Factorio Forums

Version 0.16.51 introduced a change to the battery design. One that I disagree with. I liked the previous one better, it is a generic battery design that I saw in many games already. Unfortunately, it could not stay, so I am looking for other's opinion on whether or not the new one is good enough.
I dislike the change myself. The new battery looks almost like a module. I find it uncomfortable to look at while on the transport belts. Don't bring reasoning from fff-191 or fff-225 here. This change has no effect on the game play. It just does not look good. Since there is no way the previous one can return to vanilla, what about the idea of a new one?

Share your opinion!

I'm already used to the current design (it has been the technology icon for some time), but I'd be okay to see a new, more intuitive icon both for the research tech and the item itself.

It is rather noisy. I would prefer a design that looks simpler and more clearly industrial.

PTTG wrote:It is rather noisy. I would prefer a design that looks simpler and more clearly industrial.

Maybe Varta would be more interested in a partnership than Duracell :evil:.

(Personally i'm just enjoying my popcorn. I bet if the change had been one amongst many the debate would have been...measurably...smaller.)

I liked the old battery better. It was a simpler and more intuitive image. If we can't go back to Duracell colors, I suggest using a color that's not in heavy use already like grey/blues are... perhaps a white/yellow color scheme for the batteries?

The main problem with the new battery design is the shape.

A good battery does not need to look like a Duracell battery or even a AA battery, but it does need to look like a battery. Choose the colors to be different from any existing brand and the shape from AA, C, D, or even car battery.

That will avoid patent infringements and avoid looking like garbage.

Better yet, since Duracell were so stupid that they rejected free advertising... why not offer the other battery companies the option to pay for product placement in Factorio? (Paying Factorio to display their particular brand of Battery) It is constantly done in the Movie business and some games, why not make extra money by using the color scheme of whichever battery company pays the most.

not sure whats worse the cables sticking out or the 3 module points / when looking at the single bat its somehow ok / on belt it looks weird // and its the other way around with the old lol

Not being a graphic designer I don't have opinions on how to fix it, but I agree the new battery design is hard on the eyes. The transport belt full of them looks awful and I won't be doing that any time soon. However, it could be worse (flashing disco balls come to mind).

Got some new ideas. I thought I share them here.

If they can't use this:

How about hue shifting it...?


I personally would prefer the yellow one.
Only colorblind people would be left...

Just think of these as an example to the second option. (Which is the most popular at the time of writing.)

one problem with the old design is that you know these batteries as beeing kind of small - so beeing able to only put 2 on a conveyor belt - makes the whole graphics kind of out of balance - only regarding intermediates not stuff like refinery item icons etc, this is totally broken but thats the way it works

Sure, the new ones are a bit noisy and a weird style (fitting or not I'm not sure), and maybe they could be improved, but you're not getting the old icon back. That's been clearly stated by the devs and clearly reasoned by several players. Don't pressure them into a lawsuit. Also, I'd prefer not having product placement.

The wires don't really make any sense. Otherwise it's not too bad.

Why use batteries when supercaps are here, today, and they really kick ass? I'm talking about FARADS. Not milli fractions. Not a handful. I mean hundreds and thousands of them. The best part is the primary supercapacitor ingredient is CARBON, which can do wonderful things for easing up the oil tech burden. Building construction robots with only lubricant, coal and green circuits? Yes please!

Don't believe me? Just google 3000 Farad capacitor. It's the size of a soda can and less than $100. Now you too can have the firepower needed to shoot down police helicopters, which you might not need. YET. Some quick math says you only need 600 of those soda cans to equal the power capacity of one factorio accumulator. Think about that, Factorio is all this future tech and it's falling behind the real world!

3Wh per capacitor? Interesting !

Should probably look like a car battery instead.

Not sure how it really should look like. But as it looked after the last update, it is way too noisy. So i finally fired up Inkscape and made the Clean Battery Icon mod. I tried to keep the design as vanilla as i could - but with as few noise as possible without making the result looking too dull.
Now i can look at belts full of batteries without getting eye cancer anymore.

Oktokolo wrote:Not sure how it really should look like. But as it looked after the last update, it is way too noisy. So i finally fired up Inkscape and made the Clean Battery Icon mod. I tried to keep the design as vanilla as i could - but with as few noise as possible without making the result looking too dull.
Now i can look at belts full of batteries without getting eye cancer anymore.

Any chance you can get it blessed by the devs so that Factorio won't disable achievements when running your mod?

zOldBulldog wrote:Any chance you can get it blessed by the devs so that Factorio won't disable achievements when running your mod?

Not sure how to achieve that. Are there any mods wich are not counted against achievements already?

Oktokolo wrote:

zOldBulldog wrote:Any chance you can get it blessed by the devs so that Factorio won't disable achievements when running your mod?

Not sure how to achieve that. Are there any mods wich are not counted against achievements already?

No.