Friday Facts #235 - 0.16 stable

[ske]

Arachnophobia is not a joke, why would any developer introduce spiders to alienate part of potential customers?

Do you even have Arachnophobia? Mine at least doesn't trigger on mechanical spiders. I have to agree though that rideable humanoid mechs might fit the setting better.

Those 8 legs make me feel a little uncomfortable. 6 legs would be okay.

[steinio]

Arachnophobia is not a joke, why would any developer introduce spiders to alienate part of potential customers?

Do you even have Arachnophobia? Mine at least doesn't trigger on mechanical spiders. I have to agree though that rideable humanoid mechs might fit the setting better.

Those 8 legs make me feel a little uncomfortable. 6 legs would be okay.

My maximum leg limit is 4.

[Durabys]

Will you please also consider adding a bit more lane management in the game? Splitting two lanes of 1 belt onto two belts with splitter options (instead of slow inserters), and maybe a way to swap two lanes of 1 belt.

they have given us the tools.

split

underground.exploit.png

swap

swap.png

Nope. They didn't. Your arrogant non-solution makes new players go for bots instead of belts. Before they added "Smart" splitters with their own window I would have agreed with you. Now they could have just added one button to the splitter window with the same function and it would save space and resources (just one splitter and on 2×1 squares).

[fiery_salmon]

Your arrogant non-solution

This is a) solution b) there is nothing arrogant here.

[Light]

Arachnophobia is not a joke, why would any developer introduce spiders to alienate part of potential customers?

Do you even have Arachnophobia? Mine at least doesn't trigger on mechanical spiders. I have to agree though that rideable humanoid mechs might fit the setting better.

That's the real question here. If it doesn't look identical to a real spider or move exactly like one, then it shouldn't invoke any response.

This was a problem brought up when the spider girl from League of Legends was introduced and not only did she become a black widow spider but her leg movement was very realistic and it gave some devs chills. They later modified it to be less realistic and thus the problems faded away. Only a few uptight individuals continued to complain about it for the sake of complaining, but today no one gives a shit.

The spidertron hits none of those marks and thus we have the latter situation of complaining for the sake of it. I also say this as someone with arachnophobia who flees from a tiny house spider, so take that with what you will.

[POPISowyNumer]

With this in mind, we can safely say, that robots are at least 2 times stronger then express belts, but in real factories, it is much more as belts need lot of other parts and are rarely used as ideally as robots would be, so my private guess would be that robots are currently around 5+ times stronger compared to belts.

back when it was still hot topic i've run few tests of mine
and guess what
belts are so god damn weak shits that even CARGO WAGON LINE beats them by 50% for same footprint and RIDICULOUSLY lower costs than both belts, that need boatload of iron and bots, that need more stuff and more energy to work.
GOD DAMNED OVERSIZED CHESTS. and you can even filter them. And run at least four items at once. 0 problems with compression, splitting without a hitch and accessibility that would make people wet. [by golly Bob, THREE stack inserters at once?]
Belts need buff more than bots need nerf.

[Rinin]

With this in mind, we can safely say, that robots are at least 2 times stronger then express belts, but in real factories, it is much more as belts need lot of other parts and are rarely used as ideally as robots would be, so my private guess would be that robots are currently around 5+ times stronger compared to belts.

back when it was still hot topic i've run few tests of mine
and guess what
belts are so god damn weak shits that even CARGO WAGON LINE beats them by 50% for same footprint and RIDICULOUSLY lower costs than both belts, that need boatload of iron and bots, that need more stuff and more energy to work.
GOD DAMNED OVERSIZED CHESTS. and you can even filter them. And run at least four items at once. 0 problems with compression, splitting without a hitch and accessibility that would make people wet. [by golly Bob, THREE stack inserters at once?]
Belts need buff more than bots need nerf.

Inserters could beat belts in terms of speed, but not in terms of throughput. 40items/sec beats 27.7items/sec. And speed means nothing for running factory

[Rinin]

So, no any plans about trains?

I really would welcome some kind of train tunnel as that would make the rail network much more powerful and prevent a lot of situations where jams might occur.

I just hope that anything would be added to the trains. Anything. Current system is just borrowed from transport tycoon. It's not bad, but transport tycoon wasn't about automation. We have great deal of control, but it's still not enough to create perfect railway empire.

So, I just hope that anything would be added to the game from the huge pile of suggestion related to trains.

[POPISowyNumer]

Inserters could beat belts in terms of speed, but not in terms of throughput. 40items/sec beats 27.7items/sec. And speed means nothing for running factory

ye wrong
very wrong
with some insider knowledge you can create two tiles wide transport lane that has 110 items/sec, versus two tiles wide belt with 80/s

[eradicator]

Inserters could beat belts in terms of speed, but not in terms of throughput. 40items/sec beats 27.7items/sec. And speed means nothing for running factory

ye wrong
very wrong
with some insider knowledge you can create two tiles wide transport lane that has 110 items/sec, versus two tiles wide belt with 80/s

Does anybody actually use quadserted cargo wagons as their main bus? I mean...it's annoying to build, annoying to navigate or look at, and can only be build every two tiles. And uses energy. And you lose the filtering capacity of belts/bots.

[POPISowyNumer]

Does anybody actually use quadserted cargo wagons as their main bus? I mean...it's annoying to build, annoying to navigate or look at, and can only be build every two tiles. And uses energy. And you lose the filtering capacity of belts/bots.

If logibots got an axe i'd switch to that in heartbeat
You can BP it, traversing is harder but doable, if looks mattered nobody would build refineries and energy requirements are nothing compared to buts.
Also you can still filter them easily by filtered cargo spaces in entry points.

[eradicator]

Does anybody actually use quadserted cargo wagons as their main bus? I mean...it's annoying to build, annoying to navigate or look at, and can only be build every two tiles. And uses energy. And you lose the filtering capacity of belts/bots.

If logibots got an axe i'd switch to that in heartbeat
You can BP it, traversing is harder but doable, if looks mattered nobody would build refineries and energy requirements are nothing compared to buts.
Also you can still filter them easily by filtered cargo spaces in entry points.

Since when can you blueprint cargo wagons? And filtering can't be done at full throughput unlike belts.

[POPISowyNumer]

Since when can you blueprint cargo wagons? And filtering can't be done at full throughput unlike belts.

you can bp the tracks and inserters, and placing wagons should be one strut with pressed button
and you can filter them at full throughput, the inserters will just pick what the wagons can accept

[Mike5000]

I wonder if it would be better to revert the map generator to the 0.15 version?

Some things about 0.16 are great - particularly the performance improvements, filter splitters, and artillery. The cliffs are fun in the early game but they break the late game with no way but tedious slogging to clear space for major construction. But cliffs can be turned off (and should default to off until robots can handle them). What can't be turned off is the 0.16 resource generation.

Do we really want newbies posting that they dropped $20 on a game and gave up on it after spending an hour searching for stone and another hour running back and forth carrying stone a mile each way ... only to be told that it's their own fault for not first spending two hours regenerating maps until they found one that was playable?

So please consider reverting the map generator - and maybe reducing the old 0.15 tree intensity - before releasing 0.16.

And as a bonus, stable players won't all get their maps broken when 0.16 is released!

[Oktokolo]

Hmm, Spidertrons - would be great as an enemy faction. Abandoned alien tech that has lost its owner. They defend choke points, resources or seemingly random spots (that may have had some strategic or tatctical significance back when their owners where still present) against the biters and the player.

[Rinin]

ye wrong
very wrong
with some insider knowledge you can create two tiles wide transport lane that has 110 items/sec, versus two tiles wide belt with 80/s

Well. you are actually convinced me to test it. And numbers are exactly like in wiki. Blue belt throughput is 44% better. And cheap easy to produce red belts are only 4% worse. Of course compared to fully upgraded stack inserters.
In terms of price 16 blue belts is 504 of iron, and 4 stack inserters, wagon and 3 rails in sum is 501,75 of iron+copper+stone+coal. And it's hardly any economy.

[POPISowyNumer]

Well. you are actually convinced me to test it. And numbers are exactly like in wiki. Blue belt throughput is 44% better. And cheap easy to produce red belts are only 4% worse. Of course compared to fully upgraded stack inserters.
In terms of price 16 blue belts is 504 of iron, and 4 stack inserters, wagon and 3 rails in sum is 501,75 of iron+copper+stone+coal. And it's hardly any economy.

how were you testing it? Feeding it off the belt? Or off the chests? Because the whole point off this setup is to have four stack inserters putting in and four putting out of each cargo wagon with maximum efficiency of 27,7 items/s, which is also number stated in the wiki.
ALSO belts require only Iron that used to be the most sought after ore in 0.15 and before. I now play with RSO so i don't know if it's still a thing in 0.16.

[numgun]

The metagame needs improvement.

Currently the factories and resources we make in Factorio just get discarded once either a satellite is launched or all the content is exhausted on an existing map.

I hope you guys will come up with something that allows any factories and resources gathered matter and be useable for an infinite metagame of sorts. See the link in my signature for a possible solution to this problem. I can answer questions about it if a developer asks them.

[bman212121]

So I'll make a couple of separate posts.

First is the .15 -> .16 transition. This will break the fluid wagon for a lot of setups correct?

Is there anything else we should be concerned about that could be game breaking?

[bman212121]

Car physics: Is there anyway we can fix the reverse direction on vehicles? The way the game is setup the steering in reverse is backwards to real life. I don't know why it was setup that way in the first place, but it's basically counter intuitive because it's opposite of anything you would ever drive. So when you are backing up you have to hit the right arrow to go left in factorio, but in real life you turn the wheel to the left and you still go left when you back up. Turning the wheel in one direction creates a perfect circle regardless of whether it's forward or backward in real life. In factorio the steering controls create a S pattern. Left and forward goes left, left and reverse goes to the right.
EDIT: Ignore that, I'm not sure what I was using that it seemed wrong on, but I just tried it and it seems to be correct.

I'm also hoping when you fix the car physics, you can account for steering vs movement speed. Currently those two seem to be bound to each other in a direct fashion. Steering should become exponential the faster you go, so it would actually slow down steering input as you go faster. It's super obvious when you start using mods like Bob's with overdrive engines. The tank becomes un-drivable because if you are going like 2 or 3x normal speed one tap of the left or right steering will cause a complete 180 degree turn.