Friday Facts #245 - Campaign concept

[Terukio]

The free-play lonely? The music is sad but I have all type of machinery and robots to keep me company.

Factorio really should have better music for late game that is not so depressing.

At what point would this occur?

In general, I'm excited about the campaign changes even though I have yet to play the current campaign

[Jap2.0]

I'm a bit curious as to how the demo will tie into all of this.

https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-241
The Demo is currently just the tutorial parts of the Campaign, but will change to be a completely separate experience designed to teach the game concepts AND show what Factorio is all about. The demo is a thing that will stick around, everyone here is committed to the idea that at least part of the game should be accessible for free.

So far I would say the testing versions of the NPE feel less like a tutorial and more like a playable trailer (but I am biased).

Ah, thanks, I must've missed that.

[SHiRKiT]

I certainly think that science packs need to be rethink, but don't know what is the best solution. But I think this:

Whatever you do, please make construction robots available ASAP.

[thecatlover1996]

Really happy with the fact that the science pack researches now only become available as their ingredients have been researched

[bNarFProfCrazy]

If you add this unlocked by science X feature please make sure that you don't add things to that list, that require a different research which requires the same.

If Research B requires research A, and research C requires B, then C should not also require research A (because it already does that through B).
Because otherwise you have this weird bunch of pseudo random lines, that just confuses the users.

IMO you did that with your Power Armor:

[Philip017]

I really look forward to trying out the new campaign, i have played it through a few times and though the first time it was a nice tutorial, the second and third time was to see the changes and i was able to blast through them with ease. it helps that i have >3k hours in the game too.

it would be awesome if i could invite a friend that was new to the game and could experience the tutorial with them, i think this would be a great addition if it was possible.

RE: the music, i am not bothered at all by the music, mostly i listen to it at very soft levels, not quite sure if it has the same changes to track like: Play this track when im low on copper, Play this if im low on iron, others for coal and oil, if it does i haven't noticed the changes buy browsing through the sound track files notes a file that seems to indicate this might be in there possibly. "the-search-for-iron.ogg" i played total annihilation and it definitely had track changes that played different music to low on energy or metal, as well as combat music. just a thought.

also there is no reason to totally trash the old campaign missions, they can be left in the game as a relic imo.

as for the new method of science - even though i have >3k hrs in the game i still have to try and find the science packs and try and remember where do i unlock this again, so big thumbs up for putting them out there like that! and even though you have made the separation of production and high tech giving it a better feel, i still will need both and will start with production as it is simpler and then high tech very shortly there after. must have my mk2 but must also have modules everywhere!

now if only module inserter and upgrade planner were vanilla squeak through is also a major mod i really must have when playing modded. speaking of which we need automatic mod syncing when connecting to a multiplayer server please!

keep up the good work

[Rinin]

Why do we need a new campaign at all? We find that the current campaign:
* Does not convey the feeling of loneliness that the Freeplay does.

Feeling of loneleliness is not that good at all. Plying single player is much less fun after playing multiplayer. In my opinion the lack of "feeling of loneliness" is realy good thing in old campaign.

[topforce]

I think that campaign would work best if it's built on top of sandbox, something like https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Mining-Space-Industries like sandbox but, directed with tasks and events.

[torham]

The free-play lonely? The music is sad but I have all type of machinery and robots to keep me company.

Factorio really should have better music for late game that is not so depressing.

I want to disagree... but more awesome music is better...

[bman212121]

I certainly think that science packs need to be rethink, but don't know what is the best solution. But I think this:
Whatever you do, please make construction robots available ASAP.

You already get the unlock for construction robots plenty early. In order to build them you need electric engines for the robot frames, which requires you have oil processing setup. So the minimum amount you can actually use them requires green science packs, and if you wanted to use them on your person you actually need blue science to get a personal roboport. So all of the required items to actually use construction robots already require green science, so there's no benefit to unlocking them sooner as you won't be able to build them until you have: Electric engines (Meaning lubricant), batteries (sulfuric acid), advanced circuits (Which requires plastic).

[Rinin]

I think that campaign would work best if it's built on top of sandbox, something like https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Mining-Space-Industries like sandbox but, directed with tasks and events.

If you want another experience for another player don't force then to play the same sandbox but with another souce.
Company should be interesting, scripted, with drama, with additionall stuff like planes for company only, it should be like a good movie. Not the same sandbox with additional limitations.
If we are talking about company. And old company actually offered this kind of gameplay.

[herkalurk]

I feel like at some point nuclear needs to be used in research. The centrifuges make lots of the U-238 (dark green) so why not have it be a part of science? You already do very expensive science in the space science packs. It seems to me like there aren't enough applications for the uranium at this time. I'm always at a surplus of it.

[bman212121]

The free-play lonely? The music is sad but I have all type of machinery and robots to keep me company.

Factorio really should have better music for late game that is not so depressing.

I want to disagree... but more awesome music is better...

In most games turning off the in game music is one of the first things I do. Factorio is definitely no exception to me. The music is okay I guess, but it's not really something that ties into the game as much as it's just background noise. I'm not sure how long the total amount of music is in the game right now, but I'd guess there isn't nearly enough for it to not become repetitive in a hurry. We're talking about a game where you might spend 100+ hours on a single map, so if there is a total of 2 hours of in game music you will have heard everything 50 times over.

Taking a quick look at the ambient folder and opening one of the ogg files, it's slightly over 1MB per minute of music. There's about 100MB of data in that folder, so if I were guessing there is somewhere in the neighborhood of 75 - 80 minutes of music in game. So you'd be closer to 75 - 80 loops of all in game music before you moved to the next map. We're basically talking about having a single CD in your player and putting it on repeat, Even if they doubled the amount of music it would still be quite repetitive for any length of time, so I'm not really sure it's worth much of an investment to do anything with. The game has music you can enjoy for a little while, but I'd imagine most people have turned it off after a period of time.

[bobucles]

I'm curious why power armor mk2 was made easier to unlock. The Mk2 is such a colossal upgrade over mk1 (9 full 2x2 modules vs. 25 full 2x2 modules) and they aren't terribly far apart in terms of tech either. It's not a big deal to skip mk1 when the upgrade is so worth it. If anything the mk2 should be gated behind space science. It's an ultimate end game tech and it is literally that good.

I kind of understand how the tech tree is supposed to "fan out" a bit after blue science into two major paths, but it doesn't really play out that way in reality. The recipe difference between the two paths isn't equal at all, with purple science being far easier to complete than gold science. A lot of the top researches need both packs anyway so there's little purpose in committing heavily to either path. Players ultimately need both, and they need both at around the same time so it's not much of a choice at all.

[bman212121]

Please keep the old campaign as a scenario pack as I really liked a few of those missions. For example the one that teaches us to use trains; seemed really good.

Perhaps a missions pack would be nice. Perhaps you could add the world used in the trailer to the mission pack also.

I would think that they would be able to reuse most of that work, and just incorporate it into the campaign where appropriate. So there would still be a mission to teach you how to use trains, it just would be after you build all of the required items to make a train network.

The one thing that making a progressive campaign does cause issues with is how to handle if a player wants to just do a certain piece. Like in your instance if you love doing the train setup, there should be a way for you to still launch that mission after it's been unlocked, without having to go through all of the missions that precede it. I could see either having the game automatically create you saves after each campaign so you have something to fall back on, or just giving you their version of a starting template so you can just do that mission. The latter is probably more likely as it could be difficult to keep working versions of your old maps.

Hey!
Are you planning on allowing a co-op experience in the campaign? It would be very cool to bring over your friends and play through the whole campaign together.

I'd definitely give a +1 to this. Normally I'd say that's actually a hard thing to do in most games because the game would stall out at prompts, but in Factorio the entire game is already 100% synchronous anyway, so it really won't be that hard to put in something that waits until all players click through whatever screen pops up before continuing on.

[viveks711]

Would Sandbox mode be getting some love? always played with Sandbox mode since I found it exhausting to go from one part of the base to another, especially when you are creating a base with 1 RPM / SPM in mind.

[DanGio]

Unlike bobucles, I'm all for this power armor mk2 change. I won't say there's a huge gap between mk1 & mk2, but I think it's a sufficient gap : mk2 requires yellow packs. So mk1 isn't worthless. I feel on the contrary that the gap between mk1 and mk2 is now closer of the gap between modular and mk1, and that's good. You can skip everything and get mk2 if you're ahead science wise, but each tier has its value in case of military emergency.

Also consider that I tend to find everything Factorio devs do fantastic. Many thumbs up on science packs technologies, I'm still unsure of what tech unlocks which pack after 4000h of gameplay well you changed it and brought new packs

[ixnorp]

The many crossing branches in the Science Tree paths that occur when you have images like https://eu2.factorio.com/assets/img/blo ... ropped.png are visually confusing. Someone who looks at it for a bit can figure it out but maybe they could be made more visually distinct by using arrows or something similar along the path so your eyes can more easily follow the line? What if that something was actually conveyor belts for extra Factorio style?

[mathturtle]

+1 for science pack technologies. I remember this being confusing for me as a new player in .14/.15

I bought the game for a friend a few months ago and he didn't enjoy the campaign much. The constant resetting of progress and the arbitrary 'mine X iron' goals didn't really give him a good feel for the game. But I showed him the start (up to almost oil) in freeplay and he seemed much more interested in playing after that. I did mention that you were working on improving the campaign too, so I'm glad to see progress is being made. Keep up the good work!

[Ghoulish]

Looking forward to the changes!