After 400+ hours a few problems and suggestions

[Mchief105]

I will fully admit that i may play this game to much that said i have com across some issues and possible fix's for them. Oh and before i start please don't take this as an attack on the game, veiw this as more a potential wish list if you will.

The bugs - Yes i know you need some one to go up against and it is quite possible that i have done something wrong but in my current game there nests have grown to the point where they are almost one giant nest, and short of a nuking spree they tend to regenerate just as fast, i end up having to craft defended train ways with 3 rows thick of laser turrets to keep my supply lines safe. so things that would be nice

Some sort of repulsor or item that prevent base growth in a large area, i have come back to not so secure section of my base only to find a hive grown around power lines.

some sort of mid range sensor system, like the radar but actively warns you something has sown up.


The resources - collecting in this game is half the fun, only problem is that after you get to the electric drill theirs not much more than minor speed increases to look forward to. so suggestions

Laser Miner - fires a beam at the closest resource tile, multiple beams can work together on the same tile and Efficiency is increased this way, Heavy electrical use and can output ore faster than a red belt can take it away when running at full tilt.

Magma mine - this rather large structure pulls vast amounts of material from the planets core, which needs to be processed ( adding further machinery) , used large amounts of electricity and produces heat damage if you are close, has a rather long setup time as you need to drill down a long ways with big drills to get it going.

Water tower - this building pumps water from underground, works just like the shore pump , multiple water towers in close proximity reduce effectiveness.

Moving around - some times it gets quite hard to move around, a few ideas

movement tunnels - walking over top of an entrance tile puts you "under ground" you can only walk in the direction of another tunnel entrance, max size 15-30 tiles long

Teleportation tunnel - works like the movement tunnel but requires power no, max size, if power drops you are kicked out the closest entrance.

Drones - drones are an integral and fun part of the game , i do however find them lacking in a few things.

Inroute charger - this tower charges drones as they fly requiring no stopping time, draws directly from the grid and has no reserves or storage space.

Drone path selection - Option on drone towers, if turned off drones act as normal, if turned on drones will only approach the tower from the direction of another linked tower, this can chain.

Security drones - as combat drones arent quite what they used to be upgrade them to full drones with there own combat bases and patrol points, combat drones have much larger batterys but are grounded if they run out of power.

Charger relay - this power suit option allows for charging drones at much larger ranges and with out needing them to stop.

Defences

Multiple types of walls

electric fence - quick and easy to build will stop most small hostiles with out issue

Steel wall - very durable if not very movable

Plasma wall - requires larger amounts of power into dedicated generator stations , wall is invulnerable when powered but can over heat.

Energy wall - functions just like regular wall when provided power, the wall section can be attacked and destroyed by bugs but its base cant, once some time has passed the wall portion reforms.


Modular turrets

small turret - what we have now

medium turret - longer range , by default requires power

large turret - longer range still , by default requires power, has minimum range

Artillery - longest range , requires power and nearby radar to function, large minimum range.

weapon type would be modules added like the speed boosters are now, there would be other modules as well

Ammo beacon - a new Ammo drone will grab ammo from ammo chests and delver it as long as the turret is in the roboports construction range.

Armor - increases the damage resistance of the turret.

Internal battery - gives the turret a battery reserve ( like how the lasers currently do)



i think thats enough for now, let me know what you think.

[Koub]

[Koub] Topic moved to Ideas and Suggestions
This might give you some preliminary thoughts on your topic :
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3394

[Foerdifuxx]

A lot of good ideas but non of them are really necessary at the moment (at least not in PvE). Enemies are too weak in general or power intake of laser turrets is too small, doesn't matter how you see it but both are two sides of the same coin. Expansion atm is like removing mold. It's annoying, sometimes time consuming but never intellectually challenging. All you have to do is putting up more laser turrets. Without more challenging enemies you don't need the defense and without more late game content you don't need the mining because you can get the resources with expansion anyway.

PS: just 100h for me

[JohnyDL]

Love the mining laser idea, saturating red belt might be OP but I'd like to see a mod of this and the balancing cause it seems cool as hell

Dustine has a mod called Charge Transmission it's alpha and baggy but it does the whole remote charging thing you describe

Drone path selection is unfeasible without rewriting how drones work completely so while it sounds cool it probably won't happen.

Biters can't spread back too close to your factory (there's a minimum distance of 7 chunks from your buildings so build buildings to prevent expansion) you can also turn off their spread with advanced settings and moderate or slow down how often they spread and how close they get.

If you're struggling with only laser turrets why not intermix flame thrower and uranium round turrets it'll save on electricity and deal damage in a distributed way for the flame and just more damage for uranium rounds. Walls and dragon's teeth also help. Personally I don't think more walls or turrets are needed but razor wire or electric fences as a means to slow/minor damage approaching biters seems like a cool idea.

2.5kh here :p

[n7m6e7]

One thing really stood out to me.
More walls.
Especially with the enemies tiered growth (small medium, large, behemoth) there should be tiered walls (steel +stone wall= steel plated wall. Steel plated wall + X= best wall)

[Jap2.0]

Practically eveything on here has been suggested before.

[JohnyDL]

new to forum, first post moved to the suggestions forum and now they can't find it to reply, I'm pretty sure that they won't have known to look for the ideas before or that lists like this are generally bad.

[Jap2.0]

new to forum, first post moved to the suggestions forum and now they can't find it to reply, I'm pretty sure that they won't have known to look for the ideas before or that lists like this are generally bad.

Ignorance (which you're assuming, although not without good reason) is not an excuse. If I'm driving 80mph on a road with a speed limit of 45mph, then I tell the police that I didn't know what the speed limit was, that won't mean I won't get a ticket.

[JohnyDL]

If you're driving then you know there are rules for driving and at least one of those is/would be a speed limit, if you're driving and don't know this you're likely a child and know that adults drive and children don't, "Driving is something mommies and daddies do not me but I like to pretend so.... oops" posting to a forum is objectively not the same, and if it were I'm sorry to say this situation is more like kid driving a car rather than adult being willfully ignorant, I mean even if you assume this is the thought process it's hardly being just ignorant:

"I have an idea and I just made an account. Where's the first place to post my idea that fits my needs, News? No, Releases? No, General Discussion? Could be, 'Post all other topics which do not belong to any other category.'? okay so lets see the other categories: Multiplayer, Show your Creations, Spread the Word, Off topic, This Forum, Gameplay Help, Technical Help, Bug Reports? Doesn't fit in any of those and ideas is probably what newbies come to post so it should be on the first page but the list only seems to be two pages long so I'll just double check" scrolls to bottom of page and because the list is a little more than 2 pages long misses the factorio direction section which is exactly in the middle "Mods, Modding Discussions, Tools, Maps and Scenarios, Translations, Texture Packs, Fan Art, Wiki Talk. Well general discussion it has to be" clicks "there's The Forum Rules but I bet that's stuff like be nice, don't spam and such, I'll just go ahead and make a new thread, don't need to read that."

I think we (regular posters to ideas and suggestions) can be too critical of newbies at times and take the attitude "ignorance isn't an excuse" as an excuse to be rude but understanding and benefit of the doubt costs nothing in the first instance, I've had in depth arguments and discussions with some people but usually those are people who've been here a while and disagree with me on what we each consider best for the game, cutting newbies a little slack doesn't hurt, people who've got a dozen posts to their credit and have managed to post in the right forum first time though, they've managed to find the forum they've seen there are rules on other boards most likely and willfully ignored the ones here, go ham. On the other hand first post, moved by a mod: meh. It costs literally nothing to encourage better interactions rather than saying "your ideas are not with the electrons they're stored with cause someone beat you to them" or words to that effect, and while some have been posted before, I don't think I've come across a laser mining thread and I hadn't thought to look for one so the post has value in that respect too, just my 2 cents

[Jap2.0]

If you're driving then you know there are rules for driving and at least one of those is/would be a speed limit, if you're driving and don't know this you're likely a child and know that adults drive and children don't, "Driving is something mommies and daddies do not me but I like to pretend so.... oops" posting to a forum is objectively not the same, and if it were I'm sorry to say this situation is more like kid driving a car rather than adult being willfully ignorant, I mean even if you assume this is the thought process it's hardly being just ignorant:

"I have an idea and I just made an account. Where's the first place to post my idea that fits my needs, News? No, Releases? No, General Discussion? Could be, 'Post all other topics which do not belong to any other category.'? okay so lets see the other categories: Multiplayer, Show your Creations, Spread the Word, Off topic, This Forum, Gameplay Help, Technical Help, Bug Reports? Doesn't fit in any of those and ideas is probably what newbies come to post so it should be on the first page but the list only seems to be two pages long so I'll just double check" scrolls to bottom of page and because the list is a little more than 2 pages long misses the factorio direction section which is exactly in the middle "Mods, Modding Discussions, Tools, Maps and Scenarios, Translations, Texture Packs, Fan Art, Wiki Talk. Well general discussion it has to be" clicks "there's The Forum Rules but I bet that's stuff like be nice, don't spam and such, I'll just go ahead and make a new thread, don't need to read that."

I think we (regular posters to ideas and suggestions) can be too critical of newbies at times and take the attitude "ignorance isn't an excuse" as an excuse to be rude but understanding and benefit of the doubt costs nothing in the first instance, I've had in depth arguments and discussions with some people but usually those are people who've been here a while and disagree with me on what we each consider best for the game, cutting newbies a little slack doesn't hurt, people who've got a dozen posts to their credit and have managed to post in the right forum first time though, they've managed to find the forum they've seen there are rules on other boards most likely and willfully ignored the ones here, go ham. On the other hand first post, moved by a mod: meh. It costs literally nothing to encourage better interactions rather than saying "your ideas are not with the electrons they're stored with cause someone beat you to them" or words to that effect, and while some have been posted before, I don't think I've come across a laser mining thread and I hadn't thought to look for one so the post has value in that respect too, just my 2 cents

I'm by no means saying that we should be jerks to them - just to get that out of the way - and this is getting a little off topic, oh well - and I agree that there are some merits to this thread and some of these suggestions. However, to go back to my analogy (which I know isn't perfect, perhaps it was a little extreme as well), the person knows speed limits are a thing, he just assumes what it is incorrectly, just like (presumably) this person. They (again, probably - this is all uncertain) knew forum rules were a thing, but they wrongly assumed what they were. I'm not saying that you're entirely wrong, or that I'm entirely right - I think that you have to balance so that you aren't overly mean to everyone who breaks some of the rules, but you don't ignore their mistakes and instead enforce and teach about rules. What the right balance is is somewhat subjective, and I admit I oveerexaggerated my opinion somewhat so that there was some contrast to yours.
Did that make any sense whatsoever? I can ramble on and explain things poorly sometimes.

[Koub]

[Koub] Please people, chill. We all, older members of the community, whish our new members, would post in the right sections, search before, and try to follow our rules for better clarity and efficiency. We just need a little patience and pedagogy. Also don't forget that every newcomer is a new newcomer, so this is a neverending task.

[Tekky]

I agree that new users should be welcomed to the forum instead of facing severe criticism for breaking forum rules in their first post.

Of course, there is nothing wrong in pointing out to the new user that he did something wrong, as long as this is done in a friendly manner.

new to forum, first post moved to the suggestions forum and now they can't find it to reply, I'm pretty sure that they won't have known to look for the ideas before or that lists like this are generally bad.

I agree that moving threads of new users is a problem. That is exactly why I have suggested that, whenever a moderator moves a thread to a different sub-forum, a link to the thread should be left behind in the old sub-forum. The message board has a feature designed specifically for this purpose.

Here is a link to my suggestion thread:
viewtopic.php?f=55&t=53959

[Jap2.0]

I agree that new users should be welcomed to the forum instead of facing severe criticism for breaking forum rules in their first post.

Of course, there is nothing wrong in pointing out to the new user that he did something wrong, as long as this is done in a friendly manner.

new to forum, first post moved to the suggestions forum and now they can't find it to reply, I'm pretty sure that they won't have known to look for the ideas before or that lists like this are generally bad.

I agree that moving threads of new users is a problem. That is exactly why I have suggested that, whenever a moderator moves a thread to a different sub-forum, a link to the thread should be left behind in the old sub-forum. The message board has a feature designed specifically for this purpose.

Here is a link to my suggestion thread:
viewtopic.php?f=55&t=53959

Sorry, Koub. I completely agree.

Tekky: I think that's an interesting idea. I see how it coule be useful for new members, however I'm not sure how well that would work. You would still partially have the topic in that forum, which would kind of defeat the topic of moving it - for example, what would the developers do witha topic that got moved from bug reports to technical help? Would they have a new subforum for that, which would completely defeat the purpose? Etc. I think all these problems could be worked around, it just complicates it a bit more than you make it sound. Personally I think that maybe when a new user's topic gets moved, then they should get a pm saying something like this (I did my best to make it accurate to this topic, but I'm unsure where it was moved from, I'm assuming general discussion):

"Your topic After 400+ hours a few problems and suggestions was moved from the subforum General discussion to Ideas and suggestions because it contains ideas and suggestions for the developers. You can see all your posts by clicking the view your posts button in the header."

Perhaps it could include something about the rules if they broke any of them. Obviously that's just a rough draft. I'm unsure which iddea would work better.

[Tekky]

In order to prevent double-posting, I have replied to the last post in my suggestion thread.