Remove Expensive Mode

[aka13]

We had a discussion prompted by this topic, and we agreed with a lot of the points,
Even internally the expensive mode causes a lot of hassle and code maintainence

Since we have already 'broken the seal' of internal/base game mods with the expansion (the expansion content will be a separate mod),
It was agreed we would make the expensive mode recipes into a small mod that will be packaged with the game.

How will that relate with steam achievements, and will deathworld be supported with the expansion?

Using internal mods will still allow achievements as normal,
Death world should work the same as now, unless I misunderstand the query?

No, I was just making sure I understood YOU right
Glad to hear it.

[rhynex]

We had a discussion prompted by this topic, and we agreed with a lot of the points,
Even internally the expensive mode causes a lot of hassle and code maintainence

Since we have already 'broken the seal' of internal/base game mods with the expansion (the expansion content will be a separate mod),
It was agreed we would make the expensive mode recipes into a small mod that will be packaged with the game.

it is possible that I misunderstood the decision. just wondering if it is decided.
is it expansion feature only or 1.2 as well?
how shall migration happen? like 1.1 has expensive mode as a separate recipe tree but 1.2 shall not (that is what I understood from above). so what shall happen to existing games with expensive mode of 1.1?
shall 1.2 refuse to open such maps?

some information about this would be really nice. because depending on the answers above, it is really waste of time to start new expensive mode maps (and maybe invest in making that mod early)

why I ask? because I have not played with normal mode for two years (maybe 3, after 0.17 changes). I even made my own mods on top of expensive mode recipe tree. it seems removing expensive mode means I have to make my own recipe world to continue my games instead of staying at expensive mode.

[FuryoftheStars]

We had a discussion prompted by this topic, and we agreed with a lot of the points,
Even internally the expensive mode causes a lot of hassle and code maintainence

Since we have already 'broken the seal' of internal/base game mods with the expansion (the expansion content will be a separate mod),
It was agreed we would make the expensive mode recipes into a small mod that will be packaged with the game.

it is possible that I misunderstood the decision. just wondering if it is decided.
is it expansion feature only or 1.2 as well?
how shall migration happen? like 1.1 has expensive mode as a separate recipe tree but 1.2 shall not (that is what I understood from above). so what shall happen to existing games with expensive mode of 1.1?
shall 1.2 refuse to open such maps?

some information about this would be really nice. because depending on the answers above, it is really waste of time to start new expensive mode maps (and maybe invest in making that mod early)

why I ask? because I have not played with normal mode for two years (maybe 3, after 0.17 changes). I even made my own mods on top of expensive mode recipe tree. it seems removing expensive mode means I have to make my own recipe world to continue my games instead of staying at expensive mode.

It sounds like expensive mode will be made into a mod that can be activated separately from anything else, but like the expansion (which is also going to behave like a mod), it will not affect achievement status. Otherwise functionality may likely be the same. It will work on existing maps provided you enable the mod, otherwise it will revert their costs to that of normal. Any player created mods that actually use expensive mode will likely have to be updated to work.

[rhynex]

We had a discussion prompted by this topic, and we agreed with a lot of the points,
Even internally the expensive mode causes a lot of hassle and code maintainence

Since we have already 'broken the seal' of internal/base game mods with the expansion (the expansion content will be a separate mod),
It was agreed we would make the expensive mode recipes into a small mod that will be packaged with the game.

it is possible that I misunderstood the decision. just wondering if it is decided.
is it expansion feature only or 1.2 as well?
how shall migration happen? like 1.1 has expensive mode as a separate recipe tree but 1.2 shall not (that is what I understood from above). so what shall happen to existing games with expensive mode of 1.1?
shall 1.2 refuse to open such maps?

some information about this would be really nice. because depending on the answers above, it is really waste of time to start new expensive mode maps (and maybe invest in making that mod early)

why I ask? because I have not played with normal mode for two years (maybe 3, after 0.17 changes). I even made my own mods on top of expensive mode recipe tree. it seems removing expensive mode means I have to make my own recipe world to continue my games instead of staying at expensive mode.

It sounds like expensive mode will be made into a mod that can be activated separately from anything else, but like the expansion (which is also going to behave like a mod), it will not affect achievement status. Otherwise functionality may likely be the same. It will work on existing maps provided you enable the mod, otherwise it will revert their costs to that of normal. Any player created mods that actually use expensive mode will likely have to be updated to work.

actually it depends on how you implement it. you might say "recipe.expensive = nil" so recipes shall always fall to "recipe.normal" or just recipe itself which is not a problem at all. but then why remove expensive mode because it is already not affecting majority of the players (I am assuming this, expensive mode players are little).

but it might also be implemented as "recipe.expensive" is removed completely to avoid all hassle it has created/might create. expansion might change recipe prototypes (it might have breaking changes I suppose? it is a big version change so any change might happen I guess), maybe devs shall go into such a drastic path, completely scrapping the "recipe.expensive and recipe.normal" properties, making them unrecognized at prototypes. if this is the case, then mods shall be broken (if they touch "recipe.expensive" property for example). that was my question actually, if this approach is decided.

I do not care about achievements, but some people definitely do so it is another topic. I just do not mind how it is solved there.

so basically question is about backward compatibility as of today vs the version without expensive mode, especially about prototypes.

[FuryoftheStars]

actually it depends on how you implement it. you might say "recipe.expensive = nil" so recipes shall always fall to "recipe.normal" or just recipe itself which is not a problem at all. but then why remove expensive mode because it is already not affecting majority of the players (I am assuming this, expensive mode players are little).

but it might also be implemented as "recipe.expensive" is removed completely to avoid all hassle it has created/might create. expansion might change recipe prototypes (it might have breaking changes I suppose? it is a big version change so any change might happen I guess), maybe devs shall go into such a drastic path, completely scrapping the "recipe.expensive and recipe.normal" properties, making them unrecognized at prototypes. if this is the case, then mods shall be broken (if they touch "recipe.expensive" property for example). that was my question actually, if this approach is decided.

I do not care about achievements, but some people definitely do so it is another topic. I just do not mind how it is solved there.

so basically question is about backward compatibility as of today vs the version without expensive mode, especially about prototypes.

Honestly, I expect the complete removal of the .normal and .expensive properties, as that is in and of itself what causes the problems for modders because some recipes have and use them, and some don't.

[Deadlock989]

so basically question is about backward compatibility as of today vs the version without expensive mode, especially about prototypes.

What I'm getting from the rare and guarded snippets revealed here and there, and this new development around normal/expensive recipes, is that for 1.2 (which is going to be the core version of Factorio that supports the completely optional DLC mod whether you buy it or not) all bets are off and we are taking the Oxygen Not Included road whereby the release of a DLC pack breaks everything that came before it and the modding scene will take months/years to get back to square one. In the specific case of normal/expensive, I'm tempted to say that it's completely worth it.

There won't be any normal or expensive property of recipes any more and everything will always be in the "root" of the prototype, so if you have written code which expects or requires normal or expensive properties to exist in specific vanilla instances of recipes, it will break, but you probably shouldn't have done that in the first place since any other mod can change them first. I may have misunderstood the limited information provided.

If you have made a mod which is entirely built around the vanilla expensive mode recipe setting and you want to continue on that road for some reason, I guess we may get the option to force requirement of the "expensive mod", which also raises the interesting possibility that we might also block it as a conflict.

There's also nothing to stop people continuing to make mods for 1.1 if they want to.

Edit: Actually is there any mod out there that takes advantage of technology difficulty? I don't think I've seen any.

I've never seen it used either but I have spent time answering "bug reports" from punters complaining that my mods don't support the mapgen technology difficulty setting (the "difficulty" dropdown, not the cost multiplier), they were no doubt surprised to learn that technology difficulty does precisely nothing in a vanilla game either.

[kazaakas]

Why not replace expensive mode with a customizable research science cost multiplier?

That way, players wanting a longer and slower playthrough, still get what they want, and it doesn’t mess with the recipes.

[robot256]

Generic vs normal vs expensive was always an overdefined interface. It should have been like standard and high-res textures, where--awkward though it may be--the standard sprites are in the same place regardless of whether high res sprites are defined.

I believe expensive mode was originally intended as a "built-in overhaul", so that you could have more interesting challenges than simply scaling the existing recipes. But there are so many overhaul mods to choose from now, expensive mode gets very little attention.

If the vanilla expensive experience is really desired, it would be better implemented as an overhaul mod as well. That way, it could override (generic) recipes in other mods, or other mods could detect its presence and change accordingly, as we do for K2, AB, Py, etc.

As a vanilla feature, simple scaling is the only user interface that makes sense, but it too has the potential to break things that for whatever don't meah well with linear scaling. So I'm not sure what value it would being over a mod that applies scaling to every recipe and then fixes whatever corner cases arise.

[jamiechi1]

I would really like the normal vs expensive thing to go away. But if it doesn't, maybe every item in the game should have the 'normal' or 'expensive' options. This would make it much easier for those of us who make or edit mods.

I spent hours yesterday trying to get a mod to work, and finally realized that it was the normal vs expensive thing that broke it. And there are no errors when starting the game to show me that I did something wrong.

I also spent what seemed like hours trying to get a mod to work and found out I forgot to enable the mod. I hate when that happens!

[aka13]

I would really like the normal vs expensive thing to go away. But if it doesn't, maybe every item in the game should have the 'normal' or 'expensive' options. This would make it much easier for those of us who make or edit mods.

I spent hours yesterday trying to get a mod to work, and finally realized that it was the normal vs expensive thing that broke it. And there are no errors when starting the game to show me that I did something wrong.

I also spent what seemed like hours trying to get a mod to work and found out I forgot to enable the mod. I hate when that happens!

I really would like the mod vs unmod thing to go away. This would make it much easier for those of us who do not make or use mods.

Sadly, there is no clown reaction similar to telegram here on the forums

[Factoruser]

- Support.

The gain is not worth the disadvantages. You could already reduce resources in the enviroment, which is of course just like a simple handicap factor. The expensive mode requires additional work in modding and documentation. If a mod changes a recipe, it has also to consider the expensive recipe. Otherwise you may have different ingredients depending whether you are in expensive mode or not.

A simple production difficulty value, slowing down production speed, increasing power usage etc. combined with smaller deposits, would be better.

[azesmbog]

Das Kind mit dem Bade ausschutten

[aka13]

- Support.

The gain is not worth the disadvantages. You could already reduce resources in the enviroment, which is of course just like a simple handicap factor. The expensive mode requires additional work in modding and documentation. If a mod changes a recipe, it has also to consider the expensive recipe. Otherwise you may have different ingredients depending whether you are in expensive mode or not.

A simple production difficulty value, slowing down production speed, increasing power usage etc. combined with smaller deposits, would be better.

Why do you all comment on removing stuff you obviously have never touched, and don't understand what changes?
"Marathon" recipes radically rebalance all midgame stuff and ratios. Let's take circuits as example - in normal recipes are retard-proof, and the 1:1.5 ratio is easily fullfilled, requires zero effort, end easily inline-extendable until you can't no more.
On marathon, the ratio is shifted to 1:4, which radically changes how you can, and can not build it.

The logistics are completely different - you can't live with 1 copper belt for everything, and launch a rocket. I just need to scroll through reddit at "muh spagetti first rocket very proud my fellow redditor" consisting of 3,5 assemblers, and 1-2 trains.
Marathon significantly changes gameplay, and focuses on the logistic side of the game + forces you to decentralize and outsource.

But I bet your "anime figurine player model" mods are very important, and require dumbing down of logistics of the basegame, amirite

[robot256]

I regret replying to this thread without reading the developers' responses from three months ago (viewtopic.php?p=577204#p577204). They stated very clearly that they agree with changing the API (without changing the player experience) for the expansion, and no, there is no plan to change it for 1.1. I don't see what more there is to say on the topic, and it should probably be locked.

[aka13]

Absolutely agreed. The devs conclusion keeps me happy, and offrailing this topic into removing it alltogether is uncool.
So I'd appreciate if the topic got closed.

[Factoruser]

But I bet your "anime figurine player model" mods are very important, and require dumbing down of logistics of the basegame, amirite

No, your anime player model mod won't have a problem with the expensive mode, but all mods that are changing and adding new recipes might get in a conflict with it.