest problem with Factorio, you only need around a hundred iron- and copperplates for a smg and some clips and you can wreck thousands of plates worth of stuff. Building a defence is really resource- and time consuming in comparison to your typical RTS and the normal defences can be outsmarted or outranged way too easily. That's the main reason why I don't think Factorio is suited for anything else but some derpy fun-pvp on customized maps.
And how do bullets work? You haven't discovered explosives. No coal or salpeter used for gunpowder. Seems you just form raw bullets and the magazines from iron plates and they magically accelerate towards aliens when you pull the trigger. Maybe players should start of with bow and arrow or knife and spear. Go real low tech.
.

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Re: Friday Facts #159 - Research revolution

Post by Hannu »

Drury wrote:Factorio combat is just so straightforward there is no fun in it regardless of one's preferences. You go somewhere with a gun, you hold down space, you win
...
That's not fun.
I agree this. Actual fighting is boring. It is easy but time consuming and laborious. But in my opinion the fighting should have very small role in Factorio. This is a logistics and automation game, not a fighting game. Fun thing is to make fully automatized defense lines so that only sign of enemies is small flashing triangle on screen, and constant material flow to my weapon production cell and ammo and robot flow to the train station and defense lines. Until they become more strong and break through. Then I have to think better production and logistics.

I would like if devs developed also automatized offensive warfare. So that I would not have to go out and be a soldier who points the aim and pulls the trigger or a sergeant who decides fighting tactics against the single biter base. Instead I would like to be an engineer colonel who plans large scale and long term strategies, allocates resources to build fighting robots and sends them to clear areas and/or collect artifacts needed in the research labs. I want also to plan and build complex production chains for various types combat robots and their weapons and equipment. Control and logistics systems which would replace destroyed robots automatically and bring them to their units in front line, would keep up the manpower of my robot army.


For example, the radar could tell me approximate locations and sizes of enemy bases. The more distant the base would be the more inaccurate detection would be. Maybe forests could decrease the range and accuracy too. Then I would make couple of fast small reconnaissance robots with selectable sensors and give them a route to follow and special points of interest. They would send the data of how many and what kind of nests are in the base and their accurate locations, how many enemies there are, what is evolution factor etc. But maybe the scouts would disappear suddenly and I would to have to build faster or stronger but more expensive ones. Or I could choose better detectors and keep range. When I would know more about enemy, I could build suitable fighting bots and plan missions for them. There could also be defense oriented fighting bots, guardians etc. It would need more variety in biter bases and nests to be interesting.

Good fighting game is very resource intensive programming task. Especially the AI. Most of the games from high level gaming companies have quite pathetic AIs. It is easier to program just insane mass of dumb enemies, and probably it is also what the most customers want. Easy violent entertainment without need for thinking. I doubt that small dev team of Factorio could make a good combat mechanics for face to face fighting. But they are ingenious to program logistic games and it would give more fun for players (at least for me) if they used their resources to make more core things in Factorio instead whole new fighting mechanics.

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Re: Friday Facts #159 - Research revolution

Post by MeduSalem »

Drury wrote:I think most people feel this way. I do too. I don't think it has to do with what type of player you are - Factorio combat is just so straightforward there is no fun in it regardless of one's preferences. You go somewhere with a gun, you hold down space, you win. Most of what you're doing is kiting a large blob of biters, you drive/run in circles, shooting back at them until they're all dead, then you go for the base, they come again, rinse, repeat. There is no such thing as different biter bases that would require different tactics, weapons don't radically differ in their use, so you just use the most powerful ones. Sure, a grenade has different mechanics than an smg, but the effect on biters is the same, grenades are just better. The biters don't adjust to your tactics. If you keep running at them with a flamethrower, they won't send any special fireproof biters. If you keep throwing poison, they'll keep dying to it all the same. You don't have to think about anything, you just do the same thing over and over again and it works. That's not fun.

Said this before already - there need to be specialized types of biter nests that spawn one type of biter that has a lot of resistances to most types of weapons, except one. This way the variety of weapons in the game will start making sense to use and manufacture ammo for. You'll need flamethrowers for this one, smgs for that one, rocket launchers for another. For PvP, different armor types. Thermal armor for fire, blast armor for explosives, kevlar armor for physical. Get that counterplay going. See they're going for poison? Get gas masks.
I agree to it as well...

I even made already a suggestion a while ago (though it got buried pretty fast) where I basically suggested making biter nests spawn purposedly ontop or around a resource patch... and whatever resource patch they sit on the Spawners etc develop special defense abilities and the biters they spawn have special resistances/attacks that have something to do with the resource they sit upon.

Like for example you got a coal patch and the biters spawning ontop develop carbon nanofiber armor... which may be resistant to special damage types, but weak to others. Ontop it might even be a special resource the biter nests drop after defeating them.
If the biter nests sit next to/ontop of an Iron patch then they have something like steel armor and so on... I guess you get the idea.

The devs wouldn't even have to implement a lot of new graphics... simple color shades applied as a layer to existing graphics would be enough to differentiate... like black for Carbon based Biters/Spitters, reddish for Copper-based, blue-ish for Iron, light-greyish for stone, dark-greenish for oil, yellowish if there's ever something like sand, something yellow-greenish glowing for uranium, and so on, etc.

At least it would make the player adjust his combat tactics according to the resource patch they want to conquer... and you would also have to diversify your own base defense a lot more because the incoming biters will have varying resistances and attacks.

The devs just need to take some examples from your average Tower Defense games... they keep you entertained because there is often no real one-size-fits-all-solution.


If something more elaborate, diversified like that won't be implemented by the devs in a later addon (somewhen after they took their well deserved break after releasing stable 0.16) then basically the fighting part is braindead no matter how much they rebalance the weapons etc. Might as well automate the combat at this point with combat robots that are on search&destroy missions to fly out in the wilderness and kill everything in plain sight and when disengaged they fly back to nearby roboports, pretty much like the defense ring around the machine city in Matrix Revolutions.

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Re: Friday Facts #159 - Research revolution

Post by Wolfwaffe »

Furnaces and pumpjacks for science packs. OK, so whose brilliant idea is that? :roll:

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Re: Friday Facts #159 - Research revolution

Post by sekanz »

I am really excited about these changes!! :mrgreen:

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Re: Friday Facts #159 - Research revolution

Post by GlassDeviant »

Are the new science pack recipes set in stone?

I ask this because the High Tech science pack puzzles me. It already has 3 PUs which contain a total of 240 copper cables and a speed module which contains 49 copper cables, then you have to add another 30 additional copper cables.

Is that just to have an additional input (belt, swarm of drones, whatever) to manage?

Also, the FF shows that it will be buildable in an assembler 2, is that just a mockup error since 4 inputs requires an assembler 3?
- GD

Sorry if my posts are becoming difficult to read, my typing ability is rapidly deteriorating due to a nerve disorder. I try to clean them up before posting but don't always get every last typo.

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Re: Friday Facts #159 - Research revolution

Post by Nemoricus »

GlassDeviant wrote:Are the new science pack recipes set in stone?

I ask this because the High Tech science pack puzzles me. It already has 3 PUs which contain a total of 240 copper cables and a speed module which contains 49 copper cables, then you have to add another 30 additional copper cables.

Is that just to have an additional input (belt, swarm of drones, whatever) to manage?

Also, the FF shows that it will be buildable in an assembler 2, is that just a mockup error since 4 inputs requires an assembler 3?
No, that's correct. Assembling Machine 2 can handle up to 4 inputs.

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